"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. 

The Butterfly and the God - Artistry in Layton's "The Fertile Muck" and "Butterfly on Rock"

Irving Layton's “Butterfly on Rock” and “The Fertile Muck” concern themselves primarily with the same issue. In “The Fertile Muck,” the speaker asks “How to dominate reality?” (25); in “Butterfly on Rock,” the poet contemplates the “desire/to be a thing alive” (7-8). In both pieces, that is, Layton ponders how to bring significance to mere existence. He explicitly provides two answers - “Love is one way;/imagination another” (25-26) – and the latter of these he brings to the forefront and focus of each of these poems.

In “Butterfly on Rock,” Layton explores the concept of the creative artist through the metaphor of a butterfly which settles on a rock, thereby making “manifest” (8) the lifeless object's yearning. He employs this metaphor, as well, in “The Fertile Muck,” where he describes insects as having a poet's “crafty eyes” (8). The image of the butterfly is evocative. Butterflies connote beauty and fancifulness – qualities which may be attributed to the artist or his craft – but, above all, they represent transformation. Layton suggests, then, that imagination is transformative; it has the power to “extend...rooms...without cost” (“The Fertile Muck” 19) – to transform, and transcend, what is.

Layton is, however, not content with settling on this earthy, delicate representation of the poet. In “The Fertile Muck,” for example, though “the winged insects...wear [his] crafty eyes” (7-8), they are no “better off” (7) than the empty wind. Perhaps butterflies are simply too common for Layton, too much a part of the “bleak forest” (“Butterfly on Rock” 10) he desires to escape. Layton does not see the butterfly as the ideal image of the poet because it is fragile; it can be destroyed or confined in “moth-proofed cupboards” (“Fertile” 17), its “irregular footprint” (“Fertile” 22) erased.

Being thus discontent with the fragility connoted by the butterfly, Layton elevates the poet further, to the status of a god. For instance, in “Butterfly on Rock,” it is not until the speaker most epically brings his “hand down on the butterfly” (14) that the rock actually comes alive, so to speak; it is the poet's hand which achieves the miraculous. In “The Fertile Muck,” Layton writes,

There are brightest apples on those trees
but until I, fabulist, have spoken
they do not know their significance
or what other legends are hung...
on their black boughs. (1-5)

The image of the tree and its legendary fruit is allusive: it brings to mind, for instance, the golden apples of Greek mythology, or the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. By putting his speaker in the position of the “fabulist” (2) then, Layton not only conveys that a poet is a mythmaker in a dual sense. The poet is a creator, an artist, drawing from the “fertile muck” of his mind and surroundings, and, like the religious Creator, he makes life meaningful.

While Layton, then, associates himself as an artist with the butterfly, evidently he is not satisfied with a purely natural symbol. In both of the poems in question, he chooses to represent his poetic expression as Godlike. He shows staunch - indeed, almost arrogant - conviction in the power of the creative artist - but perhaps Layton in his time, unlike the Romantic poets in theirs, though he is inspired by it, simply feels no complete reassurance in or by nature. Nature is death, “shattered porcupines...in [a] bleak forest” (“Butterfly” 9-10). To feel secure in his vocation - to bring significance to his art and thereby his own existence - Layton must, as he does, envision the poet - himself - as indestructible, Godlike.

WORKS CITED

Layton, Irving. “Butterfly on Rock.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 512. Print.

---. “The Fertile Muck.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 508-509. Print.

Thoreau as Emerson’s Philosophical Equivalent

The 19^th-century philosophical and literary movement of Transcendentalism emphasized three things: a Romantic notion, tinged with Asian beliefs, of the interrelated relationship between nature, divinity, and humankind; a faith in intuition, by way of passive perception; and, lastly, an interest in “the quintessential American concept” of individuality (Introduction xxv). Ralph Waldo Emerson, as a foremost figure, if not the founder, of American Transcendentalism, is a champion of these three tenets, of course. More uncertain is the extent to which Henry David Thoreau adopted the views of Emerson, who was “the most important influence and friendship in [Thoreau’s] life” (Henry David Thoreau 826). A comparative reading of the pivotal works of these two authors – Nature and “Self-Reliance” by Emerson; Walden and “Resistance to Civil Government” by Thoreau – indicates a few differences between the two. Most notably, Thoreau demonstrates a far greater preoccupation with contemporary societal issues and the immediate world about him. However, in the larger scope of each author’s ideas, these differences are minor; Thoreau’s conception of Transcendentalism is effectively equivalent to Emerson’s philosophy.

To begin with, Thoreau shares many of Emerson’s views of nature. For instance, as John Ronan and Sherman Paul before him have noted, in Walden, Thoreau demonstrates the four uses of nature – “commodity,” “language,” “beauty,” and “discipline” – which Emerson outlines in Nature (Ronan 155). Paul summarizes it thus (as quoted by Ronan):

Like Emerson in Nature [Thoreau] began with the prudential, rising through the progressive uses of nature to spirit. Indeed, most of Emerson’s treatise was embodied in Walden: “Commodity” in “Economy”; “Nature” and “Beauty” in “Sounds” and “Solitude”; “Language” in “Brute Neighbours”; “Discipline” in “Reading.” “The Beanfield,” and “Higher Laws”... (155)

Of the four, “Discipline” is the most significant to both Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson states that “the happiest man is he who learns from nature” (514). Similarly, Thoreau states that his purpose in spending time in the woods around Walden Pond is to “learn what [nature] had to teach” (892).

To Thoreau, nature’s lessons regard “the essential facts of life” (892). To Emerson, the greatest lesson to procure from nature is that “of worship” (514). Herein, a divergence between the two transcendentalists becomes apparent. Although both Emerson and Thoreau agree in the importance of nature as a discipline, Emerson’s primary concern is the discovery of “a religion by revelation” (492). He turns to nature for such revelation of spiritual knowledge because, as he states, “in the woods, we return to...faith” (494). On the other hand, Thoreau shows a greater interest in contemporary “life” (892). In the chapter “Economy,” his nature imagery consistently relates to or is representative of society. For example, Thoreau uses a metaphor describing philanthropic men as plants used in tea-making to express his disagreement with charity:

Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. (884)

In “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” as another case in point, Thoreau envisions all humanity as ants that “live meanly” (892). Thus, while Emerson is interested in nature for its perceived ability to connect him to God, for Thoreau, nature’s essential lessons are about life, people, and the issues faced by Western society.

This is not to say, however, that Thoreau does not share in Emerson’s view of nature as divine. Walden is ripe with allusions to a higher power. Thoreau’s description of his cabin in the woods, for example, connotes divinity in its references to godly figures and heavenly music:

This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. (889)

He goes on to state “Olympus is but the outside of the Earth everywhere” (889) relating the divine in the subject of Mount Olympus, with “the outside...everywhere” (889) – that is, nature. Elsewhere, Thoreau writes, “In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But...God himself culminates in the present moment,” suggesting his belief in what Emerson calls the “perpetual presence of the sublime” (895). Thus, although Thoreau most clearly depicts nature as a metaphor for life conveying messages regarding specific issues of his time, he also recognizes and refers to the inherent divinity in his surroundings. Therefore in their views of nature, Emerson and Thoreau are not especially divergent. Although Emerson is more frequently explicit in stating his spiritual beliefs, both he and Thoreau express an opinion of nature as an extension of a higher power, capable of departing to its observant student a greater understanding of himself and the world about him.

In addition to their respective understandings of nature, Emerson and Thoreau also do not differ in the manner in which they propose to observe and intuit nature; both advocate a method of receptiveness. Passivity, a vital aspect of this method, is exemplified in this well-known passage from Emerson’s Nature:

Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (494)

The phrase “all mean egotism vanishes” epitomizes the notion of absolute passivity – being, without any assertion of one’s being. The transparency (rather than opacity or translucency) of the infamous transcendental eye-ball also alludes to the concept of passive existence; the eye-ball is all but nonexistent. At the same time, the passivity described by Emerson is one which allows exceptional observation: Emerson “[sees] all” (494). As Kristen Bennett details in “Translating Transcendentalism: a Transcontinental Revelation of Emersonian Enthusiasm,” the transcendental emphasis on a perceptive passivity was inspired by the Kantian notion of a priori knowledge, or intuition, filtered through European Romanticism, particularly through the figures of Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle (33). Bennett writes,

Carlyle will maintain that the subconscious generates Creation, and is, via inward reflection, revealed to the conscious self through subliminal inspiration. Ergo, when one consciously strives to achieve revelation, it will only be a manufactured version, (33) thus explaining the emphasis placed by transcendentalists on absolute passivity in anticipation of intuition.

Thoreau partakes in transcendental passivity during his stay at Walden Pond. Through the first two chapters, he advocates a non-assertive existence in the repetition of “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” (892) and praise of his own minimalistic lifestyle for “the leisure...thus secured” (876). Author David Robinson labels Thoreau’s stance as one of “dynamic passivity” (21), a term which neatly sums up the transcendentalist approach to intuiting nature. Thoreau’s desire to “‘receive [his] life as passively as the willow leaf that flutters over the brook’” (Robinson 21) is another aspect of Transcendentalism which he shares with Emerson.

As with the appreciation of nature as a bearer of truth as well as the passive approach to nature, Thoreau does not radically differ from Emerson on the third fundamental tenet of transcendentalism: self-reliance and assertion of one’s individuality, following intuition. In Walden, he aspires to “live deliberately” (892), and thereby set himself apart from “the mass of men [who] lead lives of quiet desperation” (847). In “Resistance to Civil Government,” while allowing that the installation of democracy is “a progress toward a true respect for the individual” (844), he maintains that” a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice” (830) as “there is but little virtue in the action of masses of men” (832). Thus, Thoreau is a champion of individual thinking and non-conformity, putting him in alignment with Emerson, who declares, “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist” (534). Thoreau also shares Emerson’s belief in non-consistency, as evidenced by his agreement, in Walden, with the Confucian line “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again” (891). If there is any difference in the issue of self-reliance and independence between the two men, it is akin to the difference between them in regards to their connection to nature (discussed above); Emerson deals abstractly with the ideals of non-conformity and non-consistency whereas Thoreau is deeply concerned with actual contemporary experiences such as the cause of abolition in America, the Mexican War, and the poll tax. That said, however, the ideas which underlie Thoreau’s actions in these matters – among them a belief in non-conformity and confidence in one’s intuitions – are aligned with Emerson’s thoughts.

Thoreau’s conception of Transcendentalism is, thus, considerably similar to Emerson’s philosophy in regards to those ideas and beliefs which are most commonly associated with the movement. Emerson and Thoreau both share a view of nature as divinely inspired with knowledge of the world; they each believe in the need to intuitively grasp the lessons of nature, through a method of “dynamic passivity” (Robinson 21); finally, they believe in following these intuitions with conviction and self-assurance. The only divergence between the two authors as evidenced by the literature is that Emerson is theoretical, while Thoreau, concerned with the application of his ideas, is experiential and empirical. That being said, Thoreau does not significantly re-envision Emerson’s fundamental ideas regarding nature, intuition, and self-reliance. His philosophy is, therefore, Transcendentalist in the Emersonian mould.

Simplicity, Sublimity, Divinity: The Romantic Notion of Nature

The unappreciative reader of works spanning from 1785 to 1830 might be tempted to call the Romantic poets a bunch of self-absorbed, sentimental pansies, on account of those attributes which are among the most characteristic of them: namely, an emphasis on emotion and the individualism of each man. However, there is one concept many times more essential to the Romantic Age than those above mentioned: nature. So inherent is it in the works of the Romantic period, that many refer to the poems of the age simply as "nature poetry." Whereas before the 1780s, nature served as a backdrop to the poem at best, the Romantic age witnessed its transformation into a central theme or otherwise recurring motif. A thorough understanding of the circumstances which gave rise to Romanticism helps in understanding the period's pronounced focus on nature. Furthermore, analysis of the works of major poets, such as Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge and Shelley, and artists of the age, including Turner and Constable, indicate that there were two major qualities alternately ascribed to nature - simplicity and sublimity - and that both, furthermore, relate to a discernible trend during the Romantic age of associating nature with the divine.

To understand the Romantic preoccupation with nature, one must first understand the two conditions which influenced it. The first of these is the Enlightenment. As Isaiah Berlin details in his book The Roots of Romanticism, men of the Enlightenment, encouraged by the scientific discoveries of figures such as Newton and Galileo, abandoned as faulty previously held sources of knowledge - revelations, traditions, dogma, and so forth - and turned to human reason as the one thing capable of attaining truth (22). Popular belief held that the application of reason could bring order to the chaotic realms of morals, politics and aesthetics - in brief, the human world - in the same way that Newton had brought order to the physical universe (Berlin 24). Thus arose an era of strict rationalism, which attempted to explain, predict and control human nature. The philosophies of the Romantic era were born in opposition to this rationalism. These were formulated by men such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wrote in his Émile, "The one thing we do not know, is the limit of the knowable" (Rousseau). Romantic thinkers, sharing Rousseau's view, placed emphasis on the mysteries of the world, and particularly those concentrated in the depths of nature, in opposition, as Mark Micale notes, to salons, the symbol of the intellectual Enlightenment, which were concentrated in large Parisian cities (2029). The words in "The Tables Turned" by William Wordsworth - "Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;/Our meddling intellect/Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things" (25-27) - and the encouragement therein given to "quit...books" (1) may be thus understood in the context of the division between Romanticism and the Enlightenment.

The other condition which led to the Romantic absorption in nature was the industrialization taking place across Europe, and the shift from the rural to the urban. The Romantics saw industrialization as unnatural, yet another instance of man taking "nothing as nature made it" (Rousseau). In his poem "And did those feet," William Blake represents the industrialization with the term "those dark Satanic Mills" (8) indicating the level of corruption the Romantics associated with urbanization. Furthermore, in the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth outlines a number of reasons for preferring "humble and rustic life" over city life, among them that "in [rural life] the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." As with the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution played an important role in the rise of Romanticism.

While both these preconditions gave way to Romantic thought, they contributed two different characteristics to the Romantic conception of nature. The Enlightenment, by focusing on strict order and control of nature, led the Romantics to revolt with a view of nature as something wild, mysterious and irrepressible. This view of nature can be seen in artwork such as J.M.W. Turner's watercolour, Interior of Tintern Abbey and John Martin's Manfred on the Jungfrau, both of which show the superiority of nature to man and man-made things. The alternate view of nature, as influenced by an industrialization which the Romantics felt distanced men from their natural, "humble" beginnings, was that nature was a place of simplicity. The Hay Wain, a painting by John Constable where he "captured soothing, arcadian scenes of the English summertime...across a rustic landscape," demonstrates this view (Micale). These two characteristics may seem mutually exclusive; we tend to think of simple as small, and as such have difficulty imagining how a simple and calm nature may be associated with the exhilarating, breath-taking nature of sublimity. Yet these two ideas did merge into one notion of nature; this fusion of the two is what allowed William Wordsworth to write both "Lines...," in which he describes the "sense sublime....deeply interfused" (96-97) in nature, as well as "I wandered lonely as a cloud," wherein he commemorates the simple joy brought on by a "host of golden daffodils" (4). Clearly then, these two views did not result in a division within the collective Romantic conscious whereby a few of the Romantics saw nature in one way, while the rest saw it in the other.

Perhaps what helped in fusing them in the Romantic conscious was the way both of these alternate attributes - simplicity and sublimity - relate nature to divinity in a complex way. In the Romantic view of nature as sublime, it's superiority to mankind demonstrates that nature is an aspect of God: bigger, better and beyond humanity. Wordsworth's "Lines..." which takes place at an abbey which is never mentioned, implying that nature itself is the abbey, the very home of religion, strongly implies this relation between God and sublime nature. Another strong case in point is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In this poem, the all-encompassing force of nature, consisting of "a hot and copper sky" (111), the "broad bright Sun" (174), a "wide wide sea" (232), and
the elements rain, wind and snow, serve to either punish or reward the ancient mariner in accordance with his sins or good deeds; in other words, nature in the poem is Providence, the manifestation of God's will on earth.

The relation between divinity and the simplicity of nature, on the other hand, has to do with the fact that nature is the creation, the masterpiece, of God. It needs no improvements, such as those prescribed by industrialization and rationalism, to complicate it, because it is God's work, and therefore already perfect. This concept is conveyed very clearly in the work "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen. In this modern fairy tale, a boy named Kay gets in his eyes a shard of glass from a mirror which has the power to distort reality, making "the most beautiful landscapes [look] like boiled spinach." The mirror is the product of a demon, and in the story symbolizes the rationalism of the Enlightenment (Cooper): after Kay is taken over by it, he recites mathematics in place of prayers and seeks perfection with a magnifying glass. Most significantly to the understanding of Romantic ideas, he rejects roses, a symbol of divine love in the story, because they are flawed, being "cankered [and]...quite crooked." The protagonist of the story, a little girl named Gerda, on the other hand, untainted by the demon's glass, continues to love roses as ever despite their imperfection. As such, as she journeys to save Kay, robbers and royalty alike strive to help her, and angels form out of the steam of her breath as she prays! The story is a dense metaphor which conveys the Romantic notion that a simple approach to nature, such as that assumed by a child, which doesn't seek flaws in nature to be fixed, as the Enlightenment does, brings one closer to God.

There is another key element in the linking of the simplicity of nature with divinity, and it can be seen in the cover illustration of William Blake's Songs of Innocence. It takes merely a glance at the illustration - which includes the pastoral image of a piper, branches laden with fruit winding across the page, and the concealment of a snake in the shadow of the tree - to ascertain that the simplicity of nature was also connected to the Garden of Eden, an idealized past in a natural setting, closer to God. Thus, analogous to how Blake sets up a dichotomy between experience and innocence, Romantics in general set up the dichotomy between the city life as spiritually impure and the simple, rustic life as divine. As Jeffrey Foss states in his work, Beyond Environmentalism: a Philosophy of Nature, the Romantics had a sense of mankind having lost their hold on perfection (211). We had achieved this loss by way of knowledge - by defiance and impatience towards the natural ways - as manifest in the science behind industrialization and rationalism; therefore the only way to repent, and regain that ideal state of happiness of earlier times, was to reject technology, and return, as Foss described "to our state of original innocence" (211), which included living the rural life. Nature, in its purest form, then, was a paradise akin to the "ancient trees" (Blake 5) of Eden described in "And did those feet." This analogy between nature and the Garden of Eden is clearly spiritual in nature; it directly refers to Christian beliefs, and therefore further explains the connection made between the simplicity of nature and God.

Consider the way the world was heading until the Romantics came along: understanding nature by system of reason, manipulating and controlling it by way of science - these were generally unquestioned objectives throughout Europe. Romantics rose up against these trends in a movement that would later be termed "return to nature." In nature, they saw the sublimity of an essence that was far greater than humanity, and that would assert its force upon the hubris of mankind, as in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias." They also saw in nature the peace of uncrowded paths and smokeless skies, the purity of a time before the application of reason had blasted human life into a thousand complications. Above all, however, they felt nature as something sacred. We can try to understand this by analyzing the preconditions that birthed Romanticism and picking out the details in the poems which might give a clue as to why the writers felt a divine connection with nature, but perhaps there is a better way: "behold/A rainbow in the sky" (1-2) as William Wordsworth wrote in "My heart leaps up," and you may sense that "natural piety" (9) which was at the heart of Romanticism.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Andersen, Hans Christian. "The Snow Queen." Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Project Gutenberg. Web. 10 Apr 2010.

Blake, William. "And did those feet." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 123-124. --- "Introduction." Songs of Experience. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 87. --- Title page for Songs of Innocence. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 82.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 430-446.

Martin, John. Manfred on the Jungfrau. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: C6

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Émile.1762. Project Gutenberg. Web. 10 Apr 2010.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 768.

Turner, J.M.W. Interior of Tintern Abbey. Victoria & Albert Museum. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: C4

Wordsworth, William. "I wandered lonely as a cloud." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 305-306. --- "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey..." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 258-262. --- "My heart leaps up." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D:306. --- "Preface to Lyrical Ballads." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 263-274. --- "The Tables Turned." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. D: 251-252.


SECONDARY SOURCES

Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticism. Ed. Henry Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Google Books. 10 Apr 2010 .

Cooper, Susan. Class Lecture on Modern Fairytales. ENG2110: Children's Literature. University of Ottawa, Ontario, CA. 30 Jan 2010.

Foss, Jeffrey E. Beyond Environmentalism: a philosophy of nature. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2006. Google Books. 10 Apr 2010 .

Micale, Mark S. "Romanticism." Europe 1789-1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire. Ed. John Merriman and Jay Winter. Vol. 4. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 2026-2033. Gale Virtual Reference Library.