This 2007 novel by Masha Hamilton stirred some debate in my Book Group, mostly over whether pre-literate cultures should be left alone so they can preserve their traditional way of life or whether individuals in those cultures could benefit from access to the opportunities that literacy and formal education can provide in a global society.
Afterwards, I went back to see if I could find a basis for claiming that the novel itself takes a position one way or the other.
The novel does not romanticize the experience of living "close to nature." Its opening chapter dramatizes the attack of a hyena on a toddler in Northeastern Province, Kenya, leaving the child severely disfigured for life. Throughout the novel, the local nomadic tribe in Mididima struggles with hunger and the fear of an oncoming drought. Yet, the tribe and its traditional ways have survived for much longer than most human societies, much as the ubiquitous mosquitoes, referenced in headings before each of the six parts of the book, have survived since long before homo sapiens appeared.
A good case can be made that the novel supports the decision of the tribal leaders to move away from the camel bookmobile, a lending library run by a white, American woman librarian from Brooklyn. Just as the coming drought threatens the physical survival of the tribe, the coming of literacy and exposure to Western culture threatens the survival of tribal traditions. Yet, the American librarian has formed human bonds with members of the tribe, including a romantic bond with a male teacher, whose wife wants a divorce so she can marry someone else. The librarian offers educational opportunities to a young girl who longs to see the outside world and to that disfigured boy who shows a remarkable artistic talent that only the American librarian seems to recognize and value.
The conflict between tradition and change is a major theme of the novel. In the end it seems that tradition wins out, as the American librarian is left grieving the loss of the tribe that has moved away. Yet the seeds of literacy and exposure to the outside world have been planted, and the reader senses that the internal tribal struggle between tradition and change will continue, whether the camel bookmobile finds the tribe in its new location or not.
And so I concluded that the novel takes an ambivalent stance in the debate over preservation of tradition vs. openness to change. For every loss of tradition, there is the possibility of gain in the embrace of new ideas and practices. For every gain in individual and social opportunity there is the loss of traditional stability and cultural cohesion.
The triumph of tradition at the end of the novel is temporary. Change is inevitable and will overtake the tribe eventually. When that happens there will be losses to grieve, but there will also be gains to celebrate.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Speaking of the American success story (see previous post), Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is a classic of the type.
Franklin was one of the first to secularize the American personal narrative, which, whether it took the form of historical adventure (Columbus, John Smith), spiritual autobiography, captivity narrative (see post on Mary Rowlandson), or travel narrative, until the 18th century could not be separated from the religious world view.
While Franklin somewhat perfunctorily invokes the "Creator" and "Providence," his primary focus is on material success in this world, not salvation in the next. He quite explicitly proclaims himself a Deist, not a traditional Christian, and seems to view morality in practical, utilitarian terms, rather than in terms of divine command. He offers himself as a role model and his autobiography as a kind of self-help book for those who want to emulate his success. And success is not the result of God's grace so much as the result of one's own efforts. "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the maxims in Poor Richard's Almanac.
As one of the first, now iconic, American success stories, Franklin establishes the classic formula: poverty and obscurity--hard work and virtue--opportunity--wealth and fame. Franklin did not actually start out in poverty. He was born to a middle class family and was apprenticed to his older brother, a printer. He ran away, though, and did start out in Philadelphia with no home, no job, and just a few pence in his pocket. From there he rose to become a successful businessman, writer, inventor, civic leader, and eventually delegate to the Constitutional Convention and ambassador to France. And, yes, he was very hard-working and ethical. However, he also was very lucky. His Autobiography records as many coincidences in his favor as it documents his work ethic.
As for virtue, he confesses to having frequent "Intrigues with low Women that fell in [his] Way." His "Project of arriving at moral Perfection" is, perhaps, the best known part of the Autobiography. It is a masterwork of subtle satire, revealing both his moral seriousness and his tongue-in-cheek mockery of moral seriousness. What could be less humble than his precept for the virtue of humility: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates"?
The autobiography is a literary form that allows writers to present themeselves as they want to be seen rather than as they truly are, though a certain amount of candor is necessary to establish credibility. And Franklin is very successful in creating an image of himself that has stood the test of time.
Franklin was one of the first to secularize the American personal narrative, which, whether it took the form of historical adventure (Columbus, John Smith), spiritual autobiography, captivity narrative (see post on Mary Rowlandson), or travel narrative, until the 18th century could not be separated from the religious world view.
While Franklin somewhat perfunctorily invokes the "Creator" and "Providence," his primary focus is on material success in this world, not salvation in the next. He quite explicitly proclaims himself a Deist, not a traditional Christian, and seems to view morality in practical, utilitarian terms, rather than in terms of divine command. He offers himself as a role model and his autobiography as a kind of self-help book for those who want to emulate his success. And success is not the result of God's grace so much as the result of one's own efforts. "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the maxims in Poor Richard's Almanac.
As one of the first, now iconic, American success stories, Franklin establishes the classic formula: poverty and obscurity--hard work and virtue--opportunity--wealth and fame. Franklin did not actually start out in poverty. He was born to a middle class family and was apprenticed to his older brother, a printer. He ran away, though, and did start out in Philadelphia with no home, no job, and just a few pence in his pocket. From there he rose to become a successful businessman, writer, inventor, civic leader, and eventually delegate to the Constitutional Convention and ambassador to France. And, yes, he was very hard-working and ethical. However, he also was very lucky. His Autobiography records as many coincidences in his favor as it documents his work ethic.
As for virtue, he confesses to having frequent "Intrigues with low Women that fell in [his] Way." His "Project of arriving at moral Perfection" is, perhaps, the best known part of the Autobiography. It is a masterwork of subtle satire, revealing both his moral seriousness and his tongue-in-cheek mockery of moral seriousness. What could be less humble than his precept for the virtue of humility: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates"?
The autobiography is a literary form that allows writers to present themeselves as they want to be seen rather than as they truly are, though a certain amount of candor is necessary to establish credibility. And Franklin is very successful in creating an image of himself that has stood the test of time.
Monday, March 8, 2010
A Raisin in the Sun
The other day I attended a meeting where people of color talked about problems they face living in the local community. They told stories of their experiences with individual and stystemic racism in the schools, the job market, and the criminal justice system; limited access to public transportation; lack of adequate and affordable housing; and barriers in the health care system.
Having grown up in the South during the Civil Rights Movement and having seen significant progress in race relations during my lifetime, I found it extremely disheartening to hear these stories of racial prejudice, cultural ignorance, and institutional norms that continue to favor whites over people of color. It almost felt like we were living in an unofficial and informal system of apartheid. It was hard to believe that one year ago we were celebrating the inauguration of our first US President of color.
The 1957 play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry seems a lot less dated to me after hearing these stories. When it opened in 1959, it was the first play by a black woman ever produced on Broadway. Its dramatization of an African American family struggling with economic deprivation and aspiration, racial discrimination, cultural pride, and black manhood "sometime between WWII" and the late 1950's seems painfully similar to stories I heard from people of color a few days ago in 2010.
For all the progress I have seen in the last fifty years, it seems there has been just as much persistence of the same old patterns.
The title of Hansberry's play comes from a poem by Langston Hughes published in 1951:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Americans love the redemptive narrative and will prefer the stories of emancipation from slavery, of civil rights victories, and of the achievement of the American dream by such as Barak Obama, but the tragic stories of dreams deferred are just as much a part of our history and culture. We just don't want to hear them.
A Raisin in the Sun is itself a redemptive narrative. We could no doubt never have made the progress we have on racial issues without hope and faith on the part of people of color, but all Americans need to remember that for every triumphant story there are hundreds of tragic ones; for every American success story there are hundreds of unsung stories of American failure.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
In a previous post (see The Danish Girl), the captivity narrative was cited as one example of the American story of redemption. Mary Rowlandson's bestselling personal narrative of this popular genre could also be studied as a spiritual autobiography. The wife of a minister, Mary Rowlandson and three of her children, were captured by Narragansett Indians on February 10, 1676, during King Philip's War. The youngest child, six-year-old Sarah, died within a week. Separated from her other two children, Rowlandson was finally ransomed on May 2, 1676; several weeks later Joseph, 14, and Mary, 10, were also released.
In her account, Rowlandson attributes her captivity to punishment from God for such sins as smoking and to a test of her faith. She holds fast to her Bible (which one of the Narragansetts had restored to her) and sprinkles her account liberally throughout with scriptural quotations. The narrative takes her from captivity, through suffering (especially the death of her child), remorse, faithfulness, and finally restoration to freedom, which she interprets as proof of God's forgiveness and blessing.
During her nearly three months of captivity, she complains bitterly of the food she is given to eat and other physical conditions of her ordeal. Every event is interpreted through a Biblical lens and the doctrine of Providence, that is, God controls history and all events are the result of His will. Though He puts His faithful to the test, ultimately He rewards His followers and punishes ungodly heathens. With this world view, she has a tough time explaining why the "heathens" manage to escape their English pursuers time after time. And when the "heathens" behave kindly toward her, it is not because of their own inherent capacity for goodness but because God was protecting her and made them do it. It is never quite clear why God gets the credit for their good behavior, but their bad behavior is their own fault, the result of their "heathenism."
The captivity narrative is a uniquely American genre and enjoyed considerable popularity both in North American and in Europe into the nineteenth century. It became secularized in such frontier novels as The Last of the Mohicans and other Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, not to mention Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Though Cooper and Sedgwick reinforced many negative stereotypes of native people, they were much more sympathetic than Rowlandson. The ultimate irony though was the use of the genre by African American authors of the slave narrative (see previous post on Frederick Douglass), in which white Christians like Mary Rowlandson replace the ungodly "heathens" as the cruel captors.
Mary Rowlandson can be viewed as a heroic, Christian survivor of a horrific captivity during a brutal war, or as an ethnocentric white, Christian supremecist during early colonial America, or both. Her narrative helped raise the profile of white women in an oppressively patriarchal culture AND it helped reinforce Eurocentric oppression of native people--one example of many in the long history of American contradictions.
In her account, Rowlandson attributes her captivity to punishment from God for such sins as smoking and to a test of her faith. She holds fast to her Bible (which one of the Narragansetts had restored to her) and sprinkles her account liberally throughout with scriptural quotations. The narrative takes her from captivity, through suffering (especially the death of her child), remorse, faithfulness, and finally restoration to freedom, which she interprets as proof of God's forgiveness and blessing.
During her nearly three months of captivity, she complains bitterly of the food she is given to eat and other physical conditions of her ordeal. Every event is interpreted through a Biblical lens and the doctrine of Providence, that is, God controls history and all events are the result of His will. Though He puts His faithful to the test, ultimately He rewards His followers and punishes ungodly heathens. With this world view, she has a tough time explaining why the "heathens" manage to escape their English pursuers time after time. And when the "heathens" behave kindly toward her, it is not because of their own inherent capacity for goodness but because God was protecting her and made them do it. It is never quite clear why God gets the credit for their good behavior, but their bad behavior is their own fault, the result of their "heathenism."
The captivity narrative is a uniquely American genre and enjoyed considerable popularity both in North American and in Europe into the nineteenth century. It became secularized in such frontier novels as The Last of the Mohicans and other Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, not to mention Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Though Cooper and Sedgwick reinforced many negative stereotypes of native people, they were much more sympathetic than Rowlandson. The ultimate irony though was the use of the genre by African American authors of the slave narrative (see previous post on Frederick Douglass), in which white Christians like Mary Rowlandson replace the ungodly "heathens" as the cruel captors.
Mary Rowlandson can be viewed as a heroic, Christian survivor of a horrific captivity during a brutal war, or as an ethnocentric white, Christian supremecist during early colonial America, or both. Her narrative helped raise the profile of white women in an oppressively patriarchal culture AND it helped reinforce Eurocentric oppression of native people--one example of many in the long history of American contradictions.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Thousand Splendid Suns
I wish I knew more about Afghan mythology, literature, and history so that I could place this novel by Khaled Hosseini in the context of its own cultural heritage. The title comes from a poem in praise of Kabul by an Afghan poet I've never read. What struck me in reading the novel was how well it can be related to world mythology and Western literature, of which I do know something.
Structurally, the novel brilliantly interweaves the stories of two Afghan women characters from different generations trying to survive and thrive in a patriarchal, polygamous society torn by civil war and outside invasions, first by the Soviet Union in 1979 and later by the United States in 2001.
The two women's stories begin separately, intersect, then pivot away from each other in a violent murder, which leads to the older woman's execution and the younger one's liberation. At the heart of this divergence is the older woman's self-sacrifice, which re-enacts her own mother's suicide. When Mariam murders the husband that she shares with Laila, as he is beating the younger woman, Laila is freed from an oppressive marriage and reunited with her first love, whose child she has already borne. One story ends in tragedy, the other in renewal and redemption from an oppressive life.
The novel could be read as historical drama or feminist protest, but the theme of human sacrifice connects it to a universally recurring mythological, religious and human story of birth, quest and trial, sacrifice, and renewal. This pattern plays out in the cosmic story of creation, apocalypse, and re-creation; in the divine narrative of birth, mission, sacrifice, death, and resurrection; in the hero myth of youthful possibility, quest, trial, encounter with death, and apotheosis.
In religious traditions, sacrifice is the means of reconnection to divine origins. The cleansing flood restores the original divine purpose, the death of the god renews human history, the hero's sacrifice saves the human community. In A Thousand Splendid Suns Mariam's sacrifice raises her own tragic life to a higher purpose, that of saving Laila and freeing her to a higher life of authentic love, family, and belonging. Just as those thousand splendid suns were made possible by a thousand dark nights.
Similarly, Odysseus must descend into Hades before he can be restored to his home and family, the Shakespearean tragic hero must die before the corruption of his nation can be cleansed, Jane Austen's heroines must suffer loss and rejection before finding romantic fulfillment, Billy Budd's hanging is necessary to maintain the social order, and the American hero must experience deprivation before achieving the American dream.
Sacrifice is the necessary evil out of which springs human fulfillment. To what extent does our individual happiness depend upon the sacrifice of others? To what extent does the happiness of others depend upon our own self-sacrifice?
Structurally, the novel brilliantly interweaves the stories of two Afghan women characters from different generations trying to survive and thrive in a patriarchal, polygamous society torn by civil war and outside invasions, first by the Soviet Union in 1979 and later by the United States in 2001.
The two women's stories begin separately, intersect, then pivot away from each other in a violent murder, which leads to the older woman's execution and the younger one's liberation. At the heart of this divergence is the older woman's self-sacrifice, which re-enacts her own mother's suicide. When Mariam murders the husband that she shares with Laila, as he is beating the younger woman, Laila is freed from an oppressive marriage and reunited with her first love, whose child she has already borne. One story ends in tragedy, the other in renewal and redemption from an oppressive life.
The novel could be read as historical drama or feminist protest, but the theme of human sacrifice connects it to a universally recurring mythological, religious and human story of birth, quest and trial, sacrifice, and renewal. This pattern plays out in the cosmic story of creation, apocalypse, and re-creation; in the divine narrative of birth, mission, sacrifice, death, and resurrection; in the hero myth of youthful possibility, quest, trial, encounter with death, and apotheosis.
In religious traditions, sacrifice is the means of reconnection to divine origins. The cleansing flood restores the original divine purpose, the death of the god renews human history, the hero's sacrifice saves the human community. In A Thousand Splendid Suns Mariam's sacrifice raises her own tragic life to a higher purpose, that of saving Laila and freeing her to a higher life of authentic love, family, and belonging. Just as those thousand splendid suns were made possible by a thousand dark nights.
Similarly, Odysseus must descend into Hades before he can be restored to his home and family, the Shakespearean tragic hero must die before the corruption of his nation can be cleansed, Jane Austen's heroines must suffer loss and rejection before finding romantic fulfillment, Billy Budd's hanging is necessary to maintain the social order, and the American hero must experience deprivation before achieving the American dream.
Sacrifice is the necessary evil out of which springs human fulfillment. To what extent does our individual happiness depend upon the sacrifice of others? To what extent does the happiness of others depend upon our own self-sacrifice?
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Narrative of the Life of an American Slave
In the previous two posts the popular American redemptive narrative, or recovery plot, was mentioned, and the slave narrative was cited as one example. Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave is probably the best known, most popular, and classic type of the slave narrative.
By the time it was published (1845), the conventional formulaic structure was well established: moving from an account of life in slavery to a turning point of escape, rescue or manumission and then to an account of life in freedom. Douglass follows this pattern and includes almost all the elements of the slave narrative formula: his birth in slavery; obscure parentage; bleak conditions of food, clothing, shelter, work; cruel overseer, whippings, becoming sensitive to suffering; learning to read and write; developing a special sense of destiny; brutality of Christian slave owners; rebelling against cruel treatment; failed escape attempts; successful escape; new home and identity; reflections on slavery. (http://www.redemptiveself.northwestern.edu/)
What distinguishes Douglass' Narrative from others of its type is the clarity and effectiveness of its style. While there are a couple of places where rhetorical flourishes seem excessive, for the most part the style is understated, matter-of-fact, and transparent.
Appropriate to his primary abolitionist purpose, Douglass crafts a style that is broadly appealing and accessible to a mass audience. He projects the persona of an intelligent, practical man who is sensitive to the suffering of his fellow slaves, yet tough enough to fight back when necessary and smart enough to deceive his captors in order to learn how to read and write and ultimately to plan and execute his own escape.
Some of his white mentors in the anti-slavery movement thought his autobiography would be more credible if it were written in a "plantation" style using slave vernacular, but Douglass insisted on demonstrating his literacy and self-education by aiming at a middle range between the colloquial and the high-flown. In some ways, he anticipates the realistic, journalistic style that came to dominate post-Civil War American literature.
While there are moments of melodrama, for the most part Douglass tells his story in a straightforward, factual, down-to-earth manner, establishing his credibility through a literate, direct, and confident voice. He successfully appropriates Christian symbolism and Biblical language to construct a devastating critique of the hypocritical religous underpinnings of the institution of slavery.
For the most part his tone is either neutral or directly denunciatory of slavery, but he sometimes takes a sentimental turn, sometimes an ironic one. Lest any reader be inclined to view his occasional sentimentalism as somehow weak, he uses the opening chapter to satirically address the oft-cited passage of Genesis 9:20-27, the story of Noah cursing Ham to a life of bondage, regularly used as Biblical justification for slavery: "If the lineal descendents of Ham are alone to be scriptually enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters." Such ironic touches effectively display a toughness of tone as well as of argument.
Perhaps the ultimate irony and most brilliant rhetorical stroke is Douglass' implicit dramatization of himself as the quintessential American type--the self-made man, the "rugged individualist"-- the personification of Emersonian self-reliance. While Douglass acknowledges his bonds of friendship with other slaves and the help he received from others in his escape, what emerges most strongly is the profile of a man who acts independently to liberate himself from oppression. By presenting himself in these terms, Douglass' makes a powerful argument that a black slave is as much an American as the pioneer, the entrepreneur, or the original settlers throwing off the yoke of European oppression.
Without a doubt, Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave is one of the most remarkable works of political rhetoric to have been produced in all of American literature.
By the time it was published (1845), the conventional formulaic structure was well established: moving from an account of life in slavery to a turning point of escape, rescue or manumission and then to an account of life in freedom. Douglass follows this pattern and includes almost all the elements of the slave narrative formula: his birth in slavery; obscure parentage; bleak conditions of food, clothing, shelter, work; cruel overseer, whippings, becoming sensitive to suffering; learning to read and write; developing a special sense of destiny; brutality of Christian slave owners; rebelling against cruel treatment; failed escape attempts; successful escape; new home and identity; reflections on slavery. (http://www.redemptiveself.northwestern.edu/)
What distinguishes Douglass' Narrative from others of its type is the clarity and effectiveness of its style. While there are a couple of places where rhetorical flourishes seem excessive, for the most part the style is understated, matter-of-fact, and transparent.
Appropriate to his primary abolitionist purpose, Douglass crafts a style that is broadly appealing and accessible to a mass audience. He projects the persona of an intelligent, practical man who is sensitive to the suffering of his fellow slaves, yet tough enough to fight back when necessary and smart enough to deceive his captors in order to learn how to read and write and ultimately to plan and execute his own escape.
Some of his white mentors in the anti-slavery movement thought his autobiography would be more credible if it were written in a "plantation" style using slave vernacular, but Douglass insisted on demonstrating his literacy and self-education by aiming at a middle range between the colloquial and the high-flown. In some ways, he anticipates the realistic, journalistic style that came to dominate post-Civil War American literature.
While there are moments of melodrama, for the most part Douglass tells his story in a straightforward, factual, down-to-earth manner, establishing his credibility through a literate, direct, and confident voice. He successfully appropriates Christian symbolism and Biblical language to construct a devastating critique of the hypocritical religous underpinnings of the institution of slavery.
For the most part his tone is either neutral or directly denunciatory of slavery, but he sometimes takes a sentimental turn, sometimes an ironic one. Lest any reader be inclined to view his occasional sentimentalism as somehow weak, he uses the opening chapter to satirically address the oft-cited passage of Genesis 9:20-27, the story of Noah cursing Ham to a life of bondage, regularly used as Biblical justification for slavery: "If the lineal descendents of Ham are alone to be scriptually enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters." Such ironic touches effectively display a toughness of tone as well as of argument.
Perhaps the ultimate irony and most brilliant rhetorical stroke is Douglass' implicit dramatization of himself as the quintessential American type--the self-made man, the "rugged individualist"-- the personification of Emersonian self-reliance. While Douglass acknowledges his bonds of friendship with other slaves and the help he received from others in his escape, what emerges most strongly is the profile of a man who acts independently to liberate himself from oppression. By presenting himself in these terms, Douglass' makes a powerful argument that a black slave is as much an American as the pioneer, the entrepreneur, or the original settlers throwing off the yoke of European oppression.
Without a doubt, Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave is one of the most remarkable works of political rhetoric to have been produced in all of American literature.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Danish Girl
Americans love the redemptive narrative, the recovery plot (see previous post), and throughout our history it has taken many forms: spiritual autobiography, captivity narrative, slave narrative, economic success story, courtship romance, "coming of age," medical/psychological recovery. All of these genres involve the struggle with obstacles, redemption from suffering, and the attainment of salvation, freedom, fame and fortune, romantic love, maturity, and/or recovery from dis-ease, either physical or psychological or both.
A contemporary sub-set of the physical/psychological recovery plot is the story of the transexual, who undergoes physical, psychological, and social transformation to redeem him/herself from the bondage of a body and a gender role that do not fit and to achieve a sense of wholeness and authenticity in a new body and new gender identity.The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (2000) is a recent fictional version of an experience that has been recounted in transexual autobiographies from Jan Morris' Conundrum (1974) to Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There (2003). In this work of fiction Ebershoff imagines his way into the life of Danish painter Einer Wegener, who underwent the first surgical sex change in Dresden in 1931 to become Lili Elbe, all with the help and support of his/her wife Greta Waud.
What strikes me as remarkable about this novel is the way in which it represents the transexual journey as a biological experience. Obviously, it is a psychological and social experience as well, and the novel portrays it as such. But more than any other account I have read, in this novel the body of Einer/Lili is almost a part of the setting of the narrative. Einer/Lili's body is like a stage on which the transexual drama is acted out. Ebershoff captures the biological, as well as the psychological and social, suffering of Einer/Lili, and explores the erotic dimension of the experience more than any other author I have read. One has the sense that Lili's physical survival depends upon a successful transformation from a male to a female body.
Lili's redemption and liberation from this suffering comes by way of three separate surgeries, during which it is discovered that she has ovaries. The last surgery involves a uterine transplant to make it
possible for her to become pregnant. Ironically, the novel ends with the ominous foreshadowing of Lili's death. The historical Einer/Lili did in fact die about three months after the third surgery, possibly from transplant rejection. Thus this redemptive narrative becomes a tragic one. Lili literally risks her life to save herself, and while her redemption is real, it also ironically leads to her death.
The novel also challenges the popular postmodern view of gender as a social construction rather than an essential part of one's identity. While in one sense Einer/Lili serves as an example of the fluidity and indeterminacy of gender identity, in another she/he dramatizes its essential psychological and biological reality, experienced by Einer/Lili as a necessity which cannot be denied.
One of the doctors that Greta consults tells her about one of his early cases of male to female surgery: "Who would think it possible" he says, "going from man to woman? Who would risk his career to try something that sounds like something from a myth?" On the next page, in a book on gender ambiguity, Einer/Lili reads the myth of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose union produced Hermaphroditus, an intersex character. And, indeed, the transgender character in literature can perhaps be traced back to the metamorphoses and shape-shifting of ancient mythology.
As Greta ponders Einer/Lili's plight, she thinks of him/her as being "on a perpetual track of transformation, as if these changes...would never cease, would lead to no end. And when she thought about it, who wasn't always changing? Wasn't everyone always turning into someone
new?" For Greta, Einer/Lili was just a more extreme and dramatic version of all of us.
A contemporary sub-set of the physical/psychological recovery plot is the story of the transexual, who undergoes physical, psychological, and social transformation to redeem him/herself from the bondage of a body and a gender role that do not fit and to achieve a sense of wholeness and authenticity in a new body and new gender identity.The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (2000) is a recent fictional version of an experience that has been recounted in transexual autobiographies from Jan Morris' Conundrum (1974) to Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There (2003). In this work of fiction Ebershoff imagines his way into the life of Danish painter Einer Wegener, who underwent the first surgical sex change in Dresden in 1931 to become Lili Elbe, all with the help and support of his/her wife Greta Waud.
What strikes me as remarkable about this novel is the way in which it represents the transexual journey as a biological experience. Obviously, it is a psychological and social experience as well, and the novel portrays it as such. But more than any other account I have read, in this novel the body of Einer/Lili is almost a part of the setting of the narrative. Einer/Lili's body is like a stage on which the transexual drama is acted out. Ebershoff captures the biological, as well as the psychological and social, suffering of Einer/Lili, and explores the erotic dimension of the experience more than any other author I have read. One has the sense that Lili's physical survival depends upon a successful transformation from a male to a female body.
Lili's redemption and liberation from this suffering comes by way of three separate surgeries, during which it is discovered that she has ovaries. The last surgery involves a uterine transplant to make it
possible for her to become pregnant. Ironically, the novel ends with the ominous foreshadowing of Lili's death. The historical Einer/Lili did in fact die about three months after the third surgery, possibly from transplant rejection. Thus this redemptive narrative becomes a tragic one. Lili literally risks her life to save herself, and while her redemption is real, it also ironically leads to her death.
The novel also challenges the popular postmodern view of gender as a social construction rather than an essential part of one's identity. While in one sense Einer/Lili serves as an example of the fluidity and indeterminacy of gender identity, in another she/he dramatizes its essential psychological and biological reality, experienced by Einer/Lili as a necessity which cannot be denied.
One of the doctors that Greta consults tells her about one of his early cases of male to female surgery: "Who would think it possible" he says, "going from man to woman? Who would risk his career to try something that sounds like something from a myth?" On the next page, in a book on gender ambiguity, Einer/Lili reads the myth of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose union produced Hermaphroditus, an intersex character. And, indeed, the transgender character in literature can perhaps be traced back to the metamorphoses and shape-shifting of ancient mythology.
As Greta ponders Einer/Lili's plight, she thinks of him/her as being "on a perpetual track of transformation, as if these changes...would never cease, would lead to no end. And when she thought about it, who wasn't always changing? Wasn't everyone always turning into someone
new?" For Greta, Einer/Lili was just a more extreme and dramatic version of all of us.
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