Society – The Literature Blog

Spotlight On… A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

“things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully”.

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

I have tried (and failed) for many years to write a review that entirely encapsulates the beauty of A Little Life.
I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible.
Very rarely do I come across a book that remains with me for longer than a few months. Often, within a few weeks, plot lines begin to fade from memory and characters all but vanish; they become books I have on my shelf, vaguely remembered and almost forgotten. However, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is not one of these books. Having read it over three years ago on a solo trip to Madrid in January, characters remain as vivid and alive in my memory as though I finished it yesterday. Haunting, beautiful and tragic, A Little Life is a once in a generation novel, a novel that’s impression can never be adequately described in a review that I have attempted so many times to write.

Centred round four recently graduated friends in New York and spanning decades, Yanighara’s epic novel navigates the friendship of these four men as their relationships deepen and darken. Whilst Willem chases his acting dreams, Malcom begins his career as a frustrated architect at a prominent firm and JB seeks entry into the New York art world, it is with the troubled lawyer Jude that the novel tracks its course through the decades. Scarred by childhood trauma and increasingly more haunted by a past he feels incapable of overcoming, the novel navigates each characters’ relationship with Jude and each other. As their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success and pain, the reader is taken on a journey that is heartbreakingly beautiful in its raw depictions of love, loss and grief. Yanagihara’s prose is unashamedly raw in its emotional intensity; it is at times entirely overwhelming and yet it is also compulsively readable.

In an age where male mental health remains a taboo subject for many, A Little Life remains a novel that is both as culturally important as it is literary.

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

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.

Wuthering Heights: Reverse Colonialism and the Imperial Gothic Tradition

Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together?’
– Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, p.40.

In Gothic fiction of the Victorian period, concepts of the racial other become inextricably linked with fin-de-siècle fears of imperial decline and subsequent degeneration. More specifically, characters that are denounced as racially distinct are often viewed as figures of abjection and fear; they are the ‘marauding, invasive other[s]’ in which ‘British culture sees its own imperial practices mirrored back in monstrous forms’.[1] This monstrosity is accentuated through a denouncement of the racial other as recidivist, linked intimately to notions of both moral and physical degeneracy. However, this degeneracy in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights not only internalises fears of Victorian England’s ‘devolution’ into a more primitive and morally degraded state of being, but more widely comes to critique and accentuate the increasing fragility of the British empire itself. This Victorian Gothic work is an example of the ‘imperial Gothic’, playing on Victorian anxieties.[2] In their respective representations of the racial Other, the texts come to highlight anxieties surrounding Victorian societies supposedly morally supreme status, presenting images of reverse imperialism to accentuate the decline of the British empire.

Anxieties surrounding colonial decline are clearly accentuated in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a novel which Susan Meyer argues acts as ‘an extended critique of British Imperialism.’[3] Heathcliff, an orphan of ambiguous racial origin, becomes the embodiment of the racial ‘Other’; his social position and actions threaten the rigid imperialistic class structures engrained in the fabric of the rigid model of the Victorian family home, as well as the position of England as colonial superior. Throughout the novel, Heathcliff is repeatedly collocated with notions of racial inferiority; he is frequently compared to darkness and criminality, his uncertain race alluding to a supposedly corrupted underlying spirit.[4] These notions of otherness are first accentuated through Heathcliff’s introduction to the Earnshaw family. Nelly declares that:

We crowded round, and, over Miss Cathy’s head, I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk- indeed, its face looked older than Catherine’s – yet, when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.[5]

From his very introduction, Heathcliff is displaced as a figure of ‘Otherness’ that is scarcely acknowledged to even belong to the same species as those surrounding him. His ‘black’ hair, coupled with his ‘dirty’ and ‘ragged’ appearance (p.25), places him entirely at odds with the middle-class Earnshaw children. Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity consequently becomes associated with the dirt that masks his face, contrasting starkly with the white skinned ‘purity’ of Catherine and Hindley.[6] Heathcliff’s otherness further becomes demarcated through the Earnshaw’s inability to comprehend his speech, resulting in the denouncement of Heathcliff as merely speaking ‘gibberish’ (p.25). It is in the adjective ‘gibberish’ that racial superiority is ultimately compounded; in speaking ‘gibberish’ (p.25), defined as ‘unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense’, Heathcliff finds himself silenced through a racial prejudice that denounces his voice as unimportant ‘nonsense’. [7] In doing so the Earnshaw family, including Nelly, attempt to silence Heathcliff under the colonial gaze; the family denounce Heathcliff as racially inferior in order to affirm their own colonially superior social position.[8] As Susan Meyer observes, Heathcliff finds himself ‘pronounced upon as if he were a specimen of some strange animal species’, ‘subjected to the potent gaze of racial arrogance deriving from British imperialism.’[9] Through this gaze, Heathcliff finds himself marginalised and consigned to social and class inferiority.

However, although treated as an inferior racial other, continual interest in Heathcliff’s ambiguous racial ancestry accentuates the liminality of his position and the threat this poses to the surrounding gentrified families. Throughout the novel, Heathcliff finds himself continually collocated with countries synonymous with imperial resistance and political uncertainty.[10] These fears are clearly evoked in Nelly’s speculations; she tells Heathcliff that he is ‘fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together?’ (p.40). At the time of Wuthering Heights’ publication in 1847, both India and China proved to be countries fraught with colonial uncertainty. Although the British empire had almost entirely established political control in India, English rule in China had been marred by the effects of the Opium wars. The subsequent decline in trade left England with far less confidence surrounding their ability to control and assimilate countries into their once burgeoning empire.[11] Through a collocation of Heathcliff with an ancestry closely tied to notions of colonial decline and uncertainty, Nelly’s narrative essentially gives voice to ‘prospect of an alliance’ between the two countries ‘and the possibility of their joint occupation of Britain.’ [12] In the suggestion of Heathcliff’s families purported wealth, which would ultimately give him the ability to buy up both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights for as little as ‘one weeks income’ (p.40), Brontë highlights the possibility of the conqueror becoming the conquered by countries before considered colonially inferior.

These economic fears appear to be realised on Heathcliff’s return, who subsequently subverts and monopolises the imperial gaze that once consigned him to racial inferiority. In his power over both the Linton and Earnshaw families, Heathcliff seemingly confirms Nelly’s conjectured anxieties. Revelling in his new position of economic power, Heathcliff enacts his revenge on his ‘colonisers’ and invokes a course of reverse imperialism. Through this reversal, Heathcliff’s position as racial ‘other’ provides him with the liminality to rise above and conquer those once considered his colonial superiors. This inversion is not only demonstrated through his economic ruining of Hindley and the stripping of Linton’s family home, but also in Heathcliff’s horrific oppression of Isabella Linton. Isabella, once superior to Heathcliff, finds herself subjected to a radical class inversion in the hands of her captor/husband. Isabella, who once looked from a position of social superiority on the man who looked ‘exactly like the son of the fortune-teller’ (p.34), finds herself oppressed by the same colonising gaze that she once deployed to belittle her husband. As Isabella is subjected to Heathcliff’s gaze, Brontë describes Heathcliff as looking upon her ‘as one might do at a strange repulsive animal: a centipede from the Indies, for instance’ (p.76). This results in Isabella turning ‘white and red in rapid succession’ and using ‘her nails’ to free herself from Cathy’s grip (p.77). Isabella, reduced under the imperial gaze inflicted upon her, becomes a figure collocated with animalism. She is not only colluded in the passage with both a ‘centipede’ (p.76), but is also denounced as a ‘tigress’ (p.77) by Cathy for her animalistic clawing of her arm in an attempt to escape Heathcliff’s gaze. Paralleled thus with the wildlife abundant in the West Indies Isabella finds herself, in the same way as her husband, ‘pronounced upon as if [s]he were a specimen of some strange animal species’.[13] Through this reduction, Heathcliff’s monopolisation of the imperial gaze is complete; his ability to wield this gaze, coupled with the class liminality provided to him through his ambiguous racial ancestry, subsequently allows him to enact his legal domination over the colonially superior figures that become the embodiment of the British Empire in the narrative.

As Meyer thus comes to argue, ‘the “vivid and fearful” scenes in Wuthering Heights, of which Charlotte Brontë complained, are primarily scenes in which the ugliness of starkly wielded colonial power, usually exercised in areas remote from the reach of British law or putative moral standards, is enacted through Heathcliff’s fearful reversals.’[14] It is in this way that the novel proved so horrifying to its Victorian readership; Heathcliff’s enactment of ‘fearful reversions’, as well as his meteoric rise, threaten the imperial superiority engrained in the social and moral values of the British Empire. However, Meyer further suggests that this threat is felt most sharply through the location of Heathcliff’s reversions being in England.

References
Featured Image– Illustration by Fritz Eichenberg, as taken from the 1943 Random House edition of Wuthering Heights. See Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847; London: Random House, 1943).

[1] Stephen D. Arata, ‘The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonisation’ in Dracula: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. Glennis Byron (London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1999), pp.119-145, p.121.

[2] The term ‘imperial Gothic’ was first introduced by Patrick Bratlinger. For more background information on the term, see Patrick Bratlinger, ‘Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880- 1914’ in Reading Fin de Siècle Fictions, ed. Lyn Pykett (London: Longman, 1996), pp.184-210.

[3] Susan Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p.100.

[4] For more information, see Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York City: D. Appleton and Company, 1895).

[5] Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847; Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 2000), p.25. All further references to Brontë s text are to this edition, and page numbers will be presented parenthetically.

[6] Throughout the novel, Brontë continually deploys light imagery to contrast the racial ambiguity of Heathcliff with the purity of the middle-class Earnshaw and Linton families. The use of dirt and mud is once again evoked at the start of Chapter 7 on the return of Cathy to Wuthering Heights. Cathy’s passage from ‘savage’ (p.36) to gentrified is starkly contrasted with Heathcliff, who is described as having ‘thick uncombed hair’, ‘clothes […] which had seen three months’ service in mire and dust’, and a ‘beclouded’ visage (p.37).

[7] Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gibberish [Accessed 17/03/2018]

[8] In postcolonial theory, the imperial gaze is often defined by the observed finding themselves defined in terms of colonially superiors own set of social systems and moral values. From this perspective, the imperial gaze thus infantilizes the object of the scrutiny whilst simultaneously denouncing the observed as racially and socially inferior. This is the concept of the imperial gaze, as first introduced and subsequently developed by E. Ann Kaplan, that this blog post will focus on and expand in relation to the supposedly racial inferior monopolising this gaze to enact discourses of reverse imperialism. For more information on the imperial gaze, see E. Ann Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism and the Imperial Gaze (London: Routledge, 2012).

[9] Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, p.97.

[10] Not only is Heathcliff associated with India and China in the novel, but also with the American Civil War. As Lockwood conjectures of Heathcliff’s meteoric rise in fortune, did ‘he earn honours by drawing blood from his foster country [?]’ (p.67). This, as Susan Meyer contends, further places Heathcliff into a discourse of ‘successful colonial rebellion’. For more information, see Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, p.114.

[11] For more information, see Ross G. Forman, China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

[12] Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, p.114.

[13] Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, p.114.

[14] Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, p.118.

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

The Transgression of heterosexual marriage in Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger

‘I was like a man, I suppose, wanting a lock of hair from the head of a girl he had suddenly and blindingly become enamoured of.’
-Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger, p.5.

Marriage is typically based on a mutual love and desire. However, in The Little Stranger, Waters subverts the social understanding of marriage, and instead uses marriage to satisfy a queer ulterior motive. Faraday’s sudden longing for Caroline is unsettling when contrasted to his earlier unfavourable descriptions of her appearance. He describes her as androgynous with ‘boyish shoes’ and her feminine body parts (hips and bosom) are described with negativity as ‘wide’ and ‘large’. Even after becoming engaged to Caroline, therefore supposedly feeling love and desire towards her, Faraday describes her face as masculine by using the words ‘strong’ and ‘angular’. The text says, ‘I couldn’t believe that I had ever found [her face] plain.’1 Faraday’s description of Caroline is hardly praising her beauty or expressing a profound attraction. Instead, he appears repulsed by her fleshly female form. A poetic literary technique, the blazon, dissects the female body and typically praises its

beauty. Faraday subverts the traditional blazon, which is commonly associated with Petrarchan love, and instead he describes Caroline in a basic and simplistic way. Faraday transgresses typical expectations of heterosexual relationships where desire and attraction are fundamental. His reoccurring criticism of Caroline’s appearance is implicit of no attraction, lust or desire towards her, which jars with his sudden desire to marry her. Instead, it is implied that Hundred’s Hall is the object of his desire. Caroline summarises this herself as she says, ‘Do you really [want me]’ ‘Or is it the house you want?’(p.448) The queer projection of desire onto the house transgresses typical expectations of marriage. Heterosexual love becomes spectral as desire is displaced onto a house, rather than Faraday’s own fiancé. The relationship, therefore, becomes merely functional as a way to guarantee possession of the house, and challenges social ideologies of romantic love.

Even as a small child Faraday is infatuated with Hundred’s Hall. On his first ever visit, he took an acorn out of the wall which he felt entitled to own. Faraday describes this event by saying, ‘I was like a man, I suppose, wanting a lock of hair from the head of a girl he had suddenly and blindingly become enamoured of.’(p.3) Faraday defines his feelings towards the house in relation to heterosexual desire, which transgresses the typical social ideologies of desire. Desire is displaced onto an object, rather than a person. The queer attraction to the Hall is intensified when Faraday describes the feeling of the acorn in his trouser pocket. The text says, ‘I felt the hard plaster lump in my pocket, now, with a sort of sick excitement.’(p.3) The hard lump in his pocket appears phallic, especially as he refers to a ‘sick’ excitement, immediately portraying Faraday’s perverse attraction to the house. The queer sense of desire Faraday feels towards Hundred’s becomes intensified as the novel continues, and when he sees an opportunity of gaining ownership (through marrying Caroline) he becomes obsessed with the idea. Heterosexual love and marriage become a socially acceptable way of satisfying his queer obsession of the house. Caroline becomes aware of Faraday’s ulterior motives for marriage. When Caroline calls off the engagement, Faraday asks, ‘[h]ow can you say all of these terrible things? After all I’ve done, for you, for your family?’ Caroline responds by saying, ‘You think I should repay you, by marrying you? Is that what you think marriage is- a kind of payment?’(p.448) Caroline appears to be aware of Faraday transgressing the social and cultural norms of marriage. For Faraday, marriage becomes a disguise and excuse which allows him to satisfy his queer obsession with the house.

References
Featured photo: Book cover of The Little Stranger, Sarah Walters. Reprint edition (May 4, 2010)

1.Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (Virago Press: London, 2009) p.323 All further references are to this edition.

Written by Sarah Culham.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The Robin Hood ballads: Regurgitating Traditional Tropes or Deeply Influenced by Historical Context?

‘Not a Frenchman will I spare
[…]
Not a Frenchman will he spare.’
– ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’, ll.104-108

Although Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren point out that the tropes, the ‘augmentation of the outlaw band’ and ‘Robin Hood meets his match’ are prevalent in the Robin Hood tradition, certain late ballads are more influenced by their historical military context than any previous Robin Hood material in the tradition. (1) ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’ is shaped by the Anglo-French relations of the seventeenth century and ‘Robin Hood Prince of Aragon’ reflects the powerful threat of the Ottoman Empire.

Joseph Ritson recognises that the ‘most surviving common broad-sheet ballads were printed between the Restoration of 1660 and the Revolution of 1688’. (2) The relationship between France and England throughout the whole of the seventeenth century is characterised by war and military conflict, but it is most aggressive during, and shortly after the time Ritson refers to. The Anglo-French war of 1627-29 was sparked by the French refusal to ally with England against the Habsburg Spain and Austria. In the second Anglo-Dutch war (1665-1667), the French allied with the English enemy. (3) Similarly, the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97) brought William III to the throne and therefore caused England’s alliance with the Dutch against the forces of Louis XIV. (4) This Anglo-French rivalry is undoubtedly articulated in the late Robin Hood ballad ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’. Stephen Pincus notes that ‘[t]he streets of London and provincial towns were littered with pamphlets, broadsides and poems offering glosses on witticisms about the most recent doings of European dignitaries.’ (5) This confirms that this ballad could be a form of political propaganda. In it, the enemy is politicised. Robin Hood states, ‘not a Frenchman I will spare’ (6) and the narrator repeats, ‘not a Frenchman he would spare’ (l.108). Although ‘Frenchman’ is in the singular, it is symbolic of the entire nation which, is confirmed through the celebration of the violence in the ballad. The narrator repeats how Robin took his ‘noble bow’ (l.125). Despite the fact that the ballad comes after Munday’s gentrified version of Robin Hood, the adjective ‘noble’ is not connected with Robin, but with his weapon, and therefore with the violence. The bow is no longer being used for sport and archery competitions as it is in the early ballads, but is turned into a war weapon. The narrative of the ballad is celebrating the violence because of the political nature of the enemy which adds something new to the larger tradition, and shows its contextual influences. (7)

This celebration of violence in the ballad coincides with the negative portrayal of the French enemy. The fishermen were ‘awar of a French robber/Coming toward them most desperately’ (ll.79-80). This description, with the reference to robbery and the adverb ‘desperately’, suggests French greed and links with the absence of the fish in sea; Robin, disguised as Symon ‘neither gott great nor smaw’ (l.52). This lack of fish metaphorically suggests an impending French threat to goods on English soil as well as in the sea. This threat is confirmed towards the end of the ballad when Symon ‘found within that ship of war/[t]welve hundred pounds in gold so bright’ (ll.163-164). Pincus writes that in the late seventeenth century there was a ‘well-known Francophobia of Londoners’ and this shows how the ballad is responding to this popular negative feeling towards France and its ruler Louis XIV, who emerged from the Second Dutch War as immensely powerful. (8) This French power is reflected in the contrast between the ‘fisher and the waryer free/[…] the noble ship’ (ll.158-159). The English ‘fisher’ is unlikely to defeat the ‘noble’ French ship and this unprecedented success, alongside the greedy portrayal of the French, shows the ballad to be acting as a form of political propaganda. The ballad portrays the French as an easy defeat whilst also encouraging hatred towards them. Although the date of the ballad is ambiguous, the violence within it confirms that the negative attitude towards the French is shaped by the contextual military conflict between England and France in the late seventeenth century.

By the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire had established a large area of territory. However, the seventeenth century marked a change for the Empire. Their focus was now to defend existing land and trade routes, rather than further expansion. (9) Historian Cathal Nolan states that ‘by 1650 […] the empire was one of the largest states in the world at 800,000 square miles and 20 million inhabitants’ and because of wars, such as the Austro-Ottoman War (1683-1689), ‘much of Europe came to view the Ottomans as a lasting and direct security threat where previously it had been a distant and unknown country’. (10) This threatening perception of the Ottoman Empire is articulated through the late Robin Hood ballad, ‘Robin Hood Prince of Aragon’. (11) This ballad is particularly concerned with a racial othering of the enemy. The ‘proud Prince of Aragon’ (l. 49) is joined by two giants ‘most horrid for to see’ (l.56). They have ‘grisly looks, and eyes like brands, […] with serpents hissing on their helms,/[i]nstead of feathered plume’ (ll.57-60). The description of their eyes ‘branding terror’ and the ‘serpents on their helms’ makes the giants explicitly monstrous and inhuman. This othering of the enemy is taken further through use of the conjunctive adverb ‘instead’ which allows the narrator to show what is perceived as normal. It is not until later in the ballad when Robin encounters the Prince of Aragon and calls him a ‘tyrant Turk’ (l.141) that the significance of this othering is revealed. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire and their impending threat is allegorically dramatized through the otherness of the giants. Like, ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’, this ballad is responding to the English perception of a potential military threat. This time the threat is the Ottoman Empire, which still confirms the large influence of the historical context.

This ballad places a larger focus on the violence between Robin Hood and the enemy in comparison to ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’. This could contextually suggest that the Ottoman threat is stronger than the French threat. In terms of setting, the enemy is already on English soil, not out at sea. The Prince of Aragon commands ‘bring forth my bride, or London burns’ (l.127). The narrative of the enemy is engaging directly with the Great Fire of London of 1666. This not only shows how the ballad is responding to its context but also supports the idea that it is a form of political propaganda, encouraging a national wariness towards the Ottoman Empire. This threatening persona of the enemy is mostly articulated through the violence in the ballad. At the battle, Little John ‘clove the giant to the belt,/[a]nd cut in twain his heart’ (ll.175-176) and to the other giant Will Scadlock ‘with his faulchion he run through/ [a] deep and gashly wound’ (l.181-182). The violence, which structurally takes up a large section of the ballad, is littered with adjectives associated with aggression such as ‘hewd’ (l.155), ‘deep and gashly’ (l.182), and verbs such as ‘struck’ (l.158), ‘slain’ (l.160), and ‘clove’ (l.175). In ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’, Robin uses his ‘noble bow’ and shoots the Frenchmen from afar whilst being ‘bound to the main mast tree’ (RHF, l.105). Here, the ‘noble bow’ is replaced with the ‘faulchion’ which in itself is symbolic for the greater intimacy of the battle because it means Robin and the enemy must fight closer together than with the use of a bow. This change in weaponry coincides with the greater focus upon the descriptions of the wounds – ‘blood sprang from every vain’ (l. 56) – and suggests the Ottoman threat to be greater than the French threat because the narrative is much more focused on the action. Despite the difference in the way that the threats are portrayed, these late ballads still show how the military context shapes their themes.

References
Featured Photo: Image from page 20 of ‘Robin Hood; a collection of ancient poems, songs, and ballads, not extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw, to which are prefixed historical anecdotes of his life’, accessed from https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14766209342, [accessed on 29/11/18].

1) Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren, ‘Later Ballads: Introduction’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), available online at <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/later-robin-hood-ballads-introduction> [Accessed 11/04/2017]

2) Joseph Ritson, quoted in Rhymes of Robyn Hood by Richard Barrie Dobson and John Taylor (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1989), p. 51.

3) Ronald H. Fritze and William B. Robison, Historical Dictionary of Stuart England (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), pp.203-204.

4) John Childs, The Nine Years’ War and the British Army, 1688-1697: The Operations in the Low Countries, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp.21-25.

5) Stephen C.A Pincus , ‘From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s’ in The Historical Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1995), pp. 333-361 (p.335).

6) ‘Robin Hood’s Fishing’, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), l. 104 available online at <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/gest-of-robyn-hode> [Accessed 28/02/2017]. All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically within the body of the essay.

7) In the medieval ballad ‘Robin Hood and the Guy of Gisborne’, the violence is casual; Robin kills Sir Guy and cuts him in the face in order to make it seem as though it is him who is dead. ‘Robin Hood and the Guy of Gisborne’, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), available online at <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/gest-of-robyn-hode> [Accessed 08/04/2017]. In Munday’s play The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, the enemies are personal. Prince John is a rival for the love of Maid Marian. Anthony Munday, The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), available online at <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/downfall-of-robert-earle-of-huntington> [Accessed 08/04/2017].

8) Stephen C. A. Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy: 1650-1658, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 254.

9) Cathal C. Nolan, Wars of the age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715: An Encyclopaedia of Global Warfare and Civilisation (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008), p. 344.

10) Nolan, Wars of the age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715, p. 344.

11) ‘Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon’ in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), available at <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/robin-hood/text/child-ballad-129-robin-hood-and-the-prince-of-aragon> [Accessed 14/04/17]. All other references to this text are to this edition and are given parenthetically within the body of the essay.

Written by Estelle Luck.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The Myth of Innate Social Cohesion During the London Blitz

‘It’s intellectuals like ourselves who are the only free men. Not bound by conventions, patriotic emotions, sentimentality […] we haven’t what they call a stake in the country.’
-Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear, p.29.

The London Blitz caused large scale destruction and unrest in London which, naturally, fuelled anger towards the enemy. During this time of conflict there existed a myth of an innate social cohesion, where London was united against the perpetrator. Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear deconstructs this idea of a united Britain against a common enemy. Suzan R. Grayzel notes the large scale destruction during the Blitz. She argues:

Those whom air raids affected had to confront an essential feature of modern and total warfare: every home could now come under fire. As a result, civilians mattered in wartime as never before.1

The large scale ruin and the effect on the civilians would assume a negative reaction to the Blitz. However, Arthur Rowe focuses on his own personal experience with disregard to the collective struggle. Buildings that once held memories are destroyed, and the destruction is liberating for Rowe who’s past, according to the narrator, both traps and defines him. Memories of his wife are intertwined with the streets of London and Rowe lives with the guilt of killing her. The narrator says, ‘after a raid he used to sally out and note with a kind of hope that this restaurant or that shop existed no longer-it was like loosening the bars of a prison cell one by one.’2 The bars of the prison cell metaphorically represent his past and when London is bombed he is free; the physical destruction purifies him of his guilt. The stranger who attempts to kill Rowe in Mrs Purvis’ house summarises Rowe’s indifference to the destruction caused by the blitz. He says, ‘it’s intellectuals like ourselves who are the only free men. Not bound by conventions, patriotic emotions, sentimentality […] we haven’t what they call a stake in the country.’ (p.29) Rowe becomes immune to patriotic emotion and instead he is occupied with thoughts of his own past. Choosing to disengage with the political discourse of war does not render Rowe a free man. Instead, patriotic emotions are replaced with imprisoning feelings of guilt. He is ‘othered’ from a collective fight against one common ‘enemy’ as he fights his personal war against his past. Greene presents a system of living based on personal salvation and redemption, rather than a desire to be part of a larger ideology. The novel continues to feature a discourse of imprisonment surrounding him. Greene writes, ‘for more than a year now Rowe had been imprisoned- there had been no change of cell, no exercise yard, no unfamiliar warder to break the monotony of solitary confinement.’ (p.46) The language used by Greene renders Rowe an outsider trapped in the cell of his own mind, confined by his past. Greene depicts a conflict of language and ideas within the novel: Rowe is liberated and cleansed by the bombing, but equally, remains trapped by his past. This state of stasis Rowe experiences renders him an outsider from any social cohesion. By focusing on internal strife and finding relief in the bombing, Rowe is ‘othered’ from a patriotic unity against a common ‘enemy’. The definition of ‘other’, then, is not only a description of a foreign enemy, as would be assumed war time London. Instead, Rowe himself is the enemy, as he is wages a war against himself.

At the beginning of the novel, Rowe attends a fête, a place he would go every year as a child. Imagery of war is reoccurring throughout the fête, reminding the reader of the greater social events happening at the time. Greene writes, ‘of course, this year there would be no coconuts because there was a war on’ (p.11) and, ‘they would have to close early because of the black-out.’ (p.11) The novel depicts a community trying to cling onto life pre-war by hosting a fête. The event, however, cannot be separated from the discourse of war which penetrates each aspect of the day. Greene depicts the loneliness the people felt during the war by clinging onto an idyllic, British tradition and gathering together to create a sense of community. The novel shows that collectively people in Britain were endeavoring to re-create a piece of the past in order to escape their own horrific, brutal reality of life during the London Blitz. Instead of using the fête to escape the horror of the Blitz, Rowe uses it as a way to fantasize about his own past, and attempt to re-live his childhood experience. He immediately becomes ‘othered’ from the collective experience of the other fête goers. Instead, Rowe spends his time attempting to reconnect with his childhood innocence. In doing so, he momentarily rids himself from his present overriding feelings of guilt. The narrator defines Rowe’s perception of childhood as, ‘liv[ing] under the brightness of immortality […] God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock.’ (p.95) In short, childhood is a simpler, blameless time with no moral ambiguity. For Rowe, the fête is symbolic of the past as the narrator says, ‘the fête called him like innocence: it was entangled with childhood.’ (p.11) The novel suggests that Rowe endeavours to reconnect with his lost sense of identity and reunite with who he was before he murdered his wife: an opportunity to cleanse himself from his past. The text says, ‘he came to these fêtes every year with an odd feeling of excitement as if anything might happen, as if the familiar pattern of his afternoon might be altered forever.’(p.13) Greene continues to recall Rowe’s desire to ‘mislay the events of twenty years.’ (p.13) The novel depicts Rowe in a state of stasis: unable to escape his past, with no clear direction for his future. The fête represents a longing for the past, as other people who attend the fête unite in their hatred of the war, and desire for some normality amongst the chaos. Rowe, on the other hand, isolates himself from the shared experience of escaping the Blitz. Instead, he uses the event to escape his own, personal past. His inability to forgive his own past means he fails to connect with his own present, rendering him an ‘other’, but at his own will.

References:
Featured painting: Nettie Moon, The Spirit of London during the Blitz, 1979, Oil on Canvas, 55 x 65.5 cm, Museum of London.

1.Susan R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

2.Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (London: Penguin, 1943) All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically within the body of the essay.

Written by Sarah Culham
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Exploring the Meaning of the Fig Tree in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

‘I saw myself sitting in the crotch of the fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.’
-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, p. 73.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is full of interesting symbolism and imagery. The most iconic image, however, is the fig tree that torments protagonist Esther. She first encounters it in a story about the relationship between a Jewish man and a Catholic nun. Esther returns to the image later as she considers what career path to take and spirals into panic about her future:

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple pig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of the fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. 1

In this passage, Esther worries about the different opportunities available and believes that if she picks one she cannot pursue the others. Society forces women to choose one path because they are unable to be both career driven and a mother figure. The fig tree is contradictory, however, because it could be perceived as a positive image due to the limitless possibilities that life can give. On the other hand, Esther finds the amount of choices overwhelming as she believes that she can only have one. The conflicting nature of the fig tree represents Esther’s inner turmoil between conforming to the expected role of a young woman in New York and her desire to be an individual. Perloff suggests that during this period ‘female roles are no longer clearly defined, women are confronted by such a bewildering variety of seeming possibilities that choice itself becomes all but impossible.’2 Perloff’s statement sympathises with Esther’s struggles and it is often a common dilemma that young women have, even during the present day. Each branch represents a different choice. Therefore, the fig tree can represent how society – and Esther herself – enforces pressures upon young women to restrict themselves to one path in their lives.

Although the fig tree highlights the struggle of young women in society, it is Esther’s inability to decide on a career path or future that shows her unstable mindset. The fig tree paralyses Esther and forces her to watch herself starve to death which foreshadows her later suicide attempt, offering a warning to the reader of the seriousness of her unhealthy mentality and inability to decide. Esther witness her actions from afar which suggests a detachment from her mind, implying her mind is not at one. The disassociation could indicate she does not feel attached to the aspects of herself that are mentally unwell or is in denial. Stephanie Tsank proposes that ‘Esther’s inability to make decisions about her future has to do with her negative perception of self and her belief that she is unqualified to make such a decision’.3 Tsank’s view focuses on Esther’s internal struggle which is more crucial to understanding how her illness dangerously impacts her thought process compared to society’s influence. As Perloff suggested, many women were confronted with the restrictions of womanhood, yet not all of them suffered with mental health problems. This raises the strong possibility that mental illness can be attributed as much to the individual mindset and personality as to societal influences.

The symbolism of a fig itself expands on Esther’s inner turmoil. Esther describes the fig as ‘fat’ and ‘purple’ which implies an exotic, sensual fruit due to its Mediterranean origin.4 The colour purple is often associated with royalty, luxury, and wealth which suggests the choices are initially met with pleasure due to the vast amount of opportunities. Furthermore, figs are full of rich flavour suggesting that the positive associations imply Esther is initially inspired by the prosperity. The end of the passage shows the figs wrinkle and turn black, losing their richness, which symbolises the consequences of Esther’s indecisiveness and the loss of all options. This change represents Esther’s transformation as she sinks deeper into depression further on in the novel. The inside of a fig evokes sensual imagery and has links to fertility and female genitalia. In Greek, the word for fig (sykon) is the same word for vulva which directly links the two, providing the reader with an image of sexuality.5 These associations can be applied to Esther as her virginity is another personal choice and shows her struggle to find a sexual identity. She never experiences healthy relationships with men or strong enough relationships with women to discuss these issues. The fig tree is also biblically significant as Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves from this tree to hide their shame and sin after eating the forbidden fruit. Therefore, by linking these religious associations to Esther’s indecisiveness, the suggestion is that Esther feels shameful towards her confusion. Although the pressures of society can influence Esther’s attitude towards her future, the symbolism and meanings of figs demonstrate that it is her own inner struggle, turmoil, and anxiety that causes her to have such a distressing view of her future.

References
Featured Image: Front cover of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005)

1) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), p. 73. All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.

2) Marjorie G. Perloff, ‘”A Ritual for Being Born Twice”: Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’’, Contemporary Literature, 13.4 (1972), 507-522 (p.515)

3) Stephanie Tsank, ‘The Bell Jar: A Psychological Case Study’, Plath Profiles: An International Journal of Studies on Sylvia Plath, 3 (2010), 166-177 (p. 175).

4) The Columbia Encyclopaedia, 6th ed., ‘fig’, The Columbia University Press [n.d.] <https://www.encyclopedia.com/plants-and-animals/plants/plants/fig >

5) ‘sycophant (n.)’, Online Etymology Dictionary [n.d.] <https://www.etymonline.com/word/sycophant>

Written by Sophie Shepherd
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.