Location, Location, Location

Perhaps because I had Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, and Trees in my head (or maybe I’m just dreaming of faraway places), I began to notice the various place names in Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest.  There seem to be three sorts of places in the novel: real ones (i.e. locatable on a map), fictional ones, and purposely obscured ones. 

What’s remarkable about the fictional ones is that they seem to center around the Abbey and Adeline’s clandestine escape.  For instance, neither the city of Auboine, nor the forest of Fontainville (sometimes Fontaingville) are locatable on the map.  This may either be 1) because Radcliffe simply invented them to prevent travelers arriving at the location and realizing there is, indeed, no ancient Abbey there; or, 2) because she was reading faulty travel literature that included Auboine and Fontainville as such, and merely reproduced the error. 

There is another place name, however, that is even more ambiguous, and doesn’t (at least upon a preliminary search) appear in any contemporary travel literature: Caux.  Our first introduction to the city comes from the manuscript Adeline discovers in the dark chamber of the Abbey (later realized to be from her father).  He writes that he was arrested on the road to Caux, where there is erected a monument to the “immortal Henry” (128).  Certainly this would remain unremarkable, if the city had not reappeared upon Adeline’s escape.

The next time Caux is mentioned is while the Marquis remains injured in an inn after his skirmish with Theodore.  This inn is in Caux (212), which means that Adeline and Theodore arrived here, were retained here, and, most importantly, travelled the road to Caux, retracing the steps of her father.  Unfortunately, however, Caux does not exist as such on a map of France.  There are many roads to Caux (Rue de Caux), and a few cities with “Caux” in their names; nothing, however, exists as simply “Caux” to which a road called “Rue de Caux” leads.  This, of course, preserves Radcliffe’s geographical obscuring of the first-half of the novel, but oddly establishes Caux as a point of connection between father and daughter—between the scene of one arrest, and the scene of another.

What’s also perplexing about place names is that aside from using real ones, and making up fictional ones, Radcliffe also had a third option: using only the first letter.  This is mostly used during Louis’s description of his father’s journey to the Abbey.  “D—,” is close to Paris; “V—“ is south of “D—;”  “M—“ is south yet of that, where Adeline stayed sick; at “L—“ Louis seemed to be lost, but he saw La Motte’s scribbling on the glass and people of inn recollected him.  From there, he arrived at “Auboine.” 

Obviously La Motte wouldn’t want his persecutors to know the way to the Abbey, and thus the obscured place names would make sense if they were written in a letter.  However, he is speaking his retracing of his father’s journey, presumably not actually saying “D, dash,” and thus the dashes are Radcliffe (or the narrator) purposely obscuring these particular place names from the reader. 

What this indicates, then, is that though the story is based in contemporary France and the action touches several real-life places, the Abbey, and the events surrounding it were geographically unreal for Radcliffe—unreachable.  The reader can never actually go back and find it.  After the La Mottes left Paris, and before the action reappears on the map in Savoy, they had literally arrived in a realm of fantasy.

This small analysis of place names in The Romance of the Forest is fairly fragmented and warrants further in-depth research.  Quite a bit of comparison has been made between popular travel literatures of Radcliffe’s day and this novel; however, I’d like to look a bit deeper into printed maps of France, and (Mortetti-style) do a bit of mapping to see if I can make sense of the (partial) travel routes.  Further, since The Romance of the Forest inscribes locations both real and fantastical, I’d also like to consider Adeline’s methods and conditions of transportation between the two worlds: both seeming to hinge upon the charity/character of La Motte, and a helpful Peter.

Tristram Shandy’s Bodies

Bodies are all over Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.  There are dead ones, live ones, textual ones, bodies national, female bodies, male bodies, injured bodies, infant bodies, bodies with the wrong names; and these bodies are doing all sorts of things.  They are being born, dying, creating other bodies, birthing, begetting and carrying other bodies, walking around, running, getting injured, etc. 

The boundary of bodies is continually questioned throughout the novel.  Tristram wonders, at a point, about “the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the digestion” (59), suggesting a correlation between one’s mental/emotional capacities and the functioning of one’s body. 

But it is not only passions and emotions that affect the body; the process works in the reverse, as well.  Tristram’s father reinforces these ideas when musing “the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding…arose merely from the lucky or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul principally took up her residence” (106).  The extent of one’s knowledge, in other words, arises directly out of the make-up of one’s body. 

Bodies, then, as we think of them today, can’t seem to be contained in the novel.  There is nowhere to look and say “this—this is a body” and “that—that is a feeling.”  Angry emotions are bodily; knowledge of Descartes tells something about the physical construction of one’s body.

This is perhaps connected with the desire in the text to regulate or contain these bodies—to pin them down to an understanding of them.

Near the beginning of the text, in fact, we find Tristram lamenting polluted surnames.  The changing of one’s surname, he argues, is a “villainous affair,” and “will one day so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and swear, ‘That his own great grand father was the man who did either this or that.’”  Whereas names served to differentiate two bodies previously, this instrument is slowly becoming useless.  Although Tristram believes that emotions/knowledge/etc. arises out of the body’s constitution, he cannot see visible proof of a well-working “pineal gland,” or a disrupted digestive tract.  Here, he recognizes the need for outward labels—for family names that symbolize hereditary bodily traits.

And of course, the dominion of the body doesn’t stop at the emotions or knowledge-base.  Bodies are extrapolated into nations, texts, and various abstractions in order to make sense of them, and ground them natural science. 

For instance, in the novel, the current of men and money flowing toward the city of London is “identically the same in the body national as in the body natural, where blood and spirits [are] driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down;—a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which [is] death in both cases” (33).  Here, an imbalance in the nation (too much capital and men in one city, crippling the rest) is likened to an imbalance in the body, which imbalance arises out of the inability to regulate blood flow. 

This echoes Tristram’s description of Uncle Toby’s recovery, wherein “his recovery depending…upon the passions and affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to talk upon it without emotion” (63).  In order to heal his body, Uncle Toby had to regulate his passions—not let them flow wildly—and return to equilibrium. 

But then, if equilibrium is so important, what of this monstrous textual body?

The novel is literally named Tristram Shandy—is literally identified as a body of lack and misfortune.  It is also given a creator, and a life of its own, both within its pages, and in print culture.  Tristram writes of his own work that it is “digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time.…I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept agoing” (52).

While Tristram’s textual body seems unruly, unregulated, and uncontained, he assures us, at various points, that it is controlled.  What is interesting, is that rather than change the way his textual body is made up—to make it seem more at stasis—he changes the body that his text wishes to represent. 

The body of Tristram Shandy the novel is not a body at all, but a machine.

And as such, it is emancipated from the traditional life cycle, from indigestive emotions, from handicapping “pineal gland[s],” from unnatural birth processes, or grievous accidents.  Tristram Shandy the novel, though given a name identical to its (arguable) protagonist, is all of a sudden outside of the bodily world.

Blinded by Pamela

While reading Pamela, it made me crazy that I could never get outside of her worldview.  All of the letters we have are from her.  All of the narrative, her.  The portrayal of Mr. B, Mr. Williams, Mrs. Jewkes, Mrs. Jarvis—her.  This is especially frustrating when Mr. B and Mrs. Jewkes seem so convinced of Pamela’s disagreeable nature, and during Mr. B’s suspicion of another lover.  It makes one wonder if Pamela is telling her own story straight.  If she isn’t leaving certain things out.  But that is, I suppose, the power of the writer, and ultimately, why Mr. B is upset with her in the first place—he has the power to elevate her in marriage; she has the power to decimate him in print. 

Another thing that’s bothersome about the novel is that we never get to see the action as it’s happening.  Though it may seem like we’re voyeurs of Pamela’s near-suicide, or her emotional return to Mr. B, in reality, it happened days ago.  We’re simply reading it in a letter, written after the fact.  The Pamela we really see is the one right in front of our faces: the one recounting the stories, sitting at a table, with a pen and paper, and continuously, masterfully, letterwriting. Since we see none of the events actually happen to her, we can never quite be sure of their validity.  We must take her word for it—a word that is, throughout the course of the novel, challenged by Mr. B, Mrs. Jewkes, and even the trusty Mrs. Jarvis.

Certainly, the argument could be made that we are always receiving a story from a narrator’s perspective—never viewing the events except through their slant, and never really able to see behind their interpretations.  In this case, however, the narrator becomes the scope through which the reader accesses the story—the reader has no other choice.  In Pamela, however, we are actively aware that there are other sides of the story—other characters who see things differently than the narrator, and the narrator’s version of things is being constantly challenged.  In this novel, then, Pamela is not so much the scope through which the episodes can be seen, but the blind spot that must be navigated around in order to find the true story.

Of course, all of this wouldn’t bother me nearly so much if Pamela weren’t portrayed consistently throughout the novel as hopelessly passionate and impressionable.  First of all, she is fifteen, and though she has had a generous education from her Mistress, it is apparent in the novel that she lacks worldly experience.  Upon receipt of the letter from her mother, exhorting her to safeguard her virtue, Pamela is wary of Mr. B.  At first, she questions her mother’s interpretation; however, Mr. B’s actions in the summer house serve to validate her mother’s concern, and color her impression of Mr. B.  After this singular action from Mr. B, her mother’s worried letter becomes the prism through which she sees the remainder of the novel’s events.  She never again questions it.  Even when things are beginning to improve with Mr. B, and she receives an anonymous letter from a very suspicious gypsy, she still takes it at face value.  She never questions its truthfulness, never goes to Mr. B about it, never confronts the issue directly.  Not only is this simply irritating, but it also puts Pamela’s credibility as a narrator in question.  If she so easily latches on to one fear and never looks deeper (the fact that all of her fears were initially confirmed in Mr. B is really beside the point), how can she accurately and fairly portray all of the story’s characters.

But, that is precisely the point in Pamela.  The characters aren’t accurately and fairly portrayed, and the novel forces us (whether consciously or unconsciously) to come to terms with the stories we cannot read—the ones Pamela cannot tell.  We are blinded by Pamela’s story, and cannot see what’s behind it—the true events.  What is really being displayed in Pamela, then, is the act of writing itself, and a servant girl spinning a wonderful story. 

And then we remember that it was not a servant girl spinning.  It was a man.  And even if it had been a servant girl, it still would have been edited—first by herself, and then by a man.  So what we have in Pamela, is a novel with an intriguing story about social mobility and virtue, laid upon a secondary story about the physical act of writing, of editing, and finally, publishing one’s story to the world.  If the burgeoning of print allowed for an author’s upward mobility (if not with society at large, at least in certain individuals’ minds—which is all that is at stake in Pamela), how could one ever be sure that the story the author was telling was worthy of such mobility?  It is this question that seems to be plaguing Richardson’s novel, and perhaps this, if not an immorality in himself, that unconsciously casts suspicion upon her virtue, her motives, and her credibility as an author.

Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic

For fear of posting an entire paper  my blog (which seems so counterintuitive), I have condensed a longer summary and some critical thoughts on Max Weber.

His thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism—essentially that the anxiety caused by the uncertainty of one’s salvation within Calvinism prompted believers to prove their election through restless, systematic, unemotional, continuous works in the world, which works provided the perfect climate for capitalism to flourish—is a foundational one for many of the texts we read this week.

Essentially, for Weber, the spirit of capitalism is that spirit which selflessly, unemotionally, systematically, and continually labors for labor’s sake, which is naturally followed by an accumulation of wealth.  That wealth, however, is not the aim; and greed, for Weber is opposite of the true spirit of capitalism.

This idea, of course, seems to run counter to the traditional Catholic ideas of wealth and worldly pursuits as necessary evils—having money is only acceptable in as far as it helps one survive, and no more.  Out of this idea grew monasticism.

Martin Luther, however, disliked this reclusive lifestyle, and saw it as selfish and forsaking of one’s duty.  He thus proposed another alternative: the virtuous labor in one’s earthly calling.  The position one inhabits in life—the industry that one may produce there—was, for Luther, one’s calling; laboring within it allowed an individual to glorify God, while proving useful to society.

Though Luther’s ideas were certainly vital, Lutheranism lacked the ability to prompt its followers to do good works within a calling in the same way as Calvinism did.  Calvinism’s doctrine of predestination held that some of its followers were destined for heaven and some to hell—unequivocally, and irrevocably.  This, naturally, made followers anxious, and constantly in a state of uncertainty regarding their salvation.  To remedy this uncertainty, then, working—doing good works in the world—became a vital way to prove one’s chosen status before God.  For, God allows his chosen people to prosper; and, how could one prosper if one did not do work?

Calvinists, then, were sent into the world systematically, restlessly, unemotionally, and urgently, to produce, to work, and to prosper.  And prosper they did. 

Hence, capitalism is born.

Problems I have with Weber: First, he is unashamedly Western-centric, acknowledging that other nations/civilizations certainly invented, discovered, and produced, while simultaneously suggesting that the West perfected these inventions of the Other. 

This Western-centrism becomes a problem for Weber’s study when one considers the narrowness of his definition of capitalism.  Certainly, when one explores a capitalism with decidedly Protestant characteristics, as Weber has, one will find the origins of that capitalism within Protestantism.

However, despite Weber’ s shortcomings, his contribution to religious, economic, and literary studies (among others) are many, and the thread of his ideas runs through many groundbreaking texts.

“a View to the Sea”

Robinson Crusoe was published in London in the heyday of international trade and discovery. It grants its reader a glimpse of a world that changed English nationality and economy profoundly, which world was, paradoxically, very unreal and faraway. As Crusoe’s world of trade was both central and unimaginable to the modern Englishperson, the popularity of a novel that spelled out the particulars in great detail was destined to be popular. Robinson Crusoe’s popularity was not simply limited to would-be sailors or commerce men, but was gobbled up by free-spirited and curious boys, girls, mothers, and fathers alike.

One of the appeals to the novel must have been the sheer number of things connecting Defoe’s audience with the strange shipwrecked sailor. As Crusoe is rescuing goods from the wrecked ship in the story’s beginning, he provides itemized lists of what he’s bringing back. He lists construction items: “nails and spikes,” “hatchets,” “and…that most useful Thing call’d a Grindstone” (41). He lists homemaking items: “a Hammock, and some Bedding” (41), “Bread, Rice, three Dutch Cheeses, five Pieces of dry’d Goat’s Flesh…and European Corn” (38). He lists hunting items: “Fowling-pieces,” “two Pistols,” “two old rusty Swords” (38). He lists hygiene items: “two or three Razors,” “one Pair of Sizzers,” and “ten or a Dozen of good Knives and Forks” (43). He lists literary devices: “Pens, Ink, and Paper” (48); navigational tools: “three or four Compasses, some Mathematical Instruments, Dials, Perspectives, Charts, and Books of Navigation” (48); and, religious material: “three very good Bibles…and some Portuguese books” (48). And, finally, he lists money: “Thirty six Pounds value in Money, some European Coin, some Brasil, some Pieces of Eight, some Gold, some Silver” (43). In a word, Defoe draws his audience into his story through the material things that surround both them and Crusoe. The items which sit quietly on a shelf in a reader’s London home, which are also existant in Crusoe’s world, become portals to access and identify with the faraway foreign island and the everyday life of the unruly, ‘unrepentant’ sailor.

As such, the things in Robinson Crusoe take on a certain doubleness: always both foreign, outside their normal contexts, and keys to retaining that context. This is most clearly seen with Crusoe’s mention of the money he finds in his wrecked ship. “O Drug!” he laments upon discovering the ship’s store of gold. “What art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no not the taking off of the Ground; one of those Knives is worth all this Heap” (43). And yet, though money is utterly worthless to him, he, “on Second Thought…[takes] it away” with him to the island (43). Though money has no value to him on the island, he cannot leave it behind. It has value in his old world—the world Crusoe wants to return to; and, further, in the sphere of the novel, money has value to the novel’s reader, and thus serves as a connector to the utterly foreign world of the island. The hope is, of course, that one day, if it is kept, the money will be of value once again, as Crusoe reunites with his homeland—a connection that, though hard to fathom, bridges the gap between his alien world, and a comfortable London reading chair.

By way of ending, the same sort of double consciousness occurs in this section as Crusoe mulls over the things he needs for survival. He lists: “1^st. Health, and fresh Water…2dly. Shelter from the Heat of the Sun, 3dly. Security from ravenous Creatures, whether Men or Beasts, 4thly. A View to the Sea, that if God sent any Ship in Sight, I might not lose any Advantage for my Deliverance” (44). The first three things in the list—health, shelter, and security—are natural survival concerns. The fourth—“a view to the sea”—is the outlier. Though it may seem fruitless for a sailor, so obviously cut off from humanity (at this point), to be able to spot another ship, let alone attract her attention, Crusoe’s determination to always keep looking is vital—indeed, as important as basic physical needs. It is the hope that this “view to the sea” grants him that separates him from a human being simply surviving on a deserted island, to a civilized being stranded for a time. And, in terms of the novel, this looking out—this consciousness of humanity ‘out there’—allows the reader to connect with Crusoe and his world; to know that somewhere, as they gaze upon his world, he is gazing back, longing for theirs.

"knight-errand like"

Although centuries removed, I was surprised by the moments in which Haywood’s Love in Excess reads like a medieval, chivalric adventure tale. Of course, having just finished a course on Arthurian legends last semester, I’m predisposed to the genre; but there are nevertheless, at several points in the novel, striking holdovers from medieval literature that Haywood employs to underscore her narrative.

For instance, although the tale between Count D’Elmont and Amena certainly serves to set up his relationship with Alovisa, and does, in some way, give depth to his character, it really isn’t necessary to the remainder of the novel. It is, as in medieval tales, the launching point—the tale that ropes the knight into action that follows.

Further, throughout the story, we find Count D’Elmont increasingly unable to negotiate between an obligatory politeness towards and sympathy for women, and the usually inevitable misconceptions that such behavior gives to the female recipient. D’Elmont is, once he is forever committed to Melliora in the last book, the perfect echo of the Lancelots, the Tristrams—the desireable, but untouchable knights of medieval literature—men who must balance between the respect for women that chivalry commands, and the duty to love that courtly love requires.

And of course, there are duels.

Chevalier Brillian, after thinking his courtship of Ansellina triumphant, receives a challenge from his opponent, Bellpine, “to meet him the next morning” (73). And, though it is already obvious to everyone except Bellpine, Brillian decides he must fight to defend his honor—for “there was no possibility of evading [the fight], without rendring myself unworthy of her” (74). Though three hundred years removed, Brillian’s allegiance is to the chivalric code—he does not need to fight for Ansellina, nor to kill Bellpine. He fights because he can’t refuse.

Where these duels deviate from their predecessors, though, is in their reception by the State. While in medieval literature, they existed largely to reinforce the political structure in recompense for a weak court system, in Love in Excess, the duels are always portrayed in opposition to the government (the Count needs to hop into Ciamara’s garden to avoid the police after he defends Frankville, Brillian needs to leave Ansellina to avoid being charged with Bellpine’s murder, etc.). Thus, while these medieval holdovers exist in the novel (and are still deeply entrenched in society), they can only exist in secret—in concealed places away from the law.

Finally, a word about women in the novel. Of course we have our desireable women here, as we do in medieval literature—those who strike men with their beauty, and whose mannerisms entrap them to love. However, we also have female assistants, propelling the narrative forward. The narrative relies on helper figures such as Camilla’s Violetta, Amena’s Anaret, as well as troublesome figures like Melantha and Brione, to facilitate or complicate its plot. They are, in effect, the fair maidens that the “knight-errand” (237) meets along the road, who either point the way innocently to the castle, or, while he’s sleeping underneath the apple tree, cause him to forget he ever sought it.

There is, to be sure, much more to Love in Excess than this simple reading gives it credit for. Love, death, violence, virtue, moderation, jealousy, gender roles, education, are all fascinating conundrums whirling around our protagonists. However, it’s important not to forget (in part just so we can emancipate Count D’Elmont from his rakish reduction) the echoes of chivalry throughout the novel, and how the way in which the characters approach the above issues is heavily influenced by their medieval forbearers.

Introductory Notes

Hi everyone! Welcome to my margins. Here, I think, rethink, notate, conclude, wax poetic, sound silly--really whatever helps me sift through the complex ideas of the moment.

This really won't be solely confined to literature, though it will be a large part. I figure since my life is a constant mixture of balancing academia and baby, why not this blog, too?

For instance, this moment, my complex idea is bedtime. Specifically: how does one get a one-year-old, a four-year-old, and a seven-year-old to bed by eight when there's Oreos to be eaten, jammies to be donned, teeth to be brushed, stories to be read, lullabies to be sung, diapers to be changed (ok, not really in that order), and after-kids-are-in-bed victory dances to be danced. Really, how to do all that in one hour? It truly is complex.

And then after that, I can focus on Love in Excess and Margaret Beaufort.

The juxtaposition really is quite comical.

So hopefully you'll be as amused as I am, and enjoy reading my little marginal notes on literature and life.

Again, welcome.