The other day, my son-in-law Ned was drinking his morning coffee and reading The Washington Post soon to discover that he and my daughter had lived in the house where Seabiscuit was written, which is next door to its author’s house. Let me explain. Laura Hillenbrand rented a small house in DC where she wrote the novel. Thereafter, she and her husband bought the house next door. Soon thereafter, my daughter and her husband moved into the rental.
Before I continue, I invite you to read Laura Hillenbrand's story in The New Yorker: http://www.cfids-cab.org/MESA/Hillenbrand.html
I talked about her story in my Great Books seminars this week. In HON101, I related her story to Aristotle's concept that character development is both social and active. Unlike Plato, who believed that we improve our character through contemplation and dialogue, Aristotle believed that we improve our character through action. In HON201, I related her story to Voltaire’s ending of Candide, which invites (or instructs, depending upon your translation) us to tend (or cultivate) our gardens. In essence, Voltaire accepts human conflict and prescribes work over philosophical argumentation as a tolerable way to live.
I would like to know how Ms. Hillenbrand has found her strength. Honestly, my interest lies not so much with how she wrote two full-length novels with such little energy, but how she eschewed enervating social acculturation. How did she face and surmount the social stigmas imposed on her disease? Might those social stigmas have fostered some independence or risibility that promoted her self-actualization?
I'm still wondering if there is, ironically, some female self-actualization benefit to being considered non-normative.
Here's to all strong women...
dedicated to my mother, aunt, sister, cousin, nieces, daughters, step-daughter, and granddaughters
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
No Philosopher's Stone in The Alchemist (by Paulo Coelho)
Coelho, Paulo. Trans. Alan R. Clarke. The Alchemist. New York: HarperOne. 1998.
With stories like The Alchemist, it’s no wonder that so few of us self-actualize. Here’s the plot:
Spain. A young man who has rejected the seminary life and now herds his sheep seeks advice from a gypsy who foretells that he will find a treasure close to the Pyramids. Promising her a portion of the treasure, the boy ponders his next move when a King appears, telling him a story about focusing on the present while still taking care of his business. That story spurs the boy on his way. He sells his sheep and journeys to Tangiers where he helps a crystal shop owner become rich. From there, our young man journeys across Africa where he encourages an alchemist, falls in love with a dessert woman, encounters the oasis wars, converses with the dessert, turns himself into the wind, arrives at the Pyramids, and returns home to discover his treasure buried by his familiar village church. There’s no place like home.
According to the Introduction, this plot is about following your “personal calling,” which is described as “god’s blessing,” “the path that God chose for you here on Earth,” “our dream,” and “our legend.” The secular version of that is what this blog calls “self-actualization.” Before readers gets their hopes up, Coelho catalogues four “obstacles” that typically impede fulfilling personal callings. 1) As children, we’re discouraged that fulfilling our dream is impossible. 2) We privilege our love for others over our dream. 3) We are too afraid of defeat. 4) We are afraid of realizing our dream when we are about to fulfill it. Predictably, the young man journeys through each of these obstacles, surmounting them with a bit of assistance and advice, and ultimately, winding up rich back home.
Before pursuing the major gripe with the book, R&E would like to address one of the aforementioned proscriptions which--contrary to the book--actually enervates self-actualizing. Number 2: don’t allow your love for anyone to impede your pursuit of your dream. True, the candor may be refreshing, for who has not suspected that the likes of Socrates and Thoreau couldn’t possibly have led the examined life and the simplified life while changing nappies? Beyond that suspicion, self-actualizing mandates acting—from improving a relationship to changing the world. Self-actualizers, rather than shunning their relationships and responsibilities, nurture them. Think Aristotle. We must act generously to be generous people. We must act gratefully to be grateful people. And with whom are we generous and to whom are we grateful? According to Aristotle, it takes human interaction to develop one’s character. It takes two, baby. Thus, self-actualizers don’t simply self-fashion, as the Humanists promoted. They self-improve while and because they authentically relate to others. To tell people who are searching for truth and ethic that pursuing their dreams absolves them of human interactions and responsibilities is to sit beside Thoreau counting his damn beans. But let’s not forget, that Henry David was traipsing over to Ma Emerson’s house many a night, depending on her hospitality for one meal after the next. Mr. Self-sufficient.
Now to the major problem with Coelho’s approach to what Maslow calls self-actualizing. Under the disguise of a coming-of-age story, the novel tosses at its reader prescriptions for living the good and prosperous life taken from many different and, often, competing philosophies. To convince you of this, R&E should, in proper graduate school fashion, illustrate each philosophy as Santiago allegedly comes of age. But, frankly, that’s more trouble than the author expended. Suffice to say that there’s a spatchcocking of Christianity, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Reductionism, Skeptical Fideism, Existentialism, Foundationalism, Neo-Platonism, and more. If you don’t subscribe to one, just read a few more pages because another will be coming along. By the end, like the dessert winds, the aphorisms become merely susurrus ramblings. So sloppily is this sciolism introduced and never developed, that it (ironically) prevents the reader from knowing which path to follow. Ever sample a cornucopia of foods at a state fair and ended up with a tummy ache?
The back cover of The Alchemist brags that Coelho’s books “have sold more than 65 million copies in 150 countries and have been translated into 60 languages.” If they’re all as turbid as The Alchemist, isn’t that a bit disgusting? ReadandExceed invites its readers to reject books that treat self-actualizing as a game of finding a prize: self-improvement could be behind door #1, door #2, or door #3. Take your pick; take your chances. But in the case of The Alchemist, it’s all the doors…and therefore, none of them. So although there’s no risk, there’s no payoff. You won’t have a clue how to be a better person.
What R&E wants to say--more than continuing to bash this book—is that Americans need to declare a fast on their self-help book hunger. They need to reject the corn dog, the cotton candy, and the caramel corn. Instead, they need to vigilantly scrutinize their reading options and select only quality products— those produced from carefully tended soil, culled for pests, and harvested when at their peak. Those that will provide for their nourishment. Let us prune our SH collections, considering that it’s time to recall philosophy’s foundations. R&E recommends a rereading of The Dialogues of Plato and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic. No finer start could you make toward understanding the conversation of the good.
With stories like The Alchemist, it’s no wonder that so few of us self-actualize. Here’s the plot:
Spain. A young man who has rejected the seminary life and now herds his sheep seeks advice from a gypsy who foretells that he will find a treasure close to the Pyramids. Promising her a portion of the treasure, the boy ponders his next move when a King appears, telling him a story about focusing on the present while still taking care of his business. That story spurs the boy on his way. He sells his sheep and journeys to Tangiers where he helps a crystal shop owner become rich. From there, our young man journeys across Africa where he encourages an alchemist, falls in love with a dessert woman, encounters the oasis wars, converses with the dessert, turns himself into the wind, arrives at the Pyramids, and returns home to discover his treasure buried by his familiar village church. There’s no place like home.
According to the Introduction, this plot is about following your “personal calling,” which is described as “god’s blessing,” “the path that God chose for you here on Earth,” “our dream,” and “our legend.” The secular version of that is what this blog calls “self-actualization.” Before readers gets their hopes up, Coelho catalogues four “obstacles” that typically impede fulfilling personal callings. 1) As children, we’re discouraged that fulfilling our dream is impossible. 2) We privilege our love for others over our dream. 3) We are too afraid of defeat. 4) We are afraid of realizing our dream when we are about to fulfill it. Predictably, the young man journeys through each of these obstacles, surmounting them with a bit of assistance and advice, and ultimately, winding up rich back home.
Before pursuing the major gripe with the book, R&E would like to address one of the aforementioned proscriptions which--contrary to the book--actually enervates self-actualizing. Number 2: don’t allow your love for anyone to impede your pursuit of your dream. True, the candor may be refreshing, for who has not suspected that the likes of Socrates and Thoreau couldn’t possibly have led the examined life and the simplified life while changing nappies? Beyond that suspicion, self-actualizing mandates acting—from improving a relationship to changing the world. Self-actualizers, rather than shunning their relationships and responsibilities, nurture them. Think Aristotle. We must act generously to be generous people. We must act gratefully to be grateful people. And with whom are we generous and to whom are we grateful? According to Aristotle, it takes human interaction to develop one’s character. It takes two, baby. Thus, self-actualizers don’t simply self-fashion, as the Humanists promoted. They self-improve while and because they authentically relate to others. To tell people who are searching for truth and ethic that pursuing their dreams absolves them of human interactions and responsibilities is to sit beside Thoreau counting his damn beans. But let’s not forget, that Henry David was traipsing over to Ma Emerson’s house many a night, depending on her hospitality for one meal after the next. Mr. Self-sufficient.
Now to the major problem with Coelho’s approach to what Maslow calls self-actualizing. Under the disguise of a coming-of-age story, the novel tosses at its reader prescriptions for living the good and prosperous life taken from many different and, often, competing philosophies. To convince you of this, R&E should, in proper graduate school fashion, illustrate each philosophy as Santiago allegedly comes of age. But, frankly, that’s more trouble than the author expended. Suffice to say that there’s a spatchcocking of Christianity, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Reductionism, Skeptical Fideism, Existentialism, Foundationalism, Neo-Platonism, and more. If you don’t subscribe to one, just read a few more pages because another will be coming along. By the end, like the dessert winds, the aphorisms become merely susurrus ramblings. So sloppily is this sciolism introduced and never developed, that it (ironically) prevents the reader from knowing which path to follow. Ever sample a cornucopia of foods at a state fair and ended up with a tummy ache?
The back cover of The Alchemist brags that Coelho’s books “have sold more than 65 million copies in 150 countries and have been translated into 60 languages.” If they’re all as turbid as The Alchemist, isn’t that a bit disgusting? ReadandExceed invites its readers to reject books that treat self-actualizing as a game of finding a prize: self-improvement could be behind door #1, door #2, or door #3. Take your pick; take your chances. But in the case of The Alchemist, it’s all the doors…and therefore, none of them. So although there’s no risk, there’s no payoff. You won’t have a clue how to be a better person.
What R&E wants to say--more than continuing to bash this book—is that Americans need to declare a fast on their self-help book hunger. They need to reject the corn dog, the cotton candy, and the caramel corn. Instead, they need to vigilantly scrutinize their reading options and select only quality products— those produced from carefully tended soil, culled for pests, and harvested when at their peak. Those that will provide for their nourishment. Let us prune our SH collections, considering that it’s time to recall philosophy’s foundations. R&E recommends a rereading of The Dialogues of Plato and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic. No finer start could you make toward understanding the conversation of the good.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Elizabeth Taylor, A Wreath of Roses
Taylor, Elizabeth. Introduction by Candia McWilliam. 1949. A Wreath of Roses. London: Virago Press, 1994.
Like most of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, A Wreath of Roses, deals with male-female relationships and loneliness. After a second reading, HM wonders how, according to the novel, can we distinguish between healthy and unhealthy relationships—those that help us escape our loneliness, those that help us alleviate our loneliness, and those that intensify our loneliness.
Taylor’s fourth novel provides us with three female characters who experience both healthy and unhealthy relationships.
Liz Nicholson struggles with her relationships with her lifelong friend, old governess, new husband, and baby son. As usual, Taylor does not offer her readers female friendship as the panacea to loneliness. Liz and Camilla--separately and collectively--fall apart. They drink tea and snipe at each other. They take walks and criticize each other. Platonically, they lie in bed together and chide each other. Here’s one example, Camilla speaking to Liz: “This flair you have for recognizing the spurious, it is a pity you never put it to use in your own case” (37). It gets worse. Repeatedly, Camilla tries to sabotage Liz’s marriage, admitting that she dislikes Arthur and claiming that Liz has settled. And Liz doesn’t even expend the energy to sabotage Camilla’s dangerous romance although she strongly senses that Richard will harm Camilla. Their friendship is failing not just because Camilla is jealous of Liz’s marriage and baby. Growing apart is not to blame. We see the healthy parallel of a friendship that withstands and even, flourishes amidst change when Liz invites her old governess to come live with Liz’s family. The reason that the Liz-Camilla friendship fails is because they are independently unhappy. Consequently, together, they only intensify each other’s loneliness because each sees in the other that what she wants—marriage/motherhood or freedom—and sees that neither will ward off loneliness. Of the two, only Liz begins to accept her life--as a wife. She and Arthur, eschewing romantic illusions, learn that marriage is, unglamorously, hard work: "...marriage is an institution. It is a thing we build up, not perfect, but real.” After this epiphany, Arthur muses about his wife's sweetness. Thereafter, the narrator explains, “And it was as if Lady Davidson had risen, given the signal to the other ladies, and withdrawn” (231). His love for his wife dispels the other women’s sway over and interest in him. Put simply, we are faithful to those we love. According to the novel, working at their marriage is their only chance for becoming independently and collectively happy, thus alleviating their loneliness.
Camilla Hill turns to romance to alleviate her loneliness and almost gets herself killed. We know that this relationship can’t end well even before we know Richard Elton's secret. We’re reading merely to see just how destructive their relationship will be. We sense danger not only because we know that Richard lies and is covering up something awful in his past but also, because Camilla exhibits the jejune symptoms of romance: “’I hate him and desire him. I mock him, I chide him, I despise him, but all my body shakes at his touch, and when he goes away I shall despair’” (193). Once we overhear these thoughts, we know that Camilla has no chance to self-actualize with Richard, so intent is she on falling into the black hole of romantic submission, rescue, and fantasy. While little Harry is latching on to Liz’s breasts, Camilla is latching on to Richard's charm, which successfully disguises his true identity. Cap-a-pie, he is a drifter, con-man, and murderer. Lying about his past, present, and future, Richard's state of mind threatens Camilla's life. He is not the only one lying. Camilla lies to herself, to Liz, and to Frances. No wonder her life and her relationships fall apart, for consistently, Elizabeth Taylor illustrates the cancer of deception. Berating Liz for her marital choice, pursuing a dangerous romance, and breaching hospitality codes, Camilla finds no respite from loneliness. Nor should she.
Frances Rutherford, Liz’s old governess and painter, participates in the only healthy relationship with her new acquaintance, Morland Beddoes. With him, in their rare private moments, she finds a friend who loves her for who she is. He is Aristotle’s best friend, a soul-mate. Not coincidentally, Frances loves herself for whom she is. Together, their relationship extends beyond the initial common ground of her paintings to an authentic friendship. They exit the novel, arm in arm, just after Frances has decided to be finished with her unfinished painting...and painting.
The novel supports her decision: “Life is an unfinished sentence, or a few haphazard brush-strokes. Nothing stays. Nothing is completed. I can make nothing whole from it, however small. Pinned down, like a butterfly, it ceases to be itself, just as the butterfly becomes something else; dead, unmoving, its brightness gone. The meaning of a painting is a voice crying out: ‘I saw it. Before it vanished, it was thus.’ An honest painting would never be finished; an honest novel would stop in the middle of a sentence” (222). Her life as a painter must change. Frances, even late in her life, must continue to evolve. The novel blesses her decision with another art-as-life metaphor: “Beauty and corruption touch us—at the same time, in the same place. Not separately, as in Frances’s pictures, but always the two going hand in hand; our days alternate between them, the truth contains them both. The search for beauty, lays bare ugliness as well” (227). And so does the search for human connections. According to A Wreath of Roses, life is no Manichean struggle, but an interconnection of good and evil. To engage in life--in our friendships, our marriages, our parenthoods, and our guest-host relationships--we must learn how to integrate both beauty and ugliness. Beyond that, we must authentically pursue only the good.
The good in A Wreath of Roses requires fulfilling your duty, which the novel clarifies: “What is my duty? And surely I have a duty to myself?” “Oh, no! Frances said. “That’s loose thinking, my dear. That’s a pitfall always. Anything that must be explained won’t be your duty. Duty is very simple and obvious. It is nearly always what you don’t want to do” (72). Duty represents the tough side of life, perhaps, the ugliness. But there’s also a life-enhancing side, which Frances explores: “She was tempted outside her range as an artist, and for the first time painted from an inner darkness, groping and undisciplined, as if in an act of relief from her own turmoil” (112). Life, like art, is a mixture of duty and self-expression. A life that embraces both affords us protection against loneliness.
But is that a self-actualizing life? Let's review the criteria for self-actualizing: 1) self-examining and self-accepting; 2) rejecting forced and unfair acculturation; and 3) cultivating a better world.
1) Self-examination and acceptance...As already mentioned, we see this with the characterization of Frances--her decision to paint both the beauty and ugliness of life, as well as her determination to privilige her own artisitc vision over others' opinions.
2) Rejecting unhealthy acculturation...Can Frances be both rebel and Stoic? Well, perhaps, she is not a Stoic, at least not as Marcus Aurelius dictated Stoicism--fulfilling your obligations to your family, state, and divinity. Note that Frances says that duty is simple and obvious. Perhaps, that's why you can't have a duty to yourself, which is complicated. To live the examined life has never been simple and obvious. In short, it’s a whole lot easier to know what you don’t want to do—your duty—than to know what you want to do—live for yourself. Viewed in this duty and (not vs.) self-actualization dilemma, Frances' speech takes on a rather rebellious tone. The older Frances is not advising a Stoic life for this young wife and mother. Rather, the former governess is distinguishing between duty and self-actualization. This quote will illustrate my point more clearly: “She had no way to turn. There is no past for an artist. What is done is cast away, good only for the time of its creation. Work is the present and the immediate future; but her immediate future was a blank; the present this half-finished painting. ‘The mistake is listening to others,’ she told herself. ‘One has little enough of one’s own, but they will strip it away, with their kindness and their good advice. It is best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, to paint as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all...” (237). Frances warns herself to guard against others’ influences and cultural master narratives that denude her talent, her vision, and her endeavors. To know yourself is not good enough to self-actualize. You must also stay true to yourself—amidst (and sometimes, against) your relationships and society.
3) Cultivating a better world...Does Frances, by the novel’s end, cultivate a better world; or is her rejection of art a rejection of human connections and obligations? Hard to tell. Just after she thinks that the “the pleasure of others is a by-product,” she recalls Ophelia “handing out her flowers...the last terrible gesture but one,” glances at the wreath of roses on the bench, declares that her painting days are over, locks her studio behind her, and walks off with Morland to have coffee with Liz and Camilla. Morland “looked at her with love and concern as she stood in the doorway still holding the wreath of flowers.” It sounds so hopeful, doesn’t it? But when he inquires about the “faded garland,” she responds, “Oh, it is dead.” These are her last words in the novel. Thereafter, they walk arm in arm, the rain begins to fall, and the trees "clattered their leaves in a sudden gust of wind” (238). This is the same rain that leads Camilla inside the abandoned house with her sociopathic companion. This is not good rain. Embracing Ophelia, leaving her painting unfinished forever, carrying the dead flowers, and exposing herself to hostile nature are not the actions of cultivating a better world. They are the actions of loss.
HM shall continue to reread the rest of the novels of Elizabeth Taylor, searching for a female character who masters all three self-actualization categories. Until then, HM hears Elizabeth Taylor cautioning us against delayed self-actualization and against depending on others to alleviate our own loneliness. After all, life—like art—changes. And we will all someday, despite our best intentions and determinations, discover our wreaths of roses faded, then, dead. Carpe diem!
Like most of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, A Wreath of Roses, deals with male-female relationships and loneliness. After a second reading, HM wonders how, according to the novel, can we distinguish between healthy and unhealthy relationships—those that help us escape our loneliness, those that help us alleviate our loneliness, and those that intensify our loneliness.
Taylor’s fourth novel provides us with three female characters who experience both healthy and unhealthy relationships.
Liz Nicholson struggles with her relationships with her lifelong friend, old governess, new husband, and baby son. As usual, Taylor does not offer her readers female friendship as the panacea to loneliness. Liz and Camilla--separately and collectively--fall apart. They drink tea and snipe at each other. They take walks and criticize each other. Platonically, they lie in bed together and chide each other. Here’s one example, Camilla speaking to Liz: “This flair you have for recognizing the spurious, it is a pity you never put it to use in your own case” (37). It gets worse. Repeatedly, Camilla tries to sabotage Liz’s marriage, admitting that she dislikes Arthur and claiming that Liz has settled. And Liz doesn’t even expend the energy to sabotage Camilla’s dangerous romance although she strongly senses that Richard will harm Camilla. Their friendship is failing not just because Camilla is jealous of Liz’s marriage and baby. Growing apart is not to blame. We see the healthy parallel of a friendship that withstands and even, flourishes amidst change when Liz invites her old governess to come live with Liz’s family. The reason that the Liz-Camilla friendship fails is because they are independently unhappy. Consequently, together, they only intensify each other’s loneliness because each sees in the other that what she wants—marriage/motherhood or freedom—and sees that neither will ward off loneliness. Of the two, only Liz begins to accept her life--as a wife. She and Arthur, eschewing romantic illusions, learn that marriage is, unglamorously, hard work: "...marriage is an institution. It is a thing we build up, not perfect, but real.” After this epiphany, Arthur muses about his wife's sweetness. Thereafter, the narrator explains, “And it was as if Lady Davidson had risen, given the signal to the other ladies, and withdrawn” (231). His love for his wife dispels the other women’s sway over and interest in him. Put simply, we are faithful to those we love. According to the novel, working at their marriage is their only chance for becoming independently and collectively happy, thus alleviating their loneliness.
Camilla Hill turns to romance to alleviate her loneliness and almost gets herself killed. We know that this relationship can’t end well even before we know Richard Elton's secret. We’re reading merely to see just how destructive their relationship will be. We sense danger not only because we know that Richard lies and is covering up something awful in his past but also, because Camilla exhibits the jejune symptoms of romance: “’I hate him and desire him. I mock him, I chide him, I despise him, but all my body shakes at his touch, and when he goes away I shall despair’” (193). Once we overhear these thoughts, we know that Camilla has no chance to self-actualize with Richard, so intent is she on falling into the black hole of romantic submission, rescue, and fantasy. While little Harry is latching on to Liz’s breasts, Camilla is latching on to Richard's charm, which successfully disguises his true identity. Cap-a-pie, he is a drifter, con-man, and murderer. Lying about his past, present, and future, Richard's state of mind threatens Camilla's life. He is not the only one lying. Camilla lies to herself, to Liz, and to Frances. No wonder her life and her relationships fall apart, for consistently, Elizabeth Taylor illustrates the cancer of deception. Berating Liz for her marital choice, pursuing a dangerous romance, and breaching hospitality codes, Camilla finds no respite from loneliness. Nor should she.
Frances Rutherford, Liz’s old governess and painter, participates in the only healthy relationship with her new acquaintance, Morland Beddoes. With him, in their rare private moments, she finds a friend who loves her for who she is. He is Aristotle’s best friend, a soul-mate. Not coincidentally, Frances loves herself for whom she is. Together, their relationship extends beyond the initial common ground of her paintings to an authentic friendship. They exit the novel, arm in arm, just after Frances has decided to be finished with her unfinished painting...and painting.
The novel supports her decision: “Life is an unfinished sentence, or a few haphazard brush-strokes. Nothing stays. Nothing is completed. I can make nothing whole from it, however small. Pinned down, like a butterfly, it ceases to be itself, just as the butterfly becomes something else; dead, unmoving, its brightness gone. The meaning of a painting is a voice crying out: ‘I saw it. Before it vanished, it was thus.’ An honest painting would never be finished; an honest novel would stop in the middle of a sentence” (222). Her life as a painter must change. Frances, even late in her life, must continue to evolve. The novel blesses her decision with another art-as-life metaphor: “Beauty and corruption touch us—at the same time, in the same place. Not separately, as in Frances’s pictures, but always the two going hand in hand; our days alternate between them, the truth contains them both. The search for beauty, lays bare ugliness as well” (227). And so does the search for human connections. According to A Wreath of Roses, life is no Manichean struggle, but an interconnection of good and evil. To engage in life--in our friendships, our marriages, our parenthoods, and our guest-host relationships--we must learn how to integrate both beauty and ugliness. Beyond that, we must authentically pursue only the good.
The good in A Wreath of Roses requires fulfilling your duty, which the novel clarifies: “What is my duty? And surely I have a duty to myself?” “Oh, no! Frances said. “That’s loose thinking, my dear. That’s a pitfall always. Anything that must be explained won’t be your duty. Duty is very simple and obvious. It is nearly always what you don’t want to do” (72). Duty represents the tough side of life, perhaps, the ugliness. But there’s also a life-enhancing side, which Frances explores: “She was tempted outside her range as an artist, and for the first time painted from an inner darkness, groping and undisciplined, as if in an act of relief from her own turmoil” (112). Life, like art, is a mixture of duty and self-expression. A life that embraces both affords us protection against loneliness.
But is that a self-actualizing life? Let's review the criteria for self-actualizing: 1) self-examining and self-accepting; 2) rejecting forced and unfair acculturation; and 3) cultivating a better world.
1) Self-examination and acceptance...As already mentioned, we see this with the characterization of Frances--her decision to paint both the beauty and ugliness of life, as well as her determination to privilige her own artisitc vision over others' opinions.
2) Rejecting unhealthy acculturation...Can Frances be both rebel and Stoic? Well, perhaps, she is not a Stoic, at least not as Marcus Aurelius dictated Stoicism--fulfilling your obligations to your family, state, and divinity. Note that Frances says that duty is simple and obvious. Perhaps, that's why you can't have a duty to yourself, which is complicated. To live the examined life has never been simple and obvious. In short, it’s a whole lot easier to know what you don’t want to do—your duty—than to know what you want to do—live for yourself. Viewed in this duty and (not vs.) self-actualization dilemma, Frances' speech takes on a rather rebellious tone. The older Frances is not advising a Stoic life for this young wife and mother. Rather, the former governess is distinguishing between duty and self-actualization. This quote will illustrate my point more clearly: “She had no way to turn. There is no past for an artist. What is done is cast away, good only for the time of its creation. Work is the present and the immediate future; but her immediate future was a blank; the present this half-finished painting. ‘The mistake is listening to others,’ she told herself. ‘One has little enough of one’s own, but they will strip it away, with their kindness and their good advice. It is best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, to paint as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all...” (237). Frances warns herself to guard against others’ influences and cultural master narratives that denude her talent, her vision, and her endeavors. To know yourself is not good enough to self-actualize. You must also stay true to yourself—amidst (and sometimes, against) your relationships and society.
3) Cultivating a better world...Does Frances, by the novel’s end, cultivate a better world; or is her rejection of art a rejection of human connections and obligations? Hard to tell. Just after she thinks that the “the pleasure of others is a by-product,” she recalls Ophelia “handing out her flowers...the last terrible gesture but one,” glances at the wreath of roses on the bench, declares that her painting days are over, locks her studio behind her, and walks off with Morland to have coffee with Liz and Camilla. Morland “looked at her with love and concern as she stood in the doorway still holding the wreath of flowers.” It sounds so hopeful, doesn’t it? But when he inquires about the “faded garland,” she responds, “Oh, it is dead.” These are her last words in the novel. Thereafter, they walk arm in arm, the rain begins to fall, and the trees "clattered their leaves in a sudden gust of wind” (238). This is the same rain that leads Camilla inside the abandoned house with her sociopathic companion. This is not good rain. Embracing Ophelia, leaving her painting unfinished forever, carrying the dead flowers, and exposing herself to hostile nature are not the actions of cultivating a better world. They are the actions of loss.
HM shall continue to reread the rest of the novels of Elizabeth Taylor, searching for a female character who masters all three self-actualization categories. Until then, HM hears Elizabeth Taylor cautioning us against delayed self-actualization and against depending on others to alleviate our own loneliness. After all, life—like art—changes. And we will all someday, despite our best intentions and determinations, discover our wreaths of roses faded, then, dead. Carpe diem!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Taylor, Elizabeth. A View of the Harbour. London: Virago, 1945.
Like Elizabeth Taylor’s first two novels (discussed in earlier blogs), A View of the Harbour, proscribes romance. However, this novel also focuses on romance's promise of "happily ever after" with a biting examination of marriage. Both male and female characters illustrate the pitfalls of young and old romance going and already gone awry. Thankfully, her third novel also offers a prescription.
But first, one proscription: beware the womanizer pretending to be Prince Charming.
Bertram Hemingway is sort of a painter. He never really paints much, but he does produce a painting. He is an old, lonely, bearded, voyeuristic, retired Navy officer. Most disturbingly, he is a womanizer. Despite his age and outsider stigma, he boldly and publicly pursues a young girl. Although everyone, including Prudence's parents, thinks she’s mighty peculiar and irresponsible, singularly unattractive because of her crossed eyes, and unhealthy because of her respiratory problems, Bertram calls her beautiful, flirts with her, and escorts her around the port—in full view of everyone. He gets away with this for two reasons. First, these bored and lonely people are desperate for any action—appropriate or not. Second, these hopeless and weary people are desperate for anyone to enliven Prudence’s life, her chances of marriage are universally deemed so slim. Bertram, himself, misjudges her personality or character because he doesn’t think much of the young in general. But she is only one of his pursuits. When not with her, he’s leading on poor Mrs.Lily Wilson. She longs for him to enter the pub door at night, buy her a drink, and escort her home. Occasionally, he does that. But only as a last resort. He’s far more interested in a third woman--wooing the spirited Tory Foyle, proposing to her without loving her, so intent is he on filling a void in his life. But all the while he’s wooing Tory, he's with Lily, Prudence, and even the invalid Mrs. Bracey, as well as her two daughters. He lies to everyone and sneaks behind these women’s backs. He gets just what he deserves—Tory, the bitch. No hard-handed narration needed for his condemnation.
Dr. Robert Cazabon is Prudence and Stevie’s father and Beth’s husband—in that order. He’s conceited, cold, deceitful, dogmatic, impatient, and sanctimonious. He is having an affair with his wife’s long-time best friend, who lives next door. Even when his older daughter discovers his infidelity, he still chooses to risk his family, his reputation, and his home in order to sneak over to Tory's for a quick drink and a quickie. Ultimately, Robert gets what he deserves when Tory accepts Bertram’s proposal and moves away. The novel punishes him further by developing his wife’s character and her criticism of him. He is left lonely and speechless. And he deserves to be rejected by both of these women.
Eddie Flitcroft, as his name suggests, is a flitter—from one sister to the other without shame or aim. He is no more interesting than that; but, I suppose that the novel didn’t want to limit the womanizing to middle-aged and old men.
Geoffrey Lloyd is the exception. He is kind to Prudence, but he’s affected. Let’s meet in the cemetery, he suggests. He’s always reading Donne’s poetry. He wants to rescue her. And she wants to be rescued. Throw in her parents’ relief to have her off of their hands, and we have the trifecta of Cinderella. And we know how that romance will end. Get used to the castle walls, Miss Prudence.
And second, another proscription: beware the shrew pretending to be Cinderella.
Mrs. Lily Wilson is the suspicious, gossipy proprietor of the waxworks. Like Bertram, she is a voyeur. I'm wondering if there's anything creepier than out-of-date wax figures showcased by an outdated widow. I'm picturing Molière's Arsinoé giving tours of the House of Usher. Taking advantage of her pathetic neediness, Bertram repeatedly attends to her only to discard her. But she is a grown woman, that is, in charge of her own self-actualizing. In the end, she finds an equally creepy male companion—the controlling Librarian (unnamed). “Murder he allowed; but not fornication. Childbirth (especially if the character died of it), but not pregnancy. Love might be supposed to be consummated as long as no one had any pleasure out of it...’Breast’ was not to be in the plural. ‘Rape’ sent the stamp plunging and twisting into the purple ink" (37). We know that Lily is beyond hope when she finally, reluctantly allows him to accompany her home. Readers realize that his literary censoring will compute to stifling control in their relationship. It’s too bad, for Lily; but that’s what you get when you expect others to take charge of your own life.
Mrs. Bracey, invalid and mother of two grown girls, complains and criticizes constantly. Another voyeur (hence, the title), she keeps tabs on everyone’s comings and goings, creating suspicion from glances and glimpses, and spreading (often unfounded) gossip as extensively as she can, considering her confinement. She expects her daughters to replace her dead Prince Charming, that is, to live their lives only to entertain and maintain her—emotionally and physically. When she wants something, she’ll stomp her cane, wield her guilt lectures, or launch false accusations. Her daughters, her minister, her doctor, and her neighbors, as well as this reader, are just waiting for her to die. She rewards their patience and mine.
Mrs. Tory Foley is, as Shakespeare wrote, “a piece of work.” Can you imagine the ego and audacity that it must take to be chatting up your “best friend” while you’re sexing up her husband? Can you fathom that they have known each other since school girl days? Can you abide the daily danger because they live next door to each other? It's tough to read, and Taylor doesn't intend to alleviate those anxieties one bit. A View of the Harbour far more strongly criticizes the betraying female friend than the adulterous husband. Late in the novel, when the Cazabon family looks like the affair will devastate them, in waltzes Tory for the daily tête-à-tête with her best friend. “Years fell away from them. They became two silly girls giggling at nothing” (181). There’s no need for narrative judgment beyond that observation. Subtly but clearly the text chides, Shame on you, Tory, for being such a disloyal female "friend." Poor Beth, immersed in her writing, is clueless. But HM will get to her in a moment. Mrs. Tory Foley, deserted by her husband whom she still loves and stalks, destroys Robert’s relationship with his daughter who, although cross-eyed can’t help but see what’s going on; contributes to Robert’s disaffection with his wife; and cuckolds her fiancé. How does she get away with it? Ask yourself if you know this woman: she dresses well, is thought to be attractive, acts spiritedly, and commands attention; she’s invited to chair many boards; she’s elected to political posts; and she’s sought for many allegiances. Yes, HM thought that you would know her. And knowing her, you know why she acts with impunity. She exudes confidence and sassiness. Skeptical? Read The Invisible Gorilla. Its authors, psychiatrists and professors, are convinced of the persuasive power of confidence—despite inability, ineffectiveness, and meanness. From a fictional perspective, Elizabeth Taylor convinces us to take an authentic look at these sassy women and commands us to reject those who fail to enhance our lives. The subtly of Taylor’s fiction is that although she allows Tory to succeed--socially, financially, and sexually—Taylor aligns us with Beth and, therefore, against Tory. We recall that although Medea rides off in the chariot, leaving a wake of devastation behind, Euripides's play does not admire her. In fact, her triumphant revenge and escape, indict her most forcefully. Similarly, no matter what sassy Tory gets away with, the novel makes it clear that this woman--and women like her--deserve our contempt.
Mrs. Beth Cazabon is the most interesting character. We know that, first and foremost, because she’s a writer of semi-popular novels while periodically trying to be a good wife, mother, and house manager. She is, of course, a lot like Elizabeth Taylor. Despite this parallel, our the novelist truthfully condemns Beth for being too absorbed in her writing. Not only do domestic, family, marital, and social relationships crumble around her without her alarm. She actually uses these failures and foibles to create characters and plots. That’s irresponsible, the novel recognizes. But something happens toward the end of the novel, and it’s not what we want to happen...it’s better. We want her to catch her husband and best friend in an act of betrayal. Well, maybe we don’t want her to catch them having sex; but we want her to realize that they are having sex. But Beth doesn’t discover their betrayal—not from her friend; her husband; her daughter; or any voyeuristic, gossipy neighbor who's bound to have seen the comings and goings of Dr. Cazabon into Mrs. Foley's house. But what Beth does discover is so much better because she discovers herself. She discovers her own voice. Late in the novel, as Robert is struggling with Tory’s rejection and upcoming abandonment, Beth blasts Robert for his sanctimonious behavior, cataloguing a litany of her absolutely accurate criticisms of him, not just as a husband, but also, as a human being. The book is worth reading just for her “First...Second...Third...” litany of how she insightfully esteems his narcissism, false chivalry, and mean-spiritedness. Thereafter, she prepares tea. So British and so rewarding to read. This is the start of her self-actualizing. She has, through her novel writing and conversations with Tory, begun to self-examine and self-accept—for good and for bad. Further, she has begun to reject the female master narrative of romance’s legacy—domestication. Finally, she has begun to commit to improving the world, promising herself that she will become a better mother. You’ll notice that she’s going to remain a wife. But the imbalance of marital power has shifted, leaving Robert speechless and Beth exhilarated. Let’s not lose sight of her determination to become a good mother, which in the hands of another novelist could appear to be acculturation. However, in Taylor’s hands this novel illustrates motherhood as a rejection of self-absorption and a commitment to others.
With Elizabeth Taylor’s third novel, we see more than just the disposing of the female master narratives of romance, male-controlled marriage, and domestication. We also see the embracing of female self-actualization. Beth, like Taylor, has only begun. And their first steps are welcomed by HM.
But first, one proscription: beware the womanizer pretending to be Prince Charming.
Bertram Hemingway is sort of a painter. He never really paints much, but he does produce a painting. He is an old, lonely, bearded, voyeuristic, retired Navy officer. Most disturbingly, he is a womanizer. Despite his age and outsider stigma, he boldly and publicly pursues a young girl. Although everyone, including Prudence's parents, thinks she’s mighty peculiar and irresponsible, singularly unattractive because of her crossed eyes, and unhealthy because of her respiratory problems, Bertram calls her beautiful, flirts with her, and escorts her around the port—in full view of everyone. He gets away with this for two reasons. First, these bored and lonely people are desperate for any action—appropriate or not. Second, these hopeless and weary people are desperate for anyone to enliven Prudence’s life, her chances of marriage are universally deemed so slim. Bertram, himself, misjudges her personality or character because he doesn’t think much of the young in general. But she is only one of his pursuits. When not with her, he’s leading on poor Mrs.Lily Wilson. She longs for him to enter the pub door at night, buy her a drink, and escort her home. Occasionally, he does that. But only as a last resort. He’s far more interested in a third woman--wooing the spirited Tory Foyle, proposing to her without loving her, so intent is he on filling a void in his life. But all the while he’s wooing Tory, he's with Lily, Prudence, and even the invalid Mrs. Bracey, as well as her two daughters. He lies to everyone and sneaks behind these women’s backs. He gets just what he deserves—Tory, the bitch. No hard-handed narration needed for his condemnation.
Dr. Robert Cazabon is Prudence and Stevie’s father and Beth’s husband—in that order. He’s conceited, cold, deceitful, dogmatic, impatient, and sanctimonious. He is having an affair with his wife’s long-time best friend, who lives next door. Even when his older daughter discovers his infidelity, he still chooses to risk his family, his reputation, and his home in order to sneak over to Tory's for a quick drink and a quickie. Ultimately, Robert gets what he deserves when Tory accepts Bertram’s proposal and moves away. The novel punishes him further by developing his wife’s character and her criticism of him. He is left lonely and speechless. And he deserves to be rejected by both of these women.
Eddie Flitcroft, as his name suggests, is a flitter—from one sister to the other without shame or aim. He is no more interesting than that; but, I suppose that the novel didn’t want to limit the womanizing to middle-aged and old men.
Geoffrey Lloyd is the exception. He is kind to Prudence, but he’s affected. Let’s meet in the cemetery, he suggests. He’s always reading Donne’s poetry. He wants to rescue her. And she wants to be rescued. Throw in her parents’ relief to have her off of their hands, and we have the trifecta of Cinderella. And we know how that romance will end. Get used to the castle walls, Miss Prudence.
And second, another proscription: beware the shrew pretending to be Cinderella.
Mrs. Lily Wilson is the suspicious, gossipy proprietor of the waxworks. Like Bertram, she is a voyeur. I'm wondering if there's anything creepier than out-of-date wax figures showcased by an outdated widow. I'm picturing Molière's Arsinoé giving tours of the House of Usher. Taking advantage of her pathetic neediness, Bertram repeatedly attends to her only to discard her. But she is a grown woman, that is, in charge of her own self-actualizing. In the end, she finds an equally creepy male companion—the controlling Librarian (unnamed). “Murder he allowed; but not fornication. Childbirth (especially if the character died of it), but not pregnancy. Love might be supposed to be consummated as long as no one had any pleasure out of it...’Breast’ was not to be in the plural. ‘Rape’ sent the stamp plunging and twisting into the purple ink" (37). We know that Lily is beyond hope when she finally, reluctantly allows him to accompany her home. Readers realize that his literary censoring will compute to stifling control in their relationship. It’s too bad, for Lily; but that’s what you get when you expect others to take charge of your own life.
Mrs. Bracey, invalid and mother of two grown girls, complains and criticizes constantly. Another voyeur (hence, the title), she keeps tabs on everyone’s comings and goings, creating suspicion from glances and glimpses, and spreading (often unfounded) gossip as extensively as she can, considering her confinement. She expects her daughters to replace her dead Prince Charming, that is, to live their lives only to entertain and maintain her—emotionally and physically. When she wants something, she’ll stomp her cane, wield her guilt lectures, or launch false accusations. Her daughters, her minister, her doctor, and her neighbors, as well as this reader, are just waiting for her to die. She rewards their patience and mine.
Mrs. Tory Foley is, as Shakespeare wrote, “a piece of work.” Can you imagine the ego and audacity that it must take to be chatting up your “best friend” while you’re sexing up her husband? Can you fathom that they have known each other since school girl days? Can you abide the daily danger because they live next door to each other? It's tough to read, and Taylor doesn't intend to alleviate those anxieties one bit. A View of the Harbour far more strongly criticizes the betraying female friend than the adulterous husband. Late in the novel, when the Cazabon family looks like the affair will devastate them, in waltzes Tory for the daily tête-à-tête with her best friend. “Years fell away from them. They became two silly girls giggling at nothing” (181). There’s no need for narrative judgment beyond that observation. Subtly but clearly the text chides, Shame on you, Tory, for being such a disloyal female "friend." Poor Beth, immersed in her writing, is clueless. But HM will get to her in a moment. Mrs. Tory Foley, deserted by her husband whom she still loves and stalks, destroys Robert’s relationship with his daughter who, although cross-eyed can’t help but see what’s going on; contributes to Robert’s disaffection with his wife; and cuckolds her fiancé. How does she get away with it? Ask yourself if you know this woman: she dresses well, is thought to be attractive, acts spiritedly, and commands attention; she’s invited to chair many boards; she’s elected to political posts; and she’s sought for many allegiances. Yes, HM thought that you would know her. And knowing her, you know why she acts with impunity. She exudes confidence and sassiness. Skeptical? Read The Invisible Gorilla. Its authors, psychiatrists and professors, are convinced of the persuasive power of confidence—despite inability, ineffectiveness, and meanness. From a fictional perspective, Elizabeth Taylor convinces us to take an authentic look at these sassy women and commands us to reject those who fail to enhance our lives. The subtly of Taylor’s fiction is that although she allows Tory to succeed--socially, financially, and sexually—Taylor aligns us with Beth and, therefore, against Tory. We recall that although Medea rides off in the chariot, leaving a wake of devastation behind, Euripides's play does not admire her. In fact, her triumphant revenge and escape, indict her most forcefully. Similarly, no matter what sassy Tory gets away with, the novel makes it clear that this woman--and women like her--deserve our contempt.
Mrs. Beth Cazabon is the most interesting character. We know that, first and foremost, because she’s a writer of semi-popular novels while periodically trying to be a good wife, mother, and house manager. She is, of course, a lot like Elizabeth Taylor. Despite this parallel, our the novelist truthfully condemns Beth for being too absorbed in her writing. Not only do domestic, family, marital, and social relationships crumble around her without her alarm. She actually uses these failures and foibles to create characters and plots. That’s irresponsible, the novel recognizes. But something happens toward the end of the novel, and it’s not what we want to happen...it’s better. We want her to catch her husband and best friend in an act of betrayal. Well, maybe we don’t want her to catch them having sex; but we want her to realize that they are having sex. But Beth doesn’t discover their betrayal—not from her friend; her husband; her daughter; or any voyeuristic, gossipy neighbor who's bound to have seen the comings and goings of Dr. Cazabon into Mrs. Foley's house. But what Beth does discover is so much better because she discovers herself. She discovers her own voice. Late in the novel, as Robert is struggling with Tory’s rejection and upcoming abandonment, Beth blasts Robert for his sanctimonious behavior, cataloguing a litany of her absolutely accurate criticisms of him, not just as a husband, but also, as a human being. The book is worth reading just for her “First...Second...Third...” litany of how she insightfully esteems his narcissism, false chivalry, and mean-spiritedness. Thereafter, she prepares tea. So British and so rewarding to read. This is the start of her self-actualizing. She has, through her novel writing and conversations with Tory, begun to self-examine and self-accept—for good and for bad. Further, she has begun to reject the female master narrative of romance’s legacy—domestication. Finally, she has begun to commit to improving the world, promising herself that she will become a better mother. You’ll notice that she’s going to remain a wife. But the imbalance of marital power has shifted, leaving Robert speechless and Beth exhilarated. Let’s not lose sight of her determination to become a good mother, which in the hands of another novelist could appear to be acculturation. However, in Taylor’s hands this novel illustrates motherhood as a rejection of self-absorption and a commitment to others.
With Elizabeth Taylor’s third novel, we see more than just the disposing of the female master narratives of romance, male-controlled marriage, and domestication. We also see the embracing of female self-actualization. Beth, like Taylor, has only begun. And their first steps are welcomed by HM.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Elizabeth Taylor's Palladian: proscription without prescription
Taylor, Elizabeth. 1946. Palladian. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Spoiler alert. This discussion reveals plot details from the end of the novel.
Self-actualization thoughts after my 2nd read…
Is Elizabeth Taylor’s second novel, Palladian, a self-actualization novel? Unfortunately, no. Let me lay out how it comes close and why it fails.
Palladian comes close to being a self-actualization novel because it strongly fulfills the second category: rebellion against forced and unfair social acculturation, in this case, proscribing the female master narrative of the romance.
Although hundreds of versions of Cinderella have produced thousands of variations, it narrative skeleton remains in tact: girl improves her social and economic status by marrying a more successful and socially endorsed man. In Paladian, such a man should be Marion. However, as his name brings to mind early in the novel, he is effeminate. If readers missed those clues, Mrs. Turner spells it out for us at the end: “He was very civil and…he is not a very masculine type. By that I mean he looks delicate in a girlish sort of way…a studious young man…” Immediately thereafter, he’s compared to Margaret, whose “capability canceled his effeminacy.” This is followed by the series of dots that signify a break. Then, a 2-sentence paragraph: “Cassandra lay in bed reading. Her eyes travelled along the lines of print and then she sighed and turned back to page one again” (185). Juxtaposed to Mrs. Turner’s blunt assessment of Marion, Cassandra’s blindness to the meaning on the page replicates her blindness to Marion’s effeminate nature. But before I move on to Cassandra as the second reason for this being a proscription for romance, let me stay with Marion a bit longer. He is a cuckold. Tom has been the long-time (pre- and post-marriage) lover of Marion’s gorgeous wife Violet. She is dead now. And, therefore, she is adored by everyone in the household except Cassandra who has known of her only through photographs. Even her child—the infant she bore before expiring in childbirth—adores her as if she’d known her, such is the extent of the household’s adulation. We believe them until, typically Elizabeth Taylor style, the narrator lets a few crumbs drop (a trope in the novel for lacking gentility) that Violet’s memory should be brushed away. And not just because she’s an adulteress, but also, because she’s a narcissist and not a nice one. There’s a longer list, but my point is that Marion should never have married this beauty to begin with, such is her unappealing character. In fact, the narrator remarks that having had perfection, Marion doesn’t pursue a second best but the opposite—evidently, Cassandra. Clearly, her characterization is not flattered by that narrative remark; more clearly, his is not either. The most damning narrative critique of Marion comes at the end on the heels of the wedding. Referring to the estate that welcomes the new bride, the narrator becomes a Cassandra and prophesizes: “”The sound of voices—of doors slamming—seemed to have prolonged its life beyond what was natural and to be expected. But as the life was gradually withdrawn, the house became a shell only, seeming to foreshadow its own strange future when leaves would come into the hall, great antlered beetles run across the hearths, the spiders let themselves down from the ceilings to loop great pockets of web across corners; the chimneys and fungus branch out in thick layers in the rotting wardrobes. Then the stone floor of the hall would heave up and erupt with dandelion and briar, the bats swing up the stairs and the dusty windows show dark stars of broken glass. As soon as grass grows in the rooms and moles run waveringly down passages, the house is not a house any more, but a monument, to show that in the end man is less durable than the mole and cannot sustain his grandeur” (187). I quote lengthily partly because the passage keeps dripping decay in a Grey Gardens fashion, akin to the Poe tales that Marion is reading, but also, because although man cannot prevent nature’s ultimate ruin of façade, structure, and contents, men are supposed to be handy dandy enough to withstand time’s ravages for awhile. Lest the reader has missed periodic snipes about Marion being not just manliless but also handiless, the next paragraph resounds with such male master narrative criticism: “So, ‘You would think,’ said Margaret to her mother, ‘that he would have run to a coat of paint for his bride’” (187). Notice that the “So” is not spoken, but narrated. Big red flag, well, at least to me, a lover of narrative subtleties. So to wrap-up my first reason, Palladian cautions against romance because the groom is no prince. As such, marriage is not prize. There is no point for Cassandra to submit to marital bonds. With this caution against pointless acculturation, the novel fulfills the second criterion for self-actualization--proscribing forced social norms, in this case, the female master narrative of romance. Let’s determine if the novel prescribes the first and third criterion.
The first criterion for a self-actualization novel is a prescription for self-examination and self-acceptance. Beyond learning Greek parsing, Cassandra learns nothing about herself and perpetuates self-doubts at the novel’s end. To be fair, Cassandra, changes. She becomes employed. She learns to deal with grief of her father’s recent death although we don’t actually witness much grieving. She learns Greek. She falls in love, is proposed to, and marries. But changes guarantee no self-reflection and self-acceptance. This is the case with Cassandra who learns nothing about herself, remaining emotionally restrained, innocently dense, and physically trembling through many of her encounters with others, especially the man she marries. As bride, she reenters his house in the same coat she arrived in as new governess. So little has she changed. As bride (and we expect, as wife) she remains an innocent child. Several characters remark on her simplicity. But it is our narrator who offers the final and most damning criticism of her lack of self-actualization on the penultimate page when Margaret’s pregnancy is finally coming to its end: “Mrs. Adams rushed through the baize door into the hall with a pile of napkins. ‘The water’s broke, miss, I mean Madam.’ ‘What water?’ Cassandra asked stupidly” (191). She is more than innocent; she is stupid. Although innocent she may have been, even Jane Eyre was not stupid enough to marry her unequal and reside in crazyland. Not so Cassandra who is stupid enough to take on this life—a house with a nutty nanny; alcoholic, womanizing, and sadistic artist; and ineffectual husband. Plus, the place—house and grounds—are on the verge of collapsing as they have already begun to crumble, killing Sophy. To wrap up, marriage is no prize despite its social and economic advancement for the bride.
The third criterion for a self-actualization novel is a prescription for cultivating a better world. Sadly, Cassandra improves no one’s life. In fact, she may be responsible for another’s death; for readers must wonder where she is when Sophy is wandering around these unstable buildings. Cassandra has no plans to help Marion with his grief, Margaret with her baby, Tom with his depression, or Margaret’s mother with her anxiety. Each character, Palladian points out, is constricted by an obsession—brutality, alcohol, eating, housekeeping, hypochondria, reading, etc. Cassandra is one of those people with her own obsession---romance. She continues to pursue that with her acceptance of Marion’s marriage proposal.
Although I’d like to esteem this second novel to be Elizabeth Taylor's progress toward female self-actualization, I can’t. Far from a self-actualization novel, this reads more like Jane Eyre as Cassandra becomes a governess for a Mr. Rochester-type Marion with a Bertha Mason-like Nanny lurking behind the scenes. Elizabeth Taylor’s condemnation of the romance as a dangerous and feeble female master narrative serves well the second criterion for self-actualization. For that contribution, I am grateful and recommend you read this, her second novel.
Spoiler alert. This discussion reveals plot details from the end of the novel.
Self-actualization thoughts after my 2nd read…
Is Elizabeth Taylor’s second novel, Palladian, a self-actualization novel? Unfortunately, no. Let me lay out how it comes close and why it fails.
Palladian comes close to being a self-actualization novel because it strongly fulfills the second category: rebellion against forced and unfair social acculturation, in this case, proscribing the female master narrative of the romance.
Although hundreds of versions of Cinderella have produced thousands of variations, it narrative skeleton remains in tact: girl improves her social and economic status by marrying a more successful and socially endorsed man. In Paladian, such a man should be Marion. However, as his name brings to mind early in the novel, he is effeminate. If readers missed those clues, Mrs. Turner spells it out for us at the end: “He was very civil and…he is not a very masculine type. By that I mean he looks delicate in a girlish sort of way…a studious young man…” Immediately thereafter, he’s compared to Margaret, whose “capability canceled his effeminacy.” This is followed by the series of dots that signify a break. Then, a 2-sentence paragraph: “Cassandra lay in bed reading. Her eyes travelled along the lines of print and then she sighed and turned back to page one again” (185). Juxtaposed to Mrs. Turner’s blunt assessment of Marion, Cassandra’s blindness to the meaning on the page replicates her blindness to Marion’s effeminate nature. But before I move on to Cassandra as the second reason for this being a proscription for romance, let me stay with Marion a bit longer. He is a cuckold. Tom has been the long-time (pre- and post-marriage) lover of Marion’s gorgeous wife Violet. She is dead now. And, therefore, she is adored by everyone in the household except Cassandra who has known of her only through photographs. Even her child—the infant she bore before expiring in childbirth—adores her as if she’d known her, such is the extent of the household’s adulation. We believe them until, typically Elizabeth Taylor style, the narrator lets a few crumbs drop (a trope in the novel for lacking gentility) that Violet’s memory should be brushed away. And not just because she’s an adulteress, but also, because she’s a narcissist and not a nice one. There’s a longer list, but my point is that Marion should never have married this beauty to begin with, such is her unappealing character. In fact, the narrator remarks that having had perfection, Marion doesn’t pursue a second best but the opposite—evidently, Cassandra. Clearly, her characterization is not flattered by that narrative remark; more clearly, his is not either. The most damning narrative critique of Marion comes at the end on the heels of the wedding. Referring to the estate that welcomes the new bride, the narrator becomes a Cassandra and prophesizes: “”The sound of voices—of doors slamming—seemed to have prolonged its life beyond what was natural and to be expected. But as the life was gradually withdrawn, the house became a shell only, seeming to foreshadow its own strange future when leaves would come into the hall, great antlered beetles run across the hearths, the spiders let themselves down from the ceilings to loop great pockets of web across corners; the chimneys and fungus branch out in thick layers in the rotting wardrobes. Then the stone floor of the hall would heave up and erupt with dandelion and briar, the bats swing up the stairs and the dusty windows show dark stars of broken glass. As soon as grass grows in the rooms and moles run waveringly down passages, the house is not a house any more, but a monument, to show that in the end man is less durable than the mole and cannot sustain his grandeur” (187). I quote lengthily partly because the passage keeps dripping decay in a Grey Gardens fashion, akin to the Poe tales that Marion is reading, but also, because although man cannot prevent nature’s ultimate ruin of façade, structure, and contents, men are supposed to be handy dandy enough to withstand time’s ravages for awhile. Lest the reader has missed periodic snipes about Marion being not just manliless but also handiless, the next paragraph resounds with such male master narrative criticism: “So, ‘You would think,’ said Margaret to her mother, ‘that he would have run to a coat of paint for his bride’” (187). Notice that the “So” is not spoken, but narrated. Big red flag, well, at least to me, a lover of narrative subtleties. So to wrap-up my first reason, Palladian cautions against romance because the groom is no prince. As such, marriage is not prize. There is no point for Cassandra to submit to marital bonds. With this caution against pointless acculturation, the novel fulfills the second criterion for self-actualization--proscribing forced social norms, in this case, the female master narrative of romance. Let’s determine if the novel prescribes the first and third criterion.
The first criterion for a self-actualization novel is a prescription for self-examination and self-acceptance. Beyond learning Greek parsing, Cassandra learns nothing about herself and perpetuates self-doubts at the novel’s end. To be fair, Cassandra, changes. She becomes employed. She learns to deal with grief of her father’s recent death although we don’t actually witness much grieving. She learns Greek. She falls in love, is proposed to, and marries. But changes guarantee no self-reflection and self-acceptance. This is the case with Cassandra who learns nothing about herself, remaining emotionally restrained, innocently dense, and physically trembling through many of her encounters with others, especially the man she marries. As bride, she reenters his house in the same coat she arrived in as new governess. So little has she changed. As bride (and we expect, as wife) she remains an innocent child. Several characters remark on her simplicity. But it is our narrator who offers the final and most damning criticism of her lack of self-actualization on the penultimate page when Margaret’s pregnancy is finally coming to its end: “Mrs. Adams rushed through the baize door into the hall with a pile of napkins. ‘The water’s broke, miss, I mean Madam.’ ‘What water?’ Cassandra asked stupidly” (191). She is more than innocent; she is stupid. Although innocent she may have been, even Jane Eyre was not stupid enough to marry her unequal and reside in crazyland. Not so Cassandra who is stupid enough to take on this life—a house with a nutty nanny; alcoholic, womanizing, and sadistic artist; and ineffectual husband. Plus, the place—house and grounds—are on the verge of collapsing as they have already begun to crumble, killing Sophy. To wrap up, marriage is no prize despite its social and economic advancement for the bride.
The third criterion for a self-actualization novel is a prescription for cultivating a better world. Sadly, Cassandra improves no one’s life. In fact, she may be responsible for another’s death; for readers must wonder where she is when Sophy is wandering around these unstable buildings. Cassandra has no plans to help Marion with his grief, Margaret with her baby, Tom with his depression, or Margaret’s mother with her anxiety. Each character, Palladian points out, is constricted by an obsession—brutality, alcohol, eating, housekeeping, hypochondria, reading, etc. Cassandra is one of those people with her own obsession---romance. She continues to pursue that with her acceptance of Marion’s marriage proposal.
Although I’d like to esteem this second novel to be Elizabeth Taylor's progress toward female self-actualization, I can’t. Far from a self-actualization novel, this reads more like Jane Eyre as Cassandra becomes a governess for a Mr. Rochester-type Marion with a Bertha Mason-like Nanny lurking behind the scenes. Elizabeth Taylor’s condemnation of the romance as a dangerous and feeble female master narrative serves well the second criterion for self-actualization. For that contribution, I am grateful and recommend you read this, her second novel.
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...a self-actualization failure
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...a self-actualization failure
When I finish reading a highly recommended bestseller, I usually feel like the singer of Roy Orbison’s “You’re the Only One”: I don’t often understand the book’s appeal. Hence, I usually avoid bestsellers, claiming that I'm engaged in some project. And I should have done just that with all of the praise I heard about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I withstood the temptation to see what all the fuss was about until someone (a well-respected educator) absolutely raved that the novel portrays one of the most interesting and unique female protagonists that she’d ever read. I was hooked. I ordered it and began to devour it as soon as it arrived.
590 pages later…
Before I begin, I want to assure you that I have no problem with reading a longish novel. I’m a big fan of those long-penned Victorian writers. In high school, I read every single Dickens novel—even the unfinished one. Last summer, I finished reading all of George Eliot’s novels. Last month, I finished reading Mansfield Park—the only Austen that I’d not read. So when I keep carping about the length of this novel, it’s not that I’m a lector novice. I simply resent an unrewarding literary cathexis.
Five hundred and ninety pages later, I know who did what and how—information that I hung in there to discover. I admit that I “couldn’t put it down.” Sadly, immediately thereafter, my disappointment surfaced when I realized that I didn’t know much in the “why” department. My general complaint about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that I didn’t learn one damn thing more than plot details. Specifically, my four complaints center around the theme of this blog—female self-actualization.
Complaint #1: I could have learned about how the disease that Lisbeth Salander has affects her troubled life. Once I read that she had a disease, which is identified very late in the story, I rushed to the internet to learn more. My 20 minutes search provided me with a list of symptoms that exactly matched her behavior. This is not good writing. Good fiction, rather than replicating the facts, should nuance them into portrayals of authentic human behavior. Five hundred and ninety pages later, I am still wondering…How could this disease affect a female coming of age? How could this disease affect a female with this character’s background? How could this disease affect a female undergoing her present circumstances? How could this disease affect her future self-actualization? In conclusion, how does this disease affect a complex, troubled female who is coming of age?
Complaint #2: Salander is, to put it mildly, socially “off.” That’s a big part of the disease. However, being socially “off,” she has much in common with non-diseased self-actualizers. As Maslow’s case studies consistently revealed, self-actualizers are highly selective in their chosen associations, which makes them look, to the masses, as “off.” They are careful to choose with whom they share their lives. Just that one characteristic allows them to opt out of the master narrative and self-actualize according to a more individual and often, socially unapproved set of values. The characterization of Salander could have been a perfect candidate for her illustrating a self-actualizer’s ipseity in two ways—her values and her associations.
Complaint #3: Given that the novel, in general, and Salander’s life, in particular, turns often to revenge, every reader should expect to learn about her code, whether it’s moral, immoral, or amoral. Instead, I witnessed a female simply mimicking someone else’s advice. Instead of formulating a moral code, Salander reacts to horrible, just horrible, situations by simply employing snippets of advice she’s recalled from a former mentor. These aphorisms, which she uses to maneuver out of horrible, horrible situations when her already bad life goes terribly wrong, don’t amount to anything more than “measure twice, cut once.” But beyond these philosophically devoid apothegms, I expect a code. Specifically, I expect to understand her code relating to revenge. I was eager to learn how this person, who is socially “off,” meaning living outside the master narrative of justice, could operate amidst depravity. Disappointingly, after 590 pages, I have no idea why she sometimes advocates for public punishment and other times for private retribution. Just because someone is outside the law doesn’t mean that she has no consistent code. In fact, such renegades usually replace the socially-sanctioned codes and practices with their own individual brand. That is, living outside the law requires more than a set of moral proscriptions. It also requires a set of moral prescriptions. Self-actualizers, who often live outside social norms, are more than dissenters (like Salander). They are faithful to living within their own well-established personal codes. Such self-actualizing female individuation is exactly what I wanted to read about and try to understand more fully.
Complaint #4: Other readers can refute my first complaint by claiming that at the novel’s end, Salander forms an important human connection and, thus, fulfills one of the criteria for being a self-actualizer—forming a commitment to something or someone beyond yourself. If those readers’ claim were true, yes, that would have been a hallmark relationship for Salander and a significant prospect for launching her self-actualizing. What frustrates me about this possibility is that one of the other characters repeatedly instructs her to embrace exactly that self-actualizing break in her alienating behavior. In other words, the novel itself writes its own female self-actualizing script but then, retreats to the worn-out but still popular female master narrative of the romance. (Please, forgive my obscurity; I don’t want to spoil the plot, especially because that’s all there is.) So instead of forming a rewarding relationship (an authentic friendship as the other character instructs), Salander opts for an impractical romance—one that is preposterous because she and this guy could never be soul-mate lovers. Here’s why I am so sure of that. The only reason that she’s attracted to him is that he has an uncharacteristic “whatever” personality that weathers her socially “off” behavior. This attracts her because he demands no revision of her social ineptness. She may be relieved with his lack of curiosity, criticism, and demands. I understand her relief. But she need not be impressed with his misguided sense of apatheia. She needs to read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations to learn when it’s healthy to be apathetic—to externals you can’t control—and when it’s appropriate to act/react. Unfortunately, the novel ends with her failed romance fantasy. As such, the five hundred and ninetieth page finds her disappointed…and me disgusted. Sadly, both of us have learned nothing in the way of authentic human interactions.
I invite any comments and again, acknowledge that likely “I’m the only one” who failed to appreciate this widely popular novel.
Weeks later…I've been feeling a bit off about this review, especially after people keep reminding me that this book is a best seller in several book formats. I'd like to strengthen my argument with an analogous review of a book I just finished reading. By contrast, I hope to clarify my complaints about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...
Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2005.
Protagonist and author Sarah Vowell takes readers on her journeys to recreate (and seemingly relive) associations with the Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley assassinations. Having just recently viewed the play The Assassins, Sarah embarks first on her Lincoln journey. Readers discover many facts about Lincoln, the Civil War, the political climate of the 1860s, the Lincolns, the assassin and his family, the conspirators, and a free love commune. No tangent is too distracting for Vowell. These “fact” are not seamlessly chronologically chronicled. Rather, they are narrated amidst Sarah’s life and trips where other people become involved and drop out. Docents are emulated. Historical documents are recalled. All as if you’re reading a novel. By the end of my reading I wanted to get in my car and find some close historical marker to gawk over. I didn’t care what it was about. Just give me a tidbit of history, and I’m inspired to pursue a story around it. This is not to say that Assassination Vacation is one sentimental anecdote after another. There’s plenty of self-deprecating humor and Bush bashing. In the spirit of ancient comedy, Assassination Vacation both entertains and enlightens. I’m still pondering about the style and format of all the detours and non-chronological plot, which somehow eschews confusion and inspires confidence in an authentic telling/retelling of history (although it denies that possibility). More importantly, I learned a great deal about American history, fanatics, grieving and memorializing. Most importantly, I wanted to learn more. That’s a good book.
When I finish reading a highly recommended bestseller, I usually feel like the singer of Roy Orbison’s “You’re the Only One”: I don’t often understand the book’s appeal. Hence, I usually avoid bestsellers, claiming that I'm engaged in some project. And I should have done just that with all of the praise I heard about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I withstood the temptation to see what all the fuss was about until someone (a well-respected educator) absolutely raved that the novel portrays one of the most interesting and unique female protagonists that she’d ever read. I was hooked. I ordered it and began to devour it as soon as it arrived.
590 pages later…
Before I begin, I want to assure you that I have no problem with reading a longish novel. I’m a big fan of those long-penned Victorian writers. In high school, I read every single Dickens novel—even the unfinished one. Last summer, I finished reading all of George Eliot’s novels. Last month, I finished reading Mansfield Park—the only Austen that I’d not read. So when I keep carping about the length of this novel, it’s not that I’m a lector novice. I simply resent an unrewarding literary cathexis.
Five hundred and ninety pages later, I know who did what and how—information that I hung in there to discover. I admit that I “couldn’t put it down.” Sadly, immediately thereafter, my disappointment surfaced when I realized that I didn’t know much in the “why” department. My general complaint about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that I didn’t learn one damn thing more than plot details. Specifically, my four complaints center around the theme of this blog—female self-actualization.
Complaint #1: I could have learned about how the disease that Lisbeth Salander has affects her troubled life. Once I read that she had a disease, which is identified very late in the story, I rushed to the internet to learn more. My 20 minutes search provided me with a list of symptoms that exactly matched her behavior. This is not good writing. Good fiction, rather than replicating the facts, should nuance them into portrayals of authentic human behavior. Five hundred and ninety pages later, I am still wondering…How could this disease affect a female coming of age? How could this disease affect a female with this character’s background? How could this disease affect a female undergoing her present circumstances? How could this disease affect her future self-actualization? In conclusion, how does this disease affect a complex, troubled female who is coming of age?
Complaint #2: Salander is, to put it mildly, socially “off.” That’s a big part of the disease. However, being socially “off,” she has much in common with non-diseased self-actualizers. As Maslow’s case studies consistently revealed, self-actualizers are highly selective in their chosen associations, which makes them look, to the masses, as “off.” They are careful to choose with whom they share their lives. Just that one characteristic allows them to opt out of the master narrative and self-actualize according to a more individual and often, socially unapproved set of values. The characterization of Salander could have been a perfect candidate for her illustrating a self-actualizer’s ipseity in two ways—her values and her associations.
Complaint #3: Given that the novel, in general, and Salander’s life, in particular, turns often to revenge, every reader should expect to learn about her code, whether it’s moral, immoral, or amoral. Instead, I witnessed a female simply mimicking someone else’s advice. Instead of formulating a moral code, Salander reacts to horrible, just horrible, situations by simply employing snippets of advice she’s recalled from a former mentor. These aphorisms, which she uses to maneuver out of horrible, horrible situations when her already bad life goes terribly wrong, don’t amount to anything more than “measure twice, cut once.” But beyond these philosophically devoid apothegms, I expect a code. Specifically, I expect to understand her code relating to revenge. I was eager to learn how this person, who is socially “off,” meaning living outside the master narrative of justice, could operate amidst depravity. Disappointingly, after 590 pages, I have no idea why she sometimes advocates for public punishment and other times for private retribution. Just because someone is outside the law doesn’t mean that she has no consistent code. In fact, such renegades usually replace the socially-sanctioned codes and practices with their own individual brand. That is, living outside the law requires more than a set of moral proscriptions. It also requires a set of moral prescriptions. Self-actualizers, who often live outside social norms, are more than dissenters (like Salander). They are faithful to living within their own well-established personal codes. Such self-actualizing female individuation is exactly what I wanted to read about and try to understand more fully.
Complaint #4: Other readers can refute my first complaint by claiming that at the novel’s end, Salander forms an important human connection and, thus, fulfills one of the criteria for being a self-actualizer—forming a commitment to something or someone beyond yourself. If those readers’ claim were true, yes, that would have been a hallmark relationship for Salander and a significant prospect for launching her self-actualizing. What frustrates me about this possibility is that one of the other characters repeatedly instructs her to embrace exactly that self-actualizing break in her alienating behavior. In other words, the novel itself writes its own female self-actualizing script but then, retreats to the worn-out but still popular female master narrative of the romance. (Please, forgive my obscurity; I don’t want to spoil the plot, especially because that’s all there is.) So instead of forming a rewarding relationship (an authentic friendship as the other character instructs), Salander opts for an impractical romance—one that is preposterous because she and this guy could never be soul-mate lovers. Here’s why I am so sure of that. The only reason that she’s attracted to him is that he has an uncharacteristic “whatever” personality that weathers her socially “off” behavior. This attracts her because he demands no revision of her social ineptness. She may be relieved with his lack of curiosity, criticism, and demands. I understand her relief. But she need not be impressed with his misguided sense of apatheia. She needs to read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations to learn when it’s healthy to be apathetic—to externals you can’t control—and when it’s appropriate to act/react. Unfortunately, the novel ends with her failed romance fantasy. As such, the five hundred and ninetieth page finds her disappointed…and me disgusted. Sadly, both of us have learned nothing in the way of authentic human interactions.
I invite any comments and again, acknowledge that likely “I’m the only one” who failed to appreciate this widely popular novel.
Weeks later…I've been feeling a bit off about this review, especially after people keep reminding me that this book is a best seller in several book formats. I'd like to strengthen my argument with an analogous review of a book I just finished reading. By contrast, I hope to clarify my complaints about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...
Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2005.
Protagonist and author Sarah Vowell takes readers on her journeys to recreate (and seemingly relive) associations with the Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley assassinations. Having just recently viewed the play The Assassins, Sarah embarks first on her Lincoln journey. Readers discover many facts about Lincoln, the Civil War, the political climate of the 1860s, the Lincolns, the assassin and his family, the conspirators, and a free love commune. No tangent is too distracting for Vowell. These “fact” are not seamlessly chronologically chronicled. Rather, they are narrated amidst Sarah’s life and trips where other people become involved and drop out. Docents are emulated. Historical documents are recalled. All as if you’re reading a novel. By the end of my reading I wanted to get in my car and find some close historical marker to gawk over. I didn’t care what it was about. Just give me a tidbit of history, and I’m inspired to pursue a story around it. This is not to say that Assassination Vacation is one sentimental anecdote after another. There’s plenty of self-deprecating humor and Bush bashing. In the spirit of ancient comedy, Assassination Vacation both entertains and enlightens. I’m still pondering about the style and format of all the detours and non-chronological plot, which somehow eschews confusion and inspires confidence in an authentic telling/retelling of history (although it denies that possibility). More importantly, I learned a great deal about American history, fanatics, grieving and memorializing. Most importantly, I wanted to learn more. That’s a good book.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Elizabeth Taylor begins her female self-actualization journey
R&E has finished reading the twelve novels of Elizabeth Taylor, a 20th century British writer. R&E has decided to reread each through the lens of female self-actualization. That lens esteems another’s life vis-à-vis three of Abraham Maslow’s criteria: 1. self-reflection and self-acceptance; 2. resistance to forced and debilitating cultural assimilation; and 3. care for and cultivation of the world.
Let’s start at the very beginning...
Taylor, Elizabeth. 1945. At Mrs Lippincote’s. London: Virago Press, 1988.
A discussion of female self-actualization in Elizabeth Taylor’s first novel begins with a brief catalogue of the interesting female characters, leaving to last the protagonist and a discussion of her possible and potential self-actualization.
Eleanor, Roddy’s cousin, convalesces from a recent nervous breakdown with him, his wife, and their child at a rented house—Mrs. Lippincote’s. She adores her cousin although she lies to him about her associations with Communists, whom she romanticizes as the only people she knows who aren’t lonely. Eleanor condemns Julia’s drinking, parenting, husbandry, and wifedom. In short, Eleanor subscribes to the major female master narratives of being a good little wife, effective house manager, and devoted mother. Good for her. You will not be surprised to know that Eleanor has never walked in any of those shoes. As such, R&E sees no reason to believe that she would accomplish more than her nemesis, Julia. Eleanor would do better to take a less self-pitying look at her own life in an attempt to discover why she suffered a nervous breakdown. Low marks for self-reflection. Low marks, also, for resisting acculturation, especially when forcing domesticity on another. In terms of improving the world, she would get right on that except for one obstacle: “’I should make a good revolutionary, if it were not for my back. I am willing to die for my beliefs, as someone else once said, but I forget who, but not to-day. Not till my back is better’” (119). Low marks for improving the world.
Vera, far less culturally conscripted than Eleanor, also fails to impress R&E. Barely concealed rudeness and inflexibility exude from her. She is loyal to a few, and dismissive of the rest. Her single-focused life is more of a bohemian luxury than a badge of honor. Following her about is like reading Thoreau. One is inclined to grant her her freedom and unconventionality, but one wonders about a society populated with Thoreaus and Veras. Who’s changing the babies’ nappies? To her credit, she is hard working; but in a Chicken Little way—accounting for everyone's share without flexibility, generosity, and forgiveness. In short, she’s a bohemian snob and she knows it. Temporary high marks for self-acceptance. But without self-reflection, this amounts to more of a “my way or the high way” bravado than living the examined life. Where she shines is with Maslow’s second self-actualization criteria: resisting acculturation. Except that this shouldn’t be the goal—to rebel—but the logical and unavoidable weltanschauung needed in order to self-actualize. There’s a difference between “Screw you and the horse you rode in on” and thoughtful rejections of master narratives that abuse power. Finally, fair marks for cultivating a better world if we are satisfied with one or two relationships. R&E is, after all, not much of a cause promoter and more of a hospitality vigilant. (See hospitalitymorality.blogspot for that angle.)
Next, we have Miss Phyllis, who is Mrs. Lippincote’s daughter. She randomly creeps around the house without permission or notice. She’s creepy—not in a sinister way but in an unpredictable way. Basically, R&E suspects that she serves to highlight the hospitality limitations of Roddy and Eleanor, who freak out when they discover her lurking about. We have to disqualify her as a self-actualizer because she has no apparent goals.
Felicity is the Wing Commander’s young daughter--another sneaky girl--with a taste for misadventure. She is the child he deserves and will probably cause him more trouble as she ages. We are not sorry about that. But she’s too immature to determine any self-actualizing potential.
That leaves us with our protagonist. Does Julia, Roddy’s wife, self-actualize during the course of the novel? If not, does she at least demonstrate self-actualizing potential? No and yes. No, because she ultimately acquiesces to domesticity and a wife=appendage mindset. Yes, because she has thoughtfully reflected about the female master narratives of good wife and good mother; spoken brazenly against both, especially, the first; and attempted to cultivate a better world through a nonconventional friendship. That is, fulfilling all three criteria at one point in the novel, Julia Davenant almost self-actualizes. Almost. Let’s pursue her potential to self-actualize according to the three criteria.
First, self-awareness and self-acceptance. Julia knows herself to be lonely, frustrated, and confined. She knows that she’s living no Bronte fantasy, nor does she want to be. Second, her malaise inspires her rebellion. Mid-way through the novel, she rejects that malaise as a natural or necessary female state. She is not the wife in The Yellow Wallpaper. To Eleanor, the Wing Commander, and Roddy, Julia emphatically blasts female cultural expectations with one philippic after the next. Third, she attempts to connect to the world. She journeys out of her house, beginning to establish a meaningful (non-Madame Bovary) relationship while still struggling to remain a responsible family member. High marks for rejecting cultural norms. Unfortunately, the military orders mandate another move; and instantly, Julia returns to being a dutiful, although resentful, wife. She is back to accepting the female master narrative script.
Where does her self-actualization go wrong? Why does she, with such a good education, clear self-concept, and strong temperament, retreat to a worn-out path of subservience, restraint, and hypocrisy? We return to Maslow’s three criteria for the answer. So far, we’ve established high marks for self-reflection and self-acceptance. “’I love myself,’ she said lightly. … ‘And then,’ she added, ‘miles down the scale, in a vague, bewildered way, I love you.’ Then he knew she was truly drunk” (26). Yes, Julia loves herself. And we have already established her rebellions against female acculturation. But although she has high marks for the first two criteria, she has lower marks for the last than R&E has presented. For although she has tried, she has failed to become truly acquainted with anyone else. Although Mr. Taylor’s death seems to truncate the genesis of an authentic relationship, readers soon realize through Julia’s conversation with his mother that much of how he has presented himself has been false. Disillusioned, Julia gives up not just because the military is manipulating her life, her husband is closer to his cousin than to his wife, and her son is peculiarly backward for his age, but because she realizes that her best efforts to eschew the female master narrative without succumbing to a romance (just try to count the Bronte references) has failed. She has been deceived into a “friendship,” which, ironically destroys her more than would the knowledge of her husband’s affair. What is so damn frustrating about this novel is the accuracy of the passive voice in the last sentence. Julia is cheated by someone else. To be honest, we must acknowledge that Julia is lying to her husband about this relationship. So R&E wonders if Elizabeth Taylor is suggesting that Julia deserves what she gets, that is, that herdeception causes or at least justifies Mr. Taylor's. Maybe that's why Mr. Taylor misrepresents himself. But we don't really know that because he's dead. Nor do we know why her husband has an affair--that Julia may or may not suspect. Nor do we know why Eleanor, her son, and the Wing Commander deceiver Julia. (What's the big deal about him hiding his pre-war profession as a dentist?) What we do know is that every major and many minor characters deceive others.
Although unaware of most of these lies, Julia lives painfully aware of her disconnectedness. Julia recognizes that she is disconnected from Roddy and everyone else in her life because she has failed to see and connect to others as “real people”—a lament she expresses on the penultimate page of the novel. At the novel’s end, Julia closes Mrs. Lippincote’s curtains when she sees another liar—Mr. Aldridge—pass by. After my second reading, I’m puzzled. Why is everyone lying? Is it their fault? Is it society’s? Are we all required to live lives of “double consciousness” behind veils of deception in order to survive and acculturate? Is there no other, more honest, way? Is it simply impossible to live the examined life and improve the world?
R&E is fond of the word “authentic” when describing truthful human relationships. According to Maslow and R&E, we can't self-actualize without authentic human relationships. Not causes. Not dramas. Not romances. And not attempts to replicate the life of stories, which Julia, the Wing Commander, and Oliver desperately try to do. All those substitutes for living authentically not only diminish our lives but prevent our self-actualizing. We cannot love with deceit, At Mrs. Lippincote’s warns us. Little acts matter. Whether it’s spying into someone’s papers when we’re her boarder, mentally criticizing those we’ve invited into our homes, or lying about our whereabouts, minor secrets and discretions enervate our integrity—and prevent our self-actualizing. As R&E subscribes to Aristotle's philosophy of character development, R&E believes that if we continue to act deceptively, we accrete our self-deception. But back to Maslow and self-actualization. To be true to ourselves and rebel against the world’s unfair expectations without standing for and with at least one other person proves a hollow life. At Mrs. Lippincote’s last exchange between husband and wife reveals Julia’s deficiency: “’If we could see one another as real people…’ she began. ‘You are inquisitive about little things, but about this.. [says Roddy].’ ‘I am a coward,’ she agreed” (214). Of course, that’s not what he said or probably meant, which is part of the problem. She misprisions his remark. However, despite their miscommunication, Julia self-assesses with acumen. Why hasn’t she been able to see one other person as a real person? Because that requires risks—exposure, honesty, trust, and disinterested self-righteousness. And although Julia knows and accepts herself well and although Julia ideologically rejects cultural assimilation power abuses, she is too cowardly to take the final step to self-actualize. She has neglected the “act” in “self-actualizing” by failing to authentically act for the betterment of someone else. All her bravado is for naught because looking out the window at Mr. Aldridge who, according to his "confession" to Eleanor, “should have been dead months ago,” Julia accepts that his deceit is the way of life. Judging and accepting herself as pusillanimous, Julia participates in the world’s deception.
R&E doesn’t suggest that At Mrs. Lippincote’s sanctions such cowardliness. Perhaps, Julia’s confession serves as the novel’s proscription. That’s the case that R&E has tried to make. However, R&E can make no case that the novel serves its readers a prescription for female self-actualization. R&E will continue to reread the remaining eleven novels in hope that better news will come. Until then, R&E wonders how we can surmount our cowardliness and “see one another as real people.”
Let’s start at the very beginning...
Taylor, Elizabeth. 1945. At Mrs Lippincote’s. London: Virago Press, 1988.
A discussion of female self-actualization in Elizabeth Taylor’s first novel begins with a brief catalogue of the interesting female characters, leaving to last the protagonist and a discussion of her possible and potential self-actualization.
Eleanor, Roddy’s cousin, convalesces from a recent nervous breakdown with him, his wife, and their child at a rented house—Mrs. Lippincote’s. She adores her cousin although she lies to him about her associations with Communists, whom she romanticizes as the only people she knows who aren’t lonely. Eleanor condemns Julia’s drinking, parenting, husbandry, and wifedom. In short, Eleanor subscribes to the major female master narratives of being a good little wife, effective house manager, and devoted mother. Good for her. You will not be surprised to know that Eleanor has never walked in any of those shoes. As such, R&E sees no reason to believe that she would accomplish more than her nemesis, Julia. Eleanor would do better to take a less self-pitying look at her own life in an attempt to discover why she suffered a nervous breakdown. Low marks for self-reflection. Low marks, also, for resisting acculturation, especially when forcing domesticity on another. In terms of improving the world, she would get right on that except for one obstacle: “’I should make a good revolutionary, if it were not for my back. I am willing to die for my beliefs, as someone else once said, but I forget who, but not to-day. Not till my back is better’” (119). Low marks for improving the world.
Vera, far less culturally conscripted than Eleanor, also fails to impress R&E. Barely concealed rudeness and inflexibility exude from her. She is loyal to a few, and dismissive of the rest. Her single-focused life is more of a bohemian luxury than a badge of honor. Following her about is like reading Thoreau. One is inclined to grant her her freedom and unconventionality, but one wonders about a society populated with Thoreaus and Veras. Who’s changing the babies’ nappies? To her credit, she is hard working; but in a Chicken Little way—accounting for everyone's share without flexibility, generosity, and forgiveness. In short, she’s a bohemian snob and she knows it. Temporary high marks for self-acceptance. But without self-reflection, this amounts to more of a “my way or the high way” bravado than living the examined life. Where she shines is with Maslow’s second self-actualization criteria: resisting acculturation. Except that this shouldn’t be the goal—to rebel—but the logical and unavoidable weltanschauung needed in order to self-actualize. There’s a difference between “Screw you and the horse you rode in on” and thoughtful rejections of master narratives that abuse power. Finally, fair marks for cultivating a better world if we are satisfied with one or two relationships. R&E is, after all, not much of a cause promoter and more of a hospitality vigilant. (See hospitalitymorality.blogspot for that angle.)
Next, we have Miss Phyllis, who is Mrs. Lippincote’s daughter. She randomly creeps around the house without permission or notice. She’s creepy—not in a sinister way but in an unpredictable way. Basically, R&E suspects that she serves to highlight the hospitality limitations of Roddy and Eleanor, who freak out when they discover her lurking about. We have to disqualify her as a self-actualizer because she has no apparent goals.
Felicity is the Wing Commander’s young daughter--another sneaky girl--with a taste for misadventure. She is the child he deserves and will probably cause him more trouble as she ages. We are not sorry about that. But she’s too immature to determine any self-actualizing potential.
That leaves us with our protagonist. Does Julia, Roddy’s wife, self-actualize during the course of the novel? If not, does she at least demonstrate self-actualizing potential? No and yes. No, because she ultimately acquiesces to domesticity and a wife=appendage mindset. Yes, because she has thoughtfully reflected about the female master narratives of good wife and good mother; spoken brazenly against both, especially, the first; and attempted to cultivate a better world through a nonconventional friendship. That is, fulfilling all three criteria at one point in the novel, Julia Davenant almost self-actualizes. Almost. Let’s pursue her potential to self-actualize according to the three criteria.
First, self-awareness and self-acceptance. Julia knows herself to be lonely, frustrated, and confined. She knows that she’s living no Bronte fantasy, nor does she want to be. Second, her malaise inspires her rebellion. Mid-way through the novel, she rejects that malaise as a natural or necessary female state. She is not the wife in The Yellow Wallpaper. To Eleanor, the Wing Commander, and Roddy, Julia emphatically blasts female cultural expectations with one philippic after the next. Third, she attempts to connect to the world. She journeys out of her house, beginning to establish a meaningful (non-Madame Bovary) relationship while still struggling to remain a responsible family member. High marks for rejecting cultural norms. Unfortunately, the military orders mandate another move; and instantly, Julia returns to being a dutiful, although resentful, wife. She is back to accepting the female master narrative script.
Where does her self-actualization go wrong? Why does she, with such a good education, clear self-concept, and strong temperament, retreat to a worn-out path of subservience, restraint, and hypocrisy? We return to Maslow’s three criteria for the answer. So far, we’ve established high marks for self-reflection and self-acceptance. “’I love myself,’ she said lightly. … ‘And then,’ she added, ‘miles down the scale, in a vague, bewildered way, I love you.’ Then he knew she was truly drunk” (26). Yes, Julia loves herself. And we have already established her rebellions against female acculturation. But although she has high marks for the first two criteria, she has lower marks for the last than R&E has presented. For although she has tried, she has failed to become truly acquainted with anyone else. Although Mr. Taylor’s death seems to truncate the genesis of an authentic relationship, readers soon realize through Julia’s conversation with his mother that much of how he has presented himself has been false. Disillusioned, Julia gives up not just because the military is manipulating her life, her husband is closer to his cousin than to his wife, and her son is peculiarly backward for his age, but because she realizes that her best efforts to eschew the female master narrative without succumbing to a romance (just try to count the Bronte references) has failed. She has been deceived into a “friendship,” which, ironically destroys her more than would the knowledge of her husband’s affair. What is so damn frustrating about this novel is the accuracy of the passive voice in the last sentence. Julia is cheated by someone else. To be honest, we must acknowledge that Julia is lying to her husband about this relationship. So R&E wonders if Elizabeth Taylor is suggesting that Julia deserves what she gets, that is, that herdeception causes or at least justifies Mr. Taylor's. Maybe that's why Mr. Taylor misrepresents himself. But we don't really know that because he's dead. Nor do we know why her husband has an affair--that Julia may or may not suspect. Nor do we know why Eleanor, her son, and the Wing Commander deceiver Julia. (What's the big deal about him hiding his pre-war profession as a dentist?) What we do know is that every major and many minor characters deceive others.
Although unaware of most of these lies, Julia lives painfully aware of her disconnectedness. Julia recognizes that she is disconnected from Roddy and everyone else in her life because she has failed to see and connect to others as “real people”—a lament she expresses on the penultimate page of the novel. At the novel’s end, Julia closes Mrs. Lippincote’s curtains when she sees another liar—Mr. Aldridge—pass by. After my second reading, I’m puzzled. Why is everyone lying? Is it their fault? Is it society’s? Are we all required to live lives of “double consciousness” behind veils of deception in order to survive and acculturate? Is there no other, more honest, way? Is it simply impossible to live the examined life and improve the world?
R&E is fond of the word “authentic” when describing truthful human relationships. According to Maslow and R&E, we can't self-actualize without authentic human relationships. Not causes. Not dramas. Not romances. And not attempts to replicate the life of stories, which Julia, the Wing Commander, and Oliver desperately try to do. All those substitutes for living authentically not only diminish our lives but prevent our self-actualizing. We cannot love with deceit, At Mrs. Lippincote’s warns us. Little acts matter. Whether it’s spying into someone’s papers when we’re her boarder, mentally criticizing those we’ve invited into our homes, or lying about our whereabouts, minor secrets and discretions enervate our integrity—and prevent our self-actualizing. As R&E subscribes to Aristotle's philosophy of character development, R&E believes that if we continue to act deceptively, we accrete our self-deception. But back to Maslow and self-actualization. To be true to ourselves and rebel against the world’s unfair expectations without standing for and with at least one other person proves a hollow life. At Mrs. Lippincote’s last exchange between husband and wife reveals Julia’s deficiency: “’If we could see one another as real people…’ she began. ‘You are inquisitive about little things, but about this.. [says Roddy].’ ‘I am a coward,’ she agreed” (214). Of course, that’s not what he said or probably meant, which is part of the problem. She misprisions his remark. However, despite their miscommunication, Julia self-assesses with acumen. Why hasn’t she been able to see one other person as a real person? Because that requires risks—exposure, honesty, trust, and disinterested self-righteousness. And although Julia knows and accepts herself well and although Julia ideologically rejects cultural assimilation power abuses, she is too cowardly to take the final step to self-actualize. She has neglected the “act” in “self-actualizing” by failing to authentically act for the betterment of someone else. All her bravado is for naught because looking out the window at Mr. Aldridge who, according to his "confession" to Eleanor, “should have been dead months ago,” Julia accepts that his deceit is the way of life. Judging and accepting herself as pusillanimous, Julia participates in the world’s deception.
R&E doesn’t suggest that At Mrs. Lippincote’s sanctions such cowardliness. Perhaps, Julia’s confession serves as the novel’s proscription. That’s the case that R&E has tried to make. However, R&E can make no case that the novel serves its readers a prescription for female self-actualization. R&E will continue to reread the remaining eleven novels in hope that better news will come. Until then, R&E wonders how we can surmount our cowardliness and “see one another as real people.”
Friday, June 25, 2010
Sexual orientation vs. sexual awakening.
More than a personal essay, this blog’s entry serves as a confession.
I recently viewed a play that eventually disturbed me. Let me start with the play...Set in Paris, this story retrospectively narrates and dramatizes the sexual orientation of a 15-year old boy who becomes his teacher's lover and her neighbor's conversation partner for a weekend.
For the first few days after my viewing, I opined this production to be well-written and well-acted. I thought about how the neighbor comically enters the plot just when the sexual awakening could have become unseemly. I especially appreciated the nostalgic (but not overly sentimental) retrospective of the boy as an adult.
My initial satisfied impression faded when I began to wonder how differently I would esteem this as a female coming-of-age story and if that difference reflects my immorality. Let me explain such harsh self-criticism.
A few days after my viewing, I began to wonder...what if this had been the story of a female's sexual awakening? (Think Kate Chopin's "The Awakening.") Would I have applauded a male teacher’s sexual conquest with one of his female freshmen? Would I have laughed at a much older male teacher’s attempts to imitate the Kama Sutra position of “inverted congress” with his Lolita-like apprentice? Would I have been entertained with the neighbor’s promiscuity and resultant crab infestation? In short, if this had been an older male teacher seducing one of his adolescent female high school students and sexually bantering with his male neighbor, would I have gone along so eagerly for the ride?
I know the answer to that and believe that you do, also. A clear double standard. And as double standards go, a shameful one.
Belatedly, I'm speculating about how the play’s plot and content could have somehow restored my ethics...and my pride.
To be fair, introducing the prospect of being straddled with an STD helps scold the audience for pleasantly viewing the seduction. It begins to caution against promiscuity and deception. Unfortunately, having crabs becomes more comical and uncomfortable than cautionary, swapping a few laughs for a good lesson.
And there are other failed opportunities. First, there ought to be consequences to seducing your students,
which the play blatantly fails to demonstrate. When discovered—by the boy’s parents who inform the school’s authorities—the teacher is not punished. In fact, she continues teaching and maintains her affair with a married colleague. Second, although there are consequences for the boy, whose parents remove him from the school, the play portrays the father to be more like an irate authoritarian rather than a responsible parent. Most importantly, the boy’s adult male retrospective recalls his adolescent carnal rite of passage with fondness. The last scene solidifies his periodic nostalgic musings that have interspersed the play. No characterization, plot detail, or narrative perspective scolds the middle-age teacher or warns the audience to reconsider the narrator's perspective.
But we don't attend plays simply to align with the dramatist's views. Obviously, we are compelled to discern and critique such a double standard of male romps and female victimizations.
Now, I realize that whether the play portrays them as "femme fatales" or society labels them as "Cougars," no one would be laughing if the genders were reversed, that is, when a Professor Humbert Humbert arrives on stage to begin his seductions. More importantly, we don't need to reverse the genders in order to reprove a sexual orientation operated by coercion and deception. I should not have been laughing when this woman staged her mental, emotional, and physical mauling of an innocent young man. None of us should be laughing when sexual orientation--no matter the genders--substitutes for sexual awakening. Let me explain...
A sexual orientation tale merely instructs us in sexual positions, parlance, and tactics. One person is in charge. The other is in awe. It's a game of deception, conquest, and abandonment. We may be titillated by these stories, but we are not improved by them. For what can we learn about ourselves by witnessing an innocent, powerless person irrationally and confusedly capitulate to someone else's cravings? Rather, we need to discern and appreciate that sexual awakening narratives--unlike sexual orientation tales--teach us to reevaluate ourselves and our relationships as adults. As such, they serve as preludes to lifelong self-actualization. These are stories between two people who hold no power over the other, who act harmoniously with each the other, and who respect themselves. Consequently, sexual awakening stories eschew intimidation and coercion, instructing us how to come of age into an adult world of responsible relationships. Sexual awakening stories, and none less moral, deserve our applause.
I recently viewed a play that eventually disturbed me. Let me start with the play...Set in Paris, this story retrospectively narrates and dramatizes the sexual orientation of a 15-year old boy who becomes his teacher's lover and her neighbor's conversation partner for a weekend.
For the first few days after my viewing, I opined this production to be well-written and well-acted. I thought about how the neighbor comically enters the plot just when the sexual awakening could have become unseemly. I especially appreciated the nostalgic (but not overly sentimental) retrospective of the boy as an adult.
My initial satisfied impression faded when I began to wonder how differently I would esteem this as a female coming-of-age story and if that difference reflects my immorality. Let me explain such harsh self-criticism.
A few days after my viewing, I began to wonder...what if this had been the story of a female's sexual awakening? (Think Kate Chopin's "The Awakening.") Would I have applauded a male teacher’s sexual conquest with one of his female freshmen? Would I have laughed at a much older male teacher’s attempts to imitate the Kama Sutra position of “inverted congress” with his Lolita-like apprentice? Would I have been entertained with the neighbor’s promiscuity and resultant crab infestation? In short, if this had been an older male teacher seducing one of his adolescent female high school students and sexually bantering with his male neighbor, would I have gone along so eagerly for the ride?
I know the answer to that and believe that you do, also. A clear double standard. And as double standards go, a shameful one.
Belatedly, I'm speculating about how the play’s plot and content could have somehow restored my ethics...and my pride.
To be fair, introducing the prospect of being straddled with an STD helps scold the audience for pleasantly viewing the seduction. It begins to caution against promiscuity and deception. Unfortunately, having crabs becomes more comical and uncomfortable than cautionary, swapping a few laughs for a good lesson.
And there are other failed opportunities. First, there ought to be consequences to seducing your students,
which the play blatantly fails to demonstrate. When discovered—by the boy’s parents who inform the school’s authorities—the teacher is not punished. In fact, she continues teaching and maintains her affair with a married colleague. Second, although there are consequences for the boy, whose parents remove him from the school, the play portrays the father to be more like an irate authoritarian rather than a responsible parent. Most importantly, the boy’s adult male retrospective recalls his adolescent carnal rite of passage with fondness. The last scene solidifies his periodic nostalgic musings that have interspersed the play. No characterization, plot detail, or narrative perspective scolds the middle-age teacher or warns the audience to reconsider the narrator's perspective.
But we don't attend plays simply to align with the dramatist's views. Obviously, we are compelled to discern and critique such a double standard of male romps and female victimizations.
Now, I realize that whether the play portrays them as "femme fatales" or society labels them as "Cougars," no one would be laughing if the genders were reversed, that is, when a Professor Humbert Humbert arrives on stage to begin his seductions. More importantly, we don't need to reverse the genders in order to reprove a sexual orientation operated by coercion and deception. I should not have been laughing when this woman staged her mental, emotional, and physical mauling of an innocent young man. None of us should be laughing when sexual orientation--no matter the genders--substitutes for sexual awakening. Let me explain...
A sexual orientation tale merely instructs us in sexual positions, parlance, and tactics. One person is in charge. The other is in awe. It's a game of deception, conquest, and abandonment. We may be titillated by these stories, but we are not improved by them. For what can we learn about ourselves by witnessing an innocent, powerless person irrationally and confusedly capitulate to someone else's cravings? Rather, we need to discern and appreciate that sexual awakening narratives--unlike sexual orientation tales--teach us to reevaluate ourselves and our relationships as adults. As such, they serve as preludes to lifelong self-actualization. These are stories between two people who hold no power over the other, who act harmoniously with each the other, and who respect themselves. Consequently, sexual awakening stories eschew intimidation and coercion, instructing us how to come of age into an adult world of responsible relationships. Sexual awakening stories, and none less moral, deserve our applause.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Where did female stories go wrong?
I just watched Avatar 3D. Once again, the male master narrative rears its ugly head. Although there were moments when I thought that James Cameron might take us toward peace or eco-responsibility, he didn’t. I bring this up because we can trace the failings of most American mainstream female coming-of-age stories to the likes of Avatar 3D, that is, to the Bildungsroman. That said, it behooves us to reclaim a bit of literary history so that Read and Exceed can demonstrate what went wrong—not only with female master narratives, but also, with male master narratives.
Simply put, the romance is the female version of the Bildungsroman, a genre, which proscribes self-actualization. In many later blogs, I’m going to pursue my interests in and commitment to female self-actualization novels. So I’m postponing a thorough treatment of Abraham Maslow's work on self-actualizing and mine on the self-actualization novel until then. However, for comparison’s sake, I’ll hit the highlights now. People self-actualize by fulfilling three requirements:
1. pursuing self-knowledge and acceptance;
2. resisting forced and debilitating cultural assimilation; and
3. cultivating a better world.
For an historical perspective on this problem of botched male and female master narratives, we revisit the Enlightenment when the Germans espoused the bourgeois agenda of coming of age through the genesis of the Bildung (Sammons 41). If you’re really interested in this subject you must read Wilhelm Dilthey’s work. Unlike Read and Exceed’s derision of the Bildungsroman, Dilthey believes that Bildung implies “a total growth process”—not a checklist of lessons learned. However, Dilthey also contends that Bildung reflects the “bourgeois humanism” that controls the “German imagination” (in Swales 14-15). Therein lies the rub! How can humanism ethically thrive if limited to bourgeois agendas and suffer the controls of a nationalistic imagination (which seems like an oxymoron to me)? Doesn’t a bourgeoisie agenda automatically promote an imbalance of power along class lines, excluding the proletariat and the subaltern? In relation to the bourgeois protagonist, all other characters in a Bildungsroman, connect and disconnect “in a remarkably providential way” (Swales 30). This means that, like Manifest Destiny, males are providentially destined to affix themselves to a nationalistic bourgeois worldview. Rightly so, Paul Gilroy objects to this agenda as fascism. We can certainly add sexism to that complaint. Becuase R&E acknowledges the class and national constraints of the Bildungsroman, it rejects any perception that such constraints can foster “a total growth process.” Let’s stand back for a moment and ask ourselves a few illustrative questions. As an accepted 21st century American, can I reject spirituality, capitalism, and individualism and still abide by nationalist ideologies and bourgeois agendas? I don’t think so. Why not? Because those qualities, and others, are the touchstones of the “free” USA today. If you don’t think so, try getting a promotion while touting atheism, Communism, or Socialism. This is exactly why Hollywood doesn’t produce anti-spiritual, anti-capitalistic, and anti-individualistic movies that simultaneously wave the flag and foster self-expression. Basta. Let’s move on from Dilthey and back to our historical review.
The Biludungsroman's hero matures only if he adopts the cultural norms. Deceptively, this coming-of-age genre's initially individualistic focus ultimately metastasizes into an "intensely bourgeois" (Sammons 42) agenda for the male protagonist’s destiny. According to Edward Stewart and Milton J. Bennett, “Germans, valuing history, conflate personal identity with German ideals” (130). As such, the Bildung perpetuates acculturation—annihilating individualism. Esther Kleinbord Labovitz notes that the Bildungsroman’s male protagonist is “groomed for a ‘calling’” (53) by his culture. In relation to the protagonist, all other characters connect and disconnect “in a remarkably providential way” (Swales 30). Again, this recalls misguided mandates like Manifest Destiny. In Against Race, Paul Gilroy connects nationalism to fascism and the “New Racism”—all of which are reductionist and essentializing agendas. Like Gilroy’s “camps,” the traditional Bildungsroman stratifies society’s members outside the bourgeoisie. Applying Gilroy’s theory to this study, we see that the Bildungsroman fails to fulfill the second requirement for self-actualizing: resisting acculturation. Specifically, the Bildungsroman terminates an adolescent’s coming of age with a blind acceptance of a socially-approved adult role. All hail the status quo.
Exactly, how does a good coming-of-age story work? Arnold van Genepp details the plot of the typical coming-of-age story in his three-stage cycle: 1) societal separation triggered by physical and emotional turmoil; 2) transition with obstacles, mentors, successes, and failures; and 3) aggregation into the adult world. Like the hero quest tale that eventually leads to a return to the original culture, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, the typical coming-of-age story should question and possibly, reject some status quo values and practices. Unfortunately, the Bildungsroman, although often filled with tasks and trials, doesn’t waver from nationalist ideals and practices. Unfortunately, this idea of “cultivation (Bildung) through a harmony of aesthetic, moral, rational, and scientific education” has flourished since the Enlightenment (Martini 5). Today, competing with only other males (Endicott 42), the bourgeois male is told to come of age through aggressive and competitive.
This brings us to another problem with the Bildungsroman: its exclusive treatment of male competition ignores the value of women and female-male relationships. Women are expendable, peripheral characters. According to Bonnie Hoover Braendlin, the Bildungsroman’s protagonist positions himself against his “sexual other, the woman” (5), who contributes to his development through her foreignness. Then when he comes of age, she is gone. This agenda outlaws women from the typically male “pissing contests” and ignores more important struggles like those against prejudices. Further, female characters’ auxiliary positions reveal the typical masculinist artistic and literary image of “woman as devil or angel, hindrance or helpmate,” valuing females only in relationship to the male protagonist without a meaningful future of their own (Braendlin 5). Watching most male coming-of-age movies, there comes a point when I feel Dido. So this disappointing genre spawned an even more disappointing genre--the romance.
For when authors positioned the female coming-of-age story of the romance against the Bildungsroman, they began with Dido-like characters--weak, dependent, and waiting for male rescue. They utterly ruined their female characters' chances for self-actualization. In short, they began with compost and turned it into manure.
My final complaint is that the Bildungsroman gyps its adult readers. It depicts an adolescent coming-of-age process that stagnates in adulthood. The rest of life merely plays out upon that “true” culturally-determined self as “individuals” try desperately to understand who that would be and remain true to that image—truncating any future maturation. This is even more problematic for Americans because they have no clearly defined national parameters and rituals for the end of childhood and the advent of adulthood. After all, in America, exactly when are you considered to be an adult? When you can drive? Are drafted? Can legally drink alcohol? Become a parent? Vote? It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? And it has an effect on adolescents who, beginning at age 15 with their learner’s permit, start screaming, “But I’m an adult!” Frustrated and without a coming-of-age manual, American adolescents depend upon narratives—written, spoken, and viewed—for guidance to become adults and flourish throughout adulthood. Female adolescents are doubly frustrated as the stories they hear, tell, and view are pathetic mimics of the exclusionary, aggressive, capitalistic American male master narratives, like Fight Club. Dependent on the Bildungsroman agenda that mandates a one-time, male acculturation while excluding women (and other marginalized citizens) from important social roles, the American female romance likewise fails to promote self-actualization. No wonder that the romance—the female off-shoot of the Bildungsroman—is doomed. And, more importantly, is dooming us.
Thank you for your patience, trudging through this historical rant with me. I hope that it will help us rethink the problems of the romance genre. Also, I hope that this historical perspective with help us reevaluate our participation in reading, viewing, and telling the romance’s response to Bildungsromane’s promotion of aggression; enculturation into capitalism; and bourgeois ethnic, class, gender, and sexual orientation prejudices.
Sources:
Avatar 3D. Dir. James Cameron. 20th Century Fox, 2009. Film.
Braendlin, Bonnie Hoover. Diss. Bildung and the Role of Woman in the Edwardian
Bildungsroman: Maugham, Bennett, and Wells. Florida State University.
1978.
Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1949.
Dilthey, Wilhelm Dilthey. Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung Leipzig and Bern: B. G.
Teubner, 1913.
Endicott, Alba Quinones. “Females Also Come of Age.” English Journal (Apr. 1992): 42-
47.
Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago
Press, 1960.
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001.
Labovitz, Esther K. “The Female ‘Bildungsroman’ in the Twentieth Century, A
Comparative Study: Dorothy Richardson, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, Shrista
Wolf." Ph.D. Dissertation. 1982. Department of Comparative Literature. New
University.
Martini, Fritz. “Bildungsroman—Term and Theory.” James Hardin, Ed. Reflection and
Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina. 1991.
1-25.
Maslow, Abraham H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: The Viking
Press, 1971.
-----. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1954.
-----. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company,
1968.
Sammons, Jeffrey L. “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at a
Clarification.” James Hardin, Ed. Reflection and Action: Essays on the
Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina. 1991. 26-45.
Stewart, Edward and Milton J. Bennett. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective. Rev. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1991.
Swales, Martin. The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978.
Simply put, the romance is the female version of the Bildungsroman, a genre, which proscribes self-actualization. In many later blogs, I’m going to pursue my interests in and commitment to female self-actualization novels. So I’m postponing a thorough treatment of Abraham Maslow's work on self-actualizing and mine on the self-actualization novel until then. However, for comparison’s sake, I’ll hit the highlights now. People self-actualize by fulfilling three requirements:
1. pursuing self-knowledge and acceptance;
2. resisting forced and debilitating cultural assimilation; and
3. cultivating a better world.
For an historical perspective on this problem of botched male and female master narratives, we revisit the Enlightenment when the Germans espoused the bourgeois agenda of coming of age through the genesis of the Bildung (Sammons 41). If you’re really interested in this subject you must read Wilhelm Dilthey’s work. Unlike Read and Exceed’s derision of the Bildungsroman, Dilthey believes that Bildung implies “a total growth process”—not a checklist of lessons learned. However, Dilthey also contends that Bildung reflects the “bourgeois humanism” that controls the “German imagination” (in Swales 14-15). Therein lies the rub! How can humanism ethically thrive if limited to bourgeois agendas and suffer the controls of a nationalistic imagination (which seems like an oxymoron to me)? Doesn’t a bourgeoisie agenda automatically promote an imbalance of power along class lines, excluding the proletariat and the subaltern? In relation to the bourgeois protagonist, all other characters in a Bildungsroman, connect and disconnect “in a remarkably providential way” (Swales 30). This means that, like Manifest Destiny, males are providentially destined to affix themselves to a nationalistic bourgeois worldview. Rightly so, Paul Gilroy objects to this agenda as fascism. We can certainly add sexism to that complaint. Becuase R&E acknowledges the class and national constraints of the Bildungsroman, it rejects any perception that such constraints can foster “a total growth process.” Let’s stand back for a moment and ask ourselves a few illustrative questions. As an accepted 21st century American, can I reject spirituality, capitalism, and individualism and still abide by nationalist ideologies and bourgeois agendas? I don’t think so. Why not? Because those qualities, and others, are the touchstones of the “free” USA today. If you don’t think so, try getting a promotion while touting atheism, Communism, or Socialism. This is exactly why Hollywood doesn’t produce anti-spiritual, anti-capitalistic, and anti-individualistic movies that simultaneously wave the flag and foster self-expression. Basta. Let’s move on from Dilthey and back to our historical review.
The Biludungsroman's hero matures only if he adopts the cultural norms. Deceptively, this coming-of-age genre's initially individualistic focus ultimately metastasizes into an "intensely bourgeois" (Sammons 42) agenda for the male protagonist’s destiny. According to Edward Stewart and Milton J. Bennett, “Germans, valuing history, conflate personal identity with German ideals” (130). As such, the Bildung perpetuates acculturation—annihilating individualism. Esther Kleinbord Labovitz notes that the Bildungsroman’s male protagonist is “groomed for a ‘calling’” (53) by his culture. In relation to the protagonist, all other characters connect and disconnect “in a remarkably providential way” (Swales 30). Again, this recalls misguided mandates like Manifest Destiny. In Against Race, Paul Gilroy connects nationalism to fascism and the “New Racism”—all of which are reductionist and essentializing agendas. Like Gilroy’s “camps,” the traditional Bildungsroman stratifies society’s members outside the bourgeoisie. Applying Gilroy’s theory to this study, we see that the Bildungsroman fails to fulfill the second requirement for self-actualizing: resisting acculturation. Specifically, the Bildungsroman terminates an adolescent’s coming of age with a blind acceptance of a socially-approved adult role. All hail the status quo.
Exactly, how does a good coming-of-age story work? Arnold van Genepp details the plot of the typical coming-of-age story in his three-stage cycle: 1) societal separation triggered by physical and emotional turmoil; 2) transition with obstacles, mentors, successes, and failures; and 3) aggregation into the adult world. Like the hero quest tale that eventually leads to a return to the original culture, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, the typical coming-of-age story should question and possibly, reject some status quo values and practices. Unfortunately, the Bildungsroman, although often filled with tasks and trials, doesn’t waver from nationalist ideals and practices. Unfortunately, this idea of “cultivation (Bildung) through a harmony of aesthetic, moral, rational, and scientific education” has flourished since the Enlightenment (Martini 5). Today, competing with only other males (Endicott 42), the bourgeois male is told to come of age through aggressive and competitive.
This brings us to another problem with the Bildungsroman: its exclusive treatment of male competition ignores the value of women and female-male relationships. Women are expendable, peripheral characters. According to Bonnie Hoover Braendlin, the Bildungsroman’s protagonist positions himself against his “sexual other, the woman” (5), who contributes to his development through her foreignness. Then when he comes of age, she is gone. This agenda outlaws women from the typically male “pissing contests” and ignores more important struggles like those against prejudices. Further, female characters’ auxiliary positions reveal the typical masculinist artistic and literary image of “woman as devil or angel, hindrance or helpmate,” valuing females only in relationship to the male protagonist without a meaningful future of their own (Braendlin 5). Watching most male coming-of-age movies, there comes a point when I feel Dido. So this disappointing genre spawned an even more disappointing genre--the romance.
For when authors positioned the female coming-of-age story of the romance against the Bildungsroman, they began with Dido-like characters--weak, dependent, and waiting for male rescue. They utterly ruined their female characters' chances for self-actualization. In short, they began with compost and turned it into manure.
My final complaint is that the Bildungsroman gyps its adult readers. It depicts an adolescent coming-of-age process that stagnates in adulthood. The rest of life merely plays out upon that “true” culturally-determined self as “individuals” try desperately to understand who that would be and remain true to that image—truncating any future maturation. This is even more problematic for Americans because they have no clearly defined national parameters and rituals for the end of childhood and the advent of adulthood. After all, in America, exactly when are you considered to be an adult? When you can drive? Are drafted? Can legally drink alcohol? Become a parent? Vote? It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? And it has an effect on adolescents who, beginning at age 15 with their learner’s permit, start screaming, “But I’m an adult!” Frustrated and without a coming-of-age manual, American adolescents depend upon narratives—written, spoken, and viewed—for guidance to become adults and flourish throughout adulthood. Female adolescents are doubly frustrated as the stories they hear, tell, and view are pathetic mimics of the exclusionary, aggressive, capitalistic American male master narratives, like Fight Club. Dependent on the Bildungsroman agenda that mandates a one-time, male acculturation while excluding women (and other marginalized citizens) from important social roles, the American female romance likewise fails to promote self-actualization. No wonder that the romance—the female off-shoot of the Bildungsroman—is doomed. And, more importantly, is dooming us.
Thank you for your patience, trudging through this historical rant with me. I hope that it will help us rethink the problems of the romance genre. Also, I hope that this historical perspective with help us reevaluate our participation in reading, viewing, and telling the romance’s response to Bildungsromane’s promotion of aggression; enculturation into capitalism; and bourgeois ethnic, class, gender, and sexual orientation prejudices.
Sources:
Avatar 3D. Dir. James Cameron. 20th Century Fox, 2009. Film.
Braendlin, Bonnie Hoover. Diss. Bildung and the Role of Woman in the Edwardian
Bildungsroman: Maugham, Bennett, and Wells. Florida State University.
1978.
Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1949.
Dilthey, Wilhelm Dilthey. Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung Leipzig and Bern: B. G.
Teubner, 1913.
Endicott, Alba Quinones. “Females Also Come of Age.” English Journal (Apr. 1992): 42-
47.
Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago
Press, 1960.
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001.
Labovitz, Esther K. “The Female ‘Bildungsroman’ in the Twentieth Century, A
Comparative Study: Dorothy Richardson, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, Shrista
Wolf." Ph.D. Dissertation. 1982. Department of Comparative Literature. New
University.
Martini, Fritz. “Bildungsroman—Term and Theory.” James Hardin, Ed. Reflection and
Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina. 1991.
1-25.
Maslow, Abraham H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: The Viking
Press, 1971.
-----. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1954.
-----. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company,
1968.
Sammons, Jeffrey L. “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at a
Clarification.” James Hardin, Ed. Reflection and Action: Essays on the
Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina. 1991. 26-45.
Stewart, Edward and Milton J. Bennett. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective. Rev. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1991.
Swales, Martin. The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Beyond the Romance: The Need for Better Female Stories
We need to tell females better stories than the romance. For what is a romance but a narrative trap to ensnare females by deception into dependence. Instead, we need to take charge and discover, tell, and promote stories that depict female self-actualization (much more about this later). We simply cannot rely on publishing companies, movie producers, and made-for-TV movies to turn the tide and eschew the romance. For what sells is romance. Hollywood producers know that. The Lifetime channel executives know that. Pop culture song writers know that. Mass-market advertisers know that. And, certainly, major book publishers know that. In short, romance sells—itself and products. Romance, in a capitalist world, has become a lucrative commodity--well beyond its origins as the alternative to the bildungsroman.
I’m fascinated that science, the trusted forum for the truth, has failed to crush our romance obsession. Exactly why hasn’t science trampled today’s capitalist romance machinery? Maybe it's because science is merely the current trend for perceiving/deceiving the truth. Give it a few more centuries, and some other discipline—old or new—will supplant its credibility—just as Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Romanticism have seen their days come and go.
However, let me comfort you that independent of all epistemological shifts, one apostolic method reigns for finding and communicating the truth. I am imagining your faces when I declare this method: stories. The power of stories—throughout human history—lies in their potential to honestly interpret and to genuinely convey the truth as far as we can ever hope to know it.
I know that we live in a world where science reigns: I need data to prove that I can teach and I need data to prove that my students have learned. But the reality is that when a student asks, “What did we do when I was absent,” other students usually respond with stories—not a catalogue of their notes. Like them, we tell stories all day long without consciously becoming narrators. Consider these examples: When husbands ask, “How was your day,” wives tell stories. When officers ask for accident reports, drivers tell stories. When grandmothers inquire about the family, grandchildren tell stories. When congregations wait for eulogies, widows tell stories. In sum, when we confess or deny, report or amend, and praise or criticize, we tell stories.
In addition to their communication potential, stories can enervate or energize our self-fashioning. That is, we see ourselves differently because of the stories we hear and the stories we tell. Logically, we should carefully compose, interpret, and pass along stories. To lend some credibility to my cheerleading for good stories, I will begin to name drop. I recall for you Plato’s Republic, which cautions that we need to select only stories that mold individuals and their communities. Next, let's look at several modern texts. Jim Loehr’s The Power of Story cautions that exposure to “bad stories” can damage our identity construction. Additionally, Dan P. McAdams’ Stories We Live By upholds the “narrative truth” (29) of “good” stories that we are told and tell, attempting to make sense of our fragmented and frustrating ethical lives (11, 84-85). Brian Stock concurs: we explain ourselves to ourselves as stories and through stories (Texts, Readers, and Enacted Narratives 300). Carol S. Pearson assures us that we see the world through our current, self-chosen archetypes (Awakening the Heroes Within 7). Such archetypes, I argue, have been rolodexing in our minds as we process story after story.
While I am not suggesting that we merely appropriate a character’s image for our own imagoe, I am contending that narrative characters serve as options for self-fashioning. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty envisions the ideal: we should model ourselves after only the most ethical characters in stories (The Identities of Persons 309). The healthiest scenario, therefore, is not that stories determine or mold who we are but that stories illuminate who we become more ethical.
An example may clarify how stories can facilitate our self-fashioning and self-fulfillment. When we struggle to exit an important role in our life, we struggle to redefine ourselves. In Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit, Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh acknowledges that the tension involved in role exiting, which begins with first doubts, escalates into a process of seeking alternatives until the role exiter reaches a turning point for creating the ex-role. Stories can contribute to this process in two ways. First, stories can provoke our initial doubts. When we begin to identify with an unappealing character, who among us does not become agitated? I still recall the moment when I first identified with Emma Bovary. If I pay attention to my discomfort, however, I can investigate my faults. In like manner, Deborah O’Keefe observes how young women safely investigate unethical decisions and behaviors through reading stories (Good Girl Messages 204). Second, stories can inspire our alternative roles as characters suggest prescriptions. For example, we may admire Antonia Shimerda’s Stoicism and kindness, Silla Boyce’s courage and vision, Celie’s rebellion against Mr._____, and Dorothea Burke’s graciousness. These are the characters who can guide us toward new roles of personal empowerment and ethical behavior. Although Ebaugh does not intend narrative examples for the significant relationships that influence our role exiting, we can expand her analysis to story. If, as she asserts, we seek alternatives through comparisons to others’ choices and actions, we can surely find a far greater array for comparison in literature than in our limited personal relationships.
I propose that we expand the social nature of changing ourselves to incorporative narrative associations.
I’m fascinated that science, the trusted forum for the truth, has failed to crush our romance obsession. Exactly why hasn’t science trampled today’s capitalist romance machinery? Maybe it's because science is merely the current trend for perceiving/deceiving the truth. Give it a few more centuries, and some other discipline—old or new—will supplant its credibility—just as Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Romanticism have seen their days come and go.
However, let me comfort you that independent of all epistemological shifts, one apostolic method reigns for finding and communicating the truth. I am imagining your faces when I declare this method: stories. The power of stories—throughout human history—lies in their potential to honestly interpret and to genuinely convey the truth as far as we can ever hope to know it.
I know that we live in a world where science reigns: I need data to prove that I can teach and I need data to prove that my students have learned. But the reality is that when a student asks, “What did we do when I was absent,” other students usually respond with stories—not a catalogue of their notes. Like them, we tell stories all day long without consciously becoming narrators. Consider these examples: When husbands ask, “How was your day,” wives tell stories. When officers ask for accident reports, drivers tell stories. When grandmothers inquire about the family, grandchildren tell stories. When congregations wait for eulogies, widows tell stories. In sum, when we confess or deny, report or amend, and praise or criticize, we tell stories.
In addition to their communication potential, stories can enervate or energize our self-fashioning. That is, we see ourselves differently because of the stories we hear and the stories we tell. Logically, we should carefully compose, interpret, and pass along stories. To lend some credibility to my cheerleading for good stories, I will begin to name drop. I recall for you Plato’s Republic, which cautions that we need to select only stories that mold individuals and their communities. Next, let's look at several modern texts. Jim Loehr’s The Power of Story cautions that exposure to “bad stories” can damage our identity construction. Additionally, Dan P. McAdams’ Stories We Live By upholds the “narrative truth” (29) of “good” stories that we are told and tell, attempting to make sense of our fragmented and frustrating ethical lives (11, 84-85). Brian Stock concurs: we explain ourselves to ourselves as stories and through stories (Texts, Readers, and Enacted Narratives 300). Carol S. Pearson assures us that we see the world through our current, self-chosen archetypes (Awakening the Heroes Within 7). Such archetypes, I argue, have been rolodexing in our minds as we process story after story.
While I am not suggesting that we merely appropriate a character’s image for our own imagoe, I am contending that narrative characters serve as options for self-fashioning. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty envisions the ideal: we should model ourselves after only the most ethical characters in stories (The Identities of Persons 309). The healthiest scenario, therefore, is not that stories determine or mold who we are but that stories illuminate who we become more ethical.
An example may clarify how stories can facilitate our self-fashioning and self-fulfillment. When we struggle to exit an important role in our life, we struggle to redefine ourselves. In Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit, Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh acknowledges that the tension involved in role exiting, which begins with first doubts, escalates into a process of seeking alternatives until the role exiter reaches a turning point for creating the ex-role. Stories can contribute to this process in two ways. First, stories can provoke our initial doubts. When we begin to identify with an unappealing character, who among us does not become agitated? I still recall the moment when I first identified with Emma Bovary. If I pay attention to my discomfort, however, I can investigate my faults. In like manner, Deborah O’Keefe observes how young women safely investigate unethical decisions and behaviors through reading stories (Good Girl Messages 204). Second, stories can inspire our alternative roles as characters suggest prescriptions. For example, we may admire Antonia Shimerda’s Stoicism and kindness, Silla Boyce’s courage and vision, Celie’s rebellion against Mr._____, and Dorothea Burke’s graciousness. These are the characters who can guide us toward new roles of personal empowerment and ethical behavior. Although Ebaugh does not intend narrative examples for the significant relationships that influence our role exiting, we can expand her analysis to story. If, as she asserts, we seek alternatives through comparisons to others’ choices and actions, we can surely find a far greater array for comparison in literature than in our limited personal relationships.
I propose that we expand the social nature of changing ourselves to incorporative narrative associations.
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