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.

The Victorious, Threshold Existence: An Interpretation of the Liminal Space Between Life and Death in a Selection of Romantic Poets

            Within the collective Romantic conscience – as within the human conscience – there is a keen awareness of death; one finds this manifest in many poems of the era, among them Byron's “Prometheus,” Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale.” While these three poems touch on the theme in varying degrees of subtlety, one finds in all three alike the uniquely Romantic association of death with poetry. At the heart of each poem is a poet-figure who experiences or has experienced death and continues to desire it or cannot help but to be drawn to it. Within that symbolic attraction to death is the Romantic longing to transcend material life and its condition of suffering. As the three poems demonstrate, poetry functions as death in life, allowing the poet to escape his earthly existence. Necessarily, however, the transcendence akin to death, through poetry, is temporary, because the poet – being alive, though drawn toward death – exists on the threshold between the two. “Prometheus,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Ode to a Nightingale” suggest, ultimately, that the poet's art depends on his or her existence upon the threshold between life and death, waking and sleeping, mortality and immortality; it is within that liminal space that poetry is generated.

            Each of these poems revolves around a central character who is representative of the

Thanabalasingam  2

poet-figure. This is clearest in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” where the mariner of the title has the characteristic quality of a poet: “strange power of speech” (587). Like a bard, he wanders “from land to land” (586), sharing his story. Early in the poem, the wedding guest describes him as a “loon” (11), but the mariner's madness – the “agony.../[wherein the] heart within [him] burns” (583-585) –, as indicated by the fact that it always precedes an instance of storytelling, is, indeed, creative genius, “a poet's extacy” (Scott 90), as Sir Walter Scott elsewhere calls it. The mariner is, then, quite clearly a poet-figure. The poet-figure of Keats's poem is equally clear as being the speaker himself, not least because of the indicative, intimate first-person narrative. (Of course, one must be wary when claiming that the speaker of a poem is the poet him- or herself, but in works of the Romantic era – a period which saw the development and popularity of the personal, lyric genre – it is, arguably, safe for one to assume, excepting obvious reasons for doubt, that the persona and the poet are aligned.) Further proof that the speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale” is indeed a poet is the fact that the character successfully makes use of “the viewless wings of Poesy” (33).  The speaker, then, must be a poet, or at least capable of poetry. Prometheus, though more subtly, also represents a poet, particularly in his role as both an outsider and an insider to humankind. In Wordsworth's “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth outlines this as characteristic of the poet: the poet “is a man speaking to men...who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind” (603). In other words, the poet, in the Romantic conception, is exceptional, his nature beyond what is typical in terms of human nature – thus he stands outside of humanity – and yet he is deeply aware of human nature; the poet is at once, then, within and without, part of and yet separate from the collective human body. Prometheus fits this conception of the poet. He is a markedly isolated being, placed at the “world's-end region.../[in the]...trackless wilderness” (1-2) as Strength says at the beginning of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, and chained, as Hephaestus further indicates in the play, to a “lone peak aloof, by no voice cheered” (21). Despite his extreme separation from others, however, Prometheus, like a poet, “the sufferings of mortality/[sees] in their sad reality” (Byron 2-3). Moreover, like a poet, who, as Wordsworth further details, must have the ultimate aim of leaving his audience “in some degree enlightened” (598), Prometheus seeks to “strengthen Man with his own mind” (Byron 38). Thus, at the core of each of the three poems in question, we are presented with an image of the poet-figure: the mariner in Coleridge’s piece, the speaker-poet (possibly Keats himself) in “Ode to a Nightingale”, and Prometheus in Byron's poem.

            Each of these poet-figures has experienced death. The mariner's journey, following his shooting of the albatross, can be interpreted, for instance, as a reiteration of the descent into hell mytheme. Things deaden – “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down” (107) – and appear to decompose – “slimy things did crawl with legs/Upon the slimy sea” (125-126). Later, the mariner remarks “that God himself/Scarce seemed...to be” (599-600) with him during his experiences on the sea. Such lines suggest that the mariner has made a journey to and back from death; this interpretation is strengthened by the mariner's description of himself shortly after the albatross has fallen off his neck and he has managed to sleep: “I thought that I had died in sleep,/And was a blessed ghost” (307-308). The speaker-poet in Keats's piece also experiences death, at the very beginning of the poem, when he states that he feels “as though of hemlock [he] had drunk/...and Lethe-wards had sunk” (2-4) – hemlock, of course, being a poison, and Lethe being one of the rivers of Hades. If we accept that the speaker and the author are one in the same, furthermore, we may add that the poet has experienced death of a literal sort: as the editors' notes to the poem state, “Keats's brother Tom, wasted by tuberculosis, had died the preceding winter” (Stillinger and Lynch 903n7). Prometheus's experience with death (as he is immortal) is, again, subtle but evident: his fate is that of eternal punishment. Much like Sisyphus, doomed to roll a boulder up a hill each day only to have it roll back down by the next, Prometheus suffers his liver to be eaten and regenerated daily. Dr. Dominic Manganiello has noted, in discussions of literary modernism, that one of the defining characteristics of hell is hopelessness, often portrayed in modern literature through images of pointless repetition. Prometheus's fate, like Sisyphus's, is one of hopeless repetition, the only substantial difference between the two mythological characters being that Sisyphus's punishment takes place in Tartarus, while Prometheus is not placed in Hades. As far as hellishness goes, however, Prometheus's life is just as hellish as the lives of those in Tartarus; to this extent, one might say that he, too, has effectively experienced what it is to be dead, even though he is immortal.

            The poet-figures in these three poems have not only experienced death but continue to do so – indeed, they seem to want death. The mariner, for example, relives his descent into hell each time he retells his story, the image of his “glittering eye” (3) as he speaks connecting him to the dead men, whose “eyes/...in the Moon did glitter” (437). This reliving of his experience of death is a relief to the mariner, a confessional release of sorts, as is indicated by what happens to the mariner when he is able to tell his tale to the hermit:

                        Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched

                        With a woeful agony,

                        Which forced me to begin my tale;

                        And then it left me free.

                        Since then, at an uncertain hour,

                        The agony returns:

                        And till my ghastly tale is told,

                        This heart within me burns. (578-585)

Keats, as well, recognizes “easeful death” (52) as an escape or release, and in this regard, yearns for it: “That I might...leave the world unseen,/...dissolve, and quite forget/...leaden-eyed despairs” (19-28). What can this desire for death mean? From where does it stem?

            To answer this, we must first understand the Romantic desire not to desire. In his essay “Heroic Victimhood: 'Prometheus' and 'The Prisoner of Chillon,'” Dr. Ian Dennis makes this observation of “Prometheus”: “genuine power...lies with those who can most persuasively demonstrate indifference,...[those] who can betray less desire” (97). In Dr. Dennis's analysis, Prometheus prevails over the tyrannous Zeus precisely through his passivity, his lack of desire, which in the face of Zeus's oppression and torture of him – a torture which “demonstrates...the victim's irresistible attraction for the torturer” (99) – manages to invert the structure of power, such that “the once omni-potent hand holding the lightning bolt 'trembles'” (98). Dr. Dennis gives a nod to the idea that “the ability to resist the attraction of the other...is connected to the transcendence of spirit or mind over materiality” (98).

            Let me expand on this intriguing interpretation. In Romanticism is a belief in a transcendence which is, essentially, a blessed loss, denial or negation of the individual self. One sees this time and again in Romantic literature. To quote a famous example from “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth describes the transcendence attained through observation and remembrance of nature thus:

                        The breath of this corporeal frame,

                        And even the motion of our human blood [is]

                        Almost suspended, [and] we are laid asleep

                        In body, and become a living soul:

                        While with an eye made quiet by the power

                        Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

                        We see into the life of things. (44-50)

Transcendence, then, is to lose one's self, to become unconscious (as if “laid asleep”), and in the becoming unconscious to become conscious and perfectly aligned with “the life of things,” some essence Coleridge in another poem, “The Eolian Harp,” calls “At once the Soul of each, and God of All” (48). There are, in this view of transcendence, in addition to classical elements, notable undercurrents of Eastern philosophical thought – of which, according to Norton Topics Online, there was an influx in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century – in line with the orientalism of the Romantic age. In particular, the Romantic view of transcendence is alike to the Buddhist concept of nirvana. Nirvana, from Sanskrit meaning “to blow out,” is the ultimate goal of Buddhism: the cessation of the cycle of reincarnation. Buddhists seek nirvana because, like Keats, they are keenly aware that earthly life is, inevitably, “weariness...fever...and the fret” (Keats 23). According to Richard Hayes in his article on Buddhism, in “Buddhist doctrine, the...cause of rebirth is simply the desire to continue existing” (620). Because of this, Buddhists seek detachment from people, places, and things – they view attachment to earthly entities as underlying the desire to continue existing; Siddhartha Gautama himself, as Buddhism recounts his life, had to step out of his luxurious existence as a prince – leaving behind his wife, his child, his palaces and riches – in order to become the enlightened Buddha. Buddhism then seeks to transcend suffering by denying desire, with a goal to finally deny life itself – just as, in “Prometheus,” the denial of desire – at its epitome, the ability “not to want life” (Dennis 99) – is what allows the titan to transcend his situation as a victim. In this sense, “Death [is] a Victory” (Byron 59): as the ultimate form of passivity, the complete cessation of the self's desires, death is the ultimate transcendence.

            Although, as I have argued, the Romantic notion of transcendence through death is aligned with Buddhist thought, it is also linked with Christian ideas of the Fall and expresses a desire to return to a prelapsarian state of unity and happiness. One very significant similarity between “Prometheus,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the depiction of suffering that each poem provides. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” for example, the mariner's killing of the albatross may be interpreted as the original sin which brings about the providential vengeance by his natural environment. The mariner, through his transgression, creates a state of suffering – a state of loneliness and alienation, unquenchable thirst, fear, uncertainty, and guilt – in a parallel to the story of the Fall, as outlined in the third chapter of the Genesis, in which the original sin evicts God's punishment: pain, suffering, and a life of toil outside of Eden (Authorized Version Bible, Genesis 3:16-23). Taking the role of humanity, the mariner must continually repent for this original sin. Death, then, comes to represent his ultimate absolution and freedom from the earthly life of suffering; as a symbol of God's forgiveness of transgression, death represents the return to the former ideal state, a state without suffering. Similarly, in “Ode to a Nightingale,” the poet's symbolic death depicts him as escaping human suffering and uniting with the world of the “immortal Bird” (61), a natural and purely happy world from which the speaker-poet is disconnected. Death, which is transcendence, in these and other Romantic poems, is seen, then, by the poet as a re-entrance into an Edenic existence from which he or she, along with all of humanity, has been evicted. If, as Wordsworth says in “Ode (there was a time),” “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” (58), death is likewise envisioned as the reversal of that process, a return to “God, who is our home” (“Ode” 65).

            But here is the problem for the central, poet-figures in “Prometheus,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Ode to a Nightingale”: simply, they are not dead. In fact, they each exist between life and death. Prometheus is immortal, though he faces mortal suffering. The mariner, though his “body dropt not down” (230) when those of his shipmates did, is an image of death: unnaturally old – “ancient” – with a “skinny hand” like a skeleton, he himself admits he feels like a “ghost” (307), and his travelling “like night” (586) highlights this ghost-like quality. The speaker-poet in “Ode to a Nightingale” similarly has moments of “embalmed darkness” (43), in which he feels as though he is dead, but he is always called back to his “sole self” (72), reminded that he is of the living, knowledgeable of “what [the bird] among the leaves hast never known” (22). Thus, the poet figure is not an enlightened being: he has not completely transcended his mortal existence, but lives in a gray area between life and death, materiality and transcendence of material existence.

            Significantly, however, this is not an utter failure, for as each of these poems insists, there is value in the liminal existence of the poet: it is in that threshold existence that poetry is created. Consider, for example, the mariner: his bard-like vocation is a result of his fluctuating between life and death: whenever he is seized by the experience of death – whenever, that is, the story of his suffering, patterned into the symbolic descent into hell, rears itself in his mind – he enters a moment of ecstasy in which he appears a “'greybeard loon'” (11). Creative inspiration for the mariner is like death in that, in moments of creative genius, as in death, he transcends materiality, forgetting himself in a trancelike state that will not lift until his “ghastly tale is told” (584). Keats's speaker-poet's experience of creativity is much the same. It is no coincidence that the nightingale, the symbol of the speaker's inspiration, is said to sing in “full-throated ease” (10), when death is also described as “easeful” (52). As with the mariner, the speaker’s poetic inspiration is likened to death: the bird's song and the death-like feeling of “numbness” (1) it evokes can be recreated by the poet through “Poesy” (33). Let us consider, for a moment, what the case would be if the mariner and the speaker-poet were to fully transcend, through death. For the mariner, as argued above, this would signify absolution of his original sin, a return to a state in which there is no need for penance; however, without the guilt or memory of that sin to agonize him and cause him to continually repent, there would be no storytelling. Thus it is in the suffering state, being alive and yet aware of and informed by death, and, in some ways, himself dead, that the poet-figure of the mariner derives his creative genius. Likewise, if Keats were a transcended being - either in being dead, or in being a nightingale, which, as an “immortal Bird,” is the symbolic pinnacle in this poem of transcendence - there would simply be no “Ode to a Nightingale.” As the poet himself says, it is his being “half in love with easeful Death” (52) which creates his “mused rhyme” (53). The ode's poetic power and resonance is in the poet's fluctuation between the transcendent, deathlike state of imagination and true life “where but to think is to be full of sorrow” (27), between the “vision [and the]...waking dream” (79). These poems suggest, then, that it is necessary for poetry that the poet is not a completely transcendent being, for poetry depends on the fluctuation contained in a liminal existence – indeed, poetry depends on those desires which transcendence eradicates – namely, the desire for transcendence.

            I believe, as does Byron, that Prometheus is the very model of a poet in the Romantic conception. He is characterized by his eternal suffering – which is to say, by the liminal existence between immortality and mortality, life and death. Because of his connection to life, he is denied “the boon to die” (23) – denied the ability, that is, to become completely passive and thereby transcendent, a poet achieves moments of inspiration, Prometheus approaches complete passivity and a symbolic death in an eradication of desire. One must note, however, that he does not – cannot – achieve a complete erasure of his self and desires, which is transcendence and death. Indeed, it is in his “patient energy” (40), his passivized existence – as opposed to the absence of energy that is non-existence – that the titan is formidable.

            The association between death and art is surprisingly insistent in Romantic literature. This may be because the Romantics were intensely focused on the image of the Fall of man; they saw human existence as a Fallen condition, and, as such, were preoccupied with the issue of transcendence: how to return to the prelapsarian ideal of life and thought. Death is symbolically envisioned as a return to nature, God, inner and outer peace; and poetry, furthermore, is associated with death because, like death, the poetic mind is a gateway to transcendence. But the Romantics recognize the interdependence of life and death, sleep and waking, joy and sorrow; Romantic poetry demonstrates an understanding that poetry, while it depends on the death-like moment of transcendent inspiration, equally depends upon its grounding in life. Thus, the Romantics, while depicting death as a symbolically transcendent state, demonstrate an implicit appreciation of the liminal space between death and life which poets and non-poets inhabit, in which creativity is derived. As Byron states, “Death [is] a victory” (59) – it is transcendence – but, as “Prometheus,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Ode to a Nightingale” (among countless other Romantic poems) demonstrate, there is victory in the suffering as well.

SOURCES

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Trans. Robert Whitelaw. Fifteen Greek Plays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. 2-32.

Authorized Version Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Byron, George Gordon. “Prometheus.” The Selected Poetry of Lord Byron. Digireads.com             publishing: 2009.190-191. Google Books. Web. Mar 29 2012.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Eolian Harp.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8^th ed. Vol. D. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 426-427.

---. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8^th ed. Vol. D. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 430-446.

Dennis, Ian. “Heroic Victimhood: 'Prometheus' and 'The Prisoner of Chillon.'” Lord Byron and the History of Desire. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009. 95-108.

Hayes, Richard. “Nirvana.” Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2^nd ed. Vol. 6. Ed. Donald M. Borchert. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. 620-622. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. Apr 14 2012.

Keats, John. “Ode to a Nightingale.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8^th ed. Vol. D.Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 426-427. 903-905.

Manganiello, Dominic. Class Lecture. ENG3320: Modern British Literature. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON. Jan 23 2012.

“Romantic Orientalism: Overview.” Norton Topics Online. W.W. Norton and Company. Web. Apr 6 2012.

Scott, Walter. “The Lay of the Last Minstrels.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8^thed. Vol. D. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 407-410.

Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” William Wordsworth: The Major Works. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2008. 131-135.

---. “Ode ('There was a time,').” William Wordsworth: The Major Works. NewYork: Oxford            University Press, 2008. 297-302.

---. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” William Wordsworth: The Major Works. NewYork: Oxford          University Press, 2008. 595-615.

The Problem With Language in Avison's "Butterfly Bones"

From the onset of “Butterfly Bones,” Margaret Avison likens the act of writing a sonnet to that of capturing a butterfly, and both of these she marks, further, as destructive processes: "The cyanide jar seals life, as sonnets move/towards final stiffness" (1-2). This association between sonnet-writing and death is carried through to the end. The poem is indeed a “sonnet against sonnets.”

                Avison's criticism of the sonnet stems, in part, because it is a fixed form. By comparing sonnet-writing to the capturing, killing, and mounting of butterflies for display in museums, she indicates that the art of sonnets is a science, requiring "skill,...patience,...learning,...[and] precision" (5-8). The writing of a sonnet, that is, depends necessarily on rationality, as opposed, perhaps, to the free-flow of emotions that has been lauded in art since at least the Romantic era, during which time Wordsworth wrote, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (273). The primary concern of the sonneteer is form, order, and structure - a methodical concern which Avison criticizes.

                In this light, we come to the concluding couplet which contains the rhetorical question "Might sheened and rigid trophies strike men blind/like Adam's lexicon locked in the mind?" (13-14). One might read this as Avison further denouncing sonnets (those "rigid trophies") in favour of more natural forms of poetic expression ("Adam's lexicon" being the most primitive and untampered human language). The question may then be paraphrased thus: Can sonnets have as much of an effect on their readers as unaltered forms of poetry do? The answer, we are led to believe, is negative; just as "shivery wings" (10) are more real, more engaging, than "museum spectres" (9), so too would a poem not forcefully fixed into a preconceived form have more power than one which is – namely, a sonnet.

                However, Avison's diction in the final line can equally lead to an alternate interpretation. Specifically, that she writes "Adam's lexicon [is] locked in the mind" in a poem which criticizes things being sealed (line 1), "cased" (2), and fixed (line 7) brings to mind the question of whether even the most unsophisticated, unformulated poem is truly any more effective than a sonnet.

                I am reminded of the linguistic concept of the sign, developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. The model is as follows: the sign - or the word - is like a coin; on one side is the signifier - ie. the phonemes which make up the word - and on the other is the signified - ie. the idea that is evoked by the word (Barrie). For example, when one says the word "elephant," the pronunciation of it (as e-luh-fuhnt) is the signifier, and the idea one has in their mind (of a big, gray, four-legged animal) when they hear or speak the word is the signified. What the sign must inevitably exclude is called the referent: the actual object to which the word refers (Barrie). There may very likely be a million things regarding the elephant that a word for it either does not or can not convey. Thus, while language may capture an idea of a thing, it can never, ever convey the entirety of it.

                Avison compares writing a sonnet to capturing a butterfly. However, in capturing a butterfly, one kills it. Even as one looks at a butterfly pinned to a corkbord and thinks to oneself, this is a butterfly, there is that disjunction between what has been captured and what actually was - the creature that lived and existed freely. Similarly, what a sonnet captures is not the truth of that captured thing. In the concluding couplet, Avison seems to suggest that this is not an issue of sonnets in particular, but an issue of language itself.

                Language is one of few things that set homo sapiens apart; it is a biological function "locked in the mind" (14) and deeply interfused with other cognitive capacities which make us unique. We are rational creatures and we will always endeavour to understand and communicate what we see and know of the world - but inevitably, Avison suggests, we are doomed to fail because language cannot possibly convey the truth of that to which it refers, ie. reality. In attempting to capture and observe a butterfly - a thought, or an emotion - we are doomed to be left always with the "bones" - the exoskeleton, a mere shell - and never the essence. 

SOURCES

Avison, Margaret. “Butterfly Bones, or a Sonnet Against Sonnets.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in          English. Eds. Donna Bennett and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 553. Print.

Barrie, Michael. Introduction Lecture. LIN1310 Introduction to Linguistics I: Words and Utterances. University of Ottawa. Ottawa, 6 January 2010.

Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. 8th ed. Vol. D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 263-274. Print. 

The Duties of Adulthood - a Brief Analysis of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty"

Upon first reading, “Ode to Duty” seems to conflict with the understood views of its author: it is difficult to attribute an appraisal of duty to a man who is well-known for lauding “the spontaneous overflow of emotion” (“Preface” 598) – spontaneity and duty seem at odds. However, upon closer consideration of the poem, one finds that Wordsworth does not necessarily suggest “duty” to be the adherence and conformity to an established religious or societal code, as one might understand the word today. Rather, “duty,” as Wordsworth describes, is a conscious devotion to the very things readers have overtime come to associate with him: childlike hope, joy, and an alignment with the natural world.

            The connection between Duty and nature is clear in the seventh stanza of the poem, where the speaker recognizes Duty's hand in all the natural world about him, from the flowers up to the stars. He connects Duty, furthermore, to divinity, naming her “the Godhead's most benignant grace” (50); the implication is, then, that the ordering of nature, maintained by Duty, is a reflection of God's will and benediction. This view is not unlike the view the child takes of nature, as Wordsworth describes in “Ode (‘There was a time’)”: “The earth.../To me did seem/Apparelled in celestial light” (2-4). In both cases, nature is recognized as infused with divinity. The difference between the child's view of nature, as remembered in “Ode,” and the adult's view, as expressed in “Ode to Duty,” is that, to the child, the world merely “did seem” heavenly. The adult speaker of “Ode to Duty,” on the other hand, recognizes that the natural world is heavenly because it is ordered on a set of natural laws which have their source in “the most Ancient Heavens” (“Duty” 56), which state, for example, that flowers shall bloom and “laugh” (“Duty” 53) or that stars shall be fixed in their positions. In other words, the child, in his interactions with nature, is filled with awe and thus implicitly aware of nature's divine source; the adult explicitly recognizes a government in nature, which he personifies as Duty, the “Daughter of the Voice of God” (“Duty” 1).

            In writing an “Ode to Duty,” then, Wordsworth is in part writing an ode to adulthood and “the philosophic [or, in other words, thoughtful] mind” (“Ode” 189) which consciously takes up what the child unconsciously carries out – that is, duty. In the poem in question, “Ode to Duty,” Wordsworth writes, “Youth/...without reproach or blot/...do thy work, and know it not” (12-14), indicating that Duty is not societal or religious conventionality or conformity – those are not things which children, purely in being children, adhere to. Thus, though he gives himself to Duty's “controul” (“Duty” 35), we may know that Wordsworth has not given up his childhood ideals; rather he has re-committed himself to them. As an adult, however, who can no longer “rely/Upon the genial sense of youth” (“Duty” 11-12), Wordsworth must consciously dedicate himself to Duty “in the quietness of thought” (“Duty” 36); that is, he must employ the “philosophic mind” (“Ode” 189) of his adulthood to dedicate himself, again, to the duties of his childhood years.

            Then, of course, the final question is that of his exact duties: what are they? What is a child's duty but to be carefree? As it turns out, this is precisely what Duty provides: freedom from “strife and from despair” (8). The poem suggests that children are free of “despair” because they are hopeful by nature:  they are the “blessed” (21) who “entertain” (22) a belief that “Serene will be our days and bright/And happy will our nature be” (17-18) – that is, a belief in a pleasant future. Because they have no doubts of “love” (23) or “joy” (24), children may “live in the spirit” (23) of faith. Adults, on the other hand, because they are aware that things “press/ Upon...present happiness” (29-30), must consciously “find that other strength” (24). That is, they must wilfully take up the duty to be faithful and thus free from “strife and despair” (8).

            As I have said, the duty to be hopeful and happy, which adults must undertake, is unconsciously performed by children. That is not to say, however, that the poet is unaware of duties particular to adulthood. In the middle of the poem, he at length discusses the concept of will in accepting one's duties; it is important to Wordsworth to clarify that he “still [acts] according to the voice/Of [his] own wish” (42-43). Thus the poem indicates that, as an adult consciously aware of him or herself, one has the duty to reconcile one's actions with one's desires and needs – that is, to be true to one's self. Again, children are, by nature, true to themselves; it is as they grow slowly into adults and take up, as Wordsworth writes in “Ode,” the “vocation/[of] endless imitation” (106-107), that it becomes a conscious duty to maintain individuality and free will. Thus, even in consciously exercising free will as an adult, one is merely continuing the work of the child.

            “Ode to Duty,” then, is not discordant with Wordsworth's ideals. Of course, as one might expect, duty is linked to adulthood; in the main, this poem is about the duty of being an adult, of taking responsibility through “the quietness of thought” (36). However, the responsibilities which Wordsworth outlines are essentially synonymous with the duties of a child; like the child, the adult has a duty to be free of “strife and from despair” (8), to live in hope, and to be true to one's self. However, while the child could carry out these duties and “know it not” (14), the adult is inevitably aware of himself and his actions. This does not much change things. Ultimately the adult's true duty is to consciously, thoughtfully, and wilfully do that which he had done unconsciously since birth and as a child. 

SOURCES

Wordsworth, William. “Ode (‘There was a time’).” The Major Works. Oxford: World’s Classics, 2000. 297-302. Print.

---. “Ode to Duty.” The Major Works. Oxford: World’s Classics, 2000. 295-297. Print.

---. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Major Works. Oxford: World’s Classics, 200. 595-615. Print. 

Vaguest Gleanings Merely - the dual-voiced persona and its quest for meaning in Reaney's "Starling with a Split Tongue"

As its title suggests, “Starling with a Split Tongue” concerns itself with speech (the figurative tongue) as well as the concept of a single, twofold object (the literal split tongue). Appropriately, then, the speaker that Reaney creates is a dual-voiced persona. One intuits, as one reads the poem, marked shifts in the voice: the first of these arrives shortly after the first stanza, and the second (which re-establishes the voice used in the first stanza) comes shortly before the last stanza. What these separate voices present in and of themselves, and what they symbolize in contrast to and in conjunction with the other, is the topic of this paper.

                The poem begins on a negative note, with a description of a cruel act: boys capturing and cutting the tongue of a bird, and then cooping him in a “cage” (5). The tone employed by the speaker  is matter-of-fact, as though the bird is resigned to his bleak fate and apparent lack of agency as represented in the fact that he merely repeats what “passersby taught” (8). By the end of the stanza, this negativity and resignation has intensified as the speaker settles on the thought of the utter emptiness of his speech: “Though I pray I do not pray/Though I curse I do not curse/Though I talk I do not talk” (10-12). The repetitive structure of these lines gives the voice, as it speaks of the meaninglessness of the things it says, the ring of conclusive certainty. Yet even as the persona within the poem resolves himself to the idea that his words are meaningless, the poet unexpectedly establishes a hope: that one can “talk [but]... not talk...[is] 'kinda nice'” (12-13).

                This hopeful transition leads into the second voice - a voice which, following the first voice's accedence to a belief in hollow utterances – speaks with a resulting abandon of language altogether. This second voice is hardly coherent: it speaks openly in a double voice, as suggested by the structuring of the poem upon the page; it verbalizes nouns (18), and nominalizes articles (15) and prepositions (24); it establishes unlikely comparisons such as “As still as infinitives were the Stones” (28). I am tempted to say that this voice says nothing meaningful at all – and yet I am (and I suspect this was Reaney's objective) engaged by this voice which at first glance defies logical language; that is, my creativity is engaged, and sometimes succeeds, in establishing meaning in the apparent meaninglessness. For example, as unusual as the metaphor of line 28 is, the reader can perceive meaning: infinitives are indeed “still”; the action of an infinitive (i.e. untensed) verb is not done; therefore, no motion takes place.

                Meaning is, however, incontestably vague in the third, fifth, and sixth stanza - perhaps that is both the point and beside the point. The voice which speaks in these passages is not at all concerned with making sense since the speaker, in the first stanza, has already resolved himself to the idea that speech is meaningless. Thus the vagueness is the point of these stanzas: the poet has purposefully established it as resulting from the speaker's abandon of language. Having abandoned the conception of meaning in speech, however, the speaker has liberated himself. He is no longer trapped “in a phrenological cage/...[saying]/The cracklewords passersby taught” (5-7), but creating utterly new, unconventional expressions. He is playing with language and, fascinatingly, the readers are compelled to play with it as well – that is, to engage creatively in interpreting the text. The vagueness in meaning of these stanzas is thus beside the point: what is of more interest is the process of pure creativity within the mind of the speaker/writer as well as the interpreter.

                Now, that is a rather positive observance for a poem to make, but Reaney does not choose to end his piece there, but shifts back into the persona of the speaker's first voice, which has now turned to questioning higher powers about why tongues, and hands, and hearts are split. (We can be sure that this is, indeed, the first voice: the mention of jackknives recalls the poem's introduction; furthermore, the poem is physically structured such that it no longer suggests the double-voice embraced in the middle stanzas; the most obvious indicator, of course, is that the speaker is coherent again!).

                By thus reminding his readers of that first voice, Reaney suggests the split nature of his speaker: he is the creature trapped within the “cage” (5) of things he is taught, yearning for meaning but perceiving naught but lies in both “mask” and “face” (40-41), attempting to resign himself to a stoic belief in meaninglessness but ever “restless” (43) and questioning “Giant Jackknife in the sky” (39); at other times, he is a being at liberty, freed from the constraints of language because he expects nothing of it, and thus freed, able to create fresh meaning. These are, of course, contradictory personas: the one yearns for meaning in speech and does not find it; the other does not seek meaning but inadvertently creates it through language. At the same time, the two personas are deeply fused, for it is the starling's initial abandonment of language that allows him to spring into his free, creative alter-ego; that creative alter-ego would not exist without the ego which is ever giving up on finding meaning in language.

                “Starling with a Split Tongue” is a fascinating but obscure poem that stubbornly resists interpretation. It is, to summarize as briefly as possible, about the condition of being a split entity. Furthermore, it regards the question of how to make language meaningful. At the core of this poem (figuratively and literally), Reaney presents the notions of creation and interpretation of creation, both of which are playful and imaginative, fundamentally alike. By the end, when the starling asks “In the larger garage.../Do they not croak as I?” (46-47), there is, then, a hint that the “larger garage” refers to the world outside the poem, that “they” refers to us (the readers), and that we – starling/poet and the readers – are all a part of this croaking, this deep desire for meaning. But of course, by the last lines, we are, literally and figuratively, away from the heart of the poem where freshest meaning is created. Thus, meaning is elusive; as we attempt to grasp it, it evades us, and when it comes, it comes in vaguest gleanings merely – much like understanding of this poem.



SOURCE

Reaney, James. “Starling with a Split Tongue.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 626-627. Print.