Monday, April 12, 2004
And everyone lived happily ever after. Even though the chances of any one of the characters running into each other in the manner in which it is described in the story are infinitesimal when one considers how large the South is and how many people must have been looking for family members during this time period. However, because it is a story one must learn to suspend disbelief no matter what the writer wishes us to buy into. The End. GAK!!! Nothing like a dozen or so totally unrealistic and absurd strokes of good luck to make a great book, eh? I can’t believe how many insanely improbable coincidences happen within this novel. Of course, the most ludicrous were the family reunions. I mean, how can we really believe that Iola finds not only her lost mother and brother who she at least knew in her youth and so knew what they looked like and at least the general area they might be in but also manages to locate her long-lost uncle and grandmother who she has never even seen before. I mean, the South is a heck of a big place and characters just happen to stumble into each other amongst the millions of other people that happen to reside in that area of the world. I guess this is the reason I really didn’t enjoy this books very much—it’s far too fantastic. I was enjoying the issues and questions it was raising up to the point that the laws of reality began to fade away in order to paint the rosy-colored ending that the writer stopped at nothing to create. I realize that all stories have some improbable elements in them (it is what makes a story—who wants to read about some guy who goes to the store to purchase eggs and athlete’s foot cream?) but, there is a difference between an element or two and total abandonment of reality. So, Ebert, I have to go ahead and give it a big thumbs down.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
I guess the things that caught me as the most odd about this book both have to do with Wilson’s ‘mystical’ hobbies of palmistry and fingerprinting. I guess the thing that seems so odd about Twain’s adding the palmistry aspect of Wilson is that the lawyer seems like such a rationality-based character. Twain had to know that there is no basis for believing in palmistry other than personal testimony (the same basis that exists for the God that Twain rejects). Also, if he did have an experience that caused him to believe in this nonsense then it surely wasn’t as exact a science as he makes it appear to be in the book. Wilson is a well-educated and critically minded character that seems to have a real interest in the cutting edge of science but I don’t see any reason he should be interested in something not empirically verifiable. It just doesn’t seem like a good fit for Wilson.
The fingerprinting is only odd in the context of the court of law that Wilson uses it in. It is understandable that he is interested in this new discovery of science; however, it is not so understandable why the court accepts it. If no one but the defendants’ attorney knew about this new breakthrough of science then it seems to me that any respectable judge would want some kind of collaboration with another expert in the field. But, this doesn’t happen in the novel. Instead the entire court accepts the testimony of a very biased party in order to condemn one man and raise another up.Saturday, March 20, 2004
A Defense of Mr. Silas Lapham
I cannot help but notice how much uncontrollable rage people have against the character of Mr. Lapham. The kind of venom that has been aimed towards this man is usually reserved for characters like the infernal Beelzebub, Judas Iscariot, or, at the very least, Snidely Whiplash (the villain with a black mustache that always tries to tie the blond to railroad tracks and is thwarted at every turn by the valiant Dudley Dooright). Because Mr. Lapham is merely a fictional character and, as such, cannot defend himself in a very effective manner, I have chosen to become his defender and write this short apology on his behalf.
As far as I can see (and have been pointed out in class) there are only a few different positions one could attack this character from: hubris, lack of sophistication, the fact that he relies upon other people, and his fickleness in approach to society’s opinion of him. I will look at each of these issues individually.
1) Pride—If Silas were doomed to Hell for one of the seven deadly sins this would be the one. He is definitely very proud of himself, his family, and his own accomplishments; his boasts within the novel are always about one of these three things. Although I must concede the fact that he has more pride than is strictly necessary for existence, I don’t think that this detracts from his overall character. I would actually argue that this fault in his character is the same as his lack of sophistication. Silas, even in his intense bragging, does absolutely nothing more than we all do—he just voices it. Most people (Mother Theresa and Gandhi excluded) are proud of their accomplishments and children. We enjoy hearing how beautiful something is that we created, what quality within us is exceptional, or how our children are wonderful. We also know (most of us) when praise is warranted; we know that the painting we created is something grand, that our work-ethic is far above the norm, or that our children are as far from Quasimoto as possible. The only thing that Silas does differently is that he actually voices the things he knows he did right. He knows that his paint is the best thing on the market (at least until the end) and that his ingenuity and hard work has brought him to where he is. Mr. Lapham simply speaks out while decorum demands that he remain silent about his achievements for modesty’s sake. Thus, this flaw falls into the category of…
2) Dearth of Couth—Several times in this book Lapham makes ever so slight breaches of decorum. One must forgive many of these simply due to the rustic naiveté of Mr. Lapham. His bragging and such can easily be seen to stem from this naiveté. Lapham comes from a position of poverty where any kind of luxury is something to be cherished and his bragging can be chalked up to his joy of being able to give himself and his family the kind of life that they never expected. I think that the fact that he never really purchases any luxuries for selfish reasons. Almost all the things considered extravagant that he purchases can be traced back to something that he wishes for his family (except his horses, but we all need our little splurges). His money is used for his family and his family’s betterment never for his own selfish reasons (though he does really enjoy buying things for his family—such as the house). The other point where he shows his lack of sophistication, his lapse into drunkenness at Corey’s home, while being one of the most embarrassing and horrible lapses of dignity in the book, can be seen to have occurred for two reasons: he did not know he was getting drunk because he never touched alcohol and because he did not know how to ask for more water (this would fall under #4). Although this was humiliating it must be forgiven because he did not know any better. The following day’s episode with Corey is somewhat less forgivable. No matter what kind of backwater hillbilly town one has grown up in actually groveling like Lapham did has to be known to be against decency. I will readily admit that this is one point in the novel that Lapham acts like an absolute ass.
3) Reliance Upon Others (specifically Mrs. Lapham)—It was brought up in class that Mr. Lapham would never have come to make it to the position he is in without his wife. His reliance upon her has somehow come to be viewed as a negative aspect of his character. I disagree. Depending upon others for support and second opinions is nothing negative at all; in fact, I would propose that it is the sign of someone who knows their own limitations. If Lapham did not acknowledge this assistance or blew it off it would be one thing but he readily admits that without his wife he would have never make it. He loves his wife dearly and gives her ample credit for the help she has been.
4) Inconsistence of Views—One good argument against Silas Lapham’s character is the fact that he waffles back and forth about caring for society’s view of him and his family. It seems as though he is always discounting his reputation in society as though he does not care about what anyone thinks of him. I would propose that this is not true at all. Mr. Lapham is nothing if not concerned with others’ thoughts of him. He may speak as though it is unimportant to him but I believe, that it really is for one reason alone: his family. Lapham cares about the reputation for the sole reason that his family wishes to be included within the wealthy circle of people. For this reason Lapham does care about wearing gloves or not, that people don’t count his family as lower than anyone else’s, and that the house is just as grand as any other one in the “rich” district. Though he does care about the view society has on him, I don’t think this is anything to dislike him for. The reasons he has for desiring a good reputation are far better than most other peoples’.
Although I could go on to point out the reasons one should like the character of Silas Lapham—good ol’ boy done good, rustic character, solid integrity, etc.—I will not because this is an exceptionally long post as it is. Needless to say, I think that Silas is one of the most interesting characters in the novel.Wednesday, March 03, 2004
I am actually wondering how many people view the ending to Portrait of a Lady as a kind of tragedy. At first I was very disappointed that Isabel did not fly in the face of convention and leave Osmond. However, as I began to think about it more and more, the ending seems to me to be something more of a triumph than a tragedy. There are a few reasons that I view it this way.
From the very beginning of the book Isabel has been described as having a strong will and personality. If she were to run from this problem it would go against everything she has stood for in the book. By running away from Osmond she would be taking the easy way out (yes, I do think that running from a horrid man like Osmond must be far easier than resigning one's self to living a lifetime with him) and she is far too strong for that. Isabel never ran from problems or shrank from a challenge so if James were to portray her doing so here would be to undermine her entire character. Along those same lines . . .
Isabel is in real danger of losing herself to Osmond. Although she is far from the wife he wanted her to be, she is still being forced to conform to an ideal that he has set for her. Isabel is slowly losing her identity because of her marriage to the man. This can be seen by the way she simply rolls over and takes whatever he dishes out for the majority of the time and also through her relinquishing her dreams of freedom and travel because he does not want her to--I mean, she was almost willing to stay home when one of her best friends in the world is dying because he wants her to! I cannot think of any better example than that to prove that she is in danger of losing the person she was (can anyone really imagine the girl that first showed up at Gardencourt being manipulated like that? "'But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do.' 'So as to do them?' asked her aunt. 'So as to choose,' said Isabel (end of chapter 7). Who can argue that her attitude of demanding a choice is being squelched? So, to my point after that lengthy tirade, I ask what would have been a greater loss of character: her going back to Rome or her fleeing from Osmond? To my mind her going back to Rome seems to be her trying to recapture something of the girl she was. If she were to flee from her husband then Osmond would have succeeded in destroying all that there was of her 'self'. By going back she showed remarkable character and a desire to change what is going on in her own life.
As far as this goes, I view the entire ending scenes as a struggle for her to reclaim something of her own life. She had never really disobeyed Osmond before (whenever we cheered for her to do so we were always let down) but when it came down to it she defied him for the first time and left. This is a MAJOR shift in their relationship because it shows that she will no longer do everything that he demands of her--Mrs. Osmond is becoming Isabel once again. She has also come to the realization that both Osmond and M. Merle are using her for her money. This is a kind of turning point as well simply because it is her money. I don't think that in England at this time the husband has total rights over his wife's property anymore. So, she just acquired some real power within the relationship (though it is unclear whether she will use it). This and the other points I have shown clearly, to my mind at least, show that Isabel is changing the ways that she views her situation and how she is going to handle it.
In short, I don't think that James could have ended the book any other way while retaining anything of the character that Isabel exhibited throughout the book. She needed to go back to Rome because her strength demanded that she do so. To be Isabel she had to remain with Osmond. So, in a sense, it is a happy ending . . . kinda . . . 
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
What an amazing coincidence that the very thing that I was questioning Dr. Campbell about appears in the reading that I was assigned. In Hayford’s essay Unnecessary Duplicates: A Key to the Writing of Moby-Dick the writer makes the attempt to convince us that Melville went through several different stages in writing this book and the duplicate scenes that we see within it are due to his adding characters or changing the role of already existing ones. He makes a really good point. I can easily see that Queequeg could be deleted from the early parts of the book along with all the scenes that revolve around him without the book becoming disjointed in any way. However, the nature of modern criticism that Hayford adheres to brings up a question that must also be addressed: does it matter?
What exactly is the purpose of literature? Although many literary critics and philosophers may enjoy giving exceptionally long and convoluted answers to this question, I think that the answer is fairly easy: the purpose of literature is to tell stories. Those stories may have ulterior motives and agendas of their own, they may wish to give a moral principle to the audience or warn them of some inherent dangers in certain things, they may be polemic and attempt to sway people into believing a certain way, or they may be just stories. Regardless the purpose of the author laying pen to paper (or hacking away at the keyboard) is to convey a story with all the agendas, morals, or polemic elements that go with it to people outside of themselves. So, if we can accept this as the reason to write a story and, as such, the reason that literature exists, we have to ask if the modern scholarly approach is really as useful as it is presented to be. If the purpose of a story is to understand what it is that the author is trying to get across—what message they are trying to send to their readers—then how does the genesis of that book pertain to this? I am not trying to say that the modern critical approach to literature is of absolutely no value but I do think that FAR too much emphasis is placed on dissecting a piece of literature into the various parts. Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of what literature is all about. Knowing the different pieces of something is fine and dandy if it leads to a deeper understanding of the thing as a whole, however, that is very rarely the case. Instead we are supposed to be focused on the minute details that have very little to do with what it was the author was trying to get across. Hayford (my whipping-boy for the remainder of this posting) even says in the beginning of his essay, “From an integrative critical viewpoint the book gives a unified impression of wonder, grandeur, and tragic woe. But on close scrutiny many of its compositional elements seem, in the ordinary fictional terms, to be ‘a mob of unnecessary duplicates’….In this essay I am going, arbitrarily enough, to disregard the integrative view and take the second way of looking at it.” What! So, as is the case with the overwhelming majority of scholars working in the literary field that I have come in contact with (I can’t think of one that didn’t do this) Hayford totally disregards what Melville was trying to say with his book and, instead, delves into the way that the book came into being. I could have helped him out with that fairly easily: Melville most probably sat down with some blank pages and wrote it; now that that is settled can we please get back to the important stuff like why he wrote it?
The real question that should be asked when the final page of Moby-Dick is read is what the reader takes away from the book everything beyond this is meaningless unless it leads us to more and richer understandings about the purpose of the book. This may be where the modern approach is able to assist us but this isn’t where the approach sits. Hayford’s article, in lieu of giving us a deeper understanding of the literature, gives us nothing but a more thorough understanding of how this literature may have possibly came to be.
Okay, I think I am done now (although I could probably go on for quite some time on this topic).
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
I am becoming increasingly curious as to what kind of façade Zenobia has adopted in front of the Blithedale community. Hawthorne has given us every indication that she is being incredibly false about her true self but no hint at who or what she is has been bestowed yet.
Coverdale has twice lamented that she did not chose the stage over this “ideal” society they have created. He says that it is somehow wrong to waste her talents as a natural thespian. And what is a actor but someone who puts on a false persona in order to fool people into believing they are anything from a lover to a lion—the profession of acting is the profession of making a lie believable.
Not only this but her very name declares that the face she is showing to the world is false. Zenobia is her pen name and so has no reality behind it. In fact, although Coverdale obviously knows her real name because he tells it to the professor in the woods, the audience is never privy to this piece of information. What else are we to make of this except that she is being false?
There is also, of course, the flower. The flower is alien. It does not belong in the midst of this rustic community yet she wears it in seeming defiance of this world she finds herself in. Although nothing has been mentioned about this yet I would be willing to wager that it is a symbol for the woman who wears it.
Monday, January 19, 2004
The search for truth, justice, and the perfect pork rind continues...er...I mean *testing* 1...2...3...
