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Archive for the ‘Love’ Category

In Brian Gilbert?s Wilde, Oscar Wilde (Stephen Fry) says of the male escorts? he meets through Lord Alfred ?Bosie? Douglas (Jude Law), ?Such flowers never could grow in the harsh light of day.? This comment is more than a simple scripted line. It is the basis for much of the film?s mis-en-scene. For the filmmakers, homosexuality becomes a descent into darkness in terms of secrecy, invoking the necessity for Wilde to hide his true identity from the social critics of his time. This theme is strategically played out through the careful use of lighting in both interior and exterior scenes.

In scenes representing homosexuality, although brilliantly colored, the rooms are?also dimly lit and contained by dark walls. The first inkling of Wilde?s desire for young men is depicted when he descends into the darkness of the Leadville, CO mines and yet is guided by ?angels.? When Bosie sings at the piano, the dark wood interior makes his light gray suit and honey colored face stand out. All the young faces glow and these fresh flowers of men flourish in this type of light. Wilde wears white and also shines brightly within the scene, a film gesture than not only represents his eccentric taste, but his desire to reclaim his fearless and confident youth. In the hotel, this pattern is repeated. The costumes coordinate Wilde?s solid yellow suit with Bosie?s yellow and gray plaid. Bosie wears a yellow rose in his lapel coordinating with Wilde. Each shines brightly against the dark wood paneling. A shift is foreshadowed when Bosie learns of his brother?s death and is consoled by Wilde. The two sit in a very dark room huddled on the couch. Blinding light from the outside outlines their bodies morphing together into a nearly unrecognizable shrinking silhouette. The flowers appear to be wilting as they become smothered by the harsh scrutiny of Bosie?s father, Marquess of Queensbury (Tom Wilkenson).

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The sequel to a previous post…

In?response to a classmate who believes that French author Madam George Sand (Judy Davis) in James Lapine’s 1991 film Impromptu, is?”attracted to Chopin [(Hugh Grant)] because she unconsciously learned to be more feminine like he was,” I’d like to respectfully disagree.

Prior to Sand’s pursuit of Chopin, she is already quite feminine as demonstrated through her clothing throughout the film. As a child, she wears a dress and has long hair. Sand’s bed clothes in the very first scene are traditionally frilly with ruffles, bows and layers. At the first party where she is to meet her publisher, Chopin’s presence yet unbeknownst to her, Sand wears a rather eccentric dress/pants combination, but somewhat of a silken embroidered dress with a bow in front all the same. When she visits her mother prior to engaging in her relationship with Chopin she wears a conservatively elegant cloak and, when her mother dies, Sand’s mourning dress is a traditional black gown and her hair is traditionally upswept. Perhaps Sand entertains the idea of being fit for a more traditional dress when in pursuit of Chopin, but she also tries moving in the opposite direction by buying men’s clothing. Overall, I’d say Sand is never portrayed as strictly masculine nor feminine, but rather the perfect embodiment of both at once.

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I

My first introduction to Aurore “George” Sand, the French author, has come solely from my viewing of director James Lapine?s Impromptu. Having never read?Sand’s work, nor any form of a biography, I have come to the topic with no preconceived notions. This film’s limited window into Sand?s life provides the opportunity for an interesting experiment. I?d like to compare my first impression of Sand as directed by Lapine with that produced by acquiring additional information. Will my initial understanding be supported, contradicted or enhanced by some quick research? Let?s find out.

When Young Aurore (Lucy Speed) first appears, she is a child running through the wilderness away from an authoritative voice calling her name. She arrives at a self-made altar of stones among the ferns growing at the base of a tree. There she kneels and prays:

Hear me, O Corambe. Corambe, thou who art man, woman and god in one, hear me. I free this bird in thy name. Come to me, sublime being. I want to know the meaning of life. And I want to find perfect, perfect love. I free this lizard in thy name. [To lizard] Don?t be dead. Oh, balls.

This shot dissolves to reveal Madame ?George? Sand (Judy Davis) seated at a desk writing her memoirs.

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Between the pages of 155 and 268, our narrator, Powers, and Dr. Lentz struggle with their traditional masculine roles, feeling that they must care for and protect their women. Lentz feels responsible for his wife Audrey?s stroke occuring directly after their argument while?he was intentionally unreachable.?Guilt ridden?for not taking enough care, he visits her waning consciousness with daily devotion at the Center. Powers also cares for his lost and confused C. but learns that:

The more care I took, the more I turned her into the needy one. And the more I did that, the needier she became. We construed her neediness between the two of us. And that was not care on my part. That was cowardice. (240)

Together, Powers and Lentz search for some sort of answer to the masculine condition through the production and training of Helen, the beloved and experimental neural net in Galatea 2.2. Lentz, although he can?t change the past, has the desire to change the future, developing a way to back up the brain in the case of memory failure. Powers interprets and mulls this goal:

We could eliminate death. That was the long-term idea. We might freeze the temperament of our choice. Suspend it painlessly above experience. Hold it forever at twenty-two. (170)

We have yet to learn what Powers gains from the experiment, but perhaps Donna Haraway might offer a clue.

Pulling out the ol’ Norton, I brushed up on Donna Haraway?s ?A Manifesto for Cyborgs?, several quotes of which were rather pertinent to Helen. First off, ?a cyborg is a cybernetic organism? a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction? (2269). Already, in this one definition, the cyborg blurs the boundaries of human, animal?and machine as well as reality and fiction.

Since?Helen is essentially a new ?other,? her existence could be constued as?a cultural encounter similar to, for example, that of Europeans and Native Americans. It is assumed from the ideology at hand that one must dominate the other. That said, how is it possible to avoid the dominant/male and submissive/female trap that haunts the majority of historical human existence? According to Haraway, the power lies within the technology.

The cyborg has no origin story? they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. (2270-2271)

According to Haraway, Powers and Lentz are “inessential” as fathers.?Once they load the data, Helen thinks on her own. Although Powers has coded Helen with gender, it is within the power of the cyborg to blur the boundaries of such a dichotomy as the masculine and feminine. Once blurred, perhaps some revelation will be made to both about the roles of men and women in society.

While this unique?lesson of love?between man and machine has yet to be revealed , one thing is certain. Helen has already invoked much discussion about what constitutes human intelligence, blurring the distinction between true knowledge and switch flipping. Are we nothing more than weighted switches constantly back-feeding input through our neural nets, or is there something inherently human that sets us apart from a machine?

I’ll be turning pages rapidly to?find out?

So far this?semester, our class?has covered:

• John Barth’s short story, “Lost in the Fun House”
• Jeannette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body
• and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club.?

To help define what postmodern means we have explored excerpts from:

• Simon Malpas’ book, The Postmodern (2005)
• H?l?ne Cixous? critique “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays” (1975)
• Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979)
• Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991).
• and Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics of Postmodernism (1988)

How?do I cohesively make sense of all this????Having drank fully from the fire hose for weeks on end, I wonder… Will I digest or?blow??This post?is where?I just vomit in my mouth a little.

As Malpas explains, “at the heart of identity there is a ?thinking I? that experiences, conceptualizes and interacts with the world” (Malpas, 57). Consequently, running rampant throughout postmodern fiction is the question of this subject’s reliability as an authority?representing truth.

• Barth’s narrator, Ambrose,?is at once a child and an adult, interweaving the blind?experience of?”living in the moment”?with 20/20 hindsight?and calling attention, through various narrative devices, to the limitations of the narrating subject both as child and adult, in other words, as narrator looking in at the main character and main character being himself.
• Winterson complicates her narrator by creating a nongender-specific bisexual who objectifies?the beloved, Louise, pitting the power of subject?vs. object, one against the other, both creating and destroying the linguistic barrier to?fully realizing true love.
• Palahniuk splits?his narrator’s identity into two dueling?subjects within the same body who both objectify not only Marla, but each other, creating a power triangle rather than a single identifiable?power source.

By complicating?the subject, these authors use fiction?to turn?the subject?in on itself and reveal it’s limitations. The point for the reader is that perspective and?representation are not natural ways of reaching some sort of truth, but are cultural devices?that, until postmodernism hit the stage, were accepted?as natural. The most we can hope for, as Stephen Colbert often points out, is mere “truthiness” (or “falsiness” as the following parody explains), which is called into question each time subjectivity becomes decentered by an alternate?version of the?traditional subject. (Hello, Derrida!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8]

Sexuality is also addressed in each piece, not just in terms of masculinity or femininity, but where the two overlap. According to theorist H?l?ne Cixous:

Traditionally, the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the opposition ? a culture?s values are premised on an organisation of thought in which descriptions of the feminine are determined by masculine categories of order, opposition and hierarchy. (Malpas, 72)

Lyotard says that metanarratives order the world for a particular culture and not all cultures order the world in the same way. Because of this he believes reality is not real, that it is rather ?simplicity, communicability? (75) in the name of the ?unity of experience? (72) and that the postmodern ?puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself? (81).

• Barth calls masculinity into question by addressing the subservience of women in the ’50s and how that defines the angered narrator’s role as he matures socially in contrast with what he feels differently internally.?
• Winterson’s non-specifically gendered and bisexual narrator?draws attention to the?dysfunction of defining through opposition, creating a world of confusion for the reader while, at the same time, pointing out the problem.
• Palahniuk’s split identity, one masculinized and one feminized, are?embodied within one male person which shows that neither masculinity nor femininity encompass fully what comprises the essence of a human being.

These narrators struggle with the idea?that identity is formed through the constriction of language and social mapping?according to opposing?genders. Each illustrates that society provides no useful language or ordering of our world to address these grey areas. Postmodern work obviously strives to draw attention to the gap between the grand narrative and what actually exists.

And, although there are many more threads to follow, the HUGE question of history (revered by Jameson as fact of lived experience) versus historicity (truthiness and the closest we can get to truth) is the last item I have time to duscuss. Jameson argues that the democratization of art subjects it?to the corruption of marketing and capitalism. They are inseparable?to the detriment of?world cultures and history through?depthless representation and pastiche unless we map how the depthless came to be, “in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion” (54). SOOO, the question of historical validity appears repeatedly in our fiction selections.

• Barth criticizes history by describing the role of generations of copulation in constructing social understanding of sexuality.
• Winterson explores the narrator’s serial monogamy and only in breaking the tradition does he/she find love.
• Palahniuk creates Tyler Durden who desperately wants to break free from history to redefine it from his point of view.

According to Malpas, Hutcheon?argues that parody is not dead, it is now focused to use form?to reveal a failure of form. She also finds great value studying?the unrepresentable in fiction, as?much as that?which has been represented as “history,” because both employ the same narrative devices (Malpas, 25-26). In the fiction we have read, we can see this parody in action, where our authors provide recognition of the power forms hold, and turn around to employ these forms to point out the flaws within them. We’ll talk more about this next week when we read more of Hutcheon.

Other pan drippings, grey in color, that deserve to make it into the gravy bowl are

• body/soul connections
• bodily parts in gender definition,
• disease: death in life and life in death
• and many, many more.

Sadly, the repair man is here and I have to supervise the fixing of shit.

Watching movies for class rocks.?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HstQaobp4Jw]?

From the opening credits, Fight Club alludes to the unrepresentable. As the names spin off into gaseous clouds, what appears to be the universe swirls within the biologic make-up of Edward Norton’s character, yet one would think that the character would exist somewhere within the Universe. So, where does the Universe begin or end? Does it start with human perception or is human perception a byproduct of the Universe? Ooooh, the questions stew already.

In the opening scene, perspective shifts from within Norton?s character?s body, through the gun, and into Pitt?s character?s point of view. Perspective then leaves both characters (or halves of one character) and the camera travels out of body altogether. Now the point of view becomes that of the movie viewers? as we get a voyeuristic view of the explosives below the city. Throughout the morphing POV, we never fully know where one begins and another ends.

Cut to Bob?s boobs. Is he still a man with no balls and full breasts? What essentially makes a man ?manly? if not the biological pieces and parts? Can comfort be derived from any breasts but a mother?s or lover?s? Norton says yes.

Then we back up. The beginning of the movie isn?t the beginning as we traditionally know it. ?Nothing is real? Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.? And here, Baudrillard. Really, need I say more? Norton is a copy of himself on many levels. Stuck in the marketing galaxy, ?What kind of dining set defines me as a person?? What else does?

Playing Cornelius and other ?characters? so he can cry and sleep like a baby, where does Norton?s character end and his others begin? He dies and is reborn with each new meeting. But who dies and who is reborn? Cornelius, Tyler Durden?

Pitt’s image flashes in several scenes, spliced into a single frame at the hospital, the testicular cancer meeting, when Marla walks off supposedly forever. Later, we learn that Tyler splices frames between reels at the theater. Does he create himself then? Has Norton’s character created him?

Do events shape us or do we shape them? Do we own things or do they own us? Half asleep, half awake? Reality enters dreams, dream enters reality? Half alive, half dead? Not quite whole but not fully cleaved in half? Somewhere between life and death lies meaning.

?It was on the tip of everyone?s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.?
?First rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club.?
Coincidentally, that’s the second rule too.
?It wasn?t about words.?

We’re back to the failure of language again. Instead, the sublime is the pleasure derived from the pain of pummeling and being pummeled.

?Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.?
?This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.?

The car wreck: All I could think of were the Futurists. Historically, not just in the movie, a car launches into a ditch and?gives birth to four survivors who create a Modern movement infatuated with technology, speed and chaos.

“Let go of everything you?think you know?about life…”

You can?t explain the unexplainable, sublime. Familiar themes?akin to?Wnnterson’s Written on the Body… Marla: Love as invasive. Love as pure desire. Love as a bridesmaid dress loved for only one day and then thrown aside. Narrating organs in books?left by a recluse. Cancer of the prostrate will kill. Combination of form: Movie – documentary – porn – and back again. Characters talk to themselves on screen, then they turn to the audience and talk to … ME! I have just become the object of two subjects. How beautifully postmodern.

Capitalism: The democratization of art?becomes public taste governed by money. To?free our identity from?being defined by our stuff and our menial jobs that make us slaves?to purchasing?more stuff, Capitalism must be destroyed.

Then the biggie: Dualing subjects. One fights the other for power. Can there ever be two, particularly when they share one body? According to the smoking gun, the answer is no.

I could continue with the play-by-play but we?re all watching the same thing. Suffice it to say, I loved this movie the first two times I saw it. I have a renewed appreciation this third time. Now excuse me while I retire the keyboard and get back to the milk and cookies.

In class we began to analyze what the narrator had learned, if anything, by the end of Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body. I believe that several important massages were accepted by both the narrator and myself, as a participating reader.

In deep mourning for Louise’s lost love, the narrator says, “?I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even get near finding her. It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her??? (189).

The question feels plausible since the narrator questions reality throughout. In this moment, Louise appears to be a haunting memory, if only of a fantasy, but Gail Right offers proof that Louise and her remaining souvenirs were not invented.

“?No, but you tried to [invent her],? Gail said. ?She wasn’t yours for the making??(189).

Does the narrator ever fully understand his or her objectification of Louise? I think yes. The last passage of the book speaks to this conclusion:

The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in the room. Beyond the door where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, its getting late. I don?t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields. (190)

If, as the narrator says, ?it?s the clich?s that cause the trouble? (189),?or the language that?confines us, then the?confines or walls are exploding in a moment of clarity. Windows have turned to telescopes searching beyond the language, magnifying the world outside. This is the place where Louise and the narrator can finally exist together. The entire universe is theirs for the taking.

But is this a happy ending? It all depends on whether or not Louise’s final appearance is real. If so, one might think yes. Both the narrator and Louise have finally escaped the boundaries of subject, object, power and submission, using the term ?we? to capture the equality of the lovers let loose in open fields. Still there is a sense of urgency in ?Hurry now.? It?s as if the ability to escape the shackles of language is fleeting. One cannot avoid defining thought with language for long.

Then again, can we trust Gail? She’s never met Louise. What if Louise is not real? The last paragraph begins with ?This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room,? I returned to?the?novel’s beginning?for further insight.?From that perspective, the escape truly is brief. In the room where the story starts, we find the narrator avoiding heartbreak again by falling back into the same cycle of clich?s with Gail that were experienced with Jacqueline:

Still waiting for Mr Right? Miss [Gail] Right? And maybe all the little Rights? ? I am desperately looking the other way so that love won?t see me. I want the diluted version, the sloppy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of clich?s. It?s all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don?t have to be frightened, look, my grandma did it ? my parents did it, now I will do it won?t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. And they all lived happily ever after. (2)

If this?is where the novel ends, stuck back in?the cycle with only a breif peek into the fantasy of Louise,?it becomes painfully obvious that the narrator nor the reader can remain free from the boundaries of language, the boundaries that keep us separate from love and from our beloved.

This book raises so?many questions. How can one operate outside language, even with its flaws? How would the story be told? The minute we try, the trap snaps shut once more. Even if Louise were allowed her own quotes, wouldn’t they be?filtered through the narrator’s reactions? Perhaps we must tell every story from two or more perspectives, but how does that effect our own as author or narrator? If Louise and the narrator exist outside of language, how do they communicate? Have they become one and the same – just knowing? Has anything really changed? Louise, if real,?still doesn’t speak upon arrival except through her body, through touch. Perhaps that’s the key to truth, experience without words.

Again I’m left wondering, what do we do with this? Even when we strive to reach beyond the comfortable clich?d armchair for something more, when we can?glimpse?the possibilities of the Universe and want to run freely in the open fields of equal love, we aren’t quite sure?how to step through to the other side linguistically.

Much like this…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Xu3BYaR_8]

Challenging the Reproduction of Gender Inequality in Anne Bront??s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

In Anne Bront?’s novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, ideological apparatuses, as defined by Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, work to mold and sustain vast differences between men and women in the early nineteenth century. Each gender is groomed to occupy a separate societal sphere, men as master of the public realm and women as mistress of the domestic. These distinctions foster inequality and oppression of women, yet they are consistently reinforced by both genders within the patriarchal system. The danger of such inequality, at worst, allows for the abuse and silent oppression of women while, at the very least, it reproduces the same oppressive social system from generation to generation. Helen Huntingdon, the novel?s heroine, is the tool by which Bront? experiments with an alternate existence. Helen challenges the traditional role of motherhood by raising her son Arthur differently than a more traditional mother, Mrs. Markham. She also takes issue with the oppressive nature of marriage for women. By examining the cycle in which inequality of gender is enforced and reproduced, Bront? successfully confronts the traditional Victorian ideals which foster inequality, vice and abuse.

Bront??s Markham family is the epitome of late nineteenth century societal views. The topics that Mrs. Markham, as an authority on traditional Victorian motherhood, uses to reprimand Helen are telling of the general opinion of her day. Her first criticism is of Helen?s wine restriction for her young son, Arthur, which in turn leads to a critique of Helen?s child rearing practices in general. “If you would have your son walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them — not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone” (Bront? 28). Mrs. Markham is arguing that a young boy?s education requires experience, not shelter, and that a mother?s role is to be unobtrusive, not overbearing. Mrs. Markham undermines her own authority by requiring a man with religious authority, the vicar, to validate her claim on this tradition. ?[M. Millward will] tell you the consequences; ?he?ll set it before you as plain as day, ?and tell you what you ought to do? (Bront? 30). In doing so, Mrs. Markham maintains a discriminatory stance for herself and broadcasts it among her parlor. In the vicar?s absence, Gilbert defends the veracity of his mother’s words, unaware of his own role in reinforcing the societal precedent. He reiterates what his mother had said, that Helen must not shelter her son like a hot-house plant. “Shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on a mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements” (Bront? 30). Laura Berry?s scholarly article, ?Acts of Custody and Incarceration in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,? addresses this ideology:

Bront??s fictions deny the idea of sentimentalized motherhood as a potential haven from imprisoning or torturous anti-familial or institutional structures. If homes imprison, mothers do not, in this novel, liberate ? The family then is the place where gender difference is created. It is by ?protection? and ?influence? that a mother forms a daughter; but ?making a man? of a boy is achieved in giving him a liberal hand. (Berry )

Essentially, as is evident within the previous passages, mothers are expected to remain in the domestic realm and to mature their sons through the freedom of experience, an effort championed by free men and sanctioned by the church. Interestingly, both genders within the same family share this male-centric point of view, one perpetuated unawares until Helen challenges the requirements of motherhood.

Mrs. Markham is not without defiance within her own household. Her daughter Rose naturally opposes her mother?s reverence toward her brothers, sensing through her societal innocence, the disparity between herself and them. She complains to Gilbert when asked to make him tea once tea time is over, ?you?we can?t do too much for you ? I?m nothing at all ? I?m told not to think of myself? (Bront? 53). Rose is young and still in training. Her burning opposition is repeatedly snuffed out by her mother’s constant discipline in accordance with the laws of gender. ?You know, Rose, in all household matters, we have only two things to consider, first, what?s proper to be done, and secondly, what?s most agreeable to the gentlemen of the house?anything will do for the ladies? (Bront? 53). According to feminist theorist Judith Butler in her essay ?Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,? the body becomes a cultural sign:

Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis; the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions?and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction ?compels? our belief in its necessity and naturalness. (Butler 2500)

Rose doesn?t naturally understand the distinction between genders because it doesn?t naturally exist. Mrs. Markham, having fully absorbed gender ideology, believes that not only must she conform, she must teach Rose to conform as well; to submit to the rules of difference is preferable to the punishment offered if either one of them does not.

This snapshot of Victorian life demonstrates that religion, motherhood and education are the vehicles which perpetuate rather than challenge the rule of inequality. According to Marxist theorist Louis Althusser in ?Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,? an imaginary social construct is used to coerce submission to and reproduction of the labor condition. This ensures the power of the ruling class:

Of course many ? contrasting Virtues (modesty, resignation, submissiveness on the one hand, cynicism, contempt, arrogance, confidence, self importance, even smooth talk and cunning on the other) are ? taught in the Family, in the Church ?in a variety of know-how wrapped up in the massive inculcation of the ideology of the ruling class that the ? relations of exploited to exploiters, and exploiters to exploited are largely reproduced. (Althusser 1495)

The domestic realm espouses the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), particularly as it functions within the previously mentioned private, rather than governmental, realms of religion, family and education. In addition to class division, this enforced separateness also applies to gender, illustrating the masculine social power driving women into submission. Within Helen?s first marriage to Huntingdon, she has assumed the role of modesty and submission in response to his self importance, smooth talk and cunning. Helen understands the failure of this system for women and seeks an escape from its grasp.

Bront? intentionally creates the Markham setting ripe for Helen’s retort, allowing her to challenge not only the way in which men are socially groomed, but to rebuke the male dominant religious authority over the subject. ?Mr. Markham here, thinks his powers of conviction at least equal to Mr. Millward?s. If I hear not him, neither should I be convinced though one rose from the dead? (Bront? 30). Holding fast to her spirituality while simultaneously rejecting the domination of religion, Helen directs her rebuttal to Gilbert, specifically challenging the unseeing portion of his male point of view. She asks how he would raise a girl as compared to a boy:

You affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; — and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation … It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation ? whereas, in the nobler sex, … exercised by trial and dangers, is only further developed. (Bront? 30-31)

By exposing the duplicity between the rearing of young men and women, Helen logically questions whether or not Gilbert believes feminine character and virtue is inherently fallible. Gilbert trapped within the machine of a defunct society, objects. ?Heaven forbid that I should think so!? (Bront? 31). Herein lies exposed a great contradiction between the practice of a disguised lack of faith in women and the heralded ideal of the virtuous “angel in the house.”

Seeking balance and equality, Helen defends her practice as a mother with a strong presence in her son?s life. She breaks from prevalent expectations saying:

You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. (Bront? 31)

According to Helen’s declaration, Bront? rejects the idea that such freedom afforded young men should be fully experienced only to later be reigned in through marriage. She also rejects the opposite extreme of sheltering young girls to the point where they have no self-actuated sense of wisdom and virtue, ill preparing them for independence and strength in difficult times. Scholar Elizabeth Gruner, in her essay ?Plotting the Mother: Caroline Norton, Helen Huntingdon and Isabel Vane,? says of the same passage quoted above:

Helen?s argument here neatly defends the novel, as teaching by others? experience, and her own maternal practice, while simultaneously undercutting any conception of an essential gender identity. Masculinity and Femininity are taught in this novel and can be played, revised, changed?as Gilbert himself learns. (Gruner 312)

A compromise must be met. The possibility exists, for which Helen is an example, where each gender benefits from preparedness to function in all aspects of society rather than to perform supplementary roles from separate spheres of a distinct division.

As Rose requires constant reminders to conform to her feminine identity, Gilbert also requires more than one lesson in his education to break free from engrained gender perspective, demonstrating how deeply entrenched the importance of gender identity is to the commonwealth. The town gossip darkens Helen?s true virtue because, as a wife who left her husband regardless of his abuse, she no longer fits within the ideal of ?angel in the house.? Here the machine manipulates Gilbert once more. Performing his gender duty, he avoids Helen, punishing her for doing her gender wrong (Butler 2500). Silence aggrieves the lovers, and Gilbert finds himself ?deceived, duped, hopeless, my afflictions trampled on, my angel not an angel, and my friend a fiend incarnate? (Bront? 102). Not until Helen offers her journal, appointing a witness for her story, does Gilbert escape his torment. While he does loosen his grip on the feminine definition, the reader is left to wonder if this change is binding. Scholar Russell Poole, in his article ?Cultural Reformation and Cultural Reproduction in Anne Bront?’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,? argues:

Helen?s diary is often identified as the means of instruction ? but we should not exaggerate its effect ? A few of [Gilbert?s] comments as a narrator suggest that a mitigation of his more aggressive traits has occurred subsequent to marriage rather than before it and certainly not as a precondition of it. (Poole 863)

Gilbert is like a child under the instruction of Helen, one in constant need of a reminder not to fall into old habits, learning who Helen is as a person, not as a misunderstood cog in the gender hierarchy. Regardless of Gilbert?s retention level, more importantly demonstrated is the fact that silence must be broken by women and their stories acknowledged by men before change can occur.

Bront? appears to fall short under the contemporary lens of feminism when Helen?s relationship flourishes with Gilbert and their wedding merely reinserts her into the same system from which she fled. Her property becomes Gilbert?s; it is he who must grant permission for Helen?s aunt to stay in the home that was once hers; and Arthur ?he was my own Helen?s son, and therefore mine? (Bront? 469). Gilbert makes a statement of claim on both mother and son, as if they are property to be owned. This reads as if Bront? could envision no practical solution for the plight of women. Although she is not able to write Helen out of society?s grasp, all is not lost. Rather than becoming an example by which women may redeem their power, Helen, more realistically for Bront??s time becomes the subject for discourse among Bront??s readership. Scholar Carol Senf, in her essay ?The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Narrative Silences and Questions of Gender,? explores the value in Bront??s delineated story telling technique, one by which Helen?s tale is both divulged edited through Gilbert:

Like the unique narrative structure, the wife?s story framed by that of her husband, this emphasis on domestic life?especially on the relationships of men and women during courtship and marriage?encourages the reader to focus on questions of gender, especially to see the way that nineteenth-century notions of marriage consigned women to silence. (Senf 450)

As Helen?s full story unfolds, Gilbert and the audience of the novel learn of the horrors that can exist when expectations of women remain unchallenged. Beyond that initial lesson, a more subtle lesson is also divulged. Helen?s experience of oppression and abuse, that which had been locked within the confines of her journal until shared with Gilbert, becomes the property of Gilbert once they marry. Personal expression is no longer her own. Bront?, may not have had the vision to free Helen from the stranglehold of mastership without denying her love, yet she offers this subjection up to all of society to reform as a whole.

These social values and customs of the early nineteenth century are of importance to study because remains of those gender imbalances are still present in society today. To understand where gender inequality fails and reproduces oppression of women can help to pinpoint ways in which it can be remedied. Historic trends provide commentary through literature, allowing for study of the causes and effects within this division. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in particular, provides a most valuable social commentary as it is the first novel of its kind to reveal the harsh reality of those women who suffered the worst of oppression of the time. Without discussion of the process by which women perpetuate their oppression, the importance of the challenge posed by Bront? is unable to be fully appreciated for the impact it has had in liberating the minds of women and imparting change upon a nation.

Works Cited:

Althusser, Louis. ?Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.? The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. 1476-1508.

Berry, Laura C. ?Acts of Custody and Incarceration in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.? NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 30.1. (1996): 32-55. JSTOR. 4 April 2007

Bront?, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. New York: Oxford University Press. 1992

Butler, Judith. ?Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.? The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. 2488-2501.

Gruner, Elisabeth Rose. ?Plotting the Mother: Caroline Norton, Helen Huntingdon, and Isabel Vane.? Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. 16. 2. (1997): 303-325. JSTOR. 4 April 2007

Poole, Russell. ?Cultural Reformation and Cultural Reproduction in Anne Bront?’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.? Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 33.4 (1993): 859-873. JSTOR. 28 March 2007

Senf, Carol A. ?The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Narrative Silences and Questions of Gender? College English. 52.4 (1990): 446-456. JSTOR. 28 March 2007

My thesis states that Paul D, in Toni Morrison?s Beloved, must define what ?manhood? is for himself by exploring meaning as deduced from situations he experiences as a man, as well as analyzing definitions supplied by the people in his life. His best understanding comes from the combination of remembering his fellow ?Sweet Home Men,? and recognizing where he and Sethe fit together in the face of slavery and racism.
By contrasting white Mr. Garner?s meaning of a man with that of Schoolteacher?s, as does Paul D, conflict arises in the definition. Is he Garner?s man, one with the freedom to think, speak and argue his point? Is he Schoolteacher?s slave, not even a man, a slave with lesser value than one who can reproduce freely? Paul D is trapped within both arenas and yet fully believes neither. Slavery removes any normalcy from the lives of slaves, not allowing them to fit within the white meaning, and standing in the way of the creation of their own. Mary Carden, in ?Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison?s Beloved? discusses the ways in which white definitions prevent Paul D from being head of his house or protector of his family, which I would like to use to expand the scope of my original paper.

In my close reading of Paul D?s observance of Sixo and Halle, false layers of white manhood are peeled away. Respect for life and caring for another without ownership is at the heart of true manhood. This is supported by Deborah Sitter?s essay ?The Making of a Man: Dialogic Meaning in Beloved? when she addresses Sixo?s superior African manhood, as embodied in a man with darker skin, thicker language, and the propensity to dance among trees versus that of oppressive white plantation owners finding manhood in their guns. Sixo wants connection of family with the Thirty-Mile Woman because she puts him back together. Halle too is a man to Paul D, supportive to his wife without owning her. There is evidence of what manhood should be at Sweet Home, a reflection in the abnormal environment of the plantation.

It is also important to understand why Paul D?s story is told along side Sethe?s in the novel. What trees mean to Paul D and Sethe are inherent to the argument of what a man is as described by Sitter. Sethe?s tree scar from white Schoolteacher and Paul D?s tree friend ?Brother? where he bonded with his brothers represent very different interpretations. The images cannot merge. As Paul D defines what it means for him to be a man, Sethe is defining for herself what it means to be a woman. How does one story validate the other? Can they discover for themselves the meaning of ?manhood? or ?womanhood,? or is it necessary for them to function together to reveal that identity? I believe this is a joint effort, the goal realized when they understand how manhood and womanhood ?fit.? Carden supports this theory by saying romance transforms ?the unspeakable? into normative family and community.

I choose this topic because Paul D?s story is ?put next to? Sethe?s by Morrison, just as Paul D wants it in the end. While Sethe?s story is central to the novel, Paul D is no less important. His and Sethe?s discovery of self is not only a personal journey, but a joint discovery dependant upon one another. When they finally come together, there is evidence of connection, understanding and recognition of one by, in and of the other.

Annotated Bibliography

Sitter, Deborah Ayer. ?The Making of a Man: Dialogic Meaning in Beloved.? African American Review. 26.1 Women Writers Issue (1992): 17-29

? Summary: The thesis of Sitter?s work is ?What goes on in the ghostly subtext of Beloved is an intense debate over the meaning of manhood and the possibility for enduring heterosexual love.? She supports this thesis by comparing the dialogue of Paul D?s story with that of Sethe?s, comparing and contrasting what trees mean fro each of them and how, when they disagree and disconnect, a forest springs up between them. For Paul D, trees symbolize his feelings toward his manhood depending upon his situation while Sethe?s tree/scar symbolizes a different type of manhood. Sixo?s version of manhood comes from respect for all life versus the definition of ?men? by white overseers of Sweet Home, pitting an African version of manhood against a white version. The white version is what enslaves rather than frees Paul D and Sethe from experiencing ?normalcy.? They must cast off the chains of language that bind them and realize their own meaning while suffering the effects of slavery. This is the only way they can deal with the killing of Sethe?s daughter without Paul D seeing Sethe as an animal like Schoolteacher, and for Sethe to see Paul D as a man regardless of Schoolteacher?s collar and chains.

? Reflection: I plan to use this source to support my thoughts on Paul D learning the true meaning of the word from his fellow ?Sweet Home Men.? This also supports my belief that Paul D and Sethe must tell their story together, comparing and contrasting their assigned and discovered meanings of ?manhood? and ?womanhood.? Sitter?s work seems firmly rooted in the text and quotes from Morrison, countering Stanley Crouch?s accusations that Morrison is a ?literary conjure woman.? Sitter?s approach is to defend Morrison?s credibility as Morrison questions the ?nether regions of language.?

Carden, Mary Paniccia. ?Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison?s Beloved.? Twentieth Century Literature. 45.4 (1999): 401-427.

? Summary: Carden?s thesis: ?While much of the criticism on Beloved approaches it primarily as a story of the consequences of slavery and only secondarily as a romance story, I will argue that the novel demands to be read with both narrative lines in the foreground, and that this double sidedness produces contradictions and oppositions that are never more powerfully problematic than in Morrison?s choices for narrative outcome.? She supports this by arguing that romance plot defines normalcy through a heterosexual relationship. As a result of slavery, Paul D and Sethe haven?t the luxury of this setting. Paul D is unable to be ?man? of his house and must ?borrow? manhood from his master.? (Carden 405). By traveling, Paul D gains power over ?place? and when he settles in with Sethe in an effort to exert his authority, this fails because Sethe is not accustomed to giving up that role herself. Just as the family begins to ?coalesce,? Beloved arrives to fracture the family with her own fractured story. She briefly leads Paul D back to the manhood definition he learned at Sweet Home but still, there is no normalcy allowed any of these characters. Infanticide fractures family and identity further by bringing to light Paul D?s entrenchment in white definitions of manhood, motherhood and judgment in white terms. He must adjust his ideal of what is normal as Sethe insists it was the only option. Paul D?s image of Sethe depends upon her ability to recognize him as a man. In the first ending, Paul D can either be commended for loving big and coming back or seen as a ?return to patriarchal scripts.? The second ending depicts Beloved as pregnant history of loss, and yet ?not a story to pass on.? (Carden 422)

? Reflection: Carden?s explanation of a lack of normalcy, family, home, etc. helps explain Paul D?s questioning of his manhood and offers hope when he and Sethe join together. While she offers one interpretation of the ending to read as though Paul D should be commended for breaking the barrier of white man?s language and definition, she also offers that Paul D can be representative of traditional male dominance as he rescues a weak Sethe from her memories. I can see this point of view as well, although it doesn?t fit in my shorter essay. Carden?s angle is that the novel must be read as a narrative about the effects of slavery and as a romance together. The problem with this is that, as Morrison has stated in interviews, this is not a novel about Slavery. It is about people who are unable to realize their place and identity because of white definitions. The shift in focus here is subtle but it matters.