Okay, But What Does it Mean?: The Creation of Communicative Art as a Function of Ethics in Vonnegut’s Bluebeard

Kurt Vonnegut’s work calls into question communication usually in the form of its futility. Sometimes it is a function of the action of the novel, as at the end of Slaughterhouse-Five or throughout Slapstick where birds asks “Poo-tee-weet?” (Slaughterhouse-Five 215) and “Whip poor will?” (Slapstick 217) mocking the absurdity of our own attempt to communicate. Other times it is a function of the narrator or the authorial persona who hovers over the vast majority of Vonnegut’s work, daring his readers to attempt to understand what he is saying. But at the heart of the parodies, the ironies, the unreliability, lies something that is communicative. Vonnegut’s 1987 novel, Bluebeard, addresses the question of meaning in art and develops an ethics of art creation. The novel questions the line between the autotelic and the communicative function of art and uses the blurred distinction as a symbol for not only the ability of human beings to create meaning within the unexplainable but their ethical responsibility to do so.

The novel takes the form of an autobiography written by an Abstract Expressionist. The writing of the autobiography, however, also takes place as part of the time and plot of the novel. The narrator, Rabo Karabekian, can be described as a changing narrator. He gives the reader flashbacks about his life amidst the telling of what is happening as he is writing the autobiography. He begins the novel believing that, as Oscar Wilde writes in the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, “All art is quite useless,” (2) meaning that it is autotelic—it is an end in itself. Karabekian begins his autobiography not just with the first moments of his life but also with the first moments of the “life” of the book itself. He points to his life story as artistic creation: “I was born of immigrant parents in San Ignacio, California, in 1916. I begin this autobiography seventy-one years later” (Vonnegut 1). Karabekian spends the first chapter giving a brief overview of his entire life up to the point that he is writing his autobiography. He keeps “the most important collection of Abstract Expressionist paintings still in private hands” inside his house, and tells the reader

Since I have done no useful work for decades, what else am I, really, but a paid museum guard? And, just as a paid museum guard would have to do, I answer as best I can the question put to me by visitor after visitor, stated in various ways, of course: ‘What are these pictures supposed to mean?’ These paintings, which are about absolutely nothing but themselves, were my own property long before I married Edith. (8-9)

Karabekian’s view of his own art, when he begins writing his autobiography, is that it is completely autotelic. Within much of Vonnegut’s work, however, it is often difficult to pin down the narrator—to decide whether or not he is reliable and at what times he is offering the reader parody or irony or treating a subject with sincerity. I argue that Karabekian does parody himself and his art at times, but ultimately this parody serves to transform him from believing his art is meaningless to creating communicative art as a function of ethical responsibility.

I use the term “ethical responsibility” in the Levinasian sense. Levinas argues that ethical responsibility must precede the search for knowledge; it is “first philosophy” (Totality and Infinity). He writes in Alterity and Transcendence that, “To address someone expresses the ethical disturbance produced in me, in the tranquility of the perseverance of my being, in my egotism as a necessary state, by the interruption of the ‘conatus essendi’ [effort to be] (Levinas’ translation) (97). This “someone,” or Other, is what constitutes ethical behavior. Without addressing the Other, one becomes self-absorbed, egotistical. For Levinas, the Other is not knowable. That is, we cannot know the quality of otherness of someone else (Totality and Infinity). In Levinasian ethics, the subject’s responsibility is to the Other—not to himself as in Kantian ethics. Ethics is something outside of subjectivity just as the Other is. Based on this explanation, I will examine art as a form of addressing the Other—that it must always address the Other lest it cease to be. That is, when the viewer encounters art, he or she is addressed by the piece. If there is no one to encounter a piece, it can never be in the sense that no one will ever see it or have knowledge of its existence. This, of course, can bring into question the piece of art that is hidden, with its replications still visible. Seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is certainly a much different experience than seeing a printed copy of it, scaled to a manageable size. However, both address the viewer but perhaps in different ways. I am not concerned, therefore, with Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the mechanical replication of art and the diminished value that those replications have (1167). Those replications still address their viewers. There is a reciprocal element to this as well. The viewer is Other to the artist and his art, while those two must also be Other to the viewer. Therefore, we can understand interpretation as communication with the Other as well. It is also part of ethical responsibility because the viewer must address the art as Other—it is not fully knowable.

Rabo Karabekian is altered throughout the novel both as character within his autobiography and also outside that story in the moments of “the present” (though told in past tense)—while he is writing the autobiography. Primarily, two characters are responsible for Karabekian’s change: Circe Berman and Dan Gregory. Berman is a stranger at the beginning—someone Karabekian meets on the beach outside his home. She becomes a houseguest indefinitely and wants to question everything Karabekian thinks he knows about art. He tells her that the titles of his paintings such as “ ‘Opus Nine’ and ‘Blue and Burnt Orange’ [. . .] ‘are meant to be uncommunicative’” (Vonnegut, Bluebeard 38). Berman then asks him a very important question: “ ‘What’s the point of being alive,’ [. . .] ‘if you’re not going to communicate?’” (39). It isn’t that she thinks Karabekian’s painting is utterly worthless because she sees it as meaningless; rather, it bothers her that Karabekian thinks he can attempt to create something that does not communicate. Her question, in its own simply way, echoes Levinas’ claim above. The confrontation with the Other—the artist’s expression in the form of painting which addresses the Other—demands communication.

Karabekian is affected by his first mentor Dan Gregory as well. Gregory instructs him to paint a picture of his studio “ ‘the way it really is’ ” (148). Karabekian tells the reader: “Did I make a painting of his studio which was virtually indistinguishable from a photograph? Yes, I did, yes I did” (154). But when Gregory examines it, he tells Karabekian that it has “ ‘No soul’” (163). The “present” Karabekian, as narrator, admits that if his paintings were hung posthumously and the people he was closest to were to come see them, “not one of them would find any reason to think about [him] except randomly. There would not be a trace of their dear departed Rabo Karabekian” (164). Gregory’s use of the word soul does not necessarily imply something transcendent, but rather that Karabekian failed to attempt to put some part of himself inside the painting—he failed to try to make his painting say something. This does not mean, however, that his painting communicates nothing at all; rather, Karabekian failed to attempt communication, which is incumbent upon him in his interaction with the Other. It is a part of his ethical responsibility. Also, it is important to note that this does not mean that whatever Karabekian (or Vonnegut or any artist for that matter) intends to communicate becomes what it does communicate. As Foucault points out, “[Writing] only refers to itself, yet it is not restricted to the confines of interiority. On the contrary, we recognize it in its exterior deployment. This reversal transforms writing into an interplay of signs, regulated less by the content it signifies than by the very nature of the signifier” (116). Foucault’s explanation can easily be extended to visual art. He is reminding us of the free play of the signifier—that signified meanings cannot be attached to signifiers concretely or permanently. Therefore, the emphasis is not on what Karabekian should try to communicate but that he merely try to communicate something. It is then incumbent upon the viewer to communicate back meaning—to create meaning.

Karabekian continues to deny this responsibility to attempt communication, however. Gregory tells him: “ ‘Painters—and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians. [. . .] They are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!’” (Vonnegut 150). Karabekian despises such a sentiment. He addresses the reader directly, saying: “How was that for delusions of moral grandeur! Yes, and now that I think about it: maybe the most admirable thing about the Abstract Expressionist painters, since so much senseless bloodshed had been caused by cockeyed history lessons, was their refusal to serve on such a court” (150). Based on a Levinasian conception of ethics, Karabekian’s statement is somewhat problematic. But there is a balance struck here between two parodies. Gregory’s conclusion about the responsibility of artists is a bit overstated, but it is not completely inaccurate. Because he recognizes that communication with the Other is part of ethical responsibility, he feels artists are the ones who get to communicate messages of good and evil in accessible ways to the Other. Karabekian sees this as a bit morally presumptuous and rightfully so. However, in his denunciation, he also praises himself and the Abstract Expressionists for not communicating at all and thus averting more “senseless bloodshed,” which also can be read as morally presumptuous.

Karabekian continues to shun his ethical responsibility as an artist even until the very last few pages of the novel. The Karabekian as character in his life story has taken his old paintings, which have all peeled away to reveal the original white canvas, and hung them in a barn. They are supposed to become his masterpiece, but he decides to leave them white. He tells Edith, his wife at the time, that it is done. When she asks him what he will title it, he tells her he will call it “ ‘I Tried and Failed and Cleaned Up Afterwards, so It’s Your Turn Now’” (292). Even as an Abstract Expressionist, he could not convince others that his painting was autotelic. Earlier, in an exchange of letters with his friend the Countess Portomaggiore, she tells him that the Abstract Expressionists have “failed to paint pictures of nothing after all, that she easily identifies chaos in every canvas”; Karabekian brushes this off as “a pleasant joke” and writes back “ ‘NOT EVEN CHAOS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE [. . .] WE’LL COME OVER AND PAINT IT OUT’” (257). Karabekian tries to claim this as a joke, but the statement is ultimately unreliable because the communicative nature of art continues to consume him as demonstrated in his titling of the white canvases. The title of the white canvases illustrates how overwhelmed Karabekian feels with the task of trying to make his art autotelic—he is discovering that he cannot.

By the end of the novel, past and present time in the story have met, and Karabekian is ready to accept his responsibility. Circe Berman finally convinces him to show her his masterpiece in the barn. He did not leave it white. Rather, he has painted an impressive and detailed image of thousands of people in a valley. Karabekian tells Berman that it is a painting of where he was “ ‘when the sun came up the day the Second World War ended in Europe’” (298). He knows the story behind every person. Berman tells him that it is “ ‘a terribly important painting in someway’” (310). Neither Berman nor Karabekian feel as though he needs to know exactly what it means—what is important for Karabekian is that he has finally attempted to communicate through his art. This piece contains his soul.

Later, when people ask him what the painting means, he tells them “ ‘It isn’t a painting at all! It’s a tourist attraction! It’s a World’s Fair! It’s a Disneyland!’” (299). While this can be read as Karabekian parodying and disparaging his own work, that does not mean that he has not held up his ethical responsibility. He has recognized the responsibility of his art to communicate, but it is the viewer’s responsibility to communicate back—to interpret. Karabekian can say his painting means whatever he wants it to—but his interpretation, whether ridiculous or serious, has no weight. Therefore, Karabekian is not poking fun at his own work, but rather his inability to interpret his own work.

The novel itself can be seen as a communicative object which ironically contests its status as such. Karabekian continually inserts instances of coincidence. After relating these, he addresses the reader directly, writing: “What a coincidence! But that is all it is. One mustn’t take such things too seriously” (199) and later writes “One would soon go mad if one took such coincides too seriously. One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand” (229). Read as satire, these statements support art as communicative because they parody the belief that everything is meaningless. Karabekian comes to discover that the coincidences in his life make him who he is. He discusses some events of his life as fated. He writes: “I was obviously born to draw better than most people” (81). He writes about the “fateful truck trip” that he and Terry Kitchen take to see check on the potato barn that Karabekian eventually creates his masterpiece in. These events are coincidence just like the other ones which Karabekian says the reader cannot pay attention to. The novel becomes a metaphorical abstract expressionist painting, full of seemingly random brush strokes and splatters—on the surface, meaningless. Thus, the reader is prompted to attempt to uphold his ethical responsibility to the work and interpret.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leicht. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1167-87.

Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Language, Counter Memory, Practice. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Alterity and Transcendence. 1995. Trans. Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia UP, 1999.
—. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburg: Duquense University Press, 1969.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Bluebeard. 1987. New York: Dial Press, 2006.
—. Slapstick. 1976. New York: Dial Press, 2006.
—. Slaughterhouse-Five. 1969. New York: Dell Publishing, 1991.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1890. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

"All Art is Quite Useless": The Essence of Truth and the Ethical Responsibility of the Artist

Walter Pater discusses experience in his conclusion to The Renaissance. He writes: “At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to play upon those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force seems suspended like some trick of magic (551). Pater is referring to a phenomenon more accurately described by Friedrich Nietzsche in his essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” published in 1873—the same year as The Renaissance. In this essay, Nietzsche asserts that truth itself is merely a metaphor, that is when we name something, the truth of that label is merely illusory; it is not truth-in-itself. Both Pater and Oscar Wilde assert that art has no external function in-itself. It is autotelic. I argue, however, that the assertion that all experience is metaphor is not enough to claim all art as merely for itself with no ethical responsibility incumbent upon the artist.

Nietzsche’s discussion of the formation of what I would describe as concrete abstract concepts is very similar to Pater’s assertion that the critic has “no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience” (546). Nietzsche provides the following example regarding honesty:

We call a person ‘honest,’ and then we ask ‘why has he behaved so honestly today?’ Our usual answer is, ‘on account of his honesty.’ Honesty! [. . .] We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called ‘honesty’; but we know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which now designate as ‘honest’ actions. (1174)

The same can be applied to beauty, and Pater recognizes this. We know nothing of any essence of beauty; it is impossible for us to describe beauty—or any abstract concept—in language. Thus, Nietzsche comes to the conclusion that truth itself is “[a] movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms [. . .] which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions” (1174). In other words, Nietzsche argues that the totality of our experience begins as metaphor, and through repetition, it solidifies.

Pater writes, “To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought,” and Nietzsche’s claim certainly falls in this category. But Pater’s claim that art exists for itself is only partially consistent with a belief that we cannot know the essence of things. If all experience is metaphor, then it is incumbent on us as the ones who experience the world to create meaning and, more importantly, an order. Through this conception of truth—the fixed, canonical, and binding—Nietzsche sees

the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries—a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. (1175)

This order, which includes the privileging of oppositions, is what allows a viewer to interpret and provide meaning for a work of art. It is what allows us to debate what even constitutes art. If we think of art the same way Ferdinand de Saussure thinks of language, then we see that meaning floats free from the signifier, that is meaning is always impermanent and arbitrary. Therefore, it is natural to see the responsibility of meaning creation on the shoulders of the viewer, the reader, the listener, etc. This is something we do every day—we throw off any intentions of the author and create meaning as we see it in a text.

But there is an inherent problem in leaving the discussion there. The suggestion that we ultimately have no control over language or meaning is closely tied to the existentialist (and nihilist) proposition that the universe is ultimately meaningless. According to Nietzsche and the postmodernists in the 20th century who follow him, this is true. However, if left here, this discussion would imply that there is absolutely no ethical responsibility on the part of the communicator. If we return to Kant’s categorical imperative, we will see that the model of meaning set forth by Nietzsche and Pater actually does absolve the artist, or any communicator for that matter, of ethical responsibility. Under Kantian ethics, the only ethical responsibility an individual has is to himself. The individual must make decisions based upon whether or not his action can be universalized. If we adhere to Pater’s belief that art is autotelic, under Kantian ethics, there is never a situation where the artist would be held ethically responsible for his or her art because the object itself is without meaning. It is incumbent upon the viewer to place meaning onto the object.

Kantian ethics has a difficult time justifying itself in a reality that is completely subjective. This is because there can be no objective truth which the subject can gauge his actions against. In Kantian ethics, the subject must have the ability to universalize his or her actions, that is make them objective. In Nietzsche’s explanation of reality, this is completely impossible. Enter Emmanuel Levinas and his concepts of alterity and The Other (Totality and Infinity). The Levinasian Other is not the same as the Lacanian Other or even the post-colonial Other, though anthropologists use the term alterity to describe cultural otherness. There isn’t time to explain all the differences (which I do not fully understand anyway), but Levinas’ concept of otherness is important to this discussion. For Levinas, the Other is not knowable. That is, we cannot know the quality of otherness of someone else (Totality and Infinity). I am Other to all of you, and you to me; however, none of us can be each other so we can never know what the Other is fully. In Levinasian ethics, the subject’s responsibility is to the Other—not to himself. Ethics is something outside of subjectivity just as the Other is; therefore, ethical responsibility precedes any objective search for truth. This makes much more sense in the context of Niezsche’s proposition because it binds the subject who exists in a reality where seemingly “everything is permitted” as Camus would say. But Camus also notes that simply because “‘everything is permitted’ does not mean that nothing is forbidden” (67). This adheres to an ethics of responsibility. Therefore, the same can be said of the artist. If art is autotelic, then the artist’s first responsibility must be to the Other. If the artist creates something that he knows will disgust, terrify, offend—with absolutely no other purpose but that—then the artist must question whether or not he is upholding his responsibility to the Other. This, of course, is a question that is quite difficult to answer, and would probably make for good discussion on Tuesday as we discuss Dorian’s ethical responsibility (or lack of.)

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. 1955. New York: Vintage International, 1991.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburg: Duquense University Press, 1969.

Pater, Walter. “From The Renaissance.” 1873. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. 545-53.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 1171-9.

Metaphors of Nature and the Nature of Metaphor: Nietzsche as a Predecessor of Play

The rhetorical tradition experiences multiple ruptures in discursive practices during the 18th and 19th centuries. Universities begin training students of varied disciplines in rhetoric rather than only the divinely inspired as in the medieval period. Furthermore, divination itself, as a discursive practice, begins to dissipate as well. Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” is an excellent example of this type of rupture. Nietzsche enters into a new type of discursive practice, one that seeks to expose the edifice of absolute truth as artifice. Nietzsche’s discussion of truth in relation to nature paves the way for Jacques Derrida to enter into a new discursive practice described most clearly in relation to Nietzsche in his essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”; in this essay, Derrida displaces Nietzsche.

While Derrida makes the statement in Of Grammatology that “there is nothing outside of the text,” Nietzsche does not go so far as to say there is nothing. He seems to closely follow the work Kant and Schopenhauer—though Bizzell and Herzberg point out that Nietzsche also rigorously criticizes Schopenhauer (1173)—in that he asserts there is a reality behind the veil of human perception, what he calls “nature.” Nietzsche begins by posing this question: “What does man actually know about himself?” (1172). The answer is certainly very little. If man knows so little about himself, then where does his scrupulous conception of truth come from? It is the distinction between true and lie that Nietzsche must confront because this is the basis for all knowledge. He wishes to establish a discourse for discussing truth, and in order to get to the root of truth, he must begin with how truth is described—through language.

It is in Nietzsche’s discussion of language that we can see the framework for semiotics begins to take shape. Nietzsche is interested in the relationship between “language and thought, rhetoric and knowledge” (Emden 1); he wants to examine the possibility for contingence between these and at what point they connect if ever. He points out first and foremost that the establishment of truth can be seen as a sort of “peace treaty” (1172); its meaning is a social contract. He writes: “[A] uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth” (1172). Thus, man despises and punishes the liar because the liar does not adhere to these laws; however, Nietzsche also points out that “what [he] hate[s] is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception” (1173). In other words, it is not that the essence of the lie, the lie-in-itself, that man hates; rather, it is merely the consequences based upon the contract which was fashioned by man in the first place. Here, the opposition between truth and lie is essentially deconstructed. The consequences or rewards for lies and truths, respectively, have nothing to do with what those words are, as things-in-themselves. But if we cannot decide the difference between truth and lie at the level of our understanding, then how can we claim anything as truth? It is this question that Nietzsche answers next.

Nietzsche provides three steps for utterance-formation. He writes that a word is “the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus; between the stimulus and the sound is the image” (1173). Nietzsche also points out, however, that there are certain abstract concepts which we pretend to be familiar with outside of the context of their use. He writes: “The ‘thing in itself’ (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for” (1173). Discovering the nature of an object, being able to pull back the veil of perception, is what Nietzsche is referring to. What he draws from this is the idea that language is not “logical” because it is arbitrary. Words are not “derived from the essence of things” (1174). If we understand Nietzsche’s essay in terms suggested by Christian Emden, as a discussion of the relationship between “language and thought, rhetoric and knowledge” (1), Nietzsche’s project becomes clearer as a discursive practice. There is a rupture between language and thought because language cannot be contained by thought nor can it describe outside of the limits of what our minds can conceive. This is best exemplified in Nietzsche’s discussion of the concept and the differences between concrete and abstract concepts. The concrete is formed “by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences [between individual concrete objects—Nietzsche’s example is ‘leaf’] and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects” (1174). This concrete concept formation illuminates the inability of language to shed its own artifice in order to describe the essence of an object. Even more perplexing is the formation of the abstract concept. Nietzsche provides the following example:

We call a person ‘honest,’ and then we ask ‘why has he behaved so honestly today?’ Our usual answer is, ‘on account of his honesty.’ Honesty! [. . .] We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called ‘honesty’; but we know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which now designate as ‘honest’ actions. (1174)

Ultimately, Nietzsche is describing our account of reality as a system of metaphors. Nothing we describe in language is actually completely accounted for through language; it is only alluded to. Language exists on the fringes of nature, never able to get beyond itself to nature.

However, Nietzsche repairs this rupture between language and thought. This is not how we account for reality, that is day to day, one does not consciously recognize all language as metaphor. Rather, the metaphor has gone through a process of “petrification and coagulation” to become rigid and fixed—seemingly unmovable (1176). In the middle of his essay, Nietzsche finally answers the question that he set forth at the beginning. He writes:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force [. . .]. (1174)

Again, the opposition between truth and lie is deconstructed because truth is described in terms of falsity. Truth is not the same as what we believe its essence to be. This must be the case because truth embodies the very nature of all reality. If all concepts and their individual objects, both concrete and abstract, are metaphors—are not true essence—then truth itself, not truth-in-itself, must be described in the same way—as nothing more than a metaphor for the essence of truth, whatever that may be. Nietzsche writes, “The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself” (1177). It is not then a rupture between language and thought, but a disconnection of thought and language from nature. Language and thought are inextricably linked in order to turn metaphor into truth. Through this conception of truth—the fixed, canonical, and binding, Nietzsche sees

the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries—a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. (1175)

He describes here the ordering and structuring of oppositions which begin, for Nietzsche, with true/false. These oppositions arise out of the coagulation of metaphor—of the vivid world of first impressions. As Nietzsche says, it is a way to make reality “more human.” But this pyramidal structure is exactly that—a structure, man-made and impermanent.

Lee Hardy writes that “ ‘knowledge,’ for Nietzsche, is a kind of error, and what passes for truth among us is but a fiction, devised for vital purposes” (31). The relationship between rhetoric and knowledge is very important. If all knowledge is erroneous, but rhetoric attempts to disseminate knowledge, then the discursive practices of the past certainly need to be re-evaluated—Nietzsche’s own discursive practice should be as well. However, Nietzsche fails to acknowledge this point. Hardy poses this very important question to ask of Nietzsche: “Is the claim that all of our ‘truths’ are little ‘t’ truths—good for us to believe, perhaps, but ultimately false—itself a big ‘T’ truth, one that gets it just right, one that tells us how the world is set up such that our truths must always be spelled with a little ‘t’; or is the claim that all of our truths are little ‘t’ truths itself a little ‘t’ truth, that is, nothing more than a useful fiction?” (31). It seems very clear, in this essay at least, that Nietzsche would like to claim his explanation to be an absolute truth but he cannot. At the same time, however, he does not acknowledge the totalization his discourse demands. There is no room for other possibilities because all possibilities are contingent on empty metaphor. But this becomes self-legitimizing, which sets the stage for a displacement of this discursive practice with another.

Derrida creates points of contingence and rupture in one vital place within Nietzsche’s discourse. I use the terms contingence and rupture together as one in the same because this is the way in which Derrida describes his displacement of not only Nietzsche, but Freud and Heidegger as well. Oppositions such as contingence and rupture are both necessary tools in his discursive practice. First, Derrida recognizes the sign, to use Saussure’s terminology, as arbitrary and made of two parts, the signifier and signified, which function as two sides of a piece of paper. They are inextricably linked. These terms are essentially the same as language and thought in Nietzsche’s text. Language, the signifier, arouses thought, the signified. However, unlike Nietzsche, Derrida does not necessarily see any “nature” behind language. Derrida’s project is to discover the “nothing” that is outside of the text. He begins this in his essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” with a discussion of the “center” of structure. Derrida writes:

[I]t has always been thought that the center which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical though concerning the structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. (279)

In other words, “the center,” in Western metaphysics, must transcend the structure that it supports. This conception of center is based on the metaphysics of presence. Centers such as “essence, existence, [. . .] transcendentality, consciousness, God, man” all demand presence (280). Derrida points out, however, that a signified that demands presence limits the play of the signifier, that is if there is the possibility of an absolute the play of the signifier is finite.

However, Derrida is not interested in the destruction of Western metaphysics, which is what he claims Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger do. Derrida acknowledges that these discursive practices seek to establish a conception of truth that defies Western metaphysics and attempts to solve its central problems, questions of being, truth, and knowledge, by destroying its foundations. Derrida points out that “all of these destructive discourses and all their analogues are trapped in a kind of circle. This circle is unique. It describes the form of the relation between the history of metaphysics and the destruction of the history of metaphysics. There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics” (280). For Derrida, it is impossible to critique metaphysics by attempting to dismiss its terminology because we “have no language—no syntax and no lexicon—which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest” (280-1). It is impossible to escape the use of a discursive practice if one seeks to critique that same practice. One must use the same language.

Because of this, one cannot escape the inevitability of what would seem like contradiction in Nietzsche’s discursive practice. Derrida uses the example of Claude Lévi-Strauss and his discussion of incest prohibition to illustrate this phenomenon. Lévi-Strauss is concerned with the distinction between nature and culture—a distinction that goes at least as far back as the Phaedrus in the discussion between Calicles and Socrates. Incest prohibition seems to exist as part of both nature and culture because it is universal across all cultures, but it also belongs to a system of norms because it is a prohibition. Derrida writes “By commencing his work with the factum of the incest prohibition, Lévi-Strauss thus places himself at the point at which this difference, which has always been assumed to be self-evident, finds itself erased or questioned” (283). This is what deconstruction does. It destabilizes oppositions that were for so long though to be self-evident. It rearranges them, reorders them. In this way, Derrida’s discursive practice displaces Nietzsche’s because Nietzsche’s practice would have been concerned with exposing this pyramidal structure as metaphor, non-truth, not truth-in-itself. Derrida, however, wants to move beyond this and not merely tear down and destroy the opposition, but see how it can be rethought.

Lastly, Derrida confronts the notion of totalization. Nietzsche, as Derrida points out, defines totalization as “useless, and sometimes as impossible. This is no doubt due to the fact that there are two ways of conceiving the limit of totalization” (289). In Nietzsche’s view, totalization is impossible because he sees it as an attempt to master the unmasterable. It is the use of finite language to try and contain the infinite. Derrida, however, writes, “[N]ontotalization can also be determined in another way: no longer from the standpoint of a concept of finitude as relegation to the empirical, but from the standpoint of the concept of play” (289). Rather than seeing language as a finite field which cannot cover the infinite, Derrida sees that the “nature of the field” itself “excludes totalization” (289). That is, it is not that the field is too large; rather there is “something missing from it” (289). The field of language is missing a center. The sign replaces the center, thus “One cannot determine the center and exhaust totalization because the sign which replaces the center [. . .] occurs as a surplus, as a supplement” (289). Language, for Derrida, does not function merely as a finite system of metaphors but as a system where the “center,” the transcendent, presence, is always missing.

Works Cited

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

—. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 278-93.

Emden, Christian J. Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness and the Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Hardy, Lee. “Postmodernism as a Kind of Modernism: Nietzsche’s Critique of Knowledge.” Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought. Ed. Merold Westphal. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. 28-43.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed.
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 1171-9.

“The Heath is a Cruel Taskmaster to Me”: Nihilism and Nature in The Return of the Native

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
- Stephen Crane

The ending of The Return of the Native sparked controversy not only in Hardy’s time but in our class on Thursday as well. I speak, of course, of the “true” ending to the novel; the one which Hardy had originally intended to be the ending of the novel. I think an important point in understanding and deciding what exactly happens to Eustacia and Wildeve at the end of Book Five is the distinction between what I will term Hardy’s Nature and Huxley’s Nature. I think if we were to read the end of the novel in terms of Huxley’s Nature, which is an agnostic view, then their deaths would be very upsetting because even though there is no belief in a specific creed, as Huxley says, there is still the sense that human life can have meaning (1436); however, read in terms of Hardy’s Nature, which I argue is nihilist, their deaths are perfectly understandable and should warrant no emotional response because ultimately their lives were meaningless—they simply succumb to the vast uncaring power of Nature.

Nihilism, defined as simply as possible, is a belief in the meaninglessness of everything; therefore, the nihilist, by definition, is an atheist because he believes that nothing has meaning and thus believes in nothing. Let me reiterate the distinction I made in class between nihilism and existentialism because it is a point of misunderstanding that I have discovered even in published critical essays in my research for my master’s project. First, there are really multiple forms of existentialism, but the two main distinctions are theistic and atheistic. First, it is important to note that the thinkers I will discuss here vehemently denied the label existentialist and such a term was not in existence during Kierkegaard’s time but was applied to his work later. Last week, I mentioned Kierkegaard (and Dr. Varner mentioned him in class) who would be considered a theistic or Christian existentialist. Both schools, theistic and atheistic, believe in the meaninglessness of the universe itself. Kierkegaard argues that this is where the “leap of faith” for the Christian comes in—there is no way to absolutely prove the existence of God given the universe we find ourselves in; we must take a leap of faith. Therefore, meaning is found within a meaningless universe through faith. Atheistic existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus are concerned with discovering meaning without appeal. Sartre famously describes the term “being-in-itself” in Being and Nothingness meaning that existence precedes essence. In other words, human beings do not have a purpose or meaning before they actually come into existence—they create that meaning. The importance of this is to note that while existentialism does post the universe as meaningless, it denies the belief that everything is without meaning. Camus even writes in The Rebel that his entire life’s work is dedicated to the opposition of nihilism.

A comparison between Hardy and a couple American naturalist authors, Stephen Crane and Jack London will help to illuminate the nihilism found in The Return of the Native. In Crane’s “The Open Boat,” four survivors of a ship that has sunk find themselves at the mercy of the sea in a ten-foot dinghy that is slowly taking on water. A few days into their journey, they spot land, but they only have oars and cannot get to the shore quickly enough. The narrator, at this point writes that the men in the boat may said something to this effect: “ ‘If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why [. . .] was I allowed to come this far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about o nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous.’ [. . .] Afterward the man might have had an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds. ‘Just you drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!’” (Crane 909). At the end of the story, everyone makes it ashore but the one. The narrator writes, “The welcome of the land to the men from the sea was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried slowly up the beach, and the land’s welcome for it could only be the different and sinister hospitality of the grave” (919). In Crane’s story, the characters are completely at the mercy of Nature. Even when they arrive on shore, death beckons them. The fact that one dies and three survive is solely chance for the narrator and the characters—there is no inherent meaning.

Similarly, in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” the nameless main character, a new-comer to the wild, attempts to challenge nature though he sees the possibility that he will lose before he sets out into the freezing expanse of the Yukon. On his trip he falls into a shallow creek and attempts to build a fire to keep himself from freezing to death. He, like Crane’s characters, is faced with nature which he knows he cannot control. The narrator writes: “When it is seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire—that is, if his feet are wet. [. . .] [T]he circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder. All this the man knew” (London 982). The main character is aware of Nature’s uncontrollability, but he still believes he can beat it as long as he knows how to beat it. But his hands are numb with frostbite. He struggles to start the fire, but as soon as he gets one going, snow from a tree falls on it and puts it out. The reader knows deep down that hope is lost, but still desires to see the man prevail. The man, too, convinces himself that by his sheer willpower alone, he can defeat Nature his way; if he can just keep a steady pace and continue to walk towards his destination, he will make it. The narrator writes “Without a doubt he would lose some fingers, and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there” (986). The man is attempting to reconcile the situation in whatever way he can. Even when he is on the verge of death, the narrator tells us, “Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die” (987). There is a profound irony in the way in which the man continually attempts to reconcile his situation in the face of hopelessness. Or, in other words, he attempts to create meaning in an utterly meaningless and hopeless situation, and the way in which the narrator presents this to the reader makes his struggle seem utterly futile.

A clear parallel can be drawn between these American short stories and The Return of the Native. What happens to Mrs. Yeobright can clearly fit into the indifferent attitude of Nature, but and interpretation of the end of Book Five is even better served when put into a nihilistic context. Eustacia’s death can be read not only as suicide but as a succumbing to the power of Nature. When Clym finds Wildeve looking for Eustacia, they standoff in silence, but the narrator tells us: “While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind. Its origin was unmistakable—it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir” (Hardy 365). The reader does not know exactly how Eustacia fell into the stream, but Clym’s remarks immediately following give some indication. He asks Wildeve if he thinks it could have been Eustacia who they heard. When Wildeve asks, “ ‘Why should it be she?’”, Clym responds, “Because last week she would have put an end to her life if she had been able. She ought to have been watched!’” (365). Because Clym had threatened Eustacia just a few days before because he blamed her for his mother’s death, he feels responsible. During their argument, she tells him, “ ‘I almost wish you would kill me,’ [. . .] ‘It is with no strong desire, I assure you, that I play the part I have lately played on earth. You are no blessing, my husband’” (323). Both Clym and Wildeve jump into the water to save Eustacia. Diggory Venn is able to pull them out, but both Wildeve and Eustacia are dead.

Nihilism comes into play in these events in two major ways. First, Eustacia and Wildeve, just as in the American tales, are defeated by nature. The narrator describes he lifeless body as “more than whiteness; it was almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking” (371). The narrator then compares Wildeve to her: “Less repose was visible in his face than in Eustacia’s. [. . .] The only upon him of his recent struggle for life was in his finger-tips, which were worn and scarified in his dying endeavors to obtain a hold on the face of the weir-wall” (371). In this comparison, we see that Eustacia did not struggle at all—she succumbed to the power of Nature. And even though Wildeve struggled to survive, he could not defeat Nature. The nihilistic Nature, an indifferent, uncaring, meaningless universe destroyed them both. Second, Clym laments the losses to Venn, saying: “ ‘I am getting used to the horror of my existence. They say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it. Surely that time will soon come to me!’” (372). What Clym speaks of is flying in the face of the meaningless universe, which is what the survivors in Crane’s story and the man in London’s both do. They face it head on because in nihilism there is nothing else to do but laugh at it since the universe can crush them at any moment—and does. Venn asks him, “ ‘Why should you say such desperate things?’” and Clym responds, cementing his nihilism in the mind of the reader: “ ‘No, they are not desperate. They are only hopeless; and my great regret is that for what I have done no man or law can punish me!’” (372). This hopelessness is at the heart of nihilism. It seems fairly obvious that Hardy wanted to end the novel here, after those lines, to emphasize the meaninglessness of the universe and man’s inability to create anything meaningful within it. There is nothing but hopelessness.

What a bummer!

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Rebel. 1951. New York: Vintage International, 1991.

Crane, Stephen. “A man said to the universe:.” 1899. The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane. Ed. Joseph Katz. Ithica: Cornell UP, 1972. 102.

—. “The Open Boat.” 1897. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. C. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. 903-19.

Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. 1878. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. “From Agnosticism and Christianity.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1354-5.

London, Jack. “To Build a Fire.” 1902. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. C. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. 977-87.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. 1943. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Of Quite Infinite Depth, Of Quite Infinite Expansion: Huxley, Mill, Carlyle, and the Authority of Natural Science as a Meta-Narrative

We discussed in class the change in worldview for the Victorians from the certainty of The Church to possible uncertainty to the new certainty of Science. I would like to examine this shift and point out the ways in which Science is a meta-narrative similar to the meta-narrative of Christianity. This is a characteristic of natural science that remained ignored really until the 1980s when Jean-François Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition in which he points out that science is also a meta-narrative with its own set of values and restrictions. Our culture, and certainly the late Victorians, tends to place science and religion at odds primarily because science can be “proven” where as religion cannot. Using Mill and Carlyle as guides, I would like to look at Huxley’s work and question his definition of certainty.

I will begin with Huxley’s assertions. As a context for looking at “On the Physical Basis of Life,” I would like to point out Huxley’s claim in “Agnosticism and Christianity”: “it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty” (537). We can assume, then, that in his lecture “On the Physical Basis of Life,” he believes that evidence which logically justifies his assertions has been produced; therefore, he can speak with certainty. Of course, this evidence is Darwin’s Origin of the Species. But what if the scientific method by which this evidence was produced could be called into question? How much more certain would Huxley’s claims be than assertions made on religious foundations?

If we return to Carlyle, we’ll see the establishment of the early Victorian conception of nature. Carlyle writes, “To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles” (107). Carlyle’s view can be compared and possible considered a precursor to existentialism of the 20th century. For other philosophers who are more traditionally considered precursors to existentialism, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, experience is the only thing that human beings have to create any sort of meaning in their lives. Like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Carlyle points out here that Nature, the universe, is completely beyond human understanding. 20th century existentialists like Sartre and Camus argue that the world is completely devoid of meaning outside of what meaning humans attribute to it. This seems to line up nicely with Huxley’s discussion of protoplasm and Darwin’s later work The Descent of Man because both make the assertion that there is nothing inherently “special” about human beings. However, to assert that this is an absolute is to limit what Carlyle is saying. Carlyle specifically addresses “the wisest man” which in Huxley and Darwin’s view would certainly be the scientist. Carlyle claims that no matter how wide this man’s vision, Nature is far too vast to be explained in total. Yet Darwin’s theories certainly attempt such a totalization—and 20th and 21st century society certainly believes that his theories provide it.

In On Liberty, Mill points out how vital it is to question authority and writes that, “the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it” (252). Certainly we cannot ignore that this is precisely what Huxley and Darwin are doing—dissenting from popular opinion and for anyone to have silenced them at the time would have been wrong, as Mill points out. However, there is an underlying assumption in Huxley’s argument—that the scientific method is objective and without ideology. It is upon this underlying assumption that science has gained its massive credibility over the last 150 years. Even Mill acknowledges that nothing man-made is without any ideology. He writes that the problem with suppressing any opinion is that “the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly true. Those who desire to suppress it, or course deny its truth; but they are not infallible” (253). Therefore, why has the authority of science been so un-questionable” since the time of Darwin?

Mill defines Nature as “the aggregate of the powers and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes being as much a part of the idea of Nature, as those which take effect” (314). He goes on to say that, “mankind have been able to ascertain, either by direct observation or by reasoning processes grounded on it, the conditions of the occurrence of many phenomena; and the progress of science mainly consists in ascertaining those conditions” (314). Mill delivered these statements in a lecture approximately twenty before Huxley’s lecture; however Three Essays on Religion was published about five years after. We can see that Mill’s view on science is similar to Huxley’s. For some reason, there is a disconnect between what Mill wrote in On Liberty and what he is saying here. Science is not seen as something that needs to be questioned because it is presumably based on objective conditions.

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard argues that even science is based on ideological foundations. He points out that “Scientific knowledge is a discourse” (3). There is a danger in accepting all knowledge that is developed and based on scientific conclusions. Lyotard goes on to argue, “Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge [narrative knowledge]” (7). Lyotard does stipulate that he does not mean to suggest that narrative knowledge can prevail over scientific knowledge, rather that we must recognize the two exist together. The problem is that the language of science is self-legitimizing. We can see this in both Mill’s statement above as well as in Huxley. Huxley writes, in regard to the concept of protoplasm,

But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. (524)

Huxley asks the members of his audience to accept protoplasm as a universal force as long as he has convinced them of the existence of protoplasm. But this assumes that the method by which protoplasm is “proved” is completely objective—that it represents the totality of knowledge. This is how science can be viewed as a meta-narrative. In Huxley’s explanation of protoplasm, he provides a totalizing, universal account for all knowledge and experience. Does that mean that he is wrong? Not necessarily, but it is important that we recognize that such explanations are not completely objective and are not necessarily totalizing.

Works Cited

Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. 1831. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. “On the Physical Basis of Life.” 1869. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

—. “Agnosticism and Christianity.” 1892. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

Lyotard, Jean-Fransçois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 1979. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1984.

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

—. Three Essays on Religion. 1874. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

Narration and the First Novel For Grown-ups

The narrator seems to be point of contention for many of us, so I’d like to throw my two cents in. First, I’d like to disagree with Amy’s use of the term meta-fiction. My reasoning will be laid out with the rest of my argument, but I think it’s important to be clear on this point from the beginning. In order for Middlemarch to truly be meta-fiction, our narrator would have to consciously draw attention to her own devices as elements of fiction. In other words, she would have to be self-conscious not only of her position as narrator, but she would also need to comment on and call attention to the fact that the characters in her story are works of fiction. I argue that Middlemarch can be read as a meta-narrative for the Victorian period which is what truly makes it the “first novel for grown-ups.”

I will define meta-narrative shortly, but first I would like to clarify the type of narration that we are dealing with in Middlemarch. Wayne C. Booth offers us our best contemporary description of types of narration. He writes, “If we name over three or four of the great narrators—say Cervantes’ Cid Hamete Benengeli, Tristram Shandy, the ‘I’ of Middlemarch, and Strether, [. . .] we realize that to describe any of them with terms like ‘first person’ and ‘omniscient’ tells us little about how they differ from each other, or why they succeed while others described in the same terms fail” (149-50). Thus, “The Voice of the Wise Woman” needs to be defined more precisely. Paraphrasing Booth, there is, at the most basic level, a distinction between dramatized and undramatized narrators. There is also always a sense of implied authorship. Undramatized narrators can be first or third person; however, the stories they tell seem to come to us completely unmediated. There is no distinction between the implied, undramatized narrator and the implied author. Middlemarch is seemingly part of this category. but we can only know for sure if we know the requirements for a dramatized narrator. Such a narrator comes into existence, generally, as soon as he or she acknowledges himself with “I.” We must then decide to what degree the narrator aligns himself or herself with the implied author or distinguishes himself or herself as a character separate from the implied author, participating in the action of the story, with its own thoughts and feelings. Generally speaking, these narrators are characters; they are “never explicitly labeled as narrators at all” (Booth 152). However, sometimes these narrators are disguised as undramatized narrators. Booth writes that though narrators “of this kind are seldom labeled so explicitly as God in Job, they often speak with an authority as sure as God’s” (152). Therefore, I propose that the narrator in Middlemarch is a dramatized, first person narrator, who is aligned directly with the implied author. Now that we have many of these distinctions laid out, it should be clear how Middlemarch is not exactly meta-fiction. A good example of a meta-fictive narrator would be Tristram Shandy. Sterne’s narrator is a dramatized, first person narrator who draws attention to himself as narrator. The “I” in Middlemarch never points to the fact that she is telling a story. Her commentary is restricted to the character’s feelings and motives, and never touches on the process of story telling.

This is important because the narrator in Middlemarch is then not a narrator-agent, such as Shandy, Huckleberry Finn or Montressor in Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” through which the reliability of the narration is easily called into question. We can clearly see that her narration is not delivered to us unmediated—she gives us commentary. Of course, a question of reliability was raised in class regarding her commentary. Booth argues, however, that “To treat [commentary] as a single device is to ignore important differences between commentary that is merely ornamental, commentary that serves a rhetorical purpose but is not part of the dramatic structure, and commentary that is integral to the dramatic structure” (155). The commentary here only serves rhetorical purposes, and in some cases is perhaps purely ornamental, but it is never part of the dramatic structure because the narrator never interacts with any of the characters. The Voice of the Wise Woman speaks with the authority of God. The question of reliability also contains within it a question of distance. The examples I mentioned earlier, Shandy, Huck Finn, and Montressor, are all distant, as Booth points out, from their implied author intellectually, morally, temporally, etc. Furthermore, these narrators are not omniscient. The Wise Woman has full privilege into the minds of all the characters and has no visible distance from the implied author. How does this affect her reliability? Booth writes that “Generally speaking, the deeper our plunge [into a character’s mind] the more unreliability we will accept without loss of sympathy” (164). Based on all of these factors, we can safely accept the narrator’s commentary as reliable. This of course does not mean that we must accept it as reliable—it is merely a guide.

It is this notion of guide on which I base my assertion that Middlemarch can be read as a meta-narrative. The best example to illustrate the characteristics and purposes of meta-narrative is perhaps the Bible. This text attempts to establish an authoritative foundation on which to base one’s life. The parables, allegories, and historical accounts endeavor to institute a universal, totalizing order which explains all knowledge and experience. Middlemarch, essentially, attempts the same self-legitimization. Booth even compares Middlemarch’s narrator type, as we’ve defined it, to God in the book of Job. There are some distinct differences—the Bible is considered the Word of God; therefore, God is the narrator, but He is also a character, referred to in the third person. However, the narrator’s psychological commentary matches that of the Voice of the Wise Woman. The narrator of Job tells the reader that Job “was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil” (NASB Job 1:1). There are countless examples of this type of commentary in Middlemarch, but I only need provide one to demonstrate the correlation. The following commentary refers to Casaubon: “[H]e was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself” (Eliot 186). There are also moments of commentary where The Wise Woman confronts the reader directly, asking him to examine his own experience and thus come to the same conclusion that she has regarding a universal truth. The Wise Woman’s purpose in presenting these types of commentary could be read as an attempt to establish a meta-narrative for Victorian society. The question of reliability only becomes relevant if the reader chooses to believe in the meta-narrative or not—just as members of Christianity believe the narration in the Bible is reliable while atheists do not.

Finally, I will address Virginia Wolff’s statement regarding the status of Middlemarch as the first novel for grown-ups. First, if we view Middlemarch as a meta-narrative, then we certainly must decide that it is a novel for grown-ups. Yes, the Bible has many stories that are taught to children, but they are certainly not written for children. Children may be able to grasp the concept of meta-narrative on the level of allegory or morality tale. However, the complexity of the commentary and its implications put both of these meta-narratives out of reach. These are not the only examples. Marxism, Enlightenment science, and Freudian theory all seek to construct a meta-narrative to systematically provide a totalizing explanation for all knowledge and experience. Children certainly would not be able to grasp any of these. Whether or not this is the first novel for grown-ups would be difficult to say. However, it is the first that I can think of that can be defined as a meta-narrative and that treats its subjects in a completely adult manner.

Works Cited

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1961.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1871. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

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

“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.