Deidre Lynch's Economy of Character argues, in contrast to Ian Watt, that complicated characters in novels did not develop in response to the rise of individualism and "democratic revolutions" (125) (Lynch doesn't mention that they were, of course, actually republican revolutions, which would make the individual slightly less significant), but that economics played a role in this phenomenon.
Lynch says that "refined" readers distinguished themselves from "vulgar" readers by their appreciation of characters with more "depth" (127), and that identification with the new round characters allowed people to create themselves as individuals and to "expand their own interior resources of sensibility" (126) .
One of her examples of the new sensibility is the new way of appreciating landscapes, which she describes as one of many "new technologies of the self" (143). I was puzzled by this because I assume that people have always appreciated the beauty of nature. However, I realized later that she was talking about the particular kind of landscape appreciation that caused people to build "ruins" in their yards, like Blaize Castle in Northanger Abbey--the "picturesque" kind of landscape that Tilney teaches Catherine to appreciate. Austen, however, seems to mock Catherine's newly acquired idea that clear blue skies are no good for painting.
Both The Romance of the Forest and Northanger Abbey demonstrate the idea that Lynch discusses, that there was a "right" kind of literature that cultivated people were supposed to enjoy. The narrator of The Romance of the Forest lets us know of a character's goodness several times by telling us that he or she is fond of "elegant" literature, and Theodore and Adeline bond over good literature.
There seems to be an example of the commercialism that Lynch talks about in Tristram Shandy, in the passage describing the characters' learning of Bobby's death. The maid thinks of how upset Mrs. Shandy will be to hear the news, but in thinking of Mrs. Shandy, she thinks of "a green satin night-gown" (252) that belongs to Mrs. Shandy, and then of Mrs. Shandy's "whole wardrobe" of dresses. The dresses are a stand-in for the person. This seems related to Lynch's ideas about a self being created by commercial concerns.
Lynch also mentions the grand tour of the continent that upper-class Englishmen were expected to take. Wealthy men used it to collect experience and knowledge of the rest of the world, sort of like consuming other cultures. Part of the purpose of the grand tour was to teach the gentleman who he was in distinction from the lower classes. There is a sense of that in Tristram's grand tour. There is a passage in Volume 7 when Tristram is on the grand tour and has an argument with a commissary who insists that he pay for the remainder of his travel by carriage, even though he has decided to travel by boat instead. He has this exchange with the commissary:
"My good friend, quoth I--as sure as I am I--and you are you-- --And who are you? said he.-- --Don't puzzle me; said I" (368-9).
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tristram Shandy: storytelling, noses, death, and more
There were a lot of interesting things about Tristram Shandy. One of the things that is interesting is how the novel deals with storytelling, with its countless digressions suggesting how impossible it is to tell the story of a life, but how compelling it is to try to do so. Toby's attempts to retrace the events leading to his injury are funny and seem crazy, except that it is understandable that a terribly painful, life-changing event could become an obsession, and there is something comforting about creating a narrative to make sense out of life. In narrating a life, an identity is created. But he doesn't just do it for himself, he does it so that he can explain what happened to other people who weren't there. So there is the desire to communicate that to others, to bear witness, to make others understand the events that shaped and scarred him, and there is also the therapeutic narration--making sense out of one's history. The novel, though, suggests that that is impossible, and that you can never get to the heart of the story (or perhaps the suggestion is that there is no story). There is always more than can be told--for instance, Trim promises to tell the story of how his brother came to be taken by the Inquisition--"a story that will make your heart bleed"-- some day when there's more time for it (89), but we never get around to it. Telling the story is a thing in itself, to be experienced apart from or in addition to the actual thing that happened. And the problem isn't just that the truth is hard to grasp--the narrator also tells us that the truth sometimes needs to be decorated (65).
Another thing that is interesting in the novel is the interest in the body. The references to noses stood out to me the most because I've never read a book that paid them so much attention, and because it is such a strange point of focus, but of course internal organs and reproductive organs are also frequently mentioned. (Eyes, interestingly, don't come up as often, except in the passages dealing with love in the last volume, such as when Toby is besotted by Mrs. Wadman's intent gaze. I wonder if eyes speak too clearly, at least according to convention, to fit into the untellable story. Or maybe they're just too commonly discussed to be interesting to Sterne).
Why the interest in noses? Part of it is the absurdity of it. It's hard to interpret noses as meaning something important. They aren't expressive like mouths or eyes. They sit on the face doing nothing as far as other people can see. But Walter Shandy thinks that you can tell a person's character by his nose, and entertains ridiculous ideas about the nose being shaped by something other than heredity, such as by the imagination or by nursing. Body parts in this novel are often described as diseased, broken, or melting. They often can change their shape like Tristram's flattened nose, or there is an anxiety that they can do so, such as Walter's fear that his son's brain will be squished in the birth canal. It is as if the body is not quite a stable home for the soul. Toby asks Walter if noses can be "dissolved" (173) and later says that the "solutions of noses" explaining why noses are different lengths can only be that it is God's will that they be that way (174). When Walter is searching Erasmus's writings for a "mystic meaning" (167) explaining different nose lengths, it is funny that he is looking for deep meaning where there isn't any. It's funny when the "Nosarians" and the "Antinosarians" (190) in Slawkenbergius's Tale argue over the possible existence of a gigantic nose. There is also the idea of focusing on one feature, the nose, as if the whole face cannot be taken in at a glance. This relates to the way the story is told, that there are a lot of parts but not a whole. I'm sure there's more happening with noses that I haven't discussed...
Death is another interesting theme in the novel. In the passage on Bobby Shandy's death, the novel manages to ruminate on mortality without being morose, partly because, since we don't know him, Bobby's death isn't emotionally taxing for the reader. However, we get to see the way the principal characters respond to it. Walter deals with Bobby's death by saying "excellent things" (246)--cliches about how lucky the dead are to escape suffering, and so forth, using words to separate himself from the experience. Trim's dropping his hat to express the transience of life is a fitting tribute to the demise of a character who was already absent from the story. (There is another example of shape-shifting bodies here, when the other characters in the kitchen "melt" (253) in response to Trim's gesture). The reader sees the characters' grief from the outside, and then, just like the cities that Walter says are gone but for their names, Bobby is again gone from the story.
The passage is interrupted with the narrator's babbling about "chamber-maids and buttonholes" and making some bawdy jokes (254). The interruption of the present moment of the narration into the characters' grief is a reminder that life is happening now. There are some suggestions in the book that connecting the past with the present through the writing of history is a vital experience, but there are also suggestions throughout that even in history, an individual can be annihilated, such as when Tristram goes to visit the Tomb of the Lovers and it is gone.
In volume 7, death has a stronger presence and is personified as chasing Tristram. The grand tour is like a frenzy to experience life. The narrator's fleeing from death is emphasized by descriptions of his rushing about and having brief encounters with random women. At one point, he entertains a fantasy of escaping his life and living with a random "nut brown maid" with whom he feels a "transient spark of amity" (378). Instead, he has settled down with the characters in his narration, and developing them more fully seems to provide a more effective illusion of escape from death. But we find out in Volume 6 that Toby and Trim, characters the reader has also settled down with, are dead at the time of the narration.
(Incidentally, I knew I had seen the distinctive phrase "nut brown maid" before; I googled it and found that there is apparently an Old English ballad by that name, about a constant peasant girl who falls in love with an earl. I think it might also be in one of the Inkle and Yarico poems. It reminds me of descriptions that I've seen in other fantasies of a free-wheeling simple life, where a wealthy man or a European traveler wants to escape to a simpler life and thinks he can use a peasant girl or an island girl to save him. The girl tends to get the short end of the deal).
If this post is long and rambling, it's because I'm still not sure what to make of it all. There are other interesting things in the novel, too. There's the display of knowledge, the Enlightenment interest in the sciences (and parody of this interest), the theme of heredity, and the interest in names. I'm thinking of a line from one of Joyce Carol Oates's novels, about how literature gives structure to life. I wonder how that would apply to Tristram Shandy.
Another thing that is interesting in the novel is the interest in the body. The references to noses stood out to me the most because I've never read a book that paid them so much attention, and because it is such a strange point of focus, but of course internal organs and reproductive organs are also frequently mentioned. (Eyes, interestingly, don't come up as often, except in the passages dealing with love in the last volume, such as when Toby is besotted by Mrs. Wadman's intent gaze. I wonder if eyes speak too clearly, at least according to convention, to fit into the untellable story. Or maybe they're just too commonly discussed to be interesting to Sterne).
Why the interest in noses? Part of it is the absurdity of it. It's hard to interpret noses as meaning something important. They aren't expressive like mouths or eyes. They sit on the face doing nothing as far as other people can see. But Walter Shandy thinks that you can tell a person's character by his nose, and entertains ridiculous ideas about the nose being shaped by something other than heredity, such as by the imagination or by nursing. Body parts in this novel are often described as diseased, broken, or melting. They often can change their shape like Tristram's flattened nose, or there is an anxiety that they can do so, such as Walter's fear that his son's brain will be squished in the birth canal. It is as if the body is not quite a stable home for the soul. Toby asks Walter if noses can be "dissolved" (173) and later says that the "solutions of noses" explaining why noses are different lengths can only be that it is God's will that they be that way (174). When Walter is searching Erasmus's writings for a "mystic meaning" (167) explaining different nose lengths, it is funny that he is looking for deep meaning where there isn't any. It's funny when the "Nosarians" and the "Antinosarians" (190) in Slawkenbergius's Tale argue over the possible existence of a gigantic nose. There is also the idea of focusing on one feature, the nose, as if the whole face cannot be taken in at a glance. This relates to the way the story is told, that there are a lot of parts but not a whole. I'm sure there's more happening with noses that I haven't discussed...
Death is another interesting theme in the novel. In the passage on Bobby Shandy's death, the novel manages to ruminate on mortality without being morose, partly because, since we don't know him, Bobby's death isn't emotionally taxing for the reader. However, we get to see the way the principal characters respond to it. Walter deals with Bobby's death by saying "excellent things" (246)--cliches about how lucky the dead are to escape suffering, and so forth, using words to separate himself from the experience. Trim's dropping his hat to express the transience of life is a fitting tribute to the demise of a character who was already absent from the story. (There is another example of shape-shifting bodies here, when the other characters in the kitchen "melt" (253) in response to Trim's gesture). The reader sees the characters' grief from the outside, and then, just like the cities that Walter says are gone but for their names, Bobby is again gone from the story.
The passage is interrupted with the narrator's babbling about "chamber-maids and buttonholes" and making some bawdy jokes (254). The interruption of the present moment of the narration into the characters' grief is a reminder that life is happening now. There are some suggestions in the book that connecting the past with the present through the writing of history is a vital experience, but there are also suggestions throughout that even in history, an individual can be annihilated, such as when Tristram goes to visit the Tomb of the Lovers and it is gone.
In volume 7, death has a stronger presence and is personified as chasing Tristram. The grand tour is like a frenzy to experience life. The narrator's fleeing from death is emphasized by descriptions of his rushing about and having brief encounters with random women. At one point, he entertains a fantasy of escaping his life and living with a random "nut brown maid" with whom he feels a "transient spark of amity" (378). Instead, he has settled down with the characters in his narration, and developing them more fully seems to provide a more effective illusion of escape from death. But we find out in Volume 6 that Toby and Trim, characters the reader has also settled down with, are dead at the time of the narration.
(Incidentally, I knew I had seen the distinctive phrase "nut brown maid" before; I googled it and found that there is apparently an Old English ballad by that name, about a constant peasant girl who falls in love with an earl. I think it might also be in one of the Inkle and Yarico poems. It reminds me of descriptions that I've seen in other fantasies of a free-wheeling simple life, where a wealthy man or a European traveler wants to escape to a simpler life and thinks he can use a peasant girl or an island girl to save him. The girl tends to get the short end of the deal).
If this post is long and rambling, it's because I'm still not sure what to make of it all. There are other interesting things in the novel, too. There's the display of knowledge, the Enlightenment interest in the sciences (and parody of this interest), the theme of heredity, and the interest in names. I'm thinking of a line from one of Joyce Carol Oates's novels, about how literature gives structure to life. I wonder how that would apply to Tristram Shandy.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Pamela and Shamela
As I wrote in my last post, I was surprised that Richardson could have missed the message that he was sending, considering that money is never out of the picture in Pamela. Just one of many examples is when Pamela describes the scene in which Mr. B. comes out of hiding in her closet, intending to rape her, and she notes that he was wearing "a rich silk and silver Morning Gown" (63). Moments like this suggest that Pamela is attracted to him or to his wealth and is open to a relationship with him if he reforms. Fielding's Shamela plays on this, but has a different take. Shamela mocks the money-grubbing message of Pamela, but also endorses class hierarchies by presenting Pamela as a calculating servant girl trying to trap a wealthy man. Shamela is comfortable with the prospect of literally whoring herself. She says, " I thought once of making a little Fortune by my person. I now intend to make a great one by my Vartue" (97). While Richardson keeps class distinctions intact by making it very clear that Pamela is to be grateful to her master, he also suggests that a poor girl can value her virtue as highly as a wealthy girl can. Fielding, by presenting Pamela as calculating her conquest while having an affair with Williams, mocks Richardson's imperceptiveness, but also mocks the idea that a servant girl's virtue can have any value.
One thing I wondered was whether servant girls were a particularly sexualized class. The instructor of another class I took said that in the medieval period, it was considered acceptable for an aristocrat to rape a peasant girl on his land as long as she wasn't a nun. I wonder if it was still that way in the eighteenth century?
One thing I wondered was whether servant girls were a particularly sexualized class. The instructor of another class I took said that in the medieval period, it was considered acceptable for an aristocrat to rape a peasant girl on his land as long as she wasn't a nun. I wonder if it was still that way in the eighteenth century?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Pamela
I've fallen behind in my blogging, so for now I'm just laying out some of the initial impressions I had of Pamela. (I know that a lot of this was discussed in class and in the secondary readings).
First, I hated Mr. B. and somehow found him just as repulsive after his supposed transformation, which happens much too quickly and too completely to be believable.
One of the things that is disturbing about him is his severe case of virgin/whore syndrome. He is chastened by the proof of Pamela's virtue that he finds in her letters, but before he has that proof, when she's just a servant, he think it's all right to assault her. (I think it's interesting that a lot of the insults he hurls at her for simply telling the truth about him --"hussy," "boldface," "saucebox," etc., seem to connote promiscuity as well as defiance). So has he really changed, or has he only changed his behavior toward her? Will he continue to harass other servants or poor girls whom he deems less virtuous than Pamela?
The way that the novel deals with class was what stood out to me the most. It is strange that Richardson saw his novel as promoting virtue, when money is such an important concern in it. The message isn't so much that "virtue" is "rewarded," but that one should use one's assets wisely. Pamela raises her value as a commodity by making herself unavailable for sex. She is rewarded with a man who is abusive to his servants and gets away with it because he is wealthy. The novel shows the tyranny of the wealthy over the poor, but also approves it with the idea that Pamela should always "honor" her "master" and that she should love the would-be rapist who kidnaps and imprisons her. She explicitly deplores the power that the wealthy have over the poor, but other events in the novel support class hierarchies. For instance, Pamela keeps saying that Mr. B. is the man who would most deserve her respect if only he would behave as her "master" and stop trying to rape her. This is a rather low threshold for earning her respect.
Another thing that is interesting is how the nosy aristocrat neighbors ask to see Pamela's reunion with her father and read her letters. It's as if the emotional lives of the servants exist for their entertainment. But Pamela goes along with all of that and tells them everything, why? Because she's eager for their approval? Because she enjoys an audience? Because she's a gossipy teenage girl who doesn't know any better? Is it just how it was in those days, that letters were important not just for communication, but for entertainment? Is Richardson satirizing the idle rich? Or does he think that a good poor girl should have to perform and prostrate herself in the way that Pamela does, not only sharing her letters with them but also constantly assuring them that she doesn't think she's as good as they are? Part of Pamela's "virtue" is the humility of knowing her place (although she exhibits an odd combination of humility and vanity and often reports that others praise her for her humility).
First, I hated Mr. B. and somehow found him just as repulsive after his supposed transformation, which happens much too quickly and too completely to be believable.
One of the things that is disturbing about him is his severe case of virgin/whore syndrome. He is chastened by the proof of Pamela's virtue that he finds in her letters, but before he has that proof, when she's just a servant, he think it's all right to assault her. (I think it's interesting that a lot of the insults he hurls at her for simply telling the truth about him --"hussy," "boldface," "saucebox," etc., seem to connote promiscuity as well as defiance). So has he really changed, or has he only changed his behavior toward her? Will he continue to harass other servants or poor girls whom he deems less virtuous than Pamela?
The way that the novel deals with class was what stood out to me the most. It is strange that Richardson saw his novel as promoting virtue, when money is such an important concern in it. The message isn't so much that "virtue" is "rewarded," but that one should use one's assets wisely. Pamela raises her value as a commodity by making herself unavailable for sex. She is rewarded with a man who is abusive to his servants and gets away with it because he is wealthy. The novel shows the tyranny of the wealthy over the poor, but also approves it with the idea that Pamela should always "honor" her "master" and that she should love the would-be rapist who kidnaps and imprisons her. She explicitly deplores the power that the wealthy have over the poor, but other events in the novel support class hierarchies. For instance, Pamela keeps saying that Mr. B. is the man who would most deserve her respect if only he would behave as her "master" and stop trying to rape her. This is a rather low threshold for earning her respect.
Another thing that is interesting is how the nosy aristocrat neighbors ask to see Pamela's reunion with her father and read her letters. It's as if the emotional lives of the servants exist for their entertainment. But Pamela goes along with all of that and tells them everything, why? Because she's eager for their approval? Because she enjoys an audience? Because she's a gossipy teenage girl who doesn't know any better? Is it just how it was in those days, that letters were important not just for communication, but for entertainment? Is Richardson satirizing the idle rich? Or does he think that a good poor girl should have to perform and prostrate herself in the way that Pamela does, not only sharing her letters with them but also constantly assuring them that she doesn't think she's as good as they are? Part of Pamela's "virtue" is the humility of knowing her place (although she exhibits an odd combination of humility and vanity and often reports that others praise her for her humility).
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