Discussion Notes on Modernism and Temporality

1: RE: Dorian Gray and the difference between ritual and addiction

One could argue that Dorian Gray is addicted to the life of experience. As his compulsion to act on “infinite curiosity” progresses, the narrator says something essential about this condition: “The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.”

This is interesting from a temporal perspective: the moment of satiating desire loops immediately back to the moment of desire; there’s no real movement, in other words, beyond a reiterated moment, that inescapable presence of addiction (ie. addiction is always present); rather, that moment gains ever more gravity. “Passion makes one think in a circle,” as the narrator says elsewhere. This adds a layer of meaning to Dorian’s eternal youth: he is caught in the perpetual ‘now’ of impulse.

If addiction can be characterized, thus, as the impulsive return to the desiring impulse, I would argue that ritual, in contrast, is neither impulsive nor perpetual. This depends a lot on how one defines ritual (and I’m sure I don’t have the ‘correct’ anthropological or social definition), but in my personal experience of sacred and secular traditions, ritual time is deliberately allocated and structured to link the present with the past or a desired future (or both). Thus, though I almost entirely agree with Julia’s response above, I would say that ritual is the closed circuit (ritual time begins and ends, and it is the distinction from regular time – from the present – that gives it meaning and power), whereas cycles of addiction, devastatingly, keep going.

2) RE: Heart of Darkness and the myth of progress

Marlow's story highlights humanity's lack of progress, what he calls "truth stripped of its cloak of time:" that "the dreams of men" have actualized no dawn to follow the "night of first ages." This message, alongside the narrator's comment that the meaning of Marlow's "episode [is] not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale," lead me to wonder if Marlow's final stance "in the pose of a meditating Buddha" is one of enlightenment. Has Marlow grown?, in other words: is his "ascetic aspect" indication of some progress through experience, even as his story undermines the possibility of such? My interest here is ultimately the author himself: given that Heart of Darkness "illuminates" humanity, can we say that the author, at least, enjoys a vantage point that contradicts the narrative by formally modelling enlightenment?

My questions are prompted partially in consideration of Chinua Achebe's strong position against Conrad's "obvious racism." Contrary to the impossibility of progress that Heart of Darkness suggests, Achebe argues for pursuing progress (by way of eliminating Conrad's "racist" work from the western canon of classics). I wonder how Conrad might respond, particularly when Heart of Darkness presents even "infinite pity" as a veil. If there is no progress from "the horror" of darkness, is storytelling obliged to any imperatives?

Evidently, I have more questions here than answers. But the general drift of my thoughts is that, just as Heart of Darkness explodes the certainty of distance between the present and primordial past, it also explodes the certainty of the narrator's remote perspective. Instead, the external "haze" becomes just as much subject of the narrative as the inner "glow." In this sense, Heart of Darkness is about storytelling itself, that old "monkey trick" of creating myths out of experience: it seems to me that in the aspect of an 'enlightened' Marlow spinning his yarn, the author presents a commentary on yarn-spinning itself as formally enacting the myth of progress in endless "visions and revisions," as Eliot says elsewhere.

Building into a discussion on realism (responding to professor)

Professor, I appreciate your prompting me to think about the realist novel and its aims... my general understanding of victorian realism is that it was an attempt to see and represent the world rationally, empirically, scientifically - to capture and convey all the details (a kind of colonization of the real). Conrad's novel, alternatively, destabilizes every representation of reality and perhaps representation altogether (in the "mere incidents" of life, "the reality - the reality I tell you - fades" as Marlow says).   

I'm also mulling over what you say above re: whether narrative requires change "towards a modern 'self' with a propensity to...'accumulate' and adequately consume." We might theorize experience as the thing that is consumed (or raw material, to use another metaphor) in the production of narrative. A sentence from Conrad's work jumps out at me, towards the end, Marlow reflecting on Kurtz: "his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life." This links, also, to my point on seeing Marlow as a figure who has died through one experience and is reborn as the narrator, a Buddha no less, a figure who is continually reborn, accumulating lives!

RE: European linear time and its relationship to colonial ideas of progress (responding to a student)

You touch on a very interesting point here re: time as discourse, historical consciousness as ideology (shared reality rather than "the real," per our discussion on Lacan yesterday) wielded by both capital and state to dominate those outside the discourse, history's subalterns - ie those who do not interpret the real in that way, speak in those terms, understand time as linear progress. In this sense, history - by which I mean Western historical discourse - is bound to colonial and imperialist violence.

Marlow gains insight into the contrived, unreal nature of history; thus we can read Heart of Darkness as a progressive text critiquing ideology... but at the same time, the novel absolutely relies on a linear, historical framework to make its narrative and thematic moves (even as it doubts that linearity). In class we spoke about how Marlow senses the jungle, whereas others just see the trees (our Lacanian analogy), suggesting his commitment to "the real" - but an issue with the text is its inability to think of the jungle beyond the framework of time: the jungle represents the primordial (as do the natives - Achebe's contention). An inescapable primordiality, yes (in which sense the text questions history), but primordiality nonetheless (ie. its meaning depends on historical discourse).

This reminds me of an article I read recently by Ashis Nandy called "History's Forgotten Doubles," wherein Nandy argues that that "historical mode" gained and maintains dominance over ahistorical modes due to the ways in which it links with the nation-state, science/Enlightenment rationality, nineteenth century ideas of progress/current ideas of development, etc. A vexing point from that article, and one way to think about how or why Conrad's critique of history still relies on history (as well as modernist temporal anxiety generally): "Historical consciousness is very nearly a totalizing one...once you own history, it also begins to own you."

3) RE: "Two Gallants" from The Dubliners, "moral paralysis," and the epiphany

While he's waiting to reconvene with Corley, Lenehan has a "vision [that makes] him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit." A moment of mindfulness ensues - but if this is Lenehan's epiphany, there's more of gravy than of grace to it: "He [feels] better after having eaten" and resumes his meandering night. 

This seems to be the point. The moment entirely lacks moral sway and is instead subsumed into Lenehan's circular "wanderings." (I wonder, also, at the superimposition of this moment on the event of a meal, the desires and anxieties therein possibly sustaining the spirit of Lenehan's ongoing "wanderings.") Thus, even the epiphany has its place in the cyclic (i.e. inert, paralytic) structure of Lenehan's life.

The final revelation of the gold coin, a second epiphany of sorts, similarly maintains the momentum of a circle, the gold coin answering the questions driving both Lenehan and the narrative itself: can Corley "pull it off all right," is the slavey "game," etc. Our discussion last class reminds me that we might read this coin as reward (i.e end of a cycle), investment (i.e. beginning of a cycle), or potentially both. 

There's something to further tease out here about the narrative function of epiphany, but I'm not sure what. The story's focalization causes the reader to experience the revelation of the gold coin along with Lenehan; thus the narrative itself becomes a transaction where we as readers exchange time for the reward of a conclusion. In other words, we read simply for the revelation of the story, to know where it goes (and does it go anywhere, from the reader’s perspective?). The coin reads to me like the culmination of a cycle, suggesting moral paralysis for the characters, but I'm not sure to what extent we should synthesize the narrative function of the reader's epiphany with the (lack of) moral function of the character's epiphanies.

4) RE: the dinner passage in The Dead

There's a way in which Gabriel as a character, along with his subjectivity as an experience for the reader, disappears within the dinner scene: "Kindly forget my existence" he requests, and the narrative obliges, mostly leaving him alone until the speech brings us back into his point of view. Before that, we catch glimpses of him "at ease" (as he is at the beginning of my assigned passage), no doubt because he finds himself in a customary role: he's an "expert carver" and this is "not the first time" they've gathered for their annual Christmas dinner, as he emphasizes. It's useful to recognize the dinner as a ritual, one in which Gabriel is able to seemingly, momentarily lose himself.

With Gabriel's subjectivity apparently diminished, the dinner scene reads almost like realism, particularly in the lengthy, detailed descriptions of the table, food, and ongoing shuffle of objects, guests, and discussion experienced through what feels like a relatively omniscient perspective. We might read this realism as a representation of the world as is, with subjectivity suspended. But there's something self-conscious about it too - like a performance of realism, rather than the real thing. It feels like what matters is not the details themselves so much as the contrived feeling of realism, of a detached perspective. In this sense, the lack of Gabriel's focalizaed, self-concious perspective is conspicuous, a marker, indeed, of Gabriel's subjective experience, which is, for once, fairly "at ease." In other words, his subjectivity has indeed retreated, in a way, but this retreated subjectivity still colours the passage, being present through absence.

5) RE: Mrs. Dalloway, and modernist temporality

I think of modernism as a period in which people lose faith in the progress of history; thus arise ambiguities around concepts of time. I’ve selected the passage above because it touches on these themes.

Perhaps the most significant event that struck off modernist thought was The War, in which coalesced all the emblems of modernity (technology, machinery, nationalism) with the basest qualities of humanity (greed, hatred, murder) to produce “the horror” (to recall another modernist work) of the realization that there has been no progress.

The War is treated lightly in this passage, reflecting Mrs. Dalloway’s mood – for her, it is “over” – but it has left its marks (on Mrs. Foxcroft, for example), persisting even in “the middle of June.” Of course, the novel takes this theme up in full with the character of Septimus, whose present is determined by a nightmare past that he cannot escape. (To the extent that Mrs. Dalloway can be read as a microcosmic portrait of “life; London; [all realized in this] moment in June,” the persistence of war represents the trauma to the social psyche that produces modernism as a historical break.)

This duality of time – that an event can pass and be “over” but simultaneously persist – is caught perfectly here in the motif of Big Ben. The striking of the hour exists, first of all, in the future: Mrs. Dalloway anticipates it, “having lived in Westminster…over twenty [years]”; thus the past, though over, persists as memory and anticipation. Interesting too, how this hour melts into the future “dissolv[ing] in the air” of quotidian life, rather than happening and then disappearing, without a trace.

One final note to make on time in relation to this passage, and generally in relation to modernism, is the de-sacralization of time, the belief that our lives keep time by some cosmic measure. In this passage we do indeed have something that feels sacred: “a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense…before Big Ben strikes.” However, the thorough narrative focalization destabilizes this, for it is Clarissa who is “positive” of this sacred quality, and even she doubts it: “that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza.”

This way in which the narrative undermines its own validity through the usage of unreliable narrators, is characteristically modernist, setting works of this period apart from realism. Modernism casts doubt on meta-narratives (including the omniscient narrator); in the aesthetic absence of a guiding principle, modernism sometimes looks (as it does in Mrs Dalloway, as well as, for example, Waiting for Godot) like a perpetual now-ness, a fixation on what characterizes the moment.

6) RE: The Wasteland and footnotes

Over the weekend, bearing in mind that I had to be attentive to the footnotes, I attempted to read a hypertext version of The Wasteland (linked below). I found it extremely distracting, but it did get me thinking about how the various footnotes and endless allusions produce an extensive hypertext, expanding the poem from 400 lines to something like thousands of lines, as a kind of poetic excess.

The temporal qualities of hypertext are fascinating - think of how the internet can be such a sinkhole of your time, the rabbit-hole of Wikepedia articles or Youtube videos, everything linking to everything else, so that you can just keep going and going forever it seems, in every direction and in circles too. When you read The Wasteland as hypertext, it feels like that - the hypertext produces an even greater sense of temporal disorientation than the poem itself. (Are footnotes pre-thoughts or post-scripts? Allusions seem to exist in parallel, so that brief poetic moments - sometimes just a line or a word - extend the present ever outwards into a dense, temporarily atemporal network of history and myth.)

I am reminded of Eliot's critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" wherein he posits an ideal "historic sense" as "indispensable" to the modern poet. This historical sense, according to Eliot, "involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence...a feeling that the whole of...literature...has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order...a sense of the timeless and of the temporal together...[that] at the same time...makes a writer...acutely conscious of...his own contemporaneity."

Eliot's dialectic between history and contemporaneity also reminds me quite a bit of clock-time versus cloud-time: there is the immediate poem, which moves (can we say forward?) as a series of fragmentary moments; meanwhile the various inter- and intratextual references produce a kind of temporal cloud around the poem, a cloud of what feels like distraction wherein we are jostled back and forth through time.

Which brings me to my final point, and a question: do the allusions and footnotes in fact offer a kind of cloudy coherence to the fragmentary poem? At the very least, they do demonstrate an author's hand at work (perhaps his "automatic hand," given Eliot's poetic ideal of impersonality). The footnote that really jumps out at me in this regard is the one about Tiresias (line 218), who the note clearly indicates is "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest...[because] what he sees...is the substance of the poem." This footnote, pointing out (in an act of saving grace) the crux of a poem set up to challenge any crucial sense, is kind of remarkable to me for its confidence in substance. While most of the footnotes are not nearly as direct, I do therefore wonder if the allusive cloud within and about the poem betrays a unified consciousness distinct from the various fragmented consciousnesses represented.

That the hypertext felt like a distraction to me seems relevant here: considering one of the footnotes clearly points out the "substance" of the poem, perhaps it is more the reader's desire to filter out the hypertextual past in order to attend to the poetic present that is a distraction; perhaps it is at the "dull roots" of the poem that we find sense and substance. 

The hypertext version of the poem I was attempting to read:nhttp://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/Links to an external site.Another hypertext version that seems even better: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explore.html

7) RE: The Wasteland and the roots that clutch

The poem plants this seed of a question - "what are the roots that clutch?" - setting us on a quest searching for those roots among the "stony rubbish" of the poem. The question itself uproots reader and poet alike into this quest, rather like the thought of the key which creates the prison.

I'm not sure these roots, "clutching" as they are, are particularly good for us, after all. Perhaps the question is not so much how can we ground and stabilize ourselves, but rather, how can we up-root and un-ground in order to escape (i.e. what roots clutch, holding us back?)? But it seems to me that the very question keeps us rooted to it, trailing along poetic branches, clutching for fixed foundations. We get trapped in the poem, following shadows back and forth; the poet wants to divert us to"dust" instead.

Does the poem thus suggest redemption in disintegration? That it doesn't allow us to set roots anywhere seems part of the wasteland's torment - but perhaps this is that "fear in a handful of dust" that the poem reveals, a fear that prompts the reader's restless quest for wholeness.

In thinking of the poem's ungrounded, unrooted voice in this way, it's hard not to think of Eliot's poetic ideal as a "continual self-sacrifice," an orientalist aesthetic that is echoed in "datta, dayadhvam, damyata." Eliot finds comfort and sense in a philosophy of letting go. But does the final "shantih, shantih, shantih" actually bring peace? Can the modernist root herself in "datta, dayadhvam, damyata" - in a mode of "continual self-sacrifice"? (Can the modern self be rooted in selflessness?)

I'm not sure. As "Tradition and the Individual Talent" suggests, Eliot's de-personalization is fundamentally a means of recovering the self in the higher, more stable order of tradition. If we think to our contemporary world's turn to Eastern religion, philosophy, and practice as a means of finding the self, we also clearly see how such philosophies are always corrupted by modernist anxiety. The modernist desire to let go of the self is always corrupted by an ulterior motive of finding the self.

So, too, I think, if we think of "datta, dayadhvam, damyata" as the answer to "what roots clutch" - the quest for an escape from our rootedness in the wasteland corrupts our ability to escape the wasteland. Thus, I think if there is peace at the end of the poem, it can only be found by forgetting the questions that drove the poem in the first place (which is to say, the poem must uproot itself).

8) RE: Good Morning, Midnight and "negative 'hailing'" (Prof. G. Leonard's phrase)

I strongly agree with your notion of a "negative hailing" that Sasha experiences. It does seem to me, though, that, in addition to being excluded, she is significantly included in the world around her, very much against her will (as perhaps negative hailing implies?). In the dream, for example, she is being forced to look at the signs and move towards the Exhibition - her desperate desire for "the way out" is produced within the context of having both her gaze and self forcefully directed further in. So too, of the landscape, built of "certain cafes, certain streets, certain spots" that Sasha is trying to avoid: both her movements within the world (as acts of a positive and permitted self) and the movements she avoids (acts of a negated, othered self) are products of the same landscape, which sometimes includes her where and when she doesn't want to be. 

My general understanding, in line with this, is that alterity, by virtue of exclusion, is actually produced (interpellated?) by ideological systems, and is therefore inherent to them. Thus, it seems to me that Sasha's othered subjectivity is propped up by a world which includes it by means of exclusion. She herself captures this relationship quite clearly when thinking about Mr. Blank, her boss:

"You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value...We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich...There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours."

Although he's not part of the landscape, the exchange with Mr Blank is particularly illuminating on the nature of visibility in the production of otherness (i.e. invisibility) within social relationships. Sasha clearly doesn't want to be seen by Mr. Blank - "Don't let him notice me, don't let him look at me," she thinks - but what is most fascinating is the way her subjective voice explodes into lengthy internal narrations in direct response to being seen. An example:

'She speaks French,' Salvatini says. 'Assez bien, assez bien.'
Mr Blank looks at me with lifted eyebrows.
'Sometimes,' I say idiotically. Of course, sometimes, when I am a bit drunk and am talking to somebody I like and know, I speak French very fluently indeed. At other times I just speak it. And as to that, my dear sir, you've got everything all wrong. I'm here because I have a friend who knows Mr Salvatini's mistress, and Mr Salvatini's mistress spoke to Mr Salvatini about me, and the day that he saw me I wasn't looking too bad and he was in a good mood. Nothing at all to do with fluent French and German, dear sir, nothing at all. I'm here because I'm here because I'm here. And just to prove to you that I speak French, I'll sing you a little song about it: 'Si vous saviez, si vous saviez, si vous saviez comment ca se fait.'
For God's sake, I think, pull yourself together.
I say: 'I speak French fairly well. I've been living in Paris for eight years.'

As I think this passage demonstrates, being seen produces the unseen/unheard (that which can not or does not want to be visible) as an excess of what is "pulled together" in response to the act of hailing. Indeed, even what you might call Sasha's political consciousness as an other, an example of which I quoted above ("You, who represent Society..."), is produced in one of these moments in which her internal narration explodes in response to Mr. Blank's "boiled eyes, served cold." We could further argue, of course, that this invisible self was 'always already' there, and only brought into realization in this social exchange. 

9) RE: Good Morning, Midnight, history and subjecthood

There is a question to consider, I think: whether Sasha is a a figure of subalternity (out of history) or alterity. Subalternity - a la Gayatri Spivak's "can the subaltern speak" - is such thorny theory, but here we go.

My discussion post last class argued, as you do in this section, that the system Sasha wishes to escape "require[s] her continued presence." Thus, I would push back a little on your claim that Sasha's "perspective comes from a non-place." In fact, Sasha does not have a zeroed-out value -- at one point, she was worth 400 francs a month -- but it is the case that her value is constantly depreciating. An aging woman darting in and out of poverty, she flickers on the verge of disappearance; she knows what it is to be nothing (she has seen the horror), so I do agree with you that her perspective is strongly informed by non-existence.

You make a very interesting connection between history and accumulation when you say Sasha's is a history of the places she has existed. Western history is a temporal collection; the "accumulation" aspect makes me realize that it is also a system of accounting: to self-narrate is to account for the self. This presupposes, of course, a self to be accounted: how do you account for your self in instances where subjectivity is decimated, and a self is not present?

I think again to the exchange with Mr. Blank (a conversation in which Sasha must account for herself). What is so interesting is that a good chunk of Sasha's thoughts during the exchange are only constructed in retrospect: "Did I say all this? Of course I didn't. I didn't even think it." We could make a strong case that, in this instance for example, Sasha's narration creates a subaltern self, materializing both voice and thought in retrospect (hello, again, Spivak) in order to construct a subjectivity for a subject that was, in situ, truly annihilated in a moment of objectification.

This way of looking at the text helps me grapple somewhat with my sense that, although as you say, Sasha "longs to have a history," she also actively discards history, changing her name and avoiding "certain spots" just as she avoids memory. Not wanting to be subject to the past she has been subjected too, she effaces her history of effacement -- significantly, as a mode of self-preservation against a history that threatens to efface her as a figure in time (consider how time collapses when she collides with things she wants to avoid; what is the temporality of trauma, after all?).

From here, I think I can tentatively turn to considering the ending of the book, with emphasis on the way Sasha dissociates from her attempted rape. In relation to your point that Sasha has no social relations to mediate the collection of images she has accumulated through life, it seems to me that Sasha mediates her exchange with Rene specifically through memories (images in her "film-mind") that she is trying to avoid -- when he touches her leg, for example: "It reminds me of - never mind." This produces a dissociation from the present moment, fled from as it collapses into the past: "We kiss eachother fervently, but already something has gone wrong. I am uneasy, half of myself somewhere else." Sasha does not fully want to exist in this moment, which she relates to (and produces) as an image: "I want to avoid...a scene in this hotel...My idea is not so much to struggle as to make it a silent struggle. Nobody must hear us." This dissociation, as it relates to the subject in history, a self that makes a mark (being seen or heard), is, as I've said above, a survival tactic of the dispossessed, and a paradox: Sasha does not want to exist in a painful objectifying moment in which she does not exist (ie. an instance of rape); meanwhile, her inability to exist in the present moment is conditioned by and perpetuates a history of such moments of dispossession.

My final thought, which I won't fully flesh out given space, is that Sasha's embrace of the man in the "white dressing gown" (recalling the father in her nightmare, to speak of another image mediating social relations) represents a traumatic implosion of time and history. The "yes yes yes" is utterly ambivalent (does it represent positive subjectivity or loss of self in utter objectification?). I'm sure we will get to discussing this in class. Looking forward!

"Ancient Rage" in Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl

Bacigalupi, in bringing genetic engineering and manipulation to the forefront of his dystopian future, figures the struggle between nature and science, primitivity and civilization, the symbolic feminine and masculine. Like The Island of Dr. Moreau before it,The Wind-up Girl explores the human desire to control nature; also like Wells's work, Bacigalupi's novel suggests the ultimate futility of such an endeavour.

Bacigalupi's world is sprinkled with genetically engineered or manipulated creations, such as the megadonts, “gene-hacked animals” (8) derived from elephants for labour purposes. The megodonts are creatures both created and controlled by humans: they are chained, watched and whipped by “union handlers” (8). Despite this, it becomes evident that attempts to control the animal are unsuccessful: a “maddened megadont” (18) escapes its bonds and goes on a rampage. The novel notes that “the beast's four tusks [had] been sawn off for safety, but it it [was] still a monster” (17); in other words, despite human attempts to modify and subjugate the elephant, it still possesses an “ancient rage” (20).

Another noteworthy example of a bio-engineered creation in the novel are the cheshire cats. The origin of the cats is significant: they were created by a calorie executive (like Anderson) for children – they were playthings. Earlier in the novel, the rogue megadont, killed and butchered, is also compared to a toy: “More and more, the carcass is taking on the appearance of separated parts. Not an animal at all, more a child's play set” (25). Hock Seng also often notes that Anderson is like a “petulant child” (29). Thus a motif arises relating bioengineering with childish play, with nature as the plaything.

The various aspects of nature the novel suggests – its subjugation under humans for economic/industrial reasons, its treatment as a plaything or entertainment, and its dormant and dangerous wildness – are encapsulated and epitomized in the character of Emiko, a prostitute and freak act working for Raleigh. Emiko has been genetically engineered as an improvement upon nature: she has “perfect eyesight and...skin and disease- and cancer-resistant genes” (34). “Improvement,” however, is relative, depending on who defines what is good. Emiko is an improvement by patriarchal standards which value youth, beauty, and above all, subservience in its women: Emiko cannot resist an order.

Despite her wiring, however, Emiko, like the Cheshire cats, develops into a dynamic, natural being, with feelings, fears, and desires – one could say she is appropriated by nature. Anderson notes an “animal flicker” (266) in Emiko's eyes. The animal within her reaches its climax when Emiko is humiliated beyond her limits - even though she is engineered not to have such limits: no matter how she is humiliated, Emiko is programmed to be subservient, but, desperately, much like the maddened megodont, she lashes out, killing her subjugators, including Somdet Chaopraya and Raleigh, and escaping. Emiko, who has been genetically wired to not have control over her own body, takes control through an animalistic outburst.

Throughout the novel, Bacigalupi returns to this theme: nature is reaching its limits, springing up against the pressure put upon it by industrial, scientific, patriarchal forces. The megodont is able to escape because the chains have been naturally rusted away; nature, with its plagues, mutant pests, and global warming, seems almost to be conspiring to overthrow the forces that seek to subjugate it. The world Bacigalupi envisions is not just dystopic; it is apocalyptic. We are left aware of the futility of our sciences and civilizations in the face of nature's “ancient rage.”

SOURCES

Bacigalupi, Paolo. The Windup Girl. San Fransisco: Night Shade Books, 2010. PDF File

Nature in the female form – an exploration of the connection between femininity and the primitive in Zamyatin's We and Murphy's “His Vegetable Wife”

We by Zamyatin and “His Vegetable Wife” by Pat Murphy, because they examine and criticize the ideologies prevalent in the modern era, to some extent also criticize patriarchy which is inextricably linked with – even responsible for – those ideologies. Following a very long tradition, these twentieth-century authors associate the feminine with sensuality, spontaneity, irrationality, and the primitive; female characters, such as I-330 and the vegetable wife, embody elements that the patriarchal societies in the novels seek to subjugate. The male protagonists, Fynn and D-503, who serve as representatives of their respective societies, through their engagement with female characters, access the feminine within themselves. This inner feminization, furthermore, is mirrored by a feminization of the outer world, represented by the gradual overcoming of structured society by unstructured nature by way of revolution. Thus, Zamyatin and Murphy explore the powerful force of the feminine which lurks both at the borders of civilization and at its centre, a force that is disruptive and potentially destructive, yet also unifying and nurturing.

The argument outlined in brief above relies on this premise: the worlds depicted in Zamyatin's We and Pat Murphy's “His Vegetable Wife” are patriarchal. In “His Vegetable Wife” this is clear enough; because it is a short story, stripped of extraneous detail, one may understand its setting as microcosmic: Fynn's farm is representative of society at large, and it is ruled over by a man – thus, symbolically, it is patriarchal. The development of agricultural society is, furthermore, often linked with patriarchy. Historian Gerda Lerner, for example, develops this Marxist feminist view:

Approximately at the time when hunting/gathering or horticulture gives way to
agriculture, kinship arrangements tend to shift from matriliny to patriliny, and private property develops...All agricultural societies have reified women's...reproductive capacity...In the course of agricultural revolution the exploitation of human labor and the sexual exploitation of women became inextricably linked. (49-52)

Fynn's farm represents patriarchal society thus not only by way of analogy; the setting also reminds readers of the agricultural roots of modern society and patriarchy.

We, as a longer and thus more complex work, is more challenging to interpret. Especially when one considers that one of the self-defining aspects of the One State is its desire for equality, a world in which everyone is “alike” (6), it appears that the One State is in fact not patriarchal, for patriarchy, by common definition, promotes inequality. Despite its supposed devotion to equality, however, the One State has evolved out of, and to a great deal retains aspects of, a patriarchal system: namely, Christianity. The One State's roots in, and likeness to, Christianity is continually referred to throughout the book: at one point, D-503 claims that Christians are the “only predecessors” of the citizens of the One State (128); the services held in the society are of a Christian nature pervaded by a “Gothic silence” (45) that D-503 speculates may have been “experienced by the ancients during their 'religious services'” (45); elsewhere, R-13 outlines clearly the fundamental alignment of the One State with Christian values, stating that the One State and “the ancient God...[are] side by side, at the same table” (61). Thus, the One State is clearly qualitatively Christian. As many an ardent feminist today might claim, Christianity is closely related to patriarchy in a number of ways. It is the worship of a male sky-god; a female was responsible for original sin, while a male redeemed humanity; the Bible's depicts the first wife as being created from man to be his “help meet” (Authorized King James Version, Genesis, 2.18): all of these and more have been historically used to suggest woman's natural inferiority and to promote her subjugation.

It is interesting, in light of the present comparison between We and “His Vegetable Wife,” to note, further, that agrarianism and modern religion co-evolved in the Neolithic period, during which time the transition from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles significantly altered worldviews. John Haught outlines the close relationship between agriculture and Christianity in his text, What is Religion?, as follows:

The images that were born in the religious awareness of the agricultural revolution have provided the central metaphors and myths of the world's religions ever since. Think, for example, of the savior figure undergoing death and resurrection in Christianity...The imaginative basis of [this journey] lies in the agricultural experience of grains of wheat, or other seeds, perishing in order to produce new life. The religions of the world owe a supreme debt to the agricultural revolution and the new images...it called forth. (26) 

We may presume, then, that the agricultural world in “His Vegetable Wife” and the quasi-Christian world in We are in some significant sense alike. As I have argued, they are both patriarchal – but what does this mean, after all?

What the worlds depicted by Murphy and Zamyatin share is an emphasis on controlling and structuring nature. Indeed, the same can be said of agriculture and Christianity. Agriculture relies on controlling and manipulating the earth's productivity. The religious/Christian myth of resurrection, as Haught relates it (above), similarly conveys the desire to, in some sense, trump nature: to escape the most fundamental experience of all life – death. I venture that the agricultural revolution, while it saw the emergence of a prominent “mother-goddess” (Haught 26), also saw the development of a contempt for the earth and nature which transferred into a religious disdain for the flesh. The female entity of the earth – Mother nature, Gaia, Bhoomi, etc. - was something to be handled, manipulated, husbanded, so that crops would resurrect with equal or greater fruition and human survival would be ensured. In the course of the development of Christianity, it is Jesus Christ (and, subsequently, countless other heroes, traditionally, rather than heroines) who “descend[s] into the depths” (Haught 26) and re-emerges, victorious over death, while the earth, being the grave, takes the less favourable role of “the depths.” If, as Haught says, the resurrection mytheme is a representation of the cyclicality of crop growth, it is the re-emergence of the crops (which will later evolve into the resurrection of Christ), aided by human cultivation of the female entity of the earth, that is celebrated. Thus, the agricultural revolution witnessed not only a demarcation of humanity as separate from the natural world but also a growing contempt, on humanity's part, towards the earth – the growth, that is, of an antithetical relationship between nature and humankind, where the latter seeks to subjugate the former. The Christian valuation of spirit over flesh and reason over emotion, is based on this contempt toward nature and expresses a desire to control what is spontaneous and natural. Thus, both agriculture and modern religion – which, as outlined above, developed together through a period of co-evolution – emphasize control of nature: this is what is significantly alike between the two and marks each, moreover, as patriarchal. According to Dr. Zoi Coucopoulos of the Criminology department at the University of Ottawa, patriarchy is defined, not necessarily by the subjugation of women (although this is almost entirely the case) but by an obsessive desire for control; this obsession for control runs through the sedentary, agricultural human existence, through Christianity and, because agriculture and Christianity are the basis of the worlds developed by Murphy and Zamyatin, respectively, the obsession for control over nature also provides the basis for these fictitious worlds.

The works confirm this hypothesis. The protagonist of each story, firmly embedded in his world and embodying its values, strives for order, rigidity, and stasis, in contradiction to the natural world. Fynn, for example, takes great pleasure in reforming the natural environment in a way that is knowable to him, and therefore controllable by him: “The soft wind in the grasses irritated Fynn; he thought it sounded like people whispering secrets. He had enjoyed hacking down the grass..., planting the straight rows of cimmeg” (628). The rows of plants contrast sharply against the “vast expanse of swaying stalks [that]...[shift] and [move]” (628). This difference from the natural world, whose “whispers” (628) terrify him, is precisely what Fynn values and intends to create: he prefers rows of plants to “swaying stalks,” prefers nature that is linear, predictable, and within his control (which is, of course, to say, cultivated nature). The motif of the straight line figures prominently in We as well. It is central in the first chapter, wherein D-503 lays out his intentions:

Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to...a straight line. For the line of the One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight line – the wisest of all lines. (2, emphasis mine)

As the italicized sentence above indicates, the straight line is the symbol of the One State: the line represents not only the One State's “straight, immutable streets” (5) and “square harmony” (5), but also its Table of Hours which rigidly delineates each day, and even its ideal of equality which is merely an ideal of complete conformity, an aim for a world without any variation – no “classical noses” in contrast to “button-noses” (7), for example (one may envision such a world mathematically, graphically, as a straight line without any outliers). The natural world beyond the Green Wall, in contrast to the markedly linearized world of the One State is described not in terms of a straight line, but as a wave: “From...behind the wall rose a wild wave of roots, flowers, branches, leaves” (93). Waves are characterized – indeed, defined - by their fluctuations (ie. differences in amplitude), and as such, the natural world in We is entirely different from the settled straight-line world of the One State, just as Fynn's farm contrasts and opposes the natural world beyond it. Furthermore, Just as Fynn desires to reform nature into rows according to his own understandings and purposes, D-503 aims to “unbend the wild, primitive curve” (2). While Fynn's obsession with control has the connotation of colonization and settlement – he seeks to build an “empire” (628) – D-503's evocations of the linear ideal are decidedly religious – he speaks of the “great, divine...line” (2). Thus, each work suggests not only an antithetical relationship between humans and nature, but also a desire on humans' part to subjugate nature by reshaping it, perpetuating and perpetuated by systems of patriarchy which are the basis of the modern world.

As they figure and explore the patriarchal impulse to control, both Zamyatin and Murphy employ female characters symbolically to represent the interrelated things which patriarchy seeks to control - wilderness, irrationality/emotion, and sexuality – and, as such, these female characters act as counter-forces, threats, to the established patriarchal worlds within the stories. The vegetable wife, an all-but-literal personification of nature, is, of course, a prime example. As Fynn plants her and watches her grow, we get a sense that he is in his element: he knows what he is doing, for the “instructions on the package [for the wife] were similar to the instructions on any seed envelope” (628), and he is comfortable, even smiling as she ripens on schedule (630). Supposedly, he is happy because he is in control. However, this happiness and self-assurance erodes into irritation, anger, and finally violence, when it becomes apparent to him that his vegetable wife embodies the wilderness which he despises so; the “whispers” that aggravate him from beyond his fields figure themselves in her hair, to his increasing “annoyance” (630). Arguably, it is her unknowability which bothers Fynn most of all. Fynn cannot understand the vegetable wife, not least because she does not speak any human language. The vegetable wife, as - just that - a vegetable, exists in a world wholly different from Fynn's human world. Fynn attempts to fit her into his own systems of understanding, treating her like a human wife (based on his relatively shallow notions of what a spousal relationship is like): he cuts her a rope long enough so that she can stand by the window and “watch him work in the fields” (631) (as, one might imagine, the happy housewife of a hardworking farmer might); he brings her flowers; he tries to induce her to sleep with him at night. However, the vegetable wife does not fit into Fynn's marital schema; she does not respond as he expects a wife to respond, but rather like nature responds to us, impassively. This, her passive plant-ness, reassures him at first, when he worries that he has hurt her: “He [was]...reassured by her [blank] expression. He knew she felt no pain. The instructions had said so” (630-631). Later, however, when she does not respond emotionally to his calling her “a tramp, a whore, a filthy prostitute” (632), the vegetable wife's lack of recognition of the socially constructed, gender-based insults he throws at her “inflam[es]” Fynn (632). Fynn recognizes at this point that he cannot, try as he might, control the vegetable wife in any profound sense beyond the purely physical - “Though the sap flowed from the welts on her back, her eyes were dry” (632) – because she does not respond except at the most natural and primitive level: she only responds to immediate bodily threats. To this extent, she is irrational, unknowable on human terms, unfittable into rational human schema. This is what finally drives Fynn to attempt to murder her (somewhat comically, I think, through completely ineffectual strangulation – she does not even fit into his homicidal schema).

I-330, like the vegetable wife, embodies wilderness, sexuality, and irrationality and is, like the vegetable wife, completely oppositional to the One State, not least because she seeks to lead a revolution against it with the aim of breaking down “all walls...to let the green wind blow free” (157). She disorders the completely ordered schedule established by the Table of Hours, particularly by way of her body and sexuality, engaging in intercourse with “no pink coupon, no accounting, no State” (74). D-503 describes her laughter as a “sharp curve [as opposed to a straight line]...pliantly resistant” (29). Above all, I-330 represents the unknown: she is characterized by the “shades” (26) lowered over her eyes and the “constant, irritating X” of her face. (Interestingly, the X often serves to heighten a likeness between I-330 and the image of the satyric devil, with the top half the X – the “sharp, mocking triangle” (55) - resembling the horns. In a Christian-based society, I-330 takes a devilish role as tempter.) Like the vegetable wife, then, I-330 is a representative of the natural world that the One State is detached from and seeks to subjugate and as such, D-503 cannot understand her; she defies his understanding and remains an unsolved variable in his life.

I-330 is central because, as the representative of a world beyond the One State, she acts as D-503's guide into a non-patriarchal, free world of “anti-Christians” (165). She also, however, significantly is D-503's guide into himself, making him aware of the wilderness and irrationality within as well as without. She is the first in the novel to draw attention to his “'ape's hands'” (7) which she links later to what she calls his “'sunny forest blood” (168). She also leads him to become astutely aware of the distinct irrationality and unknowability of himself, as the following passage (following his first sexual encounter with I-330) indicates:

I had believed that I knew everything within myself. And now... I stand before a mirror...Here I am...Steel-gray eyes...And there, behind this steel...it turns out that I have never known what is there...he, with his straight eyebrows, is a stranger, alien to me, someone I am meeting for the first time in my life. (59-60)

I-330 thus leads D-503 into serious introspection and the recognition of the other within himself. The geographical movement outward in the novel - from the world of transparent glass, into the opaque Ancient House, down through hidden tunnels, and finally up and out into the jungle beyond the One State – mirrors D-503's inward journey into discovering his “soul” (89), and I-330 serves as guide for both. It may be similarly argued that through his engagement with his vegetable wife, Fynn's own irrationality and brutish nature come into greater relief. This suggests that femininity, the primitive, the irrational, even as they are exiled to the borders of civilization retain a repressed place at its heart. At a more basic level, even as an individual externalizes the feminine, the primitive, the irrational, and defines himself in opposition to these, he represses these very things within himself.

D-503, with the guidance of I-330, struggles to integrate the various hidden and clear parts of himself, to create an individual whole, recognizing and giving equal weight to the aspects within himself of spirit and body, human and animal, masculine and feminine. His journalistic reflections convey the anguish of such an endeavour as he fluctuates radically between his love for I-330 (ie. for his own uniqueness, irrationality, wilderness, freedom, etc., which she validates) and his love for the One State (ie. rationality, order, stasis). The novel suggests that the various aspects of himself that D-503 attempts to bring together are all essential to him. He has, for example, a deep need to “[break] up infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions” (65) but he possesses an equally profound need to know what is “out there, where [the] finite universe ends” (230). He is, thus, host to dynamically opposed qualities, desires, ideas, and impulses, host to the “tormentingly endless movement” (165) that I-330 advocates. Patriarchy may be understood as the trumping of this constant dynamic interplay by an overarching, all-encompassing order and “entropy” (165). Yet the desire for entropy and the desire for energy are also in dynamic interplay, as we see in the character of D-503 who wants and yet does not want “salvation” (186) via the Operation. Indeed, it is an impossibly paradoxical position that I-330 advocates – and yet, as she indicates, it is a position modelled on nature itself wherein “revolutions are infinite” (174) and nothing can remain static for long.

Both stories end with revolution, signifying, at the least, Zamyatin's and Murphy's shared belief that entropic patriarchal systems cannot hold against dynamic nature. In “His Vegetable Wife,” the wife reaches a point at which Fynn's abuse of her (resulting from his patriarchal desire to control her) reaches its climax, and she revolts, reciprocating with an equal force of violence. Murphy states that, then, Fynn becomes “like a plant” (632), while the vegetable wife, having killed the owner of the land, takes his place; thus, there is an inversion of power. Similarly, in We, the revolution of the Mephi results in the loss of the One State's control to a chaotic world of “roaring, corpses, [and] beasts” (232). D-503 reveals, however, that the revolution has been hindered by a “temporary barrier” (232), and he further expresses confidence that the One State “shall conquer” the revolution. As readers, we are also aware, however, that the next generation has already been set into motion in the midst of this revolution: O-90 has presumably escaped beyond the Wall with her unborn child. In his decision to include such a reference to the continuation of nature and life beyond the metaphoric walls of the One State, Zamyatin is perhaps suggesting that, though it seems that the revolution is being halted under the One State's regime, nature continues to regenerate and revolution is very plausible, as “revolutions are infinite” (174). The powerful image of the vegetable wife at the end of Murphy's story similarly suggests the overarching, ultimate power of nature: “She would plant the man, as she had seen him plant seeds. She would stand with her ankles in the mud and the wind in her hair, and she would see what grew” (632). The vegetable wife becomes a matriarchal figure, re-taking possession of the earth.

The fictional worlds depicted by Zamyatin and Murphy, based as they are, respectively, on Chrstianity/religion and agriculture, are patrarichal: they demonstrate a valuation of control over nature and reason over emotion as of central importance. In these patriarchies, primary female characters, the vegetable wife and I-330, embody aspects which run counter to patriarchy: they represent sexuality/sensuality, irrationality, and wilderness. Through engagement with I-330 and the vegetable wife, furthermore, D-503 and Fynn, respectively, become aware that they possess the very things they seek to externalize and subjugate, the things which the females embody – they themselves have within them, in other words, something of the feminine, the primitive. The gradual uprising of the primitive within the protagonists is mirrored by an uprising of nature without. Ultimately, the stories explore the necessity and possibility of integrating the feminine and masculine within an individual, and nature and human civilization at large. Neither of the stories are, however, optimistic, in any conventional sense, nor very informative regarding the solution to the segregation of nature and humanity. Each story does, on the other hand, depict the powerful but patient power of nature as a force to be reckoned with.

SOURCES

Coucopoulos, Zoi. Class lecture. “Gender, Race, Class, and (Dis)ability.” FEM2107. University of Ottawa. Ottawa, Jun 18 2012.

Haught, John. “Early Religion.” What is Religion?: An Introduction. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1990. 14-29. Google Books. Web. Dec 3 2012.

Lerner, Gerda. “A Working Hypothesis.” The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 36-54. Google Books. Web. Dec 3 2012.

Murphy, Pat. “His Vegetable Wife.” 1985. 628-632. PDF File.

The Bible: Authorized King James Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. 

Primitivity, Irrationality, Insanity – Demons in Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson's horror stories, “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, reflect the secularization of the modern, twentieth century which produced them. These works lack the overt supernatural: no vampire lurks in the gothic Hill House waiting to sup on the blood of innocent, defenseless women; no demon walks among the villagers in “The Lottery,” slowly concocting their damnation. Yet, despite this departure from such earlier elements of the genre, Jackson's stories are horrifying. Evil merely takes a different form in “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House: rather than being embodied in a figure external to and opposing the protagonists, evil is disembodied, an aspect of the mind and of human nature, emanating from the protagonists themselves – from their individual and collective psyches. In particular, Jackson explores group dynamics, ritual culture, and the human tendency to create – and the necessity of creating – dreams and stories by which to live. Underlying all of these, however, is a latent primitivity, irrationality, insanity – which, in the modern age of anxiety, godlessness, and self-fragmentation and -doubt, is, indeed, truly horrifying.

What strikes most readers about “The Lottery” is the sheer normality of the villagers: the children play, the men talk of “planting and rain, tractors and taxes” (1), and the women, in their “house dresses and sweaters...[exchange] bits of gossip” (1). By juxtaposing this apparent normality against the inhuman crime which the villagers commit, Jackson demonstrates the superficiality of what appears real and significant. In “The Lottery,” the things we base our lives upon and hope will hold up against evil – family, friendships – disintegrate into it. Jackson allows us to get a sense of what seems to be the villagers' tight-knit and warm community: when Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late, for example, we get a snippet of her comfortable conversation with Mrs. Delacroix before “the people [separate] good-humoredly to let her through” (2). The village thus seems like one of friends – except that it is difficult to describe them as such when they turn on one of their own. Mrs. Delacroix, in fact, who is the only woman we see Mrs. Hutchinson interact with, and with whom she does so in a decidedly friendly and familiar fashion, is among the first to turn on Mrs. Hutchinson, and does so with horrifying enthusiasm: “Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. 'Come on,' she said. 'Hurry up'” (7). Family, too, is something Jackson draws attention to, only to show it falling apart at the end of the story, when little Davy Hutchinson (along with the other Hutchinsons, presumably) advances towards his mother with pebbles in his hands. In the village, to say the least, appearances are deceiving.

In The Haunting of Hill House, too, reality is shown to be a fabrication. Eleanor altogether constructs what she presents as her life; when she tells Theo about her house, all the little details – the “white curtains..., little stone lions..., and...white cat” (64) – are things she noticed or imagined on her way to Hill House. As in “The Lottery” her relationships fall into patterns that suggest a superficial intimacy: for example, as critic Laura Miller has noted, Theo and Eleanor bond much the same way little girls do when they first meet (xvii), planning picnics, swapping various details about their lives, and finally deciding that they must be related (Jackson 38-39). They quickly become apparent best friends - “'Would you let them separate us now? Now that we've found out we're cousins?'” Theo asks Eleanor (38) – but as in “The Lottery,” Jackson invites us to recognize how quickly that veil of friendship disintegrates. The novel hints at Eleanor's latent dislike for Theo, akin to Mrs. Delacroix's dormant antipathy toward Mrs. Hutchinson: “[Eleanor] had never felt such uncontrollable loathing for any person before,” the novel states (116). Thus, in The Haunting of Hill House, as in “The Lottery,” Jackson demonstrates that the relationships, conversations, and activities that constitute daily life are fabricated and false. Eleanor's life is a series of fantasies that act as a veil. Hill House itself is a symbol of the deceptiveness of what we perceive as reality: the house does not look it, but it is ever so slightly off balance.

This – that what we perceive as reality is in fact not real at all – is disconcerting in and of itself. But Jackson's horror is more poignant: it explores what it is that our constructed realities are veiling and in so doing uncovers the primitive and irrational foundations of our lives - foundations which we strive to – but, as Jackson's works suggest, cannot - mask, ignore, forget, or transcend. In The Haunting of Hill House, this underlying irrationality is represented by the house itself. Critics and commentators often suggest that the house represents the irrational mind; as Stephen King notes in his informal discussion on the novel in Danse Macabre, “Stepping into Hill House is like stepping into the mind of a madman” (305). If we accept the compelling interpretation taken by King (and many others) that the hauntings in Hill House are not caused by actual ghosts but by telekinetic manifestations of Eleanor's psyche (King 307-308), the house becomes a symbol specifically of Eleanor's mind. The hauntings, then, can be traced back to Eleanor's childhood; they mimic the raining stones incident that occurred in her pubescent years. The hauntings thus derive from both the irrationality and unconscious narcissism of childhood and the explosive sexuality of the teenage years. From a psychoanalytical perspective, the hauntings are a manifestation of Eleanor's id, which, because she could not develop her individual self properly in her suppressive role as the passive and dutiful daughter, Eleanor could never properly subdue under a developed ego.

Eleanor's fantasies which she passes off as reality most literally are meant to veil something she lacks; she does not have a house of her own, for example, so she imagines one. Horror fiction author Anne Rivers Siddons has this to say regarding the symbol of the house:

[A] house is so much more than that...to most of us anyway, whether or not we are aware of it. It is an extension of our selves; it tolls in answer to one of the most basic chords mankind will ever hear. My shelter. My earth. My second skin. Mine. (King 287).

In creating a fantasy home and passing it off as reality, then, Eleanor is not only hiding the fact that she does not have a home, but more significantly, she is veiling the fact that she does not have an identity, a developed ego, a fixed thing to call “I.” Her attempts to create an identity for herself throughout the novel – by creating superficial relationships, for example, or by colouring her life with fairy-tale beliefs such as “journeys end in lovers meeting” - are futile, furthermore; her gradual appropriation by Hill House symbolizes, thus, her gradual reduction to nothing but her irrationality, her childishness.

The psychoanalytical concepts of the id and the ego are relevant in interpreting “The Lottery” as well. It is evident that within the village, there is a disturbing disjunct between what is presented on the surface (a village full of friendly, ordinary people) and what lies underneath (a mob of violent murderers): in a sense, the village itself has a civilized ego and a primitive id. It is significant, in this respect, that the children are the first to gather for the annual stoning; children are the most primitive members of society, those who have subdued their ids least of all. The ritual of the lottery itself is primitive, in fact; one may speculate that it has evolved from some kind of ancient fertility ritual: it takes place around the time of the summer solstice, in midsummer, like many pagan festivities; it demands a human sacrifice; furthermore, it has a superstitious basis: “'Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in june, corn be heavy soon,'” as Old Man Warner says (14).

While The Haunting of Hill House examines the irrational mind of the individual, “The Lottery” foregrounds the collective mind which, unfortunately, is no better. In Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, Freud argues the following regarding group dynamics:

The most remarkable and...important result of the formation of a group is the 'exaltation or intensification of emotion'...Men's emotions are stirred in a group to a pitch they they
seldom or never attain under other conditions; and it is a pleasurable experience for
those who are concerned to surrender themselves so unreservedly to their passions and
thus to become merged in the group and to lose the sense of the limits of individuality. (27)

Freud suggests, thus, that the collective mind is by its very nature regressive and primitive: “individuality” or ego fades away into the “'intensification of emotion'” - the id, in other words, becomes the driving force. His observations apply pertinently to “The Lottery” where it is as a unified mob, a collective “they,” that the villagers stone Mrs. Hutchinson, as the final lines of the story convey: “Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (7, emphasis mine). The irrationality we find in Eleanor is just as present among the villagers, despite the fact that the villagers act as a group while Eleanor cannot place herself successfully in a group: both demonstrate, as Freud calls it, “a regression in mental activity to an earlier stage such as we are not surprised to find among savages or children” (82). Just as Eleanor “surrenders” to Hill House, the individual villagers surrender to the group mentality - which is to say that both Eleanor and the villagers surrender to irrationality and primitivity.

Part of what makes Jackson's tales so horrifying is her implication that this irrationality, rather than resting somewhere in the unconscious and rearing its head now and again, is something that is ever-present. The narrator of “The Lottery” lists the annual stoning ritual along with various other seemingly ordinary events and gatherings that mark the calendar throughout the year - “the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program” (1) – suggesting that perhaps these too (which exist even in our own societies) have some ritualistic, primitive basis. Similarly, Mr. Summers, the modern-pagan priest, not only conducts the lottery, but also presides over most other “civic activities” (1). All of these events take place at the Town Square which – if we accept the interpretation of the lottery as a primitive ritual – plays the role of the magic circle. Of course, the shift from a magic circle to a square in Jackson's story is significant: studies of religious and cult ceremonies have associated the circle with the “circular motion of heavenly bodies” (Aune 1790) – it represents the cyclicality and change of nature. In neopagan rites, the circle represents “the passing from one phase of life to another, and the shifting from one type of consciousness to another” (Pike 7829). The square, on the other hand, suggests nature's rigidity and entrapment. The villagers cannot escape their primitivity; it is at the heart of the village and spread throughout it.

One might argue that the story hints at a gradual movement away from primitivity: in some towns, the lottery is going out of fashion. Throughout the story, however, Jackson gives strong indications of the direction of sociocultural evolution, particularly through the character of Old Man Warner who, as the oldest denizen of the village, provides observations of the future through a perspective informed by the past. According to Old Man Warner, “It's not the way it used to be...people ain't the way they used to be” (6). We learn that certain other towns have given up the lottery; Warner, like many an old man today, blames the younger generation: “'Pack of crazy fools,' he said [of those considering giving up the lottery]...Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them” (4). This seems hopeful; future generations will become aware of the horrors of the lottery and put a stop to the primitive ritual. However, when we consider this possibility against the actual “young folk” depicted by Jackson in her story, the prediction loses credibility: the children are the most likely of all to give in to such primitivity. Old Man Warner also ironically claims that giving up the lottery is like “wanting to go back to living in caves” (4) – he truly believes that the lottery is, in fact, an indicator of advanced society, while, to the reader's outside perspective, it is apparent that the lottery preserves all the violence, fervour, irrationality, and superstition ascribed to primitive paganism. Thus, the novel is not hopeful about humanity: Jackson demonstrates its lack of progress and the impossibility of it transcending its own origins and foundations.

I began with the claim that Jackson's horror tales are unlike their predecessors because they lack, for example, vampires and demons; let me return to this assessment now. It is true that we never catch a glimpse of the Count Dracula in the halls of Hill House – but there is certainly something there preying upon Eleanor, who, with her undeveloped sense of self, is in many ways innocent and defenseless. And of course there are no discernible demons among the Joes, Steves, Nancies, and Janes of the village in “The Lottery,” but an early modern Christian, for example, would certainly recognize that the lottery is a demonic, pagan ritual. And after all, – vampires, monsters, ghosts, demons, werewolves, witches – what are these but symbolic representations of evil? And what is it we fear most of all? Dracula would not be frightening if he did not have the ability to transform us into bloodless, soulless beings incapable of being saved. Demons cannot damn those incapable of sinning. And so it is the evil within ourselves that horror has always explored – in the past, it has merely done so through externalized, supernatural, symbolic creatures. “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House present, thus, a new horror – the modern-secular – but also a very ancient horror. These works examine the fragility of the happy yet superficial realities we have created for ourselves through stories, friendships, dreams, and rituals. Jackson looks through the veil of these realities to uncover the primitivity and irrationality which underlie our day-to-day lives: she looks at the id buried in all of us, points it out and says 'There is violence; there is selfishness; there is rampant sexuality; there is hate.' According to Jackson, the demons are within and among us and they are just as frightening, if not more so, than those that lurk in Gothic castles or under our beds. 

SOURCES

Aune, David. “Circle.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2^nd ed. Vol. 11. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 1790-1795. Gale Virtual Referenece Library. Web.

Freud, Sigmund. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. New York: Boni and Liveright, 192-. Scholars Portal Books. E-book.

Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Group, 2006.

---. “The Lottery.” 1948. The Middlebury Blog Network. 1-7. PDF File.

individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf>
King, Stephen. “Chapter IX: Horror Fiction.” Danse Macabre. New York: Gallery Books, 2010. 264- 310. Google Books. E-book.

Laura Miller. “Introduction.” The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. ix-xxii.
Pike, Sarah M. “Rites of Passage: Neopagan Rites.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2^nd ed. Vol. 11. Detroit: Macmillan Referenece USA, 2005. 7828-7831. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 

Mystery Fiction as Continuation and Response to Gothic - a comparison of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Lewis's The Monk

Edgar Allen Poe, who invented the first detective in C. Auguste Dupin, is widely known for his
tales of horror. As this might suggest, there is some overlap between the genres of mystery and the
Gothic. A comparison of works from the two genres, Matthew Lewis's The Monk and the short mystery
stories of Poe (particularly “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), reveals that early mystery fiction can
be seen as a continuation of the Gothic genre; many of these stories utilize characteristic Gothic motifs,
including the Gothic setting, the morally questionable protagonist, and the exploration of the darker
aspects of human nature. However, while mystery is a continuation of the Gothic, it is likewise a
response to the Gothic which, even as it uses the Gothic tropes mentioned above, alters, adapts, or
subverts them.

An evident point of similarity between Lewis's The Monk and Poe's “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” is setting. In The Monk, Lewis describes the central location of the Capuchin Church as
containing a “gloom” and a “gothic obscurity.” The setting used for the home of Dupin and his
unnamed companion, “a time-eaten and grotesque mansion,” is likewise Gothic. In each case, the
setting reflects the characters and plot. The “gothic obscurity” of the Capuchin Church, in addition to
creating the eerie quality associated with the Gothic, hints at the obscured or suppressed truths and
passions therein. Similarly, Dupin's home mirrors “the fantastic gloom of [his]...temper.” However,
there is a significant difference in setting between the two works: Lewis' novel, influenced by the
Romantic interest in the premodern, is set in the past, in a time of castles and Cavaliers carrying
rapiers; Poe's story, conversely, set in a contemporary age “amid the...shadows of the populous city,”
brings the Gothic into the modern.

The urban setting is a defining feature of mystery fiction. Poe's earlier story, “The Man of the
Crowd,” which – with its observant protagonist pursuing “the type and genius of deep crime” – one can
read as a prototype to Poe's detective stories, also emphasizes the urban setting: the story takes place on
a crowded “principal thoroughfare” in the city of London. The interest and emphasis on the urban in
mystery fiction, as well the popularity of mystery fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, can be linked to the urbanization taking place throughout Europe during the Industrial
Revolution which brought greater numbers and varieties of people into locations such as London.
Mystery fiction, then, adapts Gothic elements to a modern context. Thus, despite having Gothic traits,
mystery fiction lacks the Romantic, retrogressive quality of Gothic literature. It is more present.

The tendency of mystery fiction to be present, as opposed to distant or other-wordly as Gothic
fiction often is, manifests itself also in the underlying logic of mystery stories. Generally, mystery
fiction relies on materialism. In the baffling case of the L'Espanaye murders, for example, physical
materials such as the “little tuft [of hair he takes] from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame
L'Espanaye,” prove essential to Dupin's reasoning through the case. Gothic fiction, on the other hand,
relies on the supernatural to extend and explain the plot. In The Monk, Don Raymond is unable to elope
with Agnes, for example, because he gets involved with the ghost of a nun. Similarly, Ambrosio's
downfall is exacted though a “crafty spirit” working for the devil. Poe, in “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue,” draws particular attention to the fact that he is departing from this kind of supernatural
explanation by having Dupin say assuredly “Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye were not
destroyed by spirits. The doers of the deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how?” In both
stories, there is violence and crime; however, mystery fiction begins with the premise that these are
caused materially, and thus can be solved materially. Gothic fiction, in this way, is, conceivably, more
horrifying; to think that there are hidden, evil spirits working for our downfall, especially in a world
like Lewis's where benevolent spirits seem altogether absent, is a frightening thought. In an age of
increasing industry, materialism, and secularization, however, mystery fiction may have been seen as
more relevant and applicable than literature which relied on the supernatural.

Despite the fact that the premise underlying (and therefore the conclusion arising from) “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” is fundamentally different from that which underlies The Monk, each of
these stories considers the same issue: where does violence come from? In this, one sees that mystery
fiction has a keen interest, characteristic of Gothic literature, in the darker aspects of nature. One
element of the mystery story wherein we see this interest is the characterization of the protagonist as
morally ambiguous. From his inception with Dupin, the detective figure has rarely been a classic hero –
smart, courageous, handsome, and likeable; more often, as with Dupin, he is an insightful, somewhat
anti-social character observing society from its outskirts with no interest in engaging with it except at
his own pleasure and convenience. The moral ambivalence of Dupin shows through in his desiring to
examine the murder scene of the L'Espanayes, not from a desire to help, but because “an inquiry
[would] afford...amusement.” More strikingly perhaps, in his discussion of analysis in “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue,” the narrator writes that “the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent
[and] identifies himself therewith.” Thus, in solving the case of who killed the L'Espanayes, Dupin is,
in fact, thinking like the murderer. In this particular case, it is the mind of an animal that he identifies
with; thus, Dupin is able to get in touch with a primitive, irrational, and potentially extremely violent
mentality within himself. The narrator says that he and Dupin lived “as madmen – although,
perhaps...of a harmless nature.” In other words, the protagonist of Poe's mystery stories, the hero, is
somehow essentially alike to the villain, and this alike-ness is foregrounded. In The Monk, similarly, it
is the villainy of the protagonist Ambrosio, his capacity for evil thought, his primitive desires, his
irrational impulsivity, and so on which are foregrounded. However, again, an essential difference
emerges between the two stories. The detective's capacity for thought is unlike anyone's but the
criminal himself. This is precisely why no one else can solve the case; the police, for instance, despite
all their “vast parade of measures,” are ineffectual. Within the context of the story, then, only the
detective can identify with the criminal. In this sense, he is outside of general humanity, just as the
criminal is. In The Monk, conversely, the villanous protagonist is a monk. He is expected to be the best
of us; thus, his succumbing to evil implies that everyone else is equally, if not more so, likely to be
damned: if the best of us can fall, what hope do the rest have?

Herein, perhaps, lies the defining difference between the two genres: the early works of mystery
fiction are, essentially, hopeful. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” for example, begins with this quote
by Sir Thomas Browne: “What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he bid
himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.” That is a
reassuring statement, telling the reader that it is possible to know what seems unknowable. In the case
of “The Murders of the Rue Morgue,” it becomes possible to make sense of what initially seems to be
senseless brutality. Furthermore, it is possible to do so without resorting to explanations involving
forces of pure evil, as the Gothic tends to do. Mystery fiction is about the solution: by solving a case,
the detective brings understanding which restores a sense of security. Gothic works such as The Monk,
on the other hand, focus on the fall of society and individuals from peace and security into a state so
debased, of evil so profound, it can only be explained as supernatural.

Mystery can be read as a continuation of the Gothic. The two genres share similarities in setting
and in characterization; they even ask similar questions: What is evil? Where does violence come
from? How can humanity and society be saved from these forces that threaten them? However, mystery
and Gothic fiction differ in key respects: mystery focuses on the urban and the physical; the
protagonist, while he shares a likeness with the villain, is not himself a villain but is rather salvaged
through the usage of his intellect and imagination; as to the question of evil, mystery fiction explains
crime rationally, thus eliminating the terror. The result is that, while mystery and the Gothic share
certain elements, explore similar questions and contrive similar themes, ultimately mystery is a more
positive genre, demonstrating a subtle yet obstinate strand of optimism that the Gothic generally lacks.


SOURCES

Lewis, Matthew. The Monk, a romance. Project Gutenberg. Web. September 22, 2012.

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Man of the Crowd.” The Works of Edgar Allen Poe – Volume 1. Project
Gutenberg. Web. October 2, 2012.

---. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The Works of Edgar Allen Poe – Volume 5. Project Gutenberg.
Web. October 2, 2012.