Ah, Why Should Life All Labor Be?: Idleness and Death in the Work of Tennyson

This semester, so far, we have focused a considerable amount of time on the discussion of Work in Victorian writing and culture. I found myself thinking this week that there surely must be other subjects to write about; however, I just could not tear myself away from it. Like so many good Victorians, I find myself bound to contemplate Work. This week, I will focus on two of Tennyson’s poems, “The Lotos-Eaters” and “The Lady of Shalott,” and argue that rest and seeking happiness outside of work are treated as pure idleness, which results in death.

Both poems are narratives that tell the story of their respective characters’ downfalls at the hands of searching for something outside of labor and there are many similarities between the two. They both open with descriptions of the landscape, and both specifically describe rivers. In “The Lady of Shalott,” the river contains the island that the Lady resides on and flows to Camelot (1114). It serves two major symbolic functions. Tennyson describes the river thus: “Little breezes dusk and shiver / Through the wave that runs forever / By the island in the river / Flowing down to Camelot” (1.11-4). The river is eternal; it “runs forever,” symbolizing eternal nature of the Lady’s work since she is surrounded by it. It also runs parallel to the road that leads to Camelot where the Lady watches in her mirror “Sometimes a troop of damsels glad / An abbot on an ambling pad / Sometimes a curly shepherd lad / Or long-hared page in crimson clad / Goes by to towered Camelot” (2.55-9). I will examine these characters specifically later, but their connection with the river is that the lady sees them on their way to Camelot while she weaves; therefore, she knows the river leads to Camelot, which is the place she would much rather be. It is what tempts her away from Work. In “The Lotos-Eaters,” the river runs in the opposite direction. The island is described as “A land of streams!” with “the gleaming river seaward flow[ing] / From the inner land” (10, 14-5). In this case, the river is also symbolic in terms of connecting Odysseus’ men with their desires; however, it also serves as a warning to them. It is flowing away from the center of the island, out to sea, toward their home.

Both main characters of these poems are charged with a duty. The Lady must weave “by night and day / A magic web with colors gay” and is certain she will be cursed if she so much as pauses for a break (2.37-8). She watches the outside world in her loom mirror and is envious of the people on their way to Camelot. But close inspection of who she sees reveals a suggestion that those people are working as well. She sees an abbot, a shepherd, and a page all on their way to Camelot, all people with job titles. The troop of damsels perhaps has now business in Camelot; however, the fact that they are damsels suggests that they are young girls perhaps not of laboring age (though in the Victorian, period that would have to be quite young.) She also sees “two young lovers, lately wed” and announces, “‘I am half sick of shadows’” (2.70-1). Her decision to leave is based on seeing Sir Lancelot pass by and hearing him sing. This decision is framed as error because she assumes that she is trapped by her work while everyone outside of Shalott is free. While the people she sees pass by are not physically held by anything, they are still bound to their work. Odysseus’ crew, comparatively, openly questions the validity of labor as more important or necessary than rest. They ask “What pleasure can we have / To war with evil? Is there any peace / In ever climbing up the climbing wave?” (4.93-5). Unlike the Lady, Odysseus crew recognizes that they are choosing death over labor. They ask why they alone should have to work while “All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave / In silence—ripen, fall, and cease” (4.96-7). The crew, because they chose to eat the lotus fruit, is now cursed to accept death over the labor to journey back to Ithaca. The implication is clear: To choose idleness over Duty is to openly choose death.

The Lady’s choice to follow her heart to Lancelot and Camelot is struck down. She becomes a victim, similar to Louisa in Hard Times, of the Victorian call to Duty. Louisa is told by her father to never wonder. Toward the end of the novel, she asks, “Where are the sentiments of my heart?” indicating that she has spent her life not devoted to following her heart but to her Duty as instructed by her father (Dickens 216). The Lady, however, makes the fatal mistake of following her heart in lieu of Duty. As soon as she looks to her heart’s desire, Camelot, and decides to leave, the speaker tells us “The mirror cracked from side to side / ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried / The Lady of Shalott” (3.115-6). Furthermore, even though she knows that she is now cursed, she still makes the attempt to travel to Camelot. She freezes to death on the way there. Her death is mourned; however, Lancelot’s final words, which end the poem, are very telling. He says, “‘God in his mercy lend her grace, / The Lady of Shalott’” implying that she has sinned. Yet the prayer for mercy and grace also imply that there was at least some nobility in the Lady following her heart. Her tragic fate is a result of her ignorance. She does not realize that the people she sees in the mirror are working as well, even though they look like are not. The poem suggests that if she had been able to find the contentment she thought she would find in Camelot in her fulfillment of her duty instead, she would have lived, and she would have been happy.

The crew’s choice to remain on the island is reconciled with no such noble prayer. They openly condemn themselves to death. However, they do attempt to be reconciled in a different way. They point out that in the world outside the island, there are “Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, / Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands,” yet despite all this, people “Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil” (8.160-1, 166). Their argument is that such work is hopeless and worthless in the face of all the horror in the world. Ironically, such work is elevated through their speech. The reader is made to realize that the crew’s position is the one that is in fact hopeless because it simply abandons hope all together. Those who work may do so in vain, to a certain extent, but they are nobler because they do not abandon hope no matter how difficult it may be to fulfill their Duty to Work.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854. Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. “The Lady of Shalott.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1114-8.

—. “The Lotos-Eaters.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1119-23.

J.S. Mill: A Look at Philosophy

I write you all this week from the Oxford Backpacker's Hostel, just half a mile from Oxford University where I'll be attending and presenting a paper at the Sixth Global Conference on Monsters and the Monsterous (for those of you who didn't know.) I apologize for the formatting. This post also cost me £1 so I hope it's worth that! I am actually retyping my paper onto the hostel computer because there's no wireless here. :_( I'm on three hours of sleep, so I hope there are few if any typos, and I apologize for the ones that squeak through.

Mill's _On Liberty_ was an interesting read for me because as I was working through it, I continually came across passages that reminded me of other philosophical texts I've been reading over the last year. I would like to take a look at a few of those and situate Mill in the philosophical conversation, though I use that phrase in the very broadest historical sense. What Mill proposes is essentially continual dialectic in order to arrive at some form of Truth, while at the same time, he describes an Aristotelian rhetoric based on contingent truth and anticipates a conception of truth that does not rest on a central foundation, but rather is based upon multiple centers. Mill may have been of the opinion that Truth could be discovered eventually, as we've discussed in class; however, his essay suggests contradictions.

The dialectic method, founded by Socrates, is essentially a dialogue by which a thesis is proposed, then refuted by an antithesis, and finally the two are sythesized into a new thesis. If this new thesis is not satisfactory, the process is repeated. It can take the form of a series of questions and answers, what we today call the Socratic Method or Socratic Seminar, but I believe what Mill suggests can also function as a dialectic, though he does not use that term explicitly. At the outset of the essay, Mill gives a demonstrative scenario: "If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind" (252); thus calling for the perpetual need for dialectic. If mankind is required to continually hear the opinions of one, this suggests the possibility of no certain truth because there is the possibility that that one dissenting opinion could eventually convince others. Mill goes so far as to call "silencing the expression of an opinion" a " peculiar evil" (252).

What is important in Mill's project of arriving at truth is his constant admission that whatever that Truth is, it cannot remain authoritative. He tells us, "the opinion which it is attempted to suppress to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible" (252). Later, Mill points out the importance of a forensic rhetoric that is able "to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion" (261). Such preparation suggests the possibility that the opposite side could be true. While Socrates and Plato believed in an aboslute Truth, Aristotle argues in _Rhetoric_ for a contingent Truth. Rhetoric, for Aristotle, operates in the realm of the probable and possible. Nothing needs to be proved absolutely to garner belief. Mill, again, essentially makes the same assertion: "There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life" (254). Mill's words are not only situated in the Aristotelian realm of the possible, but they anticipate the accepted uncertainty of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Another way in which Mill anticipates the post-modern attitude is in his brief discussion of worldviews. He begins by pointing out that few people care to recognize the specific ways in which they are fallible whil being willing to admit that they, with everyone else, have faults (253). Jacques Derrida, over one hundred years later, points out in _Of Grammatology_, that one's conception of truth is based on the textuality of one's society--that the world has multiple centers of truth grounded in the grand narratives of individual societies. Mill says essentially the same thing. He points out that for anyone, "the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin" (253). Those "causes," in Derridean terms, are the grand narratives to which an individual's society adheres.

There is no doubt that Mill was a "true Victorian," which I believe can be seen more clearly in the essays which I did not discuss this week; however, I find it fascinating to see the ways in which his essay undercuts the notion of being able to arrive at absolute truth. The notion of dialectical reasoning desires to discover absolute truth, but if the truth discovered is always available for discussion and dissenting opinion, then it will never be absolute.

I'll see you all next week!

Works Cited

Mill, John Stuart. "From On Liberty." Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

Josiah Bounderby: Self-Made Tyrant of Industry

We spoke last week about the ways in which Hard Times is a Carlylean novel. I’d like to examine Josiah Bounderby in terms of Carlyle’s Captain of Industry but at the same time contrast that to a reading of Bounderby in terms of “the self-made man.” Bounderby is clearly the opposite of Carlyle’s ideal industrial leader; however, viewing his character using such a black and white schema leaves him completely two dimensional. As American readers, there is a distinct irony for us found in Bounderby’s character that offsets a strictly Carlylean reading of it. He is seen as a villain in the context of the novel; however, I find it difficult, as an American reader, not to draw parallels between Bounderby and Benjamin Franklin, America’s first “self-made man,” thus creating some level of sympathy for Josiah Bounderby.

Carlyle’s “Captain” is based on a model, which he refers to as “The Feudal Baron” (165). Carlyle tells us that the Baron’s “fruitful enlarged existence included it as a necessity to have men round him who in heart loved him; whose life he watched over with rigour yet with love, who were prepared to give their life for him, if need came” (165). Bounderby embodies the exact opposite of this description. His interactions with Stephen Blackpool serve as the best examples. When Stephen comes to Bounderby’s home seeking personal advice, the narrator notes that, “Stephen made a bow,” and then comments on the bow: “Not a servile one—these Hands will never do that! Lord bless you, Sir [referring to Bounderby], you’ll never catch them at that, if they have been with you for twenty years!” (72). This indicates fully the type of employer Bounderby is. He is not the Captain of Industry or Feudal Baron to whom the workers bow graciously. This one short section of commentary from the narrator alerts us that Bounderby is a contrast to Carlyle’s Captain of Industry.

However, Bounderby’s verbal exchanges with Stephen reveal more dimension in his character than just a simple black and white contrast. Following Stephen’s bow, Bounderby says, “ ‘Now, you know [. . .] we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don’t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of ‘em do!’ ” (72). Bounderby is not interested in the comfort of his workers. He is not interested in hearing complaints of any kind. But this exchange serves mostly to set up the next exchange between Bounderby and Blackpool in which Bounderby demands that Stephen tell him what the worker’s union has been plotting. Near the end of the exchange, Bounderby tells Stephen,

‘Now it is clear to me [. . .] that you are one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about sowing it and raising crops. That’s the business of your life, my friend. [. . .] You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see [. . .] that even your own Union [. . .] will have nothing to do with you. [. . .] I so far go with them for a novelty, that I’ll have nothing to do with you either. [. . .] You can finish off what you’re at, [. . .] and then go elsewhere.’ (150)

Bounderby really does not know Stephen at all as he claims to the first time they speak in the course of the plot. Or Bounderby’s opinion of his workers is simply subject to his mood at the given time. During the first exchange, Bounderby is having lunch, most likely awaiting a response from Gradgrind regarding his marriage proposal to Louisa; whereas, the second time, Bounderby requests to speak to Stephen about a possible plot against him. Whatever the reason, his relationship with Stephen Blackpool demonstrates that, in contrast to the Carlylean “Captain, Bounderby is a terrible employer who not only does not know his workers at all, but doesn’t care to know.

I would like to attempt to examine Bounderby’s motives strictly from his point of view, barring the Carlylean model and looking at the model of Benjamin Franklin. Although Dickens was clearly influenced by Carlyle and there is no indication in the novel that there is a connection between Bounderby’s story and Franklin’s Autobiography, I think as American readers it may be helpful to draw those connections and contrast them with the ways in which Bounderby fits into the Carlylean model. When Bounderby is first introduced, the narrator tells us that he is “A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty” (20). Bounderby continually gives Grandgrind and others reminders of where he came from: “ ‘I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch’ ” (21). Bounderby is, of course, an unsympathetic character not just because he is egotistical, but because he is somewhat ostentatious—he is a blowhard. Benjamin Franklin certainly had to have some level of egotism in writing The Autobiography. Part of being a self-made man is being willing to tell others how it was accomplished, which requires an ego. Bounderby should be, in someways, a more sympathetic character than young Ben Franklin wandering the streets of Philadelphia with nothing but loaves of bread. Franklin wasn’t orphaned like Bounderby. Franklin chose to risk a lifetime of poverty so he could pursue the things he wanted. Bounderby too pursued and achieved what he wanted, but he didn’t have a choice whether or not to risk a lifetime of poverty.

So when Bounderby continually speaks of those workers who expect “the gold spoon,” it should make sense that he resents those who want luxury handed to them. Sure, Bounderby is completely tactless. But whether or not those workers actually have an unjustified sense of entitlement is beside the point. The Carlylean model seems to look down on “the self-made man,” at least in Dickens’ representation of it. If read as the type of self-made man Benjamin Franklin was, someone who felt he had nothing handed to him, one could conclude that Bounderby’s motive for firing Blackpool was not born out of cruel malice. Was the act a mistake? Most certainly. But perhaps Bounderby felt that since he was able to pull himself from the ditch, so could anyone. In firing Stephen, Bounderby thinks he is “trimming the fat” from his workforce (cutting someone the other workers had shunned) but probably feels deep down that a young man like Stephen could find work again, despite Stephen’s protest that he couldn’t. But any such conclusion is far from the reader’s mind because the reader is lead to feel absolutely no sympathy for Bounderby despite having come from the ditch. Even before Bounderby makes himself completely detestable as an employer by firing Blackpool, he is already unlikable because of his ostentation. But should a bad personality become one of the primary ways in which Bounderby contrasts with the Carlylean model of the ideal “Captain of Industry”? Yes, Bounderby is cruel to Stephen, and the other workers are clearly fed up with him, but Dickens forms him as an unlikable and unsympathetic character from the outset of the novel based solely on his personality. Disliking him later comes naturally.

Works Cited

Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. 1843. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854. Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

So Smart It's Scary: Genius as Monstrous in Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick

Vonnegut’s seventh novel, Slapstick, is certainly a mythic story of America’s end. It is about familial relations and the destruction and recreation of the American family. But these somewhat superficial themes stem from the same root - a superior intelligence that is only created from monstrous and prohibited acts. Within the action of the plot, the novel describes the downfall of America but with so little detail the reader is left to wonder, “How could this have happened?” The narrator, Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, last President of the United States, offers no direct explanation. He is a two-meter tall mutant with the face of a Neanderthal, six fingers and toes, and four nipples. Yet his monstrous appearance is in fact not monstrous to anyone. It is the brilliant intellect that is created when he and his sister join that is monstrous. Genius, as a monster created through incestuous and prohibited relationships, creates it’s own monstrous and disastrous results, bringing about the end of American civilization.

The monstrous, for the purposes of this paper, requires a measuring stick of some kind - a familiar, standard monster. Frankenstein’s monster fits this role and presents a picture of the monstrous that best fits the representation found in Slapstick - he is uncanny, created through forbidden means, and misunderstood. The uncanny can be defined in relatively simple terms. Freud recognizes that the term is related to “what is frightening - to what arouses dread and horror,” but that the core of this “feeling” requires this special term.1 The uncanny is distinguishable from the frightening in some ways, but in others, the uncanny lies within the realm of the frightening. Freud also points out that the uncanny can seem difficult to pin down in terms of definition because different people experience it in different ways. However, Freud also argues that there is one constant among all such experiences: “the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.”2 The uncanny is the familiar made unfamiliar; therefore, the term must be applied to each individual case of fright to determine if it is indeed an uncanny experience. What is uncanny for one person, may not be for someone else. Frankenstein’s monster is uncanny because he resembles a human being, but he is not - he was created from corpses, brought to life through forbidden and forgotten science. The monster terrifies every character it comes in contact with because the experience is uncanny, but it is also terrifying because these characters do not understand the monster. He cannot communicate, and does not understand any kind of social norm or acceptable behavior. The reactions of these characters and the monstrous nature of Frankenstein’s creation will serve as a standard for the monstrous

The twins’ monstrous appearance, in contrast with this criterion, is not perceived as such by the other characters in order to defamiliarize standard reactions to monsters. By defamiliarization, I am referring to the technique by which familiar devices are made intentionally obvious and thus unfamiliar to the reader so that the reader may recognize and acknowledge the device at work. Swain wastes no time connecting the story of his childhood with the stereotypical gothic when describing his parents’ response to him and his sister: “It was humane. It was also expensive and Gothic in the extreme. [. . .] They entombed us [. . .] in a spooky old mansion which they had inherited - in the midst of two hundred acres of apple trees on a mountain-top, near the hamlet of Galen, Vermont. No one had lived there for thirty years.”3 Their parents’ actions come not in response to their physical appearance, but in response to the warning that they’d better not “risk their furniture” by attempting to raise the children. The twins are assumed to be idiots because their parents are familiar with the standard monster, and based on this assumption, their parents lock them up. The description of what the parents do is overtly gothic to the point of cliché. Wilbur and Eliza are, after all, not only monstrous in appearance but supposed to be idiots, so in Wilbur’s retrospective mind, the reaction was completely warranted. He states with complete objectivity that once he and his sister were “older and uglier, and capable of breaking arms or tearing heads off, a great gong was installed in the kitchen. This was connected to cherry red push-buttons in every room and at regular intervals down every corridor.”4 It becomes clear, once Wilbur’s story progresses, that this preventive measure was taken not because of any actual fear of physical harm but because of an unspoken obligation to uphold a proper reaction to a physical and mental monstrosity. Therefore, this cartoonish reaction defamiliarizes standard responses to monsters and correlates with one of the core reasons for fearing a monster: misunderstanding.

Wilbur, almost inexplicably, is able to outline the depth of his parents’ misunderstanding of him and his sister. He relates a letter his father wrote to his mother: “‘However short our children’s lives may be, we will have given them the gifts of dignity and happiness. We have created a delightful little asteroid for them, a little world with only one mansion on it, and otherwise covered with apple trees.’”5 The parents have an expectation that allows them to justify loving what they perceive to be physically and mentally monstrous creatures, who are, by some unfortunate coincidence, also their children. They expect that their children’s lives will be short because not only because it is a stereotype of the monstrous, but it is what is most convenient for them. It allows them to feel sympathy for these monsters, and it gets them out of what is, in their minds, little more than an awkward situation as soon as possible.

However, Wilbur and Eliza are secretly intelligent. Their stupidity is a front they put on because they believe they must maintain everyone’s expectations. Beneath the twins’ monstrous appearance and fake stupidity lie their true personalities. When Wilbur and Eliza are joined, they form a single brilliant genius. When apart, Eliza is illiterate, and Wilbur is “of low normal intelligence for [his] age.”6 Through their brilliance, they could “read and write English by the time [they] were four. [They] could read and write French, German, Italian, Latin and ancient Greek by the time [they] were seven, and do calculus, too.”7 They live in what Wilbur describes as a paradise, secretly gaining as much knowledge as they can while all of their nurses and caretakers believe them to be asleep. The twins’ happiness stems from the ignorance of everyone around them - from everyone else assuming the twins are stereotypical, familiar monsters - and they are fully aware of it, deciding that, “idiots were lovely things to be.”8 They don’t speak - they respond with “Buh” and “Duh,” call their parents “Bluth-luh” and “Mub-lub.” They recognize that they can remain in their Eden as long as they keep everyone ignorant of their intelligence.

The effect of defamiliarizing these standard responses to monsters is an accentuation of the reaction of utter horror and disgust to superior genius as a monster. During a visit for their birthday, the twins’ mother has a breakdown, screaming at their father, “‘How can I love Count Dracula and his blushing bride?’” and “‘How on Earth did I give birth to a pair of drooling totem poles?’”9 Wilbur and Eliza overhear this and decide that in order to make their mother happy, they must reveal their intelligence. Once their true, superior intelligence is revealed, it becomes monstrous and uncanny in the eyes of everyone who encounters it. It is the reaction that is expected to be caused by the Wilbur and Eliza that everyone knew up until the point they reveal their intelligence.

The twins’ parents witness their true abilities for the first time when their new doctor administers an intelligence test and allows the twins to put their heads together. Up until this point, Wilbur has not described to the reader what physically happens when the pair is united. They answer every question correctly, but Wilbur admits,

The only trouble was that the two of us, in the innocent process of checking and rechecking our answers, wound up under the table - with our legs wrapped around each others’ necks in scissors grips, and snorting and snuffing into each others’ crotches. When we regained our chairs, Dr. Cordelia Swain Cordiner had fainted, and our parents were gone.10

This is how Wilbur and Eliza achieve their superior genius. Their incest is now what is perceived as monstrous and uncanny. Wilbur and Eliza’s secret relationship is not only one that produced a phenomenal genius, but it is incestuous as well. Incest is perceived as uncanny because it resembles familiar sexual interaction, but it is between two people who are absolutely prohibited from having such interaction, making it unfamiliar. Their superior intelligence should be a discovery that brings great joy because up until this point, the twins had been thought of as idiots, capable of murderous rampages because of their lacking intellect. This discovery should eliminate any and all misunderstanding. Instead, it creates more. Their parents and Dr. Cordiner see the method of their intelligence as horrific, and it is uncanny to them; therefore, they not only misunderstand it, they cannot understand it. They cannot see past the method to the meaning of the result - the twins are nothing like what their parents thought they were for all these years. Instead they are still monstrous but in a new way - one that cannot be tolerated at all. The twins are separated for thirteen years as a result of the discovery of their relationship.

Incest is not necessarily the core of these events. It is not that the incestuous relationship should be accepted based on its results, but rather such results must be ignored because the method is prohibited. The twins’ incest has produced a monstrous birth. The core of these events is that the product of the act, superior intelligence, something that should be praised, is completely ignored because of the act itself. It becomes monstrous itself because it was birthed through monstrous means. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the product of the act must be ignored.

Incest, as a prohibited relationship, develops into a theme throughout Wilbur’s story once it is revealed. Throughout the story of his childhood, Wilbur continually includes seemingly random updates about what the Chinese have been doing. These fragments form the story of a nation’s success that runs parallel to and ultimately helps to bring about the demise of America. But it is the hint, the possibility of prohibited relationships that truly connects the story of China to Wilbur’s own tale. At the time that Wilbur and Eliza are being separated because of the discovery of their monstrous combined intelligence, Wilbur notes that China is

secretly creating literally millions upon millions of geniuses - by teaching pairs or small groups of congenial, telepathically compatible, specialists to think as single minds. [. . .] and long before I became President of the United States of America, the Chinese had begun to combine those synthetic minds into intellects so flabbergasting that the Universe itself seemed to be saying to them, ‘I await your instructions. You can be anything you want to be. I will be anything you want me to be.’11

The implication, though it is never verified, is that these relationships are of the same nature as Wilbur and Eliza’s - perhaps taboo in some way, but not necessarily incest - suggesting that the only way to achieve such unbridled genius is to commit a prohibited and monstrous act; therefore, such a genius is always heinous since it is a monstrous birth of the prohibited act. China differs from Wilbur and Eliza in that the West is uninterested in what China is doing. They are not witness to any monstrous act. They do not even understand the results. Wilbur says that “the Chinese had sent two hundred explorers to Mars - without using a space vehicle of any kind. No scientist in the Western World could guess how the trick was done. The Chinese themselves volunteered no details.”12 The Chinese are operating at a level of intelligence that is not just beyond the West, it is completely misunderstood by the West. China’s intelligence beyond understanding is therefore monstrous when compared with my earlier criteria because it is created through forbidden means and is completely misunderstood. The results of this intelligence become terrifying, and the results of Wilbur and Eliza’s intelligence become equally monstrous.

During Wilbur’s presidential campaign, his platform is based on a plan that he and Eliza created during a fit of their incestuous genius. The plan is to create artificial families based on assigning new middle names to every American. All citizens are assigned a new middle name consisting of one of twenty-five nouns and a number; hence, Wilbur’s is Daffodil-11. Every American has 10,000 new brothers and sisters and nearly 200,000 new cousins, where sharing noun and number makes a sibling and sharing only a noun makes a cousin. This, however, creates new incestuous relationships, though artificial. No one, not even Wilbur recognizes this, but inevitably two people sharing the same middle name, making the pair siblings, are bound to commit artificial incest. This becomes increasingly likely because strong family ties develop. The development of these ties begins partially at the fault of Wilbur, who while promoting this platform demonstrates how to deal with a beggar or stranger:

‘You can say to him, “Buster - I happen to be a Uranium-3. You have one hundred and ninety thousand cousins and ten thousand brothers and sisters. You’re not exactly alone in this world. I have relatives of my own to look after. So why don’t you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don’t you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?” ’13

The American public takes this mantra to heart, and during Wilbur’s second term, the country falls into chaos. Families become factions, and soon, artificially made monarchs such as the King of Michigan and the Duke of Oklahoma rise to vie for power. This is a direct result of incest on two levels. First, Wilbur and Eliza’s incestuous relationship enables the intelligence that gives birth to such a plan. Second, the plan itself, while not the intention, creates an artificial incest. This result arises out of misunderstanding of what the plan was originally intended for - the twins wanted no one to be without family. Wilbur’s campaign slogan is “Lonesome No More!” Despite these intentions, the intelligence that developed the plan was monstrous, borne of forbidden means, uncanny, and completely misunderstood. Thus, its results are the same, creating a monstrosity in artificial incest. Out of this artificial monstrosity, the means for America’s end develops.

Monstrous acts play their part in America’s demise in a third way as well. For over thirty years, America has had absolutely no contact with the Chinese, who over the last few decades have been shrinking themselves generation by generation. By the end of the story, they are numbered in the trillions and are microscopic. Americans begin dying of a disease known as The Green Death - caused by “inhaling and ingesting invisible Chinese communists.”14 The Chinese developed the intelligence to shrink themselves by presumably committing prohibited acts similar to those of Wilbur and Eliza. Their forbidden intelligence, unlike Wilbur and Eliza’s, is left to develop completely unchecked, and it ends up killing half of the American population. It is made even more horrifying because the Americans do not understand and cannot understand what is happening to them. America is bombarded and brought down by two completely misunderstood products of intelligence born out of monstrous acts.

Wilbur’s story turns the monstrous upside down, but its focus is on the reaction to intelligence. Yes, he and his sister are monstrous in physical appearance, but that is inconsequential to other characters. In the minds of these characters, traditional monsters lack intelligence, and therefore must be treated accordingly. When the twins’ intelligence is discovered, instead of being hailed as geniuses, who have the poor misfortune of physical deformity, they are separated so that they may be kept mediocre and normal. Genius as monstrous operates on two levels within the novel. First, genius achieved by monstrous means is itself monstrous and must be ignored. Second, genius that is misunderstood or not understandable is monstrous because its consequences cannot be predicted or controlled. No matter what the implications of monstrous genius are, they cannot be accepted because their results are bound to be disastrous.

Notes

1 S. Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ in V. Leitch (ed), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2001, p. 930.
2 ibid., p. 930
3 K. Vonnegut, Slapstick, Dial Press, New York, 1972, p. 32.
4 ibid., p. 35.
5 ibid., p. 38.
6 ibid., p. 104.
7 ibid., p. 45.
8 ibid., p. 44.
9 ibid., p. 73.
10 ibid., p. 114-5.
11 ibid., p. 105.
12 ibid., p. 70.
13 ibid., p. 187.
14 ibid., p. 267.

Bibliography

Freud, S., ‘The Uncanny’. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2001.

Vonnegut, K., Slapstick. Dial Press, New York, 1972.

Carlyle and the Proletariat

After our discussion of Past and Present yesterday, I thought I would try to expand on some of the connections between Carlyle and Marx and Engles. We talked at some length in class about the effect of the French Revolution on the Victorians and their desire to avoid such a revolution. Gareth Stedman Jones points that “Among the many questions raised by the French Revolution of 1789, one in particular haunted the imagination of the nineteenth century: its violence” (1). It is partially this question of violence that prompted Carlyle as well as Marx and Engles to develop their philosophies of societal relationships. Yet somehow, they came to what seem like completely opposite conclusions. I would like to examine the similarities and differences and what is at stake in those.

The major point of contention between the two is the treatment of the working class. In Sartor Resartus, Carlyle asserts that “the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteriously written, [. . .] in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom” (98). Work and the “Annihilation of Self” are most important in maintaining one’s social responsibility (99). No one should rest until they discover the value of Work, and through that, they will be free. In Carlyle’s model, dedication to Work and Duty, this selflessness, fall under the leadership of the “Captains of Industry,” what Marx and Engles would call the bourgeoisie. Of course, Marx believes that those working should and eventually will overthrow these Captains of Industry. However, I think it is important to note the value that both men placed on Work. For both Marx and Carlyle, there is an emphasis on the wellbeing of the proletariat. Their work is vitally important to the proper functioning of society. They differ in how their wellbeing should be achieved, but what I think is at stake is the faith on which their ideologies rest.

I do not think it is impossible to look with hindsight at these two and claim that they put extraordinary amounts of faith in human beings, even considering what we have witnessed in the 20th century. Carlyle put enormous amounts of faith in those who already had power to not abuse it and attempt to attain more. Marx’s placement of faith in the working class itself, while we have seen today that it was perhaps misplaced because Communism has failed, was still perhaps better invested because he at least recognized that those who already had power would most certainly continue to abuse it for their own gain and believed that those without power would not treat it the same way. Both men desired a new societal structure that virtually eliminated the possibility of future violence because of the violence of revolution in the recent past.

History, then, is another point of contention between Carlyle and Marx. In Past and Present, Carlyle makes two points about history. First, that recent history (The French Revolution) was violent and an undesirable outcome for Britain. Second, medieval history, particularly the feudal system, was a good model for Victorian society to be based on. Marx agrees partially with the first point and completely disagrees with the second. Jones tells that, “Marx wrote [. . .] ‘the terror in France could thus by its mighty hammer blows only serve to spirit away, as it were, the ruins of feudalism from French soil. The timidly considerate bourgeoisie would not have accomplished this task in decades” (14). Marx believed the Revolution was terrifying, but certainly necessary, and that if the proletariat did not rise up for one final revolution, these types of terrifying events would continue to happen in other parts of Europe. Concerning Carlyle’s second point, Marx saw feudalism for what it was, which is why I have difficulty understanding why Carlyle could not. Jones points out that Marx did “[owe] something of his conception of the role and activity of the proletariat to Carlyle” as indicated in a speech Marx gave in 1856 in which he spoke “of the ‘heroic struggles’ the English working class had gone through since the middle of the eighteenth century’” and goes on:

‘to revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages in Germany, a secret tribunal, called ‘‘the Vehmgericht’’ [sic]. If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the Vehm. All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge – its executioners the proletariat.’ (12)

The speech indicates two things regarding Marx’s conception of History’s role. First, it further emphasizes his ability to see the true nature of feudal society. Second, and more importantly, it describes the way in which Marx wanted to use medieval history as a model for his vision of society. The last statement is particularly haunting. History is to be used as a measuring stick for all the horrors committed against the common and helpless. But the proletariat, being common and helpless no more, will rise up to carry out History’s verdict.

Although Carlyle’s philosophy informs the view of the writers we are reading, I think it is important to recognize that Marx and Engels, based on their own study of Carlyle, come to a different conclusion about the role of the proletariat. I think that must have had some effect, perhaps later in the period, on Victorian writers, so it may be beneficial to revisit this discussion when we get there. Carlyle may have been the Father of the Victorians, but then Marx and Engles were certainly the Crazy Uncles.

Works Cited

Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. 1843. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. 1831. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
Stedman Jones, Gareth. “The Redemptive Power of Violence?: Carlyle, Marx and Dickens.” History Workshop Journal. 65 (Spring 2008): 1-22.