“In the Beginning Was the Word”: Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine and the Religiosity of Deconstruction

The transition from Classical to Medieval rhetoric was primarily a shift in religious worldview, from pagan to Judeo-Christian foundations. Augustine’s work, including On Christian Doctrine, asserts that the world can only be interpreted through the Word of God. At the beginning of Book IV of On Christian Doctrine, Augustine writes, “I said: ‘There are two things upon which every treatment of the Scriptures depends: the means of discovering what the thought may be, and the means of expressing what the thought is’” (456). In this paper, I will examine this statement as the basis for Book IV and Augustine’s direction for hermeneutic interpretation of the Bible in terms of Derrida’s notion of logocentrism, metaphysics of presence, and différance. Augustine’s hermeneutics will be called into question; however, if the examination ended there, the full scope of Derrida’s project would be vastly limited. My consideration of Augustine in terms of Derrida will also inherently become a consideration of Derrida in terms of Augustine through which the scope of both projects will be illuminated.

In his landmark essay “Différance,” Jacques Derrida attempts to establish a “non-concept” by which he can demonstrate how Western philosophy, and rhetoric, have been based upon what he calls in Of Grammatology “the metaphysics of presence” (23). The essential question in Western metaphysics is the essence of being. Derrida points out that, “The formal essence of the signified is presence [. . .] This is the inevitable response as soon as one asks: ‘what is the sign?,’ that is to say, when one submits the sign to the question of essence” (18). In other words, being itself, in the metaphysics of presence, has no predicate. Being itself, in this case, is transcendent because it presupposes presence. Différance, on the other hand, according to Derrida, is not a word and is not a concept. It is nothing. In order to describe such a “thing,” Derrida writes that one must, “delineate that différance is not, does not exist, is not a present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate also everything that it is not, that is, everything. [. . .] It derives from no category of being, whether present or absent” (“Différance” 6). Derrida claims that différance, therefore, defies the metaphysics of presence because in order for it to be it must be described in terms of what it is not—in terms of absence.

This affects Augustine in a number of fairly obvious ways. First and foremost, the very idea of God is based on the metaphysics of presence. God is a transcendent being whose presence is required to have always been, exist currently, and into eternity. The Bible begins by presupposing the existence of God: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (New American Standard Bible, Gen. 1:1). However, an even better example of the logocentrism that Derrida finds in Christian doctrine, especially with relation to Augustine, is in the book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (New American Standard Bible, John 1:1-3). For Derrida, this statement is logocentric because it privileges presence and attempts to establish the Word as transcendental equal to God. God spoke the Word into being. The two are inseparable. When Augustine sets forth his project of explaining the Word, he is fully aware of the difficulty in understanding a transcendental Word and God, as stated earlier; every treatment of the Word depends on “the means of discovering what the thought may be, and the means of expressing what the thought is” (456). In Derridean terms, there is an inherent difficulty in discovering what the signifier and signified are within a text that claims to transcend such language constraints.

There is a problem, as Graham Ward puts it, with “the capacity of language to communicate the Word” (25). Augustine, in a sense, circumvents this problem at the end of Book IV, when he writes, “But whether a person is now making ready to speak before the people or before any other group whatever, or to compose something neither to be delivered before the people or read by those who wish or can do so, he should pray God to put a fitting discourse upon his lips” (485). God will help man overcome man’s own limited language so that he might find the best words he possibly can to communicate God’s own message. Yet this is paradoxical because the meaning of God’s Word is absent to man, while the Word itself claims transcendent presence. It always was, is, and will be, but then where, what, and how is it if its true meaning is absent to man? The answer lay in negative theology. Humans cannot describe God in terms of what He is, only in terms of what He is not. Since the book of John asserts that the Word is God, the same can be said of the Word. Therefore, this paradox leads to an extremely fascinating observation—there is seemingly a close parallel between the Word and différance—that which attempts to undermine the Word.

Language does not have the capacity to describe either différance or the Word; both must be described in negative terms. Of course, Derrida is very careful to distance himself early from any notion of negative theology in relation to différance. He admits, “[T]he detours, locutions, and syntax in which I will often have to take recourse will resemble those of negative theology, occasionally even to the point of being indistinguishable from negative theology” (“Différance 6). If it is indistinguishable from negative theology, then what makes it not negative theology? This is a question that Derrida answers ambiguously, as John D. Caputo points out, “ ‘It is and it is not.’ Yes and no” (2). This type of answer does stay true to the “essence” (though there is no such thing in relation to the term) of différance. But it is interesting to note how différance seemingly transforms the Word into the very thing “it is.” It is through différance that the distinction between presence and absence is achieved (Of Grammatology 143) because “it” resides in the in-between—it is a trace, a ghost, something that we can never quite see. Thus, we are forced to see the problem with a meta-narrative that presupposes eternal presence through John 1:1. However, Augustine asserts that the true meaning of the Word is absent and requires God’s intervention to deliver the best possible interpretation. He warns that, “those men steal His words who wish to appear good by speaking God’s word, though they are evil in following a course of their own” (484). Therefore, it is never possible for men to arrive at the true meaning of the Word.

True, in the context I’ve been using it, has a quality of hyper-reality, not only in relation to Derrida but Augustine too, which is where the distinction between the Word and différance lay. Caputo points out that “Negative theology is always on the track of a ‘hyperessentiality’ [. . .] so really real that we are never satisfied simply to say that it is merely real. Différance, on the other hand, is less than real, not quite real, never gets as far as being or entity or presence [. . .] Différance is but a quasi-transcendental anteriority, not a supereminent, transcendent ulteriority” (2-3). In terms of Augustine’s assertion that God will put the correct words into the mouth of the chosen speaker, the Word is actually distinguished from rather than linked to différance because Augustine is concerned primarily with coming as close to transcendence as possible. Therefore, Augustine’s notion that the speaker arrives at meaning in the Word through God himself, through negative theology, is deconstructed because the original uncovering of the presupposition of presence, through différance, does in fact stand—it does not contradict itself as it would have if the parallel had stood.

Even though it seems like deconstruction has put down negative theology altogether, it would be a misunderstanding of the concept and a misreading of Derrida to assume so. Deconstruction is not satisfied with merely saying “No” to anything. Caputo agrees: “Deconstruction is thoroughly mistrustful of discourses that prohibit this and prohibit that” (3). Yes, deconstruction can point out how Augustine’s discourse falls into this prohibitive category, but it would contradict itself if it turned around and prohibited the prohibitive category altogether. The project of deconstruction is concerned, rather, with an awareness of the constraints that Western metaphysics has placed on us. It wants to uncover what seems impossible for us to see—which is where an affinity with negative theology reemerges. Both attempt to uncover the impossible.

Augustine’s desire for truth, to discover the impossible, is not merely based on his firm belief in the Divine Inspiration of the Bible. Charles S. Baldwin points out that “Augustine too had been brought up on sophistic” that “[h]e had been himself, in Plutarch’s sense and Strabo’s, a sophist” (195-6). Augustine’s familiarity with sophism only further enabled his disgust with the rhetorical style when he converted to Christianity. He writes in Book II,

There are, moreover, many false conclusions of the reasoning process called sophisms, and frequently they so imitate true conclusions that they mislead not only those who are slow but also the ingenious when they do not pay close attention. [. . .] As I see it, the Scripture condemns this kind of captious conclusion [. . .] At times a discourse which is not captious, but which is more abundant than is consistent with gravity, being inflated with verbal ornament, is also called sophistical. (67)

Augustine’s agenda is partially against any use of empty or deceptive language when communicating God’s message. He repeats continually in Book IV that wisdom must precede eloquence: “For these words were not written by human industry, but were poured forth by Divine Intelligence, with wisdom and eloquence—wisdom not being intent on eloquence” (464). He insists that teachers, “avoid all words which do not teach” (465). From this perspective, Augustine’s instruction on teaching does mirror deconstruction in that it wishes to dig into the core of the impossible by stripping away all excessive terms that surround the impossible or for Augustine, the truth. Neither Derrida nor Augustine is interested in language that distracts from what is at stake. On the surface of On Christian Doctrine, it may seem like Augustine is merely making assertions of absolute truth in order to support his points regarding teaching. However, it can be more accurately described as a desire for truth. At the core of Augustine’s instruction on teaching is ultimately desire to find truth. Even though Derrida certainly criticizes Christian doctrine for claiming to be authority based on what he exposed as logocentric, he can still appreciate the desire found within it because deconstruction is fed by a very similar desire.

Many critics of deconstruction have found it rather easy to denounce because it can be used to so authoritatively sweep away any other ideology that claims authority. As I have shown, deconstruction is not so easily cornered. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine would seem easy prey for deconstruction if the agenda were simply to topple over authoritative ideologies—if it claimed to be an ideology free from ideology. However, that is not what deconstruction is interested in. It is interested in keeping the door open. It is interested in questioning that which prohibits in order to maintain authority. Augustine is interested discovering the meaning of a text that is absent to man. Augustine and deconstruction, though they seem like they should be diametrically opposed to one another, both have a desire to discover the impossible.

Works Cited

Augustine. On Christian Doctrine: Book II. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1958.

—. On Christian Doctrine: Book IV. Trans. Thérèse Sullivan. The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 456-85.

Baldwin, Charles S. “St. Augustine on Preaching.” Essays on the Rhetoric of the Western World. Ed. Edward P.J. Corbett, James L. Golden, Goodwin F. Berquist. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1990. 195-205.

Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.
Derrida, Jaques. “Différance.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 1-27.

—. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

New American Standard Bible. Ed. The Lockman Foundation. Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 2002.

Ward, Graham. Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.

The Unplumbed, Salt, Estranging Sea: The Ocean as Metaphor in Arnold’s “Isolation: To Marguerite” and “To Marguerite—Continued”

The ocean as an image appears in Matthew Arnold’s poetry on a number of occasions. It functions, in many cases, simply as another part of Nature, wild and untamed. I would like to examine the use of the ocean as a metaphor, not only in the use of imagery, but also in Arnold’s choice of meter. Through the combination of metaphor and meter, the ocean becomes a pervading force in Arnold’s “Isolation: To Marguerite” and “To Marguerite—Continued” which emphasizes the transition from Christian community to Agnostic isolation in the mid-Victorian period.

In the first poem of the pair, “Isolation: To Marguerite,” the speaker’s subject is specific and narrow—he is lamenting his former lover who no longer has feelings for him. The speaker makes reference to the ocean in the second stanza when he says, “Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell—“ (Arnold 11), and it is on the words “ebb and swell” that we must focus our attention. The speaker is referring to the swaying of the tide—how the ocean continually crashes upon the shore and then recedes. If we scan the poem, we shall see that the same swaying motion is mimicked in the meter of the poem. It is simple iambic tetrameter, yes; however, coupled with the image of an ebb and swell, the reader has the impression of the ocean.

Of course, there are four lines in the poem that, quite clearly, do not follow this meter. Two are in iambic pentameter catalectic, meaning they are missing one syllable at the end of the line creating a half foot: “To hang over Endymion’s sleep / Upon the pine-grown Latmian sleep” (23-4). The other two are trochaic pentameter catalectic: “Even for a moment didst depart [. . .] Wandering in Heaven, far removed” (15, 27). If we are looking at the meter as representative of the ebb and swell of the tide, then the effect of these jarring lines can be read either as the crashing of waves in opposite directions against each other as the tide comes in and recedes or simply as the tide receding and coming in—iambic meter is the tide coming in; trochaic meter is the tide receding. There are other lines as well that can be read as either iambic or trochaic, especially when they are close to one of the catalectic lines. “Back to thy solitude again!” for instance, can be read as either trochaic or iambic. Normally, the reader tends to put secondary emphasis on a word like “to” rather than “back.” In doing so, the meter becomes trochaic. The word “back” helps to further cement that feeling of swaying back and forth, particularly the feeling of recession in the line, further emphasizing the connection between trochaic meter and the recession of the tide.

Throughout the poem, the speaker describes his heartbreak at realizing that Marguerite no longer loves him. He writes: “What far too soon, alas! I learned— / The heart can bind itself alone, / And faith may oft be unreturned” (8-10). He begins to realize that he was perhaps alone in his feelings for Marguerite all along. In the next stanza, the speaker resigns himself to loneliness, telling Marguerite, “But thou hast long has place to prove / This truth—to prove, and make thine own: / ‘Thou has been, shalt be, art, alone’” (28-30). Here, the speaker asserts that his loneliness is eternal. In the final stanza, the speaker fully accepts his isolation. He writes that happier men than himself:

Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness. (38-42)

This suggests that the speaker has lost the faith that could release him from isolation. In the next poem, the ocean becomes a metaphor for this isolation.

In “To Marguerite—Continued,” the image of the ocean is much more explicit. Here, the speaker expands on an idea that was only eluded to in the first poem—the isolative power of the ocean. He even begins the poem by using the ocean as a metaphor for isolation: “Yes! in the sea of life enisled” (1). The first word suggests that through his loss of faith in the last stanza of the previous poem, he has discovered a metaphor to describe human interaction in general rather than simply his interaction with Marguerite. The ocean quite obviously functions as a metaphor for what separates human beings from each other. However, it is important to note some new conclusions that the speaker has come to—to see how the speaker’s train of thought has developed. The speaker writes,

For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain—
Oh might our marges meet again! (15-8)

In this stanza, the speaker refers to the past and uses landmass as a metaphor to suggest that all people were once part of a single community. This could be read as a description of the community that people had once thought they were a part of under the Church.

Now because questions have been raised and seeds of doubt planted, this single continent has shifted, forming isolated islands of agnosticism. These poems were written at the same time Mill was supposedly, according to Buckler, writing his Three Essays on Religion (312) where his views on agnosticism are outlined. The final stanza of the poem solidifies the speaker’s agnostic, possibly even nihilistic, feelings:

Who ordered that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea. (19-24)

The speaker clearly asserts an uncaring, uninterested God as the source for the isolating ocean. It was by God’s design that human beings are islands, forever doomed to be isolated by what the speaker calls “the estranging sea” (24). At this point, the speaker is being very direct with the metaphor in contrast with the beginning of “Isolation: To Marguerite,” where the only hint at the ocean as a metaphor was the use of the words “ebb and swell” in conjunction with iambic tetrameter throughout the poem (11). Over the course of the two poems the meaning of the ocean shifts from being the agent by which people are brought in and out of the speaker’s life to the agent by which the speaker is completely isolated from others.

Works Cited

Arnold, Matthew. “Isolation: To Marguerite.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1354-5.

—. “To Marguerite—Continue.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1355-6.

Buckler, William E. “Introduction: Three Essays on Religion.” Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958. 312.

The Unity of Effect in “Porphyria’s Lover”

Edgar Allen Poe, in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” argues that stories, whether told in poetry or prose, must focus all of their energy on a single effect. He states that when he writes he “prefer[s] commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view- for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest.” (Poe “The Philosophy of Composition”) He asks himself this question: “ ‘Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?’” (Poe). This theory of composition is easily identified in the majority of Poe’s fiction and poetry—Poe actually uses “The Raven” as an example in his essay. Looking at Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” in terms of Poe’s unity of effect will illuminate the full vigor of the poem’s language.

First, we need to look at one more piece of Poe’s essay. Poe explains, “Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone- whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone- afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect” (Poe). Browning uses both incident and tone. The incident, of course, is the murder of Porphyria at the hands of the speaker. The tone is that of an unreliable narrator—which, in the context of the poem, becomes the voice of a psychopath. A similar effect is achieved in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” via the tone of the narrator. Montresor, brutally and unemotionally describes how he chains Fortunado to a wall in Forunado’s own dungeon and then, brick by brick, buries Fortunado alive. The tone of the narrator is accentuated through contrast with Fortunado’s frantic screams: “It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in [. . .] ‘For the love of God, Montresor!’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for the love of God!’ (Poe “The Cask of Amontillado”). Fortunado wants to believe that this is a joke, and when he realizes that Montresor really does mean to kill him, he loses his mind. The reader knows since the beginning what Montresor means to do, yet Fortunado never sees it coming. This is also a result of the narrator’s tone. He never gives the reader a good reason for why he is going to kill Fortunado. He merely tells the reader that he had been insulted by Fortunado.

There is here a second contrast: The narrator’s adamance in carrying out revenge for something that, to the reader, does not seem to warrant murder. In terms of Poe’s own philosophy, Montresor’s act falls under “peculiarity both of incident and tone” (Poe “The Philosophy of Composition). Montresor has murdered Fortunado for seemingly no reason at all, and the method by which he chooses to execute this plan is equally strange. Finally, the way in which Montresor describes the events is completely without emotion, which accentuates the feeling of dread created within the reader.

Let’s turn to Browning’s poem. The tone is established with the first four lines in a way very similar to how Poe begins his own work: “The rain set early in to-night, / The sullen wind was soon awake, / It tore the elm-tops down for spite, / And did its worst to vex the lake” (Browning 1-4). This is clearly reminiscent of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” with a very detailed image of the “lurid tarn” (Poe) at the foot of the Gothic castle. Returning to a comparison between “Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” it is clear that Browning’s speaker is also delusional. He (and I use “he” arbitrarily) tells the reader how Porphyria “loves” him (21) and how she “worshipp’d” him (33). The reader knows that she has come from a “gay feast” (27) and that she has perhaps chosen someone over the speaker. The speaker, in the same casual manner as Montresor in Poe’s story, tells the reader:

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. (36-41)

The speaker’s tone creates a sense of dread in the reader. Here, we can clearly see the “peculiarity of both incident and tone” (Poe “The Philosophy of Composition). Not only is the speaker’s decision to murder Porphyria bizarre, but his method, like Montresor’s, is equally bizarre. His tone, matter-of-fact and unemotional, adds to the sense of dread within the reader.

It’s interesting that many Victorian critics had such a difficult time with Browning’s poetry while across the Atlantic, Poe garnered wild success for doing essentially the same thing. “The Cask of Amontillado” was published in 1846, five years after “Porphyria’s Lover” first appeared. I haven’t found anything regarding whether or not Poe admired Browning or even read his work, but it is interesting to see these similarities, particularly because Poe was famous for developing this philosophy, yet Browning seems to have already been practicing it.

Works Cited

Browning, Robert. “Porphyria’s Lover.” 1841. http://www.bartleby.com/101/720.html. 19 Oct 2008.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” 1846. . 19 Oct 2008.

--“The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. . 19 Oct 2008.

--“The Philosophy of Composition.” 1850. . 19 Oct 2008.

Just a Means to an End: Jane Eyre and the Categorical Imperative

Something Dr. Varner mentioned in passing caught my ear on Thursday. I don’t know if many others noticed, but as we were discussing Mrs. Fairfax and her decision to withhold the knowledge of Bertha from Jane, I couldn’t help but think of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Then, I heard Dr. Varner say something about it!—though quietly and through a number of other voices during a brief swell in the conversation. I began thinking about it more, and I realized that the question of the categorical imperative can play a large role in determining which direction the ethical compass of certain characters is pointing. I became excited. This response is probably going to be a little longer than some of my other ones, but bear with me. Things are about to get crazy—philosophy style!

Let me begin by stating the purpose of delving into something so complex. By looking at the ways in which the characters of the novel, particularly Rochester, fail to meet the categorical imperative, we can clearly see how they fit the mold of utilitarianism. This requires further explanation. Kant’s categorical imperative is based on a number of assertions. First, human beings have free will because we are autonomous—we have the ability to govern our own person with our own laws on an individual level. Based on this primary assumption, Kant outlines three maxims that lead him to his final conclusion. First: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it become universal law” (Kant 30). In other words, the moral maxim must ignore any specific physical conditions that surround a particular case. It must be universally true in all cases. Kant divides this duty into two types: Perfect and Imperfect duty. We first have a perfect duty not to act by any moral maxim that cannot be universalized. An example from last week’s episode of The Office comes to mind: “It is permissible to steal.” Now, we must remember that we cannot throw in hypothetical scenarios to determine the morality of the premise. The notion of stealing presupposes the existence of property. However, if the premise were universalized, there could be no property. Therefore, there is a contradiction, and such a premise, according to our perfect duty, cannot ever be upheld. Our imperfect duty is our responsibility to uphold only maxims that we desire to be universalized. Since this duty is much more subjective, it is not as strong as perfect duty.

Kant’s second maxim is where we find the most relation to Rochester: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of an other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end” (36). I’m sure the connection to Rochester is clear. Before we delve into a discussion of the connection to Jane Eyre, however, I want to make sure I lay this all out. The clearest example of a violation of this maxim would be slavery. In such an institution, slaves are not an end in themselves but a means to an end, whether that be picking cotton or tobacco, or whatever else we can think of. In any case, it is therefore our perfect duty not to use ourselves or another as a means to an end. Our imperfect duty is then to further the ends of ourselves and others. In other words, if we desire perfection in ourselves, we are morally obligated to help others seek such perfection equally, so long as it does not contradict perfect duty.

The third maxim situates the autonomous individual within the community. Individuals are autonomous and govern themselves, but according to the first maxim, those laws must also be made universal; therefore, they must be able to apply to others as well. Kant suggests this explanation: “Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends” (43). Basically, Kant has told us how the first two maxims fit together to be plausible in real life. The primary characteristic of note in Kant’s theory: Moral acceptability is based on the act itself, not the consequences—what is known as deontological ethics. Utilitarianism is exactly the opposite. It is based on teleological ethics. In other words, the consequences of an act determine its moral acceptability. With these explanations in mind, we jump into the text.

In Chapter 23, Rochester tells Jane that he has decided to propose to Blanche Ingram and that he knows of a governess position in Ireland. Jane is distraught and confesses that Ireland is too far from Thornfield—and from Rochester himself. Rochester reveals that it is Jane whom he truly loves, and it becomes clear to the reader that his lie was intended to make Jane jealous so that he could not only gage her feelings for him but so that he could prime her for his proposal (293-9). Rochester, in what we may see as a minor way, violates Kant’s second maxim by using Jane as a means to achieve an end—acceptance of his marriage proposal. Of course, Rochester violates this maxim in arguably a much more serious way by locking Bertha in his attic and then not telling Jane about her. One more example from Kant will demonstrate the severity to which Kant bars lying from the categorical imperative. The premise “It is not permissible to lie” is universal to the extent that if asked by a murderer to reveal the location of his prey, one must answer truthfully. In comparison with this extreme example, Rochester’s playful “white lie” that he tells Jane (about Blanche Ingram) is obviously absolutely against the categorical imperative. Not only that, but because the premise “It is not permissible to lie” is universal, both of Rochester’s in these cases carry equal weight. Neither one is worse or better than the other.

But let’s go back to Rochester’s lie by omission regarding Bertha. If we, as readers, believe it is wrong, then we must ask ourselves, “Why?” His decision clearly violates the categorical imperative—based solely on the fact that he has lied, which in itself is two-fold. By locking Bertha in the attic, he is using her as a means to an end—a happier, more fulfilling life for himself and, so he says, for Bertha as well. When he lies to Jane, he uses Jane as a means to the same end. I mentioned two paragraphs earlier that utilitarianism is the exact opposite of Kantianism. If we then look at Rochester’s actions through the utilitarian perspective, he has done absolutely nothing wrong. He believes he is providing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Of course, the reader can speculate as to why Bertha went insane, or when she went insane, but based on the text, we can only believe what Rochester says or not. If we believe that, overall, Rochester is a trustworthy man, and we recognize his adherence to utilitarianism, then all of his lies are, in fact, morally sound. Mrs. Fairfax is also a utilitarian. Her decision to not tell Jane about Bertha is a lie by omission, which is, as we’ve discussed, against the categorical imperative. Her decision is most likely based on the what the consequences would be of revealing such information. What about the morality of Jane’s decision to leave Thornfield? According to Kant, she is clearly adhering to her imperfect duty. She says, “ ‘I care for myself. [. . .] I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane’ ” (Brontë 369). Not only does she clearly demonstrate herself to be an autonomous individual with her discussion of her own laws and principles, she is also upholding a maxim which she wants to be universal; thus, she is moving toward perfection and helping Rochester do the same—they cannot be together while he is legally married. Her decision, in terms of teleological ethics, is also sound because she perceives worse consequences if she were to go with Rochester; therefore, she chooses the action that she believes will result in the best outcome. Either way we look at Jane’s decision, we cannot fault her.

I don’t know about you, but teleological ethics sounds much easier to get behind than an ethics that cares nothing for the consequences of actions, and essentially upholds murder over lying. Philosophically speaking, however, we can’t have it both ways; that is we cannot condemn Rochester for lying while at the same time choosing teleological ethics over Kantianism—which is something we all do on a daily basis. I think a look at the categorical imperative will probably be important in our discussion of the next three novels and some of the other pieces. It certainly can apply to the previous two. If I were to get into those, however, this paper would go on another five or six pages. Therefore, I feel it is my imperfect duty to end here.

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. 1785. Trans. James W. Ellington. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

Emily Brontë’s Monstrous Creation: Heathcliff as a Liminal Being

We discussed in class the ways in which Heathcliff is an outsider—the ways in which he is the Other in the novel. I’d like to take that notion and apply it to theories of the monstrous to explore the ways in which both Heathcliff emerges as a monstrous figure in the novel. The monstrous is a concept that is difficult to define precisely because of the liminal nature of monsters. They are among us, yet apart from us at the same time. Monsters occupy this unique, liminal space in which they are on both sides of the threshold—known and Other. Heathcliff occupies this space in a number of ways.

Let’s begin by looking at the ways in which Heathcliff is the Other. First and foremost, his origin is a mystery. I’d prefer not to speculate about where he may have literally come from; if we stick to the text, Heathcliff’s otherness is still defined. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him home, he says to Mrs. Earnshaw, “See here, wife, I was never so beaten with anything in my life; but you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (26). This not only foreshadows Heathcliff’s character as an adult, but it suggests that Heathcliff has come from elsewhere—he is not the same as the Earnshaw children. And the other children, Nelly and Hindley specifically, treat him as Other. Nelly tells Lockwood, “Hindly hated him, and to say the truth I did the same; and we plagued him and went on with him shamefully, for I wasn’t reasonable enough to feel my injustice, and the mistress never put in a word on his behalf, when she saw him wronged” (27). Even Mrs. Earnshaw’s reaction to Heathcliff designates him as the Other. He is misunderstood, and Hindley, Nelly, and Mrs. Earnshaw don’t care to understand him. He is despised simply because he is perceived as Other.

Although Catherine does not treat Heathcliff as other at first, her opinion of him does change slightly once she meets the Lintons. When she sees Heathcliff for the first time upon returning to Wuthering Heights, she exclaims, “Why how very black and cross you look! [. . .] If you wash your face and brush your hair it will be all right. But you are so dirty!” which separates Heathcliff from herself the way he was separated from the other Earnshaws at the beginning (38-9). She now sees him as Other. The events in Chapter VII demonstrate how Heathcliff is a liminal being. He remains on the threshold of Other and known. Catherine, who once accepted him, now sees him as different. Following this interaction, however, Heathcliff announces to Nelly that he is “going to be good” and wants her to help him clean himself up (40). Despite his efforts, Mrs. Linton still does not want her children to be around him, so Hindley locks Heathcliff in the attic, which incites Heathcliff to vow revenge against Hindley.

Following Heathcliff’s return to Wuthering Heights, his liminal nature becomes even more pronounced. His relationship to the Other is strengthened because no one seems to know what he did while he was gone. The mystery surrounding him grows further, making him more unknown, more Other. When Heathcliff surprises Nelly, Catherine, and Edgar at the Grange, Nelly is astounded to see how much of a gentleman Heathcliff has become, but she still notes that, “A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows, and his eyes full of black fire” (70). There is still something about Heathcliff that is Other even though his outward appearance is “civilized” making him liminal—on the threshold of monstrosity. Of course, following this description at his return, the nature of what Heathcliff is truly capable of is revealed. He is a villainous man, capable of extreme cruelties, especially with regard to Isabella.

The important thing to note is that no matter how sadistically Heathcliff behaves towards other characters, it is difficult to ignore that much of what he does is out of true, heartfelt love for Catherine, which makes him partially sympathetic. The critical debate over whether or not Heathcliff is the hero of villain of the novel is also part of what makes him a liminal being. In many ways, the Byronic hero can be read as monstrous because he or she is seen as Other. Even if the reader sees his love for Catherine as an obsession, it is difficult to see his feelings toward her as completely negative. Heathcliff is always on the threshold of the wholly monstrous and the wholly admirable.

Works Cited

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1996

Literary Form and the Metaphysics of Presence: Plato’s Pharmacy on the Phaedrus

Plato’s Phaedrus has become famous (or rather, infamous) for its condemnation of writing and extolment of speech primarily because of the work of Jacques Derrida. Derrida was the first to expose the contradiction found within Plato simultaneously condemning writing within a written dialogue. Plato is a foundational figure of Western philosophy, played a significant “role in the definition of Western thought,” and is considered to be “the first major writing theoretician”; therefore, the gravity of his condemnation of writing is difficult to ignore (Neel 5). However, an examination of Derrida’s approach to the Phaedrus reveals that his arrival at this contradiction still takes into account the literary qualities of Plato’s text, which illuminates the ways in which the text fails to validate itself as non-writing.

First, we must examine the ways in which Plato “sets the stage” for this dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus because if indeed it is Plato’s intention to condemn the written word, then it is important to see how he prepares for the condemnation to perform as a literary function of the text. Derrida points out that, “Only a blind or grossly insensitive reading could indeed have spread the rumor that Plato was simply condemning the writer’s activity”; therefore, it is important to first give Plato the benefit of the doubt before resigning him to the mere vilification of the written word. It is quite clear from the outset that the dialogue is meant to mimic the spoken words of Socrates and Phaedrus. Their banter at the beginning and throughout the dialogue gives a good indication of this point. If Plato had written this as a treatise, moments such as Socrates teasing Phaedrus about concealing Lysias’ speech under his cloak would have been stricken because in the form of a treatise, they would have served no function; however, in the form of a dialogue meant to mimic or be a “recording” of actual speech, they function well.

As part of the narrative of the dialogue, Plato stages situations right from the start that begin to chip away at writing. The conversation begins with Phaedrus informing Socrates that he as come from Lysias, a speechwriter. Socrates notes, “it is obvious that Lysias entertained [Phaedrus] with his speeches” (138). Phaedrus offers to recite one to Socrates, but Socrates catches him with a written copy hidden under his cloak. Phaedrus then offers to read the speech to Socrates. It is at this point that the two discuss the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia and Plato introduces the concept of Pharmacea: “a blast of Boreas, the north wind, pushed her off the neighboring rocks as she was playing with Pharmacea, and that when she died in this manner she was said to have been carried off by Boreas” (140). In terms of literary form, Derrida makes an important point: “The fable [. . .] would not have been recounted, Socrates would not have been incited to tell it, if the heat, which weighs over the whole dialogue, had not driven the two friends out of the city, into the countryside, along the river Ilissus” (1834). The entire dialogue is staged, in part, to benefit the condemnation of writing. Following the telling of the myth, Socrates compares the written manuscript that Phaedrus has brought to the Pharmacea. The written speech is the equivalent of a drug—something that, in the case of Oreithyia, leads to death.

However, we must remember that Plato is not simply condemning writing here—not yet. If he were, then it would be clear that Socrates’ message is that all writing is the pharmakon; however, that is not the implication. According to Derrida, “Operating through seduction, the pharmakon makes one stray from one’s general, natural, habitual paths and laws” (1835). This is clear in the particular piece of writing in question, a copy of Lysias’ speech—one that Phaedrus treasures very much. When he finishes his reading, he asks, “What do you think of the discourse, Socrates? Is it not wonderful, especially in diction?” (142). Socrates replies, teasing Phaedrus: “I saw that you were delighted by the speech as you read. So thinking that you know more than I about such matters, I followed in your train and joined you in the divine frenzy” (142). By calling Phaedrus’ reaction to the text a “frenzy,” Socrates implies that the speech has acted as the pharmakon, pulling Phaedrus away from what Derrida calls his general, natural, habitual paths and laws. Socrates is teasing Phaedrus not simply because he has put so much stock in a written speech but because Phaedrus has not taken the time to think about what Lysias has actually said in the speech. Jasper Neel points out that Phaedrus, “sets out not to think about [the speech] or learn from it but to memorize it parrotlike” (4). Therefore, this instance could be read as a condemnation of the type of rote writing for memorization that Phaedrus has engaged in specifically, but not necessarily a denunciation of the entire enterprise of writing.

Yet Derrida still provides a powerful observation regarding Phaedrus’ recitation of Lysias’ speech, which does apply to the enterprise of writing, though it is in the guise of condemning rote memorization. Derrida asserts that for Socrates, “A spoken speech—whether by Lysias or by Phaedrus in person—a speech proffered in the present, in the presence of Socrates, would not have had the same effect” (1836). Derrida is pointing out that while Socrates may be concerned with young Phaedrus’ practice of rote memorization, there is a larger issue: writing is not present the way speech is. When Socrates tells Phaedrus, “I’m going to keep my head wrapped up while I talk, that I may get through my discourse as quickly as possible and that I may not look at you and become embarrassed,” he is disowning the speech he is about to make—that is he is removing presence from the speech.

This concept of presence is vitally important in examining the literary form of the dialogue because it sheds light on the foundation of the contradiction found within the text. We must remember in instances like this that Socrates himself is not intending these effects. There is a man behind his words whose own motives can make the meaning of the text duplicitous. Neel’s fascinating study on the Phaedrus points out that “every word has the capability, even the probability, of meaning something different from what it says,” precisely because Plato is writing a dialogue of a conversation that never literally took place, but one that could have taken place—Plato is writing in 367 BCE a dialogue that would have occurred in 410 BCE (8). Therefore Plato is not present in the dialogue that he is writing. Rather than Plato himself write a treatise using his voice from his time, he chooses to “replace [it] with already dead voices from four decades before. And at this point the text begins to complicate itself in a variety of ways as we hear a voice that is the replacement of a voice—the dead Socrates replaces the living Plato” (8). However, this relationship becomes even more complicated because Socrates’ “voice” is in reality Plato’s. Neel sees this as a clever ploy on the part of Plato to “remove” his voice from the dialogue without actually removing it. The example of Socrates’ removal of presence from the speech he delivers about lover and the nonlover is a case in point. Within the narrative of the dialogue, Socrates is merely teasing Phaedrus; however, when we take into consideration the voice behind the voice—Plato—then we can see that there is more at stake here: the presence of speech versus the non-presence of writing. Of course the question then becomes: How is it that Plato can condemn the non-presence of writing when he himself is not present within a dialogue he has written?

Derrida begins to answer this question. In his discussion of the passages mentioned above, he further develops the connection between books (“biblia”) and pharmakon that seems to arise before the “overt presentation of writing as a pharmakon arises in the middle of the myth of Theuth” (1837). Derrida argues that for Socrates, the biblia is “dead and rigid knowledge, [. . .] piles of histories, nomenclatures, recipes and formulas learned by hear” (1837). The recognition of Plato as the voice behind Socrates forces the reader to recognize the Phaedrus as part of the biblia. It too is a book, and Plato certainly intended the knowledge he imparted to remain rigid—primarily because we know that it has for the last twenty-three centuries. For Derrida, it is no coincidence that this connection between book and drug is made early in the dialogue. It is a part of the strategy of the narrative—a method of foreshadowing. Neel further notes that “once one undoes the first knot in the tapestry by asking the questions Who wrote what when? and Where am I when I read? it is quickly apparent that Phaedrus is writing” (14). In other words, the incongruity of reading the text as though it is Socrates and Phaedrus having an actual conversation in 410 and simultaneously recognizing that it is in fact Plato writing in 367 giving voice to two characters, makes it impossible not to see Phaedrus as a written, constructed text.

Finally, the myth of Theuth that Socrates relates to Phaedrus essentially concludes the dialogue. It is at this moment that Socrates (or Plato, rather) makes his strongest and most overt point about writing. Derrida notes that, “This time it is without indirection, without hidden meditation, without secret argumentation, that is writing is proposed, presented, and asserted as a pharmakon” (1837.) For Derrida, this becomes the core of his project. Socrates is presupposing, as was alluded to earlier, Being-as-self-presence because “within the tradition of Western thought, Being is revealed most clearly in the spoken word” (Frentz 253). Therefore, his telling of this myth is the focal point for Derrida with regard to the Phaedrus. In the context of literary form, the telling of the myth and the assertion of writing as inferior to speech is almost an afterthought. Right before it, Socrates says, “We have, then, said enough about the art of speaking and that which is no art” (165). He turns to writing. At the end of the myth, the king tells Theuth, inventor of writing, “You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise” (165). Judging by the myth alone, Socrates is now openly condemning what he had condemned by implication earlier: the tendency not to study the written but to simply memorize it. However, Socrates does not stop there. He tells Phaedrus, “He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person” (166). Plato, thus, establishes two ideas about writing. First, in the myth, the king of the gods has examined writing, its proposed function and has rejected it. Derrida calls the king “The Father of Logos”; in other words, he is the father of the spoken word (139). He writes that, “The value of writing will not be itself, writing will have no value, unless and to the extent that god-the-king approves of it” (1840). Writing is reduced to “product,” non-essential, and secondary to speech.

If we return the earlier analysis, this assertion becomes extremely problematic. First what Plato has created here is a mimic of speech—a product. It is meant to resemble speech, but we cannot deny that it is not, in fact, speech. It is not even a record of historical speech; it is a literary narrative devised and executed by Plato through Socrates and Phaedrus. Plato attempts to achieve two things, primarily, through this. First, writing the dialogue as a literary text purporting to be a historical record allows Plato to prepare the reader for this final conclusion, without the sense that this purpose is in mind from the beginning. Neel asserts that, “Plato’s text would have us believe that no one is in control, that it is a disinterested movement toward truth set in operation and kept in motion by the power of dialectic as exercised by the superior philosopher, Socrates” (14). However, because the reader can acknowledge the fact that Plato is composing this as a literary work, he can see that the text is deliberate and Plato is in control. Second, in appropriating Socrates’ voice, Plato attempts to remove himself completely from the dialogue, which returns us back to Neel’s point. It is meant to read and flow—to mimic—a real conversation. But it is not. Plato is absent from his text construction that affirms a metaphysics of presence.

With specific reference to the word pharmakon, Derrida finds the heart of the problem. Plato attempts, throughout the dialogue to separate the sliding meanings of pharmakon: “medicine and/or poison” (Derrida 1835). Plato attributes the meaning of medicine to speech and poison to writing, but for Derrida, the control over these signifieds continually escapes Plato, to the point where he has Socrates say, “The word [logos] is written with intelligence in the mind of the learner” (166). Therefore, as Thomas Frentz points out, “If speech is ‘written on the soul,’ then writing is already inside of ‘living’ speech (256). Thus, Plato, through this one line, has imploded the speech/writing opposition that he sets up from the beginning from within his own text. The balance that was thought to be held between the two is ruptured. It is not that writing becomes primary to speech, or even that the two are now equal. It is simply that through Plato’s own words, the reader finds the terms are supplementary. They add to each other’s value and meaning.

Simply referring to Plato’s text as contradictory would be a mistake. Such a perfunctory reading of the text ignores the literary quality of the text. This quality is important, not only because it gives context to an examination of the text, but because it is that very quality that helps to illuminate the breadth and depth of the contradictory and paradoxical nature of the text. It focuses attention on Plato’s absence from a text that upholds a metaphysics of presence, and it brings light to the problem of a written text, which, while it purports to be a record of the spoken word, condemns written texts.

Works Cited

Derrida, Jacques. “Dissemination/Plato’s Pharmacy.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leicht. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1830-76.

Frentz, Thomas S. “Memory, Myth, and Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 36 (2006): 243-62.

Neel, Jasper. Plato, Derrida, and Writing. Carbondale: U of S Illinois Press, 1988.

Plato. Phaedrus. The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 138-68.

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.

A Period of Progress

I agree with Lainey and Sarah that one of the primary difficulties in understanding this period (or any for that matter) is hurdling our pre-conceived notions of the period. Certainly stereotypes set up by the era’s own authors and popular culture, particularly the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland in my mind, play a critical part in our contemporary understanding of the period. However, we should look not just to our misunderstanding in terms of how these authors or popular culture has affected it but also, as Lainey began to point out, to the aspects of the culture that we really cannot comprehend.

As I read the introduction to the period, what stood out to me the most was the incredible progress that took place throughout the entirety of the period and the effect it had on the people. The Norton tells us that the people “suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense [. . .] of being displaced persons in a world made alien by technological changes that had been exploited too quickly for the adaptive powers of the human psyche” (980). What is at stake here is not whether or not we have lived through technological progress that matches or exceeds, perhaps proportionally, what was accomplished during the Victorian era. I think a case could be made for either side. However, I do not believe those of us alive today, who have lived at the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, can comprehend the mental strain that the majority of people during the Victorian era had to bear as a result of massive technological advancement.

The reasons for us not being able to understand such a thing stem from phenomena different from what Lainey and Sarah referred to: our pop culture and the ways the Victorian authors themselves presented the period. The advent of the railroad was monumental. We have not experienced such an incredible advancement in transportation. Even the invention of the car and airplane, I don’t think, can compare to the difference between traveling by horse and carriage and traveling by steam engine. Remember, before the steam engine, there had been no other practical way to travel except by horse or foot. I suppose the best analogy I can draw is if we suddenly discovered a way to teleport instantly—or, dare I say, apparate? As far as I can tell, that is the sort of monumental advancement in technology that the Victorian mind had to cope with.

We also do not know what it is like to live in a completely unfettered, free market economy. Yes, we’re a capitalist country, but I’m sure we’re all familiar with the ways in which our government regulates our economy, for better or worse. As contemporary Americans, we’ve grown accustom to a certain level of entitlement when it comes to employment. A minimum wage and an eight hour or less work day were simply a given when we were all holding down jobs to get through college. To think an employer could pay us less and work us more was laughable. We need to keep in mind the implications of a free market economy—both good and bad. Yes, child labor, extreme poverty, and few rights for the working class are horrible, but Britain also experienced unbridled progress that lead to inventions such as the photograph and photographic paper, the sewing machine, reinforced concrete, the list goes on and on (Victorian Web). Many of these things are completely taken for granted today, yet they are part of the foundation of our society. Now imagine what sorts of things cropped up all at once during this time. The sewing machine allowed for the mass production of clothing and linens. Reinforced concrete allowed buildings to be constructed quicker and stronger. As I said, I could continue the list of inventions and the ways in which they affected society, but the point is that all of these cropping up within just years of each other effected the common Victorian immensely. We’ve lived with concrete buildings—with skyscrapers, which were not around during this era. We’ve lived with department stores full of clothing, bed sheets, towels, anything imaginable made with a sewing machine. The mass production of goods of this nature did not exist before this time.

One final area that will escape our understanding is the imperialism of this age. We may be able to relate to it partially based on the Americanization of many countries around the world, i.e. a McDonald’s in just about every developed nation, but to understand what it would be like for those nations to actually belong to the United States would be impossible for us to understand. Never has a nation controlled such a large portion of the globe. To control so much of the world is a detestable notion today. Think about one of the major reasons most Americans believe we invaded Iraq: Oil. To gain wealth. Such a thing was completely standard just over a hundred years ago. Of course, that does not mean it was right, but I’m curious to see just how many of the authors we read address British imperialism and to what degree.

Many of us have written about our perception of the Victorians as affected by what we have in front of us: the novels of the age and the barrage of pop culture representations. While those are important, I would also stress the elements affecting our perception that are not in front of us, that we cannot fully comprehend: the lost British empire, the impact of a transportation development such as the steam engine, the effects of an unfettered, free market economy. I think it is easier for us to look at the images of the Victorians that have been planted in our head by popular culture and say, no, those are wrong because we can read the history of the period. However, reading the history of the period does not suffice when trying to comprehend the monumental progress that took place during this era. It is something that we’ll have to wrestle with and discuss if we want to understand.