From "Lectures on Literature"*.
1/ Nabokov dismisses the interpretations of this book as a mystery story (which, to him, is "the very negation of style", conventional literature), a detective story (as a detective story, it is lame), a parable or an allegory ("tasteless"). He quotes Stephen Gwynn, that it's "a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction".
2/ The names Jekyll and Hyde, according to Nabokov, are of Scandinavian origin: Hyde comes from the Anglo-Saxon "hyd", which is the Danish "hide", "a haven"; Jekyll comes from the Danish name Jökulle, meaning "an icicle".
Then he goes on to mock "Not knowing these simple derivations one would be apt to find all kinds of symbolic meanings, especially in Hyde, the most obvious being that Hyde is a kind of hiding place for Dr Jekyll, in whom the jocular doctor and the killer are combined."
Is there anything wrong in seeing the word "hide" in Hyde and "kill" in Jekyll?
I'm not sure about "hyd", "hide" and "Jökulle". The last word is particularly curious, because the Danish alphabet doesn't have "ö", only the Swedish alphabet does.
Note: according to the notes in my copy of "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", the name Jekyll is meant to be pronounced like "jee-kill", not /ˈdʒɛk(ə)l/ as OED says.
3/ I'm glad to discover that Nabokov's view on Jekyll is quite similar to mine, but of course he expresses it a lot better:
"Is Jekyll good? No, he is a composite being, a mixture of good and bad, a preparation consisting of a 99% solution of Jekyllite and 1% of Hyde [...] Jekyll's morals are poor from the Victorian point of view. He is a hypocritical creature carefully concealing his little sins. He is vindictive, never forgiving Dr Lanyon with whom he disagrees in scientific matters. He is foolhardy. Hyde is mingled with him, within him."
To make it clearer: "Jekyll is not really transformed into Hyde but projects a concentrate of pure evil that becomes Hyde, who is smaller than Jekyll, a big man, to indicate the larger amount of good that Jekyll possesses".
According to "the popular notions about this seldom read book" (to use Nabokov's words), Jekyll and Hyde are 2 separate beings that exist within 1 person, good and evil, but that isn't the case.
4/ Nabokov draws the house:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKVYLpPDrCqU3wWkQnZ7uRjUbtIXu0wccFAhcq_SXZz-j2O9NTEM0suixvsDpRXgAcRmKVKh8GMnVYIUaRblXyfsiJ-2xjGV8Z7AbSzLwRdGhx7xT0q6nikU_P-3YynqOu1mzHZOjkNE/s1600/Jekyll+House.jpg
(or rather, it's a student's drawing, with his alterations).
"Just as Jekyll is a mixture of good and bad, so Jekyll's dwelling place is also a mixture, a very neat symbol, a very neat representation of the Jekyll and Hyde relationship."
5/ "Stevenson's artistic purpose was to make "a fantastic drama pass in the presence of plain sensible men" in an atmosphere familiar to the readers of Dickens, in the setting of London's bleak fog, of solemn elderly gentlemen drinking old port, of ugly faced houses, of family lawyers and devoted butlers, of anonymous vices thriving somewhere behind the solemn square on which Jekyll lives, and of cold mornings and of hansom cabs."
Now Nabokov points that out, the setting seems familiar, even conventional. But of course the tale isn't conventional. This book is great because it's strange and well-written and also because it is many things at once and beyond them all: mystery novel, Gothic novel, detective story, fable, allegory, doppelgänger literature, popular/ sensational fiction, etc.
6/ Interestingly enough, Nabokov also likes and draws attention to a passage I've just pointed out in the earlier post: the chocolate-coloured pall scene.
7/ Speaking of alliteration, he quotes Stevenson:
"It used to be a piece of good advice to all young writers to avoid alliteration; and the advice was sound, in so far as it prevented daubing. None the less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and the mere raving of those blindest of the blind who will not see. The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence, depends implicitly upon alliteration and upon assonance. The vowel demands to be repeated; the consonant demands to be repeated; and both cry aloud to be perpetually varied. You may follow the adventures of a letter through any passage that has particularly pleased you; find it, perhaps, denied a while, to tantalise the ear; find it fired again at you in a whole broadside; or find it pass into congenerous sounds, one liquid or labial melting away into another. And you will find another and much stranger circumstance. Literature is written by and for two senses: a sort of internal ear, quick to perceive 'unheard melodies'; and the eye, which directs the pen and deciphers the printed phrase."
And adds "and let me add as a reader, the internal eye visualizes its color and meaning".
Let me paste here a few more words by Stevenson:
"Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands, and harmonises with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature."
Really, Stevenson plays a lot with sounds:
E.g: "the bless seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? [...] I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."
You can find it even in the 1st line:
"Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable."
8/ I wrote the depravity of Hyde was vague, unspecified.
Nabokov says "Stevenson gives us the specific, lifelike description of events by humdrum London gentlemen, but contrasting with this are the unspecified, vague, but ominous allusions to pleasures and dreadful vices somewhere behind the scenes. [...] If we are really being told "never mind what the evil was- just believe it was something very bad", then we might feel ourselves cheated and bullied. We could feel cheated by vagueness in the most interesting part of the story because its setting is so matter of fact and realistic".
This, to him, is a problem "It was safer for the artist not to be specific and to leave the pleasures of Jekyll undescribed. But does not this safety, this easy way, does it not denote a certain weakness in the artist? I think it does."
I do like Stevenson to make it clearer, but this is not necessarily a weakness. London is covered in fog, the vices are also covered in fog, and darkness, and the ambiguity makes the story complex, fascinating, open to interpretation. Hyde is a secret, he goes into the house through the back door, the mystery isn't revealed to anyone but Dr Lanyon until Jekyll's suicide, it is all a secret from the beginning to the end, even after the end. This might be a deliberate artistic choice rather than an evasion. Also, not saying what the vices are also makes them worse than they actually are.
Nabokov mentions the suggestion that they refer to homosexuality, which he doesn't dismiss as tasteless or impossible, even if he says "this Victorian reticence prompts the modern reader to grope for conclusions that perhaps Stevenson never intended to be groped for". Then he remarks "In any case, the good reader cannot be quite satisfied with the mist surrounding Jekyll's adventures. And this is especially irritating since Hyde's adventures, likewise anonymous, are supposed to be monstrous exaggerations of Jekyll's wayward whims."
Indeed, what have Jekyll and Hyde done?
"Now the only thing that we do guess about Hyde's pleasures is that they are sadistic- he enjoys the infliction of pain".
And that's the worst part, a lot worse than the other excesses.
9/ Quoting Stephen Gwynn, Nabokov points out "the monkish pattern" of the book: Jekyll, Utterson, Enfield and Poole are bachelors, and women have hardly any part in the action.
10/ In the last part of the lecture, Nabokov writes about Stevenson's last moments, of which I was ignorant.
"What, has my face changed? There is a curious thematical link between this last episode in Stevenson's life and the fateful transformations in his most wonderful book".
*:
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/01/vladimir-nabokovs-lecture-on-mansfield.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/01/vladimir-nabokovs-lecture-on-madame.html
Sunday, 5 April 2015
Jekyll and Hyde- look at these descriptions
This book is terribly well-written.
Look at this:
No comments now, no analysis. I just want to draw attention to these passages and those phrases.
By the way, check out this article about Jekyll and Hyde:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/06/what-everybody-gets-wrong-about-jekyll-and-hyde
(Hyde doesn't exist, "Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of his nature. He made a potion that allowed him express his urges without feeling guilty and without any consequences besmirching his good name", we never get Hyde's point of view, Jekyll always think of himself as Jekyll even when being Hyde and knows exactly what's going on, Jekyll wants to do all the things he does as Hyde and revels in this freedom, etc.)
Not saying that I agree with everything, but it's interesting.
Look at this:
"It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare."This is the scene after the murder (which, by the way, happens under the full moon, the sky is cloudless, the window of the witness brilliantly lit by the moonlight), Utterson and inspector Newcomen go to Soho looking for Hyde.
"As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll's favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling."Now look at this scene, where Poole (Jekyll's butler) thinks there is some "foul play" and asks Utterson to go with him to Jekyll's house.
"It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square, when they got there, was all full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing."That's just so good.
No comments now, no analysis. I just want to draw attention to these passages and those phrases.
By the way, check out this article about Jekyll and Hyde:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/06/what-everybody-gets-wrong-about-jekyll-and-hyde
(Hyde doesn't exist, "Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of his nature. He made a potion that allowed him express his urges without feeling guilty and without any consequences besmirching his good name", we never get Hyde's point of view, Jekyll always think of himself as Jekyll even when being Hyde and knows exactly what's going on, Jekyll wants to do all the things he does as Hyde and revels in this freedom, etc.)
Not saying that I agree with everything, but it's interesting.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Who gave me the idea, before I read Robert Louis Stevenson's book, that Jekyll represented good and Hyde represented evil?
I've just read Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Here are paragraphs, sentences, phrases describing Hyde:
- Tramples over a little girl, ignores her screams, and walks away.
- "It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running."
- "He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way."
- "Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him."
- "the bless seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? [...] I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."
- Beats a man (Danvers Carew) to death.
- Liked by nobody.
- "the body of a self-destroyer".
- Fills a pious work with "startling blasphemies".
- "He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least— with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable [...] Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me— something seizing, surprising, and revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world."
- "a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation".
- "more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil".
- "Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay."
- "pure evil".
- "The pleasures" are "undignified" and "turn towards the monstrous".
- "vicarious depravity".
- "This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone."
- "brutish, physical insensibility".
- "My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill."
- "the scene of these excesses".
- "lust of evil".
- "the crowd of hideous images and sounds".
- "a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation".
- "the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows".
- Has nothing human; has nothing in him but fear and hatred.
- Smites a woman who offers him a box of lights.
- "something not only hellish but inorganic".
- Burns letters and destroys the father's portrait.
Evil, evil, evil. I get the idea. Brutish, depraved, inhuman, wicked, etc. But it's general. Vague. There are a few actions and incidents that are more specific, but still vague. E.g Hyde tramples over a girl. What does that mean? The word "trample" seems odd. Then he attacks a man to death. Why? What have they been doing before that? What did Carew say to him? And why does he strike the woman? It's not even clear that she's holding a box of lights ("Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights"). Let's just say that there need no reasons, because after all Hyde's pure evil, without a conscience, why does he need a reason to assault someone. More important is what Hyde does when he is Hyde, what the pleasures are. Violence, drinking, sexual excesses. I'm pondering over the suggestion that they refer to homosexuality.
Of course, Stevenson doesn't have to be very specific. The ambiguity makes the text richer, more fascinating, open to interpretation.
OK, forget about Hyde for a moment. Look at Jekyll:
- "He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault."
- "Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service..."
- "the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. "
- "a double-dealer" but not "a hypocrite", according to himself.
- "a life of effort, virtue and control".
- "Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll [...] To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper."
- Addicted to being Hyde.
- "It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered."
- "As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy", because Hyde doesn't really exist.
- "restrictions of natural life", "renunciation".
- "I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence."
- "wealthy, beloved".
Here, again, the details are left out. What are the pleasures, for instance? What does Utterson mean by saying that Jekyll was wild? More importantly, the goodness of Jekyll is also vague. There is nothing about his goodness, his positive traits, virtues, qualities... Well we know that he's friendly, respected, beloved, but that means nothing. We know that he does charities, but that doesn't mean he's good; actually the quotes above show that he needs to care about his progress and position in the world, and does charities also to ease his conscience, which in his youth enables him to commit to his duplicity of life and which later helps him accept the actions of Hyde, which he does his best to separate from his Jekyll self, even though Jekyll shares in the pleasures and excitement. Read all of the passages above- it appears that Jekyll isn't truly good, he just conforms to the conventions and expectations of society, wears a mask, presents his respectable side to others, hides his pleasures and dark activities from others. He lives a double life. To himself, being Jekyll and rejecting Hyde is a restriction, a renunciation- when Hyde goes too far, Jekyll has a bad conscience, but feels a sense of joy because for the time being, Hyde can hide and doesn't have to be held accountable for his crime, and doing charities afterwards is just a way of making up for his bad deeds and feeling better about himself.
Jekyll therefore isn't good. This side only symbolises conformity, renunciation, repression, the social man, the civilised man, or, it is hard to resist, the consciousness.
I've just read Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Here are paragraphs, sentences, phrases describing Hyde:
- Tramples over a little girl, ignores her screams, and walks away.
- "It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running."
- "He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way."
- "Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him."
- "the bless seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? [...] I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."
- Beats a man (Danvers Carew) to death.
- Liked by nobody.
- "the body of a self-destroyer".
- Fills a pious work with "startling blasphemies".
- "He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least— with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable [...] Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me— something seizing, surprising, and revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world."
- "a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation".
- "more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil".
- "Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay."
- "pure evil".
- "The pleasures" are "undignified" and "turn towards the monstrous".
- "vicarious depravity".
- "This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone."
- "brutish, physical insensibility".
- "My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill."
- "the scene of these excesses".
- "lust of evil".
- "the crowd of hideous images and sounds".
- "a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation".
- "the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows".
- Has nothing human; has nothing in him but fear and hatred.
- Smites a woman who offers him a box of lights.
- "something not only hellish but inorganic".
- Burns letters and destroys the father's portrait.
Evil, evil, evil. I get the idea. Brutish, depraved, inhuman, wicked, etc. But it's general. Vague. There are a few actions and incidents that are more specific, but still vague. E.g Hyde tramples over a girl. What does that mean? The word "trample" seems odd. Then he attacks a man to death. Why? What have they been doing before that? What did Carew say to him? And why does he strike the woman? It's not even clear that she's holding a box of lights ("Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights"). Let's just say that there need no reasons, because after all Hyde's pure evil, without a conscience, why does he need a reason to assault someone. More important is what Hyde does when he is Hyde, what the pleasures are. Violence, drinking, sexual excesses. I'm pondering over the suggestion that they refer to homosexuality.
Of course, Stevenson doesn't have to be very specific. The ambiguity makes the text richer, more fascinating, open to interpretation.
OK, forget about Hyde for a moment. Look at Jekyll:
- "He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault."
- "Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service..."
- "the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. "
- "a double-dealer" but not "a hypocrite", according to himself.
- "a life of effort, virtue and control".
- "Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll [...] To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper."
- Addicted to being Hyde.
- "It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered."
- "As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy", because Hyde doesn't really exist.
- "restrictions of natural life", "renunciation".
- "I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence."
- "wealthy, beloved".
Here, again, the details are left out. What are the pleasures, for instance? What does Utterson mean by saying that Jekyll was wild? More importantly, the goodness of Jekyll is also vague. There is nothing about his goodness, his positive traits, virtues, qualities... Well we know that he's friendly, respected, beloved, but that means nothing. We know that he does charities, but that doesn't mean he's good; actually the quotes above show that he needs to care about his progress and position in the world, and does charities also to ease his conscience, which in his youth enables him to commit to his duplicity of life and which later helps him accept the actions of Hyde, which he does his best to separate from his Jekyll self, even though Jekyll shares in the pleasures and excitement. Read all of the passages above- it appears that Jekyll isn't truly good, he just conforms to the conventions and expectations of society, wears a mask, presents his respectable side to others, hides his pleasures and dark activities from others. He lives a double life. To himself, being Jekyll and rejecting Hyde is a restriction, a renunciation- when Hyde goes too far, Jekyll has a bad conscience, but feels a sense of joy because for the time being, Hyde can hide and doesn't have to be held accountable for his crime, and doing charities afterwards is just a way of making up for his bad deeds and feeling better about himself.
Jekyll therefore isn't good. This side only symbolises conformity, renunciation, repression, the social man, the civilised man, or, it is hard to resist, the consciousness.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Daniel Deronda and Andrew Davies
I've been wondering why on earth some people think Daniel Deronda has feelings for and should end up with Gwendolen.
Now I know why. Or think I do.
It's the 2002 mini-series!
The screenplay's written by Andrew Davies. Rings a bell? He's the screenwriter of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the one responsible for the soaking wet Colin Firth image and the idea that Mr Darcy is Prince Charming! That's the one!
[His adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey are better, though not as good as the less faithful take on Sense and Sensibility by Emma Thompson.]
Even if I sound like one, I'm not a purist. Look above (and here), I think highly of the Sense and Sensibility film, in which Emma Thompson and Ang Lee make various changes and shift the balance slightly from sense to sensibility. Changes are fine. Make Gwendolen a murderer even! I welcome that (though of course in that case everything else would have to change, the spirit of the film would also be different). What causes me dismay about this Daniel Deronda version is this: they romanticise the relationship between Deronda and Gwendolen, as though between a man and a woman there can be nothing else. Doesn't that make their relationship quite "earthly", commonplace? Doesn't that make Grandcourt right in his suspicions? Doesn't that put Deronda in the wrong, especially in the scene where he's with Gwendolen at Grandcourt's house and Grandcourt comes back and smiles at them in disdain? What kind of person does that make Deronda, simultaneously courting 2 women? And then that scene where Hans says he's seen how Deronda looks at Mirah, and looks at "the duchess"? What bothers me even more is that they romanticise this relationship, add lots of scenes showing that there's something going on between these 2 characters and leave hardly any space for the relationship between Deronda and Mirah, only a little at the beginning which hardly counts, and then in the end still let Deronda choose Mirah. I imagine that a person unfamiliar with the book, watching this film, would be quite stunned, and puzzled.
It looks as though Deronda chooses Mirah for her Jewishness and his great mission.
Now I know why. Or think I do.
It's the 2002 mini-series!
The screenplay's written by Andrew Davies. Rings a bell? He's the screenwriter of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the one responsible for the soaking wet Colin Firth image and the idea that Mr Darcy is Prince Charming! That's the one!
[His adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey are better, though not as good as the less faithful take on Sense and Sensibility by Emma Thompson.]
Even if I sound like one, I'm not a purist. Look above (and here), I think highly of the Sense and Sensibility film, in which Emma Thompson and Ang Lee make various changes and shift the balance slightly from sense to sensibility. Changes are fine. Make Gwendolen a murderer even! I welcome that (though of course in that case everything else would have to change, the spirit of the film would also be different). What causes me dismay about this Daniel Deronda version is this: they romanticise the relationship between Deronda and Gwendolen, as though between a man and a woman there can be nothing else. Doesn't that make their relationship quite "earthly", commonplace? Doesn't that make Grandcourt right in his suspicions? Doesn't that put Deronda in the wrong, especially in the scene where he's with Gwendolen at Grandcourt's house and Grandcourt comes back and smiles at them in disdain? What kind of person does that make Deronda, simultaneously courting 2 women? And then that scene where Hans says he's seen how Deronda looks at Mirah, and looks at "the duchess"? What bothers me even more is that they romanticise this relationship, add lots of scenes showing that there's something going on between these 2 characters and leave hardly any space for the relationship between Deronda and Mirah, only a little at the beginning which hardly counts, and then in the end still let Deronda choose Mirah. I imagine that a person unfamiliar with the book, watching this film, would be quite stunned, and puzzled.
It looks as though Deronda chooses Mirah for her Jewishness and his great mission.
Monday, 30 March 2015
Hermann: Insane? Sane?
I've finished reading Despair. Surprise- I was right for suspecting that Hermann and Felix don't look alike.
Now another question arises: What if Hermann, the unreliable narrator, is not a madman, megalomaniac and delusional, but a man awaiting his trial and pleading insanity?
Here are some arguments supporting that interpretation:
https://prezi.com/bpwzmfmhlatk/diagnosing-hermann/
http://www.academia.edu/3745336/Diagnosing_Hermann_the_perfect_balance_of_insanity_and_cunning_in_Nabokov_s_Despair
Now another question arises: What if Hermann, the unreliable narrator, is not a madman, megalomaniac and delusional, but a man awaiting his trial and pleading insanity?
Here are some arguments supporting that interpretation:
https://prezi.com/bpwzmfmhlatk/diagnosing-hermann/
http://www.academia.edu/3745336/Diagnosing_Hermann_the_perfect_balance_of_insanity_and_cunning_in_Nabokov_s_Despair
On the 25 most hated books (by Book Riot readers)
http://bookriot.com/2013/06/19/the-25-most-hated-books/
1/ Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (102 votes)
=> No wonder. In fact I'm glad it makes the 1st spot.
2/ Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (90)
=> Having been the only one in class who loved this novel whereas almost everyone else hated it, I'm not surprised to find it here, I only find it unfortunate. The general reaction is annoyance at and dislike of Holden Caulfield, without any attempt to understand him- his loss, alienation, troubled mind, etc, which is apparently caused by the tendency to see "identifying with characters" as a criterion of literary merit. It goes further, I believe- based on my own teacher, another teacher in the programme, and what I have seen in the internet, people usually represent The Catcher in the Rye as a book about teen angst and Holden as a troubled teen who doesn't want to grow up because he believes kids to be innocent and adults to be hypocritical. That is a mistaken view- if the teenagers reading the book that is said to be a teen angst book don't see themselves in the protagonist and don't relate to his feelings, it's understandable that they have trouble liking and appreciating the book. But The Catcher in the Rye is much more.
Holden is a teenager, and has certain problems of teenagers in general, but he's not typical. Note his brother's death. That loss is enough to make his world fall apart, plus a feeling of guilt, because his brother dies and he, the "worst" one in the family, survives- that makes him feel alienated from others, including his parents, and question everything. This is also why he wants to get back to the past, when Allie was alive. Holden's trouble, at the same time, comes from his intelligence and sensitivity, as he notices how many people around him pursue false values, care more about appearances and conventions, and pretend to be something they are not instead of trying to be good. Kids, generally speaking, don't pretend- because they're not aware of conventions and others' expectations, they just behave like themselves. This is why Holden adores kids and has a negative view on adults- when saying that he wants to save kids, he doesn't mean saving them from becoming adults, but saving them from becoming hypocrites and conformists as he has seen many others turn into.
3/ Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (90)
=> No surprise. It should be up there right next to Twilight, though.
4/ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (53)
=> Another high school book. Why do these people hate The Great Gatsby? I don't get it. Please enlighten me.
5/ Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (41)
=> No comment, I haven't read this one. The common criticisms: "boring", "overrated".
6/ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (41)
=> I can see why- these readers either expect it to be a romantic, beautiful love story and don't find what they're looking for, or, again, see "identifying with characters" as a measure of the greatness of a novel. Why they do so, on the other hand, is something I don't get.
7/ Lord of the Flies by William Golding (35)
=> I don't like it myself, though "hate" is a strong word. Or maybe I do hate it. It's the bleak vision that I can't stand- in spite of everything, I still don't lose faith in humanity, and even though lots of books I love are sad, tragic, even depressing according to some people's standard, I don't like and can't accept the idea that human beings are evil, genuinely, inherently evil. To equate evil with reality is a naive view. That's probably 1 of the reasons I prefer Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky.
8/ The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (33)
=> No wonder.
9/ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (31)
=> Haven't read this one.
10/ Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (30)
=> Haven't read it, but I've read a lot about Ayn Rand's philosophy (objectivism). I should have included her in my post on literary prejudices.
11/ Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (28)
=> Haven't read it, but I've seen the film. Not hard to see why. As a friend of mine puts it, Gone Girl is not uplifting. Or as another friend puts it, the plot is full of holes, and does anybody notice how the women here are generally stronger/ more intelligent/ more scheming than the men, and when there's a man who is able to engage in the battle of wits with the "wife", he's black?
12/ Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (26)
=> Again, haven't read it, but seen the film. Probably not fair to judge a book by its movie, but I feel that the film has nothing in it. Nothing.
13/ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (26)
=> I don't get it. Why should anybody hate Great Expectations? I read this novel before discovering Tolstoy and Jane Austen, and haven't read anything by Dickens since then, so my perception might be different now. However, it should be said, while I'm aware that people often criticise Dickens for sentimentality and his caricatures and 1-dimensional female characters, on my part I see nothing sentimental in Great Expectations (and people know how much I dislike false sentimentality), Miss Havisham and Estella have enough depth and complexity (of course don't compare them to Tolstoy's and Flaubert's female characters), and some characters such as Joe or Herbert, albeit (almost) caricatures, have a kind of convincingness or plausibility in this book, like the characters in Dead Souls. Not all writers create characters that are like human beings.
14/ The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (25)
=> Haven't read this book. Please, tell me, why?
15/ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (24)
=> I can see why. There can be tons of reasons: the idea that it's sentimental, trivial, mundane, confined, only romcom, only chicklit, having no passion or intellectual depth, treating unimportant issues, etc. Bright, light, sparkling. Too much dialogue, one might think. After all, my mom hates Pride and Prejudice, saying that we know more about the characters from what the narrator says and what other characters say than what they reveal themselves through words and actions. A bunch of others, famous, also hate the book, such as Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain.
16/ The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (23)
=> Haven't read it. But it's in my TBR list.
17/ Life of Pi by Yann Martel (21)
=> Haven't read it, but I've seen the film. Why do people hate it?
18/ The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (18)
=> Haven't read it.
19/ The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (17)
=> Haven't read it.
20/ On the Road by Jack Kerouac (14)
=> Haven't read it. I start to realise that this post of mine is like a confession. Let's play the Humiliation game- I'll definitely win.
21/ The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (14)
=> Another book I haven't read. But I've read several others by Paulo Coelho, and can see why.
22/ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (14)
=> This is unfortunate, but not hard to understand- people can't tolerate the contrived plot, don't like Jane, don't like Rochester, can't accept Rochester's treatment of Bertha, see Jane Eyre as an anti-feminist book and a racist book, don't like the melodrama, and so on and so forth. Nowadays I don't like it as much as in my teens. Jane Eyre is a powerful book, but it's flawed.
23/ The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (14)
=> It was so long ago when I read The Lovely Bones. Even if I remember my reaction, I was a horrible reader then. But the ending's definitely silly- what do you call that? Karma?
24/ The Pearl by John Steinbeck (14)
=> I remember reading this book- whether I finished it or not is uncertain, the feeling is vague.
25/ Ulysses by James Joyce (14)
=> Haven't read this one, but I know why it's here- people often say it's boring, pretentious, etc.
I'm rather surprised that Madame Bovary and Lolita don't make the list. Thought lots of people hated these masterpieces.
Maybe some day I'll list the books I hate.
1/ Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (102 votes)
=> No wonder. In fact I'm glad it makes the 1st spot.
2/ Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (90)
=> Having been the only one in class who loved this novel whereas almost everyone else hated it, I'm not surprised to find it here, I only find it unfortunate. The general reaction is annoyance at and dislike of Holden Caulfield, without any attempt to understand him- his loss, alienation, troubled mind, etc, which is apparently caused by the tendency to see "identifying with characters" as a criterion of literary merit. It goes further, I believe- based on my own teacher, another teacher in the programme, and what I have seen in the internet, people usually represent The Catcher in the Rye as a book about teen angst and Holden as a troubled teen who doesn't want to grow up because he believes kids to be innocent and adults to be hypocritical. That is a mistaken view- if the teenagers reading the book that is said to be a teen angst book don't see themselves in the protagonist and don't relate to his feelings, it's understandable that they have trouble liking and appreciating the book. But The Catcher in the Rye is much more.
Holden is a teenager, and has certain problems of teenagers in general, but he's not typical. Note his brother's death. That loss is enough to make his world fall apart, plus a feeling of guilt, because his brother dies and he, the "worst" one in the family, survives- that makes him feel alienated from others, including his parents, and question everything. This is also why he wants to get back to the past, when Allie was alive. Holden's trouble, at the same time, comes from his intelligence and sensitivity, as he notices how many people around him pursue false values, care more about appearances and conventions, and pretend to be something they are not instead of trying to be good. Kids, generally speaking, don't pretend- because they're not aware of conventions and others' expectations, they just behave like themselves. This is why Holden adores kids and has a negative view on adults- when saying that he wants to save kids, he doesn't mean saving them from becoming adults, but saving them from becoming hypocrites and conformists as he has seen many others turn into.
3/ Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (90)
=> No surprise. It should be up there right next to Twilight, though.
4/ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (53)
=> Another high school book. Why do these people hate The Great Gatsby? I don't get it. Please enlighten me.
5/ Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (41)
=> No comment, I haven't read this one. The common criticisms: "boring", "overrated".
6/ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (41)
=> I can see why- these readers either expect it to be a romantic, beautiful love story and don't find what they're looking for, or, again, see "identifying with characters" as a measure of the greatness of a novel. Why they do so, on the other hand, is something I don't get.
7/ Lord of the Flies by William Golding (35)
=> I don't like it myself, though "hate" is a strong word. Or maybe I do hate it. It's the bleak vision that I can't stand- in spite of everything, I still don't lose faith in humanity, and even though lots of books I love are sad, tragic, even depressing according to some people's standard, I don't like and can't accept the idea that human beings are evil, genuinely, inherently evil. To equate evil with reality is a naive view. That's probably 1 of the reasons I prefer Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky.
8/ The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (33)
=> No wonder.
9/ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (31)
=> Haven't read this one.
10/ Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (30)
=> Haven't read it, but I've read a lot about Ayn Rand's philosophy (objectivism). I should have included her in my post on literary prejudices.
11/ Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (28)
=> Haven't read it, but I've seen the film. Not hard to see why. As a friend of mine puts it, Gone Girl is not uplifting. Or as another friend puts it, the plot is full of holes, and does anybody notice how the women here are generally stronger/ more intelligent/ more scheming than the men, and when there's a man who is able to engage in the battle of wits with the "wife", he's black?
12/ Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (26)
=> Again, haven't read it, but seen the film. Probably not fair to judge a book by its movie, but I feel that the film has nothing in it. Nothing.
13/ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (26)
=> I don't get it. Why should anybody hate Great Expectations? I read this novel before discovering Tolstoy and Jane Austen, and haven't read anything by Dickens since then, so my perception might be different now. However, it should be said, while I'm aware that people often criticise Dickens for sentimentality and his caricatures and 1-dimensional female characters, on my part I see nothing sentimental in Great Expectations (and people know how much I dislike false sentimentality), Miss Havisham and Estella have enough depth and complexity (of course don't compare them to Tolstoy's and Flaubert's female characters), and some characters such as Joe or Herbert, albeit (almost) caricatures, have a kind of convincingness or plausibility in this book, like the characters in Dead Souls. Not all writers create characters that are like human beings.
14/ The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (25)
=> Haven't read this book. Please, tell me, why?
15/ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (24)
=> I can see why. There can be tons of reasons: the idea that it's sentimental, trivial, mundane, confined, only romcom, only chicklit, having no passion or intellectual depth, treating unimportant issues, etc. Bright, light, sparkling. Too much dialogue, one might think. After all, my mom hates Pride and Prejudice, saying that we know more about the characters from what the narrator says and what other characters say than what they reveal themselves through words and actions. A bunch of others, famous, also hate the book, such as Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain.
16/ The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (23)
=> Haven't read it. But it's in my TBR list.
17/ Life of Pi by Yann Martel (21)
=> Haven't read it, but I've seen the film. Why do people hate it?
18/ The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (18)
=> Haven't read it.
19/ The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (17)
=> Haven't read it.
20/ On the Road by Jack Kerouac (14)
=> Haven't read it. I start to realise that this post of mine is like a confession. Let's play the Humiliation game- I'll definitely win.
21/ The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (14)
=> Another book I haven't read. But I've read several others by Paulo Coelho, and can see why.
22/ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (14)
=> This is unfortunate, but not hard to understand- people can't tolerate the contrived plot, don't like Jane, don't like Rochester, can't accept Rochester's treatment of Bertha, see Jane Eyre as an anti-feminist book and a racist book, don't like the melodrama, and so on and so forth. Nowadays I don't like it as much as in my teens. Jane Eyre is a powerful book, but it's flawed.
23/ The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (14)
=> It was so long ago when I read The Lovely Bones. Even if I remember my reaction, I was a horrible reader then. But the ending's definitely silly- what do you call that? Karma?
24/ The Pearl by John Steinbeck (14)
=> I remember reading this book- whether I finished it or not is uncertain, the feeling is vague.
25/ Ulysses by James Joyce (14)
=> Haven't read this one, but I know why it's here- people often say it's boring, pretentious, etc.
I'm rather surprised that Madame Bovary and Lolita don't make the list. Thought lots of people hated these masterpieces.
Maybe some day I'll list the books I hate.
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Warning: This book contains adultery, miscarriages, mother hunger, depression, irrational behaviour, slavery, racism, child abandonment, suicide, murder, mutilation of a dead body, and more.
OK, joking. Couldn't help it, after reading this post:
https://argumentativeoldgit.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/trigger-happy-readers/
____________________________________________________
The characters in Jazz lack a sense of self. Alice Manfred is afraid of everything that she practices self-denial, suppresses her own desires and wishes, chooses the safe way, repeats exactly what her parents have done to her that she thought she would never do herself, imposes those hard rules on her young niece. Her niece Dorcas loses her parents from a young age and has hardly anyone but a strict aunt, whom she resists, and she does everything that she's not supposed to do, live fast, die young. Neither have a self, neither truly live- Alice's too busy conforming, Dorcas's too busy rebelling. Dorcas accepts Joe because of his affection and devotion, and the fascination of breaking rules- to have a secret affair with a married man old enough to be her father; and leaves him because he accepts everything about her, whereas she needs someone to shape her, create a sense of self for her, as Acton does. Joe Trace reacts to being abandoned by his own parents and having no last name by creating his own self and renewing it 7 times, only to carry within him an empty nothing until he meets Dorcas- the man who has never claimed anything now claims Dorcas and later can't cope with her leaving him, that he shoots her to revenge or to keep her to himself, so that she can never belong to anyone else. Violet comes to the City, the place of hope and the future, while still stuck in her past, and after 3 miscarriages she has guilt, like the voice in Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "The Mother" (though these are miscarriages, not abortions, the feeling is similar because for a while Violet doesn't want children), and later becomes more and more desperate in her mother hunger, more and more depressed, that she finds herself split into 2 and sees the chores being done instead of seeing herself doing them, just as people see her as having 2 sides, the Violet side and the Violent side. She never has anything- her father is never home, her mother Rose Dear jumps into a well, her grandmother True Belle is too obsessed with the figure of Golden Gray that remains forever stamped in Violet's mind, she claims Joe (Joe doesn't claim her), she lives in the City having nothing, no children, and later no Joe either. But if Dorcas devastates and kills Joe emotionally, with his murder of her, she wakes up Violet and sets her in motion.
Even Golden Gray, the perfect boy, the golden boy, doesn't have a self either. The moment he finds out that his biological mother pretends to have adopted him and that he has black blood, or maybe later, when he meets his own father and gets insulted for his hesitation to embrace his own identity, he has an identity crisis and his whole world falls apart. Knowing that he belongs nowhere, he finds refuge in Wild's world.
Monday, 23 March 2015
Help to rule the nations and make the age- No man has too much talent to be a musician
"... "With all my heart," said Mr. Bult, willing to be gracious. "I was sure he had too much talent to be a mere musician."(George Eliot, Daniel Deronda)
"Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there," said Klesmer, firing up. "No man has too much talent to be a musician. Most men have too little. A creative artist is no more a mere musician than a great statesman is a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We help to rule the nations and make the age as much as any other public men. We count ourselves on level benches with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence."
With the last word Klesmer wheeled from the piano and walked away."
Friday, 20 March 2015
Burnous and shawl, or Thoughts on Grandcourt
A scene from chapter 11 of Daniel Deronda (1876)- as Gwendolen Harleth comes back from a walk with Mr Grandcourt and finds her mother with Mr Lush, a man she dislikes:
This is reminiscent of a passage from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848):
And a similar scene from Mansfield Park (1814):
Coincidence?
_________________________________________________________
My initial thought is that Grandcourt, Huntingdon and Henry Crawford, who get the burnous/ shawl in the end, are all douchebags. And they are. But if I can see quite clearly Henry Crawford (selfish, vain, unscrupulous, untrustworthy, deceitful, insensitive... though charming, good-mannered, intelligent...) and Arthur Huntingdon (unprincipled, dissolute, hedonistic, self-indulgent, glib, treacherous, incorrigible, alcoholic...), I don't know what to make of Grandcourt. He's not a good man, that is certain- he controls, dominates and suffocates Gwendolen, chooses not to marry Lydia, lets go of Lush, doesn't care about anyone and doesn't give people a chance to explain themselves. But if he is egoistic, self-absorbed and selfish, so is Gwendolen; if he wants everything to follow his own wishes and prioritises himself above all others, so does Gwendolen; if he wants to control people, so does Gwendolen; if he lacks empathy, so does Gwendolen. Why is it that we feel sorry for and sympathise with her and condemn him? Because, obviously, in this marriage, she's the victim. But is he really cruel to her? Or is she a victim mostly because she is used to having her way and being obeyed, and now everything is reversed? Her suffering has to do with Lydia's curse and her own conscience, and if the theory I mentioned is true (abuse), it makes life intolerable for her, but both of these points are not really about Grandcourt, though he pretends not to know what he does know just to have the upper hand.
Another reason Gwendolen appears easier to sympathise with is her conscience. But how do we know that Grandcourt doesn't have a conscience? We don't know his thoughts. This man doesn't express emotions and doesn't appear to struggle with guilt, but he may. Why he marries Gwendolen instead of Lydia, I don't understand (perhaps because Gwendolen can be shown around whereas his relationship with Lydia was a scandal; or because Lydia is more equal to him, more like him, and thus harder to control), but he does make up for it by taking care of Lydia and their children in terms of money. This is another similarity between him and Gwendolen, who, after hurting somebody (her mother, for instance), makes up for it and eases her own conscience by giving something else as compensation or showing affection. Grandcourt isn't too mean and stingy to Gwendolen and her family either. What if he's not as bad as the narrator says? What if he's a kind of Pechorin- a selfish, amoral, hedonistic, nihilist, cruel man, bored with everything and interested in nothing, who deep down inside is more perceptive, sensitive and troubled than we realise, who at the core still sees his own wrongdoings and feels bad about them?
"... It was hardly a bow that Gwendolen gave—rather, it was the slightest forward sweep of the head away from the physiognomy that inclined itself toward her, and she immediately moved toward her seat, saying, 'I want to put on my burnous.' No sooner had she reached it, than Mr. Lush was there, and had the burnous in his hand: to annoy this supercilious young lady, he would incur the offense of forestalling Grandcourt; and, holding up the garment close to Gwendolen, he said, 'Pray, permit me?' But she, wheeling away from him as if he had been a muddy hound, glided on to the ottoman, saying, 'No, thank you.'
A man who forgave this would have much Christian feeling, supposing he had intended to be agreeable to the young lady; but before he seized the burnous Mr. Lush had ceased to have that intention. Grandcourt quietly took the drapery from him, and Mr. Lush, with a slight bow, moved away. 'You had perhaps better put it on,' said Mr. Grandcourt, looking down on her without change of expression.
'Thanks; perhaps it would be wise,' said Gwendolen, rising, and submitting very gracefully to take the burnous on her shoulders..."
This is reminiscent of a passage from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848):
"'Who was the gentleman you danced with last,' resumed she, after a pause—'that was so officious in helping you on with your shawl?'
'He was not officious at all, aunt: he never attempted to help me till he saw Mr. Boarham coming to do so; and then he stepped laughingly forward and said, 'Come, I’ll preserve you from that infliction.' '
'Who was it, I ask?' said she, with frigid gravity.
'It was Mr. Huntingdon, the son of uncle’s old friend.'"
And a similar scene from Mansfield Park (1814):
"Fanny's last feeling in the visit was disappointment: for the shawl which Edmund was quietly taking from the servant to bring and put round her shoulders was seized by Mr. Crawford's quicker hand, and she was obliged to be indebted to his more prominent attention."
Coincidence?
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My initial thought is that Grandcourt, Huntingdon and Henry Crawford, who get the burnous/ shawl in the end, are all douchebags. And they are. But if I can see quite clearly Henry Crawford (selfish, vain, unscrupulous, untrustworthy, deceitful, insensitive... though charming, good-mannered, intelligent...) and Arthur Huntingdon (unprincipled, dissolute, hedonistic, self-indulgent, glib, treacherous, incorrigible, alcoholic...), I don't know what to make of Grandcourt. He's not a good man, that is certain- he controls, dominates and suffocates Gwendolen, chooses not to marry Lydia, lets go of Lush, doesn't care about anyone and doesn't give people a chance to explain themselves. But if he is egoistic, self-absorbed and selfish, so is Gwendolen; if he wants everything to follow his own wishes and prioritises himself above all others, so does Gwendolen; if he wants to control people, so does Gwendolen; if he lacks empathy, so does Gwendolen. Why is it that we feel sorry for and sympathise with her and condemn him? Because, obviously, in this marriage, she's the victim. But is he really cruel to her? Or is she a victim mostly because she is used to having her way and being obeyed, and now everything is reversed? Her suffering has to do with Lydia's curse and her own conscience, and if the theory I mentioned is true (abuse), it makes life intolerable for her, but both of these points are not really about Grandcourt, though he pretends not to know what he does know just to have the upper hand.
Another reason Gwendolen appears easier to sympathise with is her conscience. But how do we know that Grandcourt doesn't have a conscience? We don't know his thoughts. This man doesn't express emotions and doesn't appear to struggle with guilt, but he may. Why he marries Gwendolen instead of Lydia, I don't understand (perhaps because Gwendolen can be shown around whereas his relationship with Lydia was a scandal; or because Lydia is more equal to him, more like him, and thus harder to control), but he does make up for it by taking care of Lydia and their children in terms of money. This is another similarity between him and Gwendolen, who, after hurting somebody (her mother, for instance), makes up for it and eases her own conscience by giving something else as compensation or showing affection. Grandcourt isn't too mean and stingy to Gwendolen and her family either. What if he's not as bad as the narrator says? What if he's a kind of Pechorin- a selfish, amoral, hedonistic, nihilist, cruel man, bored with everything and interested in nothing, who deep down inside is more perceptive, sensitive and troubled than we realise, who at the core still sees his own wrongdoings and feels bad about them?
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
New thoughts on Gwendolen Harleth: What if she's not a spoilt child?
I'm still thinking about George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. Don't you find Gwendolen's dislike and disdain of men quite strange and unusual? She doesn't like men, doesn't want to get married, doesn't want to have children, doesn't believe in love, doesn't like men to express their feelings for her (and if she wants a proposal, it's only because that gives her power, a sense of triumph, and the pleasure of rejecting it). She has a negative view on men in general ("I believe all men are bad")*. More than that, Gwendolen seems incapable of romantic love. Her feeling for Grandcourt isn't love. She marries him mostly because of the sudden change in her economic situation, her shock, humiliation and disillusionment (after the conversation with Klesmer), her unwillingness to become a governess and fear of being rejected and humiliated again, and also her care for her mother. In addition, Grandcourt intrigues her, because he seems different from other men, with that bored, languid air, and while she likes to have power, he's not a weak, submissive man that one can control, which makes her feel curious and see him as a challenge.
Her feeling for Deronda isn't love either. Her initial attraction to him is due to curiosity and wounded pride, because again, he also seems different from other men. After that is her admiration for and dependence on him, her loneliness and need for guidance, her weak will in important matters, as Deronda stands for all the goodness and selflessness she doesn't possess herself and doesn't see a lot of around her. Deronda is more like an idea than a person, so I believe to Gwendolen he's also as abstract as that.
Which is to say, she's incapable of romantic love.
Even if we attribute this to selfishness and egotism, we cannot explain her instability and outbursts. Several times she seems hysterical. Her reaction to Lydia's letter may be understandable, but her reaction to the picture of the dead face is inexplicable. People usually don't do that. That suggests some dark secret, some kind of trauma, some hidden wound.
Another thing is the stepfather. What has he done that makes her dislike him so much, and think badly of marriage in general? Nobody says that he beats his wife, his actions are ambiguous, unspecified. Also, 1 detail is notable- once Gwendolen sleeps in the same room with her mother and is asked to go out and get something, but she doesn't want to. That is mentioned after the passage about the stepfather. I start to believe in the possibility that he has abused her.
Too far-fetched?
Perhaps. But many unexplained details just don't fit together, except when I consider the possibility of abuse and trauma. And if that is indeed the case, I cannot look at Gwendolen the same way any more. Her selfishness, her prioritisation of herself becomes understandable and easier to sympathise with- a victim who has had to face things alone starts relying on no one but herself and only cares about herself, survival and self-protection. If it's the case, she's a lot more tragic than she seems.
*: though she does say that she hates people, not just men, I still feel that her hatred of men is stronger, more pronounced.
Update at 10.29 pm:
I've just found a more detailed, in-depth analysis of Gwendolen's behaviour that also argues for the possibility of abuse:
http://vicnovel.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2012/02/Reimer.pdf
Personally I'm a bit resistant to some bits in this essay. There must be some distortion- once we believe in a theory, everything seems to "make sense" as we bend it to fit our interpretation. Perhaps it's never in George Eliot's mind. But if we follow Roland Barthes and leave the author outside the picture and look at the work alone, I still think there's something serious in Gwendolen's past, more serious than her father's death and her stepfather's lack of kindness and the constant change of place.
Her feeling for Deronda isn't love either. Her initial attraction to him is due to curiosity and wounded pride, because again, he also seems different from other men. After that is her admiration for and dependence on him, her loneliness and need for guidance, her weak will in important matters, as Deronda stands for all the goodness and selflessness she doesn't possess herself and doesn't see a lot of around her. Deronda is more like an idea than a person, so I believe to Gwendolen he's also as abstract as that.
Which is to say, she's incapable of romantic love.
Even if we attribute this to selfishness and egotism, we cannot explain her instability and outbursts. Several times she seems hysterical. Her reaction to Lydia's letter may be understandable, but her reaction to the picture of the dead face is inexplicable. People usually don't do that. That suggests some dark secret, some kind of trauma, some hidden wound.
Another thing is the stepfather. What has he done that makes her dislike him so much, and think badly of marriage in general? Nobody says that he beats his wife, his actions are ambiguous, unspecified. Also, 1 detail is notable- once Gwendolen sleeps in the same room with her mother and is asked to go out and get something, but she doesn't want to. That is mentioned after the passage about the stepfather. I start to believe in the possibility that he has abused her.
Too far-fetched?
Perhaps. But many unexplained details just don't fit together, except when I consider the possibility of abuse and trauma. And if that is indeed the case, I cannot look at Gwendolen the same way any more. Her selfishness, her prioritisation of herself becomes understandable and easier to sympathise with- a victim who has had to face things alone starts relying on no one but herself and only cares about herself, survival and self-protection. If it's the case, she's a lot more tragic than she seems.
*: though she does say that she hates people, not just men, I still feel that her hatred of men is stronger, more pronounced.
Update at 10.29 pm:
I've just found a more detailed, in-depth analysis of Gwendolen's behaviour that also argues for the possibility of abuse:
http://vicnovel.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2012/02/Reimer.pdf
Personally I'm a bit resistant to some bits in this essay. There must be some distortion- once we believe in a theory, everything seems to "make sense" as we bend it to fit our interpretation. Perhaps it's never in George Eliot's mind. But if we follow Roland Barthes and leave the author outside the picture and look at the work alone, I still think there's something serious in Gwendolen's past, more serious than her father's death and her stepfather's lack of kindness and the constant change of place.
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