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zalenaHAPPY BIRTHDAY JANE! I picked up a copy of this book for srotu27 and decided I wanted to read (and write about) it myself. I'm not sure if the following constitutes spoilers, but it is some reflection on the most intriguing essays in the book. Please note, it's a little rough, but I wanted to put something up for the day.
--------------------------
"The first challenge you face when writing about Pride & Prejudice is to get through your first sentence without saying, "it is a truth universally acknowledged..." - Martin Amis (p83).
Indeed this phrase is one most the authors in this collection didn't bother to avoid, even when writing about Jane Austen's other works. At least one essay (I can't remember which one) acknowledges that this famous opening is NOT universal, it is the first clue Ms. Austen gives us that we have arrived in the land of comedy.
Here are some thoughts about Jane Austen and why we read her:
1. She's funny
2. She's required
3. We enjoyed the movies (John Wiltshire, at least, raises the question of why we read her when so many film versions exist. He also has some interesting commentary on the phenomena.)
Many of the authors in this book give their own compelling reasons for reading Jane Austen, though most often it boils down to this: we read her because we enjoy her. So there.
I remember being confronted with a paperback of P&P when I was 12 and hating it. The language seemed ludicrous. I could not bring myself to care about the characters. I think I was converted by the 1995 miniseries, which I saw in college, and somehow found myself identifying with Lizzie. Not that I have ever had a Mr. Darcy in my life. Most of the suitors in my life have been more of the Wickham or Mr. Collins variety. In fact, I think many women are plagued with this problem. Either the man is passionate, unfaithful, utterly wild, and morally corrupt or he is a pompous bore so acutely attuned to duty and appearances he requires us to comport ourselves, likewise. I am not trying to insult any of my male readers here, or manhood in general, but those of you who know about my dating life, know that this dichotomy rings true, at least for me.
I will freely admit that I watch film adaptation far more often than I read the books, but returning to the books always gives me an immense comfort. Here is a clever, principled, woman who came before me. Who was able to capture her keen observations in a format that resonates through the centuries and allows us a glimpse into the inner lives of the people in a world long-passed. I read Jane Austen because I love her characters, the strength of her dialogue, but mostly the fortitude of her women. These are not woman who are merely passive, but principled. They do give me a kind of model for feminine morality: what happens when women's roles collide with the Age of Reason. That is why my favorite essays in this collection of essays deal with Jane Austen's moral principles.
The most memorable essay is Louis Auchincloss' 'Jane Austen and the Good Life.' He talks about the patience, courage, and discipline required of Austen's characters to reach for the good life, which he defines thus:
...Jane Austen was clearly of the opinion tht the good life ws not compatible with noisy, undisciplined children, let loose in small rooms. o, there should be some degree of affluence to provide space, both for solitude and for genteel gatherings, in houses tht should be always elegant, even when simple, and should, if the countryside permits, look out on pleasant landscapes. Jane Austen lived in an era of such universal good taste (almost inconceivable to us) that it was inevitable for her and her contemporaries to associate outward order with inward serenity.
Also in the good life there should be time for reading, music, drawing, and for edifying conversation. And in the good marriage there should be compatibility as well as love, and money as well as mutual respect, although as Catherine Morland points out on Northanger Abby it does not matter which spouse supplies the money. But above all, both in life and marriage, there should be a guiding philosophy to restrain the individual from excess, the excess of hoping too much or of despairing too much, and a constant resignation to the whims of providence that may at any moment dash the cup from even devoutly worshipping lips. (p117-8)
To borrow a phrase from Persuasion, Chapter 16: "You are mistaken, that is not the good life, that is the best!" It remains a fair description of middle-class life even now.
Auchincloss goes on to answer criticisms of class and crass lucre using specific examples from books and final settling on Fanny from Mansfield Park as the ultimate moral heroine because she embraces what is good despite knowing the very real possibility that this will leave her impoverished and dissolute. I'd never really focused on the moral fortitude of Fanny. She has never struck me as a particularly compelling character, but Auchincloss' defense is compelling and well worth a read.
James Collins continues the defense of moral Austen in his essay 'Fanny Was Right: Jane Austen as Moral Guide':
I appreciate Austen's moral instruction because it points one toward a more moral life---where "moral" refers not only to right principles but to conduct in general. I think of Austen's value system as a sphere with layers. The inmost core might be called "morals," the next layer we could call "sentiments," and finally the surface "manners." Morals are the fundamental principles: self-knowledge, generosity, humility, tenderest compassion, upright integrity...* Sentiments are built on the foundation of these morals: an amiable heart, sensibility to all that is lovely. Manners in turn, arise from our sentiments. They have to do with behavior, with the way we work in the world: perfect good breeding, gentle address....
How can morals, sentiments, and manners help me live in the world? What should my relationships to the world be? Should I reject it entirely as corrupt and mercenary and spiteful and hypocritical and shallow? Or is there some other way, a way I can keep my integrity and sensitivity and live in the world, too? W.H. Auden stated the problem well when he wrote:
"Does Life only offer two alternatives: "You shall be happy, healthy, attractive, a good mixer, a good lover and parent, but on the condition you are not overcurious about life. On the other hand you shall be sensitive, conscious of what is happening around you, but in that case you must not expect to be too happy, or successful at home or in any company. There are two worlds and you cannot belong to them both. If you belong to the second of those worlds you will be unhappy because you will always be in love with the first, while at the same time you will despise it. The first world on the other hand will not return your love because it is in its nature to love only itself."
In effect, Auden is asking if Life offers only the two alternatives of Sense and Sensibility, and one can sympathize with his cry of despair, for when the dilemma is put the way he puts it, the two seem hopelessly irreconcilable.**
Austen comes to our rescue, though, for she does manage to modulate between Sense and Sensibility, rejecting the excesses of both. This complex of values appeals to me particularly because the combination of morals, sentiments, and manners provides a way of living that allows one both to be in the world and of the world and to enjoy the sweets of goodness and sensitivity as well... Austen's sympathetic characters participate fully in their society and accept its conventions, yet they have exquisitely well-tuned minds and hearts. (p150-1)
It was only when I came to the end of the book to Harold Bloom's excerpt from 'Canonical Memory in Early Wordsworth and Jane Austen's Persuasion,' that I realized what these author's were picking up on, and what resonated with me is something that Bloom calls, 'the Protestant will':
Anne Eliot is the last of Austen's heroines of what i think we must call the Protestant will, but in her the will is modified, perhaps perfected, by its descendant, the Romantic sympathetic imagination, of which Wordsworth was the prophet. That is perhaps what makes Anne so so complex and sensitive a character.
Jane Austen's earlier heroines, of whom Elizabeth Bennet is the exemplar, manifested the Protestant will as direct descendants of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, with Dr. Samuel Johnson hovering nearby as a moral authority. Marxist criticism inevitably views the Protestant will, even in its literary manifestations, as a mercantile matter, and it has become fashionable to talk about the socioeconomic realities that Austen exclude, such as the West Indian slavery that is part of the ultimate basis for the financial security most of her characters enjoy... Austen was, however, immensely interested in the pragmatic and secular consequences of the Protestant will, and they seem to me a crucial element of helping us appreciate the heroines of her novels.
Austen's Shakespearean inwardness, culminating in Anne Elliot, revises the moral intensities of Clarissa Harlowe's secularized Protestant martyrdom, her slow dying after being raped by Lovelace. What removes Clarissa's will to live is her stronger will to maintain the integrity of her being. To yield to the repentant Lovelace by marrying him would compromise the essence of her being, the exaltation of her violated will. What is tragedy in Clarissa is converted by Austen into ironic comedy, but the will's drive to maintain itself scarcely alters in this conversion. In Persuasion the emphasis is on a willed exchange of esteems, where both the woman and the man estimate the value of the other to be high. Obviously, the outward considerations of wealth, property, and social standing are crucial here, but so are the inward considerations of amiability, culture, wit, and affection. In a way, Ralph Waldo Emerson anticipated the current Marxist critique of Austen when he denounced her as a mere conformist who would not allow her heroines to achieve the soul's true freedom from societal conventions. But that was to mistake Jane Austen, who understood that the function of convention was to liberate the will, even if convention's tendency was to stifle individuality, without which the will was inconsequential....
There is a difficult relation between Austen's repression of her characteristic irony about her protagonists and a certain previously unheard plangency that hovers throughout Persuasion. Despite Anne's faith in herself she is very vulnerable to anxiety, which she never allows herself to express, of an unlived life, in which the potential loss transcends yet includes sexual unfulfillment. I can recall only one critic, the Australian Ann Molan, who emphasizes what Austen strongly implies, that "Anne... is a passionate woman. And against her will, her heart keeps asserting its demand for fulfillment." Since Anne had refused Wentworth her esteem eight years before, she feels a necessity to withhold her will, and thus becomes the first Austen heroine whose will and imagination are antithetical. (p233-5)
There is a lot more here about Anne and romance and her relationship to Wordsworth. Bloom includes Wentworth's passionate letter and illuminates Austen's technique of withholding viewpoints so that we might better be moved by the reveal. Bloom places Austen as a bridge between the Aristocratic Age and the Democratic Age, "...she shares with Wordsworth an art dependent upon the split between a waning Protestant will and a newly active sympathetic imagination, with memory assigned the labor of healing the divide." Bloom claims 'the sympathetic imagination' is the lasting legacy of the Romantics. "Austen will survive even the bad days ahead of us, because the strangeness of originality and of an individual vision are our lasting needs, which only literature can gratify in the Theocratic Age that slouches towards us." (p239)
All this comes from Bloom's 1994 book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages and it should be noted that the editor of this volume is a doctoral candidate at Yale, probably a personal friend of Mr. Bloom, since he also contributed the forward to the collection.
The collection as a whole did not impress me, and it had some notable exclusions, including Doris Lessing's marvelous essay on Jane Austen and the legacy of Humanism. However, what struck me most about Bloom's contribution*** was the phrase 'Protestant will.' It was like a giant :::BINGO!!!::: sign flashing over the text and in my mind. Not only is it (and the previous essays about Austen's morality) indicative of my problems in the world; but it speaks to why I find literature so compelling.
I once described Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as asking the question of whether there could be a Christian morality without Christ. It occurs to me that this is the larger question of literature from the 19C to the present. 19C literature is particularly preoccupied with this question, because it is, in essence, what results from the Age of Reason. We are still wrestling with this question, and I would argue that literature is still trying to answer it. For me it offers some of the most compelling reasons to read, and when I meet examples of other pilgrims on this trail, I feel I am amongst good company.
[This is part of why Little Women has always resonated with me. It is structured along the lines of Pilgrim's Progress a book, I'm embarrassed to admit I read at a far too early age, in part because I was starved of fantasy. I actually believed that the 'roll' on Christian's back---usually interpreted to be the burden of his sin---was in fact an enormous dinner roll, stale, and the only sustenance he had upon his journey. When Christian arrives at Calvary, is confronted by the cross the roll is loosed from his back and bounces down the hill. My immediate concern was, "What will Christian eat for the rest of his journey?" The obvious solution was that God would provide and that it was cushy hostels along the lines of House Beautiful from here on out.]
I have written before on the profound influence not just of the Protestant Reformation, but Puritanism on the shape of our world. The tenant of self-interpretation is the driving force behind both literacy and democracy. I think this bears further exploration, especially the conception of 'Protestant will' on narrative.
In part, because the battle between Protestant will and sympathetic imagination describes some of my own difficulties in the world. My parents have always spoken of my early childhood as 'willful.' My father used to believe it was his responsibility to break this spirit and beat the will out out of me. I never really looked at it as a powerful force to be reckoned with... or more importantly a force that they unconsciously instilled in me. My 'Protestant will' is as much the result of my upbringing as it is a force of my own personality. And even as I embark upon middle age I am still shocked to find it either missing or subverted in other people. (Along with functioning moral systems. Can people not see that their lives bear questioning? I am of the opinion that Mammon in our culture, is not money as commonly believed, but work itself, in which people bury themselves as though the could avoid examining their lives, their wills, their morality, by subverting their will to the higher power of the institutions in which they serve. Which is worse: chaining one's will to an angry god, who at least is rumored to be merciful, or to a faceless---or many faced---corporation?)
I'm piqued by the idea of combing through literature for moral guidance, but also a little appalled by it. On one hand, this seems like one of the functions of literature, but hardly seems to help people want to seek it out. "Read Jane Austen for moral instruction!" now there's a winner cause for literacy... in fact it is precisely this tone (ever present in children's literature) that puts people off reading for life.
This, I might add, is part of what makes Austen so clever. Her moral instruction for a good life is found folded into marvelous little comedies involving everyday people, and Love Stories. When confronted with the question, "Will you have a love-song, or a song of good life?" (Twelfth Night: Act 2, Scene 3) I believe Austen answers: both!
Next up: Jane Austen in Love.
NOTES:
* Collins' cites specific examples here, including a lovely description of the Dashwood sisters, ending in, "the author... clearly regards Marianne's emotionalism with the greatest compassion. Austen is not advocating the suppression of feelings themselves---despite her faultlessly correct behavior, Elinor undergoes great suffering and feels every bit of it. What Austen is saying, as a modern psychologist might urge, is that one should try to prevent the disintegration of one's personality."
**Note: This is the kind of damage the recently deceased Claude Levi-Strass has done to our cosmology with his conception of the 'binary opposition.' Think about the schism created in terms of gender and morality with this system of opposites and decide if you still think he is a genius. In my conception, poststructuralism offers an alternative; but it is hazardous as the sudden declassification of things puts everything into an indecipherable muddle. The Beloved Professor suggests that this is happening anyway. Foreground and background, the divisions between things are breaking down. Ultimately, the collapse into a non-dual system suggests not just the interconnection between things, but the actual lack of separation between them. We are all One. This is sublime and creepy. Maddening, really. A kind of schizophrenic inability to distinguish between systems. A lapse, almost, in the complex filtering mechanisms that allow us to order our world.
***For the record, I consider Bloom a conservative force in literature and its scholarship and someone whose earlier works contributed far more to the scholarly field and pool of ideas than his later one's in which he has self-styled himself as a Great Man speaking largely for other Great Men. Despite this I think he has some provocative ideas, remains a force to be reckoned with, and I adore his protege Camille Paglia, who despite her constant nagging on the pagan forces of pop literature remains one of the best contemporary examples our country has given of a female public intellectual since. His contributions particularly with regard to religion in America will probably set the tone for years to come. Ditto for Paglia once everyone gets over how much her delivery stings.
I thought I would also mention that I finally finished her 50-page essay on Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s. It offers a fairly succinct overview to the arrival of the New Age movement from the 19C to the present, nothing really groundbreaking, but surprising to those who might not be aware. Also some excellent criticisms of the same. We are still dealing with the problem of missing superstructure to support spiritual seekers: whether elders, communities, pharmacologists, or just plain structure against which to weigh and balance one's experience.
srotu27 and decided I wanted to read (and write about) it myself. I'm not sure if the following constitutes spoilers, but it is some reflection on the most intriguing essays in the book. Please note, it's a little rough, but I wanted to put something up for the day.--------------------------
"The first challenge you face when writing about Pride & Prejudice is to get through your first sentence without saying, "it is a truth universally acknowledged..." - Martin Amis (p83).
Indeed this phrase is one most the authors in this collection didn't bother to avoid, even when writing about Jane Austen's other works. At least one essay (I can't remember which one) acknowledges that this famous opening is NOT universal, it is the first clue Ms. Austen gives us that we have arrived in the land of comedy.
Here are some thoughts about Jane Austen and why we read her:
1. She's funny
2. She's required
3. We enjoyed the movies (John Wiltshire, at least, raises the question of why we read her when so many film versions exist. He also has some interesting commentary on the phenomena.)
Many of the authors in this book give their own compelling reasons for reading Jane Austen, though most often it boils down to this: we read her because we enjoy her. So there.
I remember being confronted with a paperback of P&P when I was 12 and hating it. The language seemed ludicrous. I could not bring myself to care about the characters. I think I was converted by the 1995 miniseries, which I saw in college, and somehow found myself identifying with Lizzie. Not that I have ever had a Mr. Darcy in my life. Most of the suitors in my life have been more of the Wickham or Mr. Collins variety. In fact, I think many women are plagued with this problem. Either the man is passionate, unfaithful, utterly wild, and morally corrupt or he is a pompous bore so acutely attuned to duty and appearances he requires us to comport ourselves, likewise. I am not trying to insult any of my male readers here, or manhood in general, but those of you who know about my dating life, know that this dichotomy rings true, at least for me.
I will freely admit that I watch film adaptation far more often than I read the books, but returning to the books always gives me an immense comfort. Here is a clever, principled, woman who came before me. Who was able to capture her keen observations in a format that resonates through the centuries and allows us a glimpse into the inner lives of the people in a world long-passed. I read Jane Austen because I love her characters, the strength of her dialogue, but mostly the fortitude of her women. These are not woman who are merely passive, but principled. They do give me a kind of model for feminine morality: what happens when women's roles collide with the Age of Reason. That is why my favorite essays in this collection of essays deal with Jane Austen's moral principles.
The most memorable essay is Louis Auchincloss' 'Jane Austen and the Good Life.' He talks about the patience, courage, and discipline required of Austen's characters to reach for the good life, which he defines thus:
...Jane Austen was clearly of the opinion tht the good life ws not compatible with noisy, undisciplined children, let loose in small rooms. o, there should be some degree of affluence to provide space, both for solitude and for genteel gatherings, in houses tht should be always elegant, even when simple, and should, if the countryside permits, look out on pleasant landscapes. Jane Austen lived in an era of such universal good taste (almost inconceivable to us) that it was inevitable for her and her contemporaries to associate outward order with inward serenity.
Also in the good life there should be time for reading, music, drawing, and for edifying conversation. And in the good marriage there should be compatibility as well as love, and money as well as mutual respect, although as Catherine Morland points out on Northanger Abby it does not matter which spouse supplies the money. But above all, both in life and marriage, there should be a guiding philosophy to restrain the individual from excess, the excess of hoping too much or of despairing too much, and a constant resignation to the whims of providence that may at any moment dash the cup from even devoutly worshipping lips. (p117-8)
To borrow a phrase from Persuasion, Chapter 16: "You are mistaken, that is not the good life, that is the best!" It remains a fair description of middle-class life even now.
Auchincloss goes on to answer criticisms of class and crass lucre using specific examples from books and final settling on Fanny from Mansfield Park as the ultimate moral heroine because she embraces what is good despite knowing the very real possibility that this will leave her impoverished and dissolute. I'd never really focused on the moral fortitude of Fanny. She has never struck me as a particularly compelling character, but Auchincloss' defense is compelling and well worth a read.
James Collins continues the defense of moral Austen in his essay 'Fanny Was Right: Jane Austen as Moral Guide':
I appreciate Austen's moral instruction because it points one toward a more moral life---where "moral" refers not only to right principles but to conduct in general. I think of Austen's value system as a sphere with layers. The inmost core might be called "morals," the next layer we could call "sentiments," and finally the surface "manners." Morals are the fundamental principles: self-knowledge, generosity, humility, tenderest compassion, upright integrity...* Sentiments are built on the foundation of these morals: an amiable heart, sensibility to all that is lovely. Manners in turn, arise from our sentiments. They have to do with behavior, with the way we work in the world: perfect good breeding, gentle address....
How can morals, sentiments, and manners help me live in the world? What should my relationships to the world be? Should I reject it entirely as corrupt and mercenary and spiteful and hypocritical and shallow? Or is there some other way, a way I can keep my integrity and sensitivity and live in the world, too? W.H. Auden stated the problem well when he wrote:
"Does Life only offer two alternatives: "You shall be happy, healthy, attractive, a good mixer, a good lover and parent, but on the condition you are not overcurious about life. On the other hand you shall be sensitive, conscious of what is happening around you, but in that case you must not expect to be too happy, or successful at home or in any company. There are two worlds and you cannot belong to them both. If you belong to the second of those worlds you will be unhappy because you will always be in love with the first, while at the same time you will despise it. The first world on the other hand will not return your love because it is in its nature to love only itself."
In effect, Auden is asking if Life offers only the two alternatives of Sense and Sensibility, and one can sympathize with his cry of despair, for when the dilemma is put the way he puts it, the two seem hopelessly irreconcilable.**
Austen comes to our rescue, though, for she does manage to modulate between Sense and Sensibility, rejecting the excesses of both. This complex of values appeals to me particularly because the combination of morals, sentiments, and manners provides a way of living that allows one both to be in the world and of the world and to enjoy the sweets of goodness and sensitivity as well... Austen's sympathetic characters participate fully in their society and accept its conventions, yet they have exquisitely well-tuned minds and hearts. (p150-1)
It was only when I came to the end of the book to Harold Bloom's excerpt from 'Canonical Memory in Early Wordsworth and Jane Austen's Persuasion,' that I realized what these author's were picking up on, and what resonated with me is something that Bloom calls, 'the Protestant will':
Anne Eliot is the last of Austen's heroines of what i think we must call the Protestant will, but in her the will is modified, perhaps perfected, by its descendant, the Romantic sympathetic imagination, of which Wordsworth was the prophet. That is perhaps what makes Anne so so complex and sensitive a character.
Jane Austen's earlier heroines, of whom Elizabeth Bennet is the exemplar, manifested the Protestant will as direct descendants of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, with Dr. Samuel Johnson hovering nearby as a moral authority. Marxist criticism inevitably views the Protestant will, even in its literary manifestations, as a mercantile matter, and it has become fashionable to talk about the socioeconomic realities that Austen exclude, such as the West Indian slavery that is part of the ultimate basis for the financial security most of her characters enjoy... Austen was, however, immensely interested in the pragmatic and secular consequences of the Protestant will, and they seem to me a crucial element of helping us appreciate the heroines of her novels.
Austen's Shakespearean inwardness, culminating in Anne Elliot, revises the moral intensities of Clarissa Harlowe's secularized Protestant martyrdom, her slow dying after being raped by Lovelace. What removes Clarissa's will to live is her stronger will to maintain the integrity of her being. To yield to the repentant Lovelace by marrying him would compromise the essence of her being, the exaltation of her violated will. What is tragedy in Clarissa is converted by Austen into ironic comedy, but the will's drive to maintain itself scarcely alters in this conversion. In Persuasion the emphasis is on a willed exchange of esteems, where both the woman and the man estimate the value of the other to be high. Obviously, the outward considerations of wealth, property, and social standing are crucial here, but so are the inward considerations of amiability, culture, wit, and affection. In a way, Ralph Waldo Emerson anticipated the current Marxist critique of Austen when he denounced her as a mere conformist who would not allow her heroines to achieve the soul's true freedom from societal conventions. But that was to mistake Jane Austen, who understood that the function of convention was to liberate the will, even if convention's tendency was to stifle individuality, without which the will was inconsequential....
There is a difficult relation between Austen's repression of her characteristic irony about her protagonists and a certain previously unheard plangency that hovers throughout Persuasion. Despite Anne's faith in herself she is very vulnerable to anxiety, which she never allows herself to express, of an unlived life, in which the potential loss transcends yet includes sexual unfulfillment. I can recall only one critic, the Australian Ann Molan, who emphasizes what Austen strongly implies, that "Anne... is a passionate woman. And against her will, her heart keeps asserting its demand for fulfillment." Since Anne had refused Wentworth her esteem eight years before, she feels a necessity to withhold her will, and thus becomes the first Austen heroine whose will and imagination are antithetical. (p233-5)
There is a lot more here about Anne and romance and her relationship to Wordsworth. Bloom includes Wentworth's passionate letter and illuminates Austen's technique of withholding viewpoints so that we might better be moved by the reveal. Bloom places Austen as a bridge between the Aristocratic Age and the Democratic Age, "...she shares with Wordsworth an art dependent upon the split between a waning Protestant will and a newly active sympathetic imagination, with memory assigned the labor of healing the divide." Bloom claims 'the sympathetic imagination' is the lasting legacy of the Romantics. "Austen will survive even the bad days ahead of us, because the strangeness of originality and of an individual vision are our lasting needs, which only literature can gratify in the Theocratic Age that slouches towards us." (p239)
All this comes from Bloom's 1994 book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages and it should be noted that the editor of this volume is a doctoral candidate at Yale, probably a personal friend of Mr. Bloom, since he also contributed the forward to the collection.
The collection as a whole did not impress me, and it had some notable exclusions, including Doris Lessing's marvelous essay on Jane Austen and the legacy of Humanism. However, what struck me most about Bloom's contribution*** was the phrase 'Protestant will.' It was like a giant :::BINGO!!!::: sign flashing over the text and in my mind. Not only is it (and the previous essays about Austen's morality) indicative of my problems in the world; but it speaks to why I find literature so compelling.
I once described Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as asking the question of whether there could be a Christian morality without Christ. It occurs to me that this is the larger question of literature from the 19C to the present. 19C literature is particularly preoccupied with this question, because it is, in essence, what results from the Age of Reason. We are still wrestling with this question, and I would argue that literature is still trying to answer it. For me it offers some of the most compelling reasons to read, and when I meet examples of other pilgrims on this trail, I feel I am amongst good company.
[This is part of why Little Women has always resonated with me. It is structured along the lines of Pilgrim's Progress a book, I'm embarrassed to admit I read at a far too early age, in part because I was starved of fantasy. I actually believed that the 'roll' on Christian's back---usually interpreted to be the burden of his sin---was in fact an enormous dinner roll, stale, and the only sustenance he had upon his journey. When Christian arrives at Calvary, is confronted by the cross the roll is loosed from his back and bounces down the hill. My immediate concern was, "What will Christian eat for the rest of his journey?" The obvious solution was that God would provide and that it was cushy hostels along the lines of House Beautiful from here on out.]
I have written before on the profound influence not just of the Protestant Reformation, but Puritanism on the shape of our world. The tenant of self-interpretation is the driving force behind both literacy and democracy. I think this bears further exploration, especially the conception of 'Protestant will' on narrative.
In part, because the battle between Protestant will and sympathetic imagination describes some of my own difficulties in the world. My parents have always spoken of my early childhood as 'willful.' My father used to believe it was his responsibility to break this spirit and beat the will out out of me. I never really looked at it as a powerful force to be reckoned with... or more importantly a force that they unconsciously instilled in me. My 'Protestant will' is as much the result of my upbringing as it is a force of my own personality. And even as I embark upon middle age I am still shocked to find it either missing or subverted in other people. (Along with functioning moral systems. Can people not see that their lives bear questioning? I am of the opinion that Mammon in our culture, is not money as commonly believed, but work itself, in which people bury themselves as though the could avoid examining their lives, their wills, their morality, by subverting their will to the higher power of the institutions in which they serve. Which is worse: chaining one's will to an angry god, who at least is rumored to be merciful, or to a faceless---or many faced---corporation?)
I'm piqued by the idea of combing through literature for moral guidance, but also a little appalled by it. On one hand, this seems like one of the functions of literature, but hardly seems to help people want to seek it out. "Read Jane Austen for moral instruction!" now there's a winner cause for literacy... in fact it is precisely this tone (ever present in children's literature) that puts people off reading for life.
This, I might add, is part of what makes Austen so clever. Her moral instruction for a good life is found folded into marvelous little comedies involving everyday people, and Love Stories. When confronted with the question, "Will you have a love-song, or a song of good life?" (Twelfth Night: Act 2, Scene 3) I believe Austen answers: both!
Next up: Jane Austen in Love.
NOTES:
* Collins' cites specific examples here, including a lovely description of the Dashwood sisters, ending in, "the author... clearly regards Marianne's emotionalism with the greatest compassion. Austen is not advocating the suppression of feelings themselves---despite her faultlessly correct behavior, Elinor undergoes great suffering and feels every bit of it. What Austen is saying, as a modern psychologist might urge, is that one should try to prevent the disintegration of one's personality."
**Note: This is the kind of damage the recently deceased Claude Levi-Strass has done to our cosmology with his conception of the 'binary opposition.' Think about the schism created in terms of gender and morality with this system of opposites and decide if you still think he is a genius. In my conception, poststructuralism offers an alternative; but it is hazardous as the sudden declassification of things puts everything into an indecipherable muddle. The Beloved Professor suggests that this is happening anyway. Foreground and background, the divisions between things are breaking down. Ultimately, the collapse into a non-dual system suggests not just the interconnection between things, but the actual lack of separation between them. We are all One. This is sublime and creepy. Maddening, really. A kind of schizophrenic inability to distinguish between systems. A lapse, almost, in the complex filtering mechanisms that allow us to order our world.
***For the record, I consider Bloom a conservative force in literature and its scholarship and someone whose earlier works contributed far more to the scholarly field and pool of ideas than his later one's in which he has self-styled himself as a Great Man speaking largely for other Great Men. Despite this I think he has some provocative ideas, remains a force to be reckoned with, and I adore his protege Camille Paglia, who despite her constant nagging on the pagan forces of pop literature remains one of the best contemporary examples our country has given of a female public intellectual since. His contributions particularly with regard to religion in America will probably set the tone for years to come. Ditto for Paglia once everyone gets over how much her delivery stings.
I thought I would also mention that I finally finished her 50-page essay on Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s. It offers a fairly succinct overview to the arrival of the New Age movement from the 19C to the present, nothing really groundbreaking, but surprising to those who might not be aware. Also some excellent criticisms of the same. We are still dealing with the problem of missing superstructure to support spiritual seekers: whether elders, communities, pharmacologists, or just plain structure against which to weigh and balance one's experience.
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Date: 2009-12-16 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 05:12 am (UTC)I particularly liked the bits about Jane Austen and the Good Life. This sounds like a quite a good life to me as well!