One of the things that I noticed in The Romance of the Forest was a pattern of Adeline and other characters being torn between seeking refuge in enclosed hiding places, and wanting to escape from captivity or from suffocating, self-imposed enclosure.
In a similar vein, the characters are also often torn between trusting and fearing others, and between loneliness and desiring solitude. The push and pull between conflicting desires for freedom and independence on the one hand, and safety and connection on the other, helps to create the emotional violence that is part of the the novel's atmosphere.
An example of this is the story that Adeline tells at the beginning of the novel. She notes that part of her reluctance to enter the convent came from her fear of being "excluded from the cheerful intercourse of society--from the pleasant view of nature--almost from the light of day" (37), and when she found herself "beyond the gates of the convent" (38), she was thrilled to see the earth "extended [...] to the round verge of the horizon" (38). She says that when she got to Paris she found it exhilarating and felt that the strangers in the crowd were all smiling and welcoming and that she was "surrounded by friends" (39). However, they left Paris and went to a "lone house on the waste" where "not a human being was to be seen" (40). The man she believed to be her father led her by the hand to a room with bars on the windows, and two days later she was locked in the room and found that her father had left her there. She wondered why he would "abandon [her] to the power of strangers" (42), and she barred the door so that others couldn't get into the room. Her fears turned out to be justified when the two men tried to break into the room. Her fear of captivity and isolation was thus replaced by fear of violation, but the men left and she thanked God for protecting her. While she was praying and thinking herself safe, the two men came in through a closet door in another part of the room. She fainted, was still locked in for a while, and then the two men gave her over to LaMotte, who she has now come to believe is her friend and "deliverer" (43).
The sense of distrust is expressed explicitly in the novel as well, such as when Adeline fears that her father has found her and that LaMotte will turn her over to him. The narrator says, "To discover depravity in those whom we have loved, is one of the most exquisite tortures to a virtuous mind" (118).
However, all of this is countered by the contrived happy ending. Theodore just happens to be the son of Adeline's kind benefactor, the Marquis wills his possessions to her before killing himself, La Luc suddenly recovers his health, and Theodore and La Motte are saved. In the end, Adeline ends up with people who were strangers, M. Verneuil and M. Amand, turning out to be family, and La Luc and Clara become like a father and sister to her so that she is no longer an orphan. (I was actually surprised that the kind physician who treated Theodore didn't show up to testify against the Marquis or to reveal that he was related to someone). It's as if the isolation and fear earlier in the novel was too disturbing and has to be countered by an idea that the individual isn't alone, that family and people who can be trusted are everywhere and that that makes up for the abuse that individuals might face at the hands of their own family members or the outside world.
The isolation and despair expressed by the manuscript writer is also countered at the end by Adeline's discovery that he was her father, as if to say that individuals are not really as alone as they think they are. But, since the coincidences in this part of the book are not really believable, the isolation and anxiety about who to trust and how to deal with others ends up being an equally, if not more powerful message. The happy ending seems to be a fantasy that's like a band-aid on a wound that has been opened up to dig into some ugly, disturbing psychological areas.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A few thoughts on Lynch
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).
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).
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).
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Watt, McKeon, Hunter
Just a few points from the readings for 2/15.
Watt argues that Robinson Crusoe represents a "secularization" (82) of Puritanism, a "'Sunday religion'" (81) that allows the eighteenth century's burgeoning capitalist individual's "economic motive" (64) to surpass everything else, from family and community to "spiritual salvation" (64) and pleasure. (My ignorance of economics is showing, but I was at first somewhat puzzled reading Watt because I had forgotten that individualism was such a big part of the rhetoric of capitalism. It seems that nowadays we're always hearing that individuals have little power and corporations own us).
McKeon argues that Crusoe's moral struggles are a battle between Calvinist and secular ideologies, with Crusoe finally learning "the psychological discipline needed to transform his activity into his calling" (408). McKeon demonstrates that Crusoe learns to obey Providence when it's convenient and ultimately becomes "reconciled to the naturalness and morality of the pursuit of self-interest" (422). He says that the moral development that Defoe tracks in Crusoe is in conflict with "the never-articulated insight that virtue is nothing but the ability to invoke providence with conviction" (423). This is related to what I was trying to say in my last post, although I don't know if I agree with McKeon that Defoe is providing his own "insight"--I can't shake my impression that Crusoe simply reflects Defoe's own views. I will admit that when I read the novel--and this was the second time I've read it--it didn't occur to me that Defoe might be deliberately representing a shallow morality that is pliable to self-interest. McKeon seems to be hinting at this, but I think that maybe he's giving Defoe too much credit. I don't really have evidence to back this up, just an impression, so I'll have to do some more thinking about this. (Maybe what McKeon is actually saying isn't that Defoe is critical of this view, but just that he is honest enough to expose it). McKeon says that Crusoe's struggle to find God's will in everything that happens to him seems ridiculous to us because "we, who have long since stopped trying [to do so], are sometimes distracted from the profundity to the absurdity of the effort" (419). So, he thinks it's my fault...
Hunter's discussion of the development of the novel from and alongside Puritan diaries and autobiographies is interesting. Having a "life story" is such a deeply ingrained thing for us that it seems that we take it for granted that our lives follow a continuing narrative with a pattern instead of being random things happening. In my previous post, I wrote about Crusoe's fantasy that God controls everything and rewards those who deserve to be rewarded. The other side of that is the fantasy of the "self-made man" who "takes destiny into his own hands," etc., etc., etc. It's interesting to think that this kind of fiction developed alongside novels, which we acknowledge to be fiction. (One of my instructors called literature "lies that tell the truth." These stories could be called "truths" that are lies). One of Hunter's points that caught my eye was that autobiographers like Ben Franklin consciously began to "edit" their diaries into "patterned narrative account[s]" (320). I think this is interesting--the idea of not just recording events from the author's point of view but deliberately going back and editing them.
On a side note, McKeon makes a mistake when he says that "Friday, like Behn's Oroonoko, is a black man whose 'European' beauty aids in the further differentiation of cultivated nature from the barbarian" (418). Actually, Friday is a Carib, Native American, and Defoe makes a point of telling us that Friday is not African. (Xury is African, and is quickly sold and removed from the story). If Friday, who, while a servant, is also to some extent a companion, had been African like Oroonoko, this might have been a different book. According to the eighteenth century pseudoscience that categorized and ranked people by "race," Native Americans were thought to be closer to Europeans than Africans were. It seems that if Defoe had made Friday African, it would have given readers more of a chance to question those hierarchies. Behn's Oroonoko, as McKeon points out, does still have some problematic qualities, but that book seems much more questioning in terms of how it deals with race. Defoe, on the other hand, seems to just be following conventional thought. (It's been quite a few years since I read Oroonoko, but I had remembered it as being clearly anti-slavery and dealing seriously with the injustice done to the very noble, strong, and brave title character. I just did a quick Google search and found that Behn is not believed to have opposed slavery and that she was actually married to a slave trader. This surprised me because it is at odds with my memory of the book. But I can't imagine that I will ever make the same mistake with Defoe).
Watt argues that Robinson Crusoe represents a "secularization" (82) of Puritanism, a "'Sunday religion'" (81) that allows the eighteenth century's burgeoning capitalist individual's "economic motive" (64) to surpass everything else, from family and community to "spiritual salvation" (64) and pleasure. (My ignorance of economics is showing, but I was at first somewhat puzzled reading Watt because I had forgotten that individualism was such a big part of the rhetoric of capitalism. It seems that nowadays we're always hearing that individuals have little power and corporations own us).
McKeon argues that Crusoe's moral struggles are a battle between Calvinist and secular ideologies, with Crusoe finally learning "the psychological discipline needed to transform his activity into his calling" (408). McKeon demonstrates that Crusoe learns to obey Providence when it's convenient and ultimately becomes "reconciled to the naturalness and morality of the pursuit of self-interest" (422). He says that the moral development that Defoe tracks in Crusoe is in conflict with "the never-articulated insight that virtue is nothing but the ability to invoke providence with conviction" (423). This is related to what I was trying to say in my last post, although I don't know if I agree with McKeon that Defoe is providing his own "insight"--I can't shake my impression that Crusoe simply reflects Defoe's own views. I will admit that when I read the novel--and this was the second time I've read it--it didn't occur to me that Defoe might be deliberately representing a shallow morality that is pliable to self-interest. McKeon seems to be hinting at this, but I think that maybe he's giving Defoe too much credit. I don't really have evidence to back this up, just an impression, so I'll have to do some more thinking about this. (Maybe what McKeon is actually saying isn't that Defoe is critical of this view, but just that he is honest enough to expose it). McKeon says that Crusoe's struggle to find God's will in everything that happens to him seems ridiculous to us because "we, who have long since stopped trying [to do so], are sometimes distracted from the profundity to the absurdity of the effort" (419). So, he thinks it's my fault...
Hunter's discussion of the development of the novel from and alongside Puritan diaries and autobiographies is interesting. Having a "life story" is such a deeply ingrained thing for us that it seems that we take it for granted that our lives follow a continuing narrative with a pattern instead of being random things happening. In my previous post, I wrote about Crusoe's fantasy that God controls everything and rewards those who deserve to be rewarded. The other side of that is the fantasy of the "self-made man" who "takes destiny into his own hands," etc., etc., etc. It's interesting to think that this kind of fiction developed alongside novels, which we acknowledge to be fiction. (One of my instructors called literature "lies that tell the truth." These stories could be called "truths" that are lies). One of Hunter's points that caught my eye was that autobiographers like Ben Franklin consciously began to "edit" their diaries into "patterned narrative account[s]" (320). I think this is interesting--the idea of not just recording events from the author's point of view but deliberately going back and editing them.
On a side note, McKeon makes a mistake when he says that "Friday, like Behn's Oroonoko, is a black man whose 'European' beauty aids in the further differentiation of cultivated nature from the barbarian" (418). Actually, Friday is a Carib, Native American, and Defoe makes a point of telling us that Friday is not African. (Xury is African, and is quickly sold and removed from the story). If Friday, who, while a servant, is also to some extent a companion, had been African like Oroonoko, this might have been a different book. According to the eighteenth century pseudoscience that categorized and ranked people by "race," Native Americans were thought to be closer to Europeans than Africans were. It seems that if Defoe had made Friday African, it would have given readers more of a chance to question those hierarchies. Behn's Oroonoko, as McKeon points out, does still have some problematic qualities, but that book seems much more questioning in terms of how it deals with race. Defoe, on the other hand, seems to just be following conventional thought. (It's been quite a few years since I read Oroonoko, but I had remembered it as being clearly anti-slavery and dealing seriously with the injustice done to the very noble, strong, and brave title character. I just did a quick Google search and found that Behn is not believed to have opposed slavery and that she was actually married to a slave trader. This surprised me because it is at odds with my memory of the book. But I can't imagine that I will ever make the same mistake with Defoe).
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Robinson Crusoe, God, fathers
I'm sorry about getting this up so late.
Several others mentioned their dislike of Crusoe's colonialism. I agree. I also found the religious didacticism repellent, combined as it is with a blithe willingness to buy and sell people into slavery. Crusoe's religious beliefs seem related to his imperialist beliefs.
Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens in the world, that every misfortune is a punishment from God, and that God even caused Crusoe's shipwreck in which all of the other sailors died, the earthquake, and various other misfortunes for the purpose of teaching Crusoe a lesson.
His morality seems shallow to me. I found it funny when, after his illness and his first prayer, he reasons that "some secret Power" created everything, and that "the Power that could make all Things, must certainly have Power to guide and direct them," and then admits that "Nothing occur'd to my Thought to contradict any of these Conclusions, and therefore it rested upon me with the greater Force, that it must needs be" (68). And when Friday asks him why, if God is so powerful, he doesn't kill the devil, Crusoe "pretend[s] not to hear him" because he doesn't have a rote answer. The answer he finally gives is unsatisfying --God will kill the devil one day, after everyone has had a chance to repent. In the meantime, he continues to tempt people to sin. Those who take the bait will be punished. This is the sort of belief system that allows the healthy, wealthy, and successful to smugly believe that they deserve their good fortune and that the less fortunate also get what they deserve. It's a bit like a supernatural version of this country's meritocracy myth.
Crusoe believes that he must trust in God's Providence and that any willfulness or ungratefulness is a sin worthy of punishment. His God demands perfect obedience and submission, not only in deed, but in thought. For instance, when he is nearly cast out to sea after sailing around the island with the hope of finding a way of escape, Crusoe believes that God is punishing him for being unhappy with his lot instead of being grateful for the sustenance that he has received.
Crusoe makes a strong connection between God and paternal authority, saying that his "ORIGINAL SIN" [emphasis in original] was disobeying his father (141). This is also related to his attitudes regarding class. The novel begins with his account of his father's insisting that the middle class are the happiest, and cursing him for his disobedience. Regretting his disobedience, Crusoe says that he has been strickened by the "general Plague of Mankind, [...] that of not being satisfy'd with the Station wherein God and Nature has plac'd them" (141). The wanderlust that brought him into his misfortunes came from his desire as a third son to improve his position, since he would not inherit his father's property. What is a third son to do if he doesn't want to take up a profession? Declare himself "lord" and "king" of an island in the Caribbean. When he first surveys the island, he insists that he is "King and Lord of all this Country indefeasibly" and by "Right of Possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in Inheritance, as completely as any Lord of a Manor in England" (73). He can then assume the role of a father figure and "master" of the local people. Crusoe says that Friday is attached to him like "a Child to a Father" (151). It is as if he is a member of a father "race," and the "noble sabages" are those who, like Xury and Friday, obey him as good sons obey their fathers, or as good Christians obey God. Despite his fear of the "savages," when Friday's real father and the Spaniard arrive, he assumes that they will be his "Subjects" (174). After his rescue, he takes the role of a father, dividing the island and its wealth among the Europeans who now live there.
Despite his repentance for disobeying his father and not fearing God, he never repents for buying and selling slaves. Near the end of his supposed moral development, he says that his trip to Africa was wrong, not because enslaving people is wrong, but because he should have been satisfied with the slaves that were available for purchase in Brazil (141). When he contemplates killing the cannibals who bring Friday's father and the Spaniard, he admits that God did not appoint him to be "Judge of their Actions" or "Executioner of his Justice," and says that God will "by National Vengeance punish them as a People, for national Crimes" (168). But he attacks them anyway when he sees that one of their captives is a white man.
Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens. His idea that the "Savages" who don't practice Christianity are receiving a "national punishment" for "national sins" sounds like a justification for the Europeans to take a paternal hand in their fate, ostensibly guiding them and providing them with illumination, but really exploiting them.
A note to myself--the discussion of the devil, fallen angels, and Abraham (157-9) also seems related to paternal authority. And what exactly is going on with the father's talk about the middle class?
Several others mentioned their dislike of Crusoe's colonialism. I agree. I also found the religious didacticism repellent, combined as it is with a blithe willingness to buy and sell people into slavery. Crusoe's religious beliefs seem related to his imperialist beliefs.
Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens in the world, that every misfortune is a punishment from God, and that God even caused Crusoe's shipwreck in which all of the other sailors died, the earthquake, and various other misfortunes for the purpose of teaching Crusoe a lesson.
His morality seems shallow to me. I found it funny when, after his illness and his first prayer, he reasons that "some secret Power" created everything, and that "the Power that could make all Things, must certainly have Power to guide and direct them," and then admits that "Nothing occur'd to my Thought to contradict any of these Conclusions, and therefore it rested upon me with the greater Force, that it must needs be" (68). And when Friday asks him why, if God is so powerful, he doesn't kill the devil, Crusoe "pretend[s] not to hear him" because he doesn't have a rote answer. The answer he finally gives is unsatisfying --God will kill the devil one day, after everyone has had a chance to repent. In the meantime, he continues to tempt people to sin. Those who take the bait will be punished. This is the sort of belief system that allows the healthy, wealthy, and successful to smugly believe that they deserve their good fortune and that the less fortunate also get what they deserve. It's a bit like a supernatural version of this country's meritocracy myth.
Crusoe believes that he must trust in God's Providence and that any willfulness or ungratefulness is a sin worthy of punishment. His God demands perfect obedience and submission, not only in deed, but in thought. For instance, when he is nearly cast out to sea after sailing around the island with the hope of finding a way of escape, Crusoe believes that God is punishing him for being unhappy with his lot instead of being grateful for the sustenance that he has received.
Crusoe makes a strong connection between God and paternal authority, saying that his "ORIGINAL SIN" [emphasis in original] was disobeying his father (141). This is also related to his attitudes regarding class. The novel begins with his account of his father's insisting that the middle class are the happiest, and cursing him for his disobedience. Regretting his disobedience, Crusoe says that he has been strickened by the "general Plague of Mankind, [...] that of not being satisfy'd with the Station wherein God and Nature has plac'd them" (141). The wanderlust that brought him into his misfortunes came from his desire as a third son to improve his position, since he would not inherit his father's property. What is a third son to do if he doesn't want to take up a profession? Declare himself "lord" and "king" of an island in the Caribbean. When he first surveys the island, he insists that he is "King and Lord of all this Country indefeasibly" and by "Right of Possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in Inheritance, as completely as any Lord of a Manor in England" (73). He can then assume the role of a father figure and "master" of the local people. Crusoe says that Friday is attached to him like "a Child to a Father" (151). It is as if he is a member of a father "race," and the "noble sabages" are those who, like Xury and Friday, obey him as good sons obey their fathers, or as good Christians obey God. Despite his fear of the "savages," when Friday's real father and the Spaniard arrive, he assumes that they will be his "Subjects" (174). After his rescue, he takes the role of a father, dividing the island and its wealth among the Europeans who now live there.
Despite his repentance for disobeying his father and not fearing God, he never repents for buying and selling slaves. Near the end of his supposed moral development, he says that his trip to Africa was wrong, not because enslaving people is wrong, but because he should have been satisfied with the slaves that were available for purchase in Brazil (141). When he contemplates killing the cannibals who bring Friday's father and the Spaniard, he admits that God did not appoint him to be "Judge of their Actions" or "Executioner of his Justice," and says that God will "by National Vengeance punish them as a People, for national Crimes" (168). But he attacks them anyway when he sees that one of their captives is a white man.
Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens. His idea that the "Savages" who don't practice Christianity are receiving a "national punishment" for "national sins" sounds like a justification for the Europeans to take a paternal hand in their fate, ostensibly guiding them and providing them with illumination, but really exploiting them.
A note to myself--the discussion of the devil, fallen angels, and Abraham (157-9) also seems related to paternal authority. And what exactly is going on with the father's talk about the middle class?
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