PDF: Spring 2013

palaver
/p ‘læv r/
e
e
n.
A talk, a discussion, a dialogue;
(spec. in early use) a conference
between African tribes-people and
traders or travellers.
v.
To praise over-highly, flatter; to cajole.
To persuade (a person) to do something; to talk (a person) out of or
into something; to win (a person)
over with palaver.
To hold a colloquy or conference; to
parley or converse with.
Masthead |
Table of Contents |
Spring 2013
Spring 2013
Note from the Editor 1
Sarah E. Bode
Founding Editors
Sarah E. Bode
Ashley Hudson
Executive Editor
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
Contributing Editors
Michelle Bliss
Ashley Hudson
Courtney Johnson
Dr. Alex Porco
Dr. Michelle Scatton-Tessier
Amy Schlag
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
Chief Copy Editor
Jamie Joyner
Copy Editors
Lauren Evans
Renee Sloan
My Dear Reader 2
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
Staff Readers
Amanda Coffman
Lauren Evans
Joel Finsel
Kitty Fiorentino
Emma Goodman
Greg Hankinson
Katja Huru
Jamie Joyner
Diane Morgan
Renee Sloan
Rachel Smyer
Caitlin Ward
Layout Editor
Sarah E. Bode
Cover Art: “Wild Oats” by Zachariah Weaver.
Inside Sectional Art: “Enter Here To Palaver” by Dr. Patricia Turrisi.
Thanks: UNC Wilmington’s Graduate Liberal Studies for letting us call your program home. Dr. Patricia Turrisi for being the mother (not of the Craven-persuasion) Palaver needed. Our Staff Readers—
thank you for expending your precious time and offering your expertise! Jamie Joyner and our other
diligent Copy Editors for keeping their pluck during the period of “Picky Perfection.” Ashley Hudson—this could never have been completed without your guidance and humanity. Robert Hoon for
all your patience when we pestered you about legalities. And UNC Wilmington for creating a campus
that encourages its students to explore and experiment, engage others, and for fostering our love for
academic enlightenment.
A publication of UNC Wilmington’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program.
Copyright © 2013 Palaver
Why I (Don’t) Write 5
Vallie Lynn Watson
Setting Our Schools on Fire 11
Joel Randolph Finsel
An Unlikely Alliance: Examining Narrative
in Reality Television 16
Lauren B. Evans
A Peek Into the Pericardium: An Interview
with Dylan Linehan 20
Sarah E. Bode
The Darkness of Midnight: Examining John
Berendt’s Narrative as a Work of Southern
Gothic Literature 26
Renee L. Sloan
Zorya Vechernyaya 50
Zorya Utrennyaya 51
Zorya Unnamed 52
Remnants of a Mythology 53
Heather Jo Divoky
Grasping Agency through the Role of the
Mother in The Awakening and The Scarlet
Letter 54
Jamie L. Joyner
Poetess Felicia Hemans: Challenging
Socially Constructed Promotion of
Female Fragility in
“The Homes of England” 60
Sadie E. Campbell
The Semiotics of “Wormhole Adventure Eco
Tours” 68
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
An American History of Wilderness
Perception 76
Caleb Stewart
No Soliciting: Violence Against Sexual
Deviants in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde 32
JoAnna C. Wright
Fred Chappell’s Backsass: Commentary on
Space, Place, and a Culture in Transition 82
Torchwood 88
Brian Caskey
Motherly Love: Wes Craven’s Reassertion
of gender in the Scream trilogy 39
Casey Jordan Mills
The Tree 89
Death Transcends the Artist 90
Gregory Hankinson
Like a Fish Out of Water 42
Lori Joy Peterson
A Cup of Coffee 92
Toni Whiteman
Food, Flowers, and Femininity: Masculine
Dominance in “The Twelve Brothers” 43
Jessica Jacob
Note From the Editor |
Sarah E. Bode
J
ulie Thompson Klein, who I’ve come to think of the Mother of Interdisciplinary, said that
bridging the gaps between disciplines should lead to a certain “unity of knowledge.” Palaver manifests such a unification of contributors with vast backgrounds, experiences, and
ideologies. Without this amalgamation of knowledge, Palaver would not have morphed from
an idea to a reality.
Palaver has been gestating for nine months, two semesters, nearly 36 weeks—sometimes
looming in my dreams, but usually it is a beacon on the horizon of my masters. I hold Palaver
close to my heart because at its foundation it is devoted to exposing and fostering interdisciplinarity through encouragement and the pursuit of always bettering yourself and your skills. I
know that as a student, having a driving force or opportunity outside of a course requirement
(like having the chance to submit to a journal or to present at a conference) helps my own
writing. By carving out a home for Palaver at UNCW, I hope to see students’ writing here on
our campus and campuses all-round the nation blossom.
This issue proved to happen in conjunction with a whole lot of hard work and a smidgen
of serendipity. As being our first issue, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just one theme,
and when we were choosing submissions to accept, we did so without the restrictions a theme
might impose. But upon a closer, holistic look, a meandering myriad of themes emerged.
Issue 1 embarks with an engaging personal essay from Vallie Lynn Watson titled “Why I
(Don’t) Write.” Then the notion of reality is challenged with a proposal of setting traditional
perceptions of our nation’s classrooms on fire, perhaps sparking our posterity to get up off
the couch (and stop watching that humdrum reality TV). Lauren B. Evans then jumps onto
the soapbox and advocates that reality television isn’t so humdrum and could be perhaps
an interesting addition to curriculum regarding cultural studies. Singer/songwriter Dylan
Linehan brings out an ethereal sensibility in her interview about her debut album Pericardium.
We then fall into a murderous rant, exposing gender definitions and constructions—including
topics of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and
the cult-classic Scream-trilogy. Authors explore gender and gender definitions with literary
criticisms of The Awakening, The Scarlet Letter, and Grimms’ “The Twelve Brothers.” Heather
Divoky, the sumptuously colorful artist, reflects on her ancestry with stain-glass illustrations
of the Slavic Zoryas. The theme of place is launched by a look into the poetess Felicia Hemans
and how England’s gender biases influenced her poetry. A wonky wormhole cartoon by Dr.
Patricia Turrisi then sucks us even further into place. Place is carried through with an exploration of the history and current trends regarding American wilderness, “Torchwood”—an
original eco-poem by Brian Caskey, and a chilling representation of the Tree of Life by artist
Greg Hankinson. We wrap this issue with a piece that I know many of our readers will hold
close—coffee. Author and photographer Toni Whiteman discusses coffee, its history, its social
constructs, and our fancy with the object of coffee and the coffee cup itself in her essay and
accompanying black and white photographs of the society we have built around the object of
coffee.
I hope you enjoy every twist and turn and idea and discovery in our first issue of Palaver,
and I hope it inspires a palaver between you and the pieces found here.—S.E.B.
My Dear Reader |
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
I
wish I could tell you that I had reached this moment deservedly after long arduous toil in
the editing room. However, though I may have conceived of something that would resemble the first issue of Palaver, it’s Ashley Hudson, Sarah Bode, and the many students and
faculty whose collaboration on reviewing, editing and producing the inaugural issue who are
truly responsible. I’d like to thank them and say in addition that they are the team you want
to have! I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when they came along.
I’d like to tell you something about why the inaugural issue is so special. As a bona fide
lifetime member of the Professor Nerd Squad, one of whose primary ambitions include promoting student excellence in written expression (because we’re made that way as much as
that written expression makes the professional world go ‘round), I wanted to showcase the
kind of reflective creative interdisciplinary work that is valued in the UNCW Graduate Liberal Studies Program. Sharing this wealth of talent with audiences beyond our classrooms is as
gratifying a task as any PN Squad member could desire.
The second reason this issue is special that I’m excited to tell you about is the transformation that occurs when a writer becomes an author. When students are called upon to put their
work out there for the public, something magical happens—their ideas take on urgency and
their words take on the power to persuade. The magic cuts right through the hemming, hawing and safely noncommittal word detritus that has a tendency to appear in student writing
that never sees a reader beyond an instructor. To the authors and artists whose work appears
in this issue—submitting your work to a gauntlet of reviewers and editors requires courage as
well as ability. Bravo!
The final reason this issue is special is that it is a profoundly original venue: an academic
journal whose objective is to present treatments of issues and topics that integrate two or more
methods of scholarship usually reserved for single discipline research or artistic production.
Palaver’s interdisciplinary scholarship does not take the form of serially identified disciplinary
approaches, one analysis following the other. Rather, the topics considered here are ones that
cry out to be studied anew, or more to the point, they that cannot be grasped adequately in any
other way but through comparative lenses and lights. I feel rather daring in saying that Palaver is a means of thinking globally. But in fact, issues that affect people deeply are not usually
simple enough to “belong” to this or that single area of academic study. “Thinking globally”
has this meaning on top of its popular connotation of looking at how different nations interpret human events—global thinking takes on relationships, between phenomena of all kinds
and methods of scrutinizing phenomena of all kinds, whatever the phenomena themselves
demand in order to be known better.
The danger of the interdisciplinary approaches we’ve invited here is that once you crack
open the door to exploring the relationships between things and ways of knowing them, it’s
very difficult to keep it shut. But why would you want to?
Yr. constant friend,
Patricia Turrisi
Director, Master of Arts and Sciences in Liberal Studies Program
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Why I (Don’t) Write |
Vallie Lynn Watson
assistant, I was responsible for twenty-five
students a semester, and now as full-time instructor, over a hundred. If I don’t do the job,
recently read an article about how a certain parenting skill in the 1970s and 1980s
I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, I don’t eat
has backfired: the way to assure one’s
and so on. I also enjoy it. It’s not difficult. The
hours are a lazy person’s dream. I’m a good
child had healthy self-esteem, many felt, was
teacher and getting better. I like the students,
to emphasize to the child that he is brilliant,
a genius, can do or be anything he wants to—
they like me, and it makes me feel like I’ve
accomplished something concrete and posiPresident of the United States, an astronaut.
Doctor, lawyer. I was surprised that was
tive that day. I could be almost satisfied to do
nothing but teach college for the remainder
a trend; I assumed it was how all children
of my career.
were—and should be—raised. But the result
My literature classes were different than
of this phenomenon, the article explained,
my writing classes: more rigorous, more
was that these children, intelligent as they
challenging, and less fun. Literature teachers
may be, began to feel that if they had to put
have exacting demands and are tough gradforth effort, if they had to work for someers, so the literature classes came second bething, it felt like they were failing. Because if
hind teaching.
they were such geniuses, nothing should be
I adore writing classes. I get a natural high
too challenging.
from being in workshops, the sitting around,
This resonated with me, because I seem
dissecting each other’s works, suggesting
to have an aversion to work. I call myself
new ideas, helping each other to create art. A
“lazy,” a term my social worker best friend
bonus is that it, like teaching, provides that
disapproves of. She catalogs the many opend-of-the-day feeling of concrete accomportunities I’ve been given and concludes
plishment. I would stay in school forever and
they must be based on effort, and I easily
just take workshops if
rebut each one—exI could. The trouble
plaining that luck and
Because if they were such
I’ve never gotten
timing have mostly
geniuses, nothing should be ismuch
paved my way. She
writing done.
points out that I’m
Once I get a story gotoo challenging.
about to finish a Ph.D.
ing, I usually enjoy the
program and says that wouldn’t be possible
process. I always enjoy the end result, the
if I were “lazy.” I explain to her that the reasheer completion of a story, and I’ve enjoyed
son I’m in this program—or the reason I’m
even more when I get a story published. But
supposed to be in this program—is to be a
often the only thing that pushes me to start a
writer, but until recently, I barely wrote at all.
story is the twice-a-semester deadlines, and
The consensus among my graduate
then I usually start something a few days before it’s due. I’m terrified I’ll never be able
school peers is that our writing should come
first, our teaching should come second, and
to write after I graduate. That without deadour literature classes last. The reality, or at
lines, I’ll never summon the “willpower.”
least my reality, is this: teaching is what I
Dr. Phil and my social-worker best friend
agree that there is no such thing as “willpower.”
get paid to do. For three years, as a teaching
I
2008
Watson | 5
I’d considered that the reason I wasn’t
more inspired to write was a fear of failure. Failure is a certainty in writing. A first,
fourth, or tenth draft will always be a failure
of sorts, otherwise there would be no need to
revise. Still, I’m not sure how much I really
care when I do fail at something. In trying
to recollect things I’ve failed at so that I can
measure how much it bothered me, I come
up blank. Either I haven’t failed at much, or if
so, it mattered little. Sometimes I joke about
having failed at marriage, but really, I believe
my ex-husband is the one who failed. So this
article I read, explaining that having to work
hard can feel like a failure of sorts, complicates the matter. I think there’s something to
it. Perhaps it’s the notion that I won’t be able
to produce art on the first, second, tenth, or
twentieth try. But if I don’t mind failing, why
do I mind the work? I don’t know if I’m a
good writer. But I think I could be with time.
I’ve been this way—lazy?—since I was a
teenager. I remember once carrying laundry
up the stairs, and I dropped a sock. I was so
resentful that I had to exert any extra effort,
any work, to pick up that sock. Maybe this is
normal teenage attitude, but I’m not sure I’ve
entirely grown out of it.
It’s true that my parents raised me repeating how intelligent I was. Teachers and
standardized tests indicated the same, which
forever frustrated my mother, because from
junior high until my junior year of college,
my grades were poor. I was having too much
fun with my friends to study, and I didn’t
buy into this propaganda about my potential. To this day, close to earning my doctorate, I think I’m okay-smart, but perhaps because I keep surrounding myself with highly
educated people in academic settings, I’m
constantly reminded of how smart I’m not.
A couple of years ago the writing process
sped up perhaps 10 percent. The increase
was inspired by hotel rooms. I went to New
York for a week-long conference and had a
corner hotel room with two completely different views: one of Times Square and one
of Central Park. An old high school/college
friend who I hadn’t seen in a decade lived in
6 | Watson
the city. Fifteen years before we’d had a complicated friendship and I—who rarely gets
nervous—was terrified to see him. It was
storming the night I got in, so he brought
a couple of bottles of wine to my room and
soon everything was fine. We picked right
up. After he left, I drank more wine, and I
moved back and forth between the two windows with my black and white Mead Composition notebook and took notes; which I
later developed into a short story that I’m so
glad I wrote—just to have those memories
committed to paper.
There’s something about writing by
hand (which I hadn’t done in awhile) that
I’ve discovered, or re-discovered feels good.
In a way it feels less like work, because in my
warped-from-too-much-school mind, work
is done at a computer. In another way, it feels
productive (which would seem to mean that
it is work) because it’s there, in hard copy in
my handwriting. It can’t be erased by highlighting it with a cursor and hitting the delete
button.
A month or so after New York, I went
to New Orleans, about an hour from where I
live. It was the weekend of what would have
been my tenth wedding anniversary, so I
decided to treat myself and get out of town.
The view from the twentieth floor spanned
the entire French Quarter, with spots of the
winding river visible through closer, taller
hotels. I stayed in the room much of the time,
ordered lots of room service, and liberated
the mini-bar, and I took notes in my Mead
Composition book on a short-short story that
I thought might make a nice companion for
the one I wrote in New York.
But after I got back, I didn’t continue to
work on it. I didn’t write again until my next
workshop deadline. I linked those shorts with
some I’d written the semester before, trying
to weave a narrative about a woman who
avoids relationship troubles by hotel-jumping. Procrastination had won again—my efforts were sloppy—but I was starting to feel
more curious.
I
remember the day, as an undergraduate,
that I decided to become a double major
in English and Psychology. I was proud
to tell people. Perhaps impressive sounding
academic feats interest me more than the
actual learning. It’s true that one draw to a
Ph.D. program was that one day I could be
Dr. Watson. The first couple of years of my
undergraduate education were poor; I was
more interested in frat boys and kamikaze shots than studying. Once I moved onto
the upper division English classes (and onto
long-haired, guitar-playing boys), I became a
little more interested.
The first fiction writing workshop I took
was mostly by accident. I had no idea what
a writing workshop was besides that it was
called English 445 or whatever, and I stumbled into the classroom of someone I didn’t
realize was a well-known writer of literary
fiction, Barry Hannah. I didn’t know what
“literary fiction” meant. By the end of the
second week of class, I was sort of in love
with this thing called a workshop. The teacher was pure charisma, and I’d never had a
class so exciting.
We turned in four stories a semester
and had the choice of having them read and
workshopped by class or not. Barry Hannah
assigned grades (A, B, C) to our stories. We
did not submit portfolios at the end of the semester, and I guess I didn’t realize that his
suggestions were in the context of revision.
I don’t know if the others just automatically
kept working on their stories, but I thought
that was it, I was done. I didn’t think I was a
good writer or had any future at it, but I was
hooked on the atmosphere, the community.
I took two undergrad workshops with him,
and when working at the same university
after I graduated, took two graduate workshops with him.
During the four years after I graduated
with my undergraduate degree, I worked
in various secretarial positions on campus.
I was bored and miserable. It took me maybe twenty minutes out of the eight-hour
workday to do the work assigned to me. I
didn’t ask for extra work, I didn’t care about
impressing anyone. met some people online in a hobby discussion-list and several
of us started talking privately off-list. Over
those four years, we exchanged upwards of
100,000 e-mails. I beat myself up then, as I do
now, about not spending that time writing. It
didn’t occur to me until very recently I was,
in fact, writing. I’ve archived the messages,
and sometimes I go back to September of
2001, or May of 1999, or whenever. It’s just
like reading a journal with others’ feedback
thrown in.
I finally got fed up with my life and my
marriage and thought an escape would be
graduate school. I wasn’t accepted into the
English department of that university, so
I applied to places within five or so hours
and was accepted to a few. I chose one in the
Midwest.
While in the M.A. program, I enjoyed
writing—or enjoyed the finished product
anyway—a but only wrote when I had a
deadline and beat myself up for not writing
more. I never considered sending anything
out for publication. I rarely read a literary
magazine, figuring that it would be above
my head. I had no interest in the publishing
world; it sounded like a lot of office work
and that’s what I’d just run away from. I was
numb from divorce and the only day of the
week I looked forward to was Wednesday.
Workshop. There was an ice storm in early
December of my first semester, and our last
workshop was cancelled. I was devastated.
In a workshop a year or so later, our
professor assigned us to write a review of a
recent book of poetry. I’d just ordered a collection from Amazon, written by a (different)
guy I knew from high school who I hadn’t
talked to in years, and wrote my review on
that. When the next issue of Big Muddy, the
school’s literary magazine, came out a few
months later, I was shocked to find that she
had included my review. I read that issue
cover to cover, over and over, and ordered
copies for everyone—my dad, my high
school English teacher, and of course, the old
friend. It was the first time I felt the itch of,
okay, maybe there’s something here; maybe I
Watson | 7
can do “this” even though I wasn’t sure what
often, but I was surrounded by people who
“this” was or could be.
were better-read than I. Many had published
As I was finishing my masters, I applied
in magazines, a couple had published books.
to some community college teaching jobs and
It took me about half a semester to realize
applied to a few Ph.D. creative writing prohow bad my writing was compared to some
grams, not really expecting to get into any.
of my classmates.
(My friends teased me, asking if a doctorate
I attribute the many great things that have
in writing stories was even a degree, and I
come my way in life to good luck and timing.
wondered the same, if going on with graduNot, as noted, effort. Mississippi Review needate school wasn’t just a way of putting off real
ed someone to work in their office my first
life a little longer.) I applied to the University
summer there. The work was typical office
of Southern Mississippi (USM) only because
work but a joy to do—busy work (which, in
I was technically still a Mississippi resident
my mind, equates somehow to concrete acand didn’t have to pay the application fee. I
complishment) in an area I was interested in.
was accepted to USM and one other school
My past life as a secretary paid off—as I was
and wanted to visit both before I made my
asked to stay at the magazine as the primary
decision. I drove to USM first and met with
graduate assistant.
the director of the program, Frederick BarAs mentioned, I knew very little about
thelme. My department funding wasn’t finalliterary magazines or publishing; I’d only
ized yet, and I didn’t
sent one other thing
My
friends
teased
me,
asking
know if I’d be teachout since my Big Muding, which I wanted to if a doctorate in writing stories dy review, and it was
do. He asked me what
rejected. From day
my career goals were, was even a degree, and I won- one, everything about
and I said I wanted to
working in the office
dered
the
same,
if
going
on
someday have a posiwas a learning expewith graduate school wasn’t rience. As I’d thumb
tion like his, to teach
creative writing. He just a way of putting off real life through and shelve
asked what I thought
other literary maga little longer.
was the best way to
azines, I started to
get there. I said—anrecognize and read
gling to be assigned classes to teach—getemerging authors. My first week I got to send
ting more teaching experience. Barthelme
an e-mail to an author I’d once studied and
said my thinking was flawed, sat back, and
that was exciting. When I started reading for
looked pleased. He said that I needed to imthe Prize issue that first fall and realized the
merse myself in writing and publishing. That
variety of work out there, I began to feel like
if I decided to enter the program, I would be
it was a world I could navigate some small
pushed, hard, to write publishable material,
corner of. I started sending out the little I’d
that it wouldn’t be easy. I wondered if he was
written and got a few things published. This
trying to scare me off. I went back to Motel
should have inspired me to write more! all
8, thought, “you’re on, buddy,” and decidthe time! but I didn’t.
ed not to visit the second school. If this place
Another lucky break: a couple years latcouldn’t get me writing, nowhere could.
er, around the time I discovered my love of
But, intimidated most of my first year
writing in hotels, I injured myself and had
and busy balancing my literature courses
shoulder surgery. Not only did I have a valid
and teaching two classes, I again only wrote
excuse not to write, I had a valid excuse to
the bare minimum. The workshops still prostay in school an extra semester. But in the
duced the natural high, though were far more
months I was unable to use my right arm,
intense. Workshops were riotous, hilarious
these little hotels stories tapped around my
8 | Watson
head and wanted to be put to paper. When
completion that each short provided that inI could write again, I got them written. But
spired me to want to keep adding on. I hardstill, at the last minute for a workshop, ally noticed when I stopped writing shorts that
ways.
could stand alone and was writing pieces
The little stories started out as traditional
that only worked in context of the larger stoflash fiction; each one striving to stand alone.
ry—not much different than writing a tradiFlash fiction felt manageable to me, sometional novel/novella. Like I was tricking the
thing to be written quickly and perhaps relazy part of my brain into thinking it wasn’t
vised, but ultimately a
as much work.
story that could come
I also played mind
The idea of writing a hunto completion and be
games about where I
dred or two hundred or three could write. My obmore or less disposed
of. Initially the dozen
hundred pages, then having session with hotels
or so stories I cobbled
long predates my colto
revise
and
re-navigate
the
together featured a
lection, but because of
nameless woman and
the initial inspiration
same story over and over
a variety of nameand the repeating hosounded
not
only
dauntless men, written in
tel rooms in the work,
a somewhat evasive,
I believed I could only
ing but plain miserable.
ghostly tone, and I bewrite at hotels. Travel
gan to think about how I could connect them
is of course hard to afford for a graduate stuto form a longer work.
dent, so I had another built in excuse to limit
Before these hotel shorts, I’d only writmy writing.
ten traditional short stories of ten to twenty
Good timing strikes again: had I not inpages, and I was never satisfied with any of
jured myself I wouldn’t have been around
them and only revised them and sent them
to fill a last-minute, full-time instructor posiout halfheartedly. The flash fiction, howevtion in the department and be able to put off
er, interested me, possibly another indication
graduation yet another semester. During the
of my inherent laziness. Piece by piece, they
fourth year (of a three-year program) I drove
certainly required less work than a more trato USM’s Gulf Coast campus several times
ditional short story.
a week and taught four classes a semester,
Once I’d aimlessly written about thirty
a fantastic experience. I knew for sure now
pages of the shorts I started to think about
that teaching full-time is something I can do
writing on to novella or novel length. Most
and want to do.
fiction writers dream of publishing a novel
I also know for sure that writing is
one day, and I was no different. But never
something I can do and want to do. As my
had seriously thought I would do so. The
first semester of full-time teaching turned
idea of writing a hundred or two hundred
into Christmas, I started studying for my
or three hundred pages, then having to relong-avoided Ph.D. comprehensive exams.
vise and re-navigate the same story over and
Rather, I tried, but I kept going back to my
over sounded not only daunting but plain
series of hotel stories. Now that something
miserable. Compiling and linking a group of
more important was threatening my writflash fiction to form a larger work seemed far
ing time, I couldn’t get enough of it. Even
more controllable. Through the shorts I crethough I knew I wouldn’t graduate if I didn’t
ated a not-entirely-linear, hazy sense of time
pass my exams (but wait, wouldn’t that be a
and place, which allowed me to move the
shame, if I didn’t graduate, and had to stay in
shorts around in the larger piece without as
school even longer . . . ), it was more importmuch concern had they not been fragmented.
ant that I finish my collection. I knew if I had
Mostly though, as said, it was the feeling of
to grab one thing in a mental fire, it would be
Watson | 9
my ability to write that sucker—not a Ph.D.
title.
I would not have been led to that state of
mind without just the combination of writing teachers I’ve had over the years. I include
Mississippi Review itself among my teachers.
Without that exposure, I’m not sure I would
have found the confidence to be a writer.
That the director, who eventually became
my greatest mentor, said at our first meeting was, after all, correct. My thinking was
flawed. The teaching develops over time, it
was the writing that needed immediate attention. And I didn’t write enough over the
last four years, by far, but have poked at
so many areas—fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
newspaper publications, presentations—that
I am not dissatisfied.
A
girl I went to elementary school with
just found me on the internet and
e-mailed. We updated each other on
the last few decades. When I told her I was in
school for creative writing and had published
a couple of things she replied, “That’s perfect. You always wanted to be a writer, growing up.” I was stunned that she remembered,
because I’d forgotten. I was also pleased; it
made me feel like a real writer, however little I wrote. And it didn’t please me because
I liked the title “writer;” I was pleased that I
was defined by an interest in work that I do,
in fact, enjoy.
10 | Watson
F
2013
ive years later, I have completed my
doctoral program, finished—and published—my hotel room novel. I am actively publishing short stories and a little poetry and nonfiction, am working on a second
Masters, and have a University job teaching
primarily creative writing. Last fall, I taught
my first graduate fiction writing workshop,
which back in 2005 is what I told Frederick
Barthelme, who eventually become my mentor and dear friend, was all I wanted to do
with my life. And it was thrilling, the best
class I’ve ever taught, but I’ve found it still
wasn’t enough. I still feel lazy, still feel like
I’m not writing enough. And thank goodness. That fear of not writing that’s plagued
me for years is my best motivation, my internal deadline. I hope I never lose the fear of
not writing. It keeps me moving.
See our Featured Artists page on our website
for more information about Vallie Lynn Watson or to purchase her debut novel A River So
Long. Or visit her website: www.vallielynnwatson.com
Setting Our Schools on Fire |
Joel Randolph Finsel
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”—Plutarch
I
n my third week of student teaching I was faced with diving into a dull lesson on coordinating conjunctions while, from the north tower of the World Trade Center, a toxic miasma
of black soot billowed out into the otherwise clear blue September sky. I had the television
on during my prep period and was still watching, transfixed, as my third period class began
to trickle in around the screen. One little girl began to cry. Her sister lived in New York, she
said. Another student, who jogged in just as the late bell pulsed and the second plane struck,
watched with wide eyes. “Whoa, that’s soOo cool!” he exclaimed, “It’s like a video game!”
Leading him to his seat with my eyes, I handed the girl my phone to call her sister, reassuring
the rest of the thirty-three ninth-graders that everything was going to be okay.
I was pretty sure the principal would make an announcement soon, probably instruct us
to get under our desks with our hands over our heads. But until then, my instincts told me to
wait and see. After a few minutes fielding questions, I finally called my mentor in the faculty
lounge, whispering into the phone, “What should I do?” Her response: “teach through it.” I
was to stick to the lesson plan. “Kids need structure,” she said. “This is no different than Columbine. Continue on as though nothing has happened.”
But I couldn’t. The little girl was having trouble getting through to her sister. How could
I expect her to pay attention to my grammar mini-lesson? Even more unsettling was that this
was the class when I was expected to execute my mentor’s ultimatum: give a student detention, no matter what happened, or face a C for the semester. To defy her, in her words, “would
be extremely detrimental for future job prospects.” Were we still living in the dark ages? I
wondered. Like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, forced to ascribe form from the
distorted reality of shadows cast upon the wall?
Although I was only a few years older than most of my students, I knew not to befriend
them. But what was wrong with being friendly? Apparently, the flexibility I allowed in class,
to my mentor, registered as a liability. Whenever I allowed the class to deviate from the outline
I had given her a full week in advance, she perceived a weakness. Did I have difficulty staying
on task, or was my willingness to improvise an essential part of the educational process?
In order for students to learn, teachers need to help them find connections, to build a
bridge between what they already knew and the new material at hand. When an opportunity
arose for what I considered meaningful discussion, I didn’t hesitate to step back, to see where
a tangential flow might go before bringing them back to task. My mentor embodied a more
traditional, authoritarian approach. As I observed during my first few weeks of class, her
lessons allowed very little breathing room for spontaneous interaction. Maintaining control,
above all else, remained paramount.
Having recently re-entered academia after over ten years of contemplation, I can’t help
but wonder: should empowering students to take back some control of their studies have a
place in the future of education? Would a paradigm-shifting concept, like the introduction of a
more democratic class structure in our public schools, work in favor of the future by allowing
smothered flames room to breathe, and, perhaps with some care, fan to a blaze?
But first, are we sure there is a problem with our present model of instruction? A report
commissioned in 1983 during President Reagan’s first term foreshadowed the current state
of our education system, stating, “The educational foundations of our society are presently
Finsel | 11
being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a
people.” The report goes on to state that if an unfriendly foreign power attempted to impose
the mediocre educational performance on us that exists today, “we might well have viewed it
as an act of war” (9).
An act of war! A rising tide of mediocrity! This is serious. So how have we been doing
Having recently re-entered
since then? In 2008, on the report’s twenty-fifth
academia after over ten years anniversary, the non-partisan campaign Strong
American Schools observed that “stunningly
of contemplation, I can’t help few of the Commission’s recommendations actually have been enacted.” Recommendations
but wonder: should empowin 1983 called for longer school years and highering students to take back
er, more rigid requirements (Lapham’s Quarterly 39). I’m reminded of Einstein’s definition of
some control of their studies
insanity: doing the same thing over and over
have a place in the future of
and expecting different results.
Let’s examine, for a moment, a typical ededucation?
ucation setting. Desks arranged in neat rows
facing forward where a teacher presents information, often using the blackboard to highlight talking points or occasionally a diagram, for
the students’ consumption. When the bell rings, like Pavlov’s dogs, students file into another
room, where the same scene plays out again. This structure, according to education historians,
is no accident.
For over a century this model of schools as learning factories served America well. Russian
satellite Sputnik propelled the United States to reinvest in math and science. At the time we
needed innovative engineers to catch up with the Russian’s technologically, along with factory workers to produce the parts (Marshall). But should producing factory workers still be the
most important aim of education? Let’s go back in time to ancient Rome. In the year 64 BCE, philosopher and statesman Seneca understood education as a separate entity from what he considered job training when he
wrote, “I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money…they
are our apprenticeship, not our real work. Why ‘Liberal Studies’ are so called is obvious: it is
because they are the ones considered worthy a free man. But there is really only one liberal
study that deserves the name—because it makes a person free—and that is the pursuit of wisdom” (144). If Seneca, tutor and later advisor to Emperor Nero, were alive today, I wonder if
he would think we have education confused with something else.
Undoubtedly, society has changed. Making money is a matter of survival, and plenty of
attention, most would argue, should be paid in that regard. But what of that which stirs our
souls and inspires a lifelong interest in learning? Seneca continued, “Geometers can calculate
the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distance separating
stars…Well, if you’re such an expert, measure a man’s soul; tell me how large or how small
that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you’ve no idea what straightness means in life” (145).
Let’s move forward in history. John Dewey, perhaps America’s foremost educational theorist, understood the value of instilling the right mindset in students when he said, “The most
important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning” (44). Reading on a
little further, I began to wonder if Dewey would agree with my former mentor’s approach.
As a student-teacher, I submitted weekly detailed lesson plans for my mentor’s review. In
retrospect, I am grateful for this requirement because it not only forced me to plan ahead but
12 | Finsel
also called for complete engrossment in the subject. I needed to know all I could about swords
and drunken heroes battling gangly bottom-lurking beasts in order to pull off a Beowulf lesson successfully. But how did my students fit into the plan? What might one of them say if
prompted out of their apathetic slump that might cause a ripple of interest to spread? And if
so, how should I handle it? By quickly bringing them back to task, or by allowing room for this
kind of spark to catch fire? My instincts led me to believe in the latter. In 1938, Dewey seemed
to agree when he wrote in “Experience and Education:”
Preparation is a treacherous idea[…]Almost everyone has had occasion to look back upon
his schooldays and wonder what has become of the knowledge he was supposed to have
amassed during his years of schooling, and why it is that the technical skills he acquired
have to be learned over again in changed form in order to stand him in good stead. Indeed,
he is lucky who does not find that in order to make progress, in order to go ahead intellectually, he does not have to unlearn much of what he learned in school. (44)
Dewey describes an uninspired education as something learned in a “watertight compartment” in isolation in order to pass an exam. He even goes on to say that students often have to
be re-educated later, to “unlearn” school lessons in order to “go ahead intellectually.” Why?
Because the learning process is “so disconnected from the rest of experience that is not available under the actual conditions of life. It is contrary to the laws of experience that learning of
this kind, no matter how thoroughly ingrained at the time, should give genuine preparation”
(44).
Fast forward from 1938 to 1983 and Reagan’s “rising tide of mediocrity” report. Now jump
ahead to the present. What are we missing? Dewey warned, “When preparation is made the
controlling end, then the potentialities of the present are sacrificed to the suppositious future. When this happens, the actual preparation for the future is missed or distorted. The
ideal of using the present simply to get ready
for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and
But how did my students fit
even shuts out, the very conditions by which a
person can be prepared for his future” (45). We
into the plan? What might one
prepare for our projection of the future, someof them say if prompted out
times forsaking the practice of being in the moment. If all that ever exists, exists in the present
of their apathetic slump that
moment, should we not also place equal emmight cause a ripple of interphasis on cultivating a sense of presence in the
unpredictable potentialities that can arise at
est to spread? And if so, how
any moment? By not holding to a rigid preconshould I handle it? By quickly
ceived form, we create the space necessary for
this kind of spontaneous interaction that can
bringing them back to task, or
lend to true insight.
by allowing room for this kind
How, then, can the act of preparation
evolve in the greater educational scheme?
of spark to catch fire?
Again, Dewey: “We always live at the time we
live and not at some other time, and only by
extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared
for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run
amounts to anything” (44).
Clearly, this educational historian sees the need to allow for a spontaneous variable when
preparing lessons. As an enlightened scholar, Dewey understood the value of living in the
Finsel | 13
present moment, of allowing for the flow of a classroom to take unexpected turns that could
shake the very foundations of what some teachers rely on as an essential mechanism of classroom management. By not giving students the power to participate outside the lines, some
might argue, there is smaller chance of descending into chaos. Yet the only viable way forward
I see is to allow more opportunities for our students’ self-discovery. Let’s instill an active stake
in our children’s future from an early age and empower them onto self-motivating paths.
Maria Montessori ran a preschool over a hundred years ago in a Roman slum. Her unconventional methods later propelled her to tour the world for the next 40 years lecturing on the
child’s natural capabilities. In “The Secret of Childhood,” published in 1936, she wrote, “We
can readily know what young animals will be like when they mature. A gazelle will be light
and swift of foot; an elephant will be awkward and heavy in its gait; a tiger will be fierce, and
a rabbit will be a timid vegetarian. But man is capable of becoming anything, and his apparent
helplessness as a child is the seedbed of his distinctive personality” (40). Montessori believed
in a child’s potential to find his own way. She continued, “Making use of his own will in his
contact with his environment, [a child] develops his various faculties and becomes in a sense
his own creator” (40).
Another enlightened concept: the power to create our own realities. We are not powerless.
In fact, all of us are full of latent powers many do not even realize they possess.
“One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child possesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly
perfect this inner life over a long period of time,” Montessori explained, expanding her projection of human potential by describing a child as “a soul in a dark dungeon striving to come
out into the light, to be born, to grow, which slowly but surely animates the sluggish flesh,
calling to it with the voice of its will. And, all the while, there is standing by a gigantic being
of enormous power waiting to pounce upon it and crush it” (40).
No parent or teacher enjoys peeking in that smudged looking-glass very long. But consider an alternative viewpoint. By shifting a child’s focus away from his or her innate developmental path, we are not only performing a disservice to the student, we are missing out on
a unique opportunity for our own personal growth. Montessori concludes, “The image of a
child as spiritual being becoming incarnate not only stirs us but imposes upon us new responsibilities” (40). Turns out, we can learn a lot from the young people among us. Taking this possibility into consideration, what should be the “new responsibilities” of a more enlightened
education?
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson faced this question before Harvard’s Phi Beta
Kappa honor society in his speech “The American Scholar.” In 1837, he predicted, “The time
is already come…when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron
lids, and fill the postponed education of the world with something better than the exertions of
mechanical skill.”
Emerson had the insight to recognize the oneness we all share. He describes a society
divided into narrowly specialized skills as one in which “the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a
stomach, an elbow, but never a man.” Scattered into pieces, man loses the collective power that
is greater than the sum of its parts. Emerson refers to this concept as a “fountain of power[…]
so distributed to multitudes[…]so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into
drops, and cannot be re-gathered.”
Thus, the inertia of empowerment is lost. The coals of inspiration are banked beneath the
pressure to perform well in quantifiable ways that show direct results. Are longer school years
and more rigid requirements, as suggested by Reagan’s 1983 study, really going to change
much when they miss the fundamental problem that society has evolved to where it’s too easy
14 | Finsel
for students not to care? It’s the same as trying to solve obesity by buying bigger pants.
Schools, according to Emerson, “can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but
to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and,
by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.” When this happens, students
“shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator…its beauty is
the beauty of his own mind.” Emerson insists on the concept of latent powers still untapped
within us when he said, “The one thing in the world, of value, in an active soul. This every
man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn.”
There is a sense of timelessness and inter-connectedness in this vigorous manifesto that
succeeded in planting a new seed of consciousness on this planet. But I would argue its emergence still lies dormant or in chrysalis form, waiting to take wing in each of our individual
present moments in time. If only we can seize it!
Emerson describes the mind “taught to aim at low subjects” as one which “eats upon itself.” Now, that would be a powerful form of mind-control. But to what end? George Orwell
described a future society in 1984 as one in which “power is for power’s sake” (268). At the
close of 2012, the United States education system was ranked seventeenth in the world (Pearson). Makes me wonder who has the most to lose if we were to invest heavily in education?
According to Emerson, when the soul is not “subject to dollars…the scholar is the delegated intellect…he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends
to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
In enlightened form, education is plastic and fluid. Nature is not fixed and neither should
our educational practices be. True alchemy takes place not in the process of turning lead to
gold, but in the process of altering a student’s state of mind. Do we view our students as vessels to be filled or fires to be kindled?
O
n the morning of September 11th, when I hung up the phone after receiving my mentor’s instructions to go back to the lesson plan as though nothing had happened, and a
third plane slammed into the Pentagon and a fourth fell in Shanksville, PA, I knew that
there was something terribly outdated about the traditional approach to educating our young.
Emerson insisted, “It is one soul which animates all men.” Perhaps when we finally let go of
our fear-based need for control and security, we will have not only released our students into
the forest of true discovery, but may also rediscover some of the same sense of wonder we too
may have lost along the way.
Dewey, John. “Experience and Education.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 44-45. Print.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” American Transcendentalism Web. Texas A&M U. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Marshall, Lisa. “Democracy in Action: Educating Students to Think, Create, Initiate.” Natural Awakenings, August 2010. Web. February
2012.
Montessori, Maria. “The Secret of Childhood.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 40. Print.
Gardner, David P., et. al. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform: An Open Letter to the American People : a Report to the Nation
and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education. Washington DC: National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983.
Print.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin, 1961. Print.
“Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment.” The Learning Curve. Pearson Plc, 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.
Seneca. “Letters from a Stoic.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 144-145. Print.
Finsel | 15
An Unlikely Alliance: Examining Narrative in Reality Television |
Lauren B. Evans
R
eality television shows have been controversial among audiences since they became
popular around the turn of the twenty-first century. In theory, reality television presents unedited stories about real people in their real lives. In reality, however, television
studios cannot keep to this standard and still gain financially from these shows. Studios use
gimmicks and liberal editing to ensure that audiences have access to the most exciting storylines during their viewing time. Some shows have even been known to write scripts for this
“reality.” Many opponents of reality television suggest that audiences enjoy it because of the
simple structures and storylines that do not require much critical thinking. However, I think
to understand the popularity of reality television, you have to examine the broader picture.
The popularity of reality television in our contemporary culture and society proves the overwhelming power of a narrative, regardless of presentation.
The phrase “reality television” encompasses several subgenres under its umbrella. Americans, in particular, have the opportunity to watch competitions, atypical family situations,
celebrities in their everyday lives, a variety of people living under one roof, and humanitarian
efforts, to name a few. Though the audiences of these shows all watch reality television, their
demographics and television habits can differ drastically. For instance, Jersey Shore on MTV
ranked number one in its timeslot for people between the ages of twelve and thirty-four in its
first season in 2010 (Seidman), while the majority of the Dancing with the Stars audience was
older than sixty that same year (Carter). For the 2009-2010 television season, nine of the top
twenty-five television shows on broadcast networks were classified as reality television (Andreeva). A large number of Americans from all demographics choose to watch reality television, but why? What could make Americans so interested in the “real” lives of other people?
This answer lies in the show’s ability to create a narrative out of a seemingly straight-forward
concept.
One of the shows at the forefront of the reality television excitement, Survivor, proves this
theory. Watching strangers survive together on a deserted island caught America’s attention,
but the concept should have lost its charm after two or three seasons of the same stories.
The showrunners knew that, so they made Survivor a competition. To survive the island, the
strangers needed to work together; however,
with money involved, the players could never
really trust each other. Each season, audiencWhat could make Americans
es watch the castaways create alliances only to
so interested in the “real” lives
betray each other a few episodes later. The executives and crew in charge of Survivor anticof other people?
ipate these betrayals and use them to create a
narrative that runs throughout the season. Survivor begins by presenting a biography of all the castaways, so audiences connect with them
in the first episode. Many of the castaways have personal reasons for needing the money, such
as a sick relative or their children’s college tuition—so they will do whatever it takes to win.
The casting directors find people with these motivations to make the show more interesting
and to ensure controversy. Survivor also uses gimmicks to keep the narrative interesting. For
instance, once alliances are formed, the castaways may be split into teams of men against
16 | Evans
women, causing them to form new alliances. Even if the show has no script, the directors and
producers always have a plan to get the narrative they want.
The people behind Survivor use a puppetmaster mentality to create the narrative they
want, but shows like The Hills go even further. The Hills started as a simple premise: following
Lauren Conrad and her friends through their lives as single women in their twenties in Los
Angeles. The show followed the cast through their hookups, breakups, jobs, and friendships
by forcing the women to interact on-camera as often as possible. Because filming the women
twenty four hours a day would be costly, the crew would have Lauren and her friends re-enact
any situations the audience needed to see. Soon, the crew went even further to instigate fights
and relationships until the show could no longer be considered “real.” Americans knew this,
yet still watched the show. Lauren and the other women gave countless interviews stating
several instances when the show took extra liberties in editing and filming their lives. The cast
mentioned scripts in some interviews and even referred to themselves as separate from their
characters. Though this should have driven viewers away, the show continued for six seasons.
The audience hooked onto the narrative beginning in season one and wanted to see it through
until the end. The writers for the show created characters the audiences loved and hated and
created arcs for the characters to grow and change just like a scripted show. Sometimes these
arcs had no basis in reality, but drew in audiences anyway.
Even American Idol, which presents itself as a straightforward singing competition, uses
narrative to draw an audience. Once the live performances begin, millions of Americans vote
each week for the singers they believe to be the best performers. The early stages of judging
between the millions of auditions have the potential to be tediously boring, but the people
in charge of American Idol use these first few weeks to begin the narratives of all contestants
they view to have potential. The audience learns about their dreams and their lives before the
show, which causes them to form bonds with specific contestants. Audiences watch the show
each week to learn more about their favorite contestants and to watch them grow and change
through the lens provided by the show. The performers on the show form fan bases first from
their stories, then those fan bases expand with their performances. The worst singers in the
competition oftentimes end up with recording contracts based solely on the personal connection formed between the contestants and millions of viewers.
Several shows use basic narratives to draw in viewers. Competitive shows that involve
a monetary prize often showcase contestants with a specific need for the money like medical
bills, student loans, or struggling family members. Some shows exploit budding romantic
relationships when the cast presents this opportunity. Audiences love to watch good triumph
over evil, especially when an underdog is involved, so many showrunners edit to depict this
dichotomy. Though reality shows use real people, the people are treated much the same as
characters in a fictional story. The show’s writers and directors insert the right elements and
show the right scenes to create characters for audiences to identify with, and then do the same
to create a villain to act as the opposing force. The push and pull between these opposing
forces keeps the audience coming back to watch their favorite characters overcome whatever
obstacles they may face to gain whatever they are looking for.
In competition-based reality shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars,
and American Idol, the goal is obvious from the beginning: each competitor wants to be the last
person standing at the end of the season. However, the competitors that will do whatever it
takes to win are often framed as villains, even though the point is to win. Audiences want to
see kindness and teamwork even in the midst of competition, so directors and editors edit to
make sure audiences see this teamwork from some competitors and not from others. Showing competitors with opposing strategies forces a side by side comparison and provides the
audience with the conflict and drama needed to keep them entertained. Reality shows also
Evans | 17
use their knowledge about the competitors’ personal lives and points of view to create drama.
For example, someone with acrophobia might be faced with a task that involves heights, or a
country music singer might have to sing a hip-hop song. Watching a competitor face personal
obstacles gives the audience something they can understand and cheer for, which keeps them
involved in this narrative.
Reality shows not based on competition to some extent use the same strategy. The Real
Housewives franchise, The Hills, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Jersey Shore, and other shows that
present people supposedly living their normal lives, also create conflict to keep their audience
intrigued. The shows frame some cast members to look like villains and some to look like the
hero for audiences to support. The shows also initiate and grow romantic relationships that
may not exist outside of the confines of this new reality they have created for the cast. Audiences want to see heroes and heroines succeed and couples defy odds and obstacles to be together, which mimics long standing narratives like Beowulf, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet and others dating back to before television existed. Reality shows have just placed a new
label on the same stories people have loved for centuries.
Many critics of this genre insist reality television makes its audiences dumber. For instance, in Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, author Lisa
Bloom claims Americans have “veered off track into a culture of empty-headed narcissism”
and challenges women to spend more time thinking critically than time watching “an increasingly bloated, empty diet of reality television shows” (3-4). I would challenge this thinking
with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s speech “The American Scholar.” Emerson says, “We all know,
that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the
broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed
by any knowledge” (92). Reality shows give
Audiences want to see heroes audiences a view into many experiences they
would not be privy to in their own reality. For
and heroines succeed and
instance, The Amazing Race presents a worldcouples defy odds and obsta- wide-race/scavenger-hunt hybrid that allows
audience to see places and cultures it may
cles to be together, which mim- the
never have the chance to experience first-hand.
Though this knowledge may not fall into typiics long standing narratives
cal areas of academia, is it accurate to say audilike Beowulf, William Shakeences gain nothing from watching reality television?
speare’s Romeo and Juliet
like Jersey Shore and The Hills proand others dating back to be- videShows
audiences with a look into subcultures
they
may
never have the opportunity to see.
fore television existed. Reality
promiscuity and partying in nightshows have just placed a new Although
clubs show sides of society many people are
label on the same stories peo- uninterested in, these reality shows give audiences a chance to better understand these
ple have loved for centuries.
life choices if they choose to watch. Cooking
shows like Chopped and Top Chef provide an insight into the world of cooking for anyone who
wants the knowledge. These television shows should not go so far as to replace other forms of
education, but they can be used as supplemental materials. Reading about a different culture
or lifestyle choice in a book may not provide the same insight as actually seeing this culture in
action. Why just read about life with multiple children when you can also watch reruns of Jon
and Kate Plus Eight and see for yourself?
18 | Evans
Our contemporary society consistently invents new ways to present the same narratives
we have seen and heard for centuries. Reality television executives saw the opportunity to
present real people as their characters and to make the narratives feel more real for the common individual. No matter how liberally the show changes in the editing room or how true
the characters onscreen connect with reality, one thread remains constant in weaving together
all reality shows in the genre: the narrative. Whether these age-old narratives imitate the real
lives presented or real lives imitate the narratives often goes unexamined, because the lives
on display, real or embellished, continue to captivate audiences week after week, season after
season.
A Peek Into the Pericardium: An Interview with Dylan Linehan |
Sarah E. Bode
D
ylan Linehan is one of those musicians who when you hear them for
the first time they put you in a state
of raw awe. When she performs she seems to
transcend the stage and become this beacon
for the ethereal.
I recently listened to Linehan’s debut album Pericardium while speeding down College Road and had to pull over because I had
to shut my eyes. I had to really listen. I instantly put myself in the keys of her piano—I
felt her joy, her pain, her immense pleasure
and displeasure. Linehan astounds me with
her ability to portray such raw and taboo
thoughts and feelings.
Now, a solid month after snagging the
album at Linehan’s CD Release Party, when
I speed down College Road I belt the lyrics
along with her, twiddle my fingers with the
violin, and tap the heel of my hand against
my gear-stick along with the drums. And I
catch myself still in awe in those suspiciously
silent seconds between songs.
Upon perhaps the thirtieth time listening
to Linehan’s “For Us,” I knew I had to delve
behind this artist’s pericardium.
ing, and it was gone moments after I stopped
singing it. Now I always carry around some
sort of recording device because you never
know when you’re going to come up the next
song. What really inspires the music for me
is listening within. I never know when I’m
going to receive my next melody or phrase
that will birth the next song, but I practice
quiet listening always. I remember when I
was in college, I’d get a lot of my ideas while
in class. I’d run out to the bathroom to record
the melodies, which would always be awkward because the people in the bathroom
would think I was crazy, and the people in
the classroom would think I always had to
go to the bathroom! I try to always go where
the music takes me; I view our bodies as the
Turn page to listen to Linehan’s song “For Us.”
Sarah E. Bode: I tend to find inspiration spontaneously and sporadically throughout life. I
am not one of those artists/writers who can
methodically find inspiration in the same action or place over and over again. How about
you? What was the first thing that inspired
you to write your own songs?
Andreeva, Nellie. “Full Series Rankings For The 2009-10 Broadcast Season.” Deadline.com. PMC, 27 May 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Bloom, Lisa. Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. New York City: Vanguard Press, 2011. Print.
Carter, Kelley L. “‘Dancing With The Stars’ Tops ‘American Idol’ In Ratings For First Time.” MTV. Viacom International Inc, 6 April 2010.
Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” American Transcendentalism Web. Texas A&M U. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Seidman, Robert. “MTV Is the #1 Cable Network for 12-34 Year Olds.” TV by the Numbers. TV By The Numbers, 1 April 2010. Web. 6 Dec.
2012.
Evans | 19
Dylan Linehan: The desire to channel music
was present ever since I can remember. The
first song I wrote was about some dolphins
that were swimming next to the boat I used to
live on with my family. I believe I must have
been three or four. My parents tried recording it, but like most song ideas, they are fleet-
20 | Bode
Offering (above) shows Linehan clutching a pig’s
heart, photographed by Kelsey Ann Linehan.
“For Us”
Written by Dylan Linehan
Available on her debut album: Pericardium
It’s been a long time since we talked face
to face,
You’ve kept that kindness in your eyes
through the love and the hate,
And I’ve been meaning to say, it don’t matter to me if you’re tall or if you’re strong,
As long as we get along...
We’ve got some roads to unwind, but
what’s worse is behind,
If you’re in then I’m in too, I can’t do this
without you…
Chorus:
For us, it’s for us.
For us, it’s for us.
My heart beats for you, without words asks
to change,
You kept filling up those empty holes with
whatever you’d attain,
And I’d be lying if I didn’t say we are the
result of our pain,
I’ll be quiet to hear you, let’s let go of our
shame…
The impulses, id, you follow, well I won’t let
us be swallowed,
By our mind we’re confined now let’s break
free together…
Chorus
No matter what happens, we are bound to
one another,
I couldn’t imagine any better for each other
Chorus
instruments of our souls, and I try to be the
best channel and instrument I can be so when
I do get that melody or lyric inspiration, I am
not held back. I sometimes feel like this really
isn’t my music…it’s from another place. That
is my inspiration.
timeless, too. Times change, but emotions
and the way they are evoked do not.
SB: And now, for a, perhaps, more personal
question: who is the “us” in “For Us”?
DL: One thing I always tell my piano students is, when you’re writing music there is
DL: I have been involved in film since I was a
no such thing as a “wrong note,” not when
lot younger and the combination of all aspects
it comes from the heart. When I’m not workof art is certainly what has always drawn me
ing on a specific song, I get into a meditato it. I don’t agree with placing art in a hitive, cleared state and
erarchy of which is
just plunk my hands Stories are timeless, and if the more important than
on the keys and let
others, though. That’s
music
is
done
in
a
way
that
my heart do the rest.
like asking which
I don’t think about it speaks universally, then it can sense is most importor get worried about
ant: sight, smell? They
become timeless, too. Times are all equally importhitting a wrong note. I
sit back and watch my change, but emotions and the ant tools in helping us
fingers move, I let the
interpret the world in
way they are evoked do not. our own unique ways.
music take over. I always record these sessions. All of my songs begin this way. I guess
As far as what music contributes to film,
you could call it a stream of consciousness.
I feel like music is the glue that ties everyThen I go through it and take the parts I like,
thing together. It sends the audience in any
and by that time, the vocal melody begins to
emotional direction the scene needs to go
form and I discover the idea behind the song
in. I’ve had the opportunity to score several
that was trying to be released all along. Evshort films and, as I said above, my first feaery song is a unique journey. But like some
ture film, and it’s fun to play around with the
things in life, you don’t quite know where
many directions you can take a scene in. It’s
you’re going when you’re following your
touchy though, because eliciting the approheart, but when you get there, you realized
priate kind of emotion always requires great
you knew all along.
sensitivity. Sometimes it’s hard to get it just
right. You kind of have to be a new “characSB: We heard “For Us” was in the film Don’t
ter” that’s interacting with the actors in the
Know Yet—congratulations! What was it like
scene that’s not seen, just heard.
to have your song mixed with the art of film?
SB: I tend to sing everywhere—like in the
DL: Oh man, it is an incredible feeling. It’s
car, in the shower, in bed, in the kitchen…
amazing to see something like that come towell, you get the idea. Do you spontaneously
gether. I was surprised at how well it fit with
break out in song or is this considered bad
the vibe of the scene it’s in. It’s the last seform?
quence of the film, and the energy is lively.
I actually ended up scoring a lot of the film
DL: Oh, yes I do! I sing frequently throughwith music from my album. I love writing
out the day, even when I talk to people at
cinematic-type music in general and try to
work, apparently. They recently pointed out
include that style in my music anyways. I
that I sing my hellos and goodbyes and sevhope I get the opportunity to do more film
eral things in-between. But I have learned to
DL: I wrote “For Us” during the hardest time
in my life. I was in college and struggling
with the balance of practicing piano hours
and hours a day with tests and homework
on top of that, fostering seven sick hound
puppies, trying to keep my relationships
with others the best I could, and on top of
that ended up having mono for nine months.
I went from running half marathons to being
in a sick and unhealthy body that couldn’t
take me on a twenty minute walk without
becoming exhausted. I felt trapped in my
own body—a body that had become foreign
to me. I wrote this song as a theme to get me
out of the rut, to form an alliance with myself
and focus on the most important relationship
I believe we are all here to work on: with us
and ourselves. It’s for us. All of these experiences we have good and “bad.” It’s for our
personal learning experiences to grow and
learn to love and appreciate ourselves.
SB: It seems like your songs are stories then?
DL: They all are inspired by stories, and then
as I write them they start taking a new form
and creating their own story as they go along.
My favorite kinds of albums tell stories within a story; a themed album or musical. That’s
definitely my next project. I grew up playing
and singing with my family to the music of
my heritage—old time music. Each song is
basically another way to pass down stories
of things that happened a long time ago. I try
to draw from that when I write. I want people down the road to understand what it was
like to be alive during this time. Stories are
timeless, and if the music is done in a way
that speaks universally, then it can become
Bode | 21
SB: Can you explain your creation/composing process—do you have any quirky habits
when you’re “in the zone?”
22 | Bode
scoring in the future.
SB: In an interview I did eons ago with Mariana Johnson, professor in UNC Wilmington’s Film Studies Department, she said film
is the highest art, because it can encompass
all other art forms. Where do you place music in the hierarchy of the art?
the end of the class, he asked me if I could
play my song “Carry On” with him at Kenan
Auditorium during his show! I hadn’t been
to UNCW in a while, so coming back to perform on that stage was surreal. It was also
the biggest show I had ever done. We ended
up rehearsing that song once—fifteen minSB: You’ve performed with some very talutes before going on
ented musicians—like
DBR and UNCW’s Whatever goes on in the mind stage! I actually preChris Johns. How sur- to create art is wild, wild stuff. ferred that because it
made it so much more
real was playing with
And I like that some of it isn’t raw. We were comsomeone who has
municating through
touched so many othreally explainable.
the music and there
er talented musicians?
was not a whole lot
of thinking involved—just feeling the music
DL: When I worked with DBR, it was a very
communicate through us.
powerful and emotional experience for me.
My vocal coach, Marina De Ratmiroff, who
When I was a cellist short for my CD release
is a performer who also teaches at UNCW,
party, I asked Chris Johns if he could recset up a master class session where I would
ommend a student, and I was so surprised
play two songs in front of her class for DBR,
when he offered to play the music himself! I
who was coming through town on tour. At
remember the first time we worked through
Keys to My Heart (below), photograph by
the music together…I got really mad. I was
Kelsey Ann Linehan.
be more protective over my voice because
it’s such a tiny grouping of muscles that can
tire easily and become strained. I’ve become
more appreciative of true vocal rest before
performances. It always makes a difference.
Bode | 23
so upset because I hadn’t found him sooner,
and he was coming up with all these outrageously awesome ideas for the music I only
wished I could have recorded on the album! I
really hope we can continue to work together
again in the future. He blows me away. He
really gets the music and is brilliant at interpreting the emotions.
SB: One of our other artists in this edition,
Greg Hankinson, believes that artists see
death differently from other people. Do you
agree? Does death touch any part of your
music?
DL: I’m not sure if I can say artists see it differently than others…maybe in the sense that
you work all of your life to create, and when
you die, your art lives on. But I see death
as another form of living, that we live on as
well. We are made of energy, which can’t be
destroyed. We just simply move on. I don’t
see us as humans, rather energies choosing
to live a human experience. Looking at it that
way, for me, doesn’t make death as final.
Death does appear in my songs from time to
time though. In my song “Another Day Like
Sunday,” the character of the song dies at
the end (sorry for the spoiler! Haha). But it’s
not like it’s the end for that person. The line
is “Somehow your soul just got away.” We
move on and take our experiences with us.
In another experience, death literally did
touch one of the songs on my album, or
maybe in a weird way it was the other way
around. “Tazmanian White” is about a beautiful white horse I owned many years ago,
who I believe was never meant to be ridden.
He was such a free spirit. The idea of the song
is if you love something, let it free. Don’t be
afraid to let go of a love or a dream if it’s not
meant to be. My dream was for my horse to
love me and for us to go far in competitions.
He never wanted my love, he wanted freedom. When I was writing the song, I always
pretended I had opened up the pasture gates
and let him out to run free and be happy. In
truth, I had to sell him when I went off to
college. It took me years to track him down.
24 | Bode
The day that I finally heard where he was, I
discovered he had literally just died—he had
broken his leg trying to jump out of a pasture
to freedom and they put him down on the
spot. This was the day the song “Tazmanian
White” was being completed in mixing. It
was so bizarre, the timing of it all. Now, I can
say he is free. The song took on the meaning
I had always kind of meant for it to have, or
at least pretended to. As I said above, some
songs finish the stories and some stories finish the songs.
SB: If death is another form of living, is there
music there, too? If so, what kinds?
DL: Yes, of course. The music comes from
somewhere, right? I had this wild experience
once. I was sitting in my living room in an
“in-between” state. My eyes were open, and
I was conscious of my surroundings. I kept
“tuning into” this beautiful music with people singing these wild harmonies that were
so loud and ethereal. I had never heard anything like it before, and it sounded like I was
in a cathedral listening to it with my ears in
the moment, loud and clear. I kept tuning in
and out of it at my discretion, kind of like a
radio station. The same thing happens to me
when I wake up sometimes. I’ll hear this incredible music. I wonder, where is that coming from, I’m hearing it with my ears, aren’t
I? If only I could harness it! I certainly attempt
to. I try to be in tune with my surroundings
both physical, mental, and spiritual as well
as I can. I have gone into these sort of trances when writing music sometimes, too. I’ll
record a musical stream of conscious for ten
minutes and when I listen to it later, I don’t
really remember what I did—I’m listening
to it with new ears. Whatever goes on in the
mind to create art is wild, wild stuff. And I
like that some of it isn’t really explainable.
SB: What’s next for you? You mentioned a
themed album idea you are developing? Any
chance you can spill about that?
DL: Now that my first album, “Pericardi-
um,” has been released, I am constantly wondering, “now what?” I would love to go on
tour. And I do have enough material for the
next two albums, but it needs a lot more developing. I see three albums ahead now, two
of which are rock-operas delving into many
of the themes we discussed above such as life
before living and life after death. The way I
interpret music and try to “channel” it, I am
in an in-between state frequently, neither
living here nor there. I have always tried to
explain that, and I think the rock-operas will
be my best effort to do so. Our bodies are certainly instruments themselves. As long as I
continue to develop mine and stay open to
the music and stay true to my heart, I will
find a way to spread the word and to tell stories.
See our Featured Artists page on our website
for more information about Dylan Linehan,
to listen to some of her music, or to buy some
of her awesome swag. Or visit her website:
www.dylanlinehan.com
Pericardium (below), designed by Heather
Divoky, is the cover for Linehan’s debut album.
The Darkness of Midnight: Examining John Berendt’s Narrative as
a Work of Southern Gothic Literature | Renee L. Sloan
I
t is no secret that Americans are fascinated by Southern culture. One only needs to look at
the success of writers such as Margaret Mitchell, Tennessee Williams, and James Dickey.1
All of these writers produced images of the South that were eccentric, beautiful, fascinating—and fictional. However, in 1994 a new picture of the South emerged. In his book Midnight
in the Garden of Good Evil, John Berendt brought many of the Southern stereotypes to life. His
characters were more than just characters; they were real people. With elements of madness,
racial tension, history, and voodoo, the book is an interesting read, and it breathes life into
the elements of Southern Gothic fiction. Though it is a true story, an examination of the text
reveals symbolism and elements of Southern Gothic present in literary fiction writing. Some
question the authenticity of Berendt’s work, saying that he was forcing stereotypical representations of the South to make his story more successful. For me, these subtexts contribute to
the authenticity of the narrative and are reminiscent of the old adage, “Truth is stranger than
fiction.” Midnight may be a work of nonfiction that depicts a crime that happened during one
of Berendt’s travels to Savannah, but the labels “nonfiction,” “true crime,” and “travel literature” don’t capture the essence of the work. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a work of
literary merit and should be lauded as a work of Southern Gothic literature.
To discuss how Midnight embodies the elements of the Southern Gothic, it is first necessary
to talk about the genre itself. Southern Gothic literature is a subdivision of the broader genre
of Gothic literature. Gothic literature originated in England in 1764 with the publication of
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Some critics saw his work as “a counterfeit medieval
tale published long after the Middle Ages” (Hogle 1), but elements of romance, history, and
the supernatural led to the work’s classification as “Gothic.” While authors such as Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe followed Walpole’s lead and published Gothic novels,
the genre was not widely recognized until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modern
Gothic literature is much like the Gothic literature of previous decades in that it possesses certain characteristics. The setting for Gothic literature is usually an “antiquated or seemingly antiquated space,” which is further explicated as anything from a “a castle” to a “large old house
or theatre,” or a “new recreation of an older venue,” and the space holds “secrets from the past
(sometimes the recent past) that haunt the characters, psychologically, physically or otherwise
at the main time of the story” (Hogle 2). Such literature also deals with themes of death, the supernatural, and the “grotesque.” The grotesque refers to anything “characterized by distortion
or unnatural combinations; fantastically extravagant; bizarre, quaint” (“grotesque”).
Like Gothic literature, Southern Gothic deals with the same themes of death, the supernatural, and the grotesque. However, Southern Gothic literature usually presents these themes
with a twist that relates to the South’s troubled history. In Southern Gothic literature, the grotesque “focuses largely on themes of terror, death, and social interaction” and the rise and fall
of the southern plantation provides “an analogy to the medieval settings available to English
gothic writers” (Witalec). While the themes of terror and death are found in traditional Gothic
Margaret Mitchell, Tennessee Williams and James Dickey wrote about the South and Southern culture. Mitchell’s epic, Gone with the Wind,
Williams’ plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire, and James Dickey’s novel, Deliverance, were all wildly successful in their
printed forms, and eventually made into motion pictures. The success of these books came before the publication of Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil.
1
Bode | 25
26 | Sloan
literature, the theme of social interaction is somewhat exclusive to Southern Gothic. Social interaction usually refers to the relationships among the races—usually Caucasian and African
American—and a dichotomy between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In Southern literature,
race and class interactions bring about tension, which usually fuels the conflict within the
piece.
Other sources call for additional elements, including “real or perceived occult events, and
a woman at risk” (Palmer 123). The real or perceived occult events are usually associated with
the supernatural and possess themes of terror and death. The “woman at risk” is often a little
less obvious. In traditional Gothic literature, the woman at risk is usually the protagonist, and
the threat is “a physical one, of death or loss of virginity, and the symptoms of fear and terror
are described in the bodily terms of the sentimental romance: tears, fainting, the heart jumping
in the breast, and so on” (Palmer 123). However, in more modern works, such a threat can be
figurative, or it may threaten a feminized object or character, such as a highly sexualized or
gay character, like Danny Hansford in Midnight.
The final characteristic of Southern Gothic literature is that it must take place in the American South.2 The prevalence of Gothic literature in the South has led to the new sub-genre classification of Southern Gothic. The popularity of this work by writers in the southern United
States has been largely attributed to the fascination with plantations and the antebellum era.
This is likely because “plantation houses satisfy some desire for connection with history; as
[I]t gives readers a way to
these sites contextualize the present within a
history that is tangible, they convey a sense of
connect with the city and becollective identity, of a heritage that Americans
gin working on establishing
share” (Adams 164). Plantations declined after
the Civil War. Most Americans’ ancestors were
a shared narrative by finding
involved in the conflict in some way and theretheir own history among the
fore feel a certain connection to plantation life.
Thus, the collapse of the plantation provides a
city and its people.
modern day equivalent to the medieval battles
of early Gothic literature. The plantation home
of the past “has been transformed from the site of an economy based on slave labor to a popular tourist site from which issues of slavery, if not racism, have been largely excised” (163).
This speaks to many Southerners’ desires to relive and sometimes—as we see in Midnight—
reinvent the past through Civil War re-enactments and parades. The issue of slavery is absent
from such events, and the focus remains on the actual battles and the “history.” Using these
definitions and criteria for the Southern Gothic subgenre, I will prove that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is foremost a work of Southern Gothic literature.
The setting for Midnight—Savannah, Georgia—adheres to the criteria of an antiquated
space. The city itself is more than two hundred and fifty years old and has been the site of
many historical events. In chapter three, Berendt approaches the librarian at the Georgia Historical Society to learn more about Savannah. He writes:
The librarian recited a list of Savannah’s historic highlights: America’s first Sunday school
had been founded in Savannah 1736, America’s first orphanage in 1740, America’s first
black congregation in 1788, America’s first golf course in 1796. John Welsey, the founder
of Methodism, had been the minister of Christ Church in Savannah in 1736, and during
The boundaries on this area often vary, but are usually depicted as far west and South as Lousiana, and as far north and East as Virginia.
Berendt’s setting in Savannah, Georgia, would always fall within the boundaries of this category.
2
Sloan | 27
his tenure had written a book of hymns that became the first hymnal used in the Church
of England. A Savannah merchant had bankrolled the first steamship to ever cross the Atlantic, the Savannah, which made its maiden voyage from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819.
(Berendt 40)
Berendt shows that the city was a site of historical importance and helps to establish it as an
antiquated space. In addition, it gives readers a way to connect with the city and begin working on establishing a shared narrative by finding their own history among the city and its
people.
In addition to the city being an antiquated space, the settings of many of Midnight’s scenes
also epitomize the concept of antiquated spaces. One example is Mercer House, the home of
Jim Williams. Mercer House was built for a Confederate General, Hugh Mercer, singer and
songwriter Johnny Mercer’s great-grandfather. The house represents Savannah’s Civil War
history and pays homage to Savannah’s claim to fame as the birthplace of Johnny Mercer.
Mercer House also meets the criterion of being a “a new recreation of an older venue.” The
mansion had fallen into a state of disrepair, and Williams restored it “to something greater
than its original elegance” (Berendt 7). In addition to Mercer House, scenes also take place
in Bonaventure Cemetery. The cemetery has been around since colonial times and includes
monuments to World War I and Civil War soldiers. In chapter two, “Destination Unknown,”
Berendt meets historian Miss Mary Harty, and she tells him that the cemetery used to be Colonel John Mulryne’s plantation home. The reference to the southern plantation provides both
historical context to establish the area as antiquated and helps to address the commodification
of the plantation as a tourist venue. Berendt’s attention to setting and history help classify
Midnight as a work of the Southern Gothic subgenre.
The second way to distinguish a work of the Southern Gothic tradition ties in with the antiquated space by alluding to secrets within that space. Midnight exemplifies this criterion also
in Mercer House and Bonaventure Cemetery. The “secrets” in Mercer House—the circumstances around Danny Hansford’s death—are critical to the plot of the book. The entire story
is built upon these secrets and Jim Williams’ fear of the revelation of the secrets that haunt
him throughout the work. When Williams finally tells Berendt that shooting his handyman
and lover Danny Hansford was not an act of self-defense but an act of rage, the secrets are unleashed and begin to haunt Berendt as well. Similarly, in the cemetery, Mary Harty mentions
that “the dead are very much with us in Savannah” (Berendt 31). She then tells him about
spirits that haunt the cemetery, including those of Colonel John Mulryne and his party guests.
This allusion to the dead still haunting the living foreshadows how Minerva will attempt to
quiet the spirit of Danny Hansford before he “does harm” to Jim Williams. By writing about
Jim Williams’ death and including that he died in the “very spot” where he shot Danny Hansford eight years prior, Berendt is able to allude to the physical haunting of Jim Williams. By
showing the secrets kept inside these ancient venues, and how these secrets figuratively, and
possibly physically, haunt these characters, Berendt reiterates that nonfiction can be Southern
Gothic.
In modern Southern Gothic literature, the grotesque is often not manifested in the physical sense, such as a girl with a wooden leg.3 In recent Southern Gothic works, such as Midnight, grotesqueness manifests as mental disease and depravity. This grotesqueness is “one
that depicts human beings, rendered grotesque by their extreme and incongruous passions
and obsessions, as the ultimate source of horror” (Bailey 269). Examples of “extreme and inThis refers to the more traditional brand of Gothic literature, in which Flannery O’Connor used manifestations of physical grotesqueness,
such as Hulga’s wooden leg in “Good Country People.”
3
28 | Sloan
congruous passions” would be Danny Hansford’s bisexuality and desire for sex, Jim Williams’
homosexuality and predatory sexual relationship with young Hansford in exchange for money, and Luther Driggers’ reclusiveness. During the 1980s—the time in which the events in this
book took place—homosexuality was still listed as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It was not removed completely from the DSM until
1986. The presence of homosexuality in the text could also help classify Berendt’s work as a
work of Southern Gothic literature because at the time it was considered a “mental illness” by
most psychoanalysts. Another aspect of grotesqueness within the book would be the society’s
attitudes toward sexual orientation and race. The story of Sadie Jefferson was one such example. Berendt first mentions Sadie when he discusses his fascination with Savannah. Her name
appeared in a short news story in an old newspaper clipping from 1914, which read:
It is no indication of insanity to tango. This was settled yesterday by the lunacy commission which decided that Sadie Jefferson is sane. It was alleged the woman tangoed all the
way to the police headquarters recently when she was arrested. (Berendt 26)
The story of Sadie Jefferson possesses the element of insanity—another instance of a mental
grotesqueness—and we later learn that there is no more to Sadie’s story because she was a
black woman. When Berendt attempts to look her up in the city directory, he can’t find her and
later learns that he was “consulting the wrong part of the city directory” (Berendt 42). The grotesque element at work in this context is the mental depravity of racism and discrimination.
Racism and mental depravities are prevalent in Midnight. Danny Hansford, Jim Williams,
and Chablis are all victims of discrimination,
and the citizens of Savannah represent mental
depravity in their closed-mindedness. Chablis,
Chablis is living her life as a
Danny, and Jim all experience discrimination
as a result of their sexuality—Danny is bisexu- female, and notices that black
al, Jim is homosexual, and Chablis is transgenmen tend to be more aggresdered and homosexual. The Southern society
sive pursuing her, and more
attempts to exoticize them in order to see them
as the “Other.” The idea of the other is derived
physically abusive with her
from identity and the concept of the “Self.” We
when they find out about her
as humans define by negation, the citizens of
Savannah attempt to eroticize Chablis, Danny,
sexuality.
and Jim in an attempt to establish them as other. Savannah’s “inhabitants control the feminine looks of their city, and exclude individuals such as Chablis and Danny Hansford on account of their race, sexual orientation and free spirit” (Farca 2). Discrimination against Chablis
is shown through her conversations with Berendt as she tells him that she does not date “black
boys” or “play up in them black bars” (Berendt 106). Chablis then tells Berendt, “When black
boys find out about my T, honey, they be ready to kick my ass,” so she avoids “them black
bars, honey. I don’t need no gun to my head” (Berendt 106-107). Chablis is living her life as a
female, and notices that black men tend to be more aggressive pursuing her, and more physically abusive with her when they find out about her sexuality. Similarly, Danny Hansford is
discriminated against because he is of a lower socio-economic status than many of Savannah’s
citizens. In order to control him, they sexualize him, referring to him as “a walking streak of
sex” (Berendt 130). Chablis and Danny become sexual objects, and, as a result, are able to be
seen as the “other.” The presence of race, class, and sexual orientation discrimination show the
Southern ideology as “depraved”—a common element in Southern Gothic literature.
Sloan | 29
The fourth element present in most Southern Gothic literature is an allusion to the occult.
This allusion can bring about a theme of horror or terror because it often involves calling upon
the spirits. This is also very unsettling for people in the South because such actions contradict the teachings of religion in the South. The
presence of voodoo in the chapter titled “MidFor many, the idea of being in night
in the Garden of Good and Evil” serves
as
the
occult reference for this book. The Occult
a cemetary after dark would be
defined as “of or relating to magic, alchemy,
unsettling, but the presence of isastrology,
theosophy, or other practical arts
a voodoo priestess calling out held to involve agencies of a secret or mysterious nature; of the nature of such an art; dealto the spirits in the “Witching
ing with or versed in such matters; magical”
(“occult”). Voodoo was a religion whose origin
Hour” (midnight) succeeds in
in the United States can be traced to New Orlecreating a sense of Gothic
ans. While voodoo was not founded on witchcraft or “Black Magic,” its call out to the spirterror.
its of the dead makes it, by modern definition,
an example of the Occult. However, the actual
voodoo religion does not use dolls, does not use the casting of “spells,” and does not employ
blood-letting or the use of old bones or trinkets.4 Because Minerva uses dove’s blood to put a
curse on District Attorney Spencer Lawton, has a wax doll for working magic, and pays “shiny
dimes” to her husband for winning lottery numbers, she is a perverted image of a voodoo
spiritual mother. Her religion does border more on the practicing of the Occult. For many, the
idea of being in a cemetery after dark would be unsettling, but the presence of a voodoo priestess calling out to the spirits in the “Witching Hour” (midnight) succeeds in creating a sense of
Gothic terror. As Minerva tells Berendt and Williams, “Dead time lasts for one hour—from a
half hour before midnight to a half hour after midnight. The half hour before midnight is for
doin’ good. The half hour after midnight is for doin’ evil” (Berendt 247). The presence of the
“witching hour” and the good and evil spells help to show Midnight as a work that possesses
elements of the Occult.
The final criteria for a work of the Southern Gothic subgenre is that it must possess “a
woman at risk.” Because of the queer nature of Midnight as a text, the idea of a “woman” may
not necessarily be a woman at all. Chablis is the physical representation of a woman, and thus
serves as “a woman.” Though Danny Hansford is a man, he also serves as a representation of
a woman at risk because he is highly sexualized by both male and female characters. Because
this eroticization is typical of female characters, he represents “a woman at risk” because Jim
Williams, Corinne, and others in the town view him in an effeminate way. His drinking, drug
abuse, and volatile temper make him a character “at risk.” His behavior makes it likely that
harm will come to him either by his own hands or at the hands of someone else—like Jim
Williams. The first part of the book focuses on Danny Hansford and alludes to a violent end.
By the middle of the book, this prophecy is fulfilled. Chablis becomes the “woman at risk” in
the second part of the story, because she attends the black debutante ball and risks having her
sexuality exposed to the black men of whom she’s so very afraid. Thus Chablis and Danny
become representations of women at risk in Midnight.
Berendt’s nonfiction novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, without a doubt possesses all of the necessary characteristics found in Southern Gothic fiction. His use of writing
This information about voodoo was obtained from the essay, “Why We Can’t Talk To You About Voodoo” by Brenda Marie Osbey. Her
essay about the ancient voodoo practices was published in issue number 2, volume XLIII of the Southern Literary Journal. None of the Osbey’s content is explicitly cited in this paper, but the ideas and information about the voodoo religion were obtained from her essay.
4
30 | Sloan
methods typically found in fiction writing, such as dialogue and scene-by-scene construction,
make this a work of literary merit, and it should be recognized as a work of Southern Gothic
literature. Such recognition is important because the interest in the South and Southern culture is prevalent even today. However, the social climate of the South is changing and modern
writers, such as Berendt, must continue to document the South. Berendt’s work is especially
important because it shows the historical ideologies of the South alongside modern social issues. He shows how the Southern Gothic has adapted to the “New South.”
No Soliciting: Violence Against Sexual Deviants in Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | JoAnna C. Wright
R
obert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is often observed as a
conspicuous tale of the duality of good and evil residing in all men coming. This analysis begins as a departure from Stevenson’s doubling in Jekyll and Hyde and will instead
reveal a reflection of the political climate of late nineteenth-century London between secret,
homo-social relationships and the prejudice and violent efforts of English law to eradicate
homosexuality. An examination of the existing male associations in Jekyll and Hyde renders the
primary antagonist, Hyde, distinct in his heterosexuality and places the other male characters
in an intricate map of homo-social relationships. Hyde’s crimes come to represent a resistance
to homosexuality and even perpetuate the notion of male, heterosexual dominance over feminine sexuality, and it is through such resistance that he is transformed from being one part of
the dual nature of man into a paradigm of social prejudice against sexual deviancy.
It is necessary to establish Hyde’s heterosexuality before attempting to situate his actions
as being paradigmatic of social prejudice toward anything that publicly departed from heterosexual norms. Beginning with the scene in which a maid observes two men approaching one
another at “about eleven” o’clock in the evening beneath her bedroom window (20):
The older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did
not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his
face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breath such an innocent
and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded
self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognize
in him a certain Mr. Hyde…in is hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all
of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the
cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentlemen took a
step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde
broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. (20)
Adams, Jessica. “The Southern Plantation in Popular Culture.” Cultural Critique. 42 (1999): n.p. JSTOR. Web. 13 Oct. 2012.
Bailey, Peggy Dunn. “Female Gothic Fiction, Grotesque Realities, and Bastard Out of Carolina: Dorothy Allison Revises the Southern Gothic.” Mississippi Quarterly 63.1. (2010): 269-292. Academic Search Complete. Web 7 Dec. 2012.
Berendt, John. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. New York: Random House, 1994. Print.
Farca, Paula Anca. “White, straight lady Savannah of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Notes on Contemporary
Literature 37.3 (2007): 2. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
Hogle, Jerrold E.. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2003. Print.
“occult, n.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Palmer, Louis. “Bourgeois blues: class, whiteness, and Southern Gothic in early Faulkner and Caldwell.” The Faulkner Journal 22.1-2 (2006):
120+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2012.
“Southern Gothic Literature.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 142. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center.
Web. 13 Oct. 2012.
Sloan | 31
It is essential to precede an analysis of this scenario with an understanding of the maid,
who later narrated the scene to the police. The encounter between Hyde and Sir Danvers
Carew, the older gentlemen, was witnessed only by the young maid, who provided “few and
startling” details after summoning the police three hours after the encounter due to fainting
(20). Prior to the encounter, the maid is described as being “romantically given, for she sat
down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of
musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience) never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world” (20). While she
is only described as a girl without an exact age, the maid is either a very young girl or perhaps
older and extremely naïve. Her musings consist of the peace and kindness of the world, and
therefore she is incapable of suspecting anything untoward in “an aged and beautiful gentlemen with white hair” walking the streets of London at eleven o’clock at night (20).
The maid’s innocence acts as a censor of the encounter between Hyde and Carew, and
32 | Wright
because of her ambivalence at the possibility of there being something wrong with the entire
incident occurring at eleven o’clock or why Carew was out prowling the streets at such a late
hour, it becomes necessary to observe the details that are not present. This is what the text is
attempting to say indirectly through the filter
of the naïve maid. Interpretations of the Carew
Her musings consist of the
murder perpetuate the older man as a victim of
a senseless and unprovoked assault. Antonio
peace and kindness of the
Sanna searches for the parallels of silence and
world, and therefore she is
homosexuality in Jekyll and Hyde and believes
that any homosexual acts occur silently within
incapable of suspecting anythe text. Stevenson avoids stating the homothing untoward in “an aged
sexual acts other than in metaphors, or that
acts occur in literal silence where nothing
and beautiful gentleman with these
is spoken in dialogue. Sanna appears to chanwhite hair” walking the streets nel the naiveté of the maid in his interpretaof the Carew murder, stating “it is interof London at eleven o’clock at tion
esting to note that the most malevolent action
night (20).
narrated in Stevenson’s tale is perpetuated in
silence” (30). Despite the function of Sanna’s
essay claiming to discover silent homosexuality in Gothic fin-de-siècle literature, this particular scene between Hyde and Carew, and the
metaphorical silence that exists, is neglected in his analysis. Instead, Sanna notes the silence:
“Hyde quietly murders Carew” (33). Taking into consideration the presence of unheard dialogue between Hyde and Carew, as well as the fact that Hyde beat Carew to death, it seems
futile in notating the silence of the murder.
It would have been useful for Sanna to note the cause for the entire incident between Hyde
and Carew; explicating what is not said in this incident begins to establish a more heterosexual vision of Hyde against a backdrop of homo-social relationships. Stevenson’s choice of
words in the maid’s narration is more revealing to how the event progressed between Hyde
and Carew. The Oxford English Dictionary reveals “accosting” someone to have two distinct
interpretations by the mid-nineteenth century. Either “to approach and speak to, especially
(in later use) in a bold, hostile, or unwelcome manner; to waylay (a person) in this way; to
address,” or in addition to this version, to approach “a prostitute: to solicit (a potential customer)” (“accost, v.”). If we are to trust the maid’s description of Hyde being accosted “with
a very pretty manner of politeness,” then it is likely Carew approached Hyde in the hopes of
pursuing him sexually.
Another character has appeared earlier in Jekyll and Hyde who behaved similarly to Carew.
Mr. Utterson’s cousin, Mr. Enfield, is described as “the well-known man about town” (5). The
Oxford edition of Jekyll and Hyde, edited by Roger Luckhurst, expands on this term by stating it
“[implies] certain sexual behavior” (184). Enfield first saw Hyde when he was “coming home
from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning” and
witnessed Hyde’s first horrific act of the text when he trampled over a young girl (6). Enfield’s
deliberate ambiguity about where he came from, as well as the early hour of the morning,
suggests that like Carew he was out in pursuit of sexual pleasures. However, when Enfield
stops Hyde, to the point of physically restraining him, Hyde “was perfectly cool and made no
resistance” (7). This is a stark contrast to the manner in which Carew politely accosted Hyde,
and yet his reaction to Carew is astonishingly violent.
The ambiguity of Hyde’s other horrific actions makes it essential to attempt to account
for his motivation in murdering Carew. He breaks out into a rage when Carew accosts him
Wright | 33
in the streets and begins to violently beat him to death. The only other character who makes
an effort to accost Hyde, in the sense of becoming better acquainted with him, is Utterson.
When Utterson stops him on the doorstep to Jekyll’s home, Hyde is still resistant to associate
with him. When questioned about how he came to know Hyde’s identity, Utterson states, “we
have common friends” (15). Rather than claiming to have no friends, or denying that Jekyll is
his friend or associate, Hyde “snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with
extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house” (15). Utterson is unsuccessful in gaining further acquaintance with Hyde until discovering him dead
in Jekyll’s laboratory.
Unlike the other male characters in Jekyll and Hyde, Hyde is the only one without homo-social relations. There are only five females to speak of within the entire text: the young maid
who narrated the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, the young girl Hyde trampled and her mother, Jekyll’s house maid, and “an ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman” who is the only
person employed at Hyde’s residence (22). These females are stationary within the text and exist without forming heterosexual relationships to the primary male characters within the text.
Unlike Hyde, the other male characters form
a complex web of intermingled, homo-social
[Jekyll’s] closet-homosexuality relationships. Utterson, Jekyll, and Dr. Lanyon
a friendship that has existed for many
may have been his impetus for form
years. Utterson and Enfield are cousins; and it
developing the means neces- is established early on in the text that Enfield
is known around the town for his potentially
sary to divorce his more
homosexual proclivities. Jekyll has employed
depraved nature from his
a butler, Poole, who has “been twenty years in
[Jekyll’s] house” (36). Utterson also employs a
known identity.
male clerk, Mr. Guest, and considered Sir Danvers Carew “one friend and client” (26).
Jekyll, like Enfield and Carew, also has potentially homosexual inclinations. His closethomosexuality may have been his impetus for developing the means necessary to divorce his
more depraved nature from his known identity. Jekyll states that his “pleasures were (to say
the least) undignified” (56). However, in creating Hyde, Jekyll miscalculates in assuming that
his darker self’s corrupt pleasures would correlate with his own improper pursuits. Instead,
Hyde’s actions are abhorrent to Jekyll. He states:
I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my 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 centered on self; drinking pleasure
with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.
Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde. (57)
Hyde’s pleasures derive from the torment of others, but the reader is never given a firsthand account of the precise details of his other repugnant actions. Hyde trampling the little
girl and the murder of Carew are the only two instances of his malevolence that the reader
has witnessed; both occurrences were told secondhand by other characters who witnessed
the events. The trampling of the young girl fractures the notion of Hyde presented so far.
In trampling the girl and murdering Carew, Hyde begins to unravel as an archetype of the
Criminal Law Amendment Act, which made homosexual acts illegal, and his character now
reveals commentary in the direction of women and feminine sexuality and how that sexuality
navigates the terrain of the imperial and misogynistic British Empire.
34 | Wright
The act of Hyde physically overpowering a young girl, pushing her beneath his feet and
walking over her, represents Hyde’s dominance over her sex, a dominance that is established
by force and without the consent or desire of the young girl. By simply noting a binary that
already exists within the text, Hyde’s masculinity and the young girl’s femininity, this changes the perhaps accidental trampling to a harsher, more explicit metaphorical rape. However,
there are several binaries within this incident. Some perpetuate the notorious theme of duality
that exists in Jekyll and Hyde, and others deviate from the simplistic idea of dual nature and
begin to unravel a power structure in the text that expands beyond masculine and feminine
discourse. When the young girl represents femininity, and Hyde embodies masculinity, it becomes crucial to remember that the setting of this encounter occurred at “about three o’clock
of a black winter morning” (6). There is not a simple answer as to why a young girl was by
herself at that time of the morning; however, the implications of why a woman would be out
and alone at that time cause a shift in how this incident is perceived. Instead of a metaphorical
rape by Hyde asserting his masculine dominance over a weaker feminine representation, the
young girl’s depiction shifts to that of a prostitute. Hyde’s representation is still masculine,
but it is no longer simply implicated in the binary conflict of feminine subjugation by violent
masculine dominance.
If Hyde is the only male character who does not engage in homo-social relationships, and
goes so far as to inflict violence on those who do, yet he also violently asserts his dominance
over female prostitutes whose business perpetuates heterosexuality, then Hyde has shifted
from an embodiment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act and instead stands as a violent
opposition to sexual deviance. Simon Joyce’s essay usefully situates Jekyll and Hyde’s reception
in nineteenth-century London and its correlation to a contemporary criminal known as Jack
the Ripper. His text seeks to identify “the criminal as an intellectual or artistic genius,” and analyzes such popular literary characters as Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll (501). He states that “the
five murders ascribed to Jack the Ripper seemed to correlate closely with the recorded actions
of Mr. Hyde” (502). To clarify Joyce’s association between the two criminals, Jack the Ripper
was a pseudonym for a serial killer in London’s Whitechapel who killed five prostitutes over
a three month period of time. The “recorded actions of Mr. Hyde” amount to the trampling
of a young girl and the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. The existing correlation between Hyde
and Jack the Ripper perhaps stems from their own motivations for targeting the victims they
chose.
Jack the Ripper was, and remains to this day, a legendary serial killer without any form of
physical embodiment: face, name, location, or gender. E.D. Cohen, for the purpose of identifying various forms of masculinity in the late nineteenth century, notes that “the stories that
identified ‘Jack the Ripper’ as an upper-class man gone bad provide the paradigmatic example
of what we now mean when we colloquially say that someone has a ‘Jekyll and Hyde personality’” (184). In making this connection, Cohen is defining Jack the Ripper by Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, respectively, in order to humanize him. Doing this allows Jack the Ripper to be
removed from the mystical pedestal he was placed upon as an unseen killer who was smart
enough to evade the authorities and lowers him to simply Jack, as he will now be referred, a
human with the same fallacies, vulnerabilities, and mortal qualities as the rest of us. Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, in the same manner, can be defined by Jack the Ripper as a criminal body, and
this analysis can go astray into many directions that venture into the mind of Dr. Jekyll and his
dissatisfaction as an elite member of society and those societal constraints placed upon him,
as well as how, as stated previously, Hyde’s own wants and intentions were so removed from
Jekyll’s that it began to frighten the doctor. This analysis also continues to explore Hyde as not
just one part of another man but as a criminal with ambitions driving his actions.
Cohen and Joyce’s correlation of Jack and Hyde rest on one commonality between the two
Wright | 35
men and it being just that: they are both men. Their crimes target a demographic that hinges
on a specific factor; while Jack targets the lower class and Hyde targets those in his path, both
deliver punishment to people who partake in seemingly unorthodox sexual practices. These
unorthodox sexual practices—prostitution, homosexuality, gross indecency, sodomy—were
illegal during the late nineteenth century when Jack was prowling the streets and Hyde was
becoming popular in the household lexicon for criminal behavior. Understanding that Jack
and Hyde’s victims were also criminals suddenly changes the perception, and reception, of
their crimes. If the intention behind their choice of victims was to eradicate sexual filth from
the world, starting with London, then Jack and Hyde become violent criminals that bear the
uncomfortable title of vigilante.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a vigIf the intention behind their
ilante is someone who is “a member of self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law
choice of victims was to eradienforcement in their community without legal
authority, typically because the legal agencies cate sexual filth from the world,
are thought to be inadequate” (“vigilante”). It starting wtih London, then Jack
has been stated that the sexual acts Hyde and
Jack targeted are illegal; however, it is evident [the Ripper] and Hyde become
that there would be a measure of personal prejviolent criminals that bear the
udice involved for the two men to risk being
condemned and executed for their crimes, re- uncomfortable title of vigilante.
gardless of their seemingly good intentions.
We can only speculate upon the impetus for
Jack, especially since almost nothing is known
about him (if he is indeed a man), as well as Hyde’s own motivations. Since both have been
presented as domineering, masculine figures targeting victims who are primarily female prostitutes, the discourse has moved back to that binary between masculinity and femininity—yet,
Jack and Hyde are now taking liberties in accusing and punishing the women, or men, who
step out of their socially-constructed sexual bounds.
Joyce once more notes an unusual factor between Hyde and Jack in stating, “the East London Advertiser speculated that ‘a murderous lunatic [is] concealed in the slums of Whitechapel, who issues forth at night like another Hyde, to prey upon the defenceless [sic] women of
the ‘unfortunate’ class’” (502). The female victims of Hyde and Jack were all joined in the lower demographic of society in East London; however, let us not forget that Hyde also murdered
an upper-class man which, according to Sanna, was marked “as a sort of offense, of a wound
to the entire nation and its legislative system” (30). The paradigm of social prejudice against
sexual deviance is on the verge of breaking apart between Jack and Hyde; their sex, their
targets, and their crimes converge as a tenuous grip that holds them together. Hyde departs
slightly from Jack in killing Carew, an upper-class man, and this murder begins to symbolize
a high standard of behavior that no one in Victorian society may escape from. In the “shocking
murder of an M.P.,” (Carew was a member of parliament), Hyde completes his embodiment
of vigilante. The legislative structure begins to fall apart when people like Hyde exist in the
world to persecute sinners regardless of their class, sex, race, or any other binary affiliation.
The reactions of the other characters to Hyde perpetuate him as an archetype for a near-dystopic form of justice; their unexplained fear and hatred of him resulting in a desire to be rid of
him. Mr. Enfield, when first seizing Hyde after trampling the girl, notices that the other witnesses of the crime share the same reaction that he does toward Hyde: “Well, sir, he was like
the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that [doctor] turn sick and white with
the desire to kill him” (7). Hyde’s appearance rouses this reaction in nearly every character
36 | Wright
who encounters him. Hyde is described as “a little man” and was “so ugly that [he] brought
out the sweat on me like running” (7). This fear that Hyde incites in all who see him could simply be his appearance; however, in Hyde there is perhaps a recognizable facet of prejudice and
loathing toward all who defy the standard of sexual norm (sex between husband and wife)
set by Victorian society. This norm, which was likely deviated from behind closed doors, cast
an unrealistic expectation on sexuality, especially feminine sexuality. Sexual deviance, which
remained a broad and encompassing term in the Victorian era, was a secret affair, and one that
participants wanted to remain that way. Hyde threatened to not expose adverse sexual behavior, but punish it. It is understandable why Mr. Enfield, and others, would want to kill Hyde.
In radical vigilante style, Hyde was persecuting those who wanted to express their sexuality
freely beyond the constraints of societal norms.
Oliver Buckton argues, in agreement with Wayne Koestenbaum, whom he quotes, “Stevenson was aware of the significance of this anti-homosexual legislation and sought to give
representation to illicit forms of masculine desire in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
(24). Buckton’s awareness of homoerotic desire remains fixated between Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, asserting that “the original readers of the story would not have known of Jekyll and
Hyde’s shared identity” (24). As I have asserted throughout this analysis, the presence of masculine desire does exist in Jekyll and Hyde but not between Jekyll and Hyde. The other male
characters, including Jekyll, perpetuate a cycle of homo-social desire for male companionship,
and Hyde is steadfastly and violently resistant to this form of desire. Furthermore, while Stevenson was discreet about the true relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he reveals
the circumstances of their association through Dr. Lanyon in describing Mr. Hyde’s transformation:
er self, Dr. Jekyll, partook in but then expanding the demographic of his victims to all who
departed from the sexual norms held sacred by marriage vows. Revealing that a startling
comparison exists between the fictional Mr. Hyde and the very real, yet very elusive, Jack the
Ripper, served to perpetuate societal prejudice against those who went astray in their sexuality, or in the case of women, dared to express that sexuality at all. Proclaiming Hyde and Jack
the Ripper as vigilantes does not justify their intentions and actions but rather removes the
blind-fold that served to hide how far a prejudice socio-legal system would go to eradicate
that which deviated from what was deemed proper. This analysis cannot be concluded with
a firm statement of Hyde’s moral or immoral behavior but instead can mark Hyde as a social
commentary for what a lack of tolerance may sow in a society existing with secret vices and
overwhelmed with an obsessive pursuit for normal.
He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered,
clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth;
and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became
suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had
sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that
prodigy, my mind submerged in terror. I screamed…for there before my eyes—pale and
shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from
death—there stood Henry Jekyll! (50)
The change that occurs is explicit in being from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Lanyon followed this description with the realization that “the creature who crept into my house that
night was, on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde” (51). While it would seem
apparent that the homosexual subtleties in Jekyll and Hyde could be missed, the entire premise
of the story centered upon Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into Mr. Hyde is blatantly conspicuous.
Buckton seeks to identify the reanimated corpse as “a figure of central importance to forms of
narrative desire in Stevenson’s fiction” (22). This corpse that Buckton searches for in Stevenson’s texts is the “corpse of Victorian realism [reanimated] through a revitalized use of Gothic
and sensational motifs” (23). Jekyll and Hyde becomes a display of everything real: real fear,
real desire, real hatred, and real horror. Buckton’s use of a “Victorian realism” corpse endorses
the ideology of Hyde as a paradigm of social hatred, prejudice, and fear of exposure. Perhaps
Hyde’s impetus for his violence is not his prejudice toward sexual deviance, but rather intolerance to secrecy and those who allow others to dictate how they express themselves and what
mold they must fit in to be a proper human being.
This analysis sought to identify Hyde’s symbolic role as a Victorian socio-legal figure and
his prejudice against the homo-social relationships that surrounded him and that his oth-
Wright | 37
“accost, v.” OED Online. 2012 Oxford University Press. Web. 3 Nov 2012.
Buckton, Oliver, S. “Reanimating Stevenson’s Corpus.” Nineteenth Century Literature 55.1 (2000): 22-58. JSTOR. Web. 7 Dec 2012.
Cohen, E.D. “Hyding The Subject?: The Antinomies Of Masculinity In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.” NOVEL: A Forum on
Fiction 37.1/2: 181-199. Duke University Press. Web. 7 Dec 2012
Joyce, Simon. “Sexual Politics and the Aesthetics of Crime: Oscar Wilde in the Nineties.” ELH 69.2 (2002): 501-523. The John Hopkins University Press. Web. 28 Nov 2012.
Sanna, Antonio. “Silent Homosexuality in Oscar Wilde’s Teleny and The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde.” Law and Literature 24.1 (2012): 21-39. Web of Science. Web. 3 Oct 2012.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 5-66. Print.
“vigilante, n.”. OED Online. 2010. Oxford University Press. Web. 7 Dec 2012.
38 | Wright
Motherly Love: Wes Craven’s Reassertion of gender in the Scream trilogy
| Casey Jordan Mills
W
es Craven’s Scream trilogy has garnered much attention in the film industry. Most of
the scholarly conversations point toward the film’s postmodern elements, meta-fictional commentary, and revival of the slasher-film genre. Less attention, however,
has been paid to the way the film attempts to reinstate a notable motif set forth by one of
the genre’s most popular predecessors, Friday the 13th: a mother figure revealed as the killer
seeking revenge for her deceased son. Valerie Wee notes that the Scream films “represent a
departure from its predecessors” (52). While the trilogy does possess several characteristics
that redefine the conventions of the genre, its reiteration of an established element should not
be overlooked.
Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 film Friday the 13th is often cited as one of the first major
slasher films, making Jason Voorhees an iconic symbol in the horror genre. However, Jason’s
mother, Pamela Voorhees (originally portrayed by Betsy Palmer) is the serial killer in the first
installment of the franchise. One of the conventions of the traditional slasher film is the gender
of the villain, whom Andrew Tudor describes as “a near superhuman, male, masked killer”
(68). Traditionally, a male figure is behind the mask, creating a masculinized stereotype for
most slasher-film antagonists. Cunningham’s initial reversal of gender roles often goes unmentioned in the critical attention placed on the film genre. Wee cites Friday the 13th numerous
times throughout her article, noting the box office success of the original film and its sequels
(52). In reference to Jason Voorhees, Wee also cites the film’s psychotic killer as an example
of a “traditional villain,” with no mention of his mother. The first installment of the Scream
trilogy (1996), acknowledges the little attention placed on Jason’s mother.
In the opening scene, Casey Becker (portrayed by Drew Barrymore) becomes the first
on-screen victim to the franchise’s iconic killer, Ghostface. Casey is being harassed over the
telephone, and Ghostface declares that if she answers the questions correctly, her boyfriend
will live. After a warm-up question, the villain declares that the “real” question is to name
the killer in Friday the 13th, to which Casey answers Jason Voorhees. Ghostface deems her
answer incorrect and states, “[Y]ou should
All the characteristics of Mrs.
know Jason’s mother, Mrs. Voorhees was the
Loomis are borrowed from
original killer. Jason didn’t show up until the
sequel” (Scream). Craven’s allusion to the FriMrs. Voorhees, an important
the 13th franchise and commentary on the
development in subverting the day
incorrect perception of the original killer is imexpectations set forth by major portant in showing Scream as a film that may
solely be a “reinterpretation of the genre’s
slasher films and retracting the not
familiar conventions,” but also an attempt to
genre’s original feminine foot- reiterate a notion presented in one of the original slasher films (Wee 54).
print.
Across the Scream trilogy, references to Pamela Voorhees are often made, showing that
her example bears repetition in establishing the importance of her contribution to the slasher-film genre. In Scream 2 (1997), film student Randy (portrayed by Jamie Kennedy) and Dep-
Mills | 39
uty Dewey Riley (portrayed by David Arquette) discuss ways to uncover the copycat killer.
Randy states, “It’s our job to observe the rules” (Scream 2). The rules Randy mentions are in reference to the conventions of traditional slasher films. This particular comment is noteworthy,
because Craven deliberately mentions the rules that must be followed within the constraints
of the genre, making subtle nods to movies such as Friday the 13th, which successfully broke
from the expected norm without much notice. Dewey furthers the commentary by stating that
serial killers are typically white males, to which Randy replies: “That’s why it’s perfect. It’s
sort of against the rules but not really. Mrs. Voorhees was a terrific serial killer” (Scream 2).
This quote serves as applause to the foundation of the genre laid by the original Friday the 13th.
The quick nods and allusions to Mrs. Voorhees come to a much fuller fruition in Scream 2.
Similar to Friday the 13th, the second installment in the Scream trilogy possesses a twist ending, in which the killer is revealed as the mother to two of the film’s central (and deceased)
characters: Jason Voorhees and Billy Loomis,
respectively. The two mother figures are both
motivated by revenge for their sons, but they The key element of the mother
also are similar in physical appearance. Both
figure has become lost in the
are middle-aged females with a short haircut.
The similar appearance is arguably Craven’s
masculinization of the horror
attempt in re-creating the iconic motherly killgenre.
er. In the ending of Friday the 13th, while Pamela Voorhees is trying to kill the Final Girl,
Alice (portrayed by Adrienne King), she talks
to herself in a childish voice, imitating Jason: “Kill her, Mommy. Kill her, Mommy” (Friday the
13th). In a similar fashion, Mrs. Loomis (portrayed by Laurie Metcalf) kills her first victim in
Scream 2 by enticing him with the same childish voice; Mrs. Loomis whispers, “Listen, Mommy. Listen, Mommy,” prompting her victim to listen through the bathroom wall, resulting in
a fatal stab to the ear. All the characteristics of Mrs. Loomis are borrowed from Mrs. Voorhees,
an important development in subverting the expectations set forth by major slasher films and
retracing the genre’s original feminine footprint.
The females in the slasher-film genre are typically either the victims or the heroes. Citing
a range of examples of both feminine representations, Wee discusses how the Scream trilogy
reinterprets the Final Girl, but also presents “the torture and often brutal killing of nubile
young women” (57). However, throughout her in-depth discussion of slasher films’ apparent
“complicated relationship with gender,” she fails to mention Mrs. Voorhees or Mrs. Loomis,
completely overlooking the subverted gender expectations in both films (57). This constant
oversight makes the ending of Scream 2 a surprise twist, which may not have been the case if
Mrs. Voorhees would be acknowledged more for her contribution to the slasher-film genre.
Mickey Altieri (portrayed by Timothy Olyphant) is the second killer in the murder spree; he
also is a representative of a replacement Billy Loomis, forming a mother-son relationship with
Mrs. Loomis. She found him on a chat room for serial killers, stating that “all he needed was
a little guidance and nurturing,” to which Sidney Prescott (portrayed by Neve Campbell), the
trilogy’s main protagonist, replies: “As only a mother can do” (Scream 2). Mickey’s character
comments on the reveal of Billy’s mother as the killer: “Surprise twist, huh? Didn’t see it coming, did you?” (Scream 2). This quote highlights the postmodern element of self-awareness for
which the trilogy is often praised; however it also acts as criticism of the fact that the element
of surprise was already presented by a famous slasher-film released 16 years before the release
of the first Scream film. In the original Friday the 13th, after Alice successfully kills Mrs. Voorhees, she has a nightmare of Jason resurrecting from the dead and attacking her. This final
scene is re-created in Scream 2 after Sidney kills Mrs. Loomis. Mickey stands up, bloodied and
40 | Mills
screaming and lunges forward in attack before being shot to death, a final nod to Friday the
13th.
While the Scream trilogy should not go unnoticed for its innovations to the slasher-film
genre and its utilization of post-modern techniques, it would be inaccurate to not consider the
retrospective elements of the films. The Scream films may be a “reinterpretation of the genre’s
overfamiliar conventions,” but they are also blatant re-creations of the genre’s less familiar
conventions, which were set forth in Friday the 13th, the film often cited as responsible for
bringing the genre into the mainstream (Wee 54). The key element of the mother figure has become lost in the masculinization of the horror genre; however, close examination of the Scream
films suggest an urging to move back toward the origin and return the genre to its birthplace:
the mother.
Like a Fish Out of Water |
Lori Joy Peterson
W
Friday the 13th. Dir. Sean S. Cunningham. Perf. Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby. Paramount Pictures, 1980. VHS.
Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, David Arquette. Dimension Films, 1996. DVD.
Scream 2. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Neve Campell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette. Dimension Films, 1997. DVD.
Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Print.
Wee, Valerie. “Resurrection And Updating The Teen Slasher: The Case Of Scream.” Journal Of Popular Film and Television. 34.2 (2006): 50-61.
MLA International Bibliography. Web 01 Nov. 2012.
Mills | 41
hen my father passed, to use the clichéd expression: my world turned
upside down. I felt abandoned,
lost, scared, just numb. The mixture of these
emotions made me feel like I wasn’t real any
longer. I felt like I was walking through a
dream.
Thankfully, I still painted while dealing
with my loss. The paintings I produced prior
to “Like a Fish out of Water” were noticeably
off beat. I painted a landscape with a moose
and a donkey together, a bunny and lizard in
the desert.
I stared at the piece. “This is the craziest
thing I ever painted.” Yet, it was comforting.
It captured my feelings. The bears walking
down the lane is my childhood, thinking
back to my earlier life with my father and me
seeing my father one last time. (Unfortunate-
42 | Peterson
ly, I never did.) The huge squirrel is impeding danger looming around the corner (real
or imagined).
For years, I painted fruit, landscapes,
and classic movie stars. It surprised me how
something so tragic change the direction of
my artwork. This painting was a result of just
letting the brush go.
Just like random turkeys at the edge of
the forest, you never know what life will
bring to your corner.
Food, Flowers, and Femininity: Masculine Dominance in “The
Twelve Brothers” | Jessica Jacob
T
he term “fairy-tale” often invokes images of innocence, providing an arena for nostalgic perceptions of childhood. Many equate the term with scenes of purity or the lavish
notion of “happily ever after.” However, many of the tales popularized by commercial
representations of the antiquated texts contain latent motifs of rape, incest, and homosexuality. Perhaps more damning, however, are the tales in which these themes are so structurally ingrained that the stories have failed to assimilate into the modern canon of acceptable,
popularized children’s literature. Kinder-und Hausmärchen, a collection of over two hundred
German folk tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm, includes both types of tales: those that
have been assimilated into—and modified to please—a more modern audience (for instance
“Cinderella,” “Snow White,” and “Little Red Riding Hood”), and those that are impossible
to separate from their sexual deviancy. “The Twelve Brothers,” for instance, may, upon first
glance, be perceived as an account of revived sibling-kinship. The language, however, exposes
the violent and oppressive gender binary of the apparently incestuous relationship between a
young girl and her twelve brothers.
The tale, like many others in the Grimms’ collection, contains an abundance of both masculine and feminine imagery. Also similar to other tales is the unmistakable equation of masculine images with power and desire, and of femininity with anxiety and/or negativity. Kay
Stone observes that:
[a]s Freud notes, female symbols are those that suggest the possibility of either entry or
entrapment. These would include rooms and houses, ovens, jugs and bowls, shoes, and
forests and flowers. Such symbols do not appear randomly or without meaning. They take
their significance from the context in which they are used. (47)
Both forests and flowers appear concurrently with male anxiety and/or the removal of male
power—a figurative castration. Additionally, critic Hans-Heino Ewers maintains that tales
such as this one “dare to give shape to male sexual desire even when this desire transgresses the borders of the self and reveals itself as regressive, narcissistic, or incestuous” (78)—a
notion that Hartmut Böhme attributes to “the infant’s earliest experiences with his mother,
namely when the infant encounters the almighty motherly self-object with both a tremendous lust for delimitation and a primordial fear of being swallowed up” (qtd. in Ewers 78).
The incestuous sexual abuse might then be an exertion of masculine power over those in the
submissive feminine role—perhaps in an attempt to appropriate and dominate the “lust for
delimitation” in order to combat the “fear of being swallowed up” that is likely magnified by
the boys’ relationship with their mother.
The story begins when a pregnant queen, the mother of twelve boys, is told by her husband that if their thirteenth child is born a girl, the twelve boys will be put to death. This immediately creates a sense of anxiety for the boys, induced by the threat of a female entering
their lives. More specifically, the threat is that with the introduction of a female character, the
boys will suffer death: the ultimate castration. In order to thwart this castration, the abundant
phallic representation begins almost immediately. Before the girl is born, the queen tells the
youngest of the boys, Benjamin, that his father has made he and his “eleven brothers” coffins
Jacob | 43
in case a girl child is born. She then tells him to “take [his] eleven brothers out into the woods”
to await her signal—a white flag will be raised if a boy is born, and a red flag will be raised if
a girl is born (Grimm 20). This entry into the forest, a traditionally feminine symbol, is forced
and occurs out of desperation. Again, the scene
is feminized and fueled by anxiety. After elevMore specifically, the threat is en days, Benjamin sees that a red flag has been
raised. The numeral representation of the numthat with the introduction of
ber eleven, 11, illustrates two phallic symbols
side by side. Although there are twelve brotha female character, the boys
ers, the group is consistently referred to using
will suffer death: the ultimate the number eleven, placing Benjamin outside
the parameter of the brotherhood. The repeticastration. In order to thwart
tion of the number eleven works to reinforce
this castration, the abundant
the phallocentrism that propels the story. Adphallic representation begins ditionally, as the brothers make a new home
in a hut in the woods, they immediately desalmost immediately.
ignate a feminine figure over whom they can
exert their dominance:
They said: ‘Let’s live here. Benjamin, you are the youngest and weakest. You can stay
home and keep house while we go out and look for food.’ They went into the woods and
shot rabbits, deer, birds, and doves, whatever was good to eat. Then they brought the food
back home for Benjamin who had to prepare it in an appetizing way for them. (Grimm 20)
The products of a patriarchal society, the boys instantly determine their worth by recreating a hierarchy that perpetuates masculine dominance. By placing Benjamin in a feminine
role, the other brothers ensure that he fulfills the female’s function of housekeeper. Moreover,
as the eleven brothers imprison Benjamin within the role of homemaker, they venture into
the woods, collectively taking on the role of hunters. This figuratively castrates the youngest
brother, stripping him of the power he is inherently due in accordance with the patriarchy
that dictates his society. Critic Francisco Vaz da Silva asserts that “to be emasculated, and thus
feminized, generally amounts to being equated to prey” rather than ascending to the “full
male status of the hunter” (9). This indicates that his brothers, who as hunters have claimed
their “full male status,” view Benjamin as a target. The eleven brothers also use their power as
a single, phallic unit to claim authority over both the hut they find in the forest and the forest
itself. By collaborating to create a single masculine group, they ascend to the role of hunter and
are able to dominate the feminine symbols that they encounter.
Additionally, the dialogue suggests that Benjamin is marginalized by his eleven brothers,
as they speak (and act) as a single unit, and he speaks and acts in isolation. In fact, in every
instance in which the eleven brothers speak, plural pronouns (either “they” or “we”) are used.
This fortifies the notion that the group is a representation of phallic power, as it maintains that
there are eleven men, but that they all act as one—again, the visual representation of the numerals 11 and 1 are phallic. By showing the clear separation between Benjamin and his group
of brothers, the text works to create a dichotomy that is reinforced by the binary opposition
of their performed gender roles—Benjamin in a feminine role, and the group of brothers in
a masculine role. Scholar Michael Jones agrees, stating “[w]ho prepares the food, serves it,
and cleans up…all these convey roles, values, and ideas about gender, hierarchy, and power”
(130). Moreover, Jones asserts that “in households where the man brings home the bacon, the
woman’s role is in the kitchen preparing dinner timed for his arrival, thus symbolizing her
44 | Jacob
obligation as homemaker and his as breadwinner” (142). In this case, the “woman’s role” is
fulfilled by Benjamin, who has food waiting when his brothers return home: “[w]hen night
fell, the brothers returned from hunting and their dinner was on the table” (Grimm 21).
But Benjamin’s feminine role is not solely to conduct domestic chores. The language suggests that they have also placed him in the position of sexual object. Take, for instance, the
aforementioned fact that Benjamin always has food waiting for his brothers when they return from hunting. According to the Oxford English Dictionary to “hunt” is to “engage in
the chase” of something, or to “eagerly search for [something] with desire and diligence”
(“hunt”). As the brothers try to find the object of their desire, they ultimately return home to
Benjamin, who satisfies their appetite. Highly noteworthy, then, is the abundance of meat that
the brothers bring home for consumption, because “for centuries, red meat has been associated with strength, power, aggression and sexuality” (Jones 139). In fact, “health manuals in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recommended a diet low in meat for adolescent
boys as a means of combating masturbation” and a diet of red meat was associated with “sexual precocity” (Jones 141). This equation of meat with virility, power, and aggression further
illustrates the predatory and dominant nature of the eleven brothers in their control over Benjamin.
The introduction of the sister provides a new character to fulfill the feminine role. The first
description of the young girl states “[s]he had a golden star on her forehead” (Grimm 20). Subsequently, when she meets her brother Benjamin for the first time, “he [is] filled with wonder
by her great beauty…and by the star on her forehead” (Grimm 20). The term “golden” may
be used to describe something that is valuable or coveted. The word “star,” in one entry in the
Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “a natural object resembling or likened to a star; e.g. the
open corolla (or corolla and disk) of a flower. The corolla of a flower is described as “the whorl
of petals forming the inner envelope of the flower, and generally its most conspicuous part;
usually coloured and delicate of texture” (“corolla”). The star-shaped corolla of the flower,
This equation of meat with
indicative of the virginal vagina, is further described as “delicate.” Many of the definitions
virility, power, and aggression
for “delicate” are suggestive of feminine sexfurther illustrates the
uality as it culturally pertains to heterosexual
males: “delightful, pleasant; characterized by
predatory and dominant
pleasure or sensuous delight; exquisitely soft,
nature of the eleven brothers
slender, or slight; a thing that gives pleasure;
so fine or tender as to be easily damaged, inin their control over Benjamin.
jured, or spoiled” (“delicate”). Delving deeper, the term “spoiled” refers to something that
has been “pillaged, plundered, or ravaged” (“spoiled”) and to “spoil” something can mean
“to disrobe or unclothe a person” or “to ravish or violate a woman” (“spoil”). Therefore, the
“golden star” on the girl’s forehead is symbolically suggestive of her specialness, and is also
indicative of her vagina, which is coveted by her brothers. Moreover, her “delicate” corolla—
her vestal vagina—in the presence of these eleven hunters, is anything but safe. Not only does
this suggest incest, it also suggests that the brothers are metaphorically, if not actually, plundering their young sister. While startling to modern readers, “many of the tales speak directly
to and about the erotic elements of love,” which James McGlathery maintains have survived
the many revisions of the tales, and are not restricted by the familial relationship of characters
(qtd. in Schmidt 44).
The more explicit aspects of incest appear when the brothers are introduced to their sister.
Immediately upon discovering that Benjamin is, in fact, the girl’s brother, the two “[feel] so
Jacob | 45
much love for each other that they [cannot] stop kissing and hugging” (Grimm 21). When the
eleven other boys find that there is now another feminine character, they are “overjoyed, and
they [throw] their arms around her, kiss her, and [feel] a deep love for her” (Grimm 21). These
instances work to introduce the incestuous relationships, before connoting their depth. Overt
displays of affection such as these have been referred to as “inevitably erotic,” (Schmidt 44)
and work to sexually objectify the boys’ sister even further.
After witnessing the “spoiling” of the girl by her brothers, it is important to return to the
first symbol that the brothers associate with their sister: “a flag red as blood” (Grimm 19). The
word “flag” can be used as “an opprobrious term applied to a woman” (“flag”). If a woman
has been disgraced or shamed, she may be referred to as a flag. The violent, incestuous rape of
the girl is certainly capable of incurring disgrace or shame. Furthermore, the flag is described
as “red as blood” shortly before the boys make an oath that if they “run into a girl, her red
blood will flow” (Grimm 19). These images imply a defloration, as well as the menses that is
associated with females and femininity. They foretell the fact that the girl will reach puberty
while living with her brothers. More importantly, they indicate the sense of violence that the
brothers associate with femininity. Essentially, the first image equated with the princess, the
“flag red as blood,” foreshadows the incestuous ravaging that will link the girl to her brothers
and will disgrace her—labeling her a flag.
The introduction of the sister does not, however, remove Benjamin from his feminine role.
Rather than join his brothers’ masculine unit, Benjamin remains in his feminine role, continuing to satisfy his brothers: “The eleven boys went into the woods, caught game, deer, birds,
and doves, so that they would have enough to eat, and Benjamin and his sister made sure that
everything was cooked in a tasty way” (Grimm 21). Again, the eleven brothers (as a single
unit) take the role of hunter and bring back meat to fuel their power and sexuality. Benjamin
remains in his feminine role, in part because changing the number of the masculine unit from
eleven to twelve would compromise its phallic power. Interestingly, Benjamin never argues
his emasculated role or his inability to ascend to the role of hunter.
Perhaps more disturbing is the implied willingness of the young girl to satisfy her brothers. She conducts her domestic duties, “making sure that there [is] always food on the table
when the brothers return home” (Grimm 22). This indicates that she is always waiting to satisfy their appetites. After ensuring that her brothers are gratified, she “[makes] the beds up with
clean, white linens” (Grimm 22). This suggests that the beds have, in some way, been soiled.
Furthermore, the specification that the new linens are “white” implies an attempt to regain
purity. Immediately following this line, the text reveals that “[t]he brothers were completely
content, and they lived together in perfect harmony” (Grimm 22). It does not, however, indicate that the sister is contented, nor that she is living harmoniously.
The story does, however, progress to a point at which the young girl begins to gain agency over her sexuality, though she is still being sexually objectified by her brothers. This is
suggested when the only mention of vegetables or herbs in the story occurs; when the girl is
moving toward a sexual awakening: “[t]he princess gathered firewood, found herbs to cook
the vegetables with, and stirred the pots on the fire so that there was always food on the table when the brothers returned home” (Grimm 22). Jones contends that “milk and eggs have
feminine associations, as do vegetables that contain seeds (the ovaries of plants) and that are
round, smooth, small, soft, sweet, and juicy” (139). Furthermore, he states that “[s]pices…
also excite[d] the sensual nature rather than moral character of a young woman” (141). This
indicates that the sister was beginning to experience sexual excitement, likely as a result of
hormonal changes upon reaching puberty. The act of “stir[ing] the pots” suggests masturbation. Though the tool used to stir the pots is likely to be viewed as a phallic symbol, when
examining the possibility of masturbation, the tool may be considered “a symbol for the girl’s
46 | Jacob
own finger” (Caccavo 133). The pot would then represent the girl’s vagina, and the stirring
would indicate self-gratification “in preparation for the future possibility of sexual intercourse
and motherhood” (Caccavo 133). The text demonstrates that the self-gratification is indeed in
“preparation…for intercourse,” as it indicates that the reason the girl stirs the pots is to provide satisfaction for her brothers’ appetites. Additionally, the word “stirred,” when used as an
adjective, refers to something that has been “moved, agitated, [or] excited” (“stirred”). When
used as a verb, “stir” can mean “to be roused or excited, as feeling, passion,” “to excite to activity [or] stimulate,” or even “to show signs of growth; to bud” (“stir”). This again indicates
that the act of stirring the pot, alongside the only reference to vegetables, is a representation of
the young girl’s pubescent sexual awakening and concurrent masturbation.
In accordance with the theme of oppressive male dominance, however, the young girl’s realization of her sexuality does not go unpunished. As Stone asserts, “[t]he restriction of women at puberty can also be interpreted as a reaction of men to the threat of female sexuality”
(47). More specifically, “[s]exuality is also portrayed as harmful to the heroine herself. There
are many symbolic hints that women should not become too familiar with their own bodies” (Stone 47). Immediately after the implied sexual awakening, the girl leaves her brothers
while “everyone [is] sitting at the table, eating” the “fine meal” that “Benjamin and his sister
had prepared” (Grimm 22). The reference to the meal again illustrates the fact that Benjamin
and his sister are responsible for indulging their brothers. At this juncture, the sister decides
she wants to “do something nice for her brothers” and escapes to her “little garden” outside
of her “enchanted house” to “pick flowers” (Grimm 22). The garden and flowers are, again,
representative of the girl’s vagina, and “picking flowers” is also symbolic of defloration. Additionally, the “house” is also a vaginal symbol, and the word “enchanted” indicates that the
“house” is “charmed [or] enraptured” (“enchanted”). This language illustrates another example of the girl’s aroused sexuality and self-gratification. The fact that she views it as a favor for
her brothers again illustrates Caccavo’s assertion that the young female’s masturbation is used
in preparation for sexual intercourse. At this point,
just as she was picking the flowers, the twelve brothers turned into twelve ravens and flew
up over the trees, and the house vanished. The poor girl was left all alone in the wilderness. As she turned around, she caught sight of an old woman next to her who said: “Dear
child, what have you done? Why didn’t you leave those twelve white flowers alone?”
(Grimm 22)
Essentially, she is blamed for spoiling the twelve boys. As punishment for the realization of
her feminine sexuality, the girl is left alone and unprotected in the wilderness. She is then
made responsible for restoring her brothers to their human form by remaining silent and not
smiling for seven years. Because the female’s realization of her sexuality posed a threat, her
power of speech was restricted. As “all domination begins by prohibiting language” (Barthes
68), the most effective way to narratively strip the girl of her power was by forcibly silencing
her for an extended period of time. Though the sister’s sexual awakening negatively affects her
brothers, it ultimately works to strip her of the resulting agency she would have gained. This
again demonstrates Stone’s ideals that women are likely to be subjugated when they threaten
men’s power and that in these tales, female sexuality is likely to prove self-destructive.
As the story continues, the girl is sitting alone in a tree, and is discovered by a king who
“set[s] eyes on the beautiful princess with the golden star on her forehead” and becomes “so
enchanted with her beauty that he call[s] up to her to ask if she [will] be his wife” (Grimm 23).
The girl is once again recognized for her “golden star” and is thereafter claimed by another
dominating patriarch. As time passes, her sexuality is revived, and it is not long before she
Jacob | 47
is accused of playing “godless tricks…in secret” and is sentenced to be burned at the stake
(Grimm 23). The “godless tricks” can be read as another reference to her illicit masturbation.
In this case, her roused sexuality leads to her imminent death. However,
[j]ust after she had been bound to the stake and at the moment when flames began to lick at her clothes with their red tongues, the seven years came to an end. Suddenly there was a whirring sound in the air and twelve ravens came flying through
the air and swooped down. When they touched the ground, they turned into
her twelve brothers, whom she had disenchanted. They stomped on the fire, put
out the flames, and released their sister. They all hugged and kissed. (Grimm 23)
Because the seven years have expired, the brothers return to reclaim their dominance over
their sister. They, unlike their sister, are capable of putting out the fire—a power that Ruth B.
Bottigheimer asserts is gender specific. Males often are able to combat flames in Kinder-und
Hausmärchen, while “[n]ot a single woman enjoys a similar immunity to flame” (Bottigheimer
28). This gender specific power over the element works to reinforce the males’ supremacy and
dominance over the female. Additionally, the flames are sexualized, described as “lick[ing]”
at the girl with their “red tongues.” To “lick”
means to “pass the tongue over (something),
Though the sister’s sexual
e.g. with the object of tasting, moistening
the surface, or removing something from it”
awakening negatively affects
(“lick”). The flames are molesting the girl, both
her brothers, it ultimately
“tasting” and “moistening” her, while simultaneously removing her power.
works to strip her of the
Interestingly, though the sister has reresulting agency she would
mained entirely silent for seven years in order to save her brothers, she is credited only
have gained.
with “disenchanting” them, while they are described as “releas[ing]” her. This implies that,
not only are the males the heroes, they also hold the power to “release” their sister. Because
she has been claimed by another phallic power, the king, the brothers relinquish their dominance of their sister to her husband. After all, they are still able to exert their dominance over
Benjamin, who never abandoned the submissive feminine role.
The recurring themes of food, forests, and feminine domestication work to cloak the more
latent motifs of masturbation, homosexuality, and incest while reinforcing the gender binary
of the tale’s male-dominated society. By placing the power with the phallic unit, the text effectively emasculates Benjamin and oppresses his sister. Moreover, by incorporating punishment
for the female in the instances in which she is responsible for the males’ castration, “The Twelve
Brothers” acts as somewhat of a deterrent or precautionary tale for females approaching a recognition of their sexual proclivities. Ultimately, the equation of femininity (or feminine sexuality) with anxiety or punishment adheres to the patriarchal construction of phallocentrism
and works to perpetuate the cultivation of a gender dichotomy that subtly subdues one sex.
48 | Jacob
Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc., 1974. Print
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. “Natural Powers and Elemental Differences.” Grimms’ Bad Girls & Bold Boys: The Moral & Social Vision of the Tales.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. 24-39. Print.
Caccavo, Penny. “The Forbidden Room: A Pair of Fairy Tales as Developmental Metaphor.” Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women. Ed. Elaine
V. Siegel. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc., 1992. 130-51. Print.
“corolla, n.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“delicate, adj.”OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“enchanted, adj.” OED Online 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Ewers, Hans-Heino. “Male Adolescence in German Fairy-Tale Novellas of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Biedermeier.” Marvels and
Tales 17.1 (2003): 75-85. Project MUSE. 1 Nov. 2012. Web.
“flag, n.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. “The Twelve Brothers.” The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Maria Tatar.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 18-24. Print.
“hunt, v.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Jones, Michael Owen. “Food Choice, Symbolism, and Identity: Bread and Butter Issues for Folkloristics and Nutrition Studies (American
Folklore Society Presidential Address, October 2005).” Journal of American Folklore 120.477 (2007): 129-177. Project MUSE. 1 Nov. 2012. Web.
“lick, v.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Schmidt, Gary D. “The Dimensions of Fairy Tale Romance.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 17.4 (1992): 44-45. Project MUSE. Web.
1 Nov. 2012.
“spoil, v.” OED Online 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“spoiled, adj.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“star, n.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“stir, v.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
“stirred, adj.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.” The Journal of American Folklore 88.347 (1975): 42-50. JSTOR. 11 Oct. 2012. Web.
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Project MUSE. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Jacob | 49
50 | Divoky
Divoky | 51
52 | Divoky
Remnants of a Mythology |
Grasping Agency through the Role of the Mother in
The Awakening and The Scarlet Letter |
Heather Divoky
E
gyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, Chinese, and even Mesoamerican mythologies were all passed down through
written manuscripts. While many of these
mythologies were pillaged and destroyed
by various conquerors—notably those found
in connection with Christendom—their traditions were much harder to completely
break. Their tales were not as easily forgotten
thanks to the written word, and historians of
the time fought to save these physical manifestations of cultures because they were part
of history. But what happens to a mythology
in which tradition was strictly oral and told
only through stories preformed in front of an
audience?
The Slavs’ mythologies were a vast collection of fascinating stories passed down
from generation to generation via the oral
tradition. When conversion to Christianity
quickly spread over the Slavic territories,
these mythologies dwindled to no more than
a few sparsely remembered accounts. As a
historian myself, this agitates me, and as a
person with Czech heritage traceable as far
back as Slavic history extends, it breaks my
heart. What remains of these rich faerie tales
are uncovered through old legends, archeological findings, and the odd manuscript
written by missionaries of the time.
Fairly well documented, these three Slavic Goddess allowed me to not only connect
back to a piece of where I came from, but also
piqued my interest as an art historian, and,
of course, an artist. The Zorya were the personifications of the Evening, Midnight, and
Morning stars. Respectively, they are called
Zorya Vechernyaya, the unnamed Zorya,
and Zorya Utrennyaya. They are as mysterious as they sound, with several documented variations of their backgrounds—in some
instances, they are married to the moon and
Jamie L. Joyner
their offspring are the stars, in others, they
are virgin goddesses. Their primary function
was to open and guard the gates of the sun
god’s palace, and in some tales guard a giant
monster hidden in our constellations. They
were beautiful, strong, and, in my case, inspiring.
Creating these three pieces not only allowed me to revisit the origins of my heritage, but I also geeked out on how awesome
Slavic myths are. It’s my way of visualizing
the remains of legends that are somehow
connected to me, deepening my connection
with the past of my people. Like most of my
work, exploring the mysterious and reimagining it, as I have done with the three Zorya,
is my attempt at not losing something that is
almost gone.
See our Featured Artists page on our website
for more information about Heather Divoky,
to peruse her prints, or commission an original.
Divoky | 53
D
uring the Victorian era, a new protagonist was introduced in the American novel—a
female protagonist depicted as a mother who was seen as other in society. The role of
the mother and patriarchy’s oppression of her sexuality can be studied in Edna Pontellier in The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter. The woman’s sexuality in the maternal role is essential in the resistance of the phallocentric societal norms because it awakens the woman’s ability to exist outside of the institution
of motherhood. Both protagonists can be analyzed through Virginia Woolf’s theory of financial and spatial independence in A Room of One’s Own, and the conclusion can be reached that
agency gained by embracing or rejecting the role of the maternal allows the mother to break
free of patriarchy. Furthermore, the mother’s plight to gain agency encourages the novels’
audiences to take action in regard to women’s rights.
Virginia Woolf’s theory in A Room of One’s Own can be used as a lens to analyze the efforts
of the protagonists to exist outside of patriarchal norms by creating a space of their own. The
sense of establishing one’s own space is pertinent in being able to exist outside of societal
norms. Edna Pontellier attempts to establish a room of her own by shedding her identities as
wife and mother. Through her rebellion against the institution of these roles, she is able to gain
agency throughout The Awakening. Her rebirth as an individual begins to plant seeds within the minds of nineteenth-century readers that will one day give birth to feminism. Hester
Prynne can be labeled as other throughout her emotional journey within Hawthorne’s novel.
Her ability to exist outside of patriarchy allows her to maintain full agency in the novel. Hester’s success in navigating the phallocentric provides an authoritative role model for women.
Each achieves this sense of agency by either shedding or wholly embracing her role as mother.
Virginia Woolf presents her theory that women should be capable of having their own
space in which to create in her book A Room of One’s Own. The book was originally a speech
that Woolf had written for “Newnham and Girton colleges” in London (Gordon vii), and was
meant to inspire young women to become more than domesticated housewives. Woolf writes
that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” in order to create (4). According to
Mary Gordon, Woolf’s theory implies that “genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear…and without money freedom is impossible” (viii). A woman must possess
her own income, independent from the masculine. Sally Alexander describes A Room of One’s
Own as Woolf’s “wish for freedom of mind, independence of property and body from fathers
and husbands, professors and judges, all men of power and wealth who would tell women
what to do” (275). Yet Woolf’s theory hinges on the fact that women must have money in order
to maintain a private space. If there is no income—there can be no agency.
In The Awakening, under the watchful eye of patriarchy in her husband’s home, Edna begins painting, which is her gateway to agency. Although the room is described as her own, her
access is restricted based on her status as wife and mother. Mr. Pontellier asserts his dominion
over Edna when he states, “It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier [her room] days which would be better
employed contriving for the comfort of her family” (Chopin 55). Patriarchy implies that her
creative space is unacceptable—thus, inducing Edna’s rebellion to obtain a room of her own
in which to refashion herself as independent.
54 | Joyner
As Edna paints, she yearns to possess a space that is predominantly her own, and as she
develops her talents with the paintbrush, she begins to cultivate her identity as woman. Edna’s choice of the paintbrush is extremely telling in her attempts to grasp agency within her
journey through the implied envy of the penis—the male source of power. Edna’s awakening
stems from her obsession with the paintbrush—a phallic symbol. The brush is an obvious male
representation, which can then be seen as Edna’s choice in manipulating the phallocentricism
that she is subjected to. Her artwork begins to change her, and her husband notes that she is
“not herself” when she is painting (Chopin 55). Patriarchy critiques Edna’s transformation as
a wayward choice deviating from the ideal woman. But according to Nikol Lohr, “painting...is
sexy because it fuses vision and skill into a creative superpower” (qtd in Hosegood 151). Edna
takes control of her own talents and applies them to the canvas of her choice. She no longer
cares if society does not approve of her self-expression. For the first time in her life, she has
attained agency through her own creativity in her manipulation of the phallic paintbrush.
This creativity leads to Edna’s financial security as she begins to sell her paintings. Edna
acquires financial agency from her husband through her artwork. She states, “I am beginning
to sell my sketches” (Chopin 76), which allows her to pay for her room of her own. According to Denise Marshall, Edna’s ability to maintain her own financial independence reinforces
Woolf’s ideology that “as women are less and less secured by men and in domesticity, they
become more and more secure in themselves.
Their identities become more pronounced as
[Edna] no longer cares if sothe conventions break up” (160). Woolf’s theory of financial stability leading to agency is
ciety does not approve of her
seen through Edna’s use of her creative talent.
self-expression. For the first
Similar to Edna, Hester is also trapped
within a loveless marriage; however, Hester
time in her life, she has athas lived alone without her husband for many
tained agency through her own
years. Her husband has gone missing, and it
has been assumed that he is dead. This implies
creativity in her manipulation
that Hester has already experienced the agency
of the phallic paintbrush.
that Edna could not due to her husband’s presence in the beginning of the novel. The Scarlet
Letter opens with Hester being released from
prison after the birth of her daughter, Pearl. Because Hester’s husband is not present, it is
known that she has sinned with another man. Hester is ostracized from puritan society due to
her refusal to admit who the father of her baby is. Cast out of her home and lifestyle, Hester
must fashion a space of her own in which to raise her daughter. But in order to maintain an
independent feminine space, according to Woolf, she must be capable of financially sustaining
it.
Like Edna, Hester gains financial agency through her own creative artistry in needlework.
Although Hawthorne describes needlework as “the only [art] within a woman’s grasp” (57),
Hester’s talent with her needle is extremely desirable to the patriarchal society that has condemned her. Frederick Newberry describes Hester’s artwork as being “worthy of the monarch
and nobility in England [and that] it is in demand for the highest orders of Puritan society”
(236). Hester is able to financially support herself and her child through her creativity. Adrienne Rich describes Hester’s needlework as “a gesture of such defiance” (160); it is with this
creative defiance that she is able to construct a space outside of patriarchal dictatorship—one
that societal norms cannot touch. Betsy Hosegood describes a woman’s creativity through
needlework as the “supreme power of the producer whose creative efforts are the result of
joy, imagination, and discipline” (152). Hester secures her own space through an artistic effort
Joyner | 55
that can be seen as requiring great discipline that most women would lack during this time in
history.
Through her manipulation of societal norms, Hester is able to maintain a room of her own
while forcing the phallocentric authorities to accept her sin in exchange for the creative outlet
that they have termed “fashion” (Hawthorne 58). Yet what should be considered is Hester’s
chosen tool in her mastery of her art—the needle. The needle can be viewed as a transgendered
object. It represents both the masculine and the feminine. The needle’s eye is a clear representation of vaginal imagery, which also correlates with the notion of giving birth. The woman is
giving birth to art through the vaginal opening of the needle. However, the needle’s point can
be considered to be a phallic representation, and it can be implied that Hester has penis envy.
Psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray defines penis envy as the “woman’s resentment and jealousy at
being deprived of the…sexual advantages, reserved for men alone” (51). Through Irigaray’s
definition of penis envy, it can be understood that Hester is envious not of the actual penis, but of its sexual freedom. Hester has been
punished for displaying her sexuality. This
Through the needle, [Hester]
leads to Hester’s manipulation of the needle.
Through the needle, she can transcend tradican transcend traditional
tional gender roles within puritanical society,
gender roles within puritanical and she can exist in a gray area in which she
society, and she can exist in a is capable of earning the finances that Woolf
states are necessary to sustaining feminine ingray area in which she is
dependence.
Although both protagonists gain the financapable of earning the
cial independence promoted in Woolf’s theory
finances that Woolf states are through their manipulation of phallic symbols
of power, they must also construct and mainnecessary to sustaining
tain a room of their own that is separate from
feminine independence.
patriarchal traditions. In order for this space to
function as Woolf argues, both women must be
capable of shedding patriarchally prescribed
gender roles, and be willing to embrace their maternal identities. It is, ultimately, through her
role as mother that each woman finds freedom from the bonds of the institution.
Edna Pontellier finds herself imprisoned within the roles that patriarchy has dictated for
her since childhood. She is trapped within a marriage that she does not want, and she has
been incorporated into the role of mother, even though she cannot mold herself to fit its requirements. Her awakening begins as she realizes that she does not have to conform to her
husband’s wishes, as she “perceive[s] that her will ha[s] blazed up, stubborn and resistant” to
his commands that she go to bed (Chopin 31). In this moment, Edna begins to awaken from
patriarchy’s hold over her. It is in this first feeble moment of resistance that Edna realizes that,
as a woman, she has lacked agency throughout her life.
But she has also lacked agency within her role as mother. Motherhood has often been
viewed as an institutional role implemented by patriarchy, which Adrienne Rich defines as “a
familial-social, ideological, political system in which men…determine what part women shall
or shall not play” (57). It can be argued that Edna views motherhood as what Rich defines as
the “institution,” which “has alienated women from [their] bodies by incarcerating [them] in
them [their bodies]” (13). Edna is described as being detached from her children. It appears
to the reader that her children are merely more independent than most, but still her husband
attempts to force her into the role of the devoted mother. However, Chopin describes Edna
as “not a mother-woman” (9), and it is immediately implied for the reader that Edna does not
56 | Joyner
live up to patriarchy’s imposed definition of mother. Sara Ruddick defends mothers like Edna
when she writes, “not all women are mothers, nor is maternal thinking the whole of women’s
thought” (236). Edna is not consumed with her maternal role. She chooses to maintain an identity that holds true to the woman she was prior to giving birth.
Rich describes Edna in her book Of Woman Born as being “an ‘inadequate’” mother, merely, because she feels “unequal to the mother role” (237). Chopin explains Edna’s imbalanced
version of the maternal as being “fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way…she did
not miss them except with an occasional intense longing” (19). Her refusal to smother her
children with unnecessary attention leads patriarchy to judge and condemn her as a woman
who is incapable of following societal norms and the role that “God” has given her. Lucia
Valeska discusses the effects that the maternal role has on women who are not meant to
It is through this disconnet
mother: “motherhood was the primary and…
only route to social and economic” stability within the facets of herself that
(74). This forced entry into motherhood led to
allows Edna to transition into
a detached form of parenting as is evident with
Edna when she exclaims, “I would give my life
her own space, free from the
for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself”
impositions that the
(Chopin 46). She recognizes that she cannot
give her self to her children, that her identity as
phalocentirc authority
Edna is more essential than the title of mother.
enforces.
Valeska explains that a new mother will take
back her identity “if [her] community will not
provide [her] with the freedom [she] need[s]
to rebuild [her] life” (75). Edna takes her freedom into her own hands in order to construct
her own identity, which leads to a disconnect from her children. It is through this disconnect
within the facets of herself that allows Edna to transition into her own space, free from the
impositions that the phallocentric authority enforces.
Edna’s awakening leads to her moving into her own home—separate from her husband
and children. As she constructs the space that Woolf deems necessary in order for a woman
to create, Edna begins to evolve into the woman that she has longed to be. Chopin shows the
reader Edna’s ascension into agency when she writes,
the pigeon-house pleased her…There was with her a feeling of having descended in the
social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which
she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion
as an individual…No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion” when her own soul
had invited her. (89)
Yet through her success in attaining agency, Edna begins to shed the role of mother. As Edna
grows into a free individual within her independent space, it is clear, based on her infatuation
with different male suitors, that she has not freed herself from patriarchal imprisonment. As
she crafts her space, she continues to base her room of her own around the phallus. When
Robert, the man who Edna loves, denies his love for her, she loses her false sense of agency,
and falls into depression. Yet even in her inability to break free, she continues to refuse to
conform to the institution of motherhood at the end of the novel by deciding that “she would
never sacrifice herself for her children” (Chopin 108). Edna breaks patriarchy’s hold over her
by shedding her identity as mother, which leads to her inability to cope with the loneliness
that she experiences without her children. However, Edna continues to view motherhood as
Joyner | 57
Rich’s idea of institution, which leads her to choose death. Within the broken shards of her
falsely secured agency, Edna denies patriarchal constraints in her final moments, choosing
death over a life of imprisonment.
While Edna chooses death over the institutional maternal, Hester maintains her agency as
she seeks to redefine the mother’s role by living. Hester uses her daughter, Pearl, as a symbol
of her agency throughout the novel. It is through Pearl that she maintains the ability to exist
outside of the patriarchal tradition in her community. However, patriarchy will never allow
a woman to hold onto something that provides such a blatant amount of resistance to societal norms. Therefore, the patriarchal traditions demand that Pearl be taken from Hester. The
Governor threatens to take Pearl away when he states, “It is because of stain which that letter
indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands” (Hawthorne 76). Due to the terrible
sin that Hester has committed, patriarchy does not see her as a fit role model for the child.
Adrienne Rich explains that “[t]hroughout patriarchal mythology, dream-symbolism, theology, [and] language…the female body is [seen as being] impure, corrupt, the site of discharges, bleedings, [and] dangerous to masculinity, a source of moral and physical contamination, ‘the devil’s gateway’” (34). Hester’s womanly body now threatens patriarchy’s hold
over societal norms, because she has successfully constructed her own space outside of the
phallocentric. Patriarchy must dismantle her agency and strip her of the power she holds outside of patriarchal constraints. Yet Hester continues to manipulate the phallocentric when she
exclaims,
God gave me the child…in the requital of all things else, which ye have taken from me. She
is my happiness!—she is my torture…Pearl punishes me too!...Ye shall not take her…I will
not give her up! (Hawthorne 78)
By deferring to patriarchal religious beliefs, Hester is able to maintain her agency while asserting her maternal instincts to defend her child. Thus, Hester gives the male representatives a
false sense of power over her by implying all of the things they wish to hear.
Hester continues to embrace the maternal role throughout the novel. Her ability to continue to mother outside of Rich’s theory of the institution leads to the ultimate sense of freedom.
Yet Hester is seen as this other woman due to the fact that she has “collaborated” with an unknown man. This act of sexual collaboration, according to Woolf, leads to “the act of creation”
(104), which gives birth to Hester’s maternal role. It is through her sexual “awakening” that
she is able to navigate outside of the patriarchal society. She embraces her role as mother as
she raises her daughter alone. Ann Ferguson suggests that patriarchy has been weakened due
to “the increase of single mother-headed families” (12), which has also led to the mother being
“both the domestic [parent] and breadwinner” (12). Through Ferguson’s ideas, Hester can be
viewed as the breadwinner through the income that she earns, yet she is also the domestic
parent as well.
Her ability to navigate both parental roles allows her agency within the puritanical society in which she lives; this agency can also relate to the needle as her chosen profession. It
is through the transgendered freedom of the needle that Hester is able to embrace her dual
identities as both mother and father. Andrea O’Reilly refers to this freedom in motherhood
as “a site of empowerment and as a location of social change” (18). Hester’s maternal role is a
source of empowerment for feminine readers in the nineteenth century, as well as the starting
point for radical social change in women’s roles. This tiny seed of evolution has been planted
within the reader’s mind, and Woolf implies that the change needed depends on women such
as Hester and the influence they can give to future generations (110). Hester has embraced
her role as mother and has found agency in which to exist independently outside of the male
58 | Joyner
dominated familial structure.
Even though both protagonists choose different paths in their maternal journeys, both
women are prime examples of the possibilities for women when they attain Woolf’s theory
of spatial independence in A Room of One’s Own. Edna rejects motherhood as institution and
gains agency through her artistic talents. Through the income earned from her art, she is able
to maintain her own home independent of her husband’s reach. Through her own room, she
is able to become sexually independent in her choice of partners, which also leads Edna to her
downfall. Edna’s inability to exist outside of the phallocentric, ultimately, leads to her death.
However, in her final moments, she chooses death over the imprisonment that motherhood
would entail, which allows her chosen identity to prevail over patriarchy.
Hester embraces her entry into motherhood and uses it to construct her own agency. She
maintains her own home free from patriarchal influence through the income generated by her
needlework. Although Hester is not seen as sexually active throughout the novel, it can be implied that she has gained sexual independence through giving birth to Pearl. Her willingness
to hold onto Pearl at any cost shows her ability to manipulate the men in power who would
strip her of the agency that Pearl represents. Hester’s role exemplifies Woolf’s idea that one
woman who creates outside of phallocentricism can influence the awakening of all women.
Hester shows that through the maternal, one can achieve agency outside of the institution. It
is in this aspect that Edna failed. If she had embraced her role as mother, she might have lived
in a room of her own, free of phallocentricism. However, Edna’s battle cannot be overlooked;
for it was through her maternal role that she was able to transcend patriarchal norms. The role
of the maternal must be valued as the root of social change for women in nineteenth-century
literature. It is through these mothers that feminism was born.
Alexander, Sally. “Room of One’s Own: 1920s Feminist Utopias.” Women: A Cultural Review 11.3 (2000): 273-88. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 12 September 2012.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: Norton, 1994. Print.
Ferguson, Ann. “Motherhood and Sexuality: Some Feminist Questions.” Hypatia. 1.2 (1986): 3-22. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 September 2012.
Gordon, Mary. Foreword. A Room of One’s Own. By Virginia Woolf. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1981. vii-xiv. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 3rd ed. Ed. Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richard Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New
York: Norton, 1988. Print.
Hosegood, Betsy. “Whip Your Hobby into Shape: Knitting, Feminism and Construction of Gender.” Textile 7.2 (2009): 148-63. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 1 December 2012.
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex which is not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. Print.
Marshall, Denise. “Slaying The Angel and The Patriarch: The Grinning Woolf.” Women’s Studies 15.1-3 (1988): 149-77. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
Newberry, Frederick. “Tradition and Disinheritance.” The Scarlet Letter an Authoritative Text: Essays in Criticism and Scholarship. 3rd ed. Ed.
Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richard Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1988. 231-48. Print.
O’Reilly, Andrea. “Outlaw(ing) Motherhood: A Theory and Politic of Maternal Empowerment for the Twenty-first Century.” Hecate 36.1
(2010): 17-29. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 October 2012.
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976. Print.
Ruddick, Sara. “Preservative Love and Military Destruction: Some Reflections on Mothering and Peace.” Mothering. Ed. Joyce Trebilcot.
Totowa: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984. 231-62. Print.
Valeska, Lucia. “If All Else Fails, I’m Still a Mother.” Mothering. Ed. Joyce Trebilcot. Totowa: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984. 70-78. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1929. Print.
Joyner | 59
Poetess Felicia Hemans:Challenging Socially Constructed Promotion
of Female Fragility in “The Homes of England” | Sadie E. Campbell
I
n Felicia Hemans’s poem “The Homes of England” from Records of Woman with Other Poems,
the poetess addresses early nineteenth-century’s socially constructed promotion of female
fragility—branded by patriarchal forces as female weakness—and challenges English society’s lack of appreciation with regard to women’s valuable contributions. Although Hemans
uses a cautious and indirect methodology to address and challenge societal and cultural mores, nonetheless, she draws critical attention to the dichotomy between an era of immense
productive power and women’s marginalization in a patriarchal society. More specifically,
Hemans contests social structures and the under-appreciation of domesticity and, resultantly,
inspired beneficial transformation in women’s personal and national identities. In terms of
female empowerment, Hemans invites women to ponder the antithesis between the negative
effects of apathetic acceptance of their undervalued domestic roles and the positive effects of
heightened recognition as to women’s importance within the domestic sphere, thereby challenging traditional beliefs and defying stereotypical interpretations of female fragility. The poetess confronts the lack of deserved recognition towards women in “The Homes of England”
and, even though Hemans’s approach is decidedly reserved in tone, her feminist message is
no less compelling. If we understand feminism to be a concept which, in part, prizes the need
for women to be credited for their unique abilities and strengths, Hemans underscores the admirable qualities of gentleness, sensitivity, and compassion in “The Homes of England” and,
in doing so, promotes women’s value, both in the past and present.
Hemans was a feminist without the fanfare and an activist without the anger; the poetess
incited a poetical discourse, a discourse that questioned societal and cultural values in a subtle
way, a genteel probing into females’ roles in British domesticity and the influence of femininity. Through her poetic contributions, particularly the poem “The Homes of England,” Hemans
undermines the patriarchal ideology of the early nineteenth century and helps women define
their subjectivity and discover their agency; additionally, by the same poetic impartations,
the poetess demonstrates that all feminist acts—however they are presented or communicated--are concurrent with feminist activism.
When the structure of the poem is analyzed in a systematic way and the language is examined, its composition reveals how Hemans aligns females’ experiences with self-confidence
and, in equal measure, rejects patriarchal ideology with its harmful potentiality to disempower
women. There are numerous examples of word choices and sentence fragments in Hemans’s
five-stanza poem to strongly suggest that women’s private emotions were in opposition with
their public sentiments. The second stanza is a premier example of the ways in which Hemans
uses a synthesis of ingenious word choices and pertinent sentence fragments to transpose internal opinions to external awareness:
The merry Homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
Meet, in the ruddy light!
There woman’s voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood’s tale is told,
60 | Campbell
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old. (9-16)
It is immediately obvious to readers that the first line of all five stanzas begins with a reference to a home: the “stately Homes of England,” the “merry Homes of England,” the “blessed
Homes of England,” the “Cottage Homes of England,” and the “free, fair Homes of England,”
thus indicative of Hemans’s intent to focus exclusively on women positioned in domestic environs, environs that are capitalized to highlight the immensity of their importance.
To better appreciate the significance of Hemans’s works and her literary appeals for the
recognition of women’s contributions in domestic environs, it is important to understand the
historical and cultural contexts when “The Homes of England” was published in 1828. As confirmed by Jerome J. McGann in The Romantic Ideology, the need “to elucidate the subject matter
historically [and] to define the specific ways in which certain stylistic forms intersect and join
with certain factual and cognitive points of reference” is crucial (82); the result is a comprehensive explanation as to why Hemans addresses and challenges societal and cultural mores regarding attitudes towards English women “in hut and hall,” yet fell short of the endorsement
to venture outside the realms of domesticity and why they remained “[a]round their hearths
by night” as poeticized by Hemans in “The Homes of England” ( 34, 10).
The impact of the British Industrial Revolution (1780-1850) penetrated economic, technological, political, and social barriers in ways that cannot be underestimated; it was the most
important shift involving mass production in European history. However, this historical shift
sharply contrasted with English society’s injustices and the virtual indifference regarding
women’s worth and prompted Hemans to craft a number of her poems in an effort to highlight the incongruities between the celebration of industrial power and the failure of society to
appreciate women for their unique and valuable contributions. Hemans offers a female perspective of society’s injustices towards women during the era of the British Industrial Revolution in “The Homes of England,” and the poetess’s astute interpretation is achieved through
Hemans was a feminist
a number of strategies, which are outlined as
without the fanfare and an
follows.
Throughout most of the five, eight-line
activist without the anger.
regular stanzas of the poem, Hemans’s vocabulary is saturated with sycophantic adjectives that portray idealistic and pastoral descriptions of England’s “pleasant land” where the
Homes are “stately,” “merry,” “blessed,” “free,” and “fair” (4, 1, 9, 17, 33). But the second
stanza seems isolated from the others; rather than references to the landscape, wildlife, et cetera, Hemans writes of a home’s occupants who gather “[a]round their hearths by night” with
“gladsome looks of household love” and adds that, within the “merry” homes, a “woman’s
voice flows forth in song” (10, 11, 9, 13). The domestic scene portrayed in this stanza differs
from the elaborate pastoral descriptions in the first, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas, and the
implication in the localization of the second stanza—and, in particular, the sentence fragment
“woman’s voice flows forth in song”—is to encourage society to value women’s presence in
the home and to illustrate how women’s influence is not limited to domesticity but reaches
beyond the home into society (Hemans 13). That is, women’s influence in society emanates
from the traits associated with femininity, all of which augment the stability and cohesion of
the home, neighborhood, state, and nation. At a time in history when industrial advancements
were acclaimed and traditional barriers were torn down and replaced with innovative ideas,
women’s place in England remained stagnant and their voices predominantly muted, which
prevented them from fully and actively participating in society. Hemans’s intent is to artic-
Campbell | 61
ulate, in poetic form, that if a “woman’s voice” is not appreciated, their gender is trivialized
and, without full recognition, their femininity is minimalized (13).
A woman’s voice was virtually ignored during the British Industrial Revolution, an era
when, as stated by E.J. Hobsbawn in The Age of Revolution, “the shackles were taken off the
productive power of human societies, which henceforth become capable of the constant, rapid,
and up to the present limitless multiplication of. . .goods and services” (28). The “productive
power of human societies” vehemently discouraged women from seeking personal fulfillment
outside the home (28); indeed, women’s entire social existence was deliberately constructed
to prevent them from attaining the same level of maturity and rationality as men in issues
other than domesticity. Without male encouragement and support, women’s voices barely
rose above a whisper outside the familial home, but Hemans moves to project an efficacious
message on behalf of all women when she writes that a woman’s voice “flows forth in song”
with “lips [that] move tunefully along,” “solemn, yet sweet,” and, as a consequence, the poetess raises reader’s awareness that women’s voices, together with their insights and opinions,
flows rather than bursts and surges rather than floods (italics mine, 13, 15, 21).
Hemans’s harmonious tone throughout the poem contributes to the overall message regarding the need for women to be recognized and appreciated for their uniqueness, and the
tone also strikes a congenial chord with readers: no biting sarcasm is used, no vulgar attack
is delivered, only transparent images and poetical representations of women who live near
“shade and sunny gleam,” close to “glowing orchards,” or next to “silvery brooks” (Hemans
6, 29, 27). Further, Hemans taps into reader’s emotions with the inclusion of certain adjectives, such as “sunny, “glowing,” and “silvery” which evoke moods of cheeriness, warmth,
and sweetness, as when a “woman’s voice flows forth in song” (6, 29, 27, 13). To complement
the tone and emotive language used, Hemans’s stylistic modus operandi in “The Homes of
England” is to compose an even-numbered eight lines for each stanza, a deliberate tactic by
Hemans to accentuate conformity in the poem’s structure, which parallels patriarchy’s expectations regarding the behavior of women in the early nineteenth century.
As a woman writer, Hemans was aware that she was obliged to follow society’s expectations and adopt a conventional, restrained tone in poetic language as much as she was aware
of the need for a poetess’s decorum in a male-dominated society, and her poetry resonates
with the expected characterizations of submissiveness. Margaret M. Morlier in “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Felicia Hemans: The ‘Poetess’ Problem” explains that:
[f]emale writers could be politically destabilizing at a time when Britain was working
through class problems of its own [and] had to learn new ways of resistance in the interstices of power-knowledge, new arts of writing in a double sense. Hemans responded to
these cultural values in general by assuming the role of the ‘poetess,’ one who was both a
writer and feminine. (71, 72)
Hemans accordingly wrote poetry not only to entertain male and female readers but also to
gently remind her audience of the female fragility endorsed by a patriarchal society and the
ramifications of passivity. As a poetess, Hemans was noted and respected for her reserve in
poetical works and critics and readers alike applauded her for writing in a dispassionate style
far removed from the Romantic mode of exposed desires and intense emotions. As reported
by critic, Francis Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, Hemans’s poetry:
[is] singularly sweet, elegant, and tender—touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather
than vehement and overpowering; finished throughout with an exquisite delicacy, and
even severity of execution, informed with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain
62 | Campbell
sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and
allay the apprehensions of those who are most afraid of the passionate exaggerations of
poetry. (34)
Despite the “humble tone of indulgence and piety,” Hemans projects a strong, articulate female voice in every stanza of the ostensibly conservative poem, “The Homes of England” (34).
A voice that is expressive and significant. Hemans elicits empathetic responses from female
readers as they connect with her feminist messages woven throughout, and, at the same time,
the poetess’s measured language reveals the internal enemies of domesticity, a domesticated
state where women “guard each hallow’d wall” without the full credit they deserve (36).
The dominant patriarchal society of the
early nineteenth century dictated that women’s
experience be strictly confined to the states of
Hemans accordingly wrote podomesticity, but those states were more often
etry not only to entertain male
than not a means of controlling women who
were strongly dissuaded to protest against and female readers but also to
the unfairness of gender inequality. In Critgently remind her audience of
ical Theory Today, Lois Tyson verifies that “[t]
his view of women as the standard-bearers of
the female fragility endorsed
traditional values, whose presence as a nonwage-earner supervisor of hearth and home, by a patriarchal society and the
was deemed necessary to maintain the moral
ramifications of passivity.
structure of society, the dominant patriarchal
ideology” (103). The patriarchal ideology ruled
that women were not entitled to any rights inside the supposed partnership of marriage or
any legal rights outside the marital home; their fundamental requirement was to exemplify
an ornamental representation of women who coveted marriage and motherhood without aspirations to publicly voice their opinions against the accepted ideology. If women expressed
desires to explore opportunities outside their designated domestic domains, their desires were
belittled by men.
At the time in history when “The Homes of England” was written, women were culturally
conditioned to believe that marriage provided the ultimate fulfillment with regard to their
emotional and psychological well-being and, while many women protested internally, very
few protested publicly. They, with “gladsome looks of household love” were to be thankful
while suppressing “[a]ll other sounds” of discontent and frustration with their restrictive domestic roles (Hemans 11, 23). Women were expected to fully embrace domesticity and accept
the false depiction of their gender as delicate and fragile.
In the early nineteenth century, the fragile state of femaleness—and its pleasing and calming appeal to men--was considered a necessary quality in women, so that their minds and
characters conformed to the socially accepted construction of femininity. The socially accepted
construction of femininity and the qualities of the ideal woman are described in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, Wilheim Meister’s Apprenticeship:
She leads a life of almost pure contemplation . . . a life without external events—alife whose
story cannot be told as there is no story. Her existence is not useless. On the contrary . . .
she shines like a beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which others, the
travelers who do have a story, can set their course. When those involved in feeling and
action turn to her in their need, they are never dismissed without advice and consolation.
She is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity of heart. (22)
Campbell | 63
The nineteenth century’s ideal woman was supposed to be satisfied with a “life without external events” (22); her duties and obligations regarding household matters, marital relationships, and parental concerns took precedence over personal ambitions at all times. A successful life meant acquiescence to a second-class existence without aspirations to be anything
other than an obedient wife, proficient homemaker, and an adoring mother. Denied the same
opportunities as their male counterparts, women were restricted to traditional domestic roles
and expected to behave like “motionless lighthouse[s] by which others, the travelers [men]
who do have a story, can set their course” (22). If women expressed desires for careers outside
the home, their desires were scorned and ridiculed by men. Hemans’s poem, “The Homes of
England,” dismisses men’s scorn and ridicules by its expressive language, its musicality, and
the fundamental message that woman’s “lips move tunefully along,” giving voice to the underappreciated female occupants of homes across the width and breadth of England (15). In
this context, Hemans questions the domestication of women together with thought-provoking
issues regarding women’s inalienable rights such as civil liberties, women’s legal equality
with men, and economic autonomy.
In 1828, only the most limited legal reforms had been enacted to support women. Several
pertinent entries in a report by Barbara Leigh Smith titled The Most Important Laws Concerning
Women confirm that, within the legal system in England, the law categorized men as superior
citizens while women were viewed as inferior. Smith reports that from the beginning of the
nineteenth century through to 1856:
o A man and wife are one person in law; the wife loses all her rights as a single woman,
and her existence is entirely absorbed in that of her husband.
o She lives under his protection or cover, and her condition is called coverture.
o Money earned by a married woman belongs absolutely to her husband.
o A married woman cannot sue or be sued for contracts—nor can she enter into contracts
except as the agent of her husband; that is to say, neither her word nor her deed is binding
in law.
o A woman’s body belongs to her husband; she is in his custody, and he can enforce his
right by a writ of habeas corpus.
o What was her personal property before marriage, such as money in hand, money at
the bank, jewels, household goods, clothes, etc., becomes absolutely her husband’s, and
he may assign or dispose of them at this pleasure whether he and his wife live together or
not. (4)
Neither single nor married women were protected from despotic rules and, in fact, women
who married to escape dominating paternal influences entered the supposed “partnership”
of marriage only to discover that their position in society had not changed; they had merely
swapped their social status from daughters to wives and the same patriarchal expectations
were transferred from single to married status. The law in the early nineteenth century governed that women’s experiences were overwhelmingly formatted by domestic matters—without intellectual stimuli—and the domestication of women further marginalized them from
the center of society. In stark contrast to the roar of economic and technological change in the
early nineteenth century, women’s voices remained hushed inside the womb of the British
Industrial Revolution; societal and cultural mores dictated that women devote their time and
energies inside the home, worshipping their husbands, taking immense pleasure in domestic
matters, and idolizing their children.
As such, the reading of “The Homes of England” generates a double awareness regarding
women’s roles in the early nineteenth century. First, Hemans showcases domestic life and
64 | Campbell
conveys how female nurturing sustains a home, whether the home is “stately,” “merry,” or
“blessed,” or whether the home is situated “[a]midst tall ancestral trees” or another location
that is less grand (1, 9, 17, 3). Second, the poetess highlights the fact that, while there was much
progress throughout England during the early nineteenth century, women remained mostly
occluded in society, habitually categorized and subsumed by their roles in households. Moreover, the noticeable absence of an identified female in “The Homes of England” is evidence
that Hemans’s aim is to represent women nationwide “[o]’er all the pleasant land” during the
period of the British Industrial Revolution, and the poetess’s deliberate omission of specific
references to any one particular social class of women substantiates her conviction for equal
appreciation and recognition for all (4).
Although it is unfair to judge poetry as superior over prose, it is reasonable to note that,
according to Louis Untermeyer in The Pursuit of Poetry,
Prose is consciously constructed whereas poetry is subconsciously created. It has been
held that the function of prose is to state and that the purpose of poetry is to suggest, that
prose is the product of the reasoning brain while poetry emanates from a wordless feeling,
a vague emotion, a sense of pain or pleasure striving for expression. (100)
Hemans’s poetry suggests rather than states and explores rather than explains; the poetess’s reason and restraint in language and tone stirs readers’ consciousness into a mindful and
thorough interpretation of “The Homes of England,” all the while sifting through a multitude
of questions regarding the meaning and implications of a female’s perspective regarding domesticity. In her poem, Hemans includes all women whether they live in stately or modest
homes, no matter what their socio-economic status, political or religious affiliation may be;
consequently, the poetess demonstrates that a female’s perspective regarding domesticity is
not limited to one specific area of England or one type of social group: her poem is directed to
all women, everywhere.
In the process of reading poetry, Untermeyer explains that:
[r]eaders must have a tolerance for the ambiguous, the more so since the most profound
poetry does not yield its complete significance at a cursory reading. The poet, aware of the
embattled world in which [she] lives and [her] insecure and insignificant part in it, cannot
but reflect the complexity and disorder of [her] environment. (73)
The poem, “The Homes of England,” is a premier example of an expressive creation borne
from the poetess’s discontent with patriarchal constructions of femininity, perceived and implied inferiority regarding her gender, the discriminatory legal system in England, and the
under-appreciation of domesticity during the early nineteenth century.
Hemans uses restraint and reason to undermine early nineteenth century’s prevailing patriarchal power structures, and the poem, “The Homes of England,” dismantles socially constructed, gendered emotions and publicizes women’s voices as rational and influential, thereby protesting against the cultural norm. As evidenced by the content and form of the entire
poem, on the one hand, the poem glorifies domesticity and follows the culturally expected,
conservative tones of nineteenth-century submissiveness merged with national patriotism. On
the other hand, the poem applauds the strengths and purpose of women who are positioned
in the home; the poetess accentuates the controlled emotions of the female character featured
in the poem and, thus, showcases her sensibilities.
In this context, as claimed by Anne K. Mellor in Romanticism and Gender, Hemans’s poetry
“locates ultimate human value within the domestic sphere. At the same time, it emphasizes just
Campbell | 65
how precarious, how threatened, is that sphere . . . by its opposition to the dominant ideology
of the masculine public sphere” (124). Throughout “The Homes of England,” Hemans depicts
the female character as one who embodies the characteristics of true early nineteenth-century
womanhood: a female who embraces family life, is mindful of the holiness of the Sabbath, and
demonstrates Victorian virtues. Even so, Mellor contends that:
Hemans’ celebration of home is complicated by her recognition that domestic felicity may
be merely a fiction: lost in the past, or destroyed in the present by the refusal of individual family members to sustain its affectional bonds, or relentlessly sacrificed to a more
powerful masculine code of individual ambition and personal fame. Having accepted her
culture’s hegemonic inscription of the woman within the domestic sphere, Hemans’ poetry subtly and painfully explored the ways in which that construction of gender finally
collapses upon itself, bringing nothing but suffering, and the void of nothingness, to both
women and men. (142)
Hemans urges male readers to forego “individual ambition and personal fame” and expand
their parochial lens to recognize the multitude of assets women possess and how those assets
contribute to the success of a marriage, the heart of home life, the involvement in the community, and, consequently, the power and strength that permeates a nation (142). In “The Homes
of England,” Hemans’s language criticizes “her culture’s hegemonic inscription of the woman
within the domestic sphere” and entreats her audience to accept the reality: women are not
fragile and their gender does not make them less able than men (142).
Since the publication of “The Homes of England,” women have, over time, challenged the
categorization of men and women and questioned their domestic roles portrayed by Hemans
in the poem and how those roles affect their influence in society. Women have demanded
equality and, for the most part, received the same in the modern-day Western world. Women
have earned degrees in higher education and excelled in areas of medicine, education, sports,
research, politics, and numerous other areas.
Nevertheless, we cannot read “The Homes of
Hemans includes all women
England” from a comfortable distance and diswhether they live in stately or miss its message as a dusty relic of the past; its
is as relevant in 2013 as it was when
modest homes, no matter what message
published in 1828. Patriarchal systems continue to operate today around the globe in homes,
their socio-economic status,
corporations, government, sweatshops,
political or religious affiliation farms,
and factories, and other innumerable dwellings
may be; consequently, the po- and workplaces. Countless women around the
remain slaves of overbearing patriarchal
etess demonstrates that a fe- world
forces, muted and suffering the same injustices
as women in the past. When we read Hemans’s
male’s perspective regarding
“The Homes of England,” we are reminded of
domesticity is not limited to
the inescapable oppression suffered by womone specific area of England or en in the past and how their collective cries for
equality and recognition compel us to listen
one type of social group: her
and respond with action and “lips [that] move
poem is directed to all women, tunefully along” (15).
everywhere.
66 | Campbell
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Wilheim Meister’s Apprenticeship. Trans. Eric A. Blackall. New York: Suhrkamp, 1989. Print.
Hemans, Felicia. Records of Woman with Other Poems. Ed. Paula R. Feldman. U. of Kentucky P, 1999. Print.
Semiotics of “Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours” |
Dr. Patricia Turrisi
Hobsbawn, E.J. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848. London: Phoenix, 2000. Print.
Jeffrey, Francis. Rev. of Records of Woman with Other Poems and The Forest Sanctuary with Other Poems by Felicia Hemans. Edinburgh Review.
1829. Print.
McGann, Jerome, J. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. U. of Chicago P, 1983. Print.
Mellor, Anne K. Romanticism & Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Morlier, Margaret, M. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Felicia Hemans: The ‘Poetess’ Problem.” Studies in Browning and His Circle. 20.
(1993): 70-79. Print.
Smith, Barbara Leigh. A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women; Together with a Few Observations
Thereon. 2nd ed. London: Holyoake. 1856. Print.
Tyson, Lois. A Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Garland, 1999. Print.
Untermeyer, Louis. The Pursuit of Poetry: A Guide to Its Understanding and Appreciation With an Explanation of Its Forms and a Dictionary of
Poetic Terms. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Print.
Campbell | 67
I
’ve drawn cartoons all my life. Please
in place of a connection with their own mothdon’t think that’s a claim to artistry. It’s
ers or teachers as role models of adult wommore of an admission that I can’t live
en. Baudrillard designates simulacra such as
without parody, mockery, irony. Moreover,
Disneyland or “the matrix” in the film The
I feel a need to keep duplicates of everything
Matrix, on which he was a consultant, as “hyimportant, and drawings serve that purpose
per-real.” My cartoons are deliberately idealfor me sometimes. As a duplicate, my carized versions of one or another feature of reality that expose and exaggerate its features.
toon is a representation of something it refers
to. But to what does it refer?
“Wormhole Adventure” references an initial
Simulacra are those things that are meant
reality as its source but not without warping
to be duplicates of other things, but are suffithe reader’s confidence in the truth of that
ciently stylized as to be distinct things themsource.
selves with a character and form of their own.
Inasmuch as a model attempts to capture
Given enough public attention, they begin to
essential structural features of that which it
substitute for that first reality upon which
models, “Wormhole Adventure” isn’t much
they are based. Those who adopt the stanof a model.2 You are expected to suspend
dards and features of a stylized duplicate of
many of your usual expectations about the
reality in favor of the duplicate’s initial referworld, and in fact, there would be nothences to a first reality are likely to lapse into
ing much worthwhile or humorous about
forgetfulness of the
“Wormhole
Adveninitial source. That
You are expected to suspend ture” if it didn’t thwart
initial reality ceases to
your
expectations
many
of
your
usual
expectaserve as reality to the
while also (falsely!)
simulacrum-infected.
tions about the world, and in reassuring you that
Jean Baudrillard has
nothing on the othfact,
there
would
be
nothing
written extensively
er side is terribly difabout simulacra and much worthwhile or humorous ferent from here. But
simulacrum,
citing
how can that possibly
Disneyland as a case about “Wormhole Adventure” be? The characters that
in point.1 Disneyland if it didn’t thwart your especta- travel back and forth
is not “real” in the
are more ordinary
same sense that the tions while also (falsely!) reas- than not. I wanted to
things it first signi- suring you that nothing on the push the fabulousness
of the duplicate reality
fied are real—pirate
other
side
is
terribly
different
of “Wormhole Advencoves, castles and so
ture” as far as possible
on. Yet it is not “unrefrom here.
beyond it being recogal” or nonexistent. It
has quite an effect on its visitors who often
nizable as a duplicate while still retaining familiar features that a reader would instantcome away with the conviction that Disneyland is more real than their hometown in
ly recognize from our everyday ordinary
world. Pointy Object Creature is an excepIowa. Little girls develop a normative contion, having come to our (ordinary) world by
nection with the forms of Disney princesses
68 | Turrisi
Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours by Dr. Patricia Turrisi
Turrisi | 69
70 | Turrisi
reverse wormhole, but so far, no one who has
read the cartoon seems to have figured that
out. Those who have read “Wormhole Adventure” in advance of its publication seem
to have forgotten everything The Disvoery
Channel ever taught them about wormholes.3
They did not seem to be able to conceive that
the same wormhole that’s a portal from here
to another world is also a portal from there
to our world, more evidence that my simulacrum becomes a normative reality once
someone enters it. The wormhole concept
stands triumphant as a tourism gimmick, replacing its scientific denotation, which now
appears as a phantom of false memory.
Signification in “Wormhole Adventure Eco
Tours”
There are a few reasons why you need a
narrative guide to the cartoon at hand. On a
minor scale, it contains “in-jokes” that you
couldn’t possibly understand without guidance, and which, once known, may add almost nothing to your experience other than
a feeling that this piece on semiotic was a
bit pedantic in places. These are nonetheless
significations of initial references to reality
as interpreted by the author, and an integral
part of the semiotic triad of represented-interpreter/interpretation-representation. On
the one hand, I, the interpreter, am the one
who draws (literally, and, through the narrative, here) the relationship between the represented and the representation. However,
though I created a representation (of something) in the form of my cartoon, and my interpretation of the represented is implicit in
the cartoon, I plan to make it explicit to you
as well. Your interpretation of my interpretations will eventually belong to the framework of signification as much as mine does
at this moment.
When you draw cartoons often enough,
some of their characters and motifs have
the potential to become self-referential. For
example, the reviewer who says “OUTSTANDING SERVICE” is a character I’ve
drawn many times. He’s a witty, urbane
stalker who writes flowery “Dear Diary”
entries chronicling his various pursuits. Unfortunately, from time to time, he disappears
for a few months, usually after being caught
red-handed burning down a shopping mall
to get the attention of a salesgirl for whom
his love is unrequited. The crisis in the plot
trajectory always devolves upon a loathsome
interruption in the stalker’s life-world. Angela, the pre-teen who crushes on super-cute
lepers, is a recurring character in two series,
“The Cousins from Burgaw” and “Tales of
the After School Club.” She’s a little young
for her age and somewhat narcissistic, which
allows her to reveal her opinions without inhibition.
So, let’s get started on the analysis of other signs and symbols. The form of the cartoon
is a magazine advertisement in the first part
and an I-don’t-know-what in the second part,
possibly a set of post-mortem reflections by
the staff who are responsible for publicizing
the ads. The first part is the sort of thing that
might have shown up in a full-page color
spread in LOOK magazine circa 1970, or that
you might find today in Esquire, only considerably smoothed over in content and style. If
it were to be re-made with actual multimedia enrichments, I still can’t imagine how it
would appear online in any known format.
It’s really something that you could only say
the way I have said it, all the while assuming
that it’s credible that wormholes exist, that
people matter-of-factly travel through them,
and that business as usual advertises wormhole tourism and makes money doing it in
an economic market that doesn’t bat an eye
at its absurdity.
As for the second part, I’ve always been
fond of company newsletters and small town
newspapers that would report such things
as “The Turrisi family recently entertained
family guests from Canastota, New York in
their Long Island home. The brothers, Al and
Dominick, went deep sea fishing on June 7,
returning home to a dinner of roast beef and
mashed potatoes with their wives and the
Canastota children, Lucille, age 9, Arlene,
age 6 and Craig, the new baby, joining the
Turrisi | 71
Long Island gang.” These compendiums of
De-constructing Eco Tourism
everyday news items would go out to employees and be handed to potential invesEco-tourism and adventure tours appear
tors and community boosters. Part Two pays
as if they are a marriage made in heaven, the
homage to the writers and readers of those
one being travel to unspoiled places and the
early zines, who knew not how they came off
other being a variation on “roughing it.” But
to mocking, capering posterity, that is, me.
mockers find such ostensible harmonies irreThe main index
sistible. I saw a riot of
of the work, indicat[A]ccompanied by a slew of opportunity here, my
ing the focus of all
early scholarly traincommercial
adaptations:
its parts, is the term
ing having taken place
“eco.” I first encouneco-water bottles; eco-coun- in archives such as the
tered “eco” as a preHoughton
Library,
tertops; eco-clothing, -shoes, where no one gets in
fix in the 1980s, when
I discovered it was
without reference let-cups; eco-hair and baby
possible to have an
ters from others who
grooming items; air, water,
academic specializahave gotten in, and
tion called “eco-fem- soil, and fuel products that are once in, one is forbidinism.” Forgive me
den to use indelible
eco-friendly,
eco-safe,
eco-efmy plodding sensiwriting instruments or
bility if I’ve gotten
ficient and eco-hipster—cul- expel bodily fluids of
this wrong. I took
any kind. Contrarily,
minating
in
that
bonanza
of
“eco-feminism” to be
anyone at all qualifies
concerned with showinscrutable inconsistancey, to go on an eco-tour,
ing how feminism as
say, to the Galapagos
eco-tourism.
a position is especialIslands, merely by
ly conscientious about
forking over a sum of
the earth, which is feminine, while her exmoney to the tour agency. The worldwide
ploiter/destroyers are not. My thought at the
significance of the effluvia of little known
time was, then why did I have to learn the
nineteenth-century philosophers kept unhistory of philosophy from the pre-Socratics
der lock and key at Harvard compared to
to the present to earn my Ph.D. specializathat of wildlife extant on the Galapagos Istion if you are getting away with having one
lands accessible to any yahoo with a credit
simplistically derivative idea to earn yours?
card is analogous to an empty toner fluid
Plowing through and past twentieth-centucanister compared to the Ark of the Covery fin de siècle post-modern tropes in popular
nant. Though again, I might be a plodding
culture, we see “eco” appearing in scientifidiot, but I’m incredulous that eco-tourism
ic contexts as an index of ecological systems
is considered legitimate. Isn’t tourism per
and functions. Just so, and then these were
se responsible for mega-hotels on tropical
accompanied by a slew of commercial adapbeaches that have made blighted the landtations: eco-water bottles; eco-countertops;
scape? Where do the eco-tourists buy souveeco-clothing, -shoes, -cups, eco-hair and
nirs? What do they eat? Where do they sleep?
baby grooming items; air, water, soil, and
Stash their luggage? Deposit their Big Gulp®
fuel products that are eco-friendly, eco-safe,
cups?
eco-efficient and eco-hipster—culminating
Moreover, from childhood on, I had exin that bonanza of inscrutable inconsistency,
perienced “roughing it,” that is, “adventure”
eco-tourism.
with the cynicism appropriate to having
a relative standpoint. My dad and I would
depart for eighteen-hour fishing trips on a
72 | Turrisi
thirty year old Chris Craft in tsunami-like
conditions armed with a couple of jelly
sandwiches and some bait. His pal from
work, a fellow named Gus, kept his boat
in the same marina. We never saw Heart of
Darkness so much as leave its berth; though
Gus and family would sometimes spend
an especially sparkling Sunday afternoon
dressed to the nines aboard her, sipping
aperitifs and nibbling cocktail snacks. My
apartment in grad school was “roughing
it.” Driving to and fro on Route 80 between
grad central Pennsylvania and New York
was “adventure” as those of you who know
that road will attest. The title, “Adventure
Eco Tours,” in my cartoon is the sign of the
fool, of the opera buffa, characterized by its
everyday settings, local dialects, and simple
vocalizations. Its cast of characters returns
to the set of Hairspray when the tourist season winds to a close. While I take ecological considerations in unspoiled places (the
remaining few, if indeed, such things ever
really existed at all as they are imagined)
rather seriously, it’s hard for me not to view
as a few pence short of a pound those commercial exploiters of tourists who put delicate environments at risk through their very
presence.
In the interest of avoiding playing the
fool myself by making this essay longer
than the cartoon it references, here are the
answers to the final question: what kinds of
smug and wrongheaded ways of thinking
did you parody? “Wormhole Adventures”
talks the talk of solicitude toward the environment, but it screams out the fact that it
doesn’t walk the walk at all. Their approach
is wrong, wrong, wrong. And you don’t
even have to read between the lines—the
lines spell it out.
For example, there never was a colonial
power or a CEO of a spoiler corporation who
didn’t claim they were leaving the world
better off for their efforts. Rick-Don Omphalos, the rock star of scout/tour guides in this
piece, announces, “Be culturally and ecologically aware and you can never go wrong”
as the last word in his Trekkers’ Corner bul-
letin on what to bring on his tours, a bulletin that urges you to bring “Cash (You never know when the natives will hold a yard
sale!)” So much for non-interference in pristine environments!
The newsletter reports a reviewer’s
comment, “Why don’t you have gift shops
on both sides of the wormhole? I would’ve
loved to get some Inca gold statuettes!”
Wormhole Eco Tours does not take this as
an opportunity to educate their customer on
the historical significance of Inca gold. My
non-cartoonist persona, the socially maladroit scholar, would have tried to urge the
reader to study a work such as Bernal Diaz
del Castillo’s The Conquest of New Spain
to learn more.4 On their sixteenth-century
travels (as Conquistadors!), Spanish adventurers confiscated gold Aztec religious idols
and sent them to Spain by the ton. Hernán
Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, as reported by
Diaz, led a religious campaign to convert
“New Spain” to Catholicism and away from
idol worship, cannibalism and sodomy.
Diaz is silent on the issue of Cortés’ soaring
career potential as a result of the riches he
is sending to the queen. To a philosopher
and as someone who relishes topics and issues that are treated through interdisciplinary study, the challenge of understanding
the conquistadors’ mixed motives is a gift.
Not so for Wormhole Adventures. Instead,
the editorial board of the Wormhole Adventures Eco Tours Newsletter responds by directing the reviewer to the online gift shop
whose featured gifts include a plastic jar of
micro-plastic bits from the Pacific garbage
patch, one of seven gyres of plastic flotsam
and jetsam accumulated and spreading in
oceans and seaways around the world.
The significance of these plastic islands
is the subject of Bonnie Monteleone’s Master’s 2011 thesis in Graduate Liberal Studies and her exhibit, “What Goes Around
Comes Around.”5 The scientific, political
and health aspects of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch are also documented in Captain
Charles Moore’s book, Plastic Ocean.6 The
rhetoric of the cartoon gift shop indicates no
Turrisi | 73
mindfulness whatsoever toward the threat
level of discarded plastic, boasting that the
micro-plastic is packaged in a plastic bottle
hand selected by Bonnie, as if Bonnie were
somehow delighted to be part of this retail
enterprise.7 In truth, Bonnie is an inexhaustible advocate for a growing organization of
scientists and citizens committed to documenting the problem and educating the public. In the next line of the gift shop section, we
are offered a blister-pack kit for children that
includes “Colors From Nature c. 1840 CE.”
Outside the context of the cartoon, one might
expect eco-tourism proponents at a minimum
to acknowledge the historical predation of
natural and cultural environments. Inside
the cartoon, wormholegifts.com predictably
(it’s the final frame) adds insult to injury.
My personal pet peeves are fairly narrow
in that I don’t anticipate others joining me in
apoplectic meltdown when I name them. I
could be wrong though! These are just a few:
• Pre-Big Bang Latent Multiverses are
simply “possible worlds,” and so are the
places Wormhole Adventure advertises, only less overtly so. Novice philosophers who have fallen in love with the
mystique of quantum physics and some
not-so-novice philosophers who try to
wiggle out of the problem inherent in
asserting self-contradictory statements
have developed the strategy of claiming that “A can be true in one possible
world while not-A is true in a different
possible world.” Arguing that you and I
can conceive of both possible worlds and
that makes them both part of our single
actual conceptual world where contradiction matters doesn’t seem to impress
anyone. So, Wormhole Adventure Eco
Tours dares these intrepid would-be
quantum physicist-philosophers to go
there and try it out for themselves! Meanwhile, all sorts of random stars are shooting through the Multiverse site. Drawing
the “multiverses” was just plain fun. The
islets of Langerhans are clusters of cells
74 | Turrisi
in the pancreas that produce endocrines
such as insulin and are entirely out of
place on the loose anywhere (as far as
we know!) Junk DNA is that mysterious
stuff that scientists found in the human
genome but don’t know why it’s there.
We don’t know why it’s in the genome
and likewise don’t know why it’s in the
“multiverses.” Dangling participles, in
my experience, occur everywhere and
have probably been with us since before
the origin of anything. The Riemann Galaxy is a math joke. I’ll explain it to you
when you’re older.
• Rick-Don Omphalos is a portmanteau character derived from my cat and
a friend I took classes with as an undergraduate. He’s a good person (like my
friend in college) but not very bright (like
my cat.) He’s reassuring because it’s better to have a good person who’s not very
bright as a guide than its inverse. His personality is a committee choice made by
various parts of me who vie for domination of the whole. He almost counterbalances the character of some tour guides
I’ve known, a few of whom were downright wicked, and honors others who
have kindly and sincerely tried to teach
something meaningful to incorrigible
skeptics such as myself. I should point
out that the source of my skepticism lies
in my convictions about how learning
really takes place, convictions Don-Rick
does not share. The wrong-headedness
that Rick-Don signifies is the belief that
one can learn about matters of significant
weight without effort or without immersion in a topic or culture. The profession
of a trained, certified wormhole scout/
tour guide is so pretentiously pretentious
that only a man who wears a pocket vest,
carries a carved walking stick and advises you that “It’s the thoughts that count!”
wouldn’t know that. His advice is so
general, it’s obvious he’s not yet found a
deep well of pertinent knowledge.
• Indifference to the fate of the natural environment is a wholesale kind of
wrongheadedness that I hope will be
reversed one day. But it’s only a symptom of a greater kind of stupidity that of
ignoring everything except what you believe might affect you immediately in the
short run. The causes of indifference to
thinking out the consequences of this or
that belief, decision or action, and taking
responsibility for them are complex and
difficult to address. Higher education
calls alertness to consequences “critical
thinking” and we do our best to produce
it in our classrooms and research, and,
to meliorate its destructiveness through
service to the community. Critical thinkers know that that thing you’re ignoring
today will bite you tomorrow. Until now,
humanity has had so very much going for
it that nature has forgiven our stupidities
for the most part. On the whole, obliviousness to the world beyond one’s doorstep
doesn’t seem to affect the survival potential of the species. As a species, we’ve
never been better off— theoretically. We
inhabit the entire globe, we’re omnivorous and there is plenty of food here, we
have long life spans and reproduce freely
in almost any environment. We go where
we want and do what we want. Theoretically. In actuality, nothing is guaranteed
for anyone in perpetuity. In actuality,
most of us usually are skating on thin
ice, but something in the human mental
composition fakes people out and makes
them believe everything is fine. I’m not
made that way. Something is missing in
me that others seem to have. Call my lack
paranoia, but I don’t trust Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours any farther than I can
throw it down a wormhole.
1— Baudrillard, Jean. “Disneyworld Company” Paris, France: Libération. March 4, 1996.
Baudrillard, Jean and Sheila Faria Glaser (trans.). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press. December 1994.
2—Colapietro, Vincent M. and Thomas M Olshewsky. Peirce’s Doctrine of Signs: Theory, Applications, and Connections. Berlin and Boston: De
Gruyter Mouton, 1996.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking. Edited with a Commentary by Patricia Turrisi. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1997. pp. 49-57.
3—Hawking, Stephen. Stephen Hawking’s Universe. United Kingdom: Discovery Channel. 2010.
4— Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin Classics. J. M. Cohen (trans.) (6th printing (1973) ed.). Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1963.
5—View it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Qx-KM1UA8
Monteleone, Bonnie. “Plastic Ocean Art Show” YouTube.com. You Tube. 10 July 2011. Web.
6—See: http://www.nccoast.org/Article.aspx?k=8e434a33-e20c-45a4-8e2e-275ffd70fa3e for an overview.
Maloney, Skip. “The ‘Plastic Ocean’ and Bonnie Monteleone.” NCCoast.org. North Carolina Coastal Federation. 13 February 2013. Web.
7—Bonnie Monteleone has given me permission to parody her work in “Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours.”
Turrisi | 75
An American History of Wilderness Perception |
Caleb Stewart
W
ilderness, though perennially existent on Earth since the beginnings of time, is only
deemed wilderness because that is the word that has evolved in the English language
to define a “wild or uncultivated state” (“Wilderness”). But just as its definition has
evolved, so cultural perceptions of wilderness have steadily evolved for millennia and rapidly in the past three centuries. Now defined by the United States Congress in the Wilderness
Act of 1964 as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,”
the wilderness concept is a subject of heated political and philosophical debate, concerning
environmentalists and business owners, Native Americans and big-game hunters alike (U.S.
House 121). The United States of America, that nation described by Theodore Roosevelt in
The American Wilderness as of “endless variety and beauty,” was once deemed the final frontier of the world, and still today, noted environmental historian William Cronon has stated
in The Trouble with Wilderness that the “frontier is … peculiarly American,” confirming Roosevelt’s assertion that “American wilderness [has] a character distinctly its own” (Roosevelt 63,
65; Cronon 474). Thus, the United States is unique in its identification with wilderness, even
though debate rages in modern society as to what place that wilderness should occupy in the
nation. To attempt to settle this question of modern American civilization, if one is to trace
the history of cultural perceptions of wilderness in the United States, an answer can be found.
Though many would begin with the Puritans’ views upon arriving in the New World,
America had been inhabited for thousands of years before even Columbus hoisted his sails.
In fact, as William Denevan illustrates in his essay The Pristine Myth, though Columbus spoke
of a “‘Terrestrial Paradise,’ beautiful and green and fertile,” in reality there “were between
40-100 million Indians in the hemisphere” as estimated by modern scholars, and they “had
modified forest extent and composition, created and expanded grasslands, and rearranged
microrelief via countless artificial earthworks” (Denevan 414-416). Deneval continues to explain how with fire, Native Americans “maintained open forest and small meadows but also
encouraged fire-tolerant and sun-loving species” (419), with agriculture “led to severe land
degradation in some regions” (424), and with hunting possibly “caused the extinction of some
large mammals in North America during the late Pleistocene” (426). These facts defy the general “noble savage” view in which Native Americans are perceived as having never altered
the biomass. Nonetheless, many ecologists, such as Dave Foreman in his article “Wilderness
Areas for Real,” would still argue that “tribes are better caretakers of the land than are government agencies,” which are responsible for wilderness protection today (Foreman 402). And
there is solid reasoning behind such an assertion in how the Native Americans have always
viewed and still view wilderness today. Chief Luther Standing Bear, writing Indian Wisdom
in 1933, described his tribe’s views of wilderness in stating that “the Lakota was a true naturist—a lover of Nature” (Bear 202). Contrasting the Indian views of wilderness with those of
the white man, he argued that the two “sense things differently because the white man has put
distance between himself and nature… Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings” (204-205). While the European
settlers strove to conquer the wilderness and erect civilization, Native Americans possessed
an early version of what would today be called a biocentric standpoint, in which man is equal
with all other species of the wilderness, and all are given rights. Standing Bear stated, “The an-
76 | Stewart
imal had rights—the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right
to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness” (203). Though the Native Americans did in
fact modify their landscapes and alter the biomass to ensure their survival, they nonetheless
managed to retain a respect for the wilderness.
However, Native Americans would not remain the stewards of the American wilderness
for much longer once European imperialism reached the Western Hemisphere. As settlers
landed on the coast of the New World, many of them shared religious goals, and early American views of the wilderness reflected this intense religious sentiment. Cronon argues that to
the early settlers of America, the word wilderness was most closely associated with its roots
in the King James Bible, where it referred to “places on the margins of civilization where it
is all too easy to lose oneself in moral confusion and despair” (Cronon 473). Reflecting this
idea, J. Baird Callicott, in his essay “That Good Old-Time Wilderness Religion,” sums up the
view of Roderick Nash that to the Puritans, “the North American ‘wilderness’ was the brooding ‘antipode’ of the Garden of Eden” (Callicott 389). Therefore, it was the goal of these
This distinct separation was
settlers to eradicate wilderness and “replace
it with those shining cities on hills” (389). But
originally embodied by the
the principles of this same view, based upon
wilderness as the evil and man the Biblical references that “wilderness was
where Christ had struggled with the devil and
as good, but as time
endured his temptations,” also served as the
progressed, and man actually foundation for the environmentalist who sees
beauty in nature and wilderness (Cronon 473).
began to master nature, the
As American settlers continued to build their
view shifted, and man became civilizations, they learned how to successfully
in the new country. Once survival was
the evil within the wilderness, survive
no longer the primary goal, wilderness was no
which was God’s glory.
longer seen as an enemy, but instead began to
be seen in a positive reflection of the same Puritanic view—that “the image of God sharply
segregates man from nature” (Callicott 390). This distinct separation was originally embodied
by the wilderness as the evil and man as good, but as time progressed, and man actually began
to master nature, the view shifted, and man became the evil within the wilderness, which was
God’s glory. Jonathan Edwards, known mostly for his fire and brimstone speeches, was one
of the first to express in writing, in “The Images or Shadows of Divine Things,” how nature
reflected God’s glory: “How much of a resemblance is there of every grace in the field covered
with plants and flowers when the sun shines serenely and undisturbedly upon them” (24).
Even as Edwards penned these words in 1758, these views of God’s glory in the wilderness
were beginning to define the Romantic movement of art and literature in the second half of
the eighteenth-century.
As Romantic literature took hold in Europe as a response to the Renaissance, in America it
gained expression through such writers as James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The idea of a distinct frontier and unique American wilderness shone through these writers’
work. Cooper’s tales focused on heroic simplicity in fervent landscapes described majestically,
while the wilderness served as a powerful symbol in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. But more
important to the American cultural perception of wilderness was the later stage of Romanticism, in which Transcendentalism took hold—producing such writers as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. In “Nature,” Emerson stated that “within
these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign” and this is why he was able to say “in
Stewart | 77
the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages” (Emerson
29-30). But what was it that Emerson found in the wilderness so dear? Thoreau would not
hesitate to assert that it was “absolute freedom and wildness,” which he declared nature to be
the source of in his writing “Walking” (31). The Transcendentalists viewed wilderness not as
just a source of sublime beauty, but as a natural source of all that is good in the world—“from
the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind” (37). Thoreau also
directly declared America to be a source of wilderness for the world. “The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon
looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider,” and he goes
on, describing the nature of America on a grand scale not even comparable to that of the Old
World (35). He describes himself “as a true patriot” and states that “the founders of every State
which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild
source” (36-37). Therefore, he declares the West, namely America, to be “but another name for
the Wild” (37). Transcendentalists saw in America a wilderness that could serve as a source of
freedom for humanity. Declaring that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World,” Thoreau
made a statement regarding the American wilderness that has had a resounding impact to
this very day (37). And this was the effect that the Transcendentalists had on the cultural perspective of American wilderness. Cronon described the effect: “Seen in this way, wild country
became a place not just of religious redemption but of national renewal, the quintessential
location for experiencing what it meant to be an American” (479).
As the world transitioned from the nineteenth- to the twentieth-century, this experience
had several different manifestations. For some, it was the source of “a certain vigorous individuality” that Aldo Leopold described in “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use” as the definition of American culture (79). To others, such as John Muir, whose perspective Michael Nelson
defines in the “cathedral argument” of his “Wilderness Preservation Arguments,” the “wilderness was the highest manifestation of nature and so was a ‘window opening into Heaven,
a mirror reflecting the Creator’” (168). John Muir preserved the notions of the Romantics and
the Transcendentalists in his writings, imbuing the wilderness with spirit and describing it as
a location of sublime beauty. In “Our National Parks,” written in 1901 as the U.S. government
first began to establish national parks, he described a common tree as “brave, indomitable,
and altogether admirable” (Muir 55). He declared that “wildness is a necessity” and “mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers,
but as fountains of life” (48). Describing landscapes as “divine sculpture and architecture,”
Muir believed that wilderness needed to be preserved in order to preserve the American forests, which belonged to all alike and existed for the benefit of the people, provided by God
(49). He was staunchly opposed to meaningless destruction of the wilderness, such as logging
and mining for profit, and this caused him to turn to the government for support of nature.
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand
straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools—only Uncle Sam
can do that” (61). Reflected in the establishment of national parks, which America had the
claim of being the first to create, this was the beginnings of a legacy of government preservation of wilderness in the United States.
As for the other primary wilderness view of the time, that of the vigorous individuality,
this is best witnessed in the works of Theodore Roosevelt. In “The American Wilderness,”
written in 1897, he too had a great appreciation for the “endless variety and beauty” of all the
different regions of wilderness in the North American continent, but Roosevelt focused more
on the virility that the wilderness inspired in “the most adventurous hunters, the vanguard
of the hardy army of pioneer settlers” that he describes as “the heralds of the oncoming civilization” (63, 66). He praised the “most daring hunters and explorers” and the “hard, dogged,
78 | Stewart
border farmers” who he describes as “a masterful race, good fighters and good breeders, as
all masterful races must be” (67). Citing examples of such legendary figures of the American
West as Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, and Kit Carson, Roosevelt provides the wilderness as
a source for honing warriors and hunters. “Hunting in the wilderness,” he states, “is of all
pastimes the most attractive, and it is doubly so when not carried on merely as a pastime”
(74). Roosevelt argues that wilderness is a necessity to America in order to hone in men the
“qualities of hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution” (74). These traits define the principles of
not just virility, but a rugged individuality that many have seen as defining the culture of the
United States of America.
Reflecting a combination of the virile individualist standpoint and the sublime beauty perspective, American culture retained a fairly consistent view of wilderness through the beginning of World War I, which attracted interest to the wild forces of war for a decade, drawing
interest away from the wilderness. However, as industrialism continued to shape the world,
creating a global economy based on capitalism, the American cultural view of wilderness yet
again shifted. Essentially, as Carl Talbot argues in his essay “Wilderness Narrative and Capitalism,” national parks were created as “museumized nature” in order to “function as a salve
for a spiritually battered workforce,” resulting in the organization of nature to “meet the spatial, economic, and psychological needs of capitalism” (326). When the workers of American
civilization were not laboring to expand civilization and increase consumption, they could
venture to the wilderness, which had become “a valuable commodity” itself, “traded on the
international market” in the form of mass tourism (329). This new wilderness was shaped by
culture in every aspect, and increased wilderness management along with new national parks
only served to bundle wilderness up as a package to be sold, overseen by culture to ensure
that the “wilderness experience” was enjoyable to the consumer. The majority of the American
populace therefore viewed wilderness as a retreat from the daily societal norms of industrial
life.
However, following World War II, as the world was launched into the nuclear age—with
fully globalized economies and with humanity possessing more destructive capability than
ever before in history—wilderness took on another meaning. As Wendell Berry wrote in his
essay “Preserving Wildness,” “We are now, to ourselves, incomprehensibly powerful, capable
of doing more damage than floods, storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes” (142). He declared
that “stripped of the restraints” of culture, humans are monsters, and that this was evidenced
by the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century (142). In response to the increasing
technology and urbanization of human culture, many environmentalists sought to protect wilderness as the last remaining vestiges of “untrammeled” nature. National parks were created
in greater frequency than ever before. In “The National Park Ideal,” David Harmon sums up
the arguments of Roderick Nash that explain why national parks were a uniquely American
idea: “‘the nation’s unique experience with nature in general and wilderness in particular,’ the
presence of a democratic ideology, and ‘the existence of a sizable amount of undeveloped land
at the moment when the first two influences combined to produce a desire for its protection’”
(219). The national park system in America was only one response to the growing concern
of environmentalists over the expansion of cities and civilization in general. The rise of deep
ecology led many, such as David Johns in “Deep Ecology and the Third World,” to put forth
the viewpoint that “the Earth can support a limited amount of biomass and the more of it that
is composed of humans or turned to human use, the less is available for other life and that humans do not have the right to so alter the composition of the biomass that there is a resulting
destruction” (248). Rather, he argued, to preserve wilderness, there would need to be fewer
humans and less consumption. On the other hand, other ecologists, who also supported wilderness preservation, such as Donald Waller in “Getting Back to the Right Nature,” put forth
Stewart | 79
the idea that though America has a “historic tendency to draw dichotomies between wild vs.
tame, or natural vs. unnatural,” the fact remains that “no area on Earth remains pristine or
fully free of human influence” (544-545). There was quite a bit of disagreement between varying branches of ecologists and controversy between biocentrism and anthropocentrism, but in
general, all agreed that the wilderness needed preservation from mankind, whether “civilization needs wilderness,” as Edward Abbey claimed in “Freedom and Wilderness,” or “the only
thing we have to preserve nature with is culture,” as Wendell Berry argued (Abbey 229; Berry
143). Both could see the basic human need for wilderness: “the reason to preserve wilderness
is that we need it,” as Berry put it, or “we need wilderness because we are wild animals,” as
Abbey put it (Berry 146; Abbey 229).
So in general, over the past half century, American ecologists have had quite a bit of disagreement amongst themselves as to the best
manner in which to preserve wilderness, but
The view is that some form of all agree that wilderness needs to be preserved.
Yet there are still others in American culture
wilderness needs to be prewho see no need for wilderness preservation
but would rather be able to exploit natural
served both for the good of
resources from the wilds for the good of hunature and humanity. Amerimanity. In a democracy like the United States,
can wilderness is a symbol of there will always be such varying views, and
it is meant to be so. But overall, the general
freedom, represented in the
cultural view today reflects the fears of Abbey
that “if the entire nation is urbanized, induswilderness of nature.
trialized, mechanized, and administered, then
our liberties continue only at the sufferance of
the technological megamachine that functions both as servant and master” (229). The view
is that some form of wilderness needs to be preserved both for the good of nature and humanity. American wilderness is a symbol of freedom, represented in the wildness of nature,
like the permissive society that Abbey describes democracy as—“a confused, chaotic mess”
where “to be alive is to take risks” (230). Our history shows us that the wilderness has played
a major role in the evolution of American culture and, as Marvin Henberg argues in “Wilderness, Myth, and American Character,” “wilderness understanding depends on…the imprint
of natural history” (506). Henberg also submits that “belief in ourselves as a people shaped
by wilderness is productive of greater good than of ill” (505). Throughout American history,
the wilderness has helped shape our cultural values. Even if there has been disagreement over
various matters related to the wilderness, it has served as “a symbolic means of uniting us in
celebration of something larger than ourselves” (505).
But what can the history of American cultural views of wilderness teach us in dealing
with the wilderness debate of the current generation? Imagining that one single solution could
solve a problem which spans an entire democracy would simply be illogical and a utopian fantasy. However, if there is one concept that remains true in a democratic republic such as that
of the United States, it is that solutions can be reached through compromise. Aldo Leopold, in
his essay “The Land Ethic,” defined something as being “right” when it “tends to preserve the
integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” (9). In order to preserve the integrity,
stability, and beauty of the biotic community, one of the most important considerations of
humanity must be necessity—as Berry states, “Everything depends on our right definition of
necessity” (145). Therefore, human society must consider what is really necessary in light of
what resources have already been taken from the wilderness to sustain industrial civilization.
Civilization must find a way to coexist with the wilderness. In considering the varying stages
80 | Stewart
of American cultural history related to wilderness and the varying arguments of modern ecologists, there have been many opposing views that have the potential to be combined to form
an ideal. Abbey stated that he believed “It is possible to find and live a balanced way of life
somewhere halfway between all-out industrialism on the one hand and a make-believe pastoral idyll on the other” (234). When the Native Americans were the only settlers of the United
States, with several million inhabitants, they altered the biomass to ensure survival, but did so
in such a way that the majority of people do not even realize it today. They managed to have
civilization surrounded by wilderness—coexistence of civilization and wilderness. That is the
goal. Abbey finds this idea in the “independent city-states of classical Greece” to “the small
towns of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America,” and views such models of civilization
as a “return to happier equilibrium between industrialism and a rural-agrarian way of life”
(234-235). However, perhaps reverting to old forms of civilization and backtracking in human
progress isn’t necessary. Perhaps humanity can preserve wilderness while still progressing
civilization. Berry presented the idea that “the landscape of harmony [is] safer far for life of
all kinds than the landscape of monoculture” (151). Creating a landscape of harmony between
civilization and wilderness must be the goal of American culture concerning the wilderness in
our future. “Whereas the monocultural landscape is totalitarian in tendency, the landscape of
harmony is democratic and free” (151). If the American cultural history of the wilderness has
taught us one thing, it is that harmony between civilization and wilderness is possible.
Bear. C.L.. “Indian Wisdom” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press,
1998. 201-206. Print.
Berry, W. (1985). Home Economics: Fourteen Essays. San Francisco: North Point, 1987. Print.
——(1991). “Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 227-238. Print.
Callicott, J.B. “The Good Old-Time Wilderness Religion.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 1998. 387-94. Print.
Cronon, W. “The Trouble with Wilderness or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and
M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 471-99. Print.
Denevan, W.M. “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P.
Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 414-42. Print.
Edwards, J. “The Images or Shadows of Divine Things.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 1998. 23-25. Print.
Emerson, R. W. “Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press,
1998. 28-30. Print.
Foreman, D. “Wilderness Areas for Real.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1998. 395-407. Print.
Harmon, D. “ Cultural Diversity, Human Subsistence, and the National Park Ideal.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and
M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 217-230. Print.
Henberg, M. “Wilderness, Myth, and American Character.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens,
Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 500-10. Print.
Johns, D. M. “The Relevance of Deep Ecology to the Third World.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson.
Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 246-70. Print.
Leopold, A. “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 75-84. Print.
——(1948). A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949. 167-190. Print.
“Wilderness.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Muir, J. “Our National Parks.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press,
1998. 48-62. Print.
Nelson, M.P. “An Amalgamation of Wilderness Preservation Arguments.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 154-98. Print.
Roosevelt, T. “The American Wilderness: Wilderness Hunters and Wilderness Game.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott
and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 63-74. Print.
Talbot. C. “The Wilderness Narrative and Cultural Logic of Capitalism.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson.
Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 325-33. Print.
Thoreau. H.D. “Walking.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press,
1998. 31-41. Print.
Waller. D.M. “Getting Back to the Right Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 540-67. Print.
U.S. House. 88th Congress, 1st Session. Pub. L. 88-577, The Wilderness Act. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1964.
Stewart | 81
Fred Chappell’s Backsass: Commentary on Space, Place, and a
Culture in Transition | Brian Caskey
W
hen Fred Chappell’s poetry collection Backsass was published in 2004, it was widely
regarded as a humorous, satirical commentary on contemporary society. While the
book is conversational in tone and makes careful use of humor as a literary device,
a close analysis reveals a collection that is layered and complex, and which firmly establishes
Chappell as an important voice in the ecopoetry movement. Backsass uses many of the poet’s
poignant personal experiences, along with a sophisticated understanding of Tuanian concepts
of space and place, to make scathing indictments of America’s rejection of healthy, sustainable
environments as well as subsequent movements toward dehumanization and loss of identity.
Born and raised on a farm near Canton, North Carolina during the Great Depression, Chappell was able to observe his family’s pre-industrial, traditional mountain culture as a young
boy and to compare it to its post-industrial aftermath (Hovis, “True Dirt” 389). Chappell’s
birthplace is known as the home of the Champion Fiber and Paper Company, a large logging
and pulp-making operation that clear-cut many of the forests in Canton and the surrounding
countryside in the early part of the twentieth century. George Hovis, a Chappell scholar who
has explored the persistence of the yeoman farmer as a cultural icon, provides a sense of the
mammoth scale of Champion’s operations and
the impact it had on Western North Carolina.
Backsass offers a warning to
He wrote in The North Carolina Literary Review
that at the lumber industry’s peak, “southern
the reader about a world that
Appalachia was providing almost forty peris in a state of flux. For Chapcent of the nation’s timber” (Hovis, “Classical
Ecopoetics” 98).
pell, his poetry reflects his view
The impact of industrialization on North
that society is busily rejecting
Carolina’s yeoman farmers can be directly
measured by the declining size of farms in op- traditional, pastoral values and
eration, and a simultaneous reduction in the
amount of land available for farming. Accord- has begun a blind descent into
ing to Hovis, the environmental devastation
the unchecked loss of identity
and pollution created by Champion reduced
the size of the average farm by more than half that accompanies modernism.
during a 50-year period, from 187 acres to 76
acres, while the available farmland declined
by 20 percent over this same span of time (“Vale” 99). Conversion to a market economy, decreased farm production, and related socio-economic changes in the region had an immediate
impact on Chappell’s family, as Chappell’s parents each had to take menial jobs in order to
make ends meet. Chappell, in an interview with Gene Hyde in Southern Quarterly, said, “We
had to have other occupations in order to keep our farm. That is, you had to have ‘paying jobs’
as well as the farm, or you’d have to sell your farm” (87).
George Hovis says that Chappell “witnessed the disappearance of the old verities, an experience that leaves him dislocated, alienated, full of epistemological uncertainty, and longing
for some touchstone of truth by which to reorient himself” (“True Dirt” 391). Chappell’s experiences as a young man allowed him to see, first-hand, the impact of rapid industrialization
82 | Caskey
not only on his immediate surroundings, but on his family and traditional culture as well. And
so, Backsass offers a warning to the reader about a world that is in a state of flux. For Chappell,
his poetry reflects his view that society is busily rejecting traditional, pastoral values and has
begun a blind descent into the unchecked loss of identity that accompanies modernism.
In “Help Help,” a poem in which both language and humanity’s place in nature are questioned, Chappell’s speaker announces his discomfort with a bold statement:
I am a prisoner of landscape
everywhere I turn there is untutored raw nature
or the brash handiwork of humankind
or some distressing hybrid of the two (1-4)
There is an obvious disconnect on display here, as the persona realizes that he is confused
and disoriented by the manner in which nature and commercialized, modernized society are
pushed together in the jumbled landscape. He continues:
seeking freedom, I have been launching
these notes in poem bottles for many years
setting them adrift in the void
but now (5-8)
In lines 5-8, the speaker describes his search for a language that he can use to communicate
with nature. The search for a universal language is a common theme in posthumanist thought,
which is predicated on “the recognition of nonhuman entities as potential interlocutors” (Gilcrest 40). For the speaker, however, this is a dead end; his “poem bottles” (6) simply sail off
into “the void” (7) without any sort of response. He can achieve no satisfaction by attempting
to communicate directly with nature. Frustration mounting, the speaker continues:
I begin to fear there is no void
only a Concept of Void
thought up by some science geek (9-11)
J. Scott Bryson has defined space as the “extent to which the world is ultimately unknowable,” and place as the locations and objects that define the world around humanity (8). Chappell questions the existence of both space and place in lines 9-11, probing the rift between
human and non-human nature and allowing the increasingly isolated speaker to become what
cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan calls an “islanded self.” Islanded selves are “divorced not
only from an indifferent natural world but from the rest of humanity as well” (Bryson 96).
For Chappell’s speaker, the resulting sense of placelessness is so discomfiting as to be almost
overpowering.
“Help Help” also allows Chappell to subtly trace “postmodernism’s debt to existentialism
and demonstrate the antithetical relationship implicit between ecocritical literature and any
language and literature that so persistently denigrates the possibility of a vital linguistic relationship between people and nature” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 106). Unlike Emerson and
others, Chappell’s vision of the possibilities that exist for humanity’s engagement with nature
is not optimistic.
“The Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit,” another poem in the collection, continues to explore
the theme of the inherent tension that exists between traditional values and a growing sense
of alienation, isolation, and disconnection from those ideals. In this poem, contemporary so-
Caskey | 83
ciety’s constant, relentless pursuit of financial gain has resulted in a linguistic loss of contact
with nature. Chappell’s protagonist was born in ‘Haint Holler’ by Hellfire Creek (3), but:
now come the real estaters
and their minion politicos
it is no more Haint Holler
no more Hellfire Creek but Sweetwater Brook (5-8)
Chappell goes on to say, “it is like that all
over” (10). The landscape once inhabited by
The senseless renaming of
traditional Appalachians, which bore the litertraditional placenames might al and figurative names that they applied to it,
make them more palatable to such as Snakeden and Frying Pan Gap, have
been “linguistically erased and subsequent
real estate developers, politiconnection made less possible by suburban
cians, or retirees from Florida, sprawl” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 105).
Chappell firmly places himself in opposition
but it also erases a valuable
to the modernization of Appalachia in “The
Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit,” but he also issues
linguistic and emotional cona challenge to the reader’s blind acceptance of
nection between man and
artifice. The senseless renaming of traditional
placenames might make them more palatable
nature.
to real estate developers, politicians, or retirees
from Florida, but it also erases a valuable linguistic and emotional connection between man and nature.
“The Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit” ends by suggesting that hell will be turned into a theme
park (19-20), and that people will be renamed as well, completing the theft of man’s identity
in this new, prettified world. Chappell is provoking the reader here by asking, hypothetically,
what kind of identity a man can retain if the history and experience and the culture of the place
that defines him has been completely erased and renamed. Clearly, Chappell is drawing upon
his own Appalachian experience to illuminate what he perceives as a dangerous disconnect.
J. Scott Bryson, in The West Side of Any Mountain, argues that ecopoets pay close attention to
the places in which they reside, which in turn leads to “an increased awareness of the ecological interconnection between all of the inhabiters of that particular space” (22). As Chappell
correctly points out, if place does not exist—or if it’s been renamed and has therefore had its
identity replaced—then a real connection cannot exist.
Chappell further explores the concept of identity loss and dehumanization in a pair of
companion poems, “Backward” and “Bringing In The Oaks,” in Backsass. In these two poems,
he applies a lighter touch, using a bit of comedy to intentionally heighten the impact of the final stanzas. In the first poem, “Backward,” the speaker reveals his own lack of understanding
by pointing out the supposed foolishness of the trees:
the Deciduous have got it backward
all winter they stand around naked
then in March the dogwoods put on green vests
and the willows slip into filmy negligees
84 | Caskey
by midsummer every last one heaves beneath
a full green topcoat
come October they buckle up in armor plate
bronze and gold and vermilion
and clatter at one another
like first-term presidents rattling sabers
they’re unteachable
you can spend lifetimes
talking directly inside their heads and nothing changes
just ask the birds about that
so maybe they’re really not intelligent after all
What kind of brains can you have
eating nothing but air and dirt?
that diet has not made Zimbabwe wiser (1-18)
“Backward” dramatizes “how turning one’s back on nature leads to our dehumanization
and the loss of empathy even for our own kind” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 107), which
is represented by the speaker’s complete indifference toward the starving masses in another
country. The speaker’s contempt for the natural world, of course, now extends to humanity.
In “Bringing In The Oaks,” Chappell’s speaker has empathy toward nature but shows a
remarkable lack of understanding of nature’s most basic processes:
tis a bitter cold New Year’s Eve
I sit warm inside
electric furnace Dick Clark on TV
but all I can think of are the oaks
sycamores maples elms
how they must suffer at ± 0 degrees
I want to bring them inside
but there’s hardly room for even one
wouldn’t be fair to bring in one
and not the others
also the ground is frozen
the shovel wouldn’t bite
still I feel guilty about the cold trees
although I can do nothing except enjoy
Realizing that he cannot bring the trees inside—paralyzed with his own inaction—he decides to simply console himself with the heat from his electric furnace and with his own guilt.
As in “Backward,” the persona in “Bringing In The Oaks” has completely insulated himself
from nature and from the natural order of things. By using a humorous tone, and by utilizing
absurd language and reasoning, Chappell brilliantly exposes the self-exile that many humans
have chosen for themselves. The humor that Chappell uses here should not be mistaken for
superficiality. Chappell was quoted by Michael McFee in the Southern Literary Journal as having said, “Comedy is much more serious than tragedy…It says more about the conditions of
people, the way people live day to day. Tragedy is wonderful, but the tragic view is sometimes
too easy” (106).
In an interview with Gene Hyde, Chappell
blames this self-exile—this tragically self-choChappell is not yearning to
sen disconnect—on “economic imperialism,”
return to a simpler time or to
saying that if one looks at America’s history,
“the two great literary themes that are endemic
idealize a less complicated
to this century would be world wars and the
way of life. He firmly believes in
effect of industrialism on local culture.” He
goes on to say that a theme that will appear
sustainablilty.
again and again in Appalachian literature is
“this change of culture” (97).
Yeoman values, and the often-ignored perspective of the small farmer, pervade much of
Chappell’s fiction and poetry, as Caroline Miles states in an article for The Southern Literary
Journal. Chappell’s work is a strong affirmation of “the centrality of yeoman values in the
state’s history and cultural memory” (Miles 146). Chappell’s uniquely Appalachian point of
view and the clear articulation of a tradition that prizes “egalitarianism, independence, and an
identification of the small family farm as the basic social unit” (Hovis, “Vale” 97) represents a
central theme in his poetic work.
Chappell is not yearning to return to a simpler time or to idealize a less complicated way of
life. He firmly believes in sustainability. Chappell has been quoted as saying that he believes
that a poet has a duty to describe the natural order of things, the way that things have existed
in any civilization that has “managed to endure for any length of time. If poets do not wish to
study these matters and treat of them, they shirk their responsibilities and fail their society”
(Hovis, “True Dirt” 413).
Somewhat incredibly, at least for the work of a man who has been described by North Carolina novelist Lee Smith as “our resident genius, our shining light, the one truly great writer
we have among us” (Howard 40), Fred Chappell’s Backsass was somewhat misunderstood
upon its initial publication. Chappell’s homespun style, his folksy manner, and his use of
humor as a literary device in many ways enhances, but also obscures, the real message of the
collection. As Don Johnson says in his essay “The Cultivated Mind,” there “is no easy primitivism here, no celebration of the noble mountaineer living in ignorance and grace” (Bizarro
190). Instead, Chappell uses his experiences in Appalachia and his understanding of classical
ecopoetics to create something greater. Backsass deftly, poignantly, and subtly points out the
dangers of modern society, and the lonely road that lies ahead if man continues to isolate himself from the natural world.
guilt always warms me
head to toe (1-16)
Caskey | 85
86 | Caskey
Bizzaro, Patrick, ed. Dream Garden. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Print.
Bryson, J. S. The West Side of Any Mountain: Place, Space, and Ecopoetry. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2005. Print.
Chappell, Fred. Backsass: Poems. Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana State University Press, 2004. Print.
Torchwood |
Brian Caskey
Gilcrest, David W. Greening the Lyre : Environmental Poetics and Ethics. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2002. Print.
Hovis, George. “The Classical Ecopoetics of Fred Chappell’s Backsass and Midquest.” North Carolina Literary Review 20 (2011): 98-110. Print.
Torchwood and longleaf reach skyward
thirsting for light and space,
their blackened trunks and blistered bark
bear silent witness.
---. “When You Got True Dirt You Got Everything You Need: Forging An Appalachian Arcadia in Fred Chappell’s Midquest.” Mississippi
Quarterly 53.3 (2000): 389-414. Print.
---. Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. Print.
Howard, Jennifer. “Fred Chappell: From the mountains to the mainstream.” Publishers Weekly 30 Sept. 1996: 55-56. Print.
Live oaks, solitary and resolute,
stand guard against the icy glint of the river­—
gnarled and awkward, knees and elbows
bracing for the smoke and heat.
Hyde, Gene. “The Southern Highlands as Literary Landscape.” Southern Quarterly 40.2 (2002): 86-98. Print.
McFee, Michael. “The Epigrammatical Fred Chappell.” Southern Literary Journal 31.2 (1999): 95-108. Print.
Miles, Caroline S. “Aristocrats, Yeomen, and Blue-Collar Folk: Understanding Class in the American South.” The Southern Literary Journal
42.1 (2009): 144-148. Print.
Wiregrass litters the pine flatwoods
and whispers softly in the winter breeze,
dormant buds patiently preparing
for the cleansing flames of spring.
How unfortunate that the fires
engulfing the human heart are not so gentle.
How unfortunate that I believed in
your love and other lies.
I
wrote “Torchwood” after participating
in a class outing at Carolina Beach State
Park last November, while taking Ashley
Hudson’s “Natural World in Poetry” course.
As we walked through the woods, I found
myself thinking about this habitat, which is
uniquely evolved towards fire. Fire, for most
humans, represents destruction—but it is a
requirement for survival here. Many of these
highly adapted trees and shrubs cannot reproduce until fire has disrupted the habitat. Immediately after a fire quickly burns
through and consumes the old, dead fuel
that lies on the sandy floor, the habitat flowers out in an incredible burst of color and life.
I wanted to juxtapose the cold and brilliant fall morning with the heat that this habitat regularly experiences. We were seeing it
at a time when everything seemed to be almost frozen, waiting for release, and yet still
bore the scorch marks from the last fire that
Caskey | 87
88 | Caskey
raged through the area.
I wanted to evoke imagery of the trees
and other flora, which seemed to me to be either growing away from the dangerous, fireprone forest floor as quickly as possible; or
in the case of the live oak, to be contorting
themselves in order to push back against the
heat and the flames. In terms of influence, I
thought quite a bit about James Arthos and
personification, and I also considered the ferocity of nature that comes through in Paul
Zimmer’s poems, like “What I Know About
Owls,” but also in Donald Halpern’s “Annuals.”
I also found myself pondering the flammability of the human heart, and I wanted
to find a way to relate back to the possibility
that as humans, we wear our scars, just as the
trees do, but we aren’t evolved toward heartbreak and we don’t always recover quickly.
Death Transcends the Artist |
Gregory Hankinson
I
n 1956, the last year of Jackson Pollock’s
life, he did not paint. The abstract expressionist had reached professional success
over the past decade, but was drowning in
alcoholism and solitude that frequented his
adult life. On August 11, 1956, while driving
intoxicated, Pollock crashed his Oldsmobile
into a tree—killing himself and one of the
other two female passengers. An artist’s obsession with self-destruction stems from a
sense of self-loathing, admittedly, but more
importantly— the self-destruction is a result
of an artist’s obsession with his or her own
death.
In 1969, a young professor named John
Kennedy Toole attached one end of a hose to
his exhaust and the other inside the window
of his automobile. Toole had recently finished his novel A Confederacy of Dunces and
was erratic at its rejection from publication
and the exhaustion of professional failure.
After taking his own life, Toole’s mother
found a manuscript for Dunces and demanded its publication. Toole received the Pulitzer
Prize posthumously.
Similar cases run amok: Kurt Cobain
(suicide), Jim Morrison (drug overdose), Jimi
Hendrix (drug overdose, practically), Elvis
Presley (overdose), Frida Kahlo (overdose),
Alfred Maurer (suicide), Mark Rothko (suicide), Hunter S. Thompson (suicide), Virginia Wolf (suicide), Sylvia Plath (suicide). The
obsession with death for artists is not a result
of the unsuccessful nature that some artists
experience within their lifetimes. The answer
is more existential.
Jean Anouilh has said, “Beauty is one of
the rare things that do not lead to doubt of
God.” Whether beauty is found in art, music,
or literature, the result is never a disillusionment of the divine, but instead a reinstatement of humanity. It does not necessarily
Hankinson | 89
90 | Hankinson
follow that a belief in God must exist, but
rather a recognition for a subliminal world
only found in death. This also does not require a heaven, or even dualist perspective,
but a relinquishment of curiosity to the artist.
The connection these people have to
death derives from both self-loathing and
narcissism. Artists’ self-loathing does not
stem from an emotional inaptitude, as many
people may say. It is rather an acknowledgment of the flaws of existence. Narcissism
in art is prevalent because of the aesthetic
appeal that must exist through appreciation. Inevitable narcissism was the only way
Hemingway made it to the end of his life.
Consequently, he shot himself.
All you must do is seek the works of
these artists and realize that as devastating
as many of their lives are, there also exists
an obsession with mortality that leads to
self-destruction. The last words of Aldous
Huxley before his death were, “LSD, 100 milligrams.” Clearly, such artists see death differently.
A paradox must exist in an artists’ mind
in finding the role of death in aesthetics.
Does an artist seek out art to find death?
Or, does an artist seek out art to defy death?
An artist’s interpretation of death remains
an integral part of their metaphysical lives.
Art can develop a fascination with existential thoughts, curiosities of death, and possibly hasten death for the far more inquisitive
artists. In defying death, there remains another consideration of an artist’s obsession.
Although an artist’s life may be brief, a masterpiece has the ability to live on for eternity.
An immortality of the artist survives with the
works they created. For example, although
Michelangelo has been deceased since 1564,
The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel maintains its permanence and demands respect.
With the creation of a masterpiece, an artist
finds the fountain of youth and the fear of
death can subside.
My work may bring my existential capabilities closer to death in a fundamental way,
but my work has the ability to create immortality. My painting The Tree represents the
Tree of Life. The black paint dripping down
a yellow backdrop represents the material
organic decay washing into the earth, while
the tree grows untarnished toward the light.
Just as in death, neither elegance nor
beauty is present in my work. The harsh reality that artists have defied runs rampant in
Picasso’s Guernica, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and
Punishment, or Welles’s Citizen Kane. These
artists have discovered what I have attempted to capture in my work, an immortal masterpiece.
Perhaps my work will not survive to
the end of my life or much thereafter, but if
it does, my existence will remain with that
work, until the day that age tarnishes the tissues that define me and the prospect of acquiring immortality dies forever. Until this
day, my search for the fountain of youth will
continue, and possibly one day a young artist will come to discover my Tree of Life, and
simultaneously uncover the secret to immortality.
A Cup of Coffee |
Toni Whiteman
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?—Albert Camus
Chinese: 咖啡, Czech: kava, Philippine: kape, Dutch: koffie, German: kaffee, Irish: caife,
Turkish: kahve, Indonesian: kopi, Vietnamese: cà phê, Hungarian: kávé
A
Introduction
cup of coffee as an object of fancy is actually two objects—coffee and the coffee cup—
both endowed with their own powers, intrinsically linked. The object, the cup of coffee, has influenced human behavior around the world for centuries. Contrary to the
long-standing belief that humans are in control of the things they invent, in the case of coffee,
it is the object that has choreographed, changed, and enhanced human behavior. Coffee woke
us up in the dark ages and sent us into modernity. Coffee consumption has changed the course
of history. It has done so from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the present, first by integrating itself into our earliest memories through embodied cognition, nonverbal communication,
and metaphor and then by creating the desire to congregate for discourse and community.
Coffee has evolved as a cultural object along with the human race and technological development. More so, it is loved.
L
History
ike the tree of knowledge story in Genesis, the fruit of the Rubiaceae bush too became an
agent of knowledge. There are many stories describing the origins of the coffee drink,
but the favorite comes from the heart of Africa as told by Morton Satin in his book,
Coffee Talk (Morton 38). One day Khaldi, a young goat herder, who lived in the highlands of
Ethiopia in the kingdom of Kaffa, noticed the how energetic his goats behaved after eating
berries from a certain bush. He discovered that the berry had the same effect on him and
brought a handful to the imam of the monastery in the village. The monks tried the beans
but found the taste unpleasant and threw the
remaining beans into the fire, only to discover
Coffee woke us up in the dark its alluring aroma. Giving it another try, they
too were energized and pleased they had disages and sent us into
covered a drink that would allow them to stay
modernity.
awake during their nightly prayers. From the
very beginning the stimulating effect of coffee
gave energy and joy to congregations of spiritual seekers. Travelers brought the bean from the monasteries of Ethiopia to the mosques of
Yemen by the eleventh-century. Arabs began to cultivate and roast and crush the seeds before
soaking the grounds in water and serving it in a vessel—a cup. The drink especially enamored
Sufi dervishes, as it gave an inspired fervor to their spinning spiritual dances.
In the thirteenth-century, coffee spread through the East with Islam. The call to Mecca
brought thousands of Muslim pilgrims each year to Arabia. It was there they first learned
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Cafe Commons (right) about the wine of Araby, rich in aroma and earthy in taste—simultaphotographed by Toni neously relaxing and stimulating, and with them the desire for coffee
Whitman spread throughout the East. By the 1400s, convocation over the cup of
coffee was a ubiquitous feature of the entire Ottoman Empire, now a culture of coffee drinkers. Beyond the personal satisfaction attained by drinking the dark kava,
gathering with other coffee drinkers became popular. And just like today, people drink coffee
with other people whether they know them or not. It creates a common bond. In the centers
of trade—the cities of Mocha, Cairo, Constantinople—a merchant or scholar would seek out
the local coffee houses upon arriving. It was a place for socializing, engaging in serious discourse, gossiping, getting the news of the day, listening music, playing chess, or watching
performers. Coffee houses became known as “schools for the wise” and eventually in England
as “penny universities” (Morton 186). Contrary to religious gatherings, the public gathered in
coffee houses for the warm aroma, the hum of human activity, and the joy of companionship.
But most threatening to the increasingly alarmed ruling class and religious leaders, was the
exchanging of ideas that coffee provoked.
The first coffee house opened in Constantinople in 1475. The lure of the coffee house was
created by the rich pungent scent of brewing coffee and by the rugs of crimson silk and wool
on the floors adorned with a rich mosaic of colored cushions. The coffee was served on small
wooden tables displaying beautifully embossed metal trays, adorned with jewels crafted by
artisans, offering cups of porcelain held in metal zarfs. The coffee house became a place for orgies, music, storytelling, and business deals. It was not long before powerful rulers tried to lock
the doors of coffee dens and drive off the coffee
merchants, but wiser men prevailed. “When
Roman Catholic clerics
Khair Bey, the governor of Mecca, banned coffee in 1511 because he feared it might encourwitnessing the small cheerful
age resistance to his rule, the sultan executed
animated groups of people
him on the grounds that coffee was actually
blessed” (The Roast and Post). By then, word
gathering on street corners,
of the lavish Turkish coffee houses had spread
called it the “Drink of Satan.”
through Europe and spawned a global coffee
house culture.
The Arabs leaders introduced coffee to the
rulers of Europe in order to encourage trade between their countries. But they were careful to
hold a monopoly over the popular seed by first roasting the bean and killing the seed, before
shipping. It was not until the Dutch seized hold of the coveted seedlings and brought it to
Europe that the West’s cultivation of coffee began. To soften relations, the mayor of the city
of Amsterdam gave the gift of a coffee seedling to King Louis XIV of France. Then a French
Naval officer stole a branch from the garden of the King and made his way to Martinique.
That seed was the progenitor to 20 million coffee trees (Morton 139). From the 1600s, European colonialism created slave-run plantations that grew coffee and other tropical products all
around the world. In England, slavery was the economic backbone of the colonialist until the
Anti-Slave Act of 1807—banning slavery across the colonies.
In a battle over Venice in 1683, the defeated Turkish soldiers left behind a stockpile of coffee. Had it not been for the Ambassador Franz George Kolschitzky, who had lived in Turkey
for many years and was familiar with the coffee house life, the coffee beans would have been
dumped into the river. Kolschitzky had been of great service to the Venetians during war, and
when he asked for the beans, they gave them to him. They also gave him a home, which he
in turn opened as the first coffee house in Venice (Morton 127). The invigorating drink was
sold by street vendors around the city. Roman Catholic clerics witnessing the small cheerful
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animated groups of people gathering on street corners, called it the “Drink of Satan.” They
petitioned the Pope to prohibit the drinking of coffee. Pope Clement VIII judicially asked for
a taste. He found it so enjoyable that he baptized it and said, “Coffee is so delicious it would
be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it” (Morton 110). Blessed by the Pope, coffee
became a cultural phenomenon in Venice and across Italy.
Some of the finest and most elegant coffee houses in Italy built during this time still serve
customers today. The Venetian proprietor Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Café Procope in Paris in 1686. It was the first literary coffee shop. It is said that Voltaire and his friends
met there. Legend has it that a lieutenant in the French Army had to leave his hat as collateral
for his unpaid bill. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte (“The History of Coffee”).
Today, coffee drinkers outnumber tea drinkers in the United States, but that was not always the case. In December of 1773, a band of patriots protesting high taxes and the British
monopoly on tea slipped aboard the British trade ships docked in the Boston Harbor and
during the night dumped 342 chests of tea into the bay. In retaliation, King George of the British Empire closed the harbor and thus sparked the spirit of rebellion in the American colonists,
who called for independence from Britain. Thereafter, tea was deemed unpatriotic, and coffee
became the drink of choice for the Americans.
Throughout history, coffee has stimulated the mind and soothed the soul. There is something about coffee that calls people together to drink either in solitude or with the company
friends and colleagues. Coffee shops create a place of belonging, where local farmers meet
to discuss crop yields and intellectuals meet to discuss politics and literature. In Satin’s book
Coffee Talk, he writes, “Because of caffeine’s ability to keep drinkers awake and mentally sharp,
the discussions would often revolve around intellectual subjects: politics, the arts, science, and
economics” (139). He continues to say the infamous reputation that grew universally around
the drink often caused dictators and monarchs and religious leaders intending to hold on to
their power to eventually ban and try to close the houses to prevent revolutions from brewing
along with the coffee (139).
Coffee has traveled from feudalism to imperialism, from slave-driven plantations, to small
farmers, to large corporations and back to the mountainsides where the farms are in the shade
and the owners practice “fair trade.” Coffee is the second most traded product in the world,
after fossil fuel. It is grown in tropical regions around the world along the equator between
the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic Capricorn. It is reported even today, at the website for
social justice for cocoa and coffee growers, that farmers in the Ivory Coast refuse to pay their
workers, and instead beat and intimidate them—most are children between nine and sixteen
years old.
Those growing it continue to make slave wages, while those selling it in coffee shops in
Zurich and Paris, New York, and Seattle make fortunes. Today’s Fair Trade organizations are
helping farmers get their fair share of the profits.
The coffee bean is a simple seed, easily grown, that triggers such a desirous effect that first
men, and then women, demanded the right to enjoy a cup of coffee at a reasonable price, and
with that the freedom to congregate away from the judgmental eyes of the clergy and out of
reach of paranoid monarchs.
I
The Meaning of the Object
n addition to the many technological uses of the human hand is its ability to reveal the intensions of the human heart. These first lessons in nonverbal communication are conveyed
to us in our earliest moments of life. As infants, we are fed by the warm breast of mothers
and cradled in their hands, and we hear the soft tones of their voices. We quickly learn to inter-
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pret the intentions of others’ through their hands. We hold hands; we touch and are touched,
caressed and loved by the hands of others. John Bargh and Lawrence Williams discuss cognitive embodiment, and they attest, “In this way, the feelings of warmth when one holds a
hot cup of coffee or takes a warm bath might
activate memories of other feelings associated
The movements of the hand to with
warmth (trust and comfort), because of
grasp and hold a cup trigger
early experiences with caretakers who provide
warmth, shelter, safety, and nourishment”
the unconscious memories
(Williams 1). The human hand is our navigafirst planted in the limbic parts tor through the system of objects, conveying
messages from the outside world to our brains.
of the brain during infancy,
How things feel, our desire to hold, whether
transmitting feelings of
something is hot or cold, smooth or prickly,
comforting or dangerous, is revealed though
comfort.
our hands. One necessary quality for the transmission of the value of the cup of coffee is that
it must be hot. The cup is the agent that transmits the feel of warm liquid to our hands.
In George Lakoff’s The Metaphors We Live By, he explains that our language and actions
are conduits for communicating what is mostly nonverbal. It is the metaphor about meeting
for coffee, the coffee clutch, the coffee break, my morning coffee, grab a cup of Joe, don’t talk
to me until I’ve had my coffee that awakens the memory that warms the heart. The metaphor
is, both linguistically and physically an action: the agent that maps the significant cognitive
link to a cup of hot coffee. He concludes that it is in the repetition of the metaphor that we find
meaning and self-knowledge (234). In the theories of cognitive embodiment, as investigated
by Williams and Bargh, it is in the memories and the unconscious mind that we hold the hidden meaning of drinking coffee that is embedded in the action. The movements of the hand to
grasp and hold a cup trigger the unconscious memories first planted in the limbic parts of the
brain during infancy, transmitting feelings of comfort.
The cup is—according to a study by Jochen Reb and Terry Connolly, Possession, Feelings
of Ownership and Endowment—the medium by which all the powers of cognitive embodiment
and metaphor are transmitted. They demonstrated why any cup and even paper cups become
bestowed with this power. They concluded, “These feelings of ownership that appeared to
lead individuals to include the object into their endowment and to shift their reference point
accordingly” (Reb 107). Even though we have a favorite coffee cup the mystical powers can be
transferred through any substituted medium:
We found a significant effect of possession, but not of factual ownership, on monetary valuation of the object. Moreover, this effect was mediated by participants’ feelings of ownership, which were enhanced by the physical possession of the object. Thus, the endowment
effect did not rely on factual ownership per se but was the result of subjective feelings of
ownership induced by possession of the object. (Reb 107)
If a person holds a cup that is not theirs, but is clearly in their possession, they transmit to the
cup all the feeling carried with ownership and the mystical power of drinking coffee. Even
more specific to the case drawn here is a study by Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, wherein
Thaler coined the term “endowment effect” (1325). In this study, subjects were given a coffee
mug and offered the chance to sell it. Interestingly, the subject estimated the value of the mug
they held to be twice the value of the mug they were not holding.
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I would take a moment to inhale the aroma of the coffee, let the steam touch my face, feel the
warmth of the cup in my gloved hands, and then I would take the first sip. It was the perfect
start to the promise of a good day.
At home today I have a white ceramic cup, about two inches high, medium or standard
circumference, with a stenciled blue Japanese landscape on it. The bottom of the cup is embossed: USA. I like all of those things about it. But most importantly it is the right weight and
feel. It is smooth and fits perfectly in my hands. It is the one. It represents my well-being and
allows for a moment of reflection. I think about what is ahead. I take it outside with me to walk
the dog. I meditate for a moment, as I take in the sun or the rain. I start my day caffeinated and
focused. Part of the magic of the morning ritual is that it can be recreated any time during the
day when I stop for a cup of coffee. This ritual gives structure to my life. Recognizing the universal quest for this morning ritual was how Howard Schultz, the entrepreneur who founded
Starbucks, grew his business.
Howard Schultz did not create the desire for coffee; rather, he tapped into a universal
phenomenology created by drinking coffee. The phenomenology of coffee drinking could be
described by ambiance, smell, emotion, personal, or communal intention. In a world where
most people feel alienated from their community, the coffee house is a sort of church where
people partake in a daily ritual, receive a morning blessing, and sometimes in just a few moments prepare mentally and emotionally for the day. According to a National Coffee Drinking Study found online, 68% of Americans have a cup of coffee within the first hour that they
awake (Live Science).
I
The Personal
The Chess Players (above) photographed by Toni Whiteman
n the early 1990s, I lived in New York City on Staten Island. I worked in the financial district in Manhattan, not far from Wall Street. Early in the morning, I would ride the train
from Oakwood Heights to St. George Station where I—and a thousand others—would disembark to climb the fifty or so stairs up into the
Staten Island Ferry terminal. Every morning
In a world where most people
we moved en masse, rolling from one building
to the other. Some of us would break off and
feel alienated from their comenter a deli, and we understood the rule that
munity, the coffee house is a
we were, without stopping, to yell our coffee
order to the clerk and follow the line around
sort of church where people
the store to the other side of the counter and
partake in a daily ritual, repick up our coffee. It was greatly appreciated if you had the exact change. I would drop
ceive a morning blessing, and
my change, pick up my coffee, and move on
sometimes in just a few moto board the ferry. Even during the coldest
days of winter, I preferred to stand outside on
ments prepare mentally and
the back deck, wrapped in garments of thick
emotionally for the day.
wool. Holding my coffee, I waited. When the
boat was safely en route and moving steadily,
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I
Wings of Desire
n the film Wings of Desire, released in 1987 by German filmmaker Wim Wenders—Peter
Falk, who plays himself, is seen standing by a food trailer next to a chain-linked fence on
the street. It is a typical cold gray morning in Berlin. He orders a cup of coffee. When the
barista hands him a paper cup of coffee, he takes it with both hands and brings it to his lips.
He stops to breathe in the aroma of the roasted beans, to take in the warmth, then takes his first
sip, and sighs in contentment. The significance of this scene in the story is not revealed until
later in the film. The significance of the behavior as a gesture is relevant because 500 million
people around the world indulge in the same ritual every day.
Near the end of the film, we see Peter Falk standing at the same food trailer with a cup of
coffee, talking to himself. He is not actually talking to himself but to an angel played by Bruno
Ganz, whom he cannot see. He knows the angel is there because an angel is presence is often
felt by a feeling of unjustifiable calm and comfort. In this scene, Falk tells the angel that he
knows he is there watching him. He tells the angel that he too was once an angel, but chose to
return to the world as a mortal, to feel things in his hands, like a cup of coffee. Only a mortal
can know the immense pleasure of holding a hot cup of coffee on cold winter’s day.
P
Conclusion
hilosopher, Jean Baudrillard may well have tapped into one of the universal phenomena
associated with the consumption coffee in his book The System of Objects when he said,
“This discursive system of objects is analogous to the system of habits” (100). Baudrillard goes on to say about habit, “Moreover, any object immediately becomes the foundation
of a network of habits, the focus of a set of behavioral routines. In everyday existence the two
are inextricably bound up with each other” (100). There is a welcomed routine that the coffee
drinker is privy to. It is a routine of behavior that is comforting. On the matter of ritual, George
98 | Whiteman
Lakoff wrote, “Each ritual is a repeated, coherently structured, and a unified aspect of our experience. In performing ritual, we give structure and significance to our activities, minimizing
chaos and disparity in our actions” (234). It is this shared ritualistic experience, defined by
metaphor and awakened by cognitive embodiment that connects people everywhere when
they stop for a cup of coffee.
Notes on Our Contributors |
Spring 2013
Sadie E. Campbell | I am a graduate student in the MALS program. My reading interests are
varied and include the works of Stephen King, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, World War
I poetry, and the poetry of Sandra Cisneros, Felicia Hemans, Christina Rossetti, Pablo Neruda,
Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, and Sharon Olds.
Brian Caskey | Brian has a BS in Biology from Stetson University. He lives in Asheville, NC
with his wife, Stacey and daughter, Allison. He also owns and operates a tutoring and test
prep facility. Brian is currently pursuing a Master’s in Liberal Studies at UNC Wilmington.
Heather Jo Divoky | Heather graduated from Appalachian State University with a degree
in Art History. Although she loves the history of art and considers herself a scholar, Heather
also is an active participant in the art world as both a traditional artist and a graphic designer.
Her aesthetic philosophy is often informed by history, past and current, though she maintains a whimsical, magical style uniquely her own. With bursts of color and incredible detail,
Heather’s inspirations are varied and often (though not always) include Mesoamerican Art,
Outsider Art, and the Art Nouveau period. Currently, she is exploring the use of wire, textiles,
and looking into the shoe making process, and integrating it into her marker, pen, and colored
pencil practice. Her favorite food is a good, homemade macaroni and cheese, and she would
never turn down a hike in the woods.
Alone Together (above) photographed by Toni Whiteman
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. 1968. Trans. James Benedict. New York: Verso, 1996. Print.
Choco Java Social Justice Network. Choco Java Social Justice. Wordpress. Jan 19, 2012. Web. 31 March 2012.
“The History of Coffee.” Go Coffee Go. GoCoffeeGo. 2013. Web. 31 Mar 2013.
Jochen, Reb and Terry Connolly. “Possession, Feelings of ownership and the Endowment Effect.” Judgment and Decision Making 2, April
2007. 107–114. Print.
Kahneman, Daniel, Jack L. Knetsch, Richard H. Thaler. “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem.” Journal of
Political Economy 98.6 (1990): 1325-48. Print.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1980. Print.
Lorenzettie, Daniel and Linda R. Lorenzettie. The Birth of Coffee. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2000. Print.
Live Science. “Coffee Facts for National Coffee Day (Infographic).” LiveScience.com. Tech Media Network. 2013. Web. 31 March 2013.
Morton, Satin. Coffee Talk, The Stimulating Story of The World’s Most Popular Brew. New York: Prometheus Books, 2011. Print.
The Roast and Post Coffee Company. “The Early Years.” RealCoffee.co.uk. The Roast & Post Coffee Co. 2013. Web. 9 April 2013.
Williams, Lawrence E. and John A. Bargh. “Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth.” Science 322.24 (2008): 606-607.
Science online. Web. 3 April 2013.
Wings of Desire. Dir. Wim Wenders. USA Orion Classics, 1987. Film.
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Lauren B. Evans | Originally from Anniston, Alabama, I graduated from the University of Alabama with a BA in English in 2012. I am currently in my second semester in the GLS program
at UNC Wilmington.
Joel Randolph Finsel | Joel is the author of Cocktails & Conversations from the Astral Plane. See
more of what he’s up to at www.joelfinsel.com.
Gregory Hankinson | Greg graduates from UNC Wilmington in May 2013 with a bachelor’s
degree in Philosophy. He plans on attending medical school upon wrapping up a minor in
chemistry and mastering the MCAT.
Jessica Jacob | Jessica is currently participating in the Master of Arts program at UNC Wilmington for English Literature and Composition. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta-International English Honor Society, as well as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. As an undergraduate,
Jessica studied abroad in Wales, and participated in a Wentworth Travel Fellowship in Greece
and Italy in an effort to expand her knowledge of both literature and the world’s cultures. She
plans to continue this expansion, beginning with traveling throughout Germany for a second
Wentworth Travel Fellowship in the summer of 2013. Ultimately, she hopes to continue to pair
travel with literature to broaden the boundaries of her intellectual curiosity.
Jamie L. Joyner | Ms. Joyner is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English Literature at
UNC Wilmington. She is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English department, as well as
a CRLA Master Certified Writing Tutor. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta-International English Honor Society. Her research interests include Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Kate
Chopin, Adrienne Rich, and Edith Wharton. She intends to further her study of the maternal,
and its underlying influence within literature, particularly in nineteenth century literature.
Dylan Linehan | Born and raised in Wilmington, NC, Dylan is a fifth-generation musician
whose musical heritage includes traditional Appalachian and Celtic roots. Dylan spent some
of her childhood traveling around North Carolina with her parents, who performed old-time
music and folk songs written by her mother, Karen. Dylan began studying classical piano at
age seven with Mary Paterson who inspired her to pursue her musical dreams from an early
age. Dylan continued her studies through late high school and college with one of North Carolina’s finest classical piano performers, Domonique Launey. Dylan also credits her favorite
composers Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Chopin (to name a few) as some of her
greatest teachers and inspirations. Dylan’s first album Pericardium was recently released in
March, 2013. It is a collection of songs written from the heart over the last five years. She currently studies voice with the incomparable Marina De Ratmiroff. Dylan’s music is an original
blend of rock-opera-pop, with a strong base of classical elements. She has scored several student films and has recently scored her first feature film Don’t Know Yet, written, produced, and
directed by her father, Terry Linehan.
Kelsey Ann Linehan | Kelsey is a recent graduate of East Carolina University School of Art
and Design, where she received a BFA in Photography. She has been passionate about visual
arts since childhood, starting with a love of collage. Kelsey credits her grandfather with sparking her early interest in photography. She recalls an enchanted evening watching him capture
movement of the moon and stars using long exposures. Kelsey spent the spring of 2011 based
out of Certaldo Alto, Italy (Tuscany), studying photography, book arts, and history of the
Renaissance art period. Her most memorable assignment was stalking Italian strangers and
secretly photographing their portraits. She is most at home exploring the road less traveled
with her camera. Her interest in photography ranges from nature to portraiture and fashion. On weekends, Kelsey can be found adventuring in junkyards, dilapidated buildings, and
coastal landscapes seeking the perfect shot of the uniquely odd. Her work has been exhibited
in diverse locales from Greenville bars to Italian castles. Her photographs are on permanent
display in Koury Hall at UNC Chapel Hill. Kelsey loves playing outdoors—especially on the
north end of Carolina Beach!
Casey Jordan Mills | Casey is an aspiring essayist, academic, performer, and journalist. His
interests include performance ethnography, immersion journalism, Welsh culture, veganism,
literature and film, applied theatre, television and film acting, and bad poetry. Daily, he tries
to imagine his life as a re-creation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Lori Joy Peterson | “Art to me is like what words are to poetry. I use paint to express my views
of the world. What I like about painting is I can put what’s in my head on paper. Art is my way
to communicate and express my feelings and thoughts on nature, life, people, and animals.”
Lori is an acrylic and watercolor artist. She has taken acrylic and watercolor classes with Betty
Brown and Ronald Williams as well as drawing courses at Saint Mary’s Adult School. Lori has
been honored to be a volunteer at the Cameron Art Museum. Her works have been displayed
at UNC Wilmington’s Warwick Center, Tres Chic, Time Warner Cable’s Shipyard Office, in
The Starving Artist Magazine, and in To the Bone Magazine. She has participated in the Battleship Arts Fest and the Community Arts Center Arts Fest. Lori believes the way to grow as an
artist is to be around fellow artists and art lovers and that you never stop growing as an artist.
Her artwork is currently displayed at Checker Cab Gallery, Figments Gallery, and Caper Fear
Native in Wilmington, NC.
Renee L. Sloan | Renee is a graduate student in the English program at UNC Wilmington.
She recently earned a BA in English with a concentration in literature, and a BFA in Creative
Writing. Prior to returning to school to pursue her education, she worked in the newspaper
industry as a graphic artist and writer. She plans to graduate with her MA in Spring 2014, and
then return to graduate school to earn an MFA in creative writing or a PhD in English. When
she’s not in class, Renee enjoys sharing her love of books with her five-year-old son.
Caleb Stewart | Hailing from a small town nestled in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia, Caleb is currently pursuing degrees in Film Studies and Creative Writing at UNC
Wilmington. He is heavily involved in organizations across campus and throughout Wilmington, but also tries to make time for family and friends. Until now, his writing has never been
published, but he is working on a novel tentatively titled Mark of the Beast.
Vallie Lynn Watson | Vallie Lynn Watson’s debut novel, A River So Long, was published by
Luminis Books in June 2012, and her Pushcart-nominated work appears or is forthcoming in
dozens of literary magazines such as PANK, decompE, and Gargoyle. Watson teaches creative
writing at Southeast Missouri State University and is learning to fly hot air balloons.
Zachariah Weaver | I was born in Michigan and raised on cartoons and comic books. I try to
create things that could never exist, in hopes that humans will stop taking the world so seriously. I am currently based in Wilmington, NC where I have worked as a proud member of
Thrive Studios since 2009, and Art Slab since 2012. You’re apt to find me hanging out at Anvil
& Ink Tattoo on Castle St., making art with an amazing group of wisecrackers and little rascals.
Toni Whiteman | Toni has returned to school to work on a Masters of Liberal Arts after many
years in the film and television business.
JoAnna C. Wright | JoAnna is currently pursuing her Masters of Arts in English at UNC
Wilmington. She is presently serving as Secretary for the Graduate English Association and
is a member of the International English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, for which she also
served as secretary as an undergraduate at UNC Wilmington. She hopes to continue her passion for literature, writing, and teaching as a lecturer.
Thank you for reading.