Gender in Northanger Abbey

First things first: I really enjoyed Northanger Abbey. I found it to be an entertainingly quick read and I didn’t want to put it down. I loved Austen’s wit sprinkled throughout, especially when subverting Gothic expectations. However, I did find that I had a hard time explaining the plot of this novel to those who would ask me what I was reading. My answer would go something like this: “It’s about this girl who is on a vacation, and she likes this guy.” “Oh,” would be the general response. “No, it’s actually so much more than that!” and I would try again and eyes would glaze over. Yet this novel is so smart. The subversions of the Gothic narrative are entertaining and plentiful, and the commentary on novels and readers is incredibly insightful and self-reflexive. But Austen goes even further, subverting other expected norms such as gender and romance.

The one true romance that Austen presents is the one between Catherine and Henry, as Eleanor’s romance takes place outside of the pages and Isabella’s romantic aims are for money rather than true companionship. Yet, Austen does not set up Catherine and Henry’s romance as some grand affair, but rather presents it more as an anti-romance. This begins with the set up of Catherine and Henry as unconventional characters or literary heroes. Catherine is immediately painted as a peculiar choice for a literary heroine in that she is so ordinary. In her young life, Catherine is called “plain” and “occasionally stupid” – not a great start for a literary heroine. Austen purposefully places Catherine in direct contrast to Gothic heroines, such as the sentimental and faint-prone Adeline of The Romance of the Forest. Catherine is “almost pretty” in contrast to Adeline’s intoxicating beauty, and is quite healthy without being prone to fainting. I just realized that she may be the first female character that we have read that doesn’t faint!

Henry is also not presented as a standard literary hero. He is “not quite handsome” and has a rather feminine knowledge of clothing. Even Catherine realizes that he does not resemble an ideal man as she almost calls him “strange” (16). Their romance is not filled with exceptional witty banter or any romantic gestures, but is instead filled with occasional discussions where Henry openly mocks Catherine and his sister. His absence is far more telling of their relationship than his presence. In his absence, we see Catherine wishing for his presence which is the only real indication of her feelings for him. However, his absence is most noted when General Tilney sends Catherine away with no guardians on a potentially dangerous trip back home. Here is the perfect place in the romance plot for the young literary hero to swoop in and save the day but again Henry is absent.

All of these anti-romantic (as in love relationships, not the Romance genre) characteristics of the plot work to highlight the frequent gender disruptions. In addition to Catherine’s tomboy past and her lack of traditional feminine arts and occupations, her first conversation with Henry informs the reader that Catherine does not keep a journal like most young girls do. In the same conversation, we learn that Henry has a vast knowledge about women’s fashion and frequently buys dresses and fabric for his sister. Though these characters are restricted in many instances by their gender, Austen creates characters who do not fully consist of gender norms even if they still have to play the gender game.

Musings on 'The Romance of the Forest'

Even though I don’t think of myself as well versed in the Gothic tradition, I definitely recognized common Gothic motifs throughout Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest: the beautiful young heroine, the dark, looming forest, the exotic locale, the mysterious Abbey, the kidnapping, the incestuous relationships. I also see strong Romantic qualities in the novel, especially in relation to Radcliffe’s treatment of awe-inspiring nature and its relationship with art. What I found interesting is the relationship between exteriors and interiors, the rational and supernatural, and order and chaos.

From the opening scenes of The Romance of the Forest, I was struck by the idea of exteriors and interiors. La Motte seeks refuge and safety for his family in a “small and ancient house” (3). However, the interior of the house does not provide the protection that La Motte hopes for, but rather holds more danger than he could have possibly imagined. While the interior of the house may shelter one from a storm, it is far removed from a safe haven. It is so dark that La Motte can barely make out the sparse room or the threatening figures and there are iron bars on the window to trap one within the house.

The interior of the Abbey is another interesting exterior/interior space. Radcliffe is a little heavy handed with the description of the Abbey as she describes La Motte’s reaction: “La Motte sighed. The comparison between himself and the gradation of decay, which these columns exhibited, was but too obvious and affecting. ‘A few years,’ said he, ‘and I shall become like the mortals on whose reliques I now gaze, and, like them too, I may be the subject of meditation to a succeeding generation, which shall totter but a little while over the object they contemplate, ere they also sink into the dust’” (16). We get it, Radcliffe.

During Vinny’s presentation on Armstrong’s How Novels Think, I asked if she mentions the French Revolution. I am also taking Professor Scrivener’s course “Reading the 1790’s” and we have been looking at the French Revolution’s influence on British writers and thinkers to the point where I cannot disassociate France’s political upheaval from any British literature of the time.

The Romance of the Forest, perhaps like other texts of Gothic fiction, presents a twisted and chaotic plot line filled with violent scenes. I have to believe that the violence and basic failure of the French Revolution is acted out in fiction of the 1790’s, including The Romance of the Forest, especially in the disruption of family relations. Social stability and personal safety are all threatened through the course of the novel only to be extinguished at the end by reaffirming through the final reveals proper social order and traditional morality. Through the text, the British citizen would be able to act out the anxieties and disruptions of the French Revolution, while still affirming the political status quo by the reestablishing of family and marriage. Through the understanding of Adeline’s family tree, her social status, and her marriage, any anxieties that were expressed and experienced are put to rest.

Rereading and Teaching

Reading these secondary readings and through our class discussions, I'm starting to think about these issues not so much as how we understand them in relation to literary history, but rather how we decide to communicate them-simply, how we choose to teach these issues. Many of us are in graduate school hoping to achieve the same goal: to teach in a post-secondary institution. It is impossible to deny that we are incredibly indebted and influenced in our way of thinking through novels and rating their artistic merit by early literary critics. While our criteria of what makes good literature may have changed throughout the years, we still are in the tradition of rating, judging, critiquing literature, of expecting good literature to do certain things, to produce certain feelings in the reader.

I was interested in the emphasis on re-reading that Lynch finds in eighteenth and nineteenth novels. Lynch argues that with a burgeoning publishing market, readers needed to distinguish themselves as intelligent pursuers of art rather than vapid consumers. Lynch writes that there was "the new insistence on making reading itself an object of observation--on devising criteria that might distinguish good uses of 'every person's property' from bad and that would make some persons' relations to their properties more personalized" (130).
Lynch goes on to argue that it is both the restriction of certain books from one's reading and the rereading of others that make for a cultured reader.

Lynch uses Pride and Prejudice as an example of the importance that was inscribed in the practice of rereading. Lynch writes, "Austen identifies to her readers the proper means of and motives for literary experiences when she demonstrates that the truth of a letter is situated beneath or beyond the face of the page and when she demonstrates that character cannot be known at first sight" (131). The need for rereading suggests that literature is, using the same language Lynch uses to describe characters, round rather than flat. Literature has dimensions that require deep thought, intense attention, and rereadings and one will not acquire all that literature has to offer with just a fast reading.

So, what does this have to do with teaching? A lot. I think we have to keep in mind that one does have to be taught how to read in a certain way and that students, especially outside of our discipline, might be resistant to this idea. There were a couple of posts this week on academic blogs dealing with the issues of undergraduate students in the sciences who resent having to work in English classes. The authors of the posts summarize stories of such students who complain of certain novels making them "feel stupid," or of novels that aren't realistic or that don't somehow relate to that student's own life.

The author of the blog writes,

When I am feeling ungenerous, I think this sort of response is about the very
real lack of respect that people in the world have for my discipline. I think
that such people would never question feeling challenged or in over their heads
in a science or math class - those are "real" disciplines don't you know - but
anybody who is moderately literate and has a library card is totally as
qualified as a reader of literature as any Ph.D. Because that's the thing: this
student's antipathy to the course material and to the course itself is about the
fact that the student feels affronted by the fact that ze can't just coast
through. Ze can't fathom that there are ways of thinking about literature that
go beyond "I connect with this character" or "it's a good story." And so yeah,
ze may be expressing that as "this stuff treats me like I'm stupid and hurts my
feelings," but I think that the underlying thing is a total lack of respect.

I have been thinking this for awhile, but this blog author hit it on the nail. As long as one is literate, then one can read and to read is to read-to get all there is out of a novel. However, even if one can count, one does not assume that he/she can do advanced calculus. The insistence of reading advocates that reading is more complicated, that one must approach literature as one would approach any other sort of academic endeavour. The issue becomes how do we as educators convince resistant students that they must devote energy to reading?

Time in "Tristram Shandy"

It is amazing how self-reflexive the arts can be. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, published just in the middle of the century which saw the creation and development of the novel, already is able to manipulate, mock, and distort the novel’s still developing conventions. Even when in comparison to the small selection of novels we have read for this class, we can see how Tristram Shandy works to emphasis while still undermining novelistic conventions, such as linear time and storytelling. Linear storytelling is abandoned in favor of a story that not only continually leaves the plot in long digressions, but also skips between past, present, and future. Sterne experiments with time in so many ways that I cannot possibly give justice to all of his ideas in this blog is, but a few instances will highlight some of his varying uses of temporal relationships.

Time and the conventional revealing of a narrative plot work to complicate the story that Shandy struggles to tell. The use of time and temporal relations in the novel calls attention to both the creation of the novel and the reading of the novel in a completely different way than that used by Richardson and Defoe. By using the act of writing in a diary, both Defoe and Richardson present their novels as being written as the action is occurring, with very little time passing between the actions and the recording of those actions. Rather, in Tristram Shandy a number of years have passed between the actual action occurring and the recording of that action; indeed, a majority of the narrative occurs before Shandy’s birth. Shandy’s complicated storytelling methods convey that this story is already in his mind in various shambles but does not replicate itself in such an easy linear manner.

Yet, despite the fact that Shandy is commenting on these events years after they have passed, at times he writes of them as if they are happening concurrently with the writing. Thus, the narrative and the events are interlinked in the same temporal landscape. After a long digression interrupts a scene with his father and uncle Toby, Shandy comes back to the scene writing, “But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco pipe” (47). Though this scene occurred before Shandy was born and, therefore, could possibly have a memory of it, the narrative works to suspend the action in an interesting connection between the written word and lived experience.

This manipulation of time appears, as many of the other characteristics of this novel, incredibly modern. In thinking through the use of time in Tristram Shandy, I was reminded of Virginia Woolf’s use of time in To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves. Yet, here is Sterne exploring the same issues over 150 years prior to Woolf’s novels! The same ebb and flow of a fluid time, which develops into a subjective temporal experience that Woolf presents in her novels (especially Orlando), is seen in Tristram Shandy as well. Illustrating time as a personal and subjective matter, Sterne writes, “It is two hours, and ten minutes,—and no more,—cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived,—and I know not how it happens, brother Toby,—but to my imagination it seems almost an age” (137). Despite the insistence of conventional time as a fixed and universal objective quantity, time does not always fall into the laws of man and measurement. Rather, in this instance Walter Shandy feels and experiences time in a completely different reality than the two hours and ten minutes set aside. An age has gone by and perhaps it has in Walter’s own lived experience.

Nancy Armstrong and Desire and Domestic Fiction

In Desire and Domestic Fiction, Armstrong is primarily dealing with 18^th and 19^th century British literature that was written by and/or for women and the various aspects and results of such a category of text. She examines its connection with the rise of the English middle class, sexual relationships, political power, and how we think of ourselves and each other as individuals.

Three main points that Armstrong argues:

History of Domestic Fiction

1. Sexuality is a cultural construct and has a history
2. Written representations of self allowed the modern individual to become an economic and psychological reality
3. The modern individual was a woman

I will now post some excerpts from my essay, but please feel free to ask any questions that may not be adequately addressed here. Armstrong's arguments are detailed and interesting, and I could not include everything!

To understand the relationship between the sexes, Armstrong first employs Rousseau’s The Social Contract. This social contract becomes integral in domestic fiction when authors convert it into a sexual contract which requires the female to “relinquish political control to the male in order to acquire exclusive authority over domestic life, emotions, taste, and morality” (31). In these domestic fiction narratives, the female was awarded with economic security for her submission to the traditional role as a subordinate. It is important to note that in such a contract, despite the need for subordination, two parties are needed. Women are not completely removed from the process, but rather are a significant and vital part. Therefore, women are even granted power and knowledge completely unique from that of men: a control over the domestic realm and interpersonal relationships. In utilizing this sexual contract in texts, domestic fiction was able to incorporate politics in the sexual relationships while still residing in the feminine domestic sphere. However, like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice or Richardson’s Pamela, the end of the novel will see the female protagonist still submissive to the male’s power and protection. Armstrong argues that in these male/female relationships, the social competition is sexualized and then suppressed while still being experienced.

An integral part to Armstrong’s argument is the importance she stresses on conduct books and their crucial role in the rise of an English middle class. Before conduct books of the seventeenth century, the ideal woman was different depending on class status. However, conduct books universalized the qualities that women should possess and provided detailed descriptions and breakdowns of a household budget so the prescribed type of living could be had by all. Yet, even though these conduct books may have encouraged a lifestyle equally attainable by those of varying incomes, they are united against the aristocracy. For example, conduct books criticized any indulgence in dress, house, spending, education, or even leisure activities, extravagances that would be associated with the aristocracy. Instead, the goodness of the female is in the moral depths beyond her surface and neither on her material body nor her class status.

Like Ian Watt, Armstrong is invested in the emergence of individualism as an important aspect in the rise of the domestic novel. By removing characters’ personality traits and motivations from their class structure, domestic novels separate gender from the political realm, and because the domestic was created in opposition to the political, the female was first differentiated from the male. These fictional characters were presented as unique individuals with distinctive moral and mental characteristics that were not indicative of their class or status, but rather of their own personal subjectivity. This was instrumental in the development of the novel as a genre and in its separation from romances. Fiction was now able to present characters that were uniquely different from one another, rather than just placeholders for themes.

This assertion of individual subjectivity is not just interesting in the psychological development of the modern subjectivity, but in its assertion of a completely independent and autonomous female subjectivity that exists outside of interpersonal relationships with men. Like many of Armstrong’s arguments and their implications, this applies readily to Pamela. Pamela’s body is hers before it is owned by Mr. B and she therefore has the power to withhold it from her master. Mr. B soon realizes Pamela’s autonomy and includes her in the negotiation of her body by presenting her with a contract. Armstrong writes, “By making the female party to the contract, Richardson implies an independent party with whom the male has to negotiate, a female self who exists outside and prior to the relationships under the male’s control” (113). Prior to the relationship with the male and thus prior to the emergence of a political realm, there is gender and there is desire. One is not made through these associations, but already exists as a complete and autonomous subjectivity. This has strong implications, as Armstrong writes, “If a servant girl could claim possession of herself as her own first property, then virtually any individual must similarly have a self to withhold or give in a modern form of exchange with the state” (118). This is a strong Lockian assertion, granting the power of self-government to not only women, but also to the laboring classes. The novel thus presents the trajectory of a unique individual that begins to play out in the burgeoning middle class and the power soon attributed to women.

The Epistolary Novel and Pamela

In my brief research on Richardson’s Pamela, I came across BBC Radio 4’s program In Our Time and a segment they did on March 15, 2007 on epistolary literature. The speakers on the program (who included host Melvyn Bragg; John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London; Karen O’Brien, Professor in English at the University of Warwick; and Brean Hammond, Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham), discussed many aspects of the epistolary form, as well as the progression of the form and how it was the logical precursor to the novel as we know it today.

It is that idea of the epistolary form as an instrumental building block to what we understand as a novel that allows me to understand the importance of Pamela better than when I first started reading it. Having never read the novel but knowing the basic plot, I came to Pamela with a lot of baggage. How was I going to enjoy, or even get through, a book that details the continuous sexual harassment of a servant by her master that ultimately ends in a consensual marriage? It just seems too...horrendous.

However, I actually found myself enjoying the reading while still being disgusted by Mr. B. and Pamela’s naive forgiveness and love for her “Master.” I found myself being scared, sad, and annoyed for Pamela, and it wasn’t until I heard In Our Time’s episode on epistolary literature that I remembered our previous class conversations on this idea of empathy and identification with characters. One of the commentators (I’m not sure which one), argued that Pamela is such a landmark work because the way Richardson uses the epistolary form invented a new way of reading based on empathy and an extreme identification with the characters. The personal form of letters works to erase the boundary between fact and fiction in such a way that readers cannot help but identify with Pamela’s journey. The commentators suggested that it is for this reason that Pamela was such a media event that it spurred operas, fans, and paintings, among other things.

In other words, using letters to tell a story allows the reader insight into the mind of the character in a way that other early forms of the novel were unable to do. This extremely close and personal access into the character’s thoughts, motivations, hopes, and fears would, of course, encourage an empathetic reaction and identification with the character and I would argue that this certainly does happen in Pamela. In Pamela’s passionate letters to her parents, the reader sees her sincere fear of losing her virtue, as well as her desires to go home, her love of her family and humble background, and even her admiration of Mr. B. Despite how unlikely we as modern readers may find Pamela’s motivations, it is difficult not to believe she as a character is sincere in them and thus, we as readers feel for her in her struggles.

I want to note a couple of other interesting things the guests on this radio program pointed out both about Pamela and the early epistolary novel. First is the actual logistics of what an epistolary novel means, mainly in that the characters are the writers and creators of the narrative, and they become the true organizers of the plot. I think that is very interesting and liberating, especially in someone like Pamela who as a woman and a low class servant, could become an author. Secondly, one of the guests noted that as an epistolary novel, Pamela is different than those that came before it in that previous epistolary novels were usually “seduction” tales where the woman’s secret was a loss of her virtue. The letters would expose her lack of innocence, while in Pamela the letters expose her complete innocence. The guest noted that this really exposes a difference between the perceived values of the aristocracy and the bourgeois. Indeed many of the morals of Pamela seem to align more with the middle class than the aristocracy.

Creating Identity in Robinson Crusoe

I think I am beginning to realize why I wasn’t too taken with Robinson Crusoe when I first read it: the overtones of religion and economy are just too much for me. Not only are they two of my least favorite themes, but they are also interconnected in this book? Whew.

Luckily, I think I found a saving grace during our class discussion, which we got to through individualism and privacy. Shelley noted during her presentation that the rise of literary culture devalued oral tradition to the status where only “the poor, uneducated, superstitious and illiterate” would participate. This devaluing of oral culture would suggest a strong emphasis on the written word and it is this idea of writing and visual imprints, which act as stamped proof, that strikes me in Robinson Crusoe. I talked in my last journal about the importance that Crusoe places on procuring writing utensils and of the written representation of his experience on the island through his journal and makeshift calendar. Thinking through these instances of documentation, I am struck not just by the importance placed on the written word, but on the multiple instances of reciprocal acknowledgement of existence which works to carve out an identity for Crusoe.

In thinking through Crusoe’s journal, I found Hunter’s discussion of diaries very interesting. The rise of individualism and the popularity of keeping a diary would not just change the way one would think of their religious journey, but also the way one views one’s own subjectivity. Not only would journaling suggest that as individuals we all have something unique and therefore worthwhile to say, but also the written account of one’s days and experiences creates external proof of one’s independent existence and life. Through their diaries, people could write their subjectivity into existence.

This reminds me immediately of Lacan (or at least my fuzzy understanding of Lacan). According to Lacan, one has no inherent concept of Self and must construct their whole notion of Self in an external identity and representation. In Lacan’s developmental stages of the Imaginary, one constructs one’s own identity out of an external entity, never internal. Thus, the subject creates an ego out of a lack; there is a desire for self-identification in the absence of a self, so the subject greedily grabs the external image and claims it as their inner self and identity. As one’s identity is fully invested in this external image, one continually looks to the external world to provide assurance for one’s own identity.

We certainly see this external identity creating in Robinson Crusoe. It is not just his written word which works to create this external subjectivity, but also other external factors. For example, Crusoe teaches his parrot Poll to repeat his own name as well as the refrain, “Poor Robin Crusoe, where are you Robin Crusoe, where have you been?” Alone with no human company to assert his identity, Crusoe teaches his bird to repeat back his name, as well as his condition of being lost. In Poll, he also creates that companion that would lament over his disappearance as if to proof that he is missed and loved by others. Even the sight of the imprinted footprint in the sand is a stamp that works to carve out Crusoe’s subjectivity. In that footprint, he sees part of his identity, that of the lone occupant, deteriorate and it causes a severe crisis. His position as ruler of his island is threatened and here is when Friday’s appearance comes to use for Crusoe’s reconstruction of identity. While the bird can call him “Robin,” Friday must call Crusoe “Master.” Crusoe places his now threatened identity as a ruler and master into Friday to assure himself that yes, he is master of his own domain.