Save the cheerleader, save the… cheerleader.

Where does it come from, this desire to comply with forces larger than ourselves and write responses to texts we have read? Is it born within us, a natural progression of our free will that led us to graduate school in the first place? Or is it an aberration, a mark on humanity’s otherwise unblemished visage?

Just kidding. I won’t put everyone through that.

But seriously, was that finale t3h SUXXORS or what? I, like Alexis, was disappointed in the finale of Heroes. But I think it is interesting that one of the episodes we’ve talked about the most here is “Five Years Gone,” because that’s the one I was going to begin with as well. That episode was the 42-minute-long manifestation of the anxieties I’d been having with Hiro’s abilities since the beginning of the show. I’ll just put it out there.

Time travel as a narrative device is extremely disconcerting to me.

Well, not exactly disconcerting; maybe that’s too strong of a word. It just makes me think too hard. I don’t want to “go with the flow” when it happens. Sure, I’ll accept telekinesis or self-healing or alter egos in the mirror or walking through walls, but when time travel happens, there’s something inside of me that just wants to say “Is ANYTHING sacred?” My first instinct is to lump the abilities I “accept” together as spatial manipulations as opposed to Hiro’s temporal manipulation, but I think that’s an oversimplification of the process. After all, there are situations in which alternate spatial dimensions are explored (Mohinder’s and Peter’s transitions into the “dream” state aren’t just dreams, are they? And they’re certainly not just memories, since they a) in Mohinder’s case take place outside of his physical location at the time being depicted in dream-world, making him a fly on the wall, and b) give corporeal form to the “dreamer,” a form visible to some [the dying? the dead?] and a form in addition to the “dreamer’s” original form in the memory). The seemingly atemporal nature of the “dream” sequences makes them acceptable to a time-travel skeptic such as myself, since the sequences are presented as external to the narrative space-time of the series.

Hiro’s travels, on the other hand, are violations of this space-time, and they make me go more than a little insane. Now is when I try to articulate why. The most obvious place to start is with the episode “Five Years Gone.” Forgive me for asking, but if there are people five years in the future living on Earth at the same time as there are people living on Earth in the narrative present, then does it not follow that there are an infinite number of narratives, an infinite number of Earths, an infinite number of possibilities and outcomes? I think that Hiro traveling back and forth through time and changing events renders any conception of space and time irrelevant, unless we accept that there are restrictions imposed by the creators of the narrative itself. Thus, the coexistence of temporal freedom and a lack of utter chaos within the show’s narrative calls attention to Heroes‘ status as a created, manipulated, mediated object…

and this is where words fail me on this train of thought, but I want to try something different now to see if I can try to make a connection.

Alexis spoke briefly on the difference between X-Men and Heroes with regard to the relationship between “those of special ability” (not quoting Alexis, just attempting to have a catch-all term) and “those without special ability.” This observation combined with the ever-present gay subtext of Heroes – you show me a superhero and I’ll show you a closeted queer (see also Colin’s astute IMDB quote) – made me think of a very different show: (The American incarnation of) Queer as Folk. One common critique (or point of praise, depending who was doing the talking) of that show was its hermetically sealed environment which only allowed for queers GLBT persons, the occasional queerGLBT-friendlies and the extremely occasional queerGLBT-bashers to exist within the show. I think that makes a nice analogy to Heroes, in the sense that the “world” of Heroes is also delimited based on identity. I’d argue that the “world” we’ve been discussing in this blog is indeed not what we think of as the “real life” world, but I’d also argue that it has as much to do with “New York” or “Texas” as Vancouver has to do with Pittsburgh (QAF was supposed to have been set in Pittsburgh, but was filmed entirely in Vancouver). Maybe a bigger leap is to say that the world is delimited based on potential for viewer identification, and if that prospective viewer is the GL and GL-friendly subject in the case of QAF, then maybe a good question to finish up with would be, who is that viewer in the case of Heroes? I’m not sure, but I think it might have to do with Neoliberalism.

That was a flippant and irresponsible ending, and I’m going to leave it at that, because like Hiro’s pre-training swordplay skillz, my Neoliberalism skillz are a bit rusty. Hopefully we have something to chew on.

Also, I don’t think the temporality issues are entirely separable from the issues in the second half of the post. But I’M NOT SURE WHY.

Also, why did the mind-reader encounter linear, usable thoughts rather than messier things such as this blog post?

Charlie

“I fear he collects monsters”: Bachelor Collectors and Their Menageries

The Bachelor as Collector has been haunting me since The Woman in White. There it was. Staring me in the face ever since Middlemarch as an undergrad. Why did it take so long for me to see it? Finally! Chapter XI in The Picture of Dorian Gray makes sense! In the words of my SoCalism roots (I was born in San Diego ya’ll): Like, duh!

It’s too obvious to speak of Sylar as the ultimate collector for this week, so I’ll keep it brief. The dude collects clocks, snow globes (for his mom), watches and powers (like, duh, right?), but he also collects sympathy, and this sympathy always erupts in violence. First, it was Dr. Chandra Suresh’s sympathy, who Sylar subsequently murdered. When he invades the Bennett home under the pretense of returning Mr. Muggles (am I reading too much into this as a Harry Potter reference?), Mrs. Bennett calls him her “hero” and he seems genuinely touched, but he ultimately creeps her out to the point where she suspects something is, well, creepy, and he physically harms her. Finally, he plays upon the Mohinder’s sympathies, but when Mohinder finds out the truth about his traveling companion (and Zane Taylor and everyone else he has basically fed to Sylar), that relationship also ends in violence. …I am just now noticing that Sylar essentially meets and exploits everyone under a false or stolen identity (be that in name or in powers, heck, his pseudonym, Sylar, is lifted from a watch brand). Except the interaction with his mother, although, that, too, ends with her death.

Anyway, I didn’t really want to talk about Heroes. I wanted to talk about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In particular, Mina Murray, and her role as a collector as well. Her collecting of the men who will make up the League resembles Sylar’s collecting habits in that they both are collecting people with power. But the extraordinary gentlemen share more in common with Sylar: they are all exiles and they are all “bachelors.” I wonder if Carlyle would add bachelorhood to his list of requisites of a sincere hero, the way poverty will enhance the sincerity of a Man of Letters. I imagine Carlyle saying something to the effect that bachelor(ette)hood (my ette, not his) ennobles individuals because they can focus on their cause and not be distracted by petty familial connections.

And now for something completely different…

League is premised on a similar theme explored in Dracula: the archaic versus modernity. In much the same way Bram Stoker was obsessed with science, technology and society in Dracula (with the inclusion of typewriters, phonographs, psychology, blood transfusions, and social questions such as Imperialism and the idea of the “New Woman”), Moore is equally obsessed with a universe slightly more advanced at the turn of the century than it actually was. Whereas in Dracula these technical developments literally shape the narrative for different characters (in Dracula Mina keeps a journal on a typewriter, marrying her with technology further solidifies her connection to the spirit of New Woman), in League, Mina writes a letter, but it’s handwritten in curvy script. Visually it has the effect of a diary entry when in narrative function it is a business letter to Campion Bond updating him about the situation with Jekyll/Hyde. Why not allow her to write this letter on a typewriter, which could possibly be more in keeping with the spirit of the original character?

I fear the answer is a misogynistic one (and this totally sucks because I don’t want it to be!). Mina assumes the role of leader for the group (perhaps due to the fact that she was the first one recruited), but even after the group is formed, she continues to give orders. The story is peppered with the other gents’ anxiety about Mina’s “manliness” resulting in petty insults (“harpy”) and usurpation of her authority (Nemo taking matters into his own hands by sending Griffin after Bond). And so I take the handwritten nature of the letter as a piece of power that writer Alan Moore is withholding from Mina.

In a sense Alan Moore is the ultimate Bachelor Collector (well, until recently he was a bachelor, he literally got married two weeks ago). He selected all the characters based on his favorite Victorian texts (both popular and obscure)–even the random characters he includes as side characters have a foothold in a Victorian text (Miss Flaybum and Miss Coote, as ironic as their names were in the context of League, they were real characters in Sherlock Holmes and The Pearl). In essence, both stories (Dracula and League) are stories of Imperialism, stories of modern/civilized society overcoming what are perceived as primitive/Other cultures. The question I’m most concerned with, though, is: at what point am I reading too much into things? Is a comic book ever just a comic book? I am all too aware that ideology asserts itself into all facets of life, taking aggressive or passive forms. I understand Stuart Hall and inferential racism. But at what point is a writer aware of the things he is writing and at what point is a writer relying on ye olde ideologies to create an action/adventure homage to his favorite novels? Does that excuse the use of ideologies? Does that make the use a rebellion of sorts? How can we trace the rebellion?

 

–Jillian

Heroes, Geeks and Fans

Having volunteered enthusiastically to blog about Heroes, I find myself with a lot of ideas and no single overarching theme. Should I detail my critiques of the race and gender politics of the series, its promises and disappointments? Offer an aesthetically oriented analysis of the show’s intertextuality and narrative complexity in the hope of convincing those of our number less enamored of the popular that it’s genuinely worthy of study? Explain why the finale was such a failure in my eyes, and why “Five Years Gone” was such an intensely pleasurable piece of television? Analyze the show’s presentation of geekishness and fandom as heroism?As I’m finding it so difficult to narrow these possibilities down to a single entry, I think that it might be best to step back from my anxiety about achieving a properly ‘academic’ tone and instead offer a list of possible discussion points on which we can elaborate further in class. I’ll assume that the rest of this entry is fair game for spoilers, as anyone who hasn’t seen the finale yet is probably watching TV now instead of reading the course blog.

***

Carlyle’s imperialist, occasionally protofascist concept of the hero is disturbingly similar to the way the term is used in Heroes. The ‘Great Man’ who makes history, who changes/saves the world: Linderman, Nathan, Hiro and even Peter all believe that this role is theirs. And though “Five Years Gone” (the dystopian future episode) and Linderman’s machinations are there to show that self-conscious heroism can slip over easily into fascism, it is not so much the idea of the Great Man that is critiqued as the failures of those who misguidedly claim it. Peter and Hiro want to save New York instead of sacrificing it, are unlikely individuals without the social and economic power Linderman and Nathan command, and so they can be fated as the true ‘Great Men’ of the show. Even Nathan returns to greatness when he abandons Linderman’s plan; his political corruption is apparently obliviated by his (literal) ascent to the right kind of heroism. I found the lack of moral ambiguity disappointing, especially after the complexities exhibited in the stories of Mr Bennet and the invisible man.

If Carlyle had watched Heroes, he might have wanted to add a new lecture: The Hero As Geek. In class on Tuesday, we talked about understanding Carlyle’s “Worship” as a fan’s affective relation to the object of fandom. The heroes of Heroes inspire fandom (both internally to the show and in the fan communities that surround it) but it is also essential to the narrative that they are themselves fans: of heroism as ideal, of other heroes, and most especially of superhero comics. Hiro in particular, of course comes to his heroism through geek cultural literacies: he learns his heroism from comic books, is guided by Isaac’s comic visions, and fulfils his quest. This is lauded, while Nathan’s mainstream political conceptions of how to be heroic have to be abandoned before he can finally save the world.

Geek cultural literacies also provide the show with a dense array of intertextual pleasures, as literary Victoriana does in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Alan Moore, in fact, is the author of one of the main intertexts I perceived in the show: his 1985 graphic novel Watchmen also invokes the destruction of New York in the context of dubious heroism and politics, adding another layer to the political allegory of Nathan’s ascension to Congress. X-Men is the other obvious reference point; most of the powers in Heroes are also held by mutant characters in those comics and films, though they affect their holders very differently (the most powerful X-Man has the same power as one of the most ineffective Heroes, Officer Parkman, to give one brief example).

Comparing Heroes and X-Men (the first two films, primarily) shows up some interesting points about otherness and power. In X-Men, mutants have physical or psychic powers, but they are outnumbered and oppressed by the normal, normative force of ‘ordinary’ people. The good guys are invested in finding and controlling super-powered mutants, in order to encourage mutant/human harmony; the bad guys are mutant separatists who believe that persecution will never cease without violent intervention. In Heroes, the superpowered people seem to have few problems with oblivious humanity, and are mainly threatened by Linderman’s organization; until the dystopia of “Five Years Gone,” their powers are not experienced as dangerous otherness, and even in “Five Years Gone” their oppression of people is portrayed as due to Sylar’s machinations rather than any more generalized systemic othering or xenophobic fear of difference’s dangers.

I think that this attitude to mutation/heroism might possibly connect to the problems which Heroes has in portraying difference in general, as shown by the general gender stereotyping and problematic racial representations. None of the ‘Great Men’ are women, and the female characters seem to all be either ineffectual, dead, underused or evil; I still can’t quite believe they never let the Haitian have a name (you’d think that Claire might have thought to ask a simple question of the man who saved her life). This shows that Heroes locates itself in the geek/fan landscape by embracing a fairly narrow segment of geek culture, in the end: a superheroism that isn’t quite as (self-)critical as it pretends to be, and that is more interested in glorifying its unconventional Greats––in promoting hero- and Heroes-worship––than in exploring the tantalizing possibilities for sociopolitical comment in the world the show creates.

Off Topic: Electrelane (w/ Tender Forever) at the Troubadour, Thursday (5/31)

Normally I wouldn’t take up class air time or blogspace to post an advert for my homies, but I know some of you are music fans–and Brit music fans at that.

My friend Emma Gaze’s band (short hair, bottom left), ELECTRELANE has been touring with Arcade Fire this summer. Electrelane are based in Brighton. We just caught their show at the Greek from the wings last nite. But tomorrow night Electrelane will be in a more intimate setting headlining another show at the Troubadour before heading to NorCal’s Greek with AF in Berkeley.

Opening for them are “Tender Forever” (really a one woman synth band) from Bordeaux. Nice, melodic electro indie pop. Think Matthieu Boogaerts meets Stereolab and lesbionica.

Tickets are $15. Doors open at 8. Tender Forever at 9. Electrelane at 10.

Electrelane Homepage
Tender Forever’s Myspace Page

KT

Links to Heroes’ “Viral Entertainment”

A quick response to Trisha’s remarks.
1. Love Bonnie Tyler’s “Hero.” Not as good as “Total Eclipse of the Heart (Turn Around Bright Eyes),” which would also, at least thematically, be appropriate for the show’s soundtrack.
2. I can see where you’re going with why Bush might love the show, but I think the “5 years gone” episode (or whatever it’s called–aka “the future” episode) is rather overt with its allusions to post 9/11 fearmongering, indefinite detention, profiling and opportunistic commemoration. In other words, even if you’re right and Bush loves the show, the show makes no secret of hating him and the way he conducts his political process (complete with Linderman’s plan to fix the voting machines. Diebold anyone)?

For anyone interested enough to pursue some Heroes-themed viral entertainment, here are a few links…
The “Vote Petrelli” site

The Yamagato Fellowship (Papa Nakamura’s organization. According to “Entertainment Weekly,” the site “will lay crucial groundwork for next season”)

KT

Holding out for a Hero…

…And seriously, if you can’t quote Bonnie Tyler in this context, what’s the point?

 

Idea #1:

First let me say that I think Heroes is a pretty fun and entertaining show.  However, while I was immersed in marathon episode-watching sessions for this class, I found myself besieged by unwelcome and crotchety questions like: “Why is it that, in Heroes, every time someone says something along the lines of ‘I thought I could save the world’ or ‘Save the cheerleader, save the world,’ what they really mean by ‘world’ is ‘New York City?’”  I know I can’t be the only one who finds this embarrassingly chauvinistic.  (And, yes, it has occurred to me that perhaps the bombing in New York was supposed to lead to more global destruction, thus making the “save the world” quotes more accurate, but I didn’t get a strong sense of that potentiality from the show.  Did anyone else?)  A similar question that popped into my head a lot was “How did so many of the ‘heroes’ happen to appear in the US?”  A lot of lip-service is paid (mostly through portentous voice over) to the “global” nature of these genetic mutations but, seriously, there are about four people with special powers and foreign accents and, other than those few, all the other heroes are American.  We’ve already begun discussing the importance of heroes and hero worship to the formation of national identity and imperialistic projects, so the show’s strong (and, to me, insincerely moderated) US focus seems noteworthy.  I really feel like the show has (so far) missed the opportunity to make itself as global as it seems to want to be.

 

Idea #2:

Like Jen, I am intrigued by the show’s fuzzy definition of what makes a true hero.  Clearly, as Karen mentioned briefly in class on Tuesday, there is a strong theme of biological determinism running through this show.  But the genetic mutations responsible for the characters’ superpowers can create villains as well as heroes.  So what separates the Peter Petrellis from the Sylers?   Is it a strong sense of individual morality and purpose that will “hold the course” even against popular opinion?  (George W. is nodding enthusiastically.  I bet he loves Heroes, by the way).  Is it the willingness to make “tough moral decisions” that cause harm to some people but supposedly bring good to a greater number?  (Bush cheers again).  Or is it a rather ill-defined capacity for and faith in selflessness and love, as the show seems to hint in the concluding episode?  What would Carlyle make of all of this?  He says (on page 101), “I prophesy that the world will once more become sincere; a believing world; with many Heroes in it, a heroic world!  It will then be a victorious world; never till then.” Isn’t that what this show is more or less depicting – many heroes, and a world that must believe in order to be saved?  Isn’t this what Bush and the Iraq war are selling us every day — the idea of the heroic average American soldier/hero?  The idea that sincerity is what counts?  And who or what is a “victorious world” conquering, anyway?  (And, for the bonus round: Who would be Carlyle’s favorite hero on the show, do you think?)

 

OK, I guess that’s enough for now.  I can’t wait to hear everyone else’s take on the show!

 

Trisha

Save the Victorian, Save the World

Hi everyone,

WARNING: I tried VERY hard not to include spoilers in this post, but if there are any, I’m truly sorry.

I can’t help but see the parallels between issues that we discussed in The Woman in White and the show. I’ll try to be kind of vague with my examples (especially since I’m sure some of you haven’t seen the ending yet, and I don’t wanna be  that girl who spoils it all for you and makes you throw your hands up in despair).

First of all, we have the obvious nature of the serialization of the show itself. Instead of episodes, there are chapters, and apparently, the first season is called the first volume. The idea of volumes probably connects to comic books in the creator’s head, but still, I cannot help but hope that they have a story arch in their mind that consists of three volumes. (Although realistically, we all know they will keep making this show until it’s no longer financially successful.)

Next, the show continuously emphasizes inheritances. I don’t want to say too much about this, but there is a familial element to the characters’ powers, and I cannot help but be reminded of the idea that a sensation novel involves bizarre events in the “domestic”/familial space.

I think we could also talk about the depiction of the “mental institution” in Heroes versus the Victorian period, and along with that, the issue of mistaken identity (Jessica/Nicky and for those of you who do not know, there’s a shapeshifter kind of like Mystique from X-Men, I won’t say more.)

Perhaps most importantly, there are a hell of a lot of coincidences in this show. I cannot help but think of The Woman in White when Walter just happens to meet a woman on the road who just happens to mention a Baron, who just happens to be the man Laura is destined to marry… and well… it goes on and on. Perhaps it’s because I watched a lot of the episodes in one long marathon, but at times, the coincidences seemed unbelievable and a little far-fetched, but then again, isn’t the far-fetched nature some of the “fun” of the show or of the sensation novel in the first place?

Also, Linderman’s collection brings to mind the discussion of Mr. Fairlie and his inability/unwillingness/lack of desire to reproduce. I don’t want to say more about this, for fear of ruining the plot, but I’ll just leave that out there. Perhaps collections are my hobby-horse, but I think his is particularly interesting.

And as for the aesthetic value of the visual, is it just me or does the art of any of the characters who paint the future begin to all look the same? Issac has such a distinctive painting style (he paints in a comic book style), and while the characters who “acquire” his abilities look at first like they’re painting in their own style, the paintings began to look a lot like Issac’s to me. Perhaps, I need to watch clips of it again, to be sure. But if that’s the case, is Issac’s artistic gift, also part of his “power”?

One last question: besides the Hiro/Ando team (and that random boy from India who could walk into dreams at the beginning) where are the people with superpowers in other countries? Why don’t the smart heroes move to Canada to avoid Sylar? Apparently, it’s all good to be a hero anywhere but the USA. No offense to the pro-American narrative, but I think it would be pretty darn good to be a hero in Europe, Asia, or any other place. No saving cheerleaders, no saving the world, just chillaxin’ with the ability to write a kick-ass dissertation in less than an hour (oh and grade a whole set of Writing 140 papers in under 30 seconds). Talk about the fun you could have during that fellowship year. Daaaammmmmn.

Okay, well, it’s back to attempting to manifest my superpowers. After exposing myself to nuclear waste, genetic mutation from freak events of nature, and various insects/animal bites, I have yet to see anything substantial. Damn my parents for not being genetically superior.

Best,

NSAH

Heroes

Having made my way through nine episodes of “Heroes” now, I have to say that my favorite hero is the Indian guy, whose superhuman ability seems to be the ability to utter banal cliches….While all the other kids dreamed about flying or being invincible or reading other people’s minds, my dream as a child was the ability to spout the kind of asinine drivel you might find in “The Secret.”  And now, finally, not only a hero after my own heart, but one who’s ethnic without being threatening!

Colin

Do Heroes Piddle?

Ugh. I am really starting to feel like I signed up for the wrong week!  No wonder Carlyle was one of the last slots to be filled – you all must have known what I apparently did not.  This book was an awful read for me.  Slogging through it over this long weekend has been nothing short of excruciating.  I finished this morning feeling utterly clueless and stupid.

“Oh no! I have to write on this and I have nothing to say.  I don’t even understand it!”  I started making up excuses – my sock drawer is really messy and I am the only person I know who hasn’t seen Spiderman 3 yet . . . might these tasks be more of a priority? How can I be expected to grasp Carlyle knowing that all of my socks are not accounted for?

In all seriousness, I am not sure what I am “supposed” to get out of this, and, is it just me, or is this a rather awkward transition out of Fingersmith? After all, I am sure that Carlyle never took a piddle in his life.  In fact, I am pretty sure that Carlyle would have held all “piddlers” in disdain.  No votes for you, you worthless piddlers!

Because I am so smart and academic, however, I am going to attempt to pinpoint the reasons I find this work so unmemorable and difficult and try to make some so-called theoretical account of my rather worthless opinions:

1.    As a woman, I feel very, for lack of a better word, excluded from Carlyle’s view of the world.  I get the impression that when he uses the phrase, “Great Men,” that he really does mean only men, and not mankind in general.  Where are the queens?  Why only kings?
2.    Politically, I feel myself thinking that Carlyle must have been quite an elitist.  All his talk of sansculottes and valets unable to recognize their masters as heroes seems rather telling to me.  The valet, of course, expects the “formal” king, and although I think I get the point Carlyle is trying to make here, isn’t it fitting that, for Carlyle, it is the serving class that cannot recognize heroes in their midst?

Thus, my astute observations lead me to the conclusion that something about Carlyle’s politics in this text rubs me the wrong way.  Of course, I am sure that there is some substance here that is not quite within my reach, something relevant to Carlyle’s cultural moment that makes “On Heroes” a significant contribution.  I have always found Victorian non-prose hard to read and this worries me to no end.  I am sure that after our discussion tomorrow, I will feel even more sheepish and ashamed of my ignorant and snarky ramblings.  But alas, I am really at a loss.  So, I retreat.  It’s bedtime.

CR

The Sonic Heroic

My apologies in advance for my excessive comma-use.

Like Kappy, I was really interested in the ways in which Carlyle discussed the heroic through the subject of language. Kappy’s inclusion of the quote “Existence had become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive” (22) made me go back and look through portions of the text to think about the ways in which the “melodious” and more generally the musical emerge in the text as an important aspect of Carlyle’s examination and articulation of what constitutes the heroic beyond language, beyond what can be linguistically articulated.Though there are brief mentions of song in both The Hero as Divinity and The Hero as Prophet, it isn’t until The Hero as Poet, specifically the discussion of Dante, that Carlyle’s admiration of music becomes apparent. He writes:  

A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists… All inmost things, we may say, are melodious; naturally utter themselves in Song… Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? (83)

In what ways does this notion of the inexpressibility of the effect of music on us correlate to what Carlyle suggests is “the first distinction” of a hero, “That he looks through the shows of things into things” (55)? Carlyle later states, “See deep enough and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it” (84). Of course, there are aspects of music that are definitely expressed, the effect of which we can clearly articulate through language, which is one aspect of musical thought (poetry), but there is also that certain quality to music that can only be felt, “a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that” (83). This particular quality in music is perhaps most apparent in instrumental music, whose lack of lyrical content emphasizes particular affects that we may attempt to express through language but always already point to the limitations of the phonic (of course, this quality is not limited to instrumental music, music that contains lyrics also has a melody which not only accompanies what is expressed in the lyrics but also hint at something deeper which the lyrics can never fully express).                

 This reminds me of Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling,” which I’ve been considering in relation to music. Williams states that a structure of feeling “is a kind of feeling and thinking which is indeed social and material, but each in an embryonic phase before it can become fully articulate and defined exchange” (131). Rather than thinking about music and particularly Carlyle’s formulations regarding melody as something that can at some point become fully articulate, I think it is useful to think about music or at least particular qualities in music as always existing as a structure of feeling. Yes, we may typically associate speech with the most common form of social exchange and interaction, but in what ways do we also use music to express what is phonically inexpressible? What about forms of musical exchange (such as mix tapes) that become a type of social interaction?

Is the Hero as Poet important precisely because of the poet’s understanding of both the importance and limitations of spoken language? And is there something in poetic language, in rhyme, meter, melody, in the musical quality of poetry, that allows for the expression of something deeper, that always remains beyond the reach of language?

A.W.

Response to Carlyle

While I read Carlyle’s lectures on hero-worship, I was struck by the correlation he makes between great men and their ability to use language. Carlye begins his series by adressing the hero as divinity, using the Norse god Odin as his primary example. Adressing the Norse’s reasons for worshipping Odin, Carlyle writes that he was ‘the first Norse man who had an original power of thinking,” further explaining that “Existence had become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive” (21 and 22). In Carlyle’s view, Odin derives the admiration of the Norse people from his ability to “articulate,” to express himself and his view of the world. By moving from individual sensory existence to the communication of these experiences through spoken language, Odin essentially establishes the Norse society, makes “Life alive.” Odin appears to be a kind of god of creation in his ability to speak and communicate with his fellow man. Carlye also cites Odin as the inventor of “Letters” and “Poetry” in the Norse mythology. Though I tend to think of a great warrior in association with the term “hero,”
both Carlyle and the Norse people venerte Odin for forming systems that enable men to share their thoughts and experiences.

In his final lecture on the hero as King, Carlyle returns to this relationship between heroes and language. In his evlautation of Cromwell’s disfavor, Carlye writes, “Poor Cromwell,– great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who could not speak” (217). Carlyle suggests that Cromwell’s failure to be attain the title of hero rests in his “inarticulate” nature. Whereas Odin becomes the ruling god of the Norse people for his development of nordic language, Cromwell remains a villanious figure in the eyes of the English becuse he “could not speak,” could not clearly explain, the great ideals he held in his mind. Though Carlyle attempts to recover Cromwell’s reputation by lauding his heroic vision and actions, Cromwell retains the title “the prince of liars” for his inability to convey his ideas to the English public.

As a student of english, I find Carlyle’s lectures incredibly empowering. While I tend to think of a hero as a strong and brave warrior, Carlyle suggests that a hero must also be able to conquer language in order to gain the admiration of his people. Studying english can be heroic! Though people say actions speak louder than words, Carlyle points to the importance of direct verbal and written communication in establishing a relationship between hero and worshippers. Actions may need explanation or words can produce action. Think of FDR, JFK, MLKJ, modern American heroes who used language to gain the respect of the people and make change, making life as we know it today “alive.”

–Kappy

In defense of those piddling passages

I have been unfortunate enough to miss the first week of class, so these issues may have been covered already. After catching up on the blog, though, I can’t resist joining in.

Reading MDaddy’s response and the answers to it, I’m struck by the passages he chose to highlight as ‘bad’ writing. Is it a coincidence that they feature vulgar language (“fuck this cheap life”; “piddle”) as well as simple sentences? Are swearing and bodily functions really synonymous with aesthetically “bad” writing? I think not; indeed, I am willing to admit those piddles, and the other bodily functions which the narration in Fingersmith is so matter-of-fact in mentioning, are some of my favorite things about the book, and about Sarah Waters’s historical fiction in general.

He finished his smoke, then smoked another. He went off for a piddle, and I went off for a piddle of my own. I heard a whistle blown as I was tidying my skirts; and when I got back, I found the guard had sent out the word and half the crowd had started up and was making in a great sweating rush for the waiting train. (54)

Piddles. Sweat. Not to mention defecation, menstruation, and sex, which show up elsewhere in Waters. These vulgar matters are left out of the Victorian aesthetic with which MDaddy seems to be enamored, and while he might consider that to be as it should be, I disagree. Waters’s embrace of the everyday may not fit the high-art requirements of certain people’s aesthetic schemas, but then, her intention was not to reproduce the Victorian novel but to revision it. And she uses vulgarity, lower-class idiom and the depiction of bodily functions (among other things) to do so – not waving them around ostentatiously in the manner of that Modernist aesthetic master, Joyce (who would certainly not be a controversial figure to teach at a community college), but simply reinserting them where they might possibly, probably have been in the lives that people were living at the time. Similarly, in this and her other novels, Waters inserts explicit same-sex desire, gender deviance and queer culture where it might have, could have or ought to have been in the historical periods she reimagines.

Perhaps it’s because of the similarity of the insertion that I find something faintly and delightfully queer about the matter-of-fact piddling Susan describes in Fingersmith; then again, perhaps that sensation contains a little of my own insistence on opposing the aesthetic ideologies MDaddy represents. His reaction makes me want to embrace Susan’s perverse piddles all the more.

Unlike MDaddy, I don’t think of ‘judging good writing’ as the same thing as ‘doing literary criticism,’ at least in the way I hope to do it; in the latter, I would prefer to be concerned with how meaning is produced and what its ideological and political implications are than with making value judgments. Because of this I don’t feel particularly compelled to defend Fingersmith as a good novel or art object (though I think it is a wonderful novel, one I have reread many times with intense pleasure; a statement which gives away my own desire to involve the affective in the aesthetic, perhaps) at this juncture.

Thus I shall give only the merest of closing asides to remind MDaddy, as the cover of my copy of the novel just reminded me, of a fact which may be relevant to his mission to judge good writing. Fingersmith was nominated not only for the Orange prize but also for the Booker, the single most prestigious literary award in the UK (for which I prefer not to “simply say England” when I don’t mean only England) and one which all too rarely features women writers or the kinds of books which are sold at Wal-Mart.

Alexis

TWoP till you drop

I just wanted to share a great website called Television Without Pity, where they have scene-by-scene recaps of many currently running shows, including our beloved Heroes.  The tone is deliciously snarky, and while it sometimes smacks of trying too hard, I’m finding it a good way to refresh myself on the episodes I caught in the fall before Heroes fell off my list of appointment television.  (It’s surely a great deal more fun and informative than those epic “Previously on Heroes” openings.)

Don’t forget to vote in the highly scientific polls in the margins!

Charlie

Aesthetic Value in “Fingersmith”

            While I wouldn’t go so far as to say Fingersmith is the best book, or even one of the best books, I’ve read in the last decade, I don’t think it is quite as lacking in stylistic imagination as that wrecking-ball of literary pleasure MDaddy would have us think.  I’ll admit that I circled a great many passages which I thought had the potential to be either sentimentally trite or artistically challenging.  Since those judgments are about as far apart as they can be, it might be profitable to examine the uncertainty I felt toward those passages.  I’m not going to do that, though, because, speaking of sadism, I think it’s cruel and unnecessary to subject a gentle readership to my prevaricating ways. 

            Since, however, I value aesthetic judgment (not necessarily in place of cultural, political, or ideological judgment, but in addition to those), and since I found myself wondering throughout whether or not Fingersmith was a “good” novel, and since a challenge was issued to find stylistically imaginative or artistic passages, I will subject you to what might be a tediously idiosyncratic reading of a certain section which I think is, if not the greatest piece of prose ever written, at least pretty and evocative, and one which made me want to flip through the book again and reexamine, with fresh eyes, the quality of the writing throughout.

            I’m speaking of the very end, the last three or so paragraphs.  “When I kissed her, she shook.  I remembered what it was, then, to make her shake by kissing her; and began to shake, too.  I had been ill.  I thought I might faint!  We moved apart.  She put her hand against her heart.  She still held the paper.  Now it fluttered to the floor.  I stooped and caught it up and smoothed the creases from it.”  The pacing of those first two sentences, regulated by the punctuation and sound patterns is, I think, rather good.  It’s particularly pleasant in the second sentence when the pace picks up through the make/shake rhyme.   Notice too the almost exclusive use of voiceless consonant sounds: k, s, sh, t, g.  The repetition of k, s, and sh in particular gives these lines a soft, breathy feel which is, clearly, perfectly consistent with the content of the passage.  So, the sound of the words synchronizes with the atmosphere being conveyed, creating a physical effect that augments the psychological or emotional affect of the passage.  Then, later in the passage, Waters is, if nothing else, bold enough to employ the apart/heart rhyme.  One could say it’s over-the-top, but, even so, the use of that rhyme highlights the sensual sonic quality of Susan’s narration at this point. 

            And that sonic sensual narration is complicated by the exchange that follows. 

            “‘What does it say?’ I said, when I had.

            “She said, ‘It is filled with all the words for how I want you…Look.’”

            In the midst of this sonic sensual narration, this bit of dialogue interjects a concern with the silent appearance of language.  Susan, the illiterate, wants to know what the text says, that is, she wants to be able to hear it.  Maud, a reader that takes the correspondence between the appearance, the sound, and the meaning of the words for granted, only wants Susan to see, to “Look.”  And what she does at the end, after the very sonically sensual line, “Her silk skirts rose in a rush, then sank” is “to show [Susan] the words she had written, one by one.”  I suppose one could imagine that when Susan says Maud “shows” her the words, she means Maud pointed to them and said their sound.  Maybe.  But since she does not say, “And Maud told me what it meant,” we really don’t know what they’re doing at the end.  It’s also interesting that Maud doesn’t really answer Susan’s question.  Instead of telling her what the text says, she gives a rather elliptical answer that, in effect, makes the text into a picture.  What I’m trying to say may not be quite rhetorically sound, or even clear, at this point, but let it suffice that I find it interesting that at this moment when the narrative is interested in a conflict between the look and the sound of words, and with what each character desires individually from words, the narration itself is very sonic and sensual, and, I would say, hardly imagistic or visual.  At this point, then, the content of the passage and the style of narration are out of synch, and this, I think, is rather thematically dramatic.

            These passages are not without their problems, though.  Maybe Maud’s putting her hand against her heart is too sentimental, to clichéd.  Also, the final paragraph says Maud spreads the paper flat, but we never hear Susan give the paper to Maud.  Troublesome?  Perhaps.

            If you agree with me that these passages work (and I think there are bits in the longer paragraph above the part where I began that work nicely too, particularly the skin/ink dynamics), you certainly aren’t committing yourself to saying the entire novel works.  Indeed, I’m not committing myself to that either.  However, in flipping back through…Look at page 580.  “I took the book from her and looked at the print on the pages.  It looked like any book would, to me.”  Do the pacing and the alliteration make those sentences interesting?  Does the conflation of a sonic style with a visual problem create an interesting dynamic (I know I’ve used that vague word a dozen times, but this is a blog, right?)  Or how about, “The lawn seemed bruised” (577).  I appreciate the conflation of a bodily malady on the inanimate landscape in the context of psychological frailty, bodily harm, harrowing action, concern with the materiality of language and writing, and illiteracy.  Also, it might be worth examining if there is a different sonic or tonal quality to Susan’s narrative style than to Maud’s.  Might one be more visual or imagistic and one more sonic than the other? 

            In any event, since a couple of good passages shouldn’t elevate this book to the heavenly aether of literature, a few unfairly picked bad ones shouldn’t condemn it to the gutter either. 

            A final word—and maybe one that will, God help me, address the themes of the course!  As I was reading, I didn’t notice the language much for two significant reasons.  First, I had to read this fast.  Second, I think Waters wants us, at least in the last 200 or so pages, to read fast.  It’s a tricky prospect, I imagine, creating an homage to the sensation novel while at the same time nodding to the important stylistic “advances,” if one wants to call them that, made by the twentieth century’s masters. 

            How I do go on…

            Enough, then.

 

            Jonathan

Complexities and Complications

In considering what to comment on in relation to Fingersmith, I have had the same reaction that Natasha and Charlie had to The Woman in White – how do I respond to a such a lengthy novel in just a couple of pages?   Added to this is the fact that I haven’t reached any actual conclusions about the text yet.  Instead, I am left with numerous questions and general reactions to the novel that I hope others will find of some interest as we begin to discuss this work.  So, what follows are really just my ideas about the novel as opposed to any concrete answers or resolutions.  My aim, therefore, is not to present a cohesive argument (as I don’t have one yet), but to simply share my thoughts and to invite any comments you might have about them.

As with The Woman in White, I was struck by the presence of a double in Fingersmith, an “other” that is central to the plot (both of the work at large and of the plot/scheme enacted by the numerous “villains”).  It is interesting to me that this “otherness” becomes an issue of class distinction, and that Sue is thought to be mad because she is a “lady” who insists that she is a maid.  Nurse Spillers comments on the regularity with which the working-class women in the asylum claim to be rightful members of the landed gentry, an aspiration she (and the doctors) can perhaps understand as somehow “normal.”  Thus, it is Sue’s inversion of this socio-economic concern that functions as a symptom of her supposed mental impairment.  Ultimately, Gentleman’s plot depends on Sue as Maud’s double – Sue who is truly wealthy, who does not know it, and who insists on articulating her working-class identity as evidence of her sanity (a compulsion that only serves to further convince those around her of her madness).

A related confusion can be located in the issue of female education and literacy.  The doctor comments to Rivers that “the over-exposure of girls to literature – the founding of women’s colleges” has resulted in a “nation of brain-cultured women,” a phenomenon that reflects a “wider malaise” of which Maud/Sue is a part.  Thus, in the doctor’s estimation it is access to education, access clearly enjoyed only by those who can afford it, that has lead to a nation-wide threat of female malady.  As such, it would seem that Sue’s instinct to profess her working-class identity, particularly through her illiteracy, would rescue her from this general “malaise.”  Yet, the doctor determines that it is through writing that Sue/Maud will be cured.  How then are we to reconcile the doctor’s identification of female literacy as a dangerous social blight with his invocation of it in curing the lady who believes herself to me a maid?  The novel offers little explanation, except to say that the doctor is rather radical in his treatment methods.  What then are we to make of this inversion?

Although unrelated to the questions above, I am also interested in the issue of perfomativity in the novel, particularly sexual performativity.  Maud’s forced readings of sexual material to her uncle and his visitors create a context of performance around the issue of sex, and despite her uncle’s assertion that it is the form and not the content that merits attention, we know this to be untrue since the issue of Maud’s sexual knowledge appears throughout the text (for example, recall Sue’s astonishment at the conclusion of the novel that Maud was made to read and write such material and is therefore not the sexually-naive girl she once thought her to be).  However, we must also consider the sexual relationship between Maud and Sue.  Both women serve as performers in Rivers’s plot, but their initial sexual interaction with each other marks the only time they are not acting a role.  At the risk of sounding sentimental, their sexual encounters reveal their true emotional states, thus the construction of sexual performativity located quite literally in Mr. Lilly’s library falls by the wayside when the two women allow their actual sexual/emotional desires to surface.  And I keep thinking of the question raised in yesterday’s discussion about the possibility of lesbian relationships as a convention of sorts.  How are we to consider Maud and Sue’s relationship through this particular framework?  Is this framework complicated by the fact that this a recently-written novel informed by Victorian works/themes/genres?

Finally, I am interested in hearing what others have to say about the mother/daughter relationships in this text.  We discussed the issue of lineage in The Woman in White, and it is clearly central to the narrative in Fingersmith.  While the concerns with lineage often center on fathers and sons, on men being able to produce heirs to their name and property, both novels locate the issue in relation to mothers and daughters.  However, in addition to passing down wealth and a family name, mothers in Fingersmith are constantly being charged with passing on madness and criminality to their daughters.  What are we to make of this revision of lineage?  It seems quite problematic to me, even though the mothers in this text are also willing to endure the greatest sacrifices for their daughters.  I guess I am more bothered by Mrs. Sucksby’s death than I thought since it seems too easy a resolution to the problem of the sins of the mother being visited on her daughter.

As I try to find a through-line in my questions about Fingersmith, which I admit is difficult for me to do, I think that I am ultimately interested in the complexities and complications of this text.  Nothing is as it seems – quite literally in the plot, but also in the ways we might critically consider the novel.  Again, I have only questions and impressions at this point, but hope that our class discussion might address some of these.  I look forward to hearing other reactions to Fingersmith tomorrow!

Best,

JRB

“MDaddy’s ‘Another Mediocre Novel??’” [reposted as main thread]

Title should say it all.
I’m curious what others’ responses might be to this aesthetic (aestheticist) argument in light of yesterday’s conversations re: sensation, cultural studies, etc.
KT

MDaddy: Another mediocre novel??
I was initially pleased at the various positive endorsements of Sarah Waters’s ‘Fingersmith.’ Apparently, according to a zealous NY Times Book Review, she writes with “descriptive skill augmented by an acute ear for dialogue…Dickens…would surely have blushed to read it.” Well, blushes may have diverse causes, including embarrassment on behalf of a writer, thus while reading the book I attempted to find evidence that supported the author’s “acute ear for dialogue.” Matter of fact, since we just might consider literary texts as aesthetic objects of sorts (fancy that) I was also looking for evidence that lends merit to esteemed pronouncements and worthy aesthetic judgments. I also happened to notice that the book was a “finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction,” an award that I previously had not known or heard of. That’s why Google was invented, I suppose. One can search these things. I hastily wondered whether there was a Red, Green, or Blue Prize. Mauve, anyone? As it turns out, the Orange Prize is a fairly prestigious literary award in the UK (let’s simply say England). Matter of fact, Kate Grenville’s ‘Idea of Perfection’ won the award in 2001, and Ann Patchett’s ‘Bel Canto’ won in 2002. Wonderful! Books that one can easily obtain at Costco and Wal-mart!! Prior winner history confirms a certain glimpse at the height of the proverbial literary bar. I gained no confidence in the report that ‘Fingersmith’ was a finalist and not a winner. Nor, one might observe, has Oprah endorsed the book. Eventually, these facts become telling, hold no surprise, and seem to be substantially indicative of aesthetic value.

‘Fingersmith’ has been compared to Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist.’ Let us appeal to Mr. Dickens. The critic Gilbert Keith Chesterton says (a long quote), “Relatively to the other works of Dickens Oliver Twist is not of great value, but it is of great importance. Some parts of it are so crude and of so clumsy a melodrama, that one is almost tempted to say that Dickens would have been greater without it. But even if be had been greater without it he would still have been incomplete without it. With the exception of some gorgeous passages, both of humour and horror, the interest of the book lies not so much in its revelation of Dickens’s literary genius as in its revelation of those moral, personal, and political instincts which were the make-up of his character and the permanent support of that literary genius. It is by far the most depressing of all his books; it is in some ways the most irritating; yet its ugliness gives the last touch of honesty to all that spontaneous and splendid output. Without this one discordant note all his merriment might have seemed like levity.” In terms of analogy, this statement may not reflect well on ‘Fingersmith.’

Can we garner evidence for stylistic mastery and craft? As Kantian ‘disinterested’ observers, do we discern aesthetic quality in sentences that are distinguished as sensually pleasurable or clever? How are we affected? What do we feel in our subtle, keen nerves? Are there passages in ‘Fingersmith’ comparable to “gorgeous passages” in Dickens?

Surely there are such passsages since comparisons have been made. Perhaps we can find in Waters’s novel sentences as resoundingly lovely and remarkable as the following most astounding gem in Collins: “My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.” Well, that is a special specimen!

Where shall we begin to look for “gorgeous passages” in Waters’s novel? Perhaps this: “He finished his smoke, then smoked another. He went off for a piddle, and I went off for a piddle of my own. I heard a whistle blown as I was tidying my skirts; and when I got back, I found the guard had sent out the word and half the crowd had started up and was making in a great sweating rush for the waiting train” (54). Nice!

And here is dialogue on the same page that surely supports “an acute ear”: “Fuck this cheap tobacco, too…Fuck this cheap life, in all its forms–eh, Suky? No more of that for you and me, soon.”

There are numerous instances in the book that seem to support a lack of stylistic imagination, which may be somewhat attributable to the fact that the narrative is told in a naive first-person perspective (rather than the third person in Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist’). I have been unable to find passages in ‘Fingersmith’ that are worthy of comparison to Dickens. Perhaps you can and have done so. I would welcome enlightenment on those merits. Does ‘Fingersmith’ exemplify properties of good writing craft? The canon snob in me longs for aesthetic value, blissful immersion in sentence variety and prose mastery, otherwise we have reason to view the novel as not so much an orange, but a lemon.

“From One Leaking Cup Into Another”

In Sarah Water’s Fingersmith, “the business of the house,” is dependent on criminality and circulations of capital that fall outside our normative understanding of labor as wage-earning and necessarily goal-oriented (52). However, despite my urge to counter-pouse normative vs. non-normative circulations of capital, the novel takes larger view of how different kinds of capital circulate in relation to each other, and to differently classed households. Early in the novel, Gentleman asks Sue, “Do you suppose that when that Money was first got, it was got honestly? Don’t think it! Money never is. It is got by families like hers, from the backs of the poor” (32). Gentleman’s remark to Sue suggests that the circulation of capital necessitates a degree of criminality that makes wealth possible.

The irony of the above passage, as we find out later in the novel, is that Sue’s mother is in fact Maud’s and that she is expecting to reap her fortune from Sue. Through out the narrative, family becomes increasingly understood as a resource for labor and monetary gain, exposing queerness, criminality, outlawry, perversion as ever-present possibilities beneath the surface legitimacy of the family.

How does discourses of labor and production interact with discourses of the familial and domestic?

Maud, in recounting her experience in the lunatic asylum, tells us: “I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks– conveying sand from one leaking cup into another… filling invisible ledgers with resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen and rich–instead of women– then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs” (203). In this passage, an important distinction is made between women, for whom lunacy is signified by the futility of endlessness, not goal-oriented tasks, while for a gentlemen, the repetitive and endless collecting of knowledge, such as Mr. Lilly engages in, is considered scholarly. What is produced out of Mr. Lilly’s endless cataloguing of his pornography?

“The world calls it pleasure. My uncle collects it– keeps it neat, keeps it ordered, on guarded shelves; but keeps it strangely– not for its own sake, no never for that; rather, as it provides fuel for the satisfying of a curious lust. I mean the lust of a bookman” (209). Maud calls herself a librarian as well as simply one of Mr. Lilly’s books– the keeper of the collection and part of the collection itself. In part, what Mr. Lilly is able to produce through his employment of Maud as librarian is a paradigm of rationality, constraint, and order that becomes linked to the domestic through the figuring of Maud as book.

The production of Fingersmith, presumed to be composed by Maud and Sue, can be read as the product of their labor that queerly critiques the scholarly, legal, and rational modes of narrativizing and producing that characters, such as Walter Hartright (Of Woman in White) and Mr. Lilly engage in. This is particularly interesting, if we consider Woman in White and Fingersmith in relationship to narrative aesthetics and class. Serial forms, sensation, and melodrama, in particular, were considered low forms of working-class entertainment and used as evidence of working-class pathology. Looking at Woman in White and Fingersmith together, to what degree does Fingersmith enact a critique of classed, gendered, and sexual pathology through, among other ways, its narrative technique?

In part, I think Fingersmith, through characters such as “Gentleman” and Mrs. Sucksby complicates the character typologies that many of us were critical of in Woman in White, and at the same time, suggests an awareness on the part of a Victorian working-class audience of the complex ways that social legimitacy was negotiated and managed through circulations of knowledge and capital.

Do we read Fingersmith as a queer alternative and critique of the reproductive, marriage plot that we see played out in Woman in White? What part does capital play in producing the different kinship networks we see developed in both novels? To what degree is Maud and Sue’s reunion as much an economic necessity for both women as their initial meeting was? How are the narrative aesthetics of both Woman in White and Fingersmith in some sense “classed”?

I’m clearly question-happy, so I’ll end there.

Jen

And how does that make you feel?

I initially came at this assignment from a place of resistance and complacency – I, like Natasha, was intimidated by the sheer size of the novel and was hesitant to make any sweeping claims, so I wanted to begin by making a few notes on my reading process. I’ll try to ultimately connect this with some strands of inquiry that I’ve been pursuing in my own work.

If there are any LJers in here…

I’m not wanting to “out” what may be your private blogging endeavors, but I thought I’d share the feed I’ve created so the posts from this blog will appear on your friends pages! That way, you (we… oh, let’s face it, I) won’t forget to check this blog. (Not that I would EVER forget, but it’s nice to have it on a page that I’m already checking on a daily basis.)

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/vicafterlives/

Charlie

The Woman in White and the Masochistic Pleasure of Collection

Rereading Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White for Tuesday, I was struck by two seemingly unrelated ideas: the notion of the collection in relation to The Woman in White and more generally, the genre of the sensation novel’s supposed/intended painful effect on the reader’s body. To begin, I would like to raise questions regarding the sensation novel and the body and then consider the collection more specifically. In his introduction to the novel, Matthew Sweet repeatedly refers to the “hysterical tempo” of the novel, or what he calls its “manic urgency,” something he argues which can be “passed to its readers, like an electric charge” (xvi-xvii). While I hope on Tuesday we can discuss our personal reading experiences in regards to The Woman in White, I would like to consider the extent to which reading a sensation novel is a masochistic pleasure.

A creative writing teacher once told me that in order to be a “good” novel writer, one has to be willing to put a character through an excessive amount of pain. “All good writers are sadists,” she said. While I am sure this idea wasn’t hers alone, and probably is shared by many teachers, if not published in creative writing how-to books, the vision of the ideal author as sadist has always stuck with me, and, in my mind, it has extended to the notion of the ideal novel reader as masochist. Even as readers appropriate the text and adapt it to their own will (think the onslaught of Elizabeth and Darcy books continuing the story of Pride and Prejudice), I believe that they are still at the mercy of the author, and at some point, they had to be confined to the project of reading where their bodies are or were literally submissive to the written word—their heads bent, their hands bound under the weight of the text itself. Further, The Woman in White’s many narrators allow for the reader to be at the author’s mercy all the more, as the author transfers the hanging reader between characters and consciousnesses without ever quite finishing a person’s story. According to the OED, the word “suspense,” in addition to its definition relating to “mental uncertainty, with expectation of, or desire for decision,” has its connections to the law and judgment (a topic we could further explore in relation to The Woman in White). The antiquated phrase “in suspense” means “not being executed, fulfilled, [. . .]” and thus, not being given finality or relief (OED online).

Because I am pressed for space, I would like to transition into the idea of the souvenir and the collection in the novel. Apart from the original serialization of the novel which required reading the text in an intended order and not jumping to the end, the work itself, is a collection of narrations, and if we buy into Walter Hartright’s narration at the end of the novel for a moment, the character at some point collected the testimonies of the other narrators and combined them into a cohesive story, one which required arrangement in a specific order to allow for the whole of the story to be told in a linear direction apart from the timeline in which the excerpts were supposedly written or submitted.

Further, the text itself is teeming with collections which help advance and “solve” the detective plot (a few of which include, Marian Halcombe’s collection of her mother’s letters, Walter Hartright’s drawings, the vestry’s registries, and less materially, the processes of “recollection” which the narrators repeatedly refer to in the text as they attempt to gather their accumulated memories of the events and reiterate them into a sequence of meaningful events), yet at the same time, collectors, such as Mr. Fairlie are viewed as effeminate and weak. Is it because Mr. Fairlie’s collection of objects do not tell a narrative, but instead are a sign of his accumulated wealth? If his objects do tell a certain story (as James Clifford says that the process of collecting “presupposes a story” in of itself), does the narrative’s tendency to look down on his endeavors relate to the fact that he cleans (and thus, edits) the stories of his collected objects? Perhaps, Mr. Fairlie is a bad reader of his collection, something the ideal reader does not share in common with him. After all, Mr. Fairlie’s presumed hypochondriac state of constant agitation connects to his inability to seek pleasure in suspense. As Mr. Fairlie tells Walter, “movement of any kind is exquisitely painful to me,” and thus, he seeks stagnation of the mind and body.

In conclusion, I hope that you have a great deal to say about the idea of the collection and by extension, the souvenir and the fetish object. I would like to leave you with one last thought to ponder. What is the significance of Anne Catherick cleaning Mrs. Fairlie’s grave? The fact that she is kneeling, to me, deems it a religious act, but at the same time, the grave, in its public place, does not allow for Anne to secretly keep the grave to herself. Instead, the grave is always on display, much like white dresses of Anne and Laura. I hope this type of response is the kind of reaction to the text which is expected. With a novel of this size, it is almost impossible to condense one’s response to a post of this size (perhaps it is a masochistic project in of itself), but I hope it will allow for interesting discussion and expansion.

Best,

NSAH