Cry the Beloved Country

A member of my Book Group had taken a week-long course on Alan Paton’s 1948 novel about South Africa and was able to instruct us in the parallels between it and the Biblical Book of Isaiah, in which can be found a redemptive pattern of destruction-repentance/penance-rebuilding/restoration.

The destruction of traditional South African culture and social cohesion, of the tribe, the family, and the individual is represented in the novel through the story of Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu Anglican pastor, whose narrative of loss intersects with that of James Jarvis, a white South African of English descent, whose son is killed by Kumalo’s son in an attempted burglary.

Both fathers, as well as other characters, undergo their own repentance and penance before achieving a renewal of hope through the rebuilding of family and the restoration of the valley in which both the Kumalo and Jarvis families live.

This intertextual relationship between Cry the Beloved Country and Isaiah is convincing and entirely appropriate for the white author and Christian protagonist of the novel. However, it also illustrates how the novel itself, by framing the story in terms of Western religion and Biblical traditions, serves to perpetuate the colonial culture which has caused the destruction of native South Africa in the first place.

Another example of intertextuality can be found in the repeated references to Abraham Lincoln, a hero to the young Arthur Jarvis, who has devoted his life to undoing the injustice that his white ancestors have done to the native land and its people before, ironically, he is killed by one of those native people.

Lincoln also, especially in his Second Inaugural Address, invokes the Bible as he frames the American Civil War in redemptive terms. War is the penance that must be suffered before the destruction that slavery has done to African people in North America can be redeemed. Repentance and forgiveness are also necessary before the nation can be rebuilt and restored. Thus Lincoln refrains from attacking the South or the Confederacy (“With malice toward none, with Charity for all…”), but looks forward with renewed hope to “a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

This parallel of American slavery with South African apartheid similarly frames colonial injustice in Western terms from a white perspective, as does the Biblical parallel of Isaiah. Perhaps no more could be expected from a white author on this subject.

One wonders, though, if it is the repentant white perspective that contributes to a novel in which there are no villains except the generalized colonial history and social system of apartheid (“With malice toward none, with Charity for all…”). Would a black African author have been so generous? Would blame and even malice from such an author be misplaced?

As the young black pastor Msimangu states, “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.” Would a hateful attack on white colonists or on white America be justified by the tragic history of black South Africans and African Americans?

Is the redemption narrative a luxury of wish-fulfillment for the guilty or is it a universal human story of forgiveness and renewal? Or both?

Resistance to Civil Government II

Earlier in this blog (December, 2009, ff) numerous references were made to the redemptive narrative or recovery plot in American literature, whether it be redemption from sin, captivity, enslavement, poverty, disease, suffering, or what have you. The transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller is the best philosophical expression of that American redemptive theme.

The transcendentalists asserted great confidence in the power of the individual to redeem himself or herself from social bondage and the mental shackles that accompany it. By shutting out the voices of family, church, school, and society and turning to nature and one’s solitary self, it becomes possible to hear the voice of a higher, spiritual power in the universe, a power that transcends the everyday reality of social conformity.

Thoreau invokes his “conscience” as the medium through which this higher, spiritual voice speaks to him. It is this innate “moral sense” that has the power to redeem us from machine-like service to state and society and to transform us from “wooden” followers to moral leaders. By our refusal to serve the state or to follow social norms blindly, we can inspire others to heed their own consciences and thereby achieve lasting social change.

A couple of problematic premises underlie Thoreau’s argument. First, he assumes the “conscience” is a spiritual entity in touch with higher truth, as opposed to a Freudian superego which merely enforces what our social experience has taught us. Second, he assumes that if we all heed our consciences we will all hear the same “truth.” These premises are consistent with transcendentalism, but are difficult to support, either by reason or evidence, and impossible to verify. They must be taken on faith alone.

A counter-theme in 19th century American literature is represented by the gothic tradition of Edgar Allen Poe and the tragic vision of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, which explore the dark side of nature and human experience. It is this counter-theme which would raise the specter of the isolated individual, out of touch with reality, listening to an inner voice of insanity rather than divine guidance.

From this perspective, Thoreau’s theory of civil disobedience might be viewed as, at the very least, misguided self-indulgence and, at worst, a dangerous step toward social anarchy and chaos.

Resistance to Civil Government I

One of my former colleagues used to refer to Henry David Thoreau as a “Quaker without a meeting.” In 1846, guided by the “inner light” of his conscience, Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. However, because he was not an isolated individual but a part of a community, with friends and relatives, someone else paid his tax for him and he was set free after one night behind bars.

Denied this opportunity for heroic martyrdom, Thoreau settled for a lecture and then an essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” now commonly referred to as “Civil Disobedience,” in which he asserts the authority of individual “conscience” over that of civil government. It is perhaps the most extreme expression of American individualism ever written. In effect it is Thoreau’s individual “Declaration of Independence” from the State and from society. “A Quaker without a meeting.”

However, while Thoreau rejected the “meeting,” he allowed the “meeting” to claim him. He had, in fact, not paid his poll tax for several years, but Sam Staples, the town jailer, did not enforce the law against Thoreau until June of 1846, because he was going to have to pay the tax himself. Thoreau spent one night in jail before someone else paid the tax for him. Similarly, Thoreau lived at home with his mother until he got permission to use Emerson’s property for his Walden experiment, and, during the two years in his cabin, he regularly went home for Sunday dinner and took his dirty laundry with him to be washed. Thus the community, of which Thoreau was a part, drew a circle that included him despite his repeated attempts to draw a circle around himself that left the community out.

The whole episode dramatizes an enduring tension in American life—that between radical individualism, on the one hand, and the inescapable power of human social bonds on the other.

Thoreau refused to pay his tax in order to protest the U.S. War against Mexico, slavery, and the government’s treatment of Indians. His protest was almost entirely symbolic and accomplished little or nothing toward ending those injustices. However, the influence of his essay stretched through history to inspire such protestors as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom, ironically, led social movements that accomplished much toward ending injustice. Thus, Thoreau’s individual symbolic gesture of protest, which had little immediate effect, went on to contribute toward major social changes in the next century. Again, he could not escape being included in the human community and participating, however indirectly, in social action.

When the Quaker rejects the meeting, the meeting just moves to the Quaker.

Thoreau was not the first to engage in civil disobedience, nor to defend it. In North America, Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams both suffered much more serious consequences for refusing to conform to Puritan orthodoxy. Both were banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony. They went on to found Rhode Island, but Anne Hutchinson was later killed by Indians. And Angelina Grimke in her “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South” had urged her readers to free their slaves and teach them to read, even if it meant breaking slave state laws. Thoreau’s essay, though, is considered the classic statement and made him famous for a relatively paltry act of protest.

It is possible to view Thoreau as a heroic individualist or as a self-indulgent dilettante, a moral prophet or a spoiled child. In any case, his story and his essay both testify as much to the power of community and society as to the power of the isolated individual, as much to the power of the meeting as to that of the Quaker without one.

"What's God Got to Do With It? Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk & the Separation of Church & State" edited by Tim Page

Considering the near hostility with which Robert Ingersoll treats religion, it is amazing that he was such a popular and successful travelling orator in the latter half of the 19th century. Considering the role that religion plays in politics today, it is amazing that just over a century ago Ingersoll, not only got away with his attacks on religion, but made a living doing it.

In the debate between science and religion that, either spoken or unspoken, wound its way through post-Civil War America, Ingersoll was unabashedly and unapologetically on the side of science. One way of explaining his success with popular audiences, immersed as they were in traditional Christianity, might be the same as we explain today’s popularity of adulterous, alcoholic, drug-addicted, wife-beating celebrities; reality TV; or shows like Jerry Springer. We are attracted to that which repulses us.

Another, more serious explanation, though, can be found in a study of Ingersoll’s rhetoric. His attack on religion is balanced by an equally strong patriotic fervor for our founding national documents, “The Declaration of Independence” and the U.S. Constitution. However shocked his audiences may have been at his public pronouncements of agnosticism (some would say atheism), they would have identified with his patriotism, his praise for our founding fathers, and his many honorifics on behalf of such founding principles of our nation as individual freedom, pursuit of happiness, and the absence of state religion.

Of these, the separation of church and state was the centerpiece for Ingersoll. Here again, while his audience might have secretly questioned the idea of a godless government, they would have been reassured by Ingersoll’s defense of their freedom to believe and to worship as they chose without interference from that godless government.

In addition, Ingersoll leavened his religious heresy with colorful language, resounding hyperbole, charming humor, and tender sentiment to win over the pious and entertain the faithful.

The harshness of his tone when attacking religion would have been redeemed by the unmistakable joy he took in Christmas (pagan holiday though it may be) and his praise for human love. His provocative persona was softened by the warmth of his humanity.

From my perspective Ingersoll was an advanced thinker for his time but also shallow and naïve. His rejection of religion is wholesale. He points out the harm it has caused but fails to acknowledge the good it has done. He praises secularism without recognizing the dangers of materialism. He upholds freedom of speech as an absolute without consideration for the destructive power of lies, slander, deliberate falsehoods, verbal harassment, and the incendiary effect of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded room.

The breadth and sweep of his thought was greater than its depth and complexity. I would respect his work more had he made some effort to reconcile science and religion, not just put them at odds.

Dracula III

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 at the height of cultural anxiety over changing sexual mores and the social role of women. During the 19th century, a major debate raged over the social role of women, their legal and political rights and their sexuality.

The novel captures some of the ambiguity with which the so-called “new woman” was viewed. While Lucy is almost entirely a damsel in distress, at Dracula’s mercy and completely dependent on others to save her from him, Mina becomes an active participant in the quest to hunt down and defeat Dracula, at least up to a point. Lest her active participation cause too much anxiety, at a certain point her role is diminished, and then, she, in turn becomes Dracula’s victim. As such, it is the men who finally take over the role of saving her and destroying Dracula, except that, under hypnosis (a semi-conscious state), Mina is able to connect with Dracula psychically and provide information on his whereabouts.

Thus, while the novel presents the image of an active, intelligent, capable woman, able to take care of herself and others, it reverses itself and reduces her role before it concludes, as if to reassure its late 19th century readers of women’s traditional role. Similarly, those readers, while titillated by women’s sexuality, needed to be reassured about female modesty and innocence.

One of the most anxiety-producing dimensions of the 19th century debate over the “new woman” had to do with women’s sexuality. “Victorian” women of good reputation were not supposed to have sexual feelings. Sexual desire was reserved for men and for “low” women. Dracula disguises its sexual content by substituting the oral exchange of blood for the genital exchange of semen.

The female vampires who swarm Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle are seductive sexual temptresses, like those “low” Victorian women, who the respectable Harker resists.

Lucy, Dracula’s first victim in London, is portrayed as a more refined and proper temptress who strings several suitors along before choosing one. Dracula attacks her in her sleepwalking state, a symbolic rape, functioning as a displacement of Lucy’s own repressed desire, which can only be expressed while she is an unconscious victim.

The more responsible and capable Mina, while vulnerable to Dracula’s power, is more resistant, suggesting either a weaker sexual desire or a stronger conscious control or both. Ironically, the more traditional woman character is portrayed as more sexually receptive, more akin to the “low” woman, than is the “new woman.”

In any case, woman’s sexuality is thus able to be openly represented but only through indirect means, which displaces it to the monster outside instead of the desire within, thus reassuring us of women’s innocence. Significantly, both women spend much of their time in the novel in a less than conscious state, Lucy asleep and Mina under hypnosis.

The vampire can be traced back to the “incubus” figure in ancient mythology, a supernatural being that rapes women in their sleep. The female “succubus” similarly seduces men as they sleep. These mythical creatures provide an explanation for sex dreams and/or orgasms during sleep, an explanation that conveniently removes responsibility from the sleeper. Perhaps our anxiety over human sexuality is universal.

Then again, perhaps it is both universal and specific to our own historical time and place. Why the upsurge in popularity of the vampire figure during the 1980’s? Could it have had anything to do with the AIDS crisis and increased anxiety over contact with bodily fluids? Why the recent popularity of the Twilight series among teenagers? Again, could it have anything to do with the post-sixties reaction to sexual promiscuity and the rise of abstinence-based sex education programs? The vampire boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t bite your neck is a substitute for the real life boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t ask you for sex.

In all its many variations the vampire seems to speak to our human fear of ourselves.

Dracula II

The gothic form represents a melodramatic struggle between good and evil. It is no coincidence that it rose to prominence in Western culture during the 18th century, the so-called Age of Reason in Europe and America, when science, facts, logic, and rationality were held up as authoritative guides to truth and action. As a species, our future progress was unlimited if we would only be led by our rational nature, which takes its place within a rationally ordered universe.

Easier said than done, claims the gothic tale. What if the universe is not rational; what if our human nature is not rational?

Instead of a universe ruled by the supernatural powers of religion (which the Age of Reason presumably had debunked), gothic writers projected a universe in which secular forms of the supernatural—ghosts, monsters, etc.—and (in anticipation of the Freudian Id) a fundamentally irrational human nature assert power over the rational surface of the world.

The classic gothic tale leaves us in terror, not only of the supernatural threats that might be “out there,” but also of the irrational forces “in here.” The detective story, on the other hand, reassures us that rationality, in the form of the carefully observant, thoroughly logical detective, can overcome those dark, destructive forces of nature both within and without. (See previous post.)

Dracula, published at the end of the 19th century, continues both traditions—questioning the power of rationality while at the same time asserting it and thereby capturing the continuing cultural anxiety over the nature of our universe and ourselves. Though their sources and methods are hardly scientific in modern terms, Dr. Seward and Professor Van Helsing are the knowledge experts, who use their expertise to overcome Dracula, but, of course, they cannot protect all of us from all the irrationality that stalks the earth, including the irrationality within our own psyches.

The continuing popularity of the vampire figure testifies to our ongoing cultural anxiety over the power of rationality to save us and over our own human nature. It is notable that in the gothic tradition, the battle between good and evil is presented, not in religious or moralistic terms, but rather in terms of the rational and the irrational. Religious morality has been replaced by more intellectual, psychological, and practical approaches to good and evil.

Nowhere does this create more anxiety than in the realms of human sexuality and the changing roles of women. (See next post.)

Dracula I

This blog began with the gothic genre (August, ‘09) and several posts on Frankenstein. A year later I found myself reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) because it came as a free e-book on my Barnes & Noble Nook.

Frankenstein is more true to the original gothic form because the “monster” escapes after leaving a trail of destruction. Dracula is himself destroyed in the end of his novel and thus aligns with the detective story, which was invented by Edgar Allen Poe earlier in the 19th century. The gothic tale, of course, was also a favorite form for Poe.

Both forms typically begin in a familiar (if perhaps ominous) setting in ordinary reality. Then there is an encounter with the irrational—a crime, monster, supernatural event, violent act, or other frightening, unexplainable occurrence—followed by a suspenseful struggle between the forces of the rational “good” and the irrational “evil.” The gothic “horror story” typically ends with the rational protagonist barely escaping destruction or ending up either dead or insane. In either case, the irrational “evil” is still at large. In the detective story, the rational detective solves the crime and the irrational perpetrator is captured, punished, or killed.

Dracula is finally destroyed, not by a “detective” in the classic sense but by a group of well-meaning men, including a vampire expert and a doctor, who, like the classic detective, eventually outsmart him and track him down. One of the young men dies in the struggle, however, and his wife has already been turned into a vampire and herself destroyed by the band of vampire hunters, including himself.

Though Dracula is destroyed, the world is hardly free of vampires, so, while the novel ends with the defeat of one irrational “evil,” there is still a lot more of it lurking out there, as in the traditional gothic form. The reader is thus left with an unsettling combination of reassurance that there are “experts” who can destroy “evil” and terror that they can never put a final end to it.

Both the gothic tale and the detective story pit the irriational against the rational, and both forms embody an ongoing debate over human nature. Are we rational animals, whose higher thinking ability can save us from our destructive irrationality? Or, will our lower, animal nature always reassert its power over our rational selves? (see next post).