"Fight Like Apes" Album Review
“Magazines are so over-rated yeah? ... they like whatever’s cool or trend’s gonna take those copies off the shelf” . So screams MayKay, lead singer of “Fight Like Apes”. This is not without its irony, seeing as “Fight Like Apes” are the simian “It” band of the moment. At times the hype seems justified, such as on the perversely catchy “Jake Summers” or the rousing “I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me” However, many tracks are formulaic. Unfortunately, for “The Apes” that formula seems to be - novelty keyboard opener, plus monotonous guitar trash, equals pop punk perfection (hopefully).” Fight Like Apes” are at their best when they’re experimental -“ Lumpy Dough”, although never quite rising into the cupcake it could be, shows the band to be capable of producing well-crafted, thoughtful songs.
At other times though, they veer perilously close to novelty band territory. “Battlestations” in particular has a definite whiff of Christmas jingle to it. This year, the band might consider asking Santa for a new synthesiser - the sheer 80s cheesiness of the keyboards being a large part of the problem.
For a debut album however, there is no doubt that “Fight Like Apes and The Mystery of The Golden Medallion” is an impressive piece of work. The band is lyrically clever. What’s more, they possess a confidence normally found only in bands with several successful albums under their belt. The lead singer yelps and wails her way through, with the abandon of a female Frank Black. And for the album closer, “Snore Bore Whore”, the band throw in a big “Avalanches” style mash up, one suspects just for the hell of it. But as much as their exuberance makes up for their other shortcomings, the album is patchy. Listener discretion is most definitely advised.
2.5/5 stars
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Modernist art essay
1 Question: Le processus de la purification de l'art et de la littérature ne peut avoir pour dénoument que la fin (la disparition? l'inutilité?) de l'art lui-même. Ê tes-vous d'accord?
From the middle of the 19th century on, there emerged a school of thought which sought to replicate in the arts the progress which had been observed in other areas of life. It was believed that art should be rid of anything that was not "proper" to it, and that good art was art that questioned what art itself was.
This self questioning was, in a way, provoked by the emergence of photography. Up until this point, artists were lauded mainly for their technique, rather than their composition. However, with the advent of photography, the exact reproduction of scenes were now possible, and so the focus in painting moved away from mimesis. Instead, artists began to concentrate on what a painting could provide that a photograph couldn't. To do this, one needed to discover what was unique to painting, what distinguished it from other artistic disciplines. By removing the elements that painting shared with other forms of art, it was hoped that painting could be "purified". This was an attempt to define painting as an autonomous discipline. Paintings became flatter and less three dimensional during this transitional period, so as to re-enforce the difference between painting and sculpture. In a similar vein, many painters abandoned the practise of under-painting. This gave their paintings a less polished appearance, so differentiating painting from photography. Over time, an increasing number of elements that were not considered to belong to painting, such as myth, meaning, content, and verisimilitude, fell by the wayside.
It should be noted that this was a process which occurred naturally. There was no explicit manifesto among the artists who practised this purification, rather, stripping out all the inessential components seemed the best way to make their paintings "stronger" and "more expressive". (C. Greenberg).
If you negate everything however, in the end you are only left with nothing. By the 1950s, this was what appeared to have happened to painting. In a sense, it vacuumed itself out of existence. Paintings were produced by artists such as Yves Klein that consisted of only one colour on a sheet of canvas, and it seemed that purification had reached the end of the line. It was a creative dead end. According to the philosophy of purification, paintings such as these were the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Nonetheless, a large swathe of the public were not of this opinion. The problem is, if, in art, you remove all links to other arenas of life, you lessen people’s ability to relate to your work. Although it may be debated whether or not an artist should be influenced by what the public wants, without some concession to public taste or understanding, art is made irrelevant. To get people to stop and actively engage with a work of art, they need to be able to trust that the artist has something a)decipherable b)worth deciphering. If, as an artist, you abuse that trust, people will just keep walking. Art would then be merely decorative, no more significant than a piece of wallpaper.
Another problem with purification is that it denies the value of works of art that do not adhere to its philosophy. It posits the idea that an artwork's degree of purity is the only standard by which to judge it. Any other criteria for judging a piece of art, such as beauty, provocativeness etc. are thus deemed extraneous. However, Greenberg disagrees with this by saying:
"Ever so many factors thought to be essential to the making and experiencing of art have been shown not to be so by the fact that Modernist art [art made according to the philosophy of purification] has been able to dispense with them and yet continue to provide the experience of art in all its essentials. That this "demonstration" has left most of our old value judgements intact makes it only the more conclusive....Modernism has not lowered thereby the standing of Leonardo, Raphael, Titian etc...what Modernism has made clear is that, though the past did appreciate masters like these justly, it often gave wrong or irrelevant reasons for doing so" ¹
When Greenberg says the past masters were appreciated for the wrong or irrelevant reasons, one can only presume that he means they weren't appreciated for their Modernist artistic purity, thereby disproving his own point.
But why should there be one single standard for judging art? Should there even be a standard at all? Can we not simply be content to let each individual like what he likes without examining his reasons?
However, it is not as straightforward as this. When you are confronted with a work of art, it is impossible not to have an opinion on it. Even if your reaction is one of indifference, that is still a critical assessment on your part. Whether or not you are aware of it, even though it might feel instinctive, on some subconscious level you must have a basis for any opinion you hold of an artwork. In other words, the fact that we will always have criteria for judging art is inevitable.
Experience shows us that people collectively consider some works of art as having greater artistic value than others. Whether it be societal factors influencing our taste, or something in human nature that finds certain things distasteful and others pleasing, our taste in art is not completely individual or arbitrary. It stands to reason that, for an artist, knowledge of the criteria that people generally judge a work of art by can only improve her work. In other words, an artist should know what good art is. To do this, she must first ask what art is.
Which brings us back to our original quandary. Although the end-result was somewhat problematic, the reasons for purification were sound enough. Perhaps then, the problem lied not in making art that questioned ideas of what art was, but in the way the adherents of purification went about it. Eliminating everything that is "not proper to art", is not the only way of discovering what constitutes art. Coeval with the purification movement was one which tested the very limits of what could be called art, and though not officially named such, this movement could be called that of "provocation". It included artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who famously took a urinal, and with no alteration save the addition of his signature, displayed it in a gallery. Like the purification movement, it too forced people into thinking about what art was. It differed from purification however, in that it did not seek to separate painting from other areas of art, or art from other areas of life, indeed everyday objects were often incorporated into the art.
However, the provocation movement also encountered problems creatively because most of its power rested on its ability to shock people into thought. But the more people became habituated to these shock tactics, the less their impact. Albeit for different reasons, the public responded to "provocative" art in the same way they responded to "purified" art - they became disengaged. This is directly responsible for the situation that we have today, where appreciation of modern, critically acclaimed art, is a preserve of the few.
The key problem is that the public need a yardstick by which they can assess a work of art. Otherwise, they are left confused and switched off. Nowadays, when everything is possible artistically ², there is consequently no right or wrong in art. People then resort to judging art using spurious criteria, for example the amount of time and labour an artwork took to produce. This is not a suitable criterion however, since a masterpiece could take a year, or be created in a day, without making any difference to its artistic value.
It is debateable whether the process of purification, with its continual questioning of art, is responsible for the crisis today. As an alternative to purification, the movement of provocation has an equally unappealing dénoument. Questioning art through art may have been a reasonable thing to do in theory, however in practise, it led to unforeseen consequences. Removing the constraints of content, depth etc paradoxically led to less creative freedom in art, and a sense that the movement of purification has run its course. Art, as a whole, has lost its sense of direction.² What's more, the absence of clear criteria in judging art makes people become disinterested. When all’s said and done, art should be made for the people. The future of art post-purification remains unclear, after all, who can predict what will happen when anything is possible?
Bibliography:
1. "Modernist Painting by Clement Greenberg" p101-110
2. "Chapter 1: Introduction: Modern, Postmodern and Contemporary” p 2-19. Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art. Publisher: New Jersey, Preston UP. Year of Publication 1997.
3. “Salon de 1859” by Charles Baudelaire.
4. “La Peintre de la vie Moderne” by Charles Baudelaire
5. “Intellectualism, Anarchism and Stasis” Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Calinescu, Matei. Publisher: Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Publication Year: 1987
From the middle of the 19th century on, there emerged a school of thought which sought to replicate in the arts the progress which had been observed in other areas of life. It was believed that art should be rid of anything that was not "proper" to it, and that good art was art that questioned what art itself was.
This self questioning was, in a way, provoked by the emergence of photography. Up until this point, artists were lauded mainly for their technique, rather than their composition. However, with the advent of photography, the exact reproduction of scenes were now possible, and so the focus in painting moved away from mimesis. Instead, artists began to concentrate on what a painting could provide that a photograph couldn't. To do this, one needed to discover what was unique to painting, what distinguished it from other artistic disciplines. By removing the elements that painting shared with other forms of art, it was hoped that painting could be "purified". This was an attempt to define painting as an autonomous discipline. Paintings became flatter and less three dimensional during this transitional period, so as to re-enforce the difference between painting and sculpture. In a similar vein, many painters abandoned the practise of under-painting. This gave their paintings a less polished appearance, so differentiating painting from photography. Over time, an increasing number of elements that were not considered to belong to painting, such as myth, meaning, content, and verisimilitude, fell by the wayside.
It should be noted that this was a process which occurred naturally. There was no explicit manifesto among the artists who practised this purification, rather, stripping out all the inessential components seemed the best way to make their paintings "stronger" and "more expressive". (C. Greenberg).
If you negate everything however, in the end you are only left with nothing. By the 1950s, this was what appeared to have happened to painting. In a sense, it vacuumed itself out of existence. Paintings were produced by artists such as Yves Klein that consisted of only one colour on a sheet of canvas, and it seemed that purification had reached the end of the line. It was a creative dead end. According to the philosophy of purification, paintings such as these were the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Nonetheless, a large swathe of the public were not of this opinion. The problem is, if, in art, you remove all links to other arenas of life, you lessen people’s ability to relate to your work. Although it may be debated whether or not an artist should be influenced by what the public wants, without some concession to public taste or understanding, art is made irrelevant. To get people to stop and actively engage with a work of art, they need to be able to trust that the artist has something a)decipherable b)worth deciphering. If, as an artist, you abuse that trust, people will just keep walking. Art would then be merely decorative, no more significant than a piece of wallpaper.
Another problem with purification is that it denies the value of works of art that do not adhere to its philosophy. It posits the idea that an artwork's degree of purity is the only standard by which to judge it. Any other criteria for judging a piece of art, such as beauty, provocativeness etc. are thus deemed extraneous. However, Greenberg disagrees with this by saying:
"Ever so many factors thought to be essential to the making and experiencing of art have been shown not to be so by the fact that Modernist art [art made according to the philosophy of purification] has been able to dispense with them and yet continue to provide the experience of art in all its essentials. That this "demonstration" has left most of our old value judgements intact makes it only the more conclusive....Modernism has not lowered thereby the standing of Leonardo, Raphael, Titian etc...what Modernism has made clear is that, though the past did appreciate masters like these justly, it often gave wrong or irrelevant reasons for doing so" ¹
When Greenberg says the past masters were appreciated for the wrong or irrelevant reasons, one can only presume that he means they weren't appreciated for their Modernist artistic purity, thereby disproving his own point.
But why should there be one single standard for judging art? Should there even be a standard at all? Can we not simply be content to let each individual like what he likes without examining his reasons?
However, it is not as straightforward as this. When you are confronted with a work of art, it is impossible not to have an opinion on it. Even if your reaction is one of indifference, that is still a critical assessment on your part. Whether or not you are aware of it, even though it might feel instinctive, on some subconscious level you must have a basis for any opinion you hold of an artwork. In other words, the fact that we will always have criteria for judging art is inevitable.
Experience shows us that people collectively consider some works of art as having greater artistic value than others. Whether it be societal factors influencing our taste, or something in human nature that finds certain things distasteful and others pleasing, our taste in art is not completely individual or arbitrary. It stands to reason that, for an artist, knowledge of the criteria that people generally judge a work of art by can only improve her work. In other words, an artist should know what good art is. To do this, she must first ask what art is.
Which brings us back to our original quandary. Although the end-result was somewhat problematic, the reasons for purification were sound enough. Perhaps then, the problem lied not in making art that questioned ideas of what art was, but in the way the adherents of purification went about it. Eliminating everything that is "not proper to art", is not the only way of discovering what constitutes art. Coeval with the purification movement was one which tested the very limits of what could be called art, and though not officially named such, this movement could be called that of "provocation". It included artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who famously took a urinal, and with no alteration save the addition of his signature, displayed it in a gallery. Like the purification movement, it too forced people into thinking about what art was. It differed from purification however, in that it did not seek to separate painting from other areas of art, or art from other areas of life, indeed everyday objects were often incorporated into the art.
However, the provocation movement also encountered problems creatively because most of its power rested on its ability to shock people into thought. But the more people became habituated to these shock tactics, the less their impact. Albeit for different reasons, the public responded to "provocative" art in the same way they responded to "purified" art - they became disengaged. This is directly responsible for the situation that we have today, where appreciation of modern, critically acclaimed art, is a preserve of the few.
The key problem is that the public need a yardstick by which they can assess a work of art. Otherwise, they are left confused and switched off. Nowadays, when everything is possible artistically ², there is consequently no right or wrong in art. People then resort to judging art using spurious criteria, for example the amount of time and labour an artwork took to produce. This is not a suitable criterion however, since a masterpiece could take a year, or be created in a day, without making any difference to its artistic value.
It is debateable whether the process of purification, with its continual questioning of art, is responsible for the crisis today. As an alternative to purification, the movement of provocation has an equally unappealing dénoument. Questioning art through art may have been a reasonable thing to do in theory, however in practise, it led to unforeseen consequences. Removing the constraints of content, depth etc paradoxically led to less creative freedom in art, and a sense that the movement of purification has run its course. Art, as a whole, has lost its sense of direction.² What's more, the absence of clear criteria in judging art makes people become disinterested. When all’s said and done, art should be made for the people. The future of art post-purification remains unclear, after all, who can predict what will happen when anything is possible?
Bibliography:
1. "Modernist Painting by Clement Greenberg" p101-110
2. "Chapter 1: Introduction: Modern, Postmodern and Contemporary” p 2-19. Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art. Publisher: New Jersey, Preston UP. Year of Publication 1997.
3. “Salon de 1859” by Charles Baudelaire.
4. “La Peintre de la vie Moderne” by Charles Baudelaire
5. “Intellectualism, Anarchism and Stasis” Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Calinescu, Matei. Publisher: Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Publication Year: 1987
Essay on "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry"
Question: Consider William Carleton's Introduction to Traits and Stories as an essay that combines autobiography, social criticism and cultural idealism.
Without doubt, the Introduction to Traits and Stories is an interesting study in the complexity of Anglo/Irish relations during the 19th century. Its author, William Carleton was the son of a tenant farmer in Prillisk, Co. Tyrone, and one of 14 children. However, although Carleton had a peasant upbringing and only received a basic education, his ambition to become more than "a mere tiller of the earth"¹ and his natural love of reading gave him the strength to endure several tortuous stints at hedge school. Through a combination of what passed for formal education for poor Catholics in Ireland, and self-taught learning, Carlton succeeded in becoming a very erudite and well-read man. At the time, England was viewed by many in Ireland as being a centre of influence and learning.
As a consequence, poor, uneducated, rural Ireland was seen as something of a backwater. The modern world was emerging from the smoke of the great industrial British cities and English was its language. In contrast, Ireland and the Irish language seemed to hearken back to a previous era. It is interesting to note that in Irish, "ag dul siar" means "to go backward", or "to go West". The West of Ireland has historically been the most Gaelic part of the country, and although it may be a coincidence, the association between Irishness and backwardness seems to be enshrined in the very language.
Carleton's level of education and refinement automatically set him apart from many of his compatriots. This meant that in a way, Carleton was forced out of a peasant identity into what was viewed as an English identity. Therefore, when he writes about the peasant Irish, he always writes at a remove. He tells his stories from a journalistic perspective, largely for the consumption of an English audience. He is the messenger, the go between, and often literally, the translator. He often refers to the Irish peasants as "the people", a choice of words which serves to distance him from them. However, it seems that Carleton is not comfortable occupying this ambiguous position between Irishness and Englishness. Reading the Introduction, one gets the sense that being Irish is an intrinsic part of Carleton's identity. For instance, he tells us that he:
"...mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until indulgence in them became the predominant passion of my youth. Throwing the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry- making in the neighbourhood, and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs and reels, that I was soon without a rival in the parish, "¹
What's more, all the people Carleton ever knew and loved would have been almost exclusively Irish. His national pride is unmistakeable in lines such as:
"there is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanized as the Irish....to be a stranger and friendless, or suffering hunger and thirst, is at any time a sufficient passport to his heart and purse...here it is where the Irishman immeasurably outstrips all competitors"¹
For that reason, one could say that Carleton has a personal stake in trying to create an Irish literature. As he puts it: "Ireland was not then what she is now fast becoming, a reading and consequently a thinking country"¹. For Carleton, a thriving national literature and discourse would allow one to be educated without diminishing one's Irishness. Thus, both sides of his personality could be reconciled.
Centuries of English rule, and unflattering caricatures in popular English literature of the blundering stage "Paddy" meant that at the time, there was a strong stigma attached to being Irish. Also beginning to emerge from the 1840s on, was a more brutal image, found in political cartoons which depicted the Irish race as being simian-like. "...I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country..." (Lyons, Culture 12/E.Hirsch) Carleton states that one of the aims of Traits and Stories was to counteract these anti-Irish stereotypes and explain how they might have come about.
He tells the reader that the reason why the Irish are so often depicted as foolish and blundering on the English stage is due to the linguistic misunderstandings which arise when the Irish converse with the English. This, he tells us, is simply due to the fact that many of the Irish are not as comfortable with the English language as in their native Irish tongue, but where English is the vernacular - "..it is spoken with far more purity and grammatical precision than is to be heard beyond the Channel."¹
As for the stereotype that portrays the Irish as being violent and brutish, he says that:
"[the Irish are] in general a peaceful and enduring people ; and it was only when some act of unjustifiable severity, or oppression in the person of a middleman, agent, or hard-hearted landlord, drove them houseless upon the world, that they fell back upon the darker crimes of which I am speaking"¹
Although Carleton's book was published in Dublin and London, he would have realised that the Irish, who naturally would have been interested in reading a book about themselves, were for the most part too poor to be able to buy it. Hence, he writes his book with a substantial English audience in mind. There are many occasions in his book where one could accuse Carleton of pandering to this audience. As I have highlighted above, Carleton excuses English prejudice which holds the Irish to be mentally deficient as merely the result of linguistic differences. In a more innocuous way, he tries to emphasise our commonalities, rather than our differences. We see this in the way Carleton always uses the word "Christian", instead of the more divisive "Catholic" when discussing the Irish. Also of note, is the number of flattering adjectives he uses to describe the English, for example: "as will always happen with generous people, the one was neither knave nor fool, nor the other churl or a boor."¹, "the immortal bard of Avon"¹, "...I say, should enable a generous people as the English undoubtedly are...", and even, "our literary men followed the example of our great landlords..."¹.
The overall tone of his writing is often a curious mixture of vanity and unconfidence. He rates highly his own contribution to Irish literature, even referring to himself in the 3rd person at one point: "He was not, however, without a strong confidence that notwithstanding the wild and uncleared state of his own country at the time, so far as native literature was concerned, his two little pioneers would work their way with at least moderate success"¹. And at times, he is effusive in his praise for the Irish people. Yet, every time he commends either himself or the Irish, he quickly backpedals with some qualifying remark. For example, he ruminates that his: "vanity [was] high and inflated exactly in proportion to my ignorance"¹, or "God forbid that I for a moment should become the apologist of crime, much less the crimes of my countrymen!"¹ It is as if he is constantly looking towards the English for approval. He is preoccupied with excusing "that portion of our national character which appears worst and weakest in the eyes of our neighbours"¹. Even in his praise for the Irish, he seems to pick out only the virtues which he feels would be palatable to an English audience. Whereas a writer today, when looking back to the turbulence of the 19th century, might praise the Irish's fiery rebelliousness, there is no question of Carleton doing that here.
Although critical of the way Ireland was governed in the past, there is no sense that Carleton feels injustice against the actual principle of English rule in Ireland. While Carleton is culturally radical in the way he extols the virtues of the Irish people, he is politically conservative. He believes that all that is required is for the English landlords to "consider the interests of the tenantry as their own"¹ and that, along with advancements in science and agriculture, is enough for the Irish to become a "prosperous, contented, and great people"¹. One could accuse Carleton of being naive. Was his dream for Ireland's future really feasible without political change? The tragic events of the famine just a few years after the publication of this book appears to prove that his ideas were untenable.
Something which sets Carleton apart from many of the writers of the day (and even today) is the way in which he does not try and cultivate the impression of a "tortured artist". He did not feel like an outsider growing up and he freely admits that he was one of the most popular people in the village. This lies in stark contrast with many of the era's English and French authors, who tended to write extremely ethereal, intellectual works from the point of view of the outsider looking in. In contrast, the folk tales of Ireland have a very physical quality to them (E. Hirsch) and the focus is on their entertainment value. It is clear that Carleton was not overly impressed by pedantic, French intellectuals -"[the Irish sorrow] is not gloom, and for this reason none of those dreary and desponding reactions take place, which, as in France especially, so frequently terminate in suicide"¹ Yet, he wanted to elevate folk tales to the status of literature, to the status of art. Perhaps it is merely coincidence but nevertheless it is worth noting that, in the French visual and poetic arts, there was during this period a great debate between artists of the classical school, and modern artists. The French poet and author, Charles Baudelaire, believed that art should not necessarily be morally instructive, or laden with ideas, but instead should be stripped of everything that was not proper to the art itself. As a consequence, French artists such as Manet began more and more to depict scenes from everyday, peasant life. At the time, France would also have been seen as a very intellectual, highly educated country, but, importantly for an Irishman like Carleton, a country that was not England. Therefore, as a well-read man, it is possible that Carleton was aware of this new French mode of thought and maybe this validated his writing about a peasant culture. Also of interest in this regard is Carlton's attachment to Latin. Although he often uses it purely to show off, and because he needed to learn it to become a priest (a vocation he was considering at one stage) it is important in the sense that it was a kind of universal language with a status to rival English. Was Carleton constantly searching for an intellectual civilisation that wasn't English, one that he could safely admire?
In conclusion, the Introduction to "Traits and Stories of The Irish Peasantry" offers a fascinating glimpse into social and political conflicts during 19th century Ireland. As well as this, it offers the reader an insight into the life of a peasant in pre-famine Ireland, recording a world which was soon to disappear. Whatever your views on Carleton personally and politically, what cannot be doubted is his contribution to Irish literature, paving the way for a whole host of Irish writers who have gone on to achieve world renown.
Bibliography
1. "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry : Volume 1" Author: William Carleton. This edition published by: Colin Smythe Ltd. Place of publication: Buckinghamshire. First published in 1842-44. Reprinted in 2002.
2. "William Carleton: Novelist of the People". Author : Brian Donnelly. From a series of essays published in "Tyrone, History & Society. Series Editor: William Nolan. Publisher: Geography Publications. Year of publication: 2000.
3. "The Imaginary Irish Peasant" Author: Edward Hirsch. Year of Publication 1991. Available from JSTOR.
4. "The Oxford Book of Irish Verse: XVIIth Century-XXth Century." Contributors: Donagh MacDonagh - author, Lennox Robinson - author. Publisher: Clarendon Press. Place of publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1958.
5. "The Politics of Irish Literature: From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats." Contributors: Malcolm Brown - author. Publisher: University of Washington Press. Place of Publication: Seattle. Publication Year: 1973.
Without doubt, the Introduction to Traits and Stories is an interesting study in the complexity of Anglo/Irish relations during the 19th century. Its author, William Carleton was the son of a tenant farmer in Prillisk, Co. Tyrone, and one of 14 children. However, although Carleton had a peasant upbringing and only received a basic education, his ambition to become more than "a mere tiller of the earth"¹ and his natural love of reading gave him the strength to endure several tortuous stints at hedge school. Through a combination of what passed for formal education for poor Catholics in Ireland, and self-taught learning, Carlton succeeded in becoming a very erudite and well-read man. At the time, England was viewed by many in Ireland as being a centre of influence and learning.
As a consequence, poor, uneducated, rural Ireland was seen as something of a backwater. The modern world was emerging from the smoke of the great industrial British cities and English was its language. In contrast, Ireland and the Irish language seemed to hearken back to a previous era. It is interesting to note that in Irish, "ag dul siar" means "to go backward", or "to go West". The West of Ireland has historically been the most Gaelic part of the country, and although it may be a coincidence, the association between Irishness and backwardness seems to be enshrined in the very language.
Carleton's level of education and refinement automatically set him apart from many of his compatriots. This meant that in a way, Carleton was forced out of a peasant identity into what was viewed as an English identity. Therefore, when he writes about the peasant Irish, he always writes at a remove. He tells his stories from a journalistic perspective, largely for the consumption of an English audience. He is the messenger, the go between, and often literally, the translator. He often refers to the Irish peasants as "the people", a choice of words which serves to distance him from them. However, it seems that Carleton is not comfortable occupying this ambiguous position between Irishness and Englishness. Reading the Introduction, one gets the sense that being Irish is an intrinsic part of Carleton's identity. For instance, he tells us that he:
"...mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until indulgence in them became the predominant passion of my youth. Throwing the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry- making in the neighbourhood, and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs and reels, that I was soon without a rival in the parish, "¹
What's more, all the people Carleton ever knew and loved would have been almost exclusively Irish. His national pride is unmistakeable in lines such as:
"there is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanized as the Irish....to be a stranger and friendless, or suffering hunger and thirst, is at any time a sufficient passport to his heart and purse...here it is where the Irishman immeasurably outstrips all competitors"¹
For that reason, one could say that Carleton has a personal stake in trying to create an Irish literature. As he puts it: "Ireland was not then what she is now fast becoming, a reading and consequently a thinking country"¹. For Carleton, a thriving national literature and discourse would allow one to be educated without diminishing one's Irishness. Thus, both sides of his personality could be reconciled.
Centuries of English rule, and unflattering caricatures in popular English literature of the blundering stage "Paddy" meant that at the time, there was a strong stigma attached to being Irish. Also beginning to emerge from the 1840s on, was a more brutal image, found in political cartoons which depicted the Irish race as being simian-like. "...I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country..." (Lyons, Culture 12/E.Hirsch) Carleton states that one of the aims of Traits and Stories was to counteract these anti-Irish stereotypes and explain how they might have come about.
He tells the reader that the reason why the Irish are so often depicted as foolish and blundering on the English stage is due to the linguistic misunderstandings which arise when the Irish converse with the English. This, he tells us, is simply due to the fact that many of the Irish are not as comfortable with the English language as in their native Irish tongue, but where English is the vernacular - "..it is spoken with far more purity and grammatical precision than is to be heard beyond the Channel."¹
As for the stereotype that portrays the Irish as being violent and brutish, he says that:
"[the Irish are] in general a peaceful and enduring people ; and it was only when some act of unjustifiable severity, or oppression in the person of a middleman, agent, or hard-hearted landlord, drove them houseless upon the world, that they fell back upon the darker crimes of which I am speaking"¹
Although Carleton's book was published in Dublin and London, he would have realised that the Irish, who naturally would have been interested in reading a book about themselves, were for the most part too poor to be able to buy it. Hence, he writes his book with a substantial English audience in mind. There are many occasions in his book where one could accuse Carleton of pandering to this audience. As I have highlighted above, Carleton excuses English prejudice which holds the Irish to be mentally deficient as merely the result of linguistic differences. In a more innocuous way, he tries to emphasise our commonalities, rather than our differences. We see this in the way Carleton always uses the word "Christian", instead of the more divisive "Catholic" when discussing the Irish. Also of note, is the number of flattering adjectives he uses to describe the English, for example: "as will always happen with generous people, the one was neither knave nor fool, nor the other churl or a boor."¹, "the immortal bard of Avon"¹, "...I say, should enable a generous people as the English undoubtedly are...", and even, "our literary men followed the example of our great landlords..."¹.
The overall tone of his writing is often a curious mixture of vanity and unconfidence. He rates highly his own contribution to Irish literature, even referring to himself in the 3rd person at one point: "He was not, however, without a strong confidence that notwithstanding the wild and uncleared state of his own country at the time, so far as native literature was concerned, his two little pioneers would work their way with at least moderate success"¹. And at times, he is effusive in his praise for the Irish people. Yet, every time he commends either himself or the Irish, he quickly backpedals with some qualifying remark. For example, he ruminates that his: "vanity [was] high and inflated exactly in proportion to my ignorance"¹, or "God forbid that I for a moment should become the apologist of crime, much less the crimes of my countrymen!"¹ It is as if he is constantly looking towards the English for approval. He is preoccupied with excusing "that portion of our national character which appears worst and weakest in the eyes of our neighbours"¹. Even in his praise for the Irish, he seems to pick out only the virtues which he feels would be palatable to an English audience. Whereas a writer today, when looking back to the turbulence of the 19th century, might praise the Irish's fiery rebelliousness, there is no question of Carleton doing that here.
Although critical of the way Ireland was governed in the past, there is no sense that Carleton feels injustice against the actual principle of English rule in Ireland. While Carleton is culturally radical in the way he extols the virtues of the Irish people, he is politically conservative. He believes that all that is required is for the English landlords to "consider the interests of the tenantry as their own"¹ and that, along with advancements in science and agriculture, is enough for the Irish to become a "prosperous, contented, and great people"¹. One could accuse Carleton of being naive. Was his dream for Ireland's future really feasible without political change? The tragic events of the famine just a few years after the publication of this book appears to prove that his ideas were untenable.
Something which sets Carleton apart from many of the writers of the day (and even today) is the way in which he does not try and cultivate the impression of a "tortured artist". He did not feel like an outsider growing up and he freely admits that he was one of the most popular people in the village. This lies in stark contrast with many of the era's English and French authors, who tended to write extremely ethereal, intellectual works from the point of view of the outsider looking in. In contrast, the folk tales of Ireland have a very physical quality to them (E. Hirsch) and the focus is on their entertainment value. It is clear that Carleton was not overly impressed by pedantic, French intellectuals -"[the Irish sorrow] is not gloom, and for this reason none of those dreary and desponding reactions take place, which, as in France especially, so frequently terminate in suicide"¹ Yet, he wanted to elevate folk tales to the status of literature, to the status of art. Perhaps it is merely coincidence but nevertheless it is worth noting that, in the French visual and poetic arts, there was during this period a great debate between artists of the classical school, and modern artists. The French poet and author, Charles Baudelaire, believed that art should not necessarily be morally instructive, or laden with ideas, but instead should be stripped of everything that was not proper to the art itself. As a consequence, French artists such as Manet began more and more to depict scenes from everyday, peasant life. At the time, France would also have been seen as a very intellectual, highly educated country, but, importantly for an Irishman like Carleton, a country that was not England. Therefore, as a well-read man, it is possible that Carleton was aware of this new French mode of thought and maybe this validated his writing about a peasant culture. Also of interest in this regard is Carlton's attachment to Latin. Although he often uses it purely to show off, and because he needed to learn it to become a priest (a vocation he was considering at one stage) it is important in the sense that it was a kind of universal language with a status to rival English. Was Carleton constantly searching for an intellectual civilisation that wasn't English, one that he could safely admire?
In conclusion, the Introduction to "Traits and Stories of The Irish Peasantry" offers a fascinating glimpse into social and political conflicts during 19th century Ireland. As well as this, it offers the reader an insight into the life of a peasant in pre-famine Ireland, recording a world which was soon to disappear. Whatever your views on Carleton personally and politically, what cannot be doubted is his contribution to Irish literature, paving the way for a whole host of Irish writers who have gone on to achieve world renown.
Bibliography
1. "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry : Volume 1" Author: William Carleton. This edition published by: Colin Smythe Ltd. Place of publication: Buckinghamshire. First published in 1842-44. Reprinted in 2002.
2. "William Carleton: Novelist of the People". Author : Brian Donnelly. From a series of essays published in "Tyrone, History & Society. Series Editor: William Nolan. Publisher: Geography Publications. Year of publication: 2000.
3. "The Imaginary Irish Peasant" Author: Edward Hirsch. Year of Publication 1991. Available from JSTOR.
4. "The Oxford Book of Irish Verse: XVIIth Century-XXth Century." Contributors: Donagh MacDonagh - author, Lennox Robinson - author. Publisher: Clarendon Press. Place of publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1958.
5. "The Politics of Irish Literature: From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats." Contributors: Malcolm Brown - author. Publisher: University of Washington Press. Place of Publication: Seattle. Publication Year: 1973.
Structuralism essay
Question 3 – Pour (le deuxième) Roland Barthes – s’inspirant sans doute de la notion de la « fonction poétique » de Roman Jakobson – la littérature moderne implique « la mort de l’auteur » car « c’est le langage qui [y] parle, ce n’est pas l’auteur ». Michel Foucault, quant à lui, parle d’une « fonction-auteur » attachée à certains textes (des « œuvres » ) et non pas à d’autres. Evaluez la logique de ces positions en vous référant aux articles originaux. Est-ce legitime de parler d’une « mort » dans ces cas où, par contre, ne s’agit-il pas d’une métaphore en besoin d’interprétation ?
Structuralism, as a school of thought, can be applied to many disciplines. In my essay, I shall be looking at how structuralist thought can be applied to the relationship between an author and his work. I will be examining whether or not our conception of an individual “author” behind a work is still relevant and I will be evaluating specifically the theories of Barthes, Jakobson and Foucault in regard to this.
In an essay entitled “ Le Mort de l’Auteur”, Roland Barthes outlines his position. In some ways, Barthes makes a valid claim when he says “c’est le langage qui [y] parle, ce n’est pas l’auteur”1 He bases this assertion on the fact that the language which we use comes from a myriad of sources. Therefore, any text which an author writes is merely “un tissu de citations, issues des mille foyers de la culture”¹ which has been stitched together. When people learn languages, in essence they are learning other people’s words. Take even this sentence- no new words, phrases or grammatical structures have been invented by me. In what sense then am I the “author” of these words? When he writes, the author does not bestow a meaning upon the words he uses. This is a force which is outside of his control. “voudrait-il s’exprimer, du moins devrait-il savoir que la «chose» intérieure qu’il a la prétention de «traduire», n’est elle-même qu’un dictionnaire tout composé…”¹ According to Barthes “tout texte est écrit éternellement ici et maintenant ”¹. Therefore, readers can infer what they wish from a text. It is not for the author to dictate. As Barthes says:
“L’Auteur une fois éloigné, la prétention de «déchiffrer» un texte devient tout à fait inutile. Donner un Auteur à un texte, c’est imposer à ce texte un cran d’arret, c’est le pourvoir d’un signifie dernier, c’est fermer l’écriture. Cette conception convient trés bien à la critique, qui veut alors se donner pour tâche importante de découvrir l’Auteur (ou ses hypostases : la société, l’histoire, la psyché, la liberté) sous l’œuvre : l’Auteur trouvé, le texte est «expliqué», le critique a vaincu.....Le lecteur, la critique classique ne s’en est jamais occupée....nous savons que, pour rendre à l’écriture son avenir, il faut en renverser le mythe : la naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort de l’auteur.”¹
However, there is one overwhelming problem with Barthes' hypothesis. It is generally accepted that the purpose of language is communication. Language can only be effective as a form of communication so long as all parties involved in the speech act share a common interpretation of the signifiers. For instance, if someone says: “I want to go for a cup of coffee” and someone listening decides that this means “I feel sick” then language is rendered futile. Does this not apply to writing also? If a reader interprets a text howsoever he wishes, then its communicative function is lost.
One could argue that literature and speech are not the same. Some might say that where speech's only concern is to get the message across, literature is more complex, and needs to be aesthetically pleasing as well. In Roman Jakobson's “cadre de l'échange linguistique”3 he states that all language can be described in terms of its function, of which there are six types : la fonction expressive, la fonction conative, la fonction phatique, le fonction métalinguistique, la fonction référentielle et la fonction poétique. It is not only poetic, literary language that has “une fonction poétique” though. Jakobson believes we use it all the time when we decide the order in which to name things. For example, with people's names, we tend to put the shortest ones first when we are listing them. However, with poetic and literary language, “la fonction poétique” is the predominant function, to which all other functions are subsidiary. Literary language is first and foremost “un objet èsthetique” In other words, it is more important that it is a piece of art before it is a piece of communication.
Nonetheless, I find this explanation unsatisfactory. The aesthetic Jakobson is referring to in “objet èsthetique”, is the beauty of “l'ordre des mots” and the various “euphonies”, “cacophonies” “assonances” “alliterations” in a piece of writing. Yet, if the aesthetics were truly more important than the writing's content, then why do people not read books in foreign languages unless they are proficient in them? Most people are aware that languages like French and Italian are famed for being very beautiful sounding languages, yet who would actually pick up and read a book in French or Italian if they had no clue what was being said?
I do not believe that literature and speech are fundamentally different. On top of everything else, how could one logically separate what is literature from other “low-brow forms” of writing such as advertisements, posters, simple stories etc. After all, speech can be written down. Although communication is not the only concern of language, I believe it is the primary one. And if communication is to happen, then we have to be able to understand what the author (or whoever the message emanated from) had intended to say. To this end, I believe that knowing the personality of the author can only be a boon to understanding.
Foucault takes a different approach to the question. On the whole, he agrees with the Barthesian view that the author should be accorded less significance. “…la marque de l’écrivain n’est plus que la singularité de son absence”2 However, he feels that Barthes' ideas have yet to be fully integrated into modern discourse as there has been not enough discussion about the context in which a work can be read, in the absence of an author. In a lecture delivered to the Society at the “Collège de France” entitled, “Qu'est ce que c'est l'auteur?”, he emphasised the importance of drawing up a set of criteria from which one can precisely define the idea of an author. He tells us the purpose of his inquiry was to examine “le seul rapport du texte à l’auteur, la manière dont le texte pointe vers cette figure qui lui est extérieure et antérieure, en apparence du moins.”² Referencing Barthes and Saussure, he tells us that:
“...l’écriture d’aujourd’hui s’est affranchie du theme de l’expression : elle n’est referee qu’à elle-même, et pourtant, elle n’est pas prise dans la forme de l’intériorité : elle s’identifie à sa propre extériorité déployée. Ce qui veut dire qu’elle est un jeu de signes ordonné moins à son contenu signifié qu’à la nature même du signifiant.”²
Foucault believes that the function of an author is “charactéristique du mode d’existence, de circulation et de fonctionnement de certains discours à l’intérieure d’une société.”² However, only some forms of discourse support this use of a “fonction-auteur”. Certain types of discourse were historically exempt from the need to have an author attached to them, for example folk tales, epics and tragedies, “leur ancienneté, vraie ou supposée, leur était une garantie suffisante.”²
Foucault, citing Saint Jerome, says that an author can be defined as someone whose work is of a more or less uniform quality, containing a consistent ideology, and homogeneity of style. He also points out that an author's work will never contain an account of any events that happened after his death. To support this, he points out how in cases where the author of a text is unknown, critics are often able to decipher his identity through analysing his other works, and looking for similarities of style etc. Although he acknowledges that :“Les quatre critères de l’authenticité selon saint Jerôme....paraissent bien insuffisants aux exegetes d’aujourd’hui.”² He still believes that: “ [Ils] définissent les quatre modalités selon lesquelles la critique moderne fait jouer la fonction auteur”2
Another function of an author is their power to open up the possibility of an entirely new topic for discourse, like in the way Freud is not only the author of “the Interpretation of Dreams” etc but is also considered the father of psychoanalysis.
However, reading “Qu'est ce que c'est l'auteur?”, I found Foucault extremely problematic. He declares that the author is dead, but acknowledges the hole left by his absence. He decides therefore, that we need a new concept, something that will take the author's place. He calls this new concept, the “fonction-auteur”. And how does he define this “fonction-auteur”? By describing, in exhaustive detail, an author. Little is achieved.
I think this serves to highlight the great difficulty that lies in removing the idea of an author. However, one argument which I felt could have been stressed more in both Foucault and Barthes, was the fact that in the Middle Ages, most stories and lyrics were essentially authorless. Although most stories were authorless because, having been passed down orally from generation to generation, their origins had become obscure, even new lyrics in the Middle Ages were generally written in anonymity. If the majority of authors wrote anonymously, it must only have been because there was no great demand for them to do otherwise. This raises interesting questions for our present, author-centric view of literature.
In the end, we must always remember that in the essays of Foucault and Barthes, when they speak of “the death of the author” they are using the word “death” only as a metaphor. Clearly, there are still such things as authors. What is being debated however is their importance. Overall, Foucault and Barthes believe that we should not think of the author as a creative force. As Barthes says, the word “author” should mean only one thing- “a person who writes things down”. I have outlined above how Foucault and Barthes came to these conclusions, but whether they came to the correct ones, is a matter for debate. The one thing that is not disputed though, is their contribution to the field of structuralism. More than just the authors of their own works, they paved the way for a new dialogue. As Foucault might say: “Ils ont produit quelque chose de plus : la possibilité et la règle de formation d'autres textes. En ce sens, ils sont fort différents....[ils sont les] «fondateurs de discurvité».”2
Bibliography:
1.“La Mort de l'Auteur” p61-68. Essais Critiques IV – Le Bruissement de la
Langue par Roland Barthes. Publié par – Éditions du Seuil, Paris, septembre
1984.
2.“Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?” p789-821. Dits et Écrits par Michel Foucault.
3.“Linguistique et poétique” Essais de Linguistique Générale par Roman Jakobson. Publié par – Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1963.
4.“Michel Foucault- Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews”. Edited with an Introduction by Donald F. Bouchard. Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Published by – Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977
5.“The Rustle of Language” - Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard. Published by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986.
Structuralism, as a school of thought, can be applied to many disciplines. In my essay, I shall be looking at how structuralist thought can be applied to the relationship between an author and his work. I will be examining whether or not our conception of an individual “author” behind a work is still relevant and I will be evaluating specifically the theories of Barthes, Jakobson and Foucault in regard to this.
In an essay entitled “ Le Mort de l’Auteur”, Roland Barthes outlines his position. In some ways, Barthes makes a valid claim when he says “c’est le langage qui [y] parle, ce n’est pas l’auteur”1 He bases this assertion on the fact that the language which we use comes from a myriad of sources. Therefore, any text which an author writes is merely “un tissu de citations, issues des mille foyers de la culture”¹ which has been stitched together. When people learn languages, in essence they are learning other people’s words. Take even this sentence- no new words, phrases or grammatical structures have been invented by me. In what sense then am I the “author” of these words? When he writes, the author does not bestow a meaning upon the words he uses. This is a force which is outside of his control. “voudrait-il s’exprimer, du moins devrait-il savoir que la «chose» intérieure qu’il a la prétention de «traduire», n’est elle-même qu’un dictionnaire tout composé…”¹ According to Barthes “tout texte est écrit éternellement ici et maintenant ”¹. Therefore, readers can infer what they wish from a text. It is not for the author to dictate. As Barthes says:
“L’Auteur une fois éloigné, la prétention de «déchiffrer» un texte devient tout à fait inutile. Donner un Auteur à un texte, c’est imposer à ce texte un cran d’arret, c’est le pourvoir d’un signifie dernier, c’est fermer l’écriture. Cette conception convient trés bien à la critique, qui veut alors se donner pour tâche importante de découvrir l’Auteur (ou ses hypostases : la société, l’histoire, la psyché, la liberté) sous l’œuvre : l’Auteur trouvé, le texte est «expliqué», le critique a vaincu.....Le lecteur, la critique classique ne s’en est jamais occupée....nous savons que, pour rendre à l’écriture son avenir, il faut en renverser le mythe : la naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort de l’auteur.”¹
However, there is one overwhelming problem with Barthes' hypothesis. It is generally accepted that the purpose of language is communication. Language can only be effective as a form of communication so long as all parties involved in the speech act share a common interpretation of the signifiers. For instance, if someone says: “I want to go for a cup of coffee” and someone listening decides that this means “I feel sick” then language is rendered futile. Does this not apply to writing also? If a reader interprets a text howsoever he wishes, then its communicative function is lost.
One could argue that literature and speech are not the same. Some might say that where speech's only concern is to get the message across, literature is more complex, and needs to be aesthetically pleasing as well. In Roman Jakobson's “cadre de l'échange linguistique”3 he states that all language can be described in terms of its function, of which there are six types : la fonction expressive, la fonction conative, la fonction phatique, le fonction métalinguistique, la fonction référentielle et la fonction poétique. It is not only poetic, literary language that has “une fonction poétique” though. Jakobson believes we use it all the time when we decide the order in which to name things. For example, with people's names, we tend to put the shortest ones first when we are listing them. However, with poetic and literary language, “la fonction poétique” is the predominant function, to which all other functions are subsidiary. Literary language is first and foremost “un objet èsthetique” In other words, it is more important that it is a piece of art before it is a piece of communication.
Nonetheless, I find this explanation unsatisfactory. The aesthetic Jakobson is referring to in “objet èsthetique”, is the beauty of “l'ordre des mots” and the various “euphonies”, “cacophonies” “assonances” “alliterations” in a piece of writing. Yet, if the aesthetics were truly more important than the writing's content, then why do people not read books in foreign languages unless they are proficient in them? Most people are aware that languages like French and Italian are famed for being very beautiful sounding languages, yet who would actually pick up and read a book in French or Italian if they had no clue what was being said?
I do not believe that literature and speech are fundamentally different. On top of everything else, how could one logically separate what is literature from other “low-brow forms” of writing such as advertisements, posters, simple stories etc. After all, speech can be written down. Although communication is not the only concern of language, I believe it is the primary one. And if communication is to happen, then we have to be able to understand what the author (or whoever the message emanated from) had intended to say. To this end, I believe that knowing the personality of the author can only be a boon to understanding.
Foucault takes a different approach to the question. On the whole, he agrees with the Barthesian view that the author should be accorded less significance. “…la marque de l’écrivain n’est plus que la singularité de son absence”2 However, he feels that Barthes' ideas have yet to be fully integrated into modern discourse as there has been not enough discussion about the context in which a work can be read, in the absence of an author. In a lecture delivered to the Society at the “Collège de France” entitled, “Qu'est ce que c'est l'auteur?”, he emphasised the importance of drawing up a set of criteria from which one can precisely define the idea of an author. He tells us the purpose of his inquiry was to examine “le seul rapport du texte à l’auteur, la manière dont le texte pointe vers cette figure qui lui est extérieure et antérieure, en apparence du moins.”² Referencing Barthes and Saussure, he tells us that:
“...l’écriture d’aujourd’hui s’est affranchie du theme de l’expression : elle n’est referee qu’à elle-même, et pourtant, elle n’est pas prise dans la forme de l’intériorité : elle s’identifie à sa propre extériorité déployée. Ce qui veut dire qu’elle est un jeu de signes ordonné moins à son contenu signifié qu’à la nature même du signifiant.”²
Foucault believes that the function of an author is “charactéristique du mode d’existence, de circulation et de fonctionnement de certains discours à l’intérieure d’une société.”² However, only some forms of discourse support this use of a “fonction-auteur”. Certain types of discourse were historically exempt from the need to have an author attached to them, for example folk tales, epics and tragedies, “leur ancienneté, vraie ou supposée, leur était une garantie suffisante.”²
Foucault, citing Saint Jerome, says that an author can be defined as someone whose work is of a more or less uniform quality, containing a consistent ideology, and homogeneity of style. He also points out that an author's work will never contain an account of any events that happened after his death. To support this, he points out how in cases where the author of a text is unknown, critics are often able to decipher his identity through analysing his other works, and looking for similarities of style etc. Although he acknowledges that :“Les quatre critères de l’authenticité selon saint Jerôme....paraissent bien insuffisants aux exegetes d’aujourd’hui.”² He still believes that: “ [Ils] définissent les quatre modalités selon lesquelles la critique moderne fait jouer la fonction auteur”2
Another function of an author is their power to open up the possibility of an entirely new topic for discourse, like in the way Freud is not only the author of “the Interpretation of Dreams” etc but is also considered the father of psychoanalysis.
However, reading “Qu'est ce que c'est l'auteur?”, I found Foucault extremely problematic. He declares that the author is dead, but acknowledges the hole left by his absence. He decides therefore, that we need a new concept, something that will take the author's place. He calls this new concept, the “fonction-auteur”. And how does he define this “fonction-auteur”? By describing, in exhaustive detail, an author. Little is achieved.
I think this serves to highlight the great difficulty that lies in removing the idea of an author. However, one argument which I felt could have been stressed more in both Foucault and Barthes, was the fact that in the Middle Ages, most stories and lyrics were essentially authorless. Although most stories were authorless because, having been passed down orally from generation to generation, their origins had become obscure, even new lyrics in the Middle Ages were generally written in anonymity. If the majority of authors wrote anonymously, it must only have been because there was no great demand for them to do otherwise. This raises interesting questions for our present, author-centric view of literature.
In the end, we must always remember that in the essays of Foucault and Barthes, when they speak of “the death of the author” they are using the word “death” only as a metaphor. Clearly, there are still such things as authors. What is being debated however is their importance. Overall, Foucault and Barthes believe that we should not think of the author as a creative force. As Barthes says, the word “author” should mean only one thing- “a person who writes things down”. I have outlined above how Foucault and Barthes came to these conclusions, but whether they came to the correct ones, is a matter for debate. The one thing that is not disputed though, is their contribution to the field of structuralism. More than just the authors of their own works, they paved the way for a new dialogue. As Foucault might say: “Ils ont produit quelque chose de plus : la possibilité et la règle de formation d'autres textes. En ce sens, ils sont fort différents....[ils sont les] «fondateurs de discurvité».”2
Bibliography:
1.“La Mort de l'Auteur” p61-68. Essais Critiques IV – Le Bruissement de la
Langue par Roland Barthes. Publié par – Éditions du Seuil, Paris, septembre
1984.
2.“Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?” p789-821. Dits et Écrits par Michel Foucault.
3.“Linguistique et poétique” Essais de Linguistique Générale par Roman Jakobson. Publié par – Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1963.
4.“Michel Foucault- Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews”. Edited with an Introduction by Donald F. Bouchard. Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Published by – Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977
5.“The Rustle of Language” - Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard. Published by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986.
Poetry of William Carlos Williams
Question 4: Using the prose selection from Spring and All to help you set a context, assess the relationship between form and meaning in two of the following poems by Williams: "This is Just to Say"; "The Locust Tree in Flower"; "The Yachts"; " The Ivy Crown".
In my essay, I shall be discussing the relationship between form and meaning in the poetry of William Carlos Williams, and explaining how the two are strongly linked. The poems I shall be discussing in relation to this are: "This is Just to Say", and "The Ivy Crown".
William Carlos Williams was renowned for his unusual prosody. His poems, although rhythmical, had no fixed poetic metre or foot. Williams coined the phrase "variable feet" to describe the phenomenon. As well as this, the layout of his poems was often unusual. In his earlier poems, he often wrote in tercets, with a full blank line between each tercet. The poetry he wrote in tercets is frequently graphic.(Berry E.) He observes a scene with the eye of a painter or journalist. It is possible that he favoured stanzaic tercets in these poems because their punchy layout resembles that of a newspaper. In his later poems, however, we see the emergence of a type of typography known as "step down lines". These do not have the sharp edges of the stanzaic tercets, hence "step down lines" tend to occur in his more lyrical works.(Berry E.)
Although this explains the different types of typography found in Williams's poetry, it does not explain why he decided to write this way. A clue to his motives may be found in the prose section of his prose/poems, Spring and All. This section is essentially Williams's manifesto as a poet, incorporating a fantasy sequence in which the earth is destroyed and then reborn. Williams wanted to demolish traditional poetry so that he could create it anew. He wanted to start again from the very beginning, (hence the frequent references to Spring in his poetry). A pitfall he feels he must avoid, is the temptation to simply repeat the evolution of poetry as it had gone before. That said, when one contrasts Williams's earlier work with his later, more traditional compositions, it appears that he has tumbled headlong into this trap.
"This is Just to Say", written in 1934, would be classed as one of Williams's earlier poems. It originally was written as a note, left by Williams on the refrigerator door, apologising to his wife Flossie. It is a sparse, vivid poem that uses no unnecessary language or obvious metaphors. The poem starts out in an Anapaestic metre, but this breaks down after the 6th line, and thereafter it relies only on the natural rhythm that certain phrases have in speech - "Forgive me", some alliteration - "so sweet", and consonance - "so cold" to supply the beat. The word that breaks this Anapaestic metre is the word "saving", and it has a line all to itself. It is possible that Williams's chose this word to stand out because this is the point where he realises that he has wronged her. The lines up to this point are spoken/read at a faster speed, due to the Anapaestic metre, because Williams wants us to experience the rush of his impulse. In the first tercet, this poem is purely concerned with physical action "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox". In the second stanza, the focus switches to the mental as he appreciates that his actions will have consequences for others. In the third stanza, the poet asks for forgiveness, yet, the way he graphically relives the pleasure of eating the plums seems to express a note of defiance. He is sorry, but does he regret his actions? Also, the way in which the "F" of "Forgive me" is oddly capitalised implies a sardonic tone.
Although the poem appears deceptively simple, it can be interpreted in many different ways. Perhaps the eating of the plums is an allegory for Eve eating the serpent's apple in the garden of Eden. Even as it stands, this poem is a succinct and subtle exploration of temptation. It seems that when Williams wants to highlight just a word or two, he gives a whole line to them. Thus " so sweet" and "so cold" are isolated in this fashion to make the reader aware of the sensory pleasure derived from his transgression. However, ending the poem, as he does, on the word "cold", sounds an ominous note. The pleasure may have been sweet but it left him cold. Throughout his marriage, Williams was unfaithful many times. As this poem was originally a note intended for his wife Flossie, consciously or unconsciously, it perhaps indicates the tense undercurrents that eventually ripped apart their marriage. The way Williams uses the typography of this poem to bring into sharper focus certain aspects of it, illustrates how form and meaning intertwine in his work. Like Emily Dickinson's dashes almost a hundred years previous, Williams uses eccentric typography to shape, and craft his poetry.
Another possible reason for Williams's irregular prosody was to break the link with poetry's past. As he put it in Spring and All: "For the first time, everything IS new. Now at last the per feet effect is being witlessly discovered. The terms "veracity" "actuality" "real" "natural" "sincere" are being discussed at length..." (For accuracy, it should be noted that this passage refers to the period just before the world/world of poetry stops replicating the old one) In other words, Williams believes that regular poetic metre is an unnatural, restrictive force, one which hinders the imagination. "...nearly all writing, up to the present, if not all art, has been especially designed to keep up the barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts the attention from its agonized approaches to the moment. It has always been the search for "the beautiful illusion" Very well. I am not in search of "the beautiful illusion...I am addressed-To the imagination...To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force - the imagination."
Not only does Williams attempt to use a more natural prosody, but also the language in his earlier poetry is clear. This is consistent with Williams's desire to break with the past and make poetry accessible to ordinary people. He wanted to create what he called an "American Idiom". In other words, he wanted to write in the vernacular of the American people rather than constantly referring to the works of British authors, or the writers of antiquity. A striking example of this in "This is Just to Say", is when he uses the word "icebox", a word rarely heard outside America.
In Williams's "The Ivy Crown", the stanzas are triadic verses written using "step down lines". These do not have the blunt impact of the tercets of "This is Just to Say", nevertheless they still serve to focus the reader's attention on specific words and phrases.(Berry E.) Like "This is Just to Say", "The Ivy Crown" does not have a clearly defined metre. The visual layout of the poem, with its diagonal branching, is reminiscent of a crown made from ivy. In this way, the poem's form mirrors one of its central images. Also reflected in the poem's formal aspects is the content of the poem's propensity to diverge tangentially. For example, this poem juxtaposes ideas of love, rebirth, hope, power and childhood.
In "The Ivy Crown", each stanza is not self contained:
"It has its seasons,
for and against,
whatever the heart
fumbles in the dark
to assert
toward the end of May.
Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep
the briars out,
they say...."
This constant use of enjambment lends the poem a flowing, lyrical tone. It gives the poem an accidental feel, almost as if we are eavesdropping on the poet's stream of consciousness. The exception to this rule, is the last stanza:
"We will it so
and so it is
past all accident"
Unlike the others, this stanza is a self contained unit. (Berry E.) The poet has clearly intended for it to be written so, and this air of intention is echoed in the words of the stanza - "We will it so...". It closes the poem with a sense of finality.
"The Ivy Crown" was written in 1955, 21 years after "This is Just to Say". As regards language and content, it seems that Williams has become more conservative. As I have previously noted, "This is Just to Say" contains no obvious similes or metaphors. Yet they abound in "The Ivy Crown". A thorny rose symbolises love- one of poetry's oldest clichés. In the same vein, Spring symbolises rebirth. Also, the poem's language is more opaque than in "This is Just to Say". For example:
"The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
it break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement."
According to Spring and All, the most heinous crime of all that he could commit as a poet would be to reference Classical works, or those of long dead British authors. In the opening chapters of Spring and All, he envisages going to war and annihilating the Europeans. He pours scorn on those who bow down before the demigods of European literature, and calls their work "a perfect plagiarism". In his opinion, the result of this type of name referencing is to keep poetry the preserve of a small academic clique. And then, in "The Ivy Crown", we find these lines:
"Anthony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all."
This manages to reference both a dead British author, and Classical history.
Thus, when Williams attempted to forge a completely new style of poetry, it seems that he was only partly successful. His aims were ambitous, perhaps overly so, but it is to his credit that he even attempted such an undertaking. He opened the doors for formal experimentation in way that few poets before him had. His genius however lies in the fact that his was not merely arbitrary experimentation, experimentation for the sake of it, but instead was a way of enhancing the very meaning of his poetry. With Williams, form and meaning are utterly inter-dependant. In the way this shifted the emphasis from the oral to the written, he was truly a modern poet.
Bibliography/Works Cited:
1. “The New Anthology of American Poetry, Vol 2, Modernisms 1900-1950”. pp. 216-257. Edited by Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, Thomas Travisano. Published in 2005 by Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, USA.
2. “William Carlos Williams's Triadic-Line Verse: An Analysis of Its Prosody, by Eleanor Berry.” from Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 35, No. 3, William Carlos Williams Issue. (Autumn, 1989), pp. 364-388. Published in 1989 by Hofstra University Press.
3. “William Carlos Williams: The Unity of His Art” from The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association > Vol. 2, Papers of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Number 1. Poetic Theory/Poetic Practice (1969), pp. 136-144 . Article author: Linda Welshimer Wagner
4. “Private Exchanges and Public Reviews: Marianne Moore's Criticism of William Carlos Williams” from Twentieth Century Literature > Vol. 30, No. 2/3, Marianne Moore Issue (Summer, 1984), pp. 160-174. Article author: Celeste Goodridge.5. “The Differing Impulses of William Carlos Williams” from American Literary History > Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 614-622. Article author: Stephen Cushman.
6. “William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound: Two Examples of Open Poetry” from College English > Vol. 22, No. 6 (Mar., 1961), pp. 387-389. Article author: Glauco Cambon
7. “"Somehow Disturbed at the Core": Words and Things in William Carlos Williams” South Central Review > Vol. 11, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 25-44 Article author: Neil Easterbrook
8. “Pound / Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.” Contributors: Ezra Pound - author, William Carlos Williams - author, Hugh Witemeyer - editor. Publisher: New Directions. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1996.
Ulysses essay
Question: Write on ONE of the following themes in Joyce’s Ulysses: “keys”, “music”, “nationalism”, “religion”, “rhetoric”, “Jews”, “money”, “the family”, “the body”. (Or choose another specific theme from the text that interests you)
In my essay, I shall be discussing the theme of "the family" in James Joyce's "Ulysses". Thanks to Joyce's unique usage of interior monologue mixed with 3rd person narration, we get unprecedented access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the main protagonists. From this we can see that the theme of familial relations in this novel is a constant presence.
This is apparent from the outset in Stephen's guilt over his dead mother in Episode One/Telemarchus. Stephen, the same man who appeared in Joyce's earlier work "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" refused his dying mother's request to pray for her on her deathbed. The reasons for his refusal are somewhat unclear at first. Unlike most other novels, we are not given a literary description of Stephen when we are first introduced to him. For example, there is no passage in Ulysses that reads like- "Stephen, a pale, serious-looking youth who had recently returned from the Sorbonne.....was an atheist because..." Instead we find out about a character's background in a more organic way by piecing it together piece by piece throughout the course of the novel. Thus it is impossible to say with certainty why he refused to pray for her, but it appears that it is because he prides himself on being strongly anti-establishment (we see this clearly in Episode Fifteen/Circe in his drunken rant at a British policeman against priests and the King). When Stephen's mother asked him to pray for her, his loyalty to his family was pitted against his loyalty to his beliefs
The very academic nature of his thoughts and the language that he uses leads us to believe that Stephen is not a man who is particularly given over to agonising regret or high emotion, even within the privacy of his own head. For instance, he expresses his guilt by using various fusty terms for it, for example, the old religious term "agenbite of inwit", meaning "remorse of conscience". Despite this apparent distancing of himself from the event, he nevertheless seems haunted by her death.
Though obliquely expressed, he seems to believe that he somehow contributed to her demise. It is interesting to note that although Stephen calls himself an atheist, at some deeper level he must still believe in the power of prayer to save lives. (Another example of this contradiction is when he believes that the thunderstorm in "Oxen of the Sun" is a sign of God's anger) He also makes continual references to others about the ghost of Hamlet's father, ostensibly to get his new theory on Shakespeare published. We can interpret this in several different ways. Perhaps the ghost of Hamlet's father is meant to represent the ghost of Stephen's mother. Perhaps Stephen is referring to his own father, Simon Daedalus. He is still alive, but the bond between them is so weak that he may as well be a ghost. As we read through the novel, an unflattering portrait of Simon begins to emerge. He is feckless. When his young daughter Dilly asks him for some money to buy food, he gives her less than she suspects he has because he is on his way to the pub. He is also critical of his son. When Bloom points Stephen out to him on the road in Episode Six/Hades, Simon responds:
"Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!"
"No" Mr Bloom said. "He was alone"
"Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose," Mr Daedalus said, "the Goulding faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise child that knows her own father...."
The feeling appears to be mutual. When Stephen is discussing his Hamlet theory in the library in "Scylla and Charybdis", he says that in his opinion, fathers are inconsequential. Paternity is unprovable and therefore insubstantial. Fathers, he says, are linked to their children only by a brief sexual act. He believes that "Amor Matris" (a mother's love for her child or a child's love for its mother) is more concrete because mother and child once shared the same body. The father/child relationship is much more fraught and tenuous.
Despite his assertion that fathers are unimportant, Stephen's relationship with Bloom suggests that he sees him as a sort of surrogate father. Bloom takes care of Stephen when he runs into trouble in a way that his own father never would. Furthermore, the age difference between them is such that they could be actual father and son- Stephen is 22 and Bloom is 38. Bloom also lost his son Rudy ten years ago, when Rudy was just a few days old. He still grieves very much for him. Bloom is usually an upbeat and optimistic character, but whenever a cloud passes over the sun, or his thoughts turn gloomy for whatever reason, he either thinks about Molly's infidelity or the death of Rudy.
There are many instances where Bloom displays a protective paternal instinct towards Stephen, for instance; when he rescues the drunken Stephen from the ugly scene that was about to unfold in the brothel, when he buys Steven food in the cabman's shelter after Stephen’s altercation with the policeman, and when he takes Stephen, locked out of his own house, home with him and makes him cocoa. Bloom also displays a kind of paternal pride in Steven's singing abilities, and a kind a paternal concern when he notices that his boots are scruffy and that he drinks too much with the wrong crowd (i.e. Mulligan). It is as if Bloom sees in Stephen the young version of himself. Indeed there are many similarities between them. Although Stephen is a poet and Bloom is inclined more towards science and the practical sides of things, as a character once remarked, "There is something of the artist about Bloom". Therefore Bloom can appreciate Stephen's artistic sensibilities in a way that Simon Daedalus does not. It has been said that Stephen and Bloom click because they share three important qualities - Energy in thought, passivity in act, and tenacity in conviction. In Bloom, Stephen finds a more level headed, balanced and wiser version of himself that he can look up to as a role model.
Both of them therefore fulfil a need in each other for a close father/son relationship. However, it must be said that theirs is not a perfect match. They disagree on politics. At times Bloom can be hypocritical, and nag Steven too much. Bloom also seems more enthusiastic about continuing the friendship than Stephen. There is an intimate moment of "father/son" bonding when Bloom speaks Hebrew to Stephen, and Stephen Irish to Bloom. While this is happening, Stephen looks at Bloom feels respect for him because he represents the past, and Bloom likewise respects Stephen because he represents the future. However, immediately following this scene, Stephen tells Bloom a story involving a Jew's daughter beheading a Christian which has anti-Semitic overtones. Whether it was intentional or not, Bloom feels slightly offended. After a moment of closeness together, they are soon reminded of their differences. Was Joyce trying to say that we can never feel truly close to people? Perhaps it was inevitable. After all, there is no such thing as complete understanding and togetherness because we are all different. To get along we must learn to respect our differences and the fact that we are all individuals. But Joyce also shows us that we can still empathise with others, like Bloom does, and our differences do not prevent us from forming close bonds with other people.
This scene with Leopold and Steven closes with them going out to urinate in the back garden together. Looking up into the night sky, they see a shooting star. Shooting stars are referred to several times in Ulysses, and we are told that they always seem to occur when a momentous event is taking place, for example the birth of Shakespeare. The reason Joyce included the shooting star at the end was undoubtedly to indicate that a positive event was taking place.
Another thing that Bloom and Stephen have in common is that Bloom also feels the lack of his father. Bloom's father committed suicide several years before-"Poor Papa! Poor man! I'm glad. I didn't go into the room to look at his face....". He still keeps his suicide note in a bedroom drawer. Bloom likewise feels guilt following his parent's death. He feels guilty for not following the kosher rules of his Jewish father (the surprising thing is though, that his Hungarian father converted to Christianity when he moved to Ireland). In Episode Six/Hades, a group of men including Bloom are travelling to Dignam's funeral in a carriage. The conversation turns to suicide. Bloom stays silent while most of the other men condemn suicide as it goes against their religious beliefs. Cunningham, who knows about Bloom's father, is the only one who pleads for compassion. Like Stephen before him, Bloom is caught up in the struggle between family loyalties versus people’s religious beliefs.
So far, I have yet to address the main family issue in Ulysses. That is, of course, the relationship between Molly and Leopold Bloom. This issue is a complex one. Bloom heavily suspects (correctly) that Molly is having an affair with her music teacher, Blazes Boylan. He also thinks Boylan is just the latest in a long string of lovers, erroneously believing that she has had 25! Molly in turn (not so correctly) suspects Bloom of having affairs with numerous women. This scenario, like something out of a soap opera, is suddenly rendered poignant by the revelation that Molly and Leopold haven't had sex in ten years following the death of their infant son Rudy. It is believed by many psychologists that when a couple suddenly stop having sex following a miscarriage or the death of a baby, it is because sub-consciously neither the man nor the woman want the woman to get pregnant again as they fear they might have to go through the whole trauma of losing another child.
We only discover that the couple hadn't had sex for that extended period of time in Episode Seventeen/Ithaca, right near the end of the book. This is all part of Joyce's message about shifting perspectives. We are forced to re-evaluate Leopold’s and Molly’s actions in light of this new information. In Ulysses, we constantly have to keep re-evaluating our opinions about the characters. We are also told the fact in the cold, scientific Socratic Question style that this whole episode is written in. This was probably to avoid a maudlin, over-sentimental ending. Joyce was at pains to avoid this, as we saw from his treatment of the final scene with Bloom and Stephen.
In the same way, he doesn't allow us the moral satisfaction of being able to villianise either Leopold or Molly for the infidelity in their marriage. They are both to blame. Neither confronts the other about their supposed cheating, instead they both let their suspicions run wild.
Bloom on one hand, although he doesn't have actual intercourse with anyone else, has a secret erotic pen-pal, fantasises constantly about other women and even masturbates on Sandymount Strand whilst watching a young woman's shapely bare knees. However, all is not quite as it seems. His erotic letters to Martha under the pseudonym Henry Flowers are pretty harmless, he is very definite in his mind that he doesn't have any intention of meeting up with her. "Could meet one Sunday after the rosary? Thank you : not having any. Usual love scrimmage" In fact, he is actually beginning to get quite bored of the correspondence. On writing a reply to her letter, he thinks - "Bore this, Bored bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought...."
As for Gerty, the young woman he masturbated over on the beach, right after he orgasmed his thoughts turned to Molly once more, and the time they made love up on Howth Head. He had been thinking of her on and off through the course of the day. The knowledge of her impending liaison with Boyle was like a cloud which had settled on his brain. The touching thing was that, unbeknownst to each other, both he and Molly kept flashing back to the same scene of them together underneath the rhododendrons in Howth. It can be safely said that the only woman that Bloom actually loves is Molly, but their estrangement has left him sexually frustrated.
As for Bloom's feelings towards Molly's paramour, Blazes Boylan, understandably enough, he doesn't like him. He prefers not to confront him though. When he sees him through his carriage window on the way to Dignam's funeral, he suddenly becomes engrossed in his fingernails. Bloom avoids him when he sees him face to face but at the same time discreetly tries to follow him into the Ormond hotel, presuming that he is rendezvousing with Molly there. His attitude towards Boylan can probably be best described as angry, but not in a blind fury type of way, more in a sour way (like the way he grumpily wonders if Boylan has any STDs). He is intimidated (everyone else appears to like Boylan except him), but ultimately he is resigned and even forgiving towards Molly (he still remembers to buy her her special lotion, he makes her breakfast in bed, and he still thinks kindly of her....) Another aspect to the Boylan and Molly affair, is that in some way, Bloom is a little aroused by it. Everybody likes to feel that their partner is attractive, and for Bloom, the fact that so many men find Molly sexually attractive is a confirmation of her sexuality. As I am sure you have already noticed from the way he masturbated publicly on the strand, Bloom is fairly kinky. A trait both he and Molly share. At one point, he briefly fantasises about catching Molly and Boylan in bed and taking pictures of them through the keyhole.
So, do Molly and Leopold reconcile at the end? Does Molly give up her other lover and do they start having sex again? The ending is typically Joycean in that it is left open to interpretation. Nonetheless, the last line of the novel, as thought by Molly, is resoundingly upbeat and positive- featuring a breathless repetition of the word "yes".
"...he asked me would I say yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."
There is some ambiguity in this line as to whom she is referring to by "him". Immediately preceding these lines she is thinking briefly about a former lover, Colonel Mulvey, and recalling the time she kissed him under the Moorish wall in Gibraltar. However, this whole final passage is of her remembering Bloom's marriage proposal to her on top of Howth Head, therefore it is probably Bloom she is referring to.
Another reason to believe that Leopold and Molly have been brought closer together by the events of the day, or at least that we are meant to read it that way, is firstly the metaphor of the horserace. Earlier in the book, Leopold unwittingly gives a man a tip on a horse. The man misinterprets Leopold's remark that Leopold was going to "throw away" his newspaper, and thinks Leopold is telling him to bet on a horse called "Throwaway" in the race that day. We learn later that “Throwaway” is an outside contender running against the favourite "Sceptre", who most of the other men in the novel have betted on. Throwaway goes on to win the race. The loser, Sceptre, with its phallic connotations, can be seen as representing Boyle (who Molly tells us has a very big penis). Also, the fact that most of the other men favour Boyle over Bloom supports this. However, at the end of the day, it is Bloom who is going back to Molly's bed every night, who lives with her and cares for her. Therefore it is Bloom who has really won the race, in the competition for her heart.
Secondly, is the fact that Joyce's Ulysses is so closely tied to the original Greek "Odyssey" (Ulysses is the Latinised word for it). All of the episodes in Ulysses are named after a character or an incident in the Odyssey. Whatever happens in an episode in Ulysses always bears some relation to the corresponding episode in "The Odyssey". The Odyssey has a happy ending with the hero Odysseus returning home and dispatching the other suitors in his palace to be finally reunited with his wife. Thus, it is quite plausible, seeing as how the rest of "Ulysses" mirrors the plot of the "Odyssey", that they would both have a similar ending. A big indication of this is that in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus spends ten years trying to get back home to his wife and "lay in their marital bed". Ten years is also the length of time Leopold and Molly haven't had sex for. Sex is tied up very strongly with marital contentment in Ulysses, and this is showed by Bloom's repetition in his head of an ad he's seen for Plumtree's potted meat. "What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss". His frequent repetition of these lines can be seen as a sub-conscious reaction to his anxieties about Molly's infidelity. Potted Meat can be read as a crude metaphor for sex. The point is driven home when he finds crumbs of potted meat on his bed, which Molly and Boylan had been eating, evidence that they were together earlier.
In this way, I think that Ulysses is a book in which Bloom, after being in a marital wilderness for ten years, finds his way back home. The novel’s exploration of the family is not only limited to Molly and Leopold however, but in many of the other relationships we see this theme again and again- with Stephen Daedalus and Leopold, with Stephen and his father, etc. With its mixture of groundbreaking narrative and universal themes, Ulysses manages to chart new territory yet remain a timeless classic, one which has, like the Odyssey before it, left a monumental imprint on literary history.
Bibliography:
1. James Joyce: The Poetry of Conscience: A Study of Ulysses. Contributors: Mary Parr - author. Publisher: Inland Press. Place of Publication: Milwaukee. Publication Year: 1961.
2. Approaches to Ulysses: Ten Essays. Contributors: Bernard Benstock - editor, Thomas F. Staley - editor. Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press. Place of Publication: Pittsburgh. Publication Year: 1970. Essays read were: (A) APPENDIX A Biography of Leopold Bloom (B) The Fictional Technique of Ulysses (C) The Allusive Method in Ulysses (D) Some Determinants of Molly Bloom
3. Deviant Modernism: Sexual and Textual Errancy in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Contributors: Colleen Lamos - author. Publisher: Cambridge University Press. Place of Publication: Cambridge, England. Publication Year: 1998.
4. The Art of James Joyce: Method and Design in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Contributors: A. Walton Litz - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1961.
5. Letters of James Joyce. Contributors: Stuart Gilbert - editor, James Joyce - author. Publisher: Viking Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1957.
In my essay, I shall be discussing the theme of "the family" in James Joyce's "Ulysses". Thanks to Joyce's unique usage of interior monologue mixed with 3rd person narration, we get unprecedented access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the main protagonists. From this we can see that the theme of familial relations in this novel is a constant presence.
This is apparent from the outset in Stephen's guilt over his dead mother in Episode One/Telemarchus. Stephen, the same man who appeared in Joyce's earlier work "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" refused his dying mother's request to pray for her on her deathbed. The reasons for his refusal are somewhat unclear at first. Unlike most other novels, we are not given a literary description of Stephen when we are first introduced to him. For example, there is no passage in Ulysses that reads like- "Stephen, a pale, serious-looking youth who had recently returned from the Sorbonne.....was an atheist because..." Instead we find out about a character's background in a more organic way by piecing it together piece by piece throughout the course of the novel. Thus it is impossible to say with certainty why he refused to pray for her, but it appears that it is because he prides himself on being strongly anti-establishment (we see this clearly in Episode Fifteen/Circe in his drunken rant at a British policeman against priests and the King). When Stephen's mother asked him to pray for her, his loyalty to his family was pitted against his loyalty to his beliefs
The very academic nature of his thoughts and the language that he uses leads us to believe that Stephen is not a man who is particularly given over to agonising regret or high emotion, even within the privacy of his own head. For instance, he expresses his guilt by using various fusty terms for it, for example, the old religious term "agenbite of inwit", meaning "remorse of conscience". Despite this apparent distancing of himself from the event, he nevertheless seems haunted by her death.
Though obliquely expressed, he seems to believe that he somehow contributed to her demise. It is interesting to note that although Stephen calls himself an atheist, at some deeper level he must still believe in the power of prayer to save lives. (Another example of this contradiction is when he believes that the thunderstorm in "Oxen of the Sun" is a sign of God's anger) He also makes continual references to others about the ghost of Hamlet's father, ostensibly to get his new theory on Shakespeare published. We can interpret this in several different ways. Perhaps the ghost of Hamlet's father is meant to represent the ghost of Stephen's mother. Perhaps Stephen is referring to his own father, Simon Daedalus. He is still alive, but the bond between them is so weak that he may as well be a ghost. As we read through the novel, an unflattering portrait of Simon begins to emerge. He is feckless. When his young daughter Dilly asks him for some money to buy food, he gives her less than she suspects he has because he is on his way to the pub. He is also critical of his son. When Bloom points Stephen out to him on the road in Episode Six/Hades, Simon responds:
"Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!"
"No" Mr Bloom said. "He was alone"
"Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose," Mr Daedalus said, "the Goulding faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise child that knows her own father...."
The feeling appears to be mutual. When Stephen is discussing his Hamlet theory in the library in "Scylla and Charybdis", he says that in his opinion, fathers are inconsequential. Paternity is unprovable and therefore insubstantial. Fathers, he says, are linked to their children only by a brief sexual act. He believes that "Amor Matris" (a mother's love for her child or a child's love for its mother) is more concrete because mother and child once shared the same body. The father/child relationship is much more fraught and tenuous.
Despite his assertion that fathers are unimportant, Stephen's relationship with Bloom suggests that he sees him as a sort of surrogate father. Bloom takes care of Stephen when he runs into trouble in a way that his own father never would. Furthermore, the age difference between them is such that they could be actual father and son- Stephen is 22 and Bloom is 38. Bloom also lost his son Rudy ten years ago, when Rudy was just a few days old. He still grieves very much for him. Bloom is usually an upbeat and optimistic character, but whenever a cloud passes over the sun, or his thoughts turn gloomy for whatever reason, he either thinks about Molly's infidelity or the death of Rudy.
There are many instances where Bloom displays a protective paternal instinct towards Stephen, for instance; when he rescues the drunken Stephen from the ugly scene that was about to unfold in the brothel, when he buys Steven food in the cabman's shelter after Stephen’s altercation with the policeman, and when he takes Stephen, locked out of his own house, home with him and makes him cocoa. Bloom also displays a kind of paternal pride in Steven's singing abilities, and a kind a paternal concern when he notices that his boots are scruffy and that he drinks too much with the wrong crowd (i.e. Mulligan). It is as if Bloom sees in Stephen the young version of himself. Indeed there are many similarities between them. Although Stephen is a poet and Bloom is inclined more towards science and the practical sides of things, as a character once remarked, "There is something of the artist about Bloom". Therefore Bloom can appreciate Stephen's artistic sensibilities in a way that Simon Daedalus does not. It has been said that Stephen and Bloom click because they share three important qualities - Energy in thought, passivity in act, and tenacity in conviction. In Bloom, Stephen finds a more level headed, balanced and wiser version of himself that he can look up to as a role model.
Both of them therefore fulfil a need in each other for a close father/son relationship. However, it must be said that theirs is not a perfect match. They disagree on politics. At times Bloom can be hypocritical, and nag Steven too much. Bloom also seems more enthusiastic about continuing the friendship than Stephen. There is an intimate moment of "father/son" bonding when Bloom speaks Hebrew to Stephen, and Stephen Irish to Bloom. While this is happening, Stephen looks at Bloom feels respect for him because he represents the past, and Bloom likewise respects Stephen because he represents the future. However, immediately following this scene, Stephen tells Bloom a story involving a Jew's daughter beheading a Christian which has anti-Semitic overtones. Whether it was intentional or not, Bloom feels slightly offended. After a moment of closeness together, they are soon reminded of their differences. Was Joyce trying to say that we can never feel truly close to people? Perhaps it was inevitable. After all, there is no such thing as complete understanding and togetherness because we are all different. To get along we must learn to respect our differences and the fact that we are all individuals. But Joyce also shows us that we can still empathise with others, like Bloom does, and our differences do not prevent us from forming close bonds with other people.
This scene with Leopold and Steven closes with them going out to urinate in the back garden together. Looking up into the night sky, they see a shooting star. Shooting stars are referred to several times in Ulysses, and we are told that they always seem to occur when a momentous event is taking place, for example the birth of Shakespeare. The reason Joyce included the shooting star at the end was undoubtedly to indicate that a positive event was taking place.
Another thing that Bloom and Stephen have in common is that Bloom also feels the lack of his father. Bloom's father committed suicide several years before-"Poor Papa! Poor man! I'm glad. I didn't go into the room to look at his face....". He still keeps his suicide note in a bedroom drawer. Bloom likewise feels guilt following his parent's death. He feels guilty for not following the kosher rules of his Jewish father (the surprising thing is though, that his Hungarian father converted to Christianity when he moved to Ireland). In Episode Six/Hades, a group of men including Bloom are travelling to Dignam's funeral in a carriage. The conversation turns to suicide. Bloom stays silent while most of the other men condemn suicide as it goes against their religious beliefs. Cunningham, who knows about Bloom's father, is the only one who pleads for compassion. Like Stephen before him, Bloom is caught up in the struggle between family loyalties versus people’s religious beliefs.
So far, I have yet to address the main family issue in Ulysses. That is, of course, the relationship between Molly and Leopold Bloom. This issue is a complex one. Bloom heavily suspects (correctly) that Molly is having an affair with her music teacher, Blazes Boylan. He also thinks Boylan is just the latest in a long string of lovers, erroneously believing that she has had 25! Molly in turn (not so correctly) suspects Bloom of having affairs with numerous women. This scenario, like something out of a soap opera, is suddenly rendered poignant by the revelation that Molly and Leopold haven't had sex in ten years following the death of their infant son Rudy. It is believed by many psychologists that when a couple suddenly stop having sex following a miscarriage or the death of a baby, it is because sub-consciously neither the man nor the woman want the woman to get pregnant again as they fear they might have to go through the whole trauma of losing another child.
We only discover that the couple hadn't had sex for that extended period of time in Episode Seventeen/Ithaca, right near the end of the book. This is all part of Joyce's message about shifting perspectives. We are forced to re-evaluate Leopold’s and Molly’s actions in light of this new information. In Ulysses, we constantly have to keep re-evaluating our opinions about the characters. We are also told the fact in the cold, scientific Socratic Question style that this whole episode is written in. This was probably to avoid a maudlin, over-sentimental ending. Joyce was at pains to avoid this, as we saw from his treatment of the final scene with Bloom and Stephen.
In the same way, he doesn't allow us the moral satisfaction of being able to villianise either Leopold or Molly for the infidelity in their marriage. They are both to blame. Neither confronts the other about their supposed cheating, instead they both let their suspicions run wild.
Bloom on one hand, although he doesn't have actual intercourse with anyone else, has a secret erotic pen-pal, fantasises constantly about other women and even masturbates on Sandymount Strand whilst watching a young woman's shapely bare knees. However, all is not quite as it seems. His erotic letters to Martha under the pseudonym Henry Flowers are pretty harmless, he is very definite in his mind that he doesn't have any intention of meeting up with her. "Could meet one Sunday after the rosary? Thank you : not having any. Usual love scrimmage" In fact, he is actually beginning to get quite bored of the correspondence. On writing a reply to her letter, he thinks - "Bore this, Bored bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought...."
As for Gerty, the young woman he masturbated over on the beach, right after he orgasmed his thoughts turned to Molly once more, and the time they made love up on Howth Head. He had been thinking of her on and off through the course of the day. The knowledge of her impending liaison with Boyle was like a cloud which had settled on his brain. The touching thing was that, unbeknownst to each other, both he and Molly kept flashing back to the same scene of them together underneath the rhododendrons in Howth. It can be safely said that the only woman that Bloom actually loves is Molly, but their estrangement has left him sexually frustrated.
As for Bloom's feelings towards Molly's paramour, Blazes Boylan, understandably enough, he doesn't like him. He prefers not to confront him though. When he sees him through his carriage window on the way to Dignam's funeral, he suddenly becomes engrossed in his fingernails. Bloom avoids him when he sees him face to face but at the same time discreetly tries to follow him into the Ormond hotel, presuming that he is rendezvousing with Molly there. His attitude towards Boylan can probably be best described as angry, but not in a blind fury type of way, more in a sour way (like the way he grumpily wonders if Boylan has any STDs). He is intimidated (everyone else appears to like Boylan except him), but ultimately he is resigned and even forgiving towards Molly (he still remembers to buy her her special lotion, he makes her breakfast in bed, and he still thinks kindly of her....) Another aspect to the Boylan and Molly affair, is that in some way, Bloom is a little aroused by it. Everybody likes to feel that their partner is attractive, and for Bloom, the fact that so many men find Molly sexually attractive is a confirmation of her sexuality. As I am sure you have already noticed from the way he masturbated publicly on the strand, Bloom is fairly kinky. A trait both he and Molly share. At one point, he briefly fantasises about catching Molly and Boylan in bed and taking pictures of them through the keyhole.
So, do Molly and Leopold reconcile at the end? Does Molly give up her other lover and do they start having sex again? The ending is typically Joycean in that it is left open to interpretation. Nonetheless, the last line of the novel, as thought by Molly, is resoundingly upbeat and positive- featuring a breathless repetition of the word "yes".
"...he asked me would I say yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."
There is some ambiguity in this line as to whom she is referring to by "him". Immediately preceding these lines she is thinking briefly about a former lover, Colonel Mulvey, and recalling the time she kissed him under the Moorish wall in Gibraltar. However, this whole final passage is of her remembering Bloom's marriage proposal to her on top of Howth Head, therefore it is probably Bloom she is referring to.
Another reason to believe that Leopold and Molly have been brought closer together by the events of the day, or at least that we are meant to read it that way, is firstly the metaphor of the horserace. Earlier in the book, Leopold unwittingly gives a man a tip on a horse. The man misinterprets Leopold's remark that Leopold was going to "throw away" his newspaper, and thinks Leopold is telling him to bet on a horse called "Throwaway" in the race that day. We learn later that “Throwaway” is an outside contender running against the favourite "Sceptre", who most of the other men in the novel have betted on. Throwaway goes on to win the race. The loser, Sceptre, with its phallic connotations, can be seen as representing Boyle (who Molly tells us has a very big penis). Also, the fact that most of the other men favour Boyle over Bloom supports this. However, at the end of the day, it is Bloom who is going back to Molly's bed every night, who lives with her and cares for her. Therefore it is Bloom who has really won the race, in the competition for her heart.
Secondly, is the fact that Joyce's Ulysses is so closely tied to the original Greek "Odyssey" (Ulysses is the Latinised word for it). All of the episodes in Ulysses are named after a character or an incident in the Odyssey. Whatever happens in an episode in Ulysses always bears some relation to the corresponding episode in "The Odyssey". The Odyssey has a happy ending with the hero Odysseus returning home and dispatching the other suitors in his palace to be finally reunited with his wife. Thus, it is quite plausible, seeing as how the rest of "Ulysses" mirrors the plot of the "Odyssey", that they would both have a similar ending. A big indication of this is that in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus spends ten years trying to get back home to his wife and "lay in their marital bed". Ten years is also the length of time Leopold and Molly haven't had sex for. Sex is tied up very strongly with marital contentment in Ulysses, and this is showed by Bloom's repetition in his head of an ad he's seen for Plumtree's potted meat. "What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss". His frequent repetition of these lines can be seen as a sub-conscious reaction to his anxieties about Molly's infidelity. Potted Meat can be read as a crude metaphor for sex. The point is driven home when he finds crumbs of potted meat on his bed, which Molly and Boylan had been eating, evidence that they were together earlier.
In this way, I think that Ulysses is a book in which Bloom, after being in a marital wilderness for ten years, finds his way back home. The novel’s exploration of the family is not only limited to Molly and Leopold however, but in many of the other relationships we see this theme again and again- with Stephen Daedalus and Leopold, with Stephen and his father, etc. With its mixture of groundbreaking narrative and universal themes, Ulysses manages to chart new territory yet remain a timeless classic, one which has, like the Odyssey before it, left a monumental imprint on literary history.
Bibliography:
1. James Joyce: The Poetry of Conscience: A Study of Ulysses. Contributors: Mary Parr - author. Publisher: Inland Press. Place of Publication: Milwaukee. Publication Year: 1961.
2. Approaches to Ulysses: Ten Essays. Contributors: Bernard Benstock - editor, Thomas F. Staley - editor. Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press. Place of Publication: Pittsburgh. Publication Year: 1970. Essays read were: (A) APPENDIX A Biography of Leopold Bloom (B) The Fictional Technique of Ulysses (C) The Allusive Method in Ulysses (D) Some Determinants of Molly Bloom
3. Deviant Modernism: Sexual and Textual Errancy in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Contributors: Colleen Lamos - author. Publisher: Cambridge University Press. Place of Publication: Cambridge, England. Publication Year: 1998.
4. The Art of James Joyce: Method and Design in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Contributors: A. Walton Litz - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1961.
5. Letters of James Joyce. Contributors: Stuart Gilbert - editor, James Joyce - author. Publisher: Viking Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1957.
Madame Bovary Essay
Question: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary provides a very early and incredibly prescient critique of the effects of mass media in an individualistic age. Do you agree?
To a certain extent, I would agree with the above statement. On a basic level, Madame Bovary functions as a criticism of romance novels. At the time, romance novels were one of the few forms of popular, mass entertainment. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert implies that these novels make us dissatisfied with our everyday lives by giving us unrealistic expectations of love and by making us lust after wealth and excitement. Emma, “[qui] se graissa...les mains à cette poussière des vieux cabinets de lecture” wanted her life to be like a great romance novel. When her impossible dreams are shattered, she commits suicide. Flaubert's criticism seems clear enough. But is Flaubert in a position to criticise? Madame Bovary is problematic in that it is a novel which is trying to criticise other novels. Isn't it hypocritical to blame Emma for getting all her ideas about how to live from books when he himself is trying to tell his reader how to live (or how not to live)?
Flaubert deals with this problem by admitting that yes, if you read this book and go along with what it says, then you are indeed behaving like Emma. He illustrates this to us through his style of narration. Flaubert writes in the 3rd person but colours the narration with the views and language of the subject of the narration (style indirect libre). Thus the narrative has qualities of both a 1st person and a 3rd person narration. A reader automatically identifies with the narrator, therefore in a objective 3rd person narration we tend to judge the characters, whereas in a 1st person narration, we are more likely to sympathise with whoever the narrator is. In Madame Bovary, with its unusual narrative style, we have enough distance to judge the characters but we are also forced to see things through their eyes. We can condemn Emma for her naï vety in believing all that she reads in books, but if we are forced to see her point of view, to identify with her, maybe recognise some of ourselves in her, then we too become guilty.
He also tries to avoid hypocrisy and comparisons with other romantic novels by refusing to glamourise Emma and her demise. He shows us the unpleasantness of her death, in all its gruesome detail. After all, the last thing he wants is to turn her into some sort of romantic heroine in the mould of Romeo and Juliet.
So was Flaubert really criticising mass media in an individualistic age? To be sure, Emma's dissatisfaction sprung in part from a feeling that she was superior to her surroundings, that she was an especially sensitive being, that she alone was exceptional. (This way of thinking came to be known as "bovarysme".) Perhaps the novels she read were the equivalent of ads today, or programmes on TV which show us the lives of the rich and famous. Emma was made to believe that she needed to have a more stylish house and clothes in order to be happy, that she deserved it. In the novel she would lose her temper at Charles for not being able to provide for her. But although they were poor, they had all the necessities. As for the novels' idealised depictions of love, not only are they unrealistic, in a way, they are also unromantic. Love in her romantic novels only seems to happen to exotic counts and rich Parisians. Emma is thus made to believe that love can only occur in certain settings:
"Elle confondait, dans son désir, les sensualités du luxe avec les joies du cœur, l‘elegance des habitudes et les délicatesses du sentiment...les soupirs au clair de lune, les longues étreintes...ne se séperaient donc pas du balcon des grands châteaux qui sont plein de loisirs..."
Consequently she falls for wealthy Rudolphe's empty words and Leon's clichés, but doesn't appreciate Charles real love for her. The novels blind her to what she has. On top of this, Emma's individualism is shown to be to the detriment of others. She is too self-absorbed to feel much pity for Charles, or her daughter Berthe.
Is Flaubert therefore telling us not to behave like Emma? Not to be a romantic dreamer longing for things you don't have? Should Emma be more realistic, for example, like Charles? This is unlikely as Charles is not seen in the most favourable light either. Although he is kind and generous, and Flaubert is keen to stress this, he is dull, dispassionate and a failure in his profession. Due to the style of narration I mentioned earlier, it could be argued that this is merely Emma's opinion of him. But even from the very start of the book, which is narrated by a schoolboy in his class, Charles is depicted as clumsy and ridiculous.
On the other hand, although she is a bit dreamy, Emma is intelligent. For a woman at the time, she was well educated from her convent days. Several of the townspeople comment on her cleverness and she spends a lot of her spare time reading. She efficiently writes polite reminder notices to Charles' patients to settle their bills, and in the early days of her marriage, when she was still bothered to look after the house and its finances, she did it well. She also manages to keep Charles in the dark about her affairs, however whether this is down to cleverness on her part, or stupidity on his, it is hard to say. As well as that, the fact that so many men end up falling for Emma must mean that she is not without her charm.
“...si douce à la fois et si réservée, que l‘on se sentait prés d’elle pris par un charme glacial...”
And maybe her haughty superiority towards everyone else in the town is simply because she is superior. This novel is full of anti-bourgeoisie sentiments and Flaubert can barely conceal his contempt at times for their petty snobberies, their rustic ways, and their useless occupations (Monsieur Binet and the napkin rings he made on his lathe, its constant, pointless hum providing a backdrop to all events in Yonville (Bloom 124)). Many of the townspeople are either dull or irritating, or both if they're Homais, so wasn't Emma right to dream of escape? After all, being a dreamer isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means that Emma was imaginative, and being a dreamer goes hand in hand with an artistic temperament. Perhaps then Flaubert modelled Madame Bovary to a certain extent on himself?
Flaubert is famously quoted as saying "Madame Bovary, c'est moi, d'aprés moi." Although Madame Bovary is clearly not a biography of Flaubert's life, certain elements of this statement ring true. Like Emma, Flaubert too suffered from nervous fits, which at the time, would have been considered a feminine illness. Also, Emma's behaviour in the novel would have been considered quite masculine. On her wedding night, we are subtly told that she was the more sexually aggressive partner:
“C’était lui plutôt que l’on eût pris pour la vierge de la veille, tandis que la mariée ne laissait rien découvrir...”
She can be very aggressive as well in the way she tells Charles what to do, and her various affairs indicate that she had a high libido. In a way then, Flaubert and Emma are both somewhat androgynous (Porter 7) Despite the gender difference, it is plausible that they had similar personalities. If Flaubert had such a psychological affinity with her, then criticising her would be like criticising himself. Nobody likes to criticise themselves, so perhaps the message of Madame Bovary is not that Emma was wrong to be a dreamer. Instead, maybe he is trying to say that Emma's problems stemmed not from the fact that she was a dreamer but from the fact that she didn't have the power to do anything about her dreams because she was a woman.
As a woman, she had very little power or control over her own destiny. Emma can't make any serious money on her own terms so she is forced to lend from unscrupulous types. She obsesses over things probably because she is a capable woman who is bored with no job to occupy her. She can't move away from a town which she hates like Leon because if she were to leave her husband, she would have no means of supporting herself (except if she was with another man, like Rodolphe). It could be argued that she doesn't really love either Leon or Rudolphe, rather they are a way of escaping the torment of her own life with Charles by providing a distraction. Furthermore, her affairs are the only way that allow her to rebel. The rest of the time, she has to keep a porcelain face and be a perfect housewife. Emma can really hate Charles sometimes, in the strongest sense of the word. At dinnertime, she often sits across the table from him quietly simmering with rage, his every knife scrape antagonising her still further. That is why now and then, she simply cracks under the strain. And so she breaks down in fits of weeping, or else takes to bed, which everyone else attributes to her mysterious “nervous” disorder. As the novel says:
“...elle était pleine de convoitises, de rage, de haine. Cette robe aux plis droits cachait un cœur bouleversé, et ces lèvres si pudiques n‘en racontaient pas la tourmenté.”
When Emma is pregnant she wants to have a son because “Un homme, au moins, est libre”
Perhaps then Madame Bovary is less a criticism of romantic novels and the way they give people notions and aspirations above their station, but more an indictment of how women were treated in the 19th Century. However if we say that then we are completely ignoring the fact that in spite of her sympathetic treatment in the novel, Emma Bovary is still a complete misogynistic stereotype- A clingy, neurotic woman who shops herself to financial ruin. When she is given some degree of power, as in when she takes control over the house's finances, she messes it up. This novel seems to be sympathetic yet scathing towards her in equal measure.
Consequently, it is difficult to say whether or not Madame Bovary is a critique of the effects of romance novels i.e. mass media or whether it is a critique of the treatment of women in 19th century society. I believe that it would be a disservice to the complexity of this novel to try and decide definitively which one it is. There is a case for and against each argument. In this way, although Madame Bovary forces the reader to question, it does not provide all the answers....
Bibliography:
1. "Madame Bovary" Author: Gustave Flaubert. Publisher: Garnier-Flammarion. Place of Publication: Paris. Publication Year: 1966.
2. "Gustave Flaubert." Editor: Harold Bloom. Publisher: Chelsea House. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1989
3. "A Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia." Editor: Laurence M. Porter. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2001
4. Article Title: Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary A Reference Guide. Author: Timothy Raser. Journal Title: International Fiction Review. Volume: 32. Issue: 1-2. Publication Year: 2005
5. "Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender." Editors: Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2003.
To a certain extent, I would agree with the above statement. On a basic level, Madame Bovary functions as a criticism of romance novels. At the time, romance novels were one of the few forms of popular, mass entertainment. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert implies that these novels make us dissatisfied with our everyday lives by giving us unrealistic expectations of love and by making us lust after wealth and excitement. Emma, “[qui] se graissa...les mains à cette poussière des vieux cabinets de lecture” wanted her life to be like a great romance novel. When her impossible dreams are shattered, she commits suicide. Flaubert's criticism seems clear enough. But is Flaubert in a position to criticise? Madame Bovary is problematic in that it is a novel which is trying to criticise other novels. Isn't it hypocritical to blame Emma for getting all her ideas about how to live from books when he himself is trying to tell his reader how to live (or how not to live)?
Flaubert deals with this problem by admitting that yes, if you read this book and go along with what it says, then you are indeed behaving like Emma. He illustrates this to us through his style of narration. Flaubert writes in the 3rd person but colours the narration with the views and language of the subject of the narration (style indirect libre). Thus the narrative has qualities of both a 1st person and a 3rd person narration. A reader automatically identifies with the narrator, therefore in a objective 3rd person narration we tend to judge the characters, whereas in a 1st person narration, we are more likely to sympathise with whoever the narrator is. In Madame Bovary, with its unusual narrative style, we have enough distance to judge the characters but we are also forced to see things through their eyes. We can condemn Emma for her naï vety in believing all that she reads in books, but if we are forced to see her point of view, to identify with her, maybe recognise some of ourselves in her, then we too become guilty.
He also tries to avoid hypocrisy and comparisons with other romantic novels by refusing to glamourise Emma and her demise. He shows us the unpleasantness of her death, in all its gruesome detail. After all, the last thing he wants is to turn her into some sort of romantic heroine in the mould of Romeo and Juliet.
So was Flaubert really criticising mass media in an individualistic age? To be sure, Emma's dissatisfaction sprung in part from a feeling that she was superior to her surroundings, that she was an especially sensitive being, that she alone was exceptional. (This way of thinking came to be known as "bovarysme".) Perhaps the novels she read were the equivalent of ads today, or programmes on TV which show us the lives of the rich and famous. Emma was made to believe that she needed to have a more stylish house and clothes in order to be happy, that she deserved it. In the novel she would lose her temper at Charles for not being able to provide for her. But although they were poor, they had all the necessities. As for the novels' idealised depictions of love, not only are they unrealistic, in a way, they are also unromantic. Love in her romantic novels only seems to happen to exotic counts and rich Parisians. Emma is thus made to believe that love can only occur in certain settings:
"Elle confondait, dans son désir, les sensualités du luxe avec les joies du cœur, l‘elegance des habitudes et les délicatesses du sentiment...les soupirs au clair de lune, les longues étreintes...ne se séperaient donc pas du balcon des grands châteaux qui sont plein de loisirs..."
Consequently she falls for wealthy Rudolphe's empty words and Leon's clichés, but doesn't appreciate Charles real love for her. The novels blind her to what she has. On top of this, Emma's individualism is shown to be to the detriment of others. She is too self-absorbed to feel much pity for Charles, or her daughter Berthe.
Is Flaubert therefore telling us not to behave like Emma? Not to be a romantic dreamer longing for things you don't have? Should Emma be more realistic, for example, like Charles? This is unlikely as Charles is not seen in the most favourable light either. Although he is kind and generous, and Flaubert is keen to stress this, he is dull, dispassionate and a failure in his profession. Due to the style of narration I mentioned earlier, it could be argued that this is merely Emma's opinion of him. But even from the very start of the book, which is narrated by a schoolboy in his class, Charles is depicted as clumsy and ridiculous.
On the other hand, although she is a bit dreamy, Emma is intelligent. For a woman at the time, she was well educated from her convent days. Several of the townspeople comment on her cleverness and she spends a lot of her spare time reading. She efficiently writes polite reminder notices to Charles' patients to settle their bills, and in the early days of her marriage, when she was still bothered to look after the house and its finances, she did it well. She also manages to keep Charles in the dark about her affairs, however whether this is down to cleverness on her part, or stupidity on his, it is hard to say. As well as that, the fact that so many men end up falling for Emma must mean that she is not without her charm.
“...si douce à la fois et si réservée, que l‘on se sentait prés d’elle pris par un charme glacial...”
And maybe her haughty superiority towards everyone else in the town is simply because she is superior. This novel is full of anti-bourgeoisie sentiments and Flaubert can barely conceal his contempt at times for their petty snobberies, their rustic ways, and their useless occupations (Monsieur Binet and the napkin rings he made on his lathe, its constant, pointless hum providing a backdrop to all events in Yonville (Bloom 124)). Many of the townspeople are either dull or irritating, or both if they're Homais, so wasn't Emma right to dream of escape? After all, being a dreamer isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means that Emma was imaginative, and being a dreamer goes hand in hand with an artistic temperament. Perhaps then Flaubert modelled Madame Bovary to a certain extent on himself?
Flaubert is famously quoted as saying "Madame Bovary, c'est moi, d'aprés moi." Although Madame Bovary is clearly not a biography of Flaubert's life, certain elements of this statement ring true. Like Emma, Flaubert too suffered from nervous fits, which at the time, would have been considered a feminine illness. Also, Emma's behaviour in the novel would have been considered quite masculine. On her wedding night, we are subtly told that she was the more sexually aggressive partner:
“C’était lui plutôt que l’on eût pris pour la vierge de la veille, tandis que la mariée ne laissait rien découvrir...”
She can be very aggressive as well in the way she tells Charles what to do, and her various affairs indicate that she had a high libido. In a way then, Flaubert and Emma are both somewhat androgynous (Porter 7) Despite the gender difference, it is plausible that they had similar personalities. If Flaubert had such a psychological affinity with her, then criticising her would be like criticising himself. Nobody likes to criticise themselves, so perhaps the message of Madame Bovary is not that Emma was wrong to be a dreamer. Instead, maybe he is trying to say that Emma's problems stemmed not from the fact that she was a dreamer but from the fact that she didn't have the power to do anything about her dreams because she was a woman.
As a woman, she had very little power or control over her own destiny. Emma can't make any serious money on her own terms so she is forced to lend from unscrupulous types. She obsesses over things probably because she is a capable woman who is bored with no job to occupy her. She can't move away from a town which she hates like Leon because if she were to leave her husband, she would have no means of supporting herself (except if she was with another man, like Rodolphe). It could be argued that she doesn't really love either Leon or Rudolphe, rather they are a way of escaping the torment of her own life with Charles by providing a distraction. Furthermore, her affairs are the only way that allow her to rebel. The rest of the time, she has to keep a porcelain face and be a perfect housewife. Emma can really hate Charles sometimes, in the strongest sense of the word. At dinnertime, she often sits across the table from him quietly simmering with rage, his every knife scrape antagonising her still further. That is why now and then, she simply cracks under the strain. And so she breaks down in fits of weeping, or else takes to bed, which everyone else attributes to her mysterious “nervous” disorder. As the novel says:
“...elle était pleine de convoitises, de rage, de haine. Cette robe aux plis droits cachait un cœur bouleversé, et ces lèvres si pudiques n‘en racontaient pas la tourmenté.”
When Emma is pregnant she wants to have a son because “Un homme, au moins, est libre”
Perhaps then Madame Bovary is less a criticism of romantic novels and the way they give people notions and aspirations above their station, but more an indictment of how women were treated in the 19th Century. However if we say that then we are completely ignoring the fact that in spite of her sympathetic treatment in the novel, Emma Bovary is still a complete misogynistic stereotype- A clingy, neurotic woman who shops herself to financial ruin. When she is given some degree of power, as in when she takes control over the house's finances, she messes it up. This novel seems to be sympathetic yet scathing towards her in equal measure.
Consequently, it is difficult to say whether or not Madame Bovary is a critique of the effects of romance novels i.e. mass media or whether it is a critique of the treatment of women in 19th century society. I believe that it would be a disservice to the complexity of this novel to try and decide definitively which one it is. There is a case for and against each argument. In this way, although Madame Bovary forces the reader to question, it does not provide all the answers....
Bibliography:
1. "Madame Bovary" Author: Gustave Flaubert. Publisher: Garnier-Flammarion. Place of Publication: Paris. Publication Year: 1966.
2. "Gustave Flaubert." Editor: Harold Bloom. Publisher: Chelsea House. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1989
3. "A Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia." Editor: Laurence M. Porter. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2001
4. Article Title: Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary A Reference Guide. Author: Timothy Raser. Journal Title: International Fiction Review. Volume: 32. Issue: 1-2. Publication Year: 2005
5. "Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender." Editors: Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2003.
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