Reading was interrupted when my Nook failed as I was trying to finish this 1915 D.H. Lawrence novel. I ended up reading the last few chapters on the Kindle application on my smartphone. Ah, the joys of e-reading!
I was familiar with Lawrence, having read, and in some cases studied, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love (the sequel to The Rainbow), selected poems, a few short stories, and Studies in Classic American Literature, possibly the most idiosyncratic commentary on American literature ever written. I had also seen the 1969 Ken Russell film of Women in Love, but not the 1989 film of The Rainbow, also directed by Russell.
My undergraduate Modern Fiction professor had engrained in me the habit of reading Lawrence through a Freudian lens, while my graduate professor emphasized the “sense of the numinous” in Lawrence. That counterpoint sums up the experience of grappling with the almost whiplash-like contradictions in Lawrence’s work. As you will see in this blog post, I have added a socio-political lens as well.
On the one hand, the human experience in Lawrence boils down to the biological urge for pleasure and dominance played out in endless power struggles with family, lovers, society at large, and even oneself. On the other, it is nature and natural expression that offers the only hope of redemption in an overly-“civilized," mechanized modern society.
The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of Brangwens: Tom, who marries a Polish widow with a young daughter; Will, Tom’s nephew, who marries Anna, Tom’s step-daughter; and Ursula, eldest daughter of Will and Anna, who pursues a teaching career and has both a female and a male lover. Each character struggles with sexual desire and the urge to dominate in all relationships, whether sexual or not. All the relationships are fraught with conflict, both expressed and repressed. In addition, the characters seek some kind of fulfillment in a society that is bound by tradition, artificiality, alienation, and industrial dehumanization.
In each generation Lawrence dramatizes the relentless Freudian conflicts that, according to Freud, characterize the human condition. Yet, whereas in Freud, these conflicts are never resolved, except in momentary flashes of pleasure or triumph, Lawrence seems to hold out hope of “salvation” in nature, as symbolized, for example, by the rainbow that appears to Ursula in the final scene.
Or, is Ursula simply deluding herself that any kind of redemption is possible? Such are the whiplash contradictions between nature as power struggle and nature as spiritual reservoir.
The first chapter of the novel is a paean to the natural world in rural England, scarred by coal mining to feed the industrial factories and populated by those like the Brangwens who are trapped in the conflict between nature and society, closest to the redemptive power that nature seems to offer, yet yearning for the ego advancement that society can provide.
What is most remarkable to me in The Rainbow is the language that Lawrence creates to represent the teeming energy of the Freudian Id and the awakening of consciousness in his characters. No one before Lawrence had written in such concrete terms of sexual desire, aggression, the will to power, the urge to submit, the longing for unity and transcendence, and the ever incomplete process of growing awareness.
And as that language captures the conflicted tumult of human psychology, it is sometimes difficult to tell when it is the characters’ and when it is Lawrence’s psychology.
Case in point: Ursula’s affair with Winifred is introduced in affirmative terms in a chapter entitled “Shame.” The waning of Ursula’s passion for Winifred is comparable to the ebb and flow of her feelings for Anton, but she looks back on her relationship with Winifred as a death-dealing “side show,” as if it were a freakish affair, unlike the one with Anton. Her feelings of revulsion for Winifred are associated with her growing maturity. Is this Ursula’s homophobia or Lawrence’s or both?
Later, when Anton returns from Africa, telling Ursula about “the strange darkness, the strange, blood fear” and “the blacks,” who “worship…the darkness,” is that Anton’s racism or Lawrence’s or both?
The Rainbow is an iconoclastic novel, challenging Victorian conventions, easy sentimentalism, and British cultural traditions, especially with respect to sex, courtship, marriage, domestic life, women’s roles, and religion. While it boldly depicts a lesbian relationship, it fails to challenge the prevailing homophobic attitudes of its day. And while it seems itself at times to “worship” nature, darkness and all, it also seems to reinforce popular Western imperialistic and ethnocentric views of nature-worshipping “blacks” on the Dark Continent.
These contradictions are perhaps the most difficult for a contemporary, progressive, pro-gay rights, anti-racist reader to grapple with, while a conservative reader, like those in Lawrence’s time who prosecuted it for obscenity and banned it, will be most offended by its open treatment of human sexuality and its Freudian view of human relationships.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Siddhartha
I first read this 1922 German novel by Herman Hesse as a college student in the 1960’s when it enjoyed a period of popularity in the U.S. among those participating in or interested in the 60’s counter culture. When I recently returned to it, all I could remember was the image of a Buddha-like man contemplating a river. Turns out that memory captures the final resting place of Siddhartha’s spiritual journey.
One way to read the novel is as a rejection of Western culture, especially Christianity, and an embrace of the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Hesse had been raised by his missionary parents in strict Christian piety. He showed his rebellious character early when he ran away from the Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he was enrolled. Ironically, his love for Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy had been learned through his parents, who had been missionaries to India. Hesse’s life could be seen as a continual spiritual conflict between his Christian and Buddhist roots.
Siddhartha’s spiritual journey could be viewed as Hesse’s own wish-fulfillment for ultimate enlightenment and peace. The novel takes place in India during the lifetime of Gautama Buddha between the 5th and 7th centuries B.C.E. Just as Hesse had rebelled against the Christianity of his missionary parents, so young Siddhartha rebels against the Hinduism of his Brahmin father and leaves home to seek enlightenment. Siddhartha meets the Buddha but refuses to become a disciple, choosing to learn from his own experience rather than the teaching of a religious leader.
He goes to the city and begins to live a worldly life, pursuing wealth and pleasure. After sating himself with materialism, he leaves his lover, who is pregnant with their son, contemplates suicide, and then returns to a life of asceticism at the river under the tutelage of a wise ferryman.
Reunited with his son after the mother’s death, Siddhartha experiences the cycle of youthful rebellion as a father, just as earlier he had experienced it as a son. From the wise ferryman he learns to let go of trying to find his runaway son, listen to the sound of the river, and accept the natural cycle of life. In the end Siddhartha attains the wisdom and enlightenment he had sought from the beginning.
Siddhartha could thus be viewed as a projection of Hesse’s own rejection of his parents’ Christianity, his own spiritual journey, and his own yearning for enlightenment. As such, it spoke to the 60’s generation of young Americans rebelling against the “establishment” and the Vietnam War, seeking enlightenment on their own, and exploring Eastern ways of religion and culture.
Another way to read the novel is as a modern re-enactment of the ancient hero myth, in which a spiritual seeker leaves home, undergoes his or her trial and suffering, confronts the reality of death, and is reborn into spiritual attainment, whether it be as wise one, as prophet, or as deity.
Either way, certain universal truths of the human story are affirmed: the quest for independence and authenticity, the inevitability of suffering and death, the possibility of redemption and spiritual fulfillment.
Also, either way, certain ironic contradictions, perhaps irresolvable, make themselves felt. Siddhartha rejects the teaching of religious leaders and insists on learning on his own. Yet he readily accepts the teaching of a courtesan, who instructs him in the ways of love and desire. Likewise, he submits to the teaching of the ferryman, who instructs him in the wisdom to be learned by listening to the sound of the river. One way of resolving this contradiction is to distinguish between learning from established and recognized authorities and learning from those at the margins of society, with the latter having more to teach than the former.
A related contradiction is that between Siddhartha’s chosen path of independence and his ultimate dependence on others as he travels his road to wisdom. His professed individualism is belied by his experience of learning from relationships with others. Again, perhaps this contradiction can be resolved if we note that Siddhartha learns for himself independently the lesson of humility that he can learn from others.
Or, perhaps these contradictions are irresolvable.
In any case, Siddhartha’s ultimate source of wisdom is the sound of the river: nature, not society.
While working on this blog post, I came across a symposium on teaching the novel (http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/Siddhartha.htm), in which is debated the value of using the novel to introduce Western students to Eastern religions vs. the claim that the novel offers a misleading and distorted representation of Buddhism. I concluded that while Siddhartha is an excellent study of one man’s spiritual quest, one would do well not to rely on it for an authentic understanding of Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy. For such understanding, one would do better to study the texts of Eastern religions rather than the writing of a German novelist struggling with his Christian identity.
One way to read the novel is as a rejection of Western culture, especially Christianity, and an embrace of the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Hesse had been raised by his missionary parents in strict Christian piety. He showed his rebellious character early when he ran away from the Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he was enrolled. Ironically, his love for Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy had been learned through his parents, who had been missionaries to India. Hesse’s life could be seen as a continual spiritual conflict between his Christian and Buddhist roots.
Siddhartha’s spiritual journey could be viewed as Hesse’s own wish-fulfillment for ultimate enlightenment and peace. The novel takes place in India during the lifetime of Gautama Buddha between the 5th and 7th centuries B.C.E. Just as Hesse had rebelled against the Christianity of his missionary parents, so young Siddhartha rebels against the Hinduism of his Brahmin father and leaves home to seek enlightenment. Siddhartha meets the Buddha but refuses to become a disciple, choosing to learn from his own experience rather than the teaching of a religious leader.
He goes to the city and begins to live a worldly life, pursuing wealth and pleasure. After sating himself with materialism, he leaves his lover, who is pregnant with their son, contemplates suicide, and then returns to a life of asceticism at the river under the tutelage of a wise ferryman.
Reunited with his son after the mother’s death, Siddhartha experiences the cycle of youthful rebellion as a father, just as earlier he had experienced it as a son. From the wise ferryman he learns to let go of trying to find his runaway son, listen to the sound of the river, and accept the natural cycle of life. In the end Siddhartha attains the wisdom and enlightenment he had sought from the beginning.
Siddhartha could thus be viewed as a projection of Hesse’s own rejection of his parents’ Christianity, his own spiritual journey, and his own yearning for enlightenment. As such, it spoke to the 60’s generation of young Americans rebelling against the “establishment” and the Vietnam War, seeking enlightenment on their own, and exploring Eastern ways of religion and culture.
Another way to read the novel is as a modern re-enactment of the ancient hero myth, in which a spiritual seeker leaves home, undergoes his or her trial and suffering, confronts the reality of death, and is reborn into spiritual attainment, whether it be as wise one, as prophet, or as deity.
Either way, certain universal truths of the human story are affirmed: the quest for independence and authenticity, the inevitability of suffering and death, the possibility of redemption and spiritual fulfillment.
Also, either way, certain ironic contradictions, perhaps irresolvable, make themselves felt. Siddhartha rejects the teaching of religious leaders and insists on learning on his own. Yet he readily accepts the teaching of a courtesan, who instructs him in the ways of love and desire. Likewise, he submits to the teaching of the ferryman, who instructs him in the wisdom to be learned by listening to the sound of the river. One way of resolving this contradiction is to distinguish between learning from established and recognized authorities and learning from those at the margins of society, with the latter having more to teach than the former.
A related contradiction is that between Siddhartha’s chosen path of independence and his ultimate dependence on others as he travels his road to wisdom. His professed individualism is belied by his experience of learning from relationships with others. Again, perhaps this contradiction can be resolved if we note that Siddhartha learns for himself independently the lesson of humility that he can learn from others.
Or, perhaps these contradictions are irresolvable.
In any case, Siddhartha’s ultimate source of wisdom is the sound of the river: nature, not society.
While working on this blog post, I came across a symposium on teaching the novel (http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/Siddhartha.htm), in which is debated the value of using the novel to introduce Western students to Eastern religions vs. the claim that the novel offers a misleading and distorted representation of Buddhism. I concluded that while Siddhartha is an excellent study of one man’s spiritual quest, one would do well not to rely on it for an authentic understanding of Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy. For such understanding, one would do better to study the texts of Eastern religions rather than the writing of a German novelist struggling with his Christian identity.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
"The Death of Ivan Ilych"
This long “short story” is considered a literary masterpiece and I think I know why. How do you render the psychology of dying without having experienced it yourself? Well, maybe you have to be an imaginative genius like Leo Tolstoy.
There is a long-standing theoretical debate about whether a successful artist relies more on experience or imagination, a foolish debate because of course a good artist relies heavily on both. But anyone who has had the experience of dying has yet to write about it, and any artist who takes up the challenge had better have a pretty reliable imagination.
Tolstoy paints, not only a compelling, credible, and painful portrait of the long process of Ivan Ilych’s death, he also relates the sad life story of a man who lived almost entirely by Russian middle class conventions and with barely a shred of authenticity.
Ivan’s bureaucratic legal career satisfies his ambition, his ego, and his material aspirations. His conspicuous consumption and social life satisfy his vanity. His marriage and children enable him to meet the expectations of middle class appearances. But the career becomes a dull routine and the socioeconomic success creates as many burdens as it does satisfactions. His family life deteriorates into a fractious marriage and disconnected parenthood. His primary pleasure in life seems to be his regular card games with friends and colleagues, whose lives are as superficial as his own.
As Ivan confronts his illness and finally his death, one hopes for a redemptive moment of self-knowledge and insight or of genuine connection with another human being. For his friends and colleagues, Ivan’s illness and death are mere troubling reminders of their own mortality, which they escape by seeking out another card game. For his family, they are inconveniences that interfere with social opportunities, including the impending marriage of his daughter. Except for one moment before his death, in which his wife and son seem to express genuine grief (more perhaps for themselves than for Ivan), Ivan is isolated and alone in his desperate hopes for a cure, his self-pity, and his despair.
The one exception is the peasant servant Gerasim, whose sunny disposition, quiet dispatch of his duties, and devoted attention to the relief of Ivan’s suffering offers an example for living that Ivan might have done well to emulate, if he could have taken his mind off himself for one moment. Gerasim accepts the conditions of his life without complaint, excels at the humble tasks of his work in the sickroom, and affirms the simplicity of life and the reality of death.
In the end, Ivan seems to come to terms with death, without ever having confronted the failures of his life, and appears to find “light” in death. But is this yet another falsehood in a long life of falsity, or is Ivan’s death ironically the most authentic moment of his life?
Sad as are Ivan’s illness, suffering, and death, the superficiality and falsity of his life are sadder still. If he did experience light and life in death, could that redeem the death-in-life of the years between his physical birth and death? Ivan’s ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to decide if it is redemptive or tragic.
There is a long-standing theoretical debate about whether a successful artist relies more on experience or imagination, a foolish debate because of course a good artist relies heavily on both. But anyone who has had the experience of dying has yet to write about it, and any artist who takes up the challenge had better have a pretty reliable imagination.
Tolstoy paints, not only a compelling, credible, and painful portrait of the long process of Ivan Ilych’s death, he also relates the sad life story of a man who lived almost entirely by Russian middle class conventions and with barely a shred of authenticity.
Ivan’s bureaucratic legal career satisfies his ambition, his ego, and his material aspirations. His conspicuous consumption and social life satisfy his vanity. His marriage and children enable him to meet the expectations of middle class appearances. But the career becomes a dull routine and the socioeconomic success creates as many burdens as it does satisfactions. His family life deteriorates into a fractious marriage and disconnected parenthood. His primary pleasure in life seems to be his regular card games with friends and colleagues, whose lives are as superficial as his own.
As Ivan confronts his illness and finally his death, one hopes for a redemptive moment of self-knowledge and insight or of genuine connection with another human being. For his friends and colleagues, Ivan’s illness and death are mere troubling reminders of their own mortality, which they escape by seeking out another card game. For his family, they are inconveniences that interfere with social opportunities, including the impending marriage of his daughter. Except for one moment before his death, in which his wife and son seem to express genuine grief (more perhaps for themselves than for Ivan), Ivan is isolated and alone in his desperate hopes for a cure, his self-pity, and his despair.
The one exception is the peasant servant Gerasim, whose sunny disposition, quiet dispatch of his duties, and devoted attention to the relief of Ivan’s suffering offers an example for living that Ivan might have done well to emulate, if he could have taken his mind off himself for one moment. Gerasim accepts the conditions of his life without complaint, excels at the humble tasks of his work in the sickroom, and affirms the simplicity of life and the reality of death.
In the end, Ivan seems to come to terms with death, without ever having confronted the failures of his life, and appears to find “light” in death. But is this yet another falsehood in a long life of falsity, or is Ivan’s death ironically the most authentic moment of his life?
Sad as are Ivan’s illness, suffering, and death, the superficiality and falsity of his life are sadder still. If he did experience light and life in death, could that redeem the death-in-life of the years between his physical birth and death? Ivan’s ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to decide if it is redemptive or tragic.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Reader
If you think Trifles presents an ethical dilemma (see previous post), consider this 1995 novel by Bernhard Schlink, later made into an Academy Award nominated film, starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.
What if you loved a criminal? What if that criminal may have taken advantage of your youthful vulnerability for her own pleasure, yet you love her? What if that criminal was somehow extremely vulnerable and disadvantaged during the commission of the crime? What if the criminal was doing what she was hired and paid to do during the commission of the crime? What if the criminal used her victims for her own pleasure during the commission of the crime? What if during the criminal’s trial she was unable to understand the written charge, the indictment or the written evidence against her? What if the criminal confessed to a false charge rather than reveal her illiteracy? What if the criminal, while incarcerated, attempted to better understand the crime she had committed and to make amends for the wrongs she had done to others?
If you loved that criminal, how would you weigh her guilt, her extenuating circumstances, and her efforts at self-redemption? If you loved that criminal, how would you judge yourself? If you loved her victims, how would you judge her?
These are the unresolved questions that emerge from a story that is told in a much simpler and more direct style than the troubling moral ambiguities with which it concerns itself.
I saw the film before reading the book and was troubled, not only by the moral ambiguity of a WW II concentration camp guard, forced to take jobs that did not require literacy, since she could neither read nor write, but also by her sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy, who loved her and benefitted, in self-esteem and self-confidence, from his relationship with her, but who also learned at an early age how to keep secrets that alienated him from his family and his peers and who never succeeded in an intimate relationship during adulthood.
Reading the book only increased the moral complexity, the emotional disturbance, and the troubling unresolved questions.
At one level Michael’s relationship with Hanna can be viewed in Freudian terms as an Oedipal dilemma, in which the young man never frees himself from attachment to a mother figure who betrays him, as mother and as lover, though he feels his own guilt of having betrayed her as intensely as he feels he could not stop loving her.
At another level this Oedipal complex is analogous to the dilemma of a whole generation of post-WW II Germans who loved their parents, who they also felt were criminals for their complicity with the Third Reich, were somehow themselves victims of extenuating circumstances, were guilty and yet not guilty, were betrayers of their children and yet victims of betrayal by their children.
All this is complicated by the theme of literacy and the huge incapacitating effect of illiteracy, the urgent need for literacy, and the overwhelming, life-changing shame of illiteracy. Does deception become such a way of life for the illiterate that they lose all capacity for the naked honesty of true intimacy? Does deception as a way of life destroy one’s ability to engage in a fully human relationship, whether it be with those under one’s power or with those that have power over one, with one’s family, one’s peers, one’s lover, or even with oneself?
Is it the deception over illiteracy or illiteracy itself or both that condemns one to a life of isolation, of misunderstanding, of unresolved anger and cruelty, of indifference, of self-protection?
And if one is literate and can enable the literacy of others, as Michael does for Hanna during her incarceration, does one have even less excuse for failure in human relationships?
And what of Hanna’s suicide? And the role of Michael’s judgment of her and distance from her in that suicide?
And what if one is a Jewish reader of this novel? Is it possible to transcend one’s own sense of historical horror and unjust victimization to sympathize with one’s oppressor? Can the oppressor be oppressed? If the lover or child of the oppressor cannot forgive, how can it be possible for the oppressed to forgive?
Can the oppressed be an oppressor?
Can one, indeed, “love the sinner and hate the sin”?
Such questions are typical of a work designed to unsettle all us “readers.”
What if you loved a criminal? What if that criminal may have taken advantage of your youthful vulnerability for her own pleasure, yet you love her? What if that criminal was somehow extremely vulnerable and disadvantaged during the commission of the crime? What if the criminal was doing what she was hired and paid to do during the commission of the crime? What if the criminal used her victims for her own pleasure during the commission of the crime? What if during the criminal’s trial she was unable to understand the written charge, the indictment or the written evidence against her? What if the criminal confessed to a false charge rather than reveal her illiteracy? What if the criminal, while incarcerated, attempted to better understand the crime she had committed and to make amends for the wrongs she had done to others?
If you loved that criminal, how would you weigh her guilt, her extenuating circumstances, and her efforts at self-redemption? If you loved that criminal, how would you judge yourself? If you loved her victims, how would you judge her?
These are the unresolved questions that emerge from a story that is told in a much simpler and more direct style than the troubling moral ambiguities with which it concerns itself.
I saw the film before reading the book and was troubled, not only by the moral ambiguity of a WW II concentration camp guard, forced to take jobs that did not require literacy, since she could neither read nor write, but also by her sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy, who loved her and benefitted, in self-esteem and self-confidence, from his relationship with her, but who also learned at an early age how to keep secrets that alienated him from his family and his peers and who never succeeded in an intimate relationship during adulthood.
Reading the book only increased the moral complexity, the emotional disturbance, and the troubling unresolved questions.
At one level Michael’s relationship with Hanna can be viewed in Freudian terms as an Oedipal dilemma, in which the young man never frees himself from attachment to a mother figure who betrays him, as mother and as lover, though he feels his own guilt of having betrayed her as intensely as he feels he could not stop loving her.
At another level this Oedipal complex is analogous to the dilemma of a whole generation of post-WW II Germans who loved their parents, who they also felt were criminals for their complicity with the Third Reich, were somehow themselves victims of extenuating circumstances, were guilty and yet not guilty, were betrayers of their children and yet victims of betrayal by their children.
All this is complicated by the theme of literacy and the huge incapacitating effect of illiteracy, the urgent need for literacy, and the overwhelming, life-changing shame of illiteracy. Does deception become such a way of life for the illiterate that they lose all capacity for the naked honesty of true intimacy? Does deception as a way of life destroy one’s ability to engage in a fully human relationship, whether it be with those under one’s power or with those that have power over one, with one’s family, one’s peers, one’s lover, or even with oneself?
Is it the deception over illiteracy or illiteracy itself or both that condemns one to a life of isolation, of misunderstanding, of unresolved anger and cruelty, of indifference, of self-protection?
And if one is literate and can enable the literacy of others, as Michael does for Hanna during her incarceration, does one have even less excuse for failure in human relationships?
And what of Hanna’s suicide? And the role of Michael’s judgment of her and distance from her in that suicide?
And what if one is a Jewish reader of this novel? Is it possible to transcend one’s own sense of historical horror and unjust victimization to sympathize with one’s oppressor? Can the oppressor be oppressed? If the lover or child of the oppressor cannot forgive, how can it be possible for the oppressed to forgive?
Can the oppressed be an oppressor?
Can one, indeed, “love the sinner and hate the sin”?
Such questions are typical of a work designed to unsettle all us “readers.”
Trifles
Susan Glaspell’s 1916 play was later rewritten as a short story, “A Jury of Her Peers.” Part detective story, part realistic drama, part feminist critique, the story raises serious ethical issues about domestic abuse, justifiable homicide, mental illness as a criminal defense, the withholding of evidence, and the protection of a murderer, not to mention male supremacy.
In an isolated farmhouse, John Wright is found dead, having been strangled to death in his bed with a rope. The only other person present at the scene is his wife, Minnie. The sheriff, county attorney, and the neighbor who discovered the crime search the farmhouse for evidence to confirm that Minnie murdered her husband. The wives of the sheriff and the neighbor are brought along to gather personal belongings to take to Minnie in jail.
The men overhear the women discussing Minnie’s domestic items, including her sewing project, wondering if she was going to “quilt it or knot it.” They mock the women for concerning themselves with “trifles” at a murder scene and fail to search the kitchen, which they dismiss as too unimportant a part of the house to contain any evidence.
While they search more important sites, like the barn, the women discover evidence in the kitchen that enables them to piece together a theory of how Minnie’s cold and heartless husband killed (by strangulation) her beloved pet songbird, causing Minnie to become unhinged.
Knowing Minnie’s history of loneliness in a loveless marriage with a cold, distant, possibly abusive husband, the women struggle over revealing the evidence to the men. In the end they conceal it, even as the men continue to dismiss their concern with “trifles.”
The story effectively exposes male superiority and prejudice against women and the domestic sphere as self-defeating bigotry. Yet it also appears to some readers to condone, not only the concealing of evidence, but also the commission of murder. By creating sympathy for Minnie and the women friends who understand her plight, does Glaspell also create sympathy for their actions, murder and the cover-up of murder?
Do Minnie’s friends have sufficient evidence that John Wright was abusive? That Minnie was “temporarily insane” and/or morally justified in taking her husband’s life? Can we be sure that John Wright killed the bird? Even if he did, does the killing of a bird justify the killing of a person? Or was the killing of the bird merely the last straw in a long marital history of cruelty that finally broke the camel’s back of Minnie’s mental health?
Given the textual evidence of the story, it is hard to imagine Minnie would not be convicted of the crime. There is no evidence of forced entry or of anyone else being in the house at the time of the murder. The manner of death would have ruled out suicide. Minnie clearly had the means and the opportunity. What is not clear is motive, and the women conceal the evidence for that.
However, it could be argued, they are also concealing evidence of John’s cruelty and Minnie’s mental instability, which could conceivably have been used in her defense. Perhaps this is splitting hairs. The story clearly creates sympathy for the murderer and the women who protect her.
So, our judgment may rest with whether we agree with the theory the women concoct based on their observations and whether, based on this theory, we agree the murder was either a justifiable homicide or a case of “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
If we disagree with that theory and that conclusion, then we might find the story to be morally disturbing, though it is worth asking if sympathy with a criminal equates with condoning their crime (see next blog post).
In any case, if we dwell on these questions, we may overlook what is, perhaps, the main point of the story—that the men who dismiss women’s work and women’s sphere as “trifles” make colossal fools of themselves in their efforts to build a complete criminal case.
In an isolated farmhouse, John Wright is found dead, having been strangled to death in his bed with a rope. The only other person present at the scene is his wife, Minnie. The sheriff, county attorney, and the neighbor who discovered the crime search the farmhouse for evidence to confirm that Minnie murdered her husband. The wives of the sheriff and the neighbor are brought along to gather personal belongings to take to Minnie in jail.
The men overhear the women discussing Minnie’s domestic items, including her sewing project, wondering if she was going to “quilt it or knot it.” They mock the women for concerning themselves with “trifles” at a murder scene and fail to search the kitchen, which they dismiss as too unimportant a part of the house to contain any evidence.
While they search more important sites, like the barn, the women discover evidence in the kitchen that enables them to piece together a theory of how Minnie’s cold and heartless husband killed (by strangulation) her beloved pet songbird, causing Minnie to become unhinged.
Knowing Minnie’s history of loneliness in a loveless marriage with a cold, distant, possibly abusive husband, the women struggle over revealing the evidence to the men. In the end they conceal it, even as the men continue to dismiss their concern with “trifles.”
The story effectively exposes male superiority and prejudice against women and the domestic sphere as self-defeating bigotry. Yet it also appears to some readers to condone, not only the concealing of evidence, but also the commission of murder. By creating sympathy for Minnie and the women friends who understand her plight, does Glaspell also create sympathy for their actions, murder and the cover-up of murder?
Do Minnie’s friends have sufficient evidence that John Wright was abusive? That Minnie was “temporarily insane” and/or morally justified in taking her husband’s life? Can we be sure that John Wright killed the bird? Even if he did, does the killing of a bird justify the killing of a person? Or was the killing of the bird merely the last straw in a long marital history of cruelty that finally broke the camel’s back of Minnie’s mental health?
Given the textual evidence of the story, it is hard to imagine Minnie would not be convicted of the crime. There is no evidence of forced entry or of anyone else being in the house at the time of the murder. The manner of death would have ruled out suicide. Minnie clearly had the means and the opportunity. What is not clear is motive, and the women conceal the evidence for that.
However, it could be argued, they are also concealing evidence of John’s cruelty and Minnie’s mental instability, which could conceivably have been used in her defense. Perhaps this is splitting hairs. The story clearly creates sympathy for the murderer and the women who protect her.
So, our judgment may rest with whether we agree with the theory the women concoct based on their observations and whether, based on this theory, we agree the murder was either a justifiable homicide or a case of “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
If we disagree with that theory and that conclusion, then we might find the story to be morally disturbing, though it is worth asking if sympathy with a criminal equates with condoning their crime (see next blog post).
In any case, if we dwell on these questions, we may overlook what is, perhaps, the main point of the story—that the men who dismiss women’s work and women’s sphere as “trifles” make colossal fools of themselves in their efforts to build a complete criminal case.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
"At the Entering of the New Year"
Unlike Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (see Dec. 20 posts), Thomas Hardy’s New Year’s poem (see previous post) is one that few of us have ever read.
At one level it is a poem about how our attitudes toward the New Year change from youth to age. In youth we welcome the passing of time and gleefully join in celebration as we look forward to the “youth of Promise” that the New Year represents. In age we resist and shun the passing of time, having experienced the losses of “bereaved Humanity.”
Hardy includes the note, however, “December 31. During the War,” suggesting that he was not thinking only in universal terms but also in terms of World War I, which, at its beginning, may have been embraced with heroic hopes of military glory, but, after ravaging a generation of European youth, must have been lamented and greeted with a shudder.
A closer look reveals more ambiguity than might be apparent at first read. Part I contrasts the indoor revelry of a New Year’s celebration with loneliness (“home-gone husbandmen”), cold (“the white highway”), and darkness (“nighted farers,” “midnight lambings”) of outdoor working men, travelers and even “stealthy poachers.” Youth celebrates with music and dancing, oblivious to the impending doom that change and time will bring.
Part II, in turn, takes place outside at “dusk…in the gray,” where tolling bells are “muffled” and a “mantled ghost” seeks to hold off the New Year: “Thy entrance here is undesired.” Yet that New Year is “comely,” if “untasked, untried,” and “stars irradiate” around it. Age resists the passing of time, yet recognizes the appeal of the New Year and concedes the innocence of change and time: “Albeit the fault may not be thine.” Age mourns the ravages and losses that time brings, but cannot completely resist the charm of a fresh start or a new day.
Similarly, just as the popular enthusiasm for war’s first blush overlooks the inevitable suffering and death, so does war weariness and war resistance still admire the courage and valor and heroic feats of the battlefield. Even the pacifist and war protester give homage to those who have given life and limb and sometimes sanity in service to their country.
Thomas Hardy’s “At the Entering of the New Year” is no simple protest against time or change or war, but a reflection on the ambiguity of human experience, whether in youth or age, at war or at peace.
At one level it is a poem about how our attitudes toward the New Year change from youth to age. In youth we welcome the passing of time and gleefully join in celebration as we look forward to the “youth of Promise” that the New Year represents. In age we resist and shun the passing of time, having experienced the losses of “bereaved Humanity.”
Hardy includes the note, however, “December 31. During the War,” suggesting that he was not thinking only in universal terms but also in terms of World War I, which, at its beginning, may have been embraced with heroic hopes of military glory, but, after ravaging a generation of European youth, must have been lamented and greeted with a shudder.
A closer look reveals more ambiguity than might be apparent at first read. Part I contrasts the indoor revelry of a New Year’s celebration with loneliness (“home-gone husbandmen”), cold (“the white highway”), and darkness (“nighted farers,” “midnight lambings”) of outdoor working men, travelers and even “stealthy poachers.” Youth celebrates with music and dancing, oblivious to the impending doom that change and time will bring.
Part II, in turn, takes place outside at “dusk…in the gray,” where tolling bells are “muffled” and a “mantled ghost” seeks to hold off the New Year: “Thy entrance here is undesired.” Yet that New Year is “comely,” if “untasked, untried,” and “stars irradiate” around it. Age resists the passing of time, yet recognizes the appeal of the New Year and concedes the innocence of change and time: “Albeit the fault may not be thine.” Age mourns the ravages and losses that time brings, but cannot completely resist the charm of a fresh start or a new day.
Similarly, just as the popular enthusiasm for war’s first blush overlooks the inevitable suffering and death, so does war weariness and war resistance still admire the courage and valor and heroic feats of the battlefield. Even the pacifist and war protester give homage to those who have given life and limb and sometimes sanity in service to their country.
Thomas Hardy’s “At the Entering of the New Year” is no simple protest against time or change or war, but a reflection on the ambiguity of human experience, whether in youth or age, at war or at peace.
A Poem for the New Year
At the Entering of the New Year
I
(OLD STYLE)
Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
"Keep it up well, do they!"
The contrabasso's measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
Hailed by our sanguine sight.
II
(NEW STYLE)
We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
Brought or withheld at the breeze's whim;
But our truest heed is to words that steal
From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
And seems, so far as our sense can see,
To feature bereaved Humanity,
As it sighs to the imminent year its say:—
"O stay without, O stay without,
Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
Though stars irradiate thee about
Thy entrance here is undesired.
Open the gate not, mystic one;
Must we avow what we would close confine?
With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
Albeit the fault may not be thine."
December 31. During the War. --Thomas Hardy
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