Tag: critical reading

Spotlight on…Independent People by Halldór Laxness

‘Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes’.
– Halldór Laxness

Having never read any Icelandic fiction, I decided (with trepidation) to order a copy of ‘Independent People’ by Halldór Laxness on the recommendation of a friend. Originally published in two volumes in 1934 and 1935 respectively, Laxness’s epic novel centres around Bjartur of Summerhouses, an Icelandic farmer doggedly determined to acquire one thing in life: Independence. Set against the backdrop of early-twentieth century Rural Iceland, the novel effortlessly blends social realism with fiction in a way that acts as both an indictment of Capitalist materialism as well as highlighting the true cost of pursuing stoic self-reliance.

As Bjartur aggravatingly pursues his quest for independence at all costs in an environment where interdependence is key, the reader is taken on an epic journey that shows the cross-generational consequences Bjartur’s obsession has on his immediate family, friends and neighbours. Yet within the brutal climate and harsh Winter’s endured by all those on the Summerhouse homestead, it is the beauty of fractured family relationships that remain the most lasting and haunting part of Laxness’s story. It is moments of vulnerability between Bjartur and his daughter Ásta Sóllilja that the beauty of the prose is perhaps most striking in its raw intensity:

‘“This was the first time that he has ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul. He was very far from understanding what he saw. But what was of more value, he felt and suffered with her. In years that were yet to come, he relived this memory in song, in the most beautiful song this world has known. For the understanding of the soul’s defencelessness, of the conflict between the two poles, is not the source of the greatest song. The source of the greatest song is sympathy’.

-Halldór Laxness, Independent People

It is, quite simply, one of those very rare novels that consumes you; it is dark, gritty and yet full of sardonic humour. Only recently reprinted in paperback form after being out of print in the United Kingdom for over 50 years, it is clear to see how this novel contributed to Laxness winning the Nobel Prize in 1955 for his contribution to literature. I failed to put this novel down.

Written by Steph Reeves
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Mimicry and Subversion: the Representation of the Neo-Victorian femme fatale in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride

 ‘You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.’

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride, p.392

As Barbara Creed argues, ‘All human societies have a concept of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about women that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject.’[1] Throughout both late Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, concepts of the monstrous-feminine are inextricably linked with masculine fears of unveiled female sexual agency. More specifically, the characterisation of the female as dangerous and horrifying is intimately linked to notions of the sexually-independent female. This is the fear internalised by the femme fatale figure, a monstrous woman who refuses to remain subordinate to androcentric notions of the ‘ideal woman’, as presented in such works as Coventry Patmore’s 1854 narrative poem Angel in the House.[2] This typecasting of the femme fatale as monstrous proliferates throughout Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride. Despite the femme fatales continual shapeshifting’[3] in representation throughout the texts, the femme fatale remains a persistent figure of monstrosity; the femme fatale embodies, amongst others, fears of devolution, emasculation and decadence. Despite this, however, she remains a figure that evokes ‘dread’ desire’ and irresistible longing in her victims. [4] This monstrous power is evoked by the femme fatale’s subversion and monopolisation of the male gaze. [5] Through this, her fatality is achieved. The femme fatale, through this subversion, uses the gaze on her victims to ensnare them. Whilst the femme fatale gains power and influence through this subversion, ordained societal codes of masculine superiority come to be entirely obliterated; this results in the representation of the femme as fatale. Through a discussion of The Robber Bride, it becomes apparent that the femme fatale’s success at internalising the male gaze correlates with her level of monstrosity. Those that entirely refute and overpower the male gaze and, in turn, androcentric ideals are proven to be far more monstrous in their entirety than those who remain trapped in patriarchy.

In stark contrast to Victorian conceptions of the fatal woman, Atwood’s contemporary femme fatale bears no fatal flaw or hamartia. Zenia, a fin-de-millennial reworking of the femme fatale, is a creation of total monstrosity; she is described by Atwood herself as a horrific ‘Lady Macbeth’ figure who harbours no morally redeeming features.[6] Unlike Victorian femme fatales such as H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha, whose passion results in her demise before she can truly be fatal, Zenia is a femme fatale that proves entirely deadly to the men and women she encounters. Unlike her Victorian counterpart, she never falls victim to the male gaze she attempts to monopolise. Instead, Zenia garners complete control over the male gaze, ensnaring her victims in their own perceptions of femininity. The power embodied in this gaze is made paramount by Roz, who declares that ‘you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.’[7] This is the gaze of patriarchal domination and oppression, which acts to reduce and ‘mould’ women into positions of inferiority and subordination at the hands of superior masculinity. Through Roz’s declaration, Atwood essentially suggests that women are ‘moulded’ into figures of the ‘proper feminine’ by the patriarchally oppressive gaze of androcentric society.[8] As Jean Noble observes, male power ‘lies at the heart of an unequal gendering gaze directed from men towards women’; women thus become ‘defined and constituted by that male gaze.’[9] Noble’s argument is clearly corroborated by Atwood, who continues to ponder ‘male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?’; ‘even pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own […] unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole’ (p.392). In this sense, it becomes apparent that the women of the novel are under the continual scrutiny of male driven society; this continual examination appears to be not too dissimilar from Panopticism. As theorised by Jeremy Bentham and later expanded by Foucault, the theory is based on the notion of ‘all-seeing’ architectural buildings. Bentham argued that these buildings would result in behavioural changes, as the individual censors their behaviour accordingly under the ever-watchful gaze.[10] Tony, Charis and Roz are all victims of this Panopticism, continually monitoring and changing themselves to please their respective partners.

However, Zenia successfully evades this Panoptic gaze through her refusal to remain trapped in these constructed ‘male fantasies’ (p.392). It is through evasion of the Panoptical gaze of patriarchy that Zenia becomes so monstrous. Zenia essentially subverts societal norms through mimicry and subversion, trapping her victims in reflections of the male fantasies that preoccupy their lives. Through mimicry and subversion, Zenia takes possession of the male gaze in a manner that proves entirely fatal to those surrounding her. As observed by Barbara Creed, ‘the femme fatale performs in order to capture and control the male gaze’.[11] Upon capturing this gaze Zenia, like Ayesha, becomes a figure of monstrosity through her unbalancing of patriarchal society. However, Zenia is never placed up ‘on a pedestal’ (p.392) by her creator in the same way as Ayesha; Ayesha’s power is hampered by her creator, Haggard, who destroys Ayesha’s monstrous power through unbridled passion. In contrast, Zenia is never hampered by such passion. She is instead a figure of unstoppable monstrosity, using the male gaze to act independently on her own immoral desires. It is this power that gives Zenia the ability to monstrously destroy her victims. In this sense, Zenia embodies Luce Irigaray’s theory of mimicry. Irigaray suggests that ‘there is […] perhaps only one ‘path’, the one historically assigned to the feminine: that of mimicry. One must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means […] to convert a form of subordination into an affirmation, and thus to begin to thwart it.’[12] The only way to deconstruct patriarchal conceptualisations of femininity, Irigaray suggests, is to adopt these male fantasies of the feminine ideal and overplay them. Only through this overplaying is subversion reached. Acting on Irigaray’s discourse, Zenia becomes a figure of gross monstrosity through her successful mimicry of male fantasies. As Roz declares, ‘The Zenia’s of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own advantage; they haven’t let themselves by moulded into male fantasies, they’ve done it themselves’ (p.392). This mimicry not only affects the men she manipulates, but also the women she targets along the way. In fabricating personal histories and personas designed purposely to speak to the innermost desires and traumas of the three women, Zenia deploys her destruction. In doing, Zenia entirely refutes the subordinate patriarchal position that Ayesha ultimately falls victim of; she instead subverts and mimics male perceptions of the feminine ideal to enact and destroy their lives. Once these fantasies are performed to the men she ensnares the result is complete emasculation and a shattering of male superiority. Mitch is suggested to have committed suicide over the loss of Zenia whilst Billy disappears entirely. Like Holly and Leo, none of the men are the same after meeting her. Atwood thus portrays a far deadlier version of the femme fatale. Zenia is a femme fatale whose monstrosity lies in her successful mimicry of each individual victim’s respective fantasy of the ideal woman.

References

[1] Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2012), p.1.

[2] See Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1858).

[3] Heather Braun, The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910 (Lanham, MD: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012), p.109.

[4] H. Rider Haggard, She (London: Vintage, 2013), p.204. All further references to Haggard’s text are to this edition, and page numbers will be presented parenthetically in the body of the essay.

[5] In feminist theory, the male gaze is defined as the act of depicting the world and women from a masculine and heterosexual point of view; this is apparent throughout both visual art and literary history. Under this gaze, women are often presented as objects of male desire, deriving the construction of their identity from these male fantasies. This is the concept of the male gaze, as first developed by the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey, that my essay will focus on and expand in relation to the supposedly ‘monstrous’ power possessed by the femme fatale. For more information on the male gaze, see Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.833-44.

[6] Margaret Atwood, Interview for South Bank Show, interviewed by Gillian Greenwood (ITV, 1993).

[7] Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (London: Virago Press, 1994), p.392. All further references to Atwood’s text are to this edition, and page numbers will be presented parenthetically in the body of the essay.

[8] For more information on the notion of the ‘proper feminine’ as opposed to the ‘improper’, see Lyn Pykett, The ‘Improper Feminine’: The Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing (London: Taylor and Francis, 1992).

[9] Jean Bobby Noble, Masculinities without Men?: Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century Fictions (Vancouver, BC :University of British Columbia Press, 2010), p.47.

[10] See Michael Foucault, ‘The Means of Correct Training’ and ‘Complete and Austere Institutions’ [from Discipline and Punish], in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin, 1991), pp.188-204, 214-24.

[11] Barbara Creed, Darwin’s Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009), p.122.

[12] Luce Irigaray, ‘The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine’ in The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp.118-32, p.124.

Written by Steph Reeves.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The Robin Hood Tradition: Tensions and Bonds in The Early Modern Ballads

‘Were thou not my maister…/
thou shuldis by hit ful sore;/
get the a man wher thou wille,/
for thou getis me no more.’
-Robin Hood and The Monk, ll.59-62.

In the early modern ballads of the Robin Hood tradition, homosocial bonds are almost continually compromised by tensions surrounding masculinity and power. These tensions are seen throughout both Robin Hood and The Monk and Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne; such conflicts are most interestingly presented through the characters, and arguments, of Little John and Robin Hood respectively. In both ballads, Little John and Robin Hood’s friendship becomes compromised mainly by power struggles, as often instigated and challenged by Robin Hood himself. These struggles consequently lead to vulnerability and dissolution within the outlaw community.

In Robin Hood and The Monk, Robin instigates tensions between himself and Little John through his attempts to assert authoritarian control. Written in around 1450[1], the ballad is far removed from the later gentrification of Robin Hood, yet Robin still possesses an undeniable authority over the band of outlaws.[2] He declares that ‘Litull John shall beyre my bow, Til that me list to drawe’.[3] The use of the modal verb ‘shall’ accentuates his belief in his authority; in using a modal verb, which ‘expresses necessity or possibility’, Robin propounds Little John’s compliance as already accepted.[4] In this case, Little John is reduced to ‘a squire rather than a fellow’[5], a depreciating position that Little John clearly refutes. Little John declares ‘were thou not my maister…thou shuldis by hit ful sore; get the a man wher thou wille, for thou getis me no more’(l.59-62). As Bernard Lumpkin argues, ‘In his rebuke, Little John rejects the language of fellowship and substitutes for it the language of hierarchy…such words vividly convey his shame and bitterness over the demeaning role Robin Hood has made him play.’[6] This ‘language of hierarchy’ is exemplified by John’s use of ‘man’, which in turn suggests servant, as well as ‘maister’. In using these terms, Little John exemplifies his lower status to Robin. However, although defining himself as subordinate to Robin in this way, Little John refuses to remain in such a lowly position. Power, therefore, becomes the key area of contention between the two men, causing tension in the homosocial community.

Power tensions in the ballad also result from the archery competition between Robin Hood and Little John, which itself articulates the masculine aggression underpinning the outlaw community. In the early fifteenth-century, archery was seen as ‘the weapon of lesser men’[7]; it was often seen as the choice weapon of the yeomanry populace. However, archery competitions were often seen as a way of showcasing prowess and masculine dominance. In Robin and Little John partaking in a competition, masculine aggressions and tensions are thus underlined; it is with Little John’s success that Robin incites tension into the seemingly peaceful forest setting. Robin Hood ‘seid schortly nay’, ‘lyed Litus Jon’ and ‘smote hym with his hande’ (l.55-56); in denouncing Little John as a liar, Robin clearly refuses to admit his inferior position and the loss of the archery competition to one of his fellow, yet simultaneously ‘lower’, outlaws. Furthermore, in the active verb ‘smote’, defined archaically as the ‘a heavy blow or strike’[8], Robin appears to berate Little John for winning, verbally and physically attacking him and consequently blemishing his archery prowess over Robin himself. This berating arises once again in Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, where Robin Hood sets out to destroy any sense of superior prowess that Little John possesses. Robin remarks that ‘it is noe cunning a knave to ken’[9], suggesting that Little John has no more skill than Robin in deducing whether strangers be friend or foe. As remarked in the ballad itself, ‘often words they breeden bale, that parted Robin and John’ (l.43); as a result of this, both ballads become ‘a full statement of the danger of conflict within the band’[10], accentuating tensions of power and masculinity and the effect of this on the cohesive homosocial community.

Such dangers are accentuated through Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne; In the ballad, the tensions are more seriously positioned. Dissolution within the outlaw gang becomes marked by death and extreme violence. As Stephen Knight argues, this makes the ballad ‘a partner piece to Robin Hood and the Monk’[11]; Just like the previous ballad, Little John and Robin are left fundamentally more vulnerable after parting company. Once again, it is Robin who instigates the disbanding, taking offence at Little John’s attempts to protect him. From the opening stanza’s of the ballad, it becomes apparent that Robin’s characterisation has been elevated further than in Robin Hood and The Monk; his dream, in which he is ‘beete and binde’ (l.9) by ‘two wight yeoman’ (l.7), aligns Robin with the Medieval Romance genre, in which the heroes find themselves indulging in dream-like prophecies.[12] This elevation in characterisation is made further apparent through Robin’s overt awareness of his masculinity; Robin sees Little John’s remarks to be attacks upon his position as lead outlaw. He declares ‘A, John, by me thou setts noe store’, ‘how offt send I my men beffore, and tarry myselfe behinde?’ (l.37-38). In this, it is clear Robin takes Little John’s words as an accusation of cowardice, rather than ones of protection and allegiance. In the use of the prepositions ‘behinde’ and ‘beffore’, Robin, like Little John, ‘rejects the language of fellowship’ for ‘the language of hierarchy’[13]. Robin repudiates the notion of being one who delays the action, as ‘tarry’ suggests, refusing to be seen in any way as subordinate in masculinity to John. Moreover, in the use of ‘my men’, Robin once again compounds the notion of Little John’s inferiority; in his rebuke, Robin reduces Little John once more to a servant as opposed to his fellow, an action reminiscent of Robin’s similar treatment of Little John in Robin Hood and the Monk.

Robin’s preoccupation with cowardice highlights the multi-faceted nature of power dynamics amongst the outlaws; preoccupations with masculinity and courage become the focal point of tension in the homosocial community. It is this that fundamentally weakens the group, leaving the community vulnerable to attack from false foresters, as embodied by Guy of Gisborne, and the corrupting force of the Sheriff. As Lumpkin argues, ‘The medieval ballads thus reveal Robin Hood’s band as a dynamic community’, in which ‘the limits of individual power are continually negotiated’ and ‘the potential for the tyranny of one man is lessened by others who act, as it were, as checks and balances.’[14] It is apparent, then, that tensions arise from Robin’s supposed superiority over the group; it is up to characters, such as Little John, to advise and placate Robin, reminding him continually of his place amongst his fellow yeomen.

References
Featured Image: Illustration of Robin Hood and The Guy of Gisborne.

[1] Although the exact dating of The Monk is unclear, this essay will take 1450 as its contextual basis for analysis.

[2] Robin, although possessing certain levels of elevation in character, does not become gentrified until The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, written by Anthony Munday and produced by the Admiral’s Men in 1599. See Anthony Munday, ‘The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), pp.303-402

[3] ‘Robin Hood and the Monk’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamzoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), pp.31-57, p.38, l.37-38. All further references to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.

[4] Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/shall [Accessed 28/02/2017]

[5] Bernard Lumpkin, ‘The Ties that Bind: Outlaw and Community in the Robin Hood Ballads and the Romance of Eustace the Monk’ in Robin Hood in Popular Culture, ed. Thomas Hahn (Boydell & Brewer: Cambridge, 2000), pp.141-151, p.146.

[6] Lumpkin, ‘The Ties that Bind: Outlaw and Community in the Robin Hood Ballads and the Romance of Eustace the Monk’ in Robin Hood in Popular Culture, p.146.

[7] Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Archer (Boydell & Brewer: Suffolk, 1985), p.1

[8] Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/smite [Accessed 26/02/2017]

[9] ‘Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamzoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997),pp.169-184, p.174, l.39. All further references to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.

[10] ‘Introduction to Robin Hood and the Monk’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamzoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997),pp.31-36, p.33.

[11] ‘Introduction to Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamzoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), pp.169-172, p.171.

[12] In the Medieval Romance genre, heroes experiencing prophecies and dreams was a common trope which elevated the position of the heroic characters. Such elevation can be seen in Medieval romances such as Guigemar, who receives a prophecy from an ambisexual stag after fatally wounding the animal with an arrow. See Marie De France, ‘Guigemar’ in The Lais of Marie De France, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby (London: Penguin, 1986),pp.43-55.

[13] Lumpkin, ‘The Ties that Bind: Outlaw and Community in the Robin Hood Ballads and the Romance of Eustace the Monk’ in Robin Hood in Popular Culture, p.146.

[14] Lumpkin, ‘The Ties that Bind: Outlaw and Community in the Robin Hood Ballads and the Romance of Eustace the Monk’ in Robin Hood in Popular Culture, p.147.

Written by Steph Reeves.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Conscience and Morality in Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear

‘In childhood we live under the brightness of immortality – heaven is as near and actual as the seaside. Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities […] that is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood – for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we know the rules’.
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear, p. 88-9.

Graham Greene classified his novel The Ministry of Fear as an entertainment, due to its espionage plot. However, many critics would disagree, arguing that it contains serious underlying themes.[1] The narrative focuses on the protagonist Arthur Rowe’s struggle with grief and his journey as he comes to terms with his mercy killing of his wife. Focusing on the character’s own identity and conscience, Greene brings into question the meaning of morality and the definitions of good and evil as his protagonist struggles to perceive himself as an innocent man.

Opening with the presentation of a village fete, the protagonist enters a state of nostalgia; this is triggered by the innocence of the event and the childhood memories that this evokes. The author leaves the reader feeling empathetic; it becomes clear that the character Arthur Rowe is a lost man searching for his childhood innocence and naivety. In his search for release from the burden of guilt, the protagonist reverts to his past in an attempt to recreate the childlike innocence that he remembers, refusing to accept this as an unattainable goal. Throughout the novel, Greene focuses on the theme of childhood versus adulthood, as Arthur Rowe, an adult man, reminisces about his own childhood, avoiding the horrors that his adult-self has experienced. The protagonist often looks to children’s literature and, through these references, Greene indicates the problems that come with looking to fiction as moral guidance. Whilst describing his reading of these children’s stories, the narrator states that he does so ‘not so much because he liked them as because he had read them as a child, and they carried no adult memories’.[2] The protagonist is clearly using literature as a means of escape from his adult identity, rather than facing his guilt. He narrates that ‘in childhood we live under the brightness of immortality – heaven is as near and actual as the seaside. Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities […] that is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood – for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we know the rules’ (p. 88-9). He recognises that adult literature is tainted and confused by complexity and ambiguity through experience, looking to simplistic childhood literature as a moral guidance.

In Book Two of the novel, Greene disorientates the reader by introducing Arthur Rowe as Digby; this disruption reflects the confusion and disorientation that the character also feels. Mary Ann Melfi notes that ‘subconscious growth in Rowe’s case is an inadvertent process wherein the subconscious takes control, working at its own pace. Here, the conscious mind relaxes, and the subconscious fulminates before manifesting itself.’[3] The protagonist’s forgetting of his identity works as a kind of healing process, administered by his own subconscious. His own pain and vulnerability become unbearable and, rather than facing his fears and facing himself, it is easier to forget and live a lie. The character’s conscience is so burdened with guilt that he entirely recreates his own identity, erasing the torturous memories of his wife’s death in a final desperate attempt to move forward. His disturbing memories have been erased and at this point in the narrative he is demonstrated to be at peace, viewing himself as an innocent man. The character of Digby represents the Arthur Rowe that would have been had he not killed his wife and suffered with the guilt. Arguably, the character has achieved his goal of innocent content through the erasure of his adult memories. However, this is shown to be only a temporary state, in which his subconscious is allowing him to heal and decipher his identity without the pain of facing his crime head on. As Arthur contemplates his childhood, he reflects on the fact that ‘he learned before he was seven what pain was like – he wouldn’t willingly allow even a rat to suffer it’ (p. 88). The reader learns of the character’s inability to witness pain and suffering due to his empathetic nature. As Digby, the protagonist feels great sympathy for the character of Stone; he remarks that ‘he felt capable of murder for the release of that gentle tormented creature’ (p. 141). Despite his identity being entirely forgotten and recreated, the sense of empathy that Arthur Rowe possessed seems ever-present. His core human nature remains the same, indicating a contingency and suggesting that even Digby, undisturbed by the burden of an ill wife, would have committed the same crime due to his own moral code. The protagonist’s tendency to empathise and pity others has ultimately led to his mental destruction; through Digby, it becomes clear that this is inherent in his human nature.

References
Featured Image: Front cover of the 1974 Penguin edition of the novel.

[1] James M. Welsh and Gerald R. Barrett, ‘Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear: The Transformation of an Entertainment’, Literature and Film Quarterly, 2 (1974), p. 312.

[2] Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), (pp.20-1). All other references are to this edition and are given in parenthesis in the main body of the text

[3] Mary Ann. Melfi, ‘The Landscape of Grief: Graham Greene’s ‘The Ministry of Fear’’, South Atlantic Review, 69 (2004) <http:// www.jstor.org/stable/20064577 > [accessed 19 April 2018] pp. 54-73, p. 64.

Written by Amy Fretwell.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Unattainable Perfection in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s To the Skylark

O’er which clouds are bright’ning
Though dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun.‘
–Percy Bysshe Shelley, To The Skylark, ll. 13- 15

Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ is a poem that encapsulates a clear yearning for the blissful joy and unattainable perfection that the skylark comes to represent. Herbert Grierson and James Smith argue that the speaker’s admiration for the skylark encourages him to ‘escape from human life… into the joyous, free and irresponsible life of Nature’.[1] The speaker is captivated by the bird’s beautiful music and longs to experience its happiness too:

‘Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love and wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.‘
–(ll. 66- 70)

Here, the ‘flood of rapture so divine’ conveys the overwhelming immortality of the skylark’s song. The fluidity of its music is reflected in the stanza’s form; the fifth line of the stanza is longer to suggest that the sound is ‘flood[ing]’ over the quatrain. In comparison to overflowing water, the poem’s form is uninterrupted and continuous. The enjambment between lines 68-70 linguistically presents the music as unblemished, as well as displaying the speaker’s thoughts as gushing and all-consuming. His admiration for the immortal bird transcends him into a fantasy of desire. Shelley inscribes the skylark as a representative of inspiration when he asks it to ‘Teach us, Sprite or Bird’.

Death is not so much desired in Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’. The bird is compared to ‘a glow-worm golden’ (l. 46). The glow-worn itself is hard to see in the ground, yet the light it radiates is prominent. This is arguably a comparison to the skylark who cannot be seen by the speaker yet it’s beautiful music can be heard. The glow-worm’s luminescence underground suggests that it is a symbol that prevents death. Its ‘golden’ description portrays the bird as a beacon of hope and guidance for the speaker who is surrounded by darkness. Similarly, the paradoxical simile ‘like a star of Heaven,/ In the broad day-light’  (ll. 18- 19) alludes to light imagery in order to show how the skylark is ever-present in both light and darkness. This imagery complements a later piece of artwork by Samuel Palmer, ‘The Rise of the Skylark’ (1839). In the painting, there is no sign of the bird aside from in the title. The multi-coloured, bright sky represents the joyous nature of the skylark and the prominence of the sunlight is captivating in comparison to the dark land. In the centre of the painting is an opened fence, which can symbolise the gateway for mankind to escape the fields of reality and join the skylark through an imaginary transcendence.

Similarly, Shelley suggests that because man is restrained by sorrow, he cannot transcend to the life of the perfect skylark:

‘If we were things born
Not to shed to a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.’
(ll.93-95)

Without the imperfections of human life, we still cannot compare to the ideal. This extract contradicts the concept of ‘tabula rasa’, as even when humans are ‘[re]born’, they will not be entirely pure from worldly grievances. Shelley is recognising that the world is full of joy and sorrow, yet the skylark’s world only embodies joy. The paradox of happiness and sorrow within mankind is discussed in Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry:

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own.[3]

Hence, hearing the skylark reflects Shelley’s keen awareness of the mixture of his personal sorrows and the pure joy from his imagination; he compares the mortality of the real world with the immortality of the imagined to suggest that mankind will always be tainted with an unfavourable ‘humanness’.

In Shelley’s poem, it is the speaker’s intense wish to reach the bird which alludes to his unfulfilled desire. The use of incessant questioning emphasises the inadequacy of the imagination in poetry: ‘What thou art we know not;/ What is most like thee?’ (ll. 31- 32). The anxious questioning of this stanza closely links to an extract from Shelley’s essay ‘On Life’ (1819):

For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and death?… I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.[4]

Here, Shelley is mirroring the same ravenous desire that is apparent in ‘To a Skylark’. It emphasises an insufficient understanding of the imagination, as the skylark cannot answer Shelley’s questions. The strong longing for answers opposes what Keats terms ‘Negative Capability’: ‘that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’.[5] This concept requires the poet to maintain an aesthetic distance from the object, and not give himself over to it. In the poem, the speaker sacrifices them self to the bird because it is seen as a more powerful entity than them. It can be argued that, in ‘To a Skylark’, the skylark is not merely a bird but also a metaphor for creativity and poetic impulse. It is evident that the creature is a natural metaphor for poetic expression with the simile ‘Like a Poet hidden’ (l. 40). This metapoetic characteristic is common in the second-generation Romantics. Jeffery Cox observes that poets like Shelley offer a self-awareness in their work, which is ‘shaped as much by editor’s pens and government writs as it is by some internal muse’.[6] Shelley finds himself less immersed in the moment compared to his predecessors, entering a circle of poetry that associates with the external world.[7]

Stewart Wilcox observes that Shelley also enters a delusional state in his poem, yet not through alcohol but by the ancient concept of ‘furor poeticus’.[8] When escaping under the power of the skylark’s song, Shelley is possessed with a ‘harmonious madness’ (l. 103). Scholars consider the Romantic period to be the beginning of scientific inquiry into ‘poet madness’.[9] It is believed that a poet’s inspiration comes from the transition of thought beyond their own mind, leaving them in a state of divine frenzy. Shelley’s oxymoron, ‘harmonious madness’, reimagines transcendence to the ideal as an experience that is creatively debilitating as well as inspiring.

The chaotic tendencies of the imagination are also reflected by the temporal and eternal states of transcendent experience. The eternal quality of the bird in ‘To a Skylark’ is inscribed in the lines:

O’er which clouds are bright’ning
Though dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun‘
(ll. 13- 15)

The dynamic verbs ‘float’, ‘run’ and ‘begun’ present the bird and the imagination as boundless entities with an everlasting existence. This eternality is also reflected in the form of Shelley’s poem; the regular rhyme and consistent meter mirrors the triumphant music of the skylark and the blissfulness of the ideal world. The poem ends with the speaker announcing, ‘as I am listening now’ (l. 105). The present progressive verb ‘listening’ suggest a continuation of the imagination and a wish for Shelley’s transcendent thoughts to continue.

For Shelley, ‘To a Skylark’ illustrates a journey forever striving to obtain a happier ideal. The immortal bird singing beyond the boundaries of human life brings an allusion of the unescapable facts of human existence. Shelley longs to be transported to the idealistic world of the skylark. Although Shelley shows an awareness for the real world’s limitations, he is less defeated and more motivated by his imaginative power. It is the transcendence from reality to the ideal that allows both poets to encounter the beauty of the imagination whilst also reveal the damaging truths of reality.

References
Featured Image– Samuel Palmer, The Rising of the Skylark, 1839, Oil on Panel (30.8 x 24.5cm), National Museum Wales, Cardiff.

[1] Herbert Grierson and James Smith, A Critical History of English Poetry (London: Peregrine, 1947) p. 335.

[2] Percy Bysshe Shelley ‘To a Skylark’ in Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 4th ed (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012) pp. 1215- 1217 (ll. 66- 70) (All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text).

[3] Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry in Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 4th ed (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012) pp. 1233- 1247.

[4] Percy Bysshe Shelley ‘On Life’ 1832 in Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Poetry. ed. Spencer Hall (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990) pp. 111- 113 (p. 111).

[5] John Keats, ‘To George and Tom Keats, 21, 27 December 1817’ in John Keats Selected Letters, ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 40- 42 (pp. 41- 42).

[6] Jeffery Cox, ‘Keats Shelley and the Wealth of the Imagination’ Studies in Romanticism, 34 (1995) pp. 364- 400 (p. 367).

[7] See John Keats ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ for another poem about the self-awareness of art and poetry.

[8] Stewart C Wilcox, ‘Sources, Symbolism and Unity of Shelley’s Skylark’ Studies in Philology, 46 (1949) pp. 560- 576 (p. 575).

[9] See Joseph Meringolo, The Sanity of Furor Poeticus: Romanticism’s Demystification of Madness and Creativity (University of New York, 2014).

Written by Emily Warren.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Persecuting the Foreign ‘Other’ in Agatha Christie’s N or M?

‘Had he been blind up to now? That jovial florid face- the face of a “hearty Englishman”- was only a mask. Why had he not seen it all along for what it was- the face of a bad-tempered overbearing Prussian officer.’
-Agatha Christie, N or M?, p. 144.

Throughout Agatha Christie’s novel N or M?, characters that are demonstrated as belonging to different nationalities to Britain are clearly demarcated as figures of ‘Otherness’. Shown to be distinct from English nationality, these characters are treated with suspicion and distrust, alienated from society and treated as possible threats to British safety simply due to their position as foreign nationals. In doing so, Christie deploys racial tropes to create clear distinctions between the inherent goodness of the English in the face of opposing threatening nationalities during the Second World War.

This viewing of the foreign ‘Other’ with distrust and suspicion is clearly highlighted through the actions of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford in the narrative. When asked to investigate suspected foreign activity in the fictional town of Leahampton, the pair immediately begin to isolate and alienate suspects through a discourse fraught with ‘Othering’. Throughout the novel, the married couple repeatedly isolate people of suspicion due to their foreign nationalities; this is highlighted through their suspicions surrounding the Irish Mrs. Perenna. As Tuppence informs Tommy:

‘Yes. She’s Irish- as spotted by Mrs O’Rourke- won’t admit the fact. Has done a good deal of coming and going on the Continent. Changed her name to Perenna, came here and started this boarding- house. A splendid bit of camouflage, full of innocuous bores’.1

Through her character description of Mrs. Perenna, Tuppence clearly isolates her suspect with a motive; she becomes a figure of ‘Otherness’, colluded with the ‘continent’ and entirely removed from any notion of British identity. Mrs Perenna’s ability to ‘camouflage’ (p.57), which bears clear connotations of concealment and deceit, is coupled with her supposed reluctance to be labelled as Irish. In the process of changing of her name, as well as her subsequent disassociation from her Irish roots, Mrs Perenna becomes a potential suspect in the narrative purely due to her foreignness. This, in turn, comes to highlight the unease felt amongst the British people towards those of different nationalities during the Second World War.

Suspicions surrounding foreign activity are not, however, only confined to Mrs Perenna; rather, speculation throughout the text is also placed on Carl Von Deinim, a man believed to be a ‘refugee from Nazi persecution, given asylum and shelter by England’ (p.28). However, this presumed identity as a refugee immediately displaces Deinim as an outsider, forced out of his country and placed on the fringes of national identity by Nazi Germany due to his Jewish faith. Despite having been the victim of anti-Semitism and persecuted by his home nations government, Deinim still finds himself colluded in England with Germany. As Tuppence remarks, ‘This country’s at war. You’re a German…You can’t expect the mere man in the street – literally the man in the street – to distinguish between bad Germans and good Germans’ (p.30). Regardless of the clear differences between Deinim and the supporters of the Nazi regime, it becomes apparent that he will continue to be associated with the enemy purely due to his nationality. As a result of this, Deinim is treated with distrust by those around him; until the conflict stops, it is made clear to him that he will remain a suspicious ‘other’ within British society.

Even in attempts to conceal foreignness in the text, is becomes apparent that the ‘otherness’ of different nationalities cannot be successfully hidden from Tommy and Tuppence. This is demonstrated through the revealing of Commander Haydock as a ‘Prussian officer’ (p.144). Although successfully disguising himself for a short time, it is soon made apparent to the investigating duo that Haydock is a member of the Fifth Column who plan to invade Britain. As Tommy muses, ‘had he been blind up to now? That jovial florid face – the face of a “hearty Englishman” – was only a mask. Why had he not seen it all along for what it was – the face of a bad-tempered overbearing Prussian officer’ (p. 144). In comparing a ‘hearty Englishman’ to a ‘bad-tempered Prussian officer’ (p.144), Christie asserts a clearly biased difference in mentality and appearance between the two nationalities. Whilst the ‘hearty’ Englishman is presented as ‘wholesome’, ‘substantial’, ‘loudly vigorous and cheerful’2, the Prussian officer finds himself ‘characterised by anger’.3 In this way, Christie appears to suggest that the aggressive true nature of the Commander could never have stayed concealed for long; his true nature as enemy to the wholesome nature of the England that Tuppence and Tommy are keen to protect would inevitably have been revealed. In this way, racial tropes are clearly deployed by Christie to highlight the alienating nature of the enemy in contrast with the automatic goodness and prestige associated with belonging to the British race.

It is through such deployment of racial tropes that characters belonging to different nationalities are alienated and placed on the fringes of ‘otherness’. Regardless of their nationalities, personal histories and allegiances to the British cause, it becomes apparent that British paranoia of external threats in N or M results in the viewing of all foreign figures in the narrative as distrustful and ultimately deceitful.

References
Featured Image- Cover Image taken from William Morrow Paperbacks 2012 edition of Agatha Christie’s novel N or M? A Tommy & Tuppence Mystery.

Agatha Christie, N or M? (Glasgow: William Collins Son & Co. Ltd, 1941), p.57. All further references to Christie’s text are to this edition and will be given parenthetically.

Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bad-tempered [Accessed 31/07/2018]

Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hearty [Accessed 31/07/2018]

Written by Imogen Barker.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Resisting Slaveowner Stereotypes in Matthew Lewis’s Journal of West India Proprietor

“I was tempted to tell him- ‘Do not say that again; say you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave.’”
-Matthew Lewis, Journal of West India Proprietor, p. 62.

As the slave owner of two plantations, Lewis found himself in a difficult position of power at a time of political reform. His autobiographical Journal of a West India Proprietor, depicting his travels in 1818 to his two inherited Jamaican plantations, provide an account of slavery from the perspective of the slave owner. From the very beginning of his travels, it becomes apparent to the reader that Lewis’s conduct and subsequent treatment of his slaves is heavily influenced by the changing social climate; he essentially performs his own act of ‘resistance’, revolting against the norms of the typical slaveowner. Elucidating on the position of the colonial slaveowner during the nineteenth century, Carl Plasa argues that Lewis is ‘awkwardly placed’ ‘in a system increasingly contested on moral grounds whilst its importance was ceasing to exist within Britain’s changing imperial economy (p. 59).1 This awkward placing significantly influences the representation of both Lewis’s interaction with his slaves, as well as his resistance in presenting his enslaved workers as oppressed individuals. As a result of this, Lewis introduces his audience to his Cornwall plantation as place of Utopia. Throughout his account, Lewis continually seeks to affirm the happiness and ease of his slaves:

‘Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest I had ever witnessed: they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted.’2

Despite clearly recognizing his own hand in the oppression of his slaves, he appears to rely greatly on the delusion of his slaves being liberated human beings. Lewis frequently attempts to justify his actions and position as slave owner throughout journal, which has resulted in the text being highly controversial and heavily critiqued since its first publication. As Maureen Hankin outlines, Lewis’s journal ‘exemplifies how under pressure of contradictory impulses, the text hovers between uncertainty and aggressive self-justification as a representation of the British colonial slaveholder’ (p. 141).3 Lewis certainly epitomises the morally-torn slaveholder. He frequently seeks to justify how idyllic his ‘workplace’ plantations are through comparisons with the western world. As he remarks, ‘I believe their [the slaves] condition to be much more comfortable than that of the labourers of Great Britain’ (p. 62). These comparisons, deployed with the purpose of diminishing the concept of slave suffering, are inconceivable to the benevolent reader’s knowledge of slavery and its distressing history.

Lewis continues to resist the concept of both slavery, as well as his own part in its history, through his repeated attempts to persuade his audience of the equal rights that his slaves obtain. He frequently alludes throughout the journal to his attempts to give his slaves a ‘voice’; this is shown through a court hearing, in which Lewis states that ‘they are not obliged to believe a negro witness, but I maintain that he ought to be heard’ (p. 222). In doing so, however, Lewis presents the slaveowner as a figure of respectability and reasonableness as opposed to a gate-keeper of liberty. His delusions continue through his attempts to defend his own position of power; he states that ‘I am not conscious of having omitted any means of satisfying my negroes, and rendering them happy and secure from oppression’ (p. 203). His continual bribes of holidays, presents from England and his granting of wishes to the slaves reinforces his notion of the plantation being a stable and safe environment to its workers; this Utopic vision is in stark contrast to the legitimated place of imprisonment that Lewis continues to upkeep.

This resistance to slavery and his own personal collusion with the trade is furthered in Lewis’s censorship of the word ‘slave’. His loathing towards the term is documented in his introduction to a black servant, who remarks to Lewis ‘Massa not know me; me your slave!’; this results in Lewis feeling ‘a pang at the heart’ (p. 62). It is in this exchange that the reader begins to see how elements of the plantation life weigh heavily upon Lewis’s conscience; this results in his refusal, and subsequent denial, of the suffering inflicted by his actions upon the lives of his slaves. Lewis, humiliated by this conversation with his servant, writes that he was ‘was tempted to tell him- ‘’Do not say that again; say you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave’ (p. 62). However, Lewis appears oblivious to the clear hypocrisy of his suggestion; despite replacing ‘slave’ with ‘negro’, he still justifies this with the qualifier ‘my’.

As the journal progresses, Lewis furthers his attempts to relieve his slaves of some of their discomforts. Further into his stay, Lewis demands that the use of the cart-whip be diminished, an instrument used as a means of punishment and control over the slaves. In this way, Lewis resists the expected conduct of the slaveowner; he states advice from one of his own slaves, remarking ‘he said that kindness was the only way to make good negroes and that, if that failed, flogging would never succeed’ (p. 165). In considering an opinion from one of his ‘inferiors’, Lewis attempts to distinguish himself from the nature of many atrocious slaveowners in history that sought to silence and oppress the people they ruled. However, despite resistance on Lewis’s part to inflict violence on his ‘workers’, this act of resistance is still fraught with contradiction. Although his refusal to inflict ‘any punishment’ on a slave ‘however great the offence might be’ (p.196) is deemed a humane gesture, it remains an inherently contradictory one as he still uses his white privilege to enslave other humans against their will.

Regardless of Lewis’s repeated attempts to resist the concept of slavery and the position of slave owner, his Utopian vision is ultimately demonstrated to be little more than a delusion built by the author in an attempt to free himself of his torment and guilt in participating in the horrific trade of human lives. Lewis’s Utopian vision is undermined throughout by his devotion in recording incidents of slave revolts. One such account details the rebellion of a ‘black servant girl’ who ‘stood by the bed to see her master drink the poison’ (p. 179). These accounts of rebellion against white oppressor figures, although only briefly mentioned in Matthew Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor, clearly demonstrate the horrific sufferings of the victims at the very heart of the transatlantic slave trade.

References
Featured Image- Cover Image taken from HardPress Publishing’s 2012 edition of Matthew Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor.

1. Carl Plasa, Slaves to Sweetness: British and Caribbean Literatures of Sugar (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009) p. 54

2. Matthew G. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2008) p. 61. All further references to Lewis’s text are to this edition and will be given parenthetically.

3. Maureen Hankin, ‘Matthew Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor: Surveillance and Space on the Plantation’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 24 (2002), 139-150 (p. 141)

Written by Ashleigh Edwards.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.