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 toFynn'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.
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)
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.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
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