Jane and Pip’s Spatial Mobility that Traces Their Personal Growth in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations,” respectively

Jane and Pip’s Spatial Mobility that Traces Their Personal Growth in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, respectively 

In both Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the fact that the protagonists, Jane and Pip, are orphans potentially restricts their self-improvement, financial independence, and social status.  Interestingly, as Jane and Pip move away further from their homes, they come closer to realizing their desires of social ascent, though their morality is more severely tested.  For instance, Jane’s each escape from her quarters augments her self-improvement and independence, though her morality is tested in each of the dwellings. Contrarily, albeit as Pip moves father away from his home, his social status seems to ascend, it is actually a delusional success of being a gentleman. Thusly, the “spatial mobility” of the both orphans, traces their different stages of social/moral ascent or descent.

Both Jane and Pip in their foster homes—Jane with the Reeds and Pip in his sister’s—feel that their self-improvement or social advancement is restricted.  As orphans, both Jane and Pip are fortunate that their foster homes provide them the basic shelter, food, and protection from the harsh world.  Both Pip and Jane, however, feel that they are emotionally, intellectually, and physically oppressed in their foster homes.  In particular, for instance, Jane’s cousin, John Reed, is overtly oppressive to her.  When Jane wants to be left alone with her reading, he emotionally and intellectually insults her by demanding her to not “take [his] books [since she is] a dependent” (8).  He further orders that she “ought to beg, and not live [there] with gentlemen’s children like [him]” (8).  This instance later develops into a physical trauma for Jane as well, as her Aunt locks her up in “the red-room” where her uncle died. (10).  Jane in her Aunt’s home hence feels that she is being treated like a servant: Am I a servant?” (9).  As long as Jane stays with the Reeds, therefore, she sees no brighter future for her, intellectually or socially.  Likewise, Pip sees no extraordinary future for him in his sister’s house, other than an apprenticeship under his brother-in-law (Joe), who is a blacksmith.  Joe narrates his conditions at home: “My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, . . . have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me” (12).  If Jane feels oppressed by her cousin, Pip feels oppressed by his own sister.  Moreover, Joe (his brother-in-law) to Pip is someone of “dismal intelligence” (13).  Like Jane, Pip therefore feels that his sister’s home is not conducive to his social and intellectual growth.  If Jane’s cousin John Reed is the patriarchal authority who restricts Jane’s self-improvement and independence, Pip’s sister and her husband—in Pip’s mind—are people who hamper his social refinement.

The protagonists’ first spatial movement from their foster homes to another space directs them to more opportunities of self-improvements.  For instance, as Jane moves away from the Reeds to Lowood Institution, her love for books and education materializes.  Jane narrates that upon arriving at Lowood charity school, the first person that she finds interesting is “a girl sitting on a stone bench. . . [who] [i]s bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seem[s] intent” (41).  Though Jane feels timid being in a new environment, she “from where [she] st[ands]. . . see[s] the title” of the book; “it [i]s ‘Rasselas;,’” she says in her mind, and the name “str[ikes] [her] as strange, and consequently attractive” (41).  Lowood to Jane is, then, a place where she grows intellectually, which in her Aunt’s home, she could not have done so freely.  Similarly, as a result of meeting Estella in Satis House, Pip yearns to have a higher social status.  When he is taken to Satis House by his Uncle Pumblechook to play with the beautiful Estella, he immediately falls in love with her, and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her.  He internalizes Estella’s disdainful treatment of him as “a common labouring-boy,” and feels more “ignorant than [he] had [ever] considered [him] self” to be (55).  He even hopes that Miss Havisham will make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella.  While Jane from Lowood Institution gains employable skills which enhance her self-sufficiency, Pip from Satis house soaks up vanity of wishing to be more than who he is—a gentleman.  The first spatial movement on the part of the both protagonists—Jane and Pip—nonetheless becomes an impetus for their further self-improvements and social ascensions.

The protagonists’ second major change of dwellings marks a higher level of financial independence for Jane and dependence for Pip.  For Jane, as she leaves Lowood to work as a governess at Thornfield, she feels she is alone in the world and must be self-supportive.  Her aunt (Mrs. Reed) confirms Jane’s independence as an adult when she—in place of her deceased husband (Jane’s uncle)—permits “that ‘[Jane] might do as [she] pleased, [for] she had long relinquished all interference in [Jane’s] affairs’” (76).  Likewise, as Pip moves from Kent to London, he feels that he is on his way of becoming a true gentleman of independence.  Pip narrates his elated sensation as he leaves his hometown: “I ha[ve] been so innocent and little [here], and all beyond [i]s so unknown and great. . . it [is] now too late and too far to go back,. . . and the world lay spread before me” (124, 5).  Although the fact that he is asked to come to London and begin his education as a gentleman is due to his secret benefactor, Pip is not ashamed of his financial dependence on him.   Instead, he continues to fancy that as a refined gentleman, he will be worthy enough for Estella.  Unlike Jane, who independently works for her own money and is more mature at this stage of her life, Pip, at this juncture of his life in London, is idle with financial dependence on a secret benefactor, and his maturity is yet to be called an independent adult, much less a gentleman.

Albeit moving from one home to another causes tremendous amount of anxiety and insecurity, Jane nevertheless removes herself  from Thornfield to St. John’s to resist temptations of immorality—the temptation of living in Thornfield as a mistress to Rochester.  Upon the shocking revelation that Rochester—the man she is about to marry—has a living wife in the attic, Jane goes through a powerful moment of confusion.  Though she loves Rochester dearly, she cannot debase herself to be his mistress, who in her mind is just as bad as a financially and morally parasitic prostitute.  In agony, she consults her heart: “’What am I to do?’ But the answer [her] mind g[ives]—‘Leave Thornfield at once’—[is] so prompt” (253).  Her third geographical movement is thus a flight from Thornfield to St. John’s abode.  This move proves to be the quintessential period in her life, because during her stay there, she is linked to a loving and admirable extended family (St. John and his sisters).  It is also during this period—with the help of her cousin, St. John—she discovers that her uncle of long distance has made her a wealthy woman through inheritance.  Yet, she is again morally challenged by St. John’s loveless marriage proposal.  Jane’s strong sense of morality, however, does not allow her to marry someone without true affections, so she refuses his offer by telling him that it is “because [he] d[oes] not love [her]” (351).  Irrespective of her morality being challenged in both places—Thornfield and St. John’s—she is able to withstand temptations of illegitimate or loveless romances.  From both places, she thus walks out with her finance and morality augmented.

Unlike Jane, who removes herself from the romantic temptations and restrictions on her independence that Thornfield and St. John’s represent, Pip further indulges himself in London, financially and sentimentally.  In London, Pip befriends a gentleman named Herbert, who helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman.  Pip however lacks the maturity and morality that Jane possesses.  With the regular income from his fortune, he and Herbert lead an undisciplined life, enjoying themselves and running up debts.  Pip admits to his lavish life style: “As I ha[ve] grown accustomed to my expectations, I ha[ve] insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. . . My lavish habits led. . . into expenses that [Herbert] c[an] not afford, corrupt[s] the simplicity of his life, and disturb[s] his peace with anxieties and regrets” (208).  His financially dependent, affluent lifestyle in London thus morally degenerates him as well as others around him.  He also becomes increasingly arrogant.  He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he vainly continues to pine after Estella, wishing to match his social status to that of hers.  While the fact that Jane is all alone as a governess makes her more morally alert and shuns away from sexual temptations, Pip’s financial dependence on an unknown benefactor and his amorous desire to marry Estella corrupts his morality.  Thus, while Jane’s mature self-control over sentimentalism makes her move away from material affluence (i.e., Thornfield), Pip’s immaturity and romantic idealism over Estella overshadows his basic goodness and demoralizes him.

Jane’s final movement back to Rochester in Ferdean is, in effect, a cardinal moment in her life where she makes an important pronouncement of her independence.  This final movement is profound, not only because it frees her from St. John—a restrictive patriarch—but because it is a choice that she deliberately makes, as Jane informs Rochester, as “an independent woman” (370).  Bewildered by her new aura and claims to independence, Rochester asks for explanation: “‘Independent! What do you mean, Jane?’” (370)  Jane gives him a stunning answer that not only informs him that she now has money of her own, but her subtle word play also implicates that she intends to keep and manage her own money: “‘Quite rich, sir…If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening’” (370, emphasis added).  Indeed, for Jane, each “spatial movement” dramatically challenges her morality.  She however does not succumb to irresponsible romanticism, thereby enhancing and fortifying her self-improvement and independence.

Unlike Jane, Pip’s final movement back to his home town does not accompany financial growth or increased dignity, except remorse.  He realizes that his great expectations of becoming a gentleman and marrying Estella have been an illusion, as he finds out that Estella is a daughter of a criminal, Magwitch, who is also his secret benefactor of big fortune.  Unlike Jane, Pip’s dizzying rise in social status at the end is thus accompanied by a sharp decline in his confidence and happiness.  Pip, however, learns from his mistakes, and shows improved morality: “I live. . . frugally, and pa[y] my debts. . . I work pretty hard for a. . . living, and therefore—Yes, I do well” (355-7).   Pip finally learns that social and educational improvements are irrelevant to one’s real worth, and that conscience and affection are to be valued above erudition and social standing.  Thusly, Jane and Pip—the two orphans in Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Dickens’s Great Expectations—increase or decrease their social status, independence, and morality, in relation to how they succumb to or overcome temptations and restrictions in each of their abodes.

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Norton & Company, Inc: New York, 2001.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Norton & Company, Inc: New York, 1999.

Chang Rae Lee’s “Native Speaker”: Diasporic Power Art

Chang Rae Lee’s Native Speaker: Diasporic Power Art

Deleuze and Guattari in “What is a Minor Literature?” discuss the “literary struggle” of a Diasporic literature (Jewish literature), an idea borrowed from Franz Kafka, who believes that Diasporic literature is “something impossible” when it is written in the language of the host country, because its cultural authenticity is compromised in the process (Richter 167).  What Kafka’s “literary struggle” suggests, then, is that in order to retrieve a true authentic meaning of a diasporic literature, the reader must be able to de-code the culturally cryptic, narratological intensions of the author, so, too, is the Native Speaker.  Overtly, the novel is about the three protagonists’ social descent due to their Asian complex, while covertly, it is about their ascension into the three hierarchical powers of America: (1) “finance,” by Henry’s father who is an “adopter”; (2) “intelligence,” by Henry who is an “assimilator”; and (3) “politics,” by Kwang who is a “merger.”  Ultimately, the social ascent of the three diasporic characters is achieved through what I call a “diasporic power art” for two reasons:  First, because their industrial successes are rendered through intense, dynamic reinventions of their diasporic subjectivities and conditions in semi-fictitious ways.  Second, because each of their individual American becomings can be aesthetically described as a “diasporic cultural art” which entails “cultural aesthetics”—the elements that elevate/cultivate one’s cultural refinement.

Asian diasporas are adept cultural artists, who reinvent themselves in order to acclimate from one end of cultural atmosphere to another—from East to West.  The nature of diasporic condition—living not in one’s motherland but in an adopted/foreign land—requires nomadic “choices,” “versatility,” and “resilience.”  It requires constant mental, physical, and cultural adjustments, but most importantly, entails recasting of their personas.  Linguistically, culturally, and phenotypically, since the East and West are arguably not the most alike, Asian diasporic acculturation into Western decorum and society is more adversative and intense.  Their inchoate American becoming is molded and remolded into an often indeterminate subjectivity by turbulent, (at times traumatic) bipolar cultural forces, thus their new life in America is almost a fiction to their consciousness.  It is a process that requires both artful nimbleness and itinerant hardiness on their part, which can be described as a “diasporic cultural art,” something that cannot be gauged by methodical or political formulas.  Rather, its appreciation comes through the lens of “cultural aesthetics”—elements that elevate or cultivate one’s cultural refinement.  Of the infinite elements of what one considers/includes as cultural aesthetics, there are at least two prevailing traits shared by all three diasporic characters which enhance/sanctify their immigrant life: (1) their ability to make prudent or conscientious choices; and (2) their nomadic versatility—the ability to reinvent themselves as needed.  The three characters in the novel employ in varying degrees these and other diasporic cultural aesthetics, not only to cultivate their nascent American subjectivities, but more primarily to adapt to their new culture.

Just as the immigrant stories of the three characters in Native Speaker —Henry’s father, Henry, and Kwang—differ from one another, so are the colors and shapes of their diasporic arts.  To fare well in their new adopted land (America), these three characters reinvent themselves as three different types of semi-fictitious personas: (1) Henry’s father as an “adopter”; (2) Henry as an assimilator; and (3) Kwang as a “merger.”  Each of these characters half-fictitiously “chooses,” in most part, what function they want to play for the dominant in power.  For instance, Henry’s father selectively “adopts” primarily one ideology of America—capitalism—while he largely ignores the others.  He therefore chooses to “adapt” to America’s economic conditions in the ghettos for financial gains.  Henry, on the other hand, wants to be singularly American, so he chooses to assimilate by gaining American intelligence.  Finally, Kwang dreams of coalition among different ethnic groups in America, so he chooses to merge different cultures for a political reason.  These brands of diasporic characters face challenges unique to their own type, and each of their moral or sociopolitical “rise” (ascent) and “fall” (descent) involve synergy of multifaceted cultural aesthetics aforementioned.  While on the plot level, their ultimate “fall” as an “adopter,” “assimilator,” or “merger” may be merely sympathetic to the readers of Western consciousness, it is simultaneously unnerving and heartening to the diasporic readers, because behind each of the character’s “fall” is the antithetical message of “rise” (hope) for them.

I. The Father’s Fall and Rise as an “Adopter”

As an opportunistic “adopter” of Western ideologies, Henry’s father fully subscribes to American capitalism, even at the cost of demoralization and intellectual enervation.  In Henry’s words, his father considers “capitalism” to be the “unseen force” and has been “single-minded[ly] determine[ed]” to succeed “through [his] twenty-five years of green-grocering in a famous ghetto” (49).  As an owner of labor-intensive grocery chains, he is proud that he is a rich man, though not proud of the industry.  He suffers intellectual atrophy and dehumanization, not only because his high scholarship from Korea is wasted—a top “industrial engineer” with a master’s degree from the best college—but because his limited English and ethnic isolation displace him from the social and intellectual centers of the U.S. (56, 57).  Though he lives in an upper class neighborhood, the wealth he amasses merely becomes an ethnic signifier—“Oriental Jews”—which does nothing to help him blend in with the mainstream Americans (53): “he never fe[els] fully comfortable in his fine house in Ardsley (affluent neighborhood)” (52).  His American becoming is thus at the social periphery, where he is a perpetual outsider without affect.  More tragically, he is even diminished to ethical immorality.  Henry describes his father’s demoralized mentality in America: “If anything, I think my father would choose to see my deceptions in a rigidly practical light, .  .  . the need to adapt” (297, emphasis added).  Thus as an ambitious adopter of capitalism, Henry’s father “falls” (becomes dehumanized), as his subjectivity alters from his former intellectual Korean self into an American nobody—the metamorphic versatility of a diaspora.

Indeed, at a glance, the intellectual and moral “fall” of Henry’s father seems to be a high price that he pays as an adopter of American capitalism.  Worst yet, since he loses his wife early from cancer, and he himself dies rather young without fully enjoying the fruits of his hard labor, the readers get a sense that his life in America ultimately signifies “death” or nothingness.  Yet from a historical context, there is more to his immigrant story than just the cost of dehumanization and death.  Jae Min Shin’s chronological analysis of Korean immigrants in his editorial column of Korea Times sheds insight into Henry’s father’s historical background and his financial motivation.  Shin reports in his editorial that until the 1960’s, Korean immigrants in America largely consisted of poor class: students, war-orphans, and females married to Americans; but in the 70’s, it shifted to the middle class capitalists with visions of economic expansion in America; then since the 80’s, it consists of even a higher class of entrepreneur Koreans with large investments in American companies (Shin D8).  According to Shin’s data, then, as a product of the 70’s and 80’s Korean American opportunism, Henry’s father has, in fact, successfully played his role as an “adopter” of American capitalism.  In other words, his principal reason for coming to America is not to augment his scholarship, but to make “enough money [so] that he could live in a majestic white house in Westchester and call himself a rich man,” even if that debases him into laboring with “a handful of vegetable stores” (333).  Thus, the cost of dehumanization and intellectual degeneration on the part of Henry’s father are factored in as a “fair” sacrifice to fulfill his financial desires.  In a word, he “chooses” to be what he is in America—an opportunist.  Then regardless of one’s intention, this “option to choose a different nation-state” as one’s new home is the advantageous “power” of the contemporary diasporas, which eventually does translate to his financial success in America, more than what his homeland, Korea, offers.

As a former industrial engineer, Henry’s father not only realistically estimates the “most” financial success he can accrue in America as a first generation immigrant, but maps the “maximum” his son, Henry, can approximate by purchasing a house in an affluent neighborhood.  With what he can financially provide, he wishes that his son will do better than him, and Henry, too, wants to do better than his father by studying hard, obviating his mother’s “tears. . . from her concern over [his] mediocre studies” (77).  Thus as a capitalist, Henry’s father’s seemingly dehumanizing existence is actually the intended, prudent course he willingly takes to humanize his son, and between the two, there is an inextricable causality, as the father’s “fall” (dehumanization) paves a way for his son’s intellectual “rise” as an upper class American.  Henry later comes to a deeper appreciation of his father’s sacrifice for him: “I see how my father had to retool his life to the ambitions his meager knowledge of the language and culture would allow . . . I am his lone American son, blessed with every hope and quarter he could provide” (333).  Considering the fact that Lee (the author) himself has intellectually “risen” from his well meaning immigrant parents, it is helpful to know that he has respectfully dedicated his first novel, Native Speaker, to his parents: “For my mother and my father.”  If we infer from the author’s reverence paid to his own parents, then the opportunistic immigrant life of Henry’s father which is devoid of human sociality does not suggest—contrary to its face value—that it is meaningless and pathetic.  Rather, the moral of this story is about how the father’s financial success can elevate/cultivate his son’s intellectual and social refinement in their adopted land, which sanctifies the father’s immigrant struggles.

II. Henry’s Fall and Rise as an “Assimilator”

Since, Henry as a spy is immorally engaged in treacherous activity against his own people, Henry’s moral “fall,” then, is textually a valid outcome.  While Henry’s father is a single-minded adopter of American capitalism—who enjoys a certain degree of independence due to his socio-political alienation—Henry, as an “assimilator,” on the other hand, is more scrutinized by the American society.  Henry is “a linguist of the field. . . [with] the troubling, expert power” (171, emphasis added).  Henry’s intellectual status is what Crystal Parikh in his essay, “Ethnic America Undercover: The Intellectual and minority Discourse,” describes as a “gained social position” of “minority intellectuals, [who] in gaining access to the mechanisms of cultural and political representation, no longer speak from a marginalized position” (Parikh 258).  Henry relies on his “gained intellectual position” to define himself as singularly American, an ultimate “assimilator,” by pledging allegiance to the dominant in power.  In order to keep his vows with the established— though his work involves extensive racialization and exploitation of ethnic minorities, including his own—he blinds himself to the racial dynamism in his work (Dennis’s private detective agency).  As a spy, he instead abuses his own cultural insidership and familiarity to “sell out” his own people.  He fictitiously and perfunctorily performs the racial dance which his superior, Dennis Hoagland, choreographs: “I am the obedient. . . the invisible underling. . . [and] this [is] my assimilation, so many years in the making” (202, emphasis added).  Most tragically, Henry’s fictitious selves created through the “legends” at his work—the fiction that allows him to be many persons at once—are the vestiges of a schizophrenic assimilator, who has morally “fallen” (22).

Henry’s versatility of being “many persons at once,” however, is precisely the auspicious edge of postmodern Asian Americans, when interpreted from a contravening contemporary point of view.  As an assimilator, the remnant of Asian silence in Henry is a cryptic language to those around him, including his most intimate wife, Lelia, and superiors at work, Jack and Dennis.  For example, Lelia cannot decipher “Henryspeak” (Henry’s reticence), and Jack and Dennis cannot decode the silent language and affinity exchanged between Henry and Kwang.  Henry, on the other hand, can both penetrate and dismantle theirs at will: “I and my kind possess another dimension.  We will learn every lesson of accent and idiom, we will dismantle every last pretense and practice you hold, noble as well as ruinous.  You can keep nothing safe from our eyes and ears” (320, emphasis added).  What Henry articulates in this passage is, in effect, an enunciation of the cultural edge of the contemporary polyglots—the irreducible linguistic versatility of diasporas.  

In our postmodern world, the versatile polyglots also have more “options,” both publicly (occupational) and privately (moral).  Henry—as someone with intellectual and cultural edge—is  a “denizen,” a royal assimilator not to be condemned, but to be emulated for the conscientious choice he ultimately makes between the oppressor (his boss) and the oppressed (him and his people).  According to Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas, “denizen” is a privileged postmodern diaspora with “considerable wealth and portable skills—a different group from the unskilled labour migrants of the nineteenth century” (164, 168).  In other words, in contrast to “the unskilled labour migrants” of the past, postmodern diasporas no longer need to tolerate any forms of oppressions, if s/he has the proper social, professional, or legal training/resources—in other words, “intellectual power” (Cohen 168).  As an educated person, Henry finally understands that an assimilator also has “options”: that wanting to assimilate to dominant culture does not mean one must allow oppression.  Upon this epiphany, he unshackles himself from his boss’s demonical bondage (Dennis’s detective agency).  Assertively, to the messenger of his boss, Jack, who asks, “Dennis thinks you will come back,” Henry answers, “Dennis is wrong” (288).  Henry continues, “Listen, Jack.  This is my mind finally speaking” (288).  The fact that it is Henry, not Dennis or Jack, who has the last word in the final scene of their relationship, symbolically and literally diminishes the power of the institutionalized racism in America.  Thus, as a contemporary assimilator, Henry exercises this “right to choose” as a denzen—to quit, if he must, those who oppress and exploit him and his people.  Ultimately, then, Henry’s such capability to make moral choices—free from vocational insecurity—is the prerogative of the diasporic intellectuals.

As an intellectual diaspora, Henry’s “right to choose” stretches farther than rejecting oppression; it extends to disseminating his linguistic expertise to other migrants.  At the end of the novel, Henry makes a conscientious choice.  He becomes an ESL teacher to share his intellectual privilege with the underprivileged.  He disseminates “knowledge of power”— English—unto the ethnic migrants of America, to help them better entrench their future in their new land.  Clearly, the fact that Henry converts from being a treacherous assimilator (his moral “fall”) to an intellectually nurturing teacher (his moral “rise”) is the acme of contradicting moment in the novel, which Lee deliberately dramatizes for didactic implications.  One way of interpreting Lee’s antithetical narratology is to deduce that Henry’s moral “fall” and “rise” is about an assimilator—with an intellectual power in America—making conscientious “choices” between his two cultures.  Henry ultimately chooses empathy and responsibility towards his fellow diasporas, and this change of attitude in Henry exemplifies what Lee may hope to see in other diasporic elites towards their marginal counterparts.

III. Kwang’s Fall and Rise as a “Merger”

From one’s “gained position,” if Henry falls morally, so does Kwang, politically.  If Henry is a fictitious assimilator, Kwang, on the other hand, is a versatile diasporic “merger,” who is faithful to both his past and present cultures, and plays his bi-cultural roles for a higher stage—politics in America.  He is a consummate actor of both cultures.  He is in Henry’s words someone who is “effortlessly Korean [and] effortlessly American,” simultaneously (328).  Unlike Henry, who as a spy aids in the deportation and dispersion of the ethnic migrants, Kwang—“an ambitious minority politician [with]. . . unwavering agenda [and] stridency”—labors to reconcile the hostility among the variegated minority groups in New York (139).  Similarly, unlike Henry’s father who is unmindful of racial “irony,” Kwang is both sensitive and sensible to racial issues, and attempts to form a political coalition among different races (58).  His career as a New York City Councilman, however, ends tragically, as his illegitimate fund-raising apparatus—the Korean money club “ggeh”—is disclosed by his most trusted staff members, Eduardo and Henry (280).  These two, who betray Kwang, work for those who represent the major political powers in America: Dennis Hoagland (Henry’s boss), De Roos (Kwang’s opponent), and indirectly, INS.  Thus, Kwang’s “messianic” political rise—as a prototypical self-made “American [in]. . .flyer[s]”—is pulverized by his political superiors for subtly contesting and threatening the White American politics (141).  As a diasporic merger, Kwang’s political “fall” ultimately intimates the vulnerability and indeterminacy of his self-claimed American persona in the political stage.

Read literally, Kwang’s political fall is tragic and discouraging.  More than any other characters in the novel, Kwang as a politician, espouses and magnifies his diasporic consciousness—sensitivity to multi-pluralism.  Unlike Henry and his father, he rejects tertiary roles in racial plays that are strategized by the so-called superpowers of America.  Rather, from his diasporic margins, Kwang encroaches inroad to challenge the very core of the American racial politics.  He is in Henry’s words “a larger public figure who [is] willing to speak and act outside the tight sphere of his family [ethnic enclave],” and is not “afraid like [Henry’s] mother and father” (139, emphasis added).  Henry “hadn’t yet envisioned” that a public career is something that “a Korean man would find significant or worthy of energy and devotion,” but is what Lee would like to have his (fellow diasporic) readers to pay a closer attention to, as a source of America’s deep seated racism (139, emphasis added).  Thus, it is precisely the turbulent theatricality of Kwang’s public career—especially his political “fall”—which crystallizes Lee’s desire to raise political awareness in his readers.  Ultimately, Kwang, among the three diasporic characters, is the one who is portrayed by Lee as someone who reaches the highest pivot of the American hierarchical achievements: politics, which wields more influence than Henry’s father’s financial success or Henry’s intellectual aptitude.  He is the consummate diasporic cultural artist.    

Furthermore, if we flip the lens, Kwang’s “fall” in the political arena projects an inverted vision that is ineffably surreal and inspiring to the readers.  Contrary to those who think Kwang would commit suicide as a result of his political calamity, Henry as a fellow Korean American understands Kwang’s Korean way of facing life crisis, thus he believes otherwise.  Henry believes that no matter how bitter Kwang’s ignoble political defeat may be, he will choose life over death, as if Kwang is a Christ figure.  Henry solemnly narrates that “Koreans don’t take their own lives.  At least not from shame” (333, emphasis added).  Henry further explains why: “My mother said to me once that suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better.  If you bite your lip and understand that this is the only world, you will perhaps persist and endure” (333, emphasis added).  According to the mother’s definition of “noblest art,” then, Kwang indeed is the noblest hero who suffers sublimely.  Like Christ, he bears his cross—his political fall—without saying anything and answering nothing “as if he is deaf” (342).  Though the angry crowd “scream at him like he is a child . . . and spit on his shoulder, . . . nothing registers in his face” (342).  In Henry’s words, Kwang “is already in another world” (342).  As it is demonstrated through Kwang’s Christ-like suffering that seems to transport him to another spiritual world, diasporas’s tendency to “hope” and capacity to “persist and endure” are some of the noblest “diasporic cultural aesthetics,” which sublimate their immigrant tribulations and inspire the readers. 

Thus, just when the readers of Western consciousness think that Kwang is being buried by his superior political opponents, the fact is Kwang’s political fall is largely an enactment of self-induced, masochistic punishment to himself for failing his people.  It stems from his unremitting loyalty to his political constituents.  It is Kwang’s way of “enduring crisis with Korean nobility” (333).  Because Lee pitilessly encapsulates Kwang’s political fall in a racially and socially claustrophobic denouement, it does not allow catharsis for the readers, but ingenuously does the reverse.  Psychologically and aesthetically, Kwang’s political “fall” to (fellow diasporic) readers—who similarly persist and endure social injustices in America—is liable to produce de-catharsis in varying degrees:  Mildly, it may evoke a nagging “reciprocal yearning” to counter the situation.  Powerfully, it may induce a strong “insurgent impulse” to combat the racial situation in America.  Thus, instead of the purging effect, Kwang’s political fall intoxicates the (fellow diasporic) readers with the unquenchable emotions, and that is the narratological scheme of the author—Lee’s way of producing powerful and lingering feelings of political injustice in the readers through his literary reversal psychology.  Indeed, Lee’s deployment of de-catharsis inversely stir and turn the readers’ interests towards more political awareness and participation in American minority politics.

Thus, decoding the author’s alternate intensions enlightens us with the deeper meaning of the text—a moment of revelation.  This kind of reader’s moment of intellectual and spiritual union with the author’s encoded message is delivered through the power of diasporic literature—the diasporas’s cognitive and cultural bond with its literature which is impenetrable by their predominant counterparts.  For instance, while it seems to the Western consciousness that the moral or sociopolitical “fall” of the three characters—Henry’s father, Henry, and Kwang—signifies their ultimate failure in acculturating into Americanism, its contravening interpretations suggest otherwise:  They are diasporic heroes, who reach their individual “maximums” in the three hierarchical levels of American successes: (1) finance; (2) intelligence; and (3) politics.  Then what is easily neglected, but should be paid its due recognition to these characters, is that they—as the best positioned and equipped characters to make a difference in American politics—wield their silent de-cathartic affectivity by influencing their readers to adopt sensible anti-racist measures.  Thus, “diasporic power art” is the effect of an exceptional diasporic literature.  Through its exemplary diasporic protagonists who display nomadic finesse—like versatility, bold choices, or resilience—it inflames profound cultural reflections in the reader.  

Works Cited and Consulted

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Lee, Chang Rae. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.

Gilles, Deleuze, and Guattari, Felix. “What Is a Minor Literature?” Falling into Theory. Richter,

David H. Boston:

Parikh, Crystal. “Ethnic America Undercover: The Intellectual and Minority Discourse.”

        Contemporary Literature 43 (2002): 249-84.

Shin, Jae-Min. “Desperate Immigration (Jul Mang Yi Min).”  Editorial. Korea Times. 23 Sept.

        2002, D8

Sumida, Stephen H. “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies.”

American Studies International 38 (2000): 97-114.

The Illogic of the American Canon that Segregates Ethnic Literature (Published in CSULA Significations 2007)

The Illogic of the American Canon that Segregates Ethnic Literature

While attempting to defend the Western literary canon, Edward W. Said in “The Politics of Knowledge,” reveals the Eurocentric mentality towards subaltern literature: “[literary] politics has needed to assume, indeed needed to firmly to believe, that what was true about Orientals or Africans was not however true about or for Europeans” (191). In essence, Said is trying to articulate his theory of “politics of knowledge”—that, in the canon war, an author’s “racial identity” translates to his/her “knowledge” and the quality of his/her work. In other words, if an author is other than “white,” then, his/her literary work is less likely to be received as equal to that of the “white” standard, thus subaltern. In this canonical dichotomy between the “White” and the “other,” America—the land of diversity—is no less a culprit to its steep division, in that, we, as well, divide our literature as either belonging to “white” (American Literature) or “other” (ethnic literature). This system of racialization in the American canon is illogical and problematic, because it is, in effect, denying the transnational subjectivity of America —the fact that America as a nation is a “nation of immigrants that produce cultural hybridity,” and thus its multiethnic literatures are, in fact, its primary building blocks. What American canon needs, then, is a re-conceptualization of “American literature” as inherently transnational, to include the works of minor/ethnic literature as its indispensable parts, categorized only by their different genres and chronology, thus obviating separate ethnic curriculum in institutions.

In order to show why ethnic literature should not be an extraneous component to, but an essential core of, an American literature, first part of this essay explores the racist and nationalistic milieu of the Western canon itself. First, it reviews the definition and the function of “ethnic” and “minor” literature to deduce why these types of literature would be marginalized by the canon. Second, it discusses cultural hybridism largely from the point of views of the critics who advocate fair and equal representation of the ethnic minorities in the Eurocentric texts. Third, it psychoanalytically probes into the notion of “foreigner” or the “other” to illustrate that the canon—by segregating ethnic literature as not part of its own—is, in fact, being self-antagonistic. Then the second part of this essay focuses on arguing against the biased practice of canon in couple of ways: First, it introduces an example of an ethnic literature (Native Speaker) in America to show how it is received and why it is labeled as a minor literature. Then the rest of this essay argues against and proves why the canonical segregation of any literature written in America as “ethnic/minor” is an act of self-negating the intrinsically hybrid, transnational “Americanism.”

I

Until recently, the inclusion into or the exclusion from the Western canon was dependent upon the work’s “familiarity” and/or “durability” within the dominant culture. Although canon debates by their very exclusionary nature can never please all sides, traditionally, they have systematically marginalized ethnic literature. Perhaps, Samuel Johnson’s observation still holds true today: that “the reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arise…not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages,…but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood” (230, emphasis added). Like Said, what Johnson’s theory is implying is that what survives as “revered” (the canonized) literature owes to its “indubitable positions” (the positions of white males) within the literary circles.

The canonical bias—which both Johnson and Said acknowledges—can therefore be stifling to ethic/minor literature of the colored writers. With this racism within the canonical circle in mind, I beg questions pertaining to the works by postmodern writers, particularly, those who fall into what Homi Bhabha in “Locations of Culture” calls the subjects of “liminal cultural locations.” They are those with ambiguous bi-cultural locality, or more popularly known as “diasporas”—ethnic minorities who are living, not in their homeland, but in their adopted land. Their cultural bi-locality places them in between the superior and the inferior social status. They are, for example, Americans who are not fully Americans, but “half Americans,” as their prefixes will designate: Afro, Latino, Asian-Americans. In short, they are America’s “ethnics,” and their literature is labeled as “ethnic literature.” Etymologically, “ethnic” is one who is not a Christian or Jew, but a Gentile, heathen, pagan, or simply the “other.” Similarly, according to Oxford’s contemporary definition, “ethnic minority” is a racial or other group within a larger system; hence, foreign or exotic” (emphasis added). Thus, “ethnic literature” is not really “American literature”; rather, it is a “foreign or exotic” literature of “racial or other group” within America.

It is precisely this widely accepted notion that “ethnic literature does not represent American mainstream culture, but that of the “foreigner’s,” which spurs American canonizers to rather marginalize it at its best, or exclude it at its worst. Since ethnic literature in their minds is “exotic” and “foreign,” it cannot be translated as part of an American culture, nor can it help them constitute and transmit “homogenous Americanism” through literature. John Guillory in “The Canon as Cultural capital,” says that much of the canonical debates stem from racist nationalism. In his essay, Guillory states that “the ‘West’ was always the creation of nationalism,” in that its “assertion of the continuity of Western tradition exactly corresponds in its intensity to the assertion of nationalism” (222). He further critiques that Western universities are involved in the discriminatory “project of constituting a national culture” largely through the process of canonization (222). According to Guillory, the method of sustaining what he calls the West’s “imaginary cultural continuities” begins with the assumed Eurocentric superiority, weighing what is culturally “Western” more principally into the canon, while subordinating or excluding literature that represents the “other.” Thus, in this nationalistic milieu of the Western canon, ethnographic literature is often pushed out as “not [representing] our culture” (222). However, Guillory warns that “the very distinctness of cultures, Western or non-Western, canonical or noncanonical, points to a certain insistent error…in the supposed transmission of culture” through literature (223), because the very idea of “cultural homogeneity” is an illusion—a “fiction” (221). However, Guillory admits that this fictitious conviction on the part of the canonizers—that the Western canon should represent the “great works of Western civilization only”—is “nevertheless a very powerful one (because it is ideological)” (221).

Then, what exactly is the distinctive trait of ethnic/minor literature that is more likely to be excluded from the Western canon? Deleuze and Guattari in “What is a Minor Literature?” define that “minor literature” is what “minority constructs within a major language.” They further list three other characteristics of the minor literature: (1) its language deterritorializes; (2) it is always political; and (3) the text serves as a collective enunciation. As an example, Deleuze and Guattari point to Jew’s experience of Diaspora to illustrate how their literature can de-territorialize cultural and national boundaries. They say that the act of “de-territorialization” happens as a result of a special situation where dispersed (often traumatized) Diasporas, who live in their host countries, cannot write their stories in their own language. However, left with no better way of emotional survival, they ironically write their Jewish story in the language of their oppressors, effectuating de-territorialization of the cultural and national boundaries. As it is shown in this example of Jewish Diasporas, the ultimate threat that a minor literature poses for the xenophobic authorities in the canon would be that it not merely transgresses its linguistic territory, but that it unavoidably penetrates the master’s culture, potentially undermining national solidarity.

Though the canonical authority in power may wish to bolster national solidarity through literature, critics like Bhabha demands equal representation of the postcolonial cultural hybridity written by diasporas and other ethnic minorities. He says, “The Western metropole must confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of postwar migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity” (1335, emphasis added). He proposes that “the centre of …[our] study would [no longer] be the “sovereignty” of national cultures, nor the universalism of human cultures, but a focus on those ‘freaks’ of social and cultural displacements”’ (1340). He asks that our contemporary “critic[s] must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for, the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present” of the marginalized, hybrid postmodern subjects (1340). In other words, Bhabha is asking the Western canon to include those who in the past have been perceived as “freaks” by the dominant culture.

Similarly, the chief spokesperson of subaltern studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her essay, “Imperialism and Sexual Difference,” requests accurate, not distorted, representation of women of color in Eurocentric literature. She challenges Western academia to stop misrepresenting the women of the third world by first deconstructing the tropological truth-claim made by the imperial masculists. Spivak believes that western academic institutions commit “translation-as-violation” (344) both in a literal sense (linguistic translation) and in a representational sense (fictional misrepresentation of the women of the third world). She claims that this cultural violation stems from the fact that Western academia insists “the white race as a norm for universal humanity” (340). Spivak is insulted not only by the assumed racial and intellectual superiority of the Western universal masculist, but also by its feminist counterparts. She believes that feminist writers of the first world are complicit with their masculist counterparts, in that, they, too, grossly misrepresent the women of the third world in their writings. Particularly, what troubles Spivak the most is that this cultural violation—committed by the Western male and female elitists—perpetuates through cultural ignorance of the teachers to their students, which she describes it as the “sanctioned ignorance” (345). In order to avoid sanctioned ignorance, Spivak is, in effect, insinuating that ethnographic texts should be written and critiqued by those with cultural familiarity and authority. Consequently, for these culturally appropriate writers to re-vision their misrepresented history written by the Eurocentric writers and to create a new “just representation” of their presence as equal humans, they need, according to Spivak, an “equal right” in the literary circles, which also implies an “equal access” in the canon (347).

If those in control of the canon, or more specifically, American canon perceives minor literature to be less than American, it is because they see the minorities as “foreigners,” “the others,” who in their eyes cannot and is not yet fully assimilated to their culture. However, Julia Kristeva’s analysis of “foreigner” in Strangers To Ourselves, shows how the “others” are in fact “our nocturnal selves”—the dark strangers who are repressed within ourselves. Psychoanalytically, she explains that Freud’s “Uncanny, [means that] foreignness is within us: we are our own foreigners; we are divided:” (181). Hence, she says, “foreigner is neither a race nor a nation” (181). In fact, Kristeva believes that “it is [only] through unraveling transference—the major dynamics of otherness. . . [which is] . . . the foreign component of our psyche—that, on the basis of the other, [we] become reconciled with [our] own otherness-foreignness” (182). Most significantly, according to Kristeva’s theory, the so called “the other,” “the foreigner, “the stranger,” or “the inferior” is, in fact, none other than “ourselves.” We are all “an integral part of the same” (181). Then psychoanalytically speaking, the Eurocentric canon war is, in fact, self-antagonistic, in that each time it alienates/negates entry of what they perceive as “foreign texts” into its collection, it is ironically diminishing and self-effacing its own culture. Thus, if Kristeva’s interpretation of the Freudian “uncanny” is adopted, it would drastically change our concept of “foreignness,” and this change of our mind, in turn, would ideally dissolve the canonical racism in America.

II

Whereas Kristeva in Strangers to Ourselves probes the notion of a “foreigner” in a psychoanalytical sense, a novel, Native Speaker explores the reality of being a “foreigner” in America. A decade ago, in 1995, an Asian Diaspora who was raised in America since the age of three wrote a novel claiming numerous awards, to name just one from the long list is the Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award. Most memorably, for his novel Native Speaker, he was selected by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best American writers under forty. This “American,” or should I say “Korean-American,” is Chang Rae Lee. Lee’s Native Speaker is an example of a “minor literature” which fits the definition of Deleuze and Guattari, in that it is written by a minority in a major language. Fittingly, Lee’s Native Speaker as a minor literature demonstrates how a “half American” (prefixed American), or more specifically, a Korean American writer, can write with the effect of racial, cultural, and national de-territorialization between Korea and America. Finally, as Deleuze and Guattari have pointed out, Native Speaker bears two other characteristics of a minor literature: it is “political” and “collective.” It exposes the political tension felt by the Asian immigrants in America, and one Korean protagonist’s immigrant life collectively expresses the life of all Korean Americans. Ultimately, the value of this novel is that it helps us examine how ethnic literature is received and labeled by the American canon.

On a plot level, the protagonist in the novel, Henry Park, is a second-generation, Korean-American private spy who works for a white racist, Dennis Hoagland, to spy on his own people, John Kwang. Henry is instructed by Dennis to get close enough to Kwang so he can betray him. Henry’s reports on Kwang, which of course are written in excellent English, surpass any native speaker in their fluency, form, and efficiency (Dennis rewards him for this). However, as Henry spends more time with Kwang, he identifies with Kwang, and starts to realize that he must do what he has avoided all his life: face up to and evaluate who he really is. Is he an American? Korean? Or Korean-American? Although he is an American born citizen with American education and American mentality, he is no longer sure that he is American, and thus clings to what his American wife—who is the “standard barrier”—says who he is (Lee 12). Though later she apologizes, the list she hands him cataloguing who he is, is long enough to kill the hope of any Korean-American who thinks s/he can become singularly American: “You are surreptitious / B+ student of life / first thing hummer of Wagner and Strauss / illegal alien / emotional alien / genre bug / Yellow peril: neo-American / great in bed / overrated / poppa’s boy / sentimentalist / anti-romantic / ____ analyst (you fill in) / stranger / follower / traitor / spy” (Lee 5). Her list basically sums up who Henry Park is to the dominant U.S. culture, and more specifically, by the American canon.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, Native speaker fits the genre of a minor literature, but does it really? True, it is written by a minority in a major language. Yet, Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of a “minor literature” is problematic for two reasons. First, the term “minor” implies that it is smaller in scale and/or is less significant than its “major” counterpart. Like the definition and connotation of “ethnic literature,” a “minor literature” similarly intimates something that is tangential, inauthentic second-class literature. Second, Deleuze and Guattari’s point that minor literature is “political” and “collective” in nature is also true, but these qualities are not exclusive to minor literature; rather, all literature is “political” and “collective.” Who in American/Western canon has written anything that was not political, and has not either implicitly/explicitly spoken for the group the writer represented? How is literature even possible to be written in a purely nonpolitical and noncollective manner? This is not possible, and if such a writing is possible, in that it is purely “objective” (as opposed to political) and “personal” (as opposed to collective), then, are not these two conditionals—“objective” and “personal”—mutually exclusive? In other words, can a writing be “purely objective” but “purely personal” simultaneously? Besides, is not “personal” (such as the list made by Henry’s wife) inherently “political?” Thus, the two of the three constituents of a minor work listed by Deleuze and Guattari—“political” and “collective”— cannot be used to label and place ethnographic literature under a “minor literature.” The point is that frankly none of this labeling business should be espoused. If the writer is an American, then, s/he is singularly American, and his/her work is singularly an American literature. No prefixes such as “Afro,” “Asian,” “Latino,” nor qualifiers such as “minor” or “ethnic” is needed, unless the canon is willing to equally dissect the entire culturally hybrid, transnational writers of America.

To illustrate why labeling any literary work as “minor/ethnic” is nonsensical, I would like to point to an example from the Native Speaker. On a plot level, an example of this racial categorization is again the previously mentioned list compiled by Henry’s wife, which symbolically documents in print her sundry reasons why she is impelled to de-legitimize her Korean American husband as not a true American. However, Henry’s white American wife, by writing this list, ironically creates a “minor literature,” since her list is “political” and “collective”: it politically alienates her husband from her culture; and implicitly, her list collectively makes a claim about Asian-Americans in general. Then who is to be blamed, in this case, for being political and collective? Meanwhile, Chang Rae Lee’s Native Speaker is segregated under the “minor literature” in a separate American canon.

Why can’t Henry’s American wife, who is the “standard barrier,” and metaphorically the American canon, allow Henry to be singularly American? He does what is required of him, but, her list, indicts him of being too alienated or “foreign” to be singularly American. Obviously, his wife has not been convinced by Kristeva’s theory that the “foreigner” (her husband) whom she resents is, in fact, “herself.” Pertinent to Henry’s dilemma of wanting to be singularly American is the essay called “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies” written by Sumida Stephen. Stephen, in his essay, informs that “for about a decade the critique of Asian American ‘dual identity’ empowered Asian American studies with the contravening idea that it is the concept of ‘America’ that needs to be changed so that it is understood that Asian Americans are singularly American” (Sumida 1). In the past, if silent submissive Asian Americans can be effortlessly alienated (e.g., Japanese internment and Chinese exclusionary Act) on the basis of “phenotypically/culturally being more foreign than others”—thus requiring qualifiers and prefixes describing what type of an American they are—now, such systemized alienation are no longer feasible. With the coming-of-age of children of the Asian Diasporas, who may be the future writers/scholars, who have grown up in America, and who are mentally, culturally, and legally “Americans,” need to be dealt with. Surely, it is inevitable that the canon debates in the U.S., in the very near future, will have to re-examine the concept of “American” in categorizing the works written by Asian Americans, and by extension, other prefixed half-Americans.

Though the canonizers intentionally or unintentionally mold “white race” as the true “American culture” through literature, just as African American history and culture cannot be cognitively nor textually segregated from “Americanism,” so is the ethnic/minor literature. For the variegated ethnic subcultures and their history are inseparable constituents of America. Although the nation’s white elitists may rather regard ethnic/minor literature as not American, more often than not, however, it overwhelmingly represents authors who are American citizens with American education and American mind (like Chang Rae Lee) invariably writing in some ways about “Americanism.” Thus, the fact that American canon routinely place literature written by its diasporic/hybrid scholars under the “ethnic category”—which automatically precludes them from being included as an essential part of the whole—is both insensitive and illogical, in that it defies the multicultural make up of the American populace.

Today, any large cosmopolitan country like England, and even China, for example, is transnational in nature, because it is made up of diverse peoples and cultures, let alone “America”—the land of liberty, equality, and diversity. Yet disturbingly, contemporary critics such as Said, Spivak, Guillory, and Bhabha would all agree that Eurocentric nationalism/racialization is the invisible force in the canon war that divides and groups, includes and excludes the wide-range of literature. However, Bhabha warns that “the very idea of a pure ‘ethnically cleansed’ national identity can only be achieved through…death” (1334). Similarly, Said in “The Politics of Knowledge” critiques that the illusion of culturally homogenous nationalism in the canon debates is that it is perceived and internalized “as if…it [is] pure and unchanging from the beginning to the end of time” (192). In other words, Said is trying to explain that (canonical) nationalism as a concept is susceptible to mutation and hybridization over time. Thus, the insistence on the part of the canonizers to forge and transmit monolithic Western culture through racially selective process of canonization not only threatens the sociopolitical harmony, but is a futile act of resisting the global currency. Instead, the authorities of the Western canon, more narrowly, those in control of the American canon need to re-assess and realign the concept of “American” as inherently transnational in scope to include the works of the prefixed American writers as singularly “American,” without qualifiers or separate curriculum.

Works Cited

Bhabba, Homi. “Locations of Culture.” The Critical Tradition. Richter, David H. Boston: Bedford Books, 1989.

Lee, Chang Rae. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.

Johnson, Samuel. “Preface to Shakespeare.” The Critical Tradition. Richter, David H. Boston: Bedford Books, 1989.

Gilles, Deleuze, and Guattari, Felix. “What Is a Minor Literature?” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H. Boston:

Guillory, John. “The Canon as Cultural Capital.” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H. Boston: Bedford Books, 2000

Kristeva, Julia. Strangers To Ourselves. Roudiez, Leon S. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Said, Edward W. “The Politics of Knowledge.” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H. Boston: Bedford Books, 2000.

Spivak, Gayatri. “Imperialism and Sexual Difference.” Falling into Theory. Richter, David H. Boston: Bedford Books, 2000.

Sumida, Stephen H. “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies.” American Studies International 38 (2000): 97-114.

Rivalry relation between Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Bertha in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Rivalry relation between

Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Bertha in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Adrienne Rich in “Jan Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman” articulates that “Jane Eyre, motherless and economically powerless” has successfully resisted “certain traditional female temptations” with dignity (470).  Rich quotes from Phyllis Chesler’s essay called the “Women and Madness” to explicate what she means by “motherless woman”: Rich explains that women for generations “have had neither power nor wealth to hand on to their daughters [because] they have been dependent on men as children are on women” (470).  Therefore, Rich says that for a woman to secure herself financially, she is left with one option: women must learn to “pleas[e] and attach themselves to, powerful or economically viable men” (470).  In Rich’s opinion, what makes Jane Eyre so different and admirable is the fact that she does not “please and attach” herself to a powerful or economically viable men in order to fare well.  Though she is an orphan, who is in need of financial support, Jane never compromises morality, self-respect, and dignity.

Adrienne Rich further lists four major temptations in Jane’s life which she courageously overcomes: (1) the temptation of victimization; (2) the thrill of masochism; (3) the temptation of romantic love and surrender; and (4) the deepest lure for a spiritual woman.  First, Jane’s “temptation of victimization” occurs when she lives with the Reeds (her Aunt), “a hostile household, where both psychic and physical violence are used against her” (471).  Though the insults and abuses she suffer from them are enough to diminish “her very spiritedness and individuality,” she manages to come out of this situation with her self-respect intact.  Secondly, “the temptation of masochism” springs from Jane’s deep affection and respect for Helen who is religious, forgiving, and ultimately masochistic.  However, Jane soon realizes that “the thrill of masochism is not for her, though it is one of her temptations” (474).  Thirdly, “the temptation of romantic love and surrender” comes to Jane at Thornfield, as she falls in love with Rochester and decides to marry him.  On the wedding day, however, it is reveled that Rochester has a living wife—a mad woman, Bertha.  Not only is it against Jane’s high moral to become Rochester’s mistress, but more implicitly, she flees from the risk of “becoming this [mad] woman” herself by marrying him (476).  Lastly, Jane’s final temptation which comes from St. John is the “most confusing temptation,” because it is “the deepest lure for a spiritual woman” (480).  As St. John offers her marriage without love which is instead filled with a spiritual sense of “duty and service to a cause” in India as a missionary couple, Jane, upon serious contemplation, rejects this offer (480).  Rich ultimately believes that it is Jane’s strong sense of morality, self-respect, and dignity that saves her from the usual trap and temptations of a motherless woman.

Although I agree with Adrienne Rich on most of her points about Jane Eyre, I take issue with her concluding comment of her essay, in which she states that “In Jane Eyre,…we find an alternative to the stereotypical rivalry of women” (482).  Rich believes that the women in the novel are supportive to one another, and they are “not…points on a triangle…as temporary substitutes for men” (482).  Though it is true that Jane and many of the women in the novel is supportive to one another, what Rich is neglecting with this comment is that she is completely overlooking the fact that the relationship between Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason is a relationship of “rivalry,” and these two women are the “points on a triangle” with one man— Rochester.  If Rich assumes that Jane’s relationship with Bertha is non-rivalry because that is how it is depicted by Bronte, then, she is complicit with Bronte for grossly misrepresenting and symbolically oppressing the women of color in Eurocentric literature written by feminist of the first world.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Imperialism and Sexual Difference” critiques that the feminists of the first world—such as Bronte and Rich—are complicit with the racist masculist of universalism, and asks that the female writers and critics to stop perpetuating the “racism within feminism” (347).  Spivak states that a novel like Jane Eyre commits “translation-as-violation,” because Bronte writes about woman of the third world (Bertha Mason) when she is “total[ly] ignoran[t] of history and subject constitution” of that world and its women (344).  Spivak says that such ignorance on the part of the first world feminist like Bronte is not only insensitive and arrogant—in that they assume their feminist paradigm is universal—but is also misleading because the distorted representation of the women of color, often as lunatics (like Bertha), becomes a generalized stereotype on the minds of their readers.

Spivaks fear of “translation-as-violation” committed by the first world feminists must have been comforted by Jean Rhys, who sympathetically reconstructs Bertha Mason in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, as a character who is victimized by Rochester.  While Adrienne Rich convincingly depicts the motherless Jane Eyre as an exceptional heroine who has resisted moral temptations in the world of patriarchy, Jean Rhys in her novel sympathetically reveals how Bertha not only became motherless, but why she became, fatherless, husbandless, childless, friendless, and penniless under the patriarch Rochester—the man Jane wins as a reward for her high morals.  Thus, though Adrienne Rich exalts Jane’s high morality and dignity, Jean Rhys novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which is written from Bertha’s point of view, helps us see that these two women are the “points on a triangle” with one man, Rochester, and thus are rivals to one another.

Works Cited

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Imperialism and Sexual Differnce.” Falling into Theory. Richter,

David H. 2 ed. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Rich, Adrienne. “Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman.” Jane Eyre. Charlotte

Bronte. New York: Norton & Co., 2001.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Norton & Co., 1999.

Forfeiting One’s Comfort for Morality in Daniel Defoe’s “Moll Flanders,” Henry Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews,” and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”

The Consequences of Forfeiting One’s Comfort for Morality in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

In Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Moll writes in her Memorandums than she was “Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother), Twelve Year a Thief, eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest and died a Penitent” (2). However, many of these circumstances could have been avoided if Moll had chosen comfort over morality.  The word “comfort,” in her case equates to “security,” which she desperately needs and seeks, but only with “moral” conscience. 

Moll’s first emotional battle over “morality” versus “security” is well captured in the event of her first marriage to Robert. For instance, when the elder brother encourages her to accept Robert’s offer—though she being an orphan knows marrying Robert will not only give her the security she needs from the harsh world, but is also the only option she has to guard herself against being homeless—she does not immediately take this offer. Rather, she is disgusted with the idea of marrying the younger, when her virginity is taken by someone else—the elder. She feels that she is morally bonded to the elder brother, though they are not legally married. She feels that she would be a prostitute in her heart if she marries the younger brother when she is in fact in love with the elder. She therefore demands moral clarification from the elder about their relationship, as well as making her own enunciation about woman’s chastity: “Will you Transfer me to your Brother? Can you Transfer my Affection?…whatever the Change of your side may be, I will ever be True; and I had much rather, since it is come that unhappy Length, be your Whore than your Brother’s Wife” (34). However, manipulated by the elder and pushed to no other alternative by the younger, Moll marries the younger brother, Robert, and attains the most needed security a young orphan girl needs—a family of her own. Nonetheless, her initial resistance to Robert’s offer deserves much credit to her high morals holding up against the temptations of security.  

Unfortunately, for Moll, the security gained through her first marriage does not last long, nor does she try to hold on to it as a widow. The security of a married woman ends as her husband, Robert, dies after five years of marriage, because she gives up the basic financial necessity and emotional security that she could have pursued and have as a widow of a prominent family. Instead, she quickly decides to leave the site of her first love because she feels she is loosing the moral battle against the imaginary incest. Moll, in her own word, explains the situation: “his Brother being so always in my sight…was a continual Snare to me; and I never was in Bed with my Husband, but I wish’d my self in the Arms of his Brother…In short, I committed Adultery and Incest with him every Day in my Desires, which without doubt, was…Criminal in the Nature of the Guilt” (49). Thus, bothered by her conscience throughout the marriage with Robert and after his death, she straight away sends her two children to live with Robert’s parents, so she can claim back her clear conscience, even if that entails forsaking security and facing danger of being all alone again.

Similarly, her third marriage to a plantation owner who is later revealed to be none other than her half brother becomes another situation that compels her to choose morality over security.  Moll marries her half brother inadvertently, both she and her husband with mercenary motives, mutually mistaking that the other party had great fortune. In light of finding out that each other has been misled into the marriage, they decide and move to Virginia where the husband has his family and plantations. For a while, the whole family get along well in America, and Moll enjoys the financial and emotional security and “th[inks] herself the happiest creature alive,” until one day she realizes that her husband’s mother is also her mother and that their marriage has been incestuous (70). Whereas with Robert, if incest was imaginary, this situation with her half brother is real enough to make all parties viscerally sick. Since she “loath[s] the Thoughts of Bedding with [her half brother],” Moll once again gives up her security for the sake of morality, and returns to England to face uncertainties and poverty (73).

Moll forgoes her security over morality again in the case of her unwanted pregnancy by Jemy. After she parts with Jemy, she realizes that she is pregnant by him. Much to her dismay, her pregnancy means that she cannot in her right conscience marry the banker who offers her the security she so desperately needs. However, abortive thoughts in regards to the life of a child—though her governess offers her help to miscarry the child—never cross her mind. Moll articulates this event to the reader: “if I was willing” she says, “[my governess] could [have] give[en] me something to make me Miscarry, if I had a desire to put an end to my troubles that way; but I soon let her see that I abhorr’d the thoughts of it” (133). In a word, rather than pursuing the security that would come by marrying the banker, she chooses the life of a child. Considering the fact that she had received offer to help her miscarry the unwanted child, Moll’s insistence in choosing the child’s life is, then, a courageous moral act on her part. Luckily, however, the banker remains devoted to Moll long enough, so the consequence of holding fast to her maternal conscience does not cost her the marriage/security itself, but the heartache of parting with the child with the “Country Woman” who shows “many a Tear,” in gratitude for receiving the child (140).  

Similarly, in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Parson Adams suffers the consequences of substituting his comfort for moral duties. Unlike Parson Trulliber, Parson Adams is an epitome of Christ-like charity. Although his charity exposes him to inconveniences and harm, he volunteers to help those in need, namely Joseph. For instance, when Joseph injures his leg he falls into the care of the innkeeper’s wife. However, her husband berates the hostess and Joseph “for wasting Hog’s Puddings” (145). Adams being an active Christian is unable to bear such inhospitable manner of the host, so he “deal[s with] him so sound a Compliment over his Face with his Fist, that the Blood immediately gushe[s] out of his Nose in a Stream” (144). The host strikes back at Adams “with so much Gratitude, that the Parson’s Nostrils likewise began to look a little redder than usual. Furthermore, the hostess, too, ungratefully returns Adams’s heroic intervention by throwing “a Pan full of Hog’s-Blood…into the Parson’s Face” (144). Thus, because Adams chooses to referee when situations seem unjust for Joseph, he himself must suffer the injurious and humiliating consequences of being a moral parson.

Parson Adams’s another example of choosing moral duties over personal comfort occurs when he rescues Fanny from being raped. While he is almost being lectured by a gentleman who claims to be brave, he hears Fanny’s shrieks. Ironically, however, it is not the self-claimed courageous gentleman but Adams who respond to the scream and saves Fanny: “Adams, who was no Chicken…exert[s] his utmost Force at once, and with such Success, he overturn[s]” the rapist (161). Then he “call[s] aloud to the young Woman, [and says]…‘Be of good cheer, Damsel,’…’you are no longer in danger of your Ravisher” (161). Though he did not know that it was Fanny who was in trouble, his unfeigned concern for all human beings, not just the selective few, makes him react and rescue victims without any moral hesitations.

Although, Parson Adams’s fearless and selfless kindness is inauspicious to him, his goodness is constant. His unvarying kindness is evidenced by his willingness to help Fanny and Joseph while traveling together with him. Though he himself is poor and has been robbed of what little he had, he is willing to share all that he has with them, whether it be money, food, or clothing.  Because he is genuinely charitable, he believes others would likewise help him in need, and he does manage to procure help when in need. Unlike Parson Trulliber, then, Parson Adams not merely preaches charity, but lives it, and expects the same from others. Thus, Parson Adams’s continuous moral examples radiate to all those around him, though they cost him countless troubles.

Finally, we see Parson Adams’s unflinching moral character when he stands up to Lady Booby on behalf of Fanny and Joseph. Being a woman of influence, Lady Booby orders Parson Adams not to publish the “Banns” for Fanny and Joseph, but he is undaunted by her command.  Instead, he dares to counter-argue Lady Booby. He argues that he “would obey [her] in every thing that is lawful; but surely [he says,] the Parties being poor is no Reason against their marrying” (280). Furious by Adams’s protestation, Lady Booby threatens to “discard [him] from his Service,” but he is undeterred. In essence, Adams’s unwavering morality stands as a bulwark for socially inconsequential young people like Joseph and Fanny against social injustice from people like Lady Booby, and thus deserves utmost “respect” for being a true man of God.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, one’s “comfort” signifies one’s social “establishment” and one’s “morality” equates to “love” that is unfeigned. The novel’s predominant issue is marriage, especially from women’s point of view. Its female characters’ only means to gain social “establishment” is through marriage with the right man, with or without true “love.” The novel’s protagonist, Elizabeth suffers consequences of not compromising “love” for “establishment.” Although the social norms at the time expects young woman to settle more for a reasonable comfort—than true love—in a marriage, Elizabeth does not want to forsake true affection in relationships.

An example of Elizabeth’s unwillingness to sacrifice true affection for comfort is seen in the case of Mr. Collin’s proposal to her. Because Mr. Collins would inherit her family estate, he would be an ideal match for both her parents and herself to secure their present financial status.  Mr. Collins makes the offer to marry Elizabeth, and she is pressured by her mother, Mrs. Bennet, to accept his offer. By implication, Mrs. Bennet’s attitude also mirrors social expectation of women in her era, which weighs the groom’s social establishment heavier than true affections exchanged between the couple. However, Elizabeth defies social norms and ignores her mother’s demands, albeit there is that risk of Mr. Collins being her first and last chance of being married. Concerning what is at stake, when Mr. Collins finds her refusal unbelievable, she steadfastly makes certain that he understands that she is not the average girl of her time: She tells him that she is “not one of those young ladies…[and that she is] perfectly serious in [her] refusal” (93). She further shamelessly articulates her point clearly by foretelling Mr. Collins that “[he] could not make [her] happy” (93).  As this scene suggests, Elizabeth is adamant about not settling for mere comfort in a marriage. Instead, what she expects and searches for in a relationship is unfeigned love, not financial establishment.

Elizabeth’s affection for socially dubious Wickham while rejecting well suited Mr. Collins is another examples that illustrates her innate tendency to value love above men’s social recognition. Although it is only their first meeting, Wickham tells her of his misfortunate status, especially due to—as he claims—Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth nonetheless falls for him all the more, out of empathy. Irrespective of Wickham’s social standing and his personal problems with the socially formidable Darcys, she finds him sympathetic and attractive. In fact, she defends him at every turn until her high regards for Wickham is proven wrong by Darcy’s revelation about his disreputable past. Nonetheless, Elizabeth’s initial respect and loyalty shown towards Wickham reveal her honorable side—the side that can never be diluted or tempted by man’s favorable social status.

Finally, Elizabeth’s courage to resist Darcy’s first proposal attests to her virtue—the fact that she is least concerned with Darcy’s immense social status than she is about true love and respect between the couple. Later when Darcy proposes to Elizabeth for the second time, he admits how surprised he was to have her reject him the first time, but thanks her for teaching him “a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous, [because it]…properly humbled” him (308). Because Elizabeth never compromises her virtue, she is given a second chance from Darcy. For it is Elizabeth’s resolute self-respective manner towards Lady Catherine that Darcy is encouraged to propose to her for the second time. Knowing Elizabeth’s “disposition,” Darcy knew that if Elizabeth has “irrevocably decided against [him], [she] would have acknowledged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly” (306). For Elizabeth, it is only when the truth is revealed about Darcy—his fairness and generosity in the matters of “Wickham and Miss Darcy” and “Wickham and Lydia,”—she is able to dismiss her prejudice against him. Because she is proven wrong about Darcy’s character, she is able to love him. For Elizabeth it is man’s character—not his establishment/status—that she attracts her. Thus for Elizabeth, not only that Darcy is “violently in love” with her, but that she, too, is with him is an unnegotiable factor in her romance. (305).

In the three novels—Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, and Pride and Prejudice—the common factor among the three protagonists, Moll, Adams, and Elizabeth, is that they are not hypocrites, but are characters who hold firm to high morals at all costs (except Moll who sometimes is just as immoral as she is moral). All three characters risk comfort/establishment for morality/love and suffer the due consequences. For intance, Moll often risks her security to choose what is morally right in her mind. Similarly, Parson Adams jeopardizes his physical safety and finances to help those in distress, namely Joseph and Fanny. Finally, Elizabeth likewise never considers what comfort or social establishment she may be able to obtain by marrying a certain men, but rather painstakingly scrutinizes whether mutual love and respect can be traceable in her relationships. Thus, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Jane Austen, by giving a happy ending to their respective protagonists in their novels impart a moral lesson: that whether it be “security” for Moll, “respect” for Adams, or “love” for Elizabeth, their ultimate reward were gained by withstanding the temptations of “comfort” that comes in various forms.

Outline of Spivak’s “Imperialism and Sexual Difference”

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Biography:

• Born in Calcutta
• Education: University of Calcuttan and Cornell University
• Chief spokesperson of “subaltern studies”
• Postcolonial theorist (with a global feminist Marxist perspective)
• Avalon Professor at Columbia University 1991
• Former Andrew w. Mellon Professor of English at university of Pittsburgh
• Social projects: Rural Literary Teacher Training (on grassroots level, in India and Bangladesh)
• Lit. Works:

1.  
   1. Translation of Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1967)
   2. Myself I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W. B. Yeats (1974)
   3. In Other worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1988)
   4. The Postcolonial Critic (1990)
   5. Outside the Teaching Machine (1993)
   6. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999)

 

“Imperialism and Sexual Difference”

Objective: Point out the “racism within feminism” against the third world women of color

Claim 1:  Academic institutions insist “White Male as a Norm” for universal humanity. Therefore, needs “The Tropological Deconstruction of Masculist Universalism.” (it means that “Truth Claim,” in this case, the truth claimed by the white male universalists, is no more than a trope, a figure of speech that passes as truth.  Therefore, it needs to be deconstructed—borrowed from De Man’s theory)

Q:   What does Spivak mean by the truth claims made by the postcolonial Masculists?

A:   She is talking about colonial texts that try to justify colonialism; for instance, (1)  colonialism was an act of benevolent masculism/paternalism; (2) it was a historically appropriate event, for instance “the Conquest of India” wasn’t really a “conquest.” Imperialism, in other words is “in loco parentis,” meaning that it was “in place of the parent”—to feed the starving, childish Indians who are utterly dependent on the first world.

Claim 2:  Eurocentric feminism is complicit with the white male imperialism.

quote: “even as we feminist critics discover the troping error of the masculist truth-claim to universality or academic objectivity, we perform the lie of constituting a truth of global sisterhood where the mesmerizing model remains male and female sparring partners of generalizable or universalizable sexuality who are the chief protagonists in that European contest. In order to claim sexual difference where it makes a difference, global sisterhood must receive this articulation even if the sisters in question are Asian, African, Arrab” (341).

 

Claim 3:  Eurocentric writers commit “Translation-as-Violation” (“total ignorance of history And subject constitution,” meaning that European writers mistranslate the language orculture of the third world women; or grossly misrepresent them in terms of gender andindividuality. In their writings, they are not really individuals, but a collective mass of dark inferiors)

quote: “kipling uses many Hindusthani words in his text—pidgin Hindusthani, barbaric to the native speaker, devoid of syntactic connections, always infelicitous almost always incorrect. The narrative practice sanctions this usage and establishes it as “correct,” without, of course, any translation. This is british pidgin, originating in a decision that hindusthani is a language of servants not worth mastering “correctly”; this is the version of the language that is established textually as “correct.” By contrast, the hindusthani speech of the Indian servants is painstakingly translated into archaic and awkward English…Let us call this ensemble of moves…translation-as-violation (344). 

quote:  “the second wave of U.S. academic feminism as a “universal” model of the “natural”reactions of the female psyche. This too is an example of translation-as-violation” (345).

Claim 4:  Institutions perpetuate the “Sanctioned Inorance” (blindness of truth telling, teachers teach without the true understanding of the 3^rd world women, therefore, the ignorance perpetuates)

quote: “Our own mania for “third-world literature” anthologies, when the teacher or critic often has no sense of the original languages, or of the subject constitution of the social and gendered agents in question (and therefore the student cannot sense this as a loss), participates more in the logic of translation-as-violation than in the ideal of translation as freedom-in-troping. What is at play there is a phenomenon that can be called sanctioned ignorance” (345).

 

Conclusion: 

1. Spivak is deeply interested in “the tropological deconstruction of masculist universalism. She knows that the “correction” of one trope points to another trope—the process is endless. Yet, she insists that critics must be persistent. 

2. The subaltern writers/critics want “the chance of an entry into the vertiginous process” of de-colonialization—the equal rights of historical, geographical, linguistic specificity, and theoretical sophistication” (347).

Questions:    

1. In our campus, is there racism within feminism? For example, does literature written by women of color receive equal appreciation as to their historical, aesthetical, and theoretical sophistication?  If no, why not?

2. Who has the ultimate authority to critique literature of the third world? Can white males/females of the first worlds critique texts of the third world? Are they capable of deconstructing the false claims of the masculist universalism? Who can de-colonialize racist texts?

Presentation by: Joey Reyes & Jessie Chen

A Cultural Analysis of The Frog Prince from Germany, Korea, and China

A Cultural Analysis of The Frog Prince from Germany, Korea, and China

Fairytales are characteristically full of magic, often involving upper class characters—princes, princesses, kings, and queens.  The Frog Prince is no exception; the story is about a handsome prince trapped in the repulsive body of a frog, but who nevertheless overcomes and transcends this bewitched state through his wit, perseverance, and magic.  Its variants in German (the Grimm’s version), Korean, and Chinese are selected here for a cultural analysis.  Among the three tales, the basic allegorical casting of the frog as a figure socially debased and physically repulsive remains the same.  There are, however, differing cultural subtleties on a plot level: (1) the role/demeanor of the father-in-law; (2) the temperament of the princess/bride; (3) the level/type of magical elements deployed by the frog; and (4) the denouement/moral of the tale.  If the common thread among the three variants—the lowly depiction of the frog—kindles a certain sense of collective consciousness in the reader, the cultural disparity/uniqueness replete in the texts, on the other hand, makes known the vast world of cultural diversity that calls for respect and tolerance, if not acceptance.  For example, The Frog Prince of Germany exemplifies the Western chivalric tradition of “romance” and “code of honor.”  Yet, Korean version illuminates “the rigid class system” and “filiality” of the East.  Finally, the Chinese version explores something entirely unique to China—the military prowess and political savvyness that are essential in one’s staying power in a culture that is historically overstretched with political turmoil and dissonance among its countless provinces in a boundless continent. 

What is embedded in the seemingly simple fairytales—the three variants of The Frog Prince that represent the cultures of Germany, Korea, and China—are the sociopolitical backgrounds that each story entails.  These geo-culturally varied tales stimulate, cultivate, and enhance the reader’s cross-cultural collective consciousness.  Correspondingly, Eugen Weber in “Fairies and Hard Facts: The Reality of Folktales,” corroborates to this effect: She believes that “fairy tales, can tell us a great deal about [the] real conditions [of the] world” which it represents (Weber 96).  However, before immersing into an analysis of what Weber calls “the real conditions” that each tales represent, it helps to first recognize the common thread among the three that connects the culturally diverse variants together.  

Most conspicuously, the common feature in all three frog tales is the lowly depiction of the frog.  There is an immense socio-economic gap between the frog and his bride-to-be in all three tales.  In the Grimm version, the frog’s bride-to-be is the youngest princess of a king.  Similarly, in Chinese version, she is a daughter of a powerful emperor.  In Korean version, the father of the bride is not a king/emperor, but a rich nobleman.  Thus, in all three tales, the fact that the frog’s object of desire (his bride) is a daughter of higher status than that of the frog heightens the social paltriness of the frog in relation to the bride’s social stature.

Whereas the socio-cultural status of the three frogs are uniformly that of the lowest stature, their phenotypical physicality are given varying degrees of human qualities.  For example, in the Grimm’s version, the frog remains as an animal until the spell is lifted, literally and metaphorically aligning his status with that of “inconsequential member” of the animal kingdom and human society.  In contrast, Korean and Chinese texts anthropomorphize the frog as an adopted-son of a poor fisherman or a biological-son of a peasant, respectively.  For instance, in Korean version, a childless couple receives the enchanted frog that follows the fisherman (the husband) into their house. The wife raises him like her own child.  Chinese version, on the other hand, is a bit more radical.  Here, a poor man’s wife goes into labor as the husband leaves home to find a living somewhere far away.  The wife delivers the “child” while he is away, not a human, but a frog.  She raises him as her own.  One day the husband returns and is shocked; he is unwilling to accept the frog as his own son until he sees that the frog has certain supernatural powers.  Thus, in Asian tales, the frog’s nascent humanization takes place before it confronts matrimonial issues (and fully matures or metamorphoses into a human being after the marriage).  Irrespective of the frog’s human/non-human qualities, its socio-economic standing nonetheless occupies the lowest of the social hierarchy in all three tales, underscoring the class barrier and the inaccessibility of the bride.

While the colossal class gap between the frog and his bride-to-be runs parallel in all three variants, the role/demeanor of the bride’s father offers insights that are unique to each culture.  For instance, the German king not only stresses the moral of “keeping one’s word” which reflects his heroic culture, but also seems to overlook/encourage sexual courtship of the frog and his daughter, exemplifying the romantic mentality of the West.  The king, for example, when his daughter (the princess) complains to him about the importunate frog, unsympathetically instructs her “that which [she] ha[s] promised must [she] perform” (Hunt 2).  Throughout the text, though the princess is continually uncooperative with and cruel to the frog, she obeys her father and “open[s] the door” for the frog that has been knocking relentlessly.  The frog, upon gaining his entry, makes his romantic passes/threats to the princess, such as “carry me into your little room and…we will both lie down and go to sleep” (Hunt 2).  Otherwise, the frog says, “[he] will tell [her] father” (Hunt 2).  Thus, because the courtship is sanctioned by the king, the frog’s only obstacle is the princess herself.  He pines after her affection, and schemes to have sex with her without fearing her father’s disapproval/censure.  The king’s laissez-faire attitude, in regards to his daughter’s courtship, suggests his endorsement of the Western romantic tradition.  Likewise, his acts of upholding and enforcing the verbal pact between his daughter and the frog are representative of the Western heroic culture.

In Korean version, however, the tension produced as a result of the frog’s absurd desire (who is of the peasant class) to marry a nobleman’s daughter is directly played out between the aristocratic iron-willed father of the bride and the frog itself, demonstrating the class and power structure of Korean culture.  For instance, the frog in Korean version asks his mother to go to the neighboring noble to initiate a marriage proposal to one of his daughters.  The stanch noble, however, is “furiously angry at such a preposterous suggestion and order[s] his servant to beat the toad’s foster-mother,” manifesting the immense power the noble has over those of the peasant status (Zong 2).  Thwarted by the bride’s father, the frog tricks the noble into thinking his home is cursed because he refused the frog’s proposal.  Only after believing his house is cursed, the alarmed father asks his youngest daughter to marry the frog.  In other words, the bride’s father forestalls the marriage as long as possible until the issue exacerbates beyond his control.  Thus, in terms of matrimonial issues, the struggle between the peasant-class frog and the noble father of the bride exposes the un-crossable rigid class system of Korean society, and the enormous power/violence the Korean aristocrats can wield against its lower-class counterparts. 

Unlike the Korean Frog Prince, Chinese version subordinates the romance/marriage concerns of the princess and the frog under the political issues.  It foregrounds, rather, the political dynamics exchanged between the bride’s father who is a powerful emperor and the frog that has a mysterious militant prowess, implicating the primacy of the political issues above the civilian matters.  One day the frog sees “the imperial decree” that promises marriage to the princess for any man “who can drive away the enemy” (Chuang 2).  Desiring to marry the princess, the frog single-handedly defeats the enemy.  The king, however, while praising the frog’s heroism, about the promise he made regarding “the princess he sa[ys] nothing, for he ha[s] not the slightest intention of letting his daughter marry a frog” (Chuang 3).  He reinvents his original decree and re-announces a difficult contest that includes anyone who—irregardless to their military contributions during the invasion—aspires to marry the princess.  However, when the frog easily wins the contest again, the emperor once more deflects from the earlier reinvented rule by now restricting the winner to be human beings only: “No beast may do so,” he says (Chuang 3).  Here, the king is, in effect, the trickster who tricks the frog; he circumvents, cheats, and defies his own imperial decree.  Thus, the political drama played out between the bride’s father (the emperor) and the frog (the warrior) in the Chinese version epitomizes the tumultuous militant milieu of its society.  

In addition to the culturally unique demeanor/role the father of the bride plays, the bride’s characteristics portrayed in each of the variants correspond to her distinct socio-cultural construction.  In Grimm’s version, for example, the princess’s physicality is overtly stressed as it is a prized value in Western chivalric tradition: she is “so beautiful that [even] the sun itself…[i]s astonished whenever it sh[ows] in her face” (Hunt 1).  Her free-engaging dialogue with the frog is also indicative of liberal sociality of the West that is more inducive to women’s free expression than that of its Eastern counterparts.  For example, it is she, not her father, who avails herself to the frog.  She allows the frog to “be [her] companion…and sleep in [her] little bed,” if the frog will “bring [her the] golden ball” from the well (Hunt 1).  Although it is evident that she fears and obeys her father, yet she exhibits strong self-expression in the absence of her father’s presence.  For instance, when she is alone with the frog, she not only mocks the frog to “be quiet” and calls him “odious frog,” but also throws the frog “with all her might against the wall” (Hunt 2).  Then again, as the frog’s spell is broken by her throwing action and the frog transforms before her very eyes into a handsome prince, she willingly “sleeps” with him until “the sun aw[akes] them,” suggesting premarital intercourse (Hunt 3).  Thus, the temperament of the frog’s bride-to-be (the princess) captures in part the self-expressive lady of the chivalric tradition. 

In the Asian tales, however, because the availability of the bride is mostly arranged by the parents, especially in noble families, the bride’s individuality is less explored.  The bride’s disposition in Korean version (the youngest daughter of the nobleman) is textually delineated as merely being obedient, without expounding on her other qualities.  For example, when her father talks to his daughters about how one of his daughters needs to marry the frog, otherwise “the whole family [will be] in a most difficult position,” the narrator simply informs that the youngest daughter obeys the father’s command (Zong 2).  At other times, the narrative casts her elder sisters—who “rush…from the room in fury and humiliation”—as foils to her submissive character (Zong 3).  Unlike her sisters, she “agree[s] to marry the toad without the slightest hesitation” (Zong 3).  While the youngest daughter’s acquiescent nature is textually emphasized, contrary to her German counterpart, however, her physicality (her beauty, for example) is ignored; it is never mentioned.  In other words, her filial domestic qualities are textually magnified while her unique individuality is eclipsed by the tense power struggle played out between the two male characters—the frog and her father.  Thus, in Korean version, the youngest daughter who is docile and dutiful with few words—spoken only to say, “yes I’ll obey”—is epitomized as an Eastern female virtue.   

Likewise, in Chinese version, it would be unfathomable for the princess to promise herself in a marriage on her own, for she is the king’s political pawn to be pledged/rewarded wisely.  Textually, the princess of China’s character is the least developed/exposed among the three tales.  Like the Korean version, not only her physicality/beauty is never mentioned, but also her inner qualities are abstruse as well, for there is no dialogue between her and the king (or with anyone else, for that matter) to discern her personality.  As a result, the reader is clueless as to whether she even has other siblings like that of her Korean counterpart.  Thus, out of three tales, she is the most politically commoditized object for both the frog and the king.  Comparatively then, the provocative bed scene of the Grimm’s version and the acquiescent filial scene of the Korean version grant more female voice than their Chinese counterpart.  Chinese princess is completely devoid of individual will.  Textually, her underdeveloped individuality seems to reflect China’s protracted warrior history that invariably would have considered women’s vulnerable physicality at least in couple of ways: (1) as someone who needs to be protected, and thus must be guarded and cannot be exposed; and/or (2) as an object/pawn that can be traded for political ends thus needing no voice nor character development. 

Apart from the socio-culturally different brides, the varying intensity of tension exchanged between the bride’s father and the frog in the variants correlates with the type/level of the magical elements staged by the frog.  The Grimm’s version, due to the frog’s rather peaceful relation with the bride’s father, contains the least amount of supernatural element.  The only enchanting scene conjured up (presumably) by the frog is that of peace and romance after it has transformed into a handsome prince.  The morning after the frog and the princess’s sleeping scene, “a carriage came…with eight white horses,” and carries them to the kingdom of the prince’s royal parents (3).  Consequently, the fact that there is a minimum level of magical elements present in the Grimm’s version coupled with the fact that there is a lack of conflict between the frog and the bride’s father seems to illustrate the interrelationship between the two.

Unlike the Grimm’s version, the frog in Korean version must deal with the resolute father-in-law-to-be who adamantly rejects the frog’s marriage proposal to his youngest daughter.  Therefore, the degree of magic contrived and matched by the frog to level with and gain the consent from the unyielding father-in-law is more consuming than his German counterpart.  However, the type of the magic employed by the frog to gain the approval of the bride’s father is more a trickery than real magic, though the recipients believe it is real magic or some type of supernatural phenomena.  For example, after being cruelly rejected by the rich nobleman, the frog catches “a hawk and…Late that night he tie[s] a lighted lantern to its foot and cre[eeps] stealthily to the rich man’s house.” Then the frog stages the following trickery spectacle which the nobleman later describes it as a “nocturnal proclamation from the sky” (Zong 3):

He tie[s] a long string to the hawk’s foot and then climb[s] a tall persimmon tree which stood by the house.  Then he h[olds] the end of the string in his hand and release[s] the hawk to fly over the house.  As it fl[ies] into the air he solemnly declare[s] in a loud voice, ‘the master of this house shall listen to my words, for I have been dispatched by the Heavenly King.  To-day you rejected a proposal of marriage, and now you shall be punished for your arrogance.  I shall give you one day to reconsider your decision.  I advise you to accept the toad’s proposal, for if you do not, you, your brothers, and your children shall be utterly destroyed.’ (Zong 3)

Oblivious to the fact that this is a trick maneuvered by the frog, the nobleman believes that his house is hunted by a supernatural being.  Frightfully, he thus hands over his youngest daughter to be wed to the frog.  Interestingly, the first night after (not before) the wedding, the frog reveals his true identity to his wife by having her remove his skin, thereby exuding more magical presence than the previous trick scene.  Thus, in Korean version, the frog heavily relies on his magical scam to gain a wife who is above his status, illustrating the sheer difficulty of an aspiring social climber who seeks to promote himself in Korean culture. 

Among the three variants, the frog in Chinese version exerts the most amount of magical power, not only because he needs to outwit his cunning and powerful father-in-law-to-be (the emperor), but because the issues at hands are of much greater magnitude—a political unrest and war.  The Chinese frog is born with supernatural power, and in his vision sees great imminent peril for the country.  He volunteers as a soldier who can defend the empire single-handedly.  When “the emperor ask[s]..how many men and horses he would need,” the frog says “not a single horse or a single man,” but “a heap of hot, glowing embers.” Then the frog continues to display the following mystical power/bravado with the combustible items he has requested (Chuang 3):

The frog s[i]ts before the fire devouring the flames by the mouthful for three days and three nights.  He [eats] till his belly [i]s as big and round as a bladder full of fat.  By now the city [i]s in great danger…The emperor [i]s terribly apprehensive, but the frog…calmly [goes] on swallowing fire and flame.  Only after the third day had passed d[oes] he go to the top of the city wall and look at the situation.  There, ringing the city, [are] thousands of soldiers and horses…As soon as the gate…open[s] the invaders pour[s] in.  The frog [i]s above them in the gate tower and, as they pass…underneath, he coolly and calmly sp[its] fire down on them, searing countless men and horses.  They [the enemy] fle[e] back in disorder. (Chuang 3).

Just as he had alleged, the frog wins the war without a single horse or man, and “the emperor [i]s overjoyed” (Chuang 3).  The emperor, however, violates his own imperial decree by summoning a new contest, whereby only human beings are allowed to win and claim the princess.  This time, the frog meets the king’s ploy by outwitting him with magical metamorphosis; he disguises himself as a stalwart man, wins the contest, and marries the princess.  Yet after the marriage, he changes back to a frog, which distresses the king gravely.  Still, at night before the princess, he secretly transforms back into a handsome man, thus dizzily shifting his magical power back and forth to distraught the king, while pleasing the princess.  Hence, if the nature/scale of the frog’s magic varies among the three tales, what remains constant is that it is used to augment its romantic stance—to overcome the bride’s father’s opposition (except for the Grimm’s version).

  If the magical elements deployed by the three culturally diverse frogs are distinctive, the different endings of the variants are just as divergent.  The ending of the Grimm’s version, for example, introduces an unexpected character called the “Faithful Henry,” the young king’s faithful servant, who “had been [so] unhappy when his master was changed into a frog that he had caused three iron bands to be laid round his heart, lest it should burst with grief and sadness” (Hunt 3).  This character conducts the carriage of eight white horses, ushering the prince and princess into the kingdom.  The inclusion of the “eleventh-hour character” (the Faithful Henry) in the last scene, who resembles a courteous faithful knight, reinforces both the heroic and romantic Western culture. 

In Korean version, the tale’s ending has extraordinary filial strings attached; the son (the frog) loves his parents equally (if not more than) as his bride.  The following passage shows that the handsome young man (previously frog) ascending to heaven carrying both his wife and his parents:

The bridegroom stripped off his toad skin and became a man…and waved his hand in the air.  Then a white haired old man appeared and he bade him bring one hundred deer.  When the deer came he drove them homeward…Then he released all the deer and rose up to Heaven, carrying his bride on his back and his parents on his arms. (Emphasis added, Zong 3).

This spectacle of “strong family bondage” theatrically demonstrates how a good son in Korea never neglects his parents, even when he is yet in a state of honeymoon bliss.  What’s amply stressed in this last scene is that not only Korean sons must love their earthly parents, but also physically care for them.  Thus, in Korean version, “the virtue of filial son” is the moral of The Frog Prince. 

Lastly, the ending of Chinese version is not romantic nor filial, but political; it entails frog’s brilliantly executed coup de tat.  Because the frog after winning the marriage with the princess transforms back into a frog, the king is tremendously distressed (He is unaware of the fact that at night, the frog is a handsome husband for the princess).  One day, the princess, unable to hold the secret any longer, reveals it to her father.  Upon this revelation, the king begs the frog not to wear the frog skin during the day, as well.  The frog cunningly rejects the appeal by saying that the frog skin helps him maintain his youth and live for thousands of years.  The king, who, too, wants to live for thousands of years, demands the frog: “Let me try it on!” (Chuang 5).  “‘Yes, Sire,’ replies the frog and ma[kes] haste to discard his skin.  The emperor smile[s] gleefully. [as] He t[akes] off his dragon-embroidered robe and put[s] on the frog-skin.  But then he could not take it off again!  [Meanwhile,] the frog put[s] on the imperial robe and bec[omes] the emperor.  His father-in-law remain[s] a frog forever” (Chuang 6).  Thus, the denouement of the Chinese tale shows that the politically strategic and persevering frog ousts the deceptive emperor, and he, himself becomes the next emperor of China.

Of this bamboozling ending of Chinese Frog Prince, Kun Mchog Dge Legs, who has surveyed Chinese fairytale characters, sheds light onto why this frog prince, who is politically driven, “at times act[s]..as [a] trickster” (Legs 6).  Legs’s report lists extensive examples of Tibetan fairytale heroes who are political tricksters/rebels (probably due to Tibetan’s precarious political stance it occupies in China) (Legs 6).  Among the Tibetan fairytale heroes, for example, Nyi, not only struggles for equality, but regularly tricks the king: “in the story of ‘The king Imitates a Dog and Barks,’ Nyi…tricks the king into barking like a dog and, in ‘White Excrement from the Sky,’ he tricks the king into eating his excrement’ (Kun 58).  By understanding that the trickster heroes are a common component of Chinese fairytales due to its sociopolitical milieu, one can better grasp the implicit meanings embedded in the Chinese tales.

As the cultural analysis of the three variants of The Frog Prince has thus shown, it is by examining the differences unique to each culture, rather than what is similar, that most powerfully inspires and enlarges multicultural sensibility in the reader.  If the Grimm’s version embodies the values of the Western chivalric culture, the Korean version reveals its social structure and values of the East, such as class and filiality.  By the same token, understanding the historical subtexts of Chinese fairytales such as The Frog Prince, one can extract hidden meanings behind the story—China’s politically discordant milieu that engenders revels, satirists, or tricksters.  Thus, by reading fairytales with geo-political perspective, one not only broadens his/her cultural views, but can experience an increase of multicultural tolerance and acceptance at heart. 

Works Cited

Carlyon, David. “The Trickster as Academic Comfort Food.” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures. 25 (2002):14-18.

Chuang. “The Frog Who Became an Emperor.” Folk Tales From China. Peking: Foregin Languages Press, 1958

Hunt, Margaret. The Frog Prince. Brothers Grimm

Legs, Shis, and Stuart, Kevin. “Tibetan Tricksters.” Asian Folklore Studies. 58 (1999): 5-30.

Ondoru, Yawa. “The Toad-Bridegroom.” Folk Tales From Korea. Zong Bog-Sun. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952

Weber, Eugen. “Fairies and Hard Facts: The Reality of Folktales.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 42 (1981): 93-113.

Modern Men’s Narcissistic Syndrome in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and James Joyce’s “The Dead”

Modern Men’s Narcissistic Syndrome in

Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and James Joyce’s “The Dead”

Modernism puts its foremost trust and emphasis in men, potentiating narcissism.  With Nietzche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” the modernists live for the acquisition/preservation of earthly glory, as opposed to entrance into heaven.  In place of old, familiar belief systems, modernists are inundated by contradictory, provocative, and complex new ideas.  In fact, Nietzsche, in Will to Power, lays out a formula for an ideal modern-man which conflicts with the age-old, Christian belief, overtly advocating egocentric, primordial instincts: “the love of power is the demon of men.  Let them have everything and they [will be]…happy – as happy as men and demons can be” (Nietzsche 397).  However, modern men’s new intense emphasis on self-gratification, that defies old morals, subjects their minds to perpetual restlessness, disorientation, and fragmentation.  In fact, Nietzsche, in Will to Power, admits that “disintegration characterizes this time.”  In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and James Joyce’s “The Dead,” the two modern protagonists, Kurtz and Gabriel respectively, struggle for worldly excellence and glory.  However, by completely subscribing to dubious modern ideologies, namely colonialism and universalism, their minds disintegrate and their spirits paralyze, crippling their ability to feel love except for themselves. 

Both Kurtz and Gabriel are archetypal, exceptional men of the modern world with extraordinary intelligence and eloquence.  For instance, Kurtz, according to those who know him is so eloquent that people “who ha[s] heard him speak once” (74) becomes “his friend” (74).  The Russian sailor tells Marlowe that he will “never, never meet such a man again” (63).  He continues: “You ought to have heard him recite poetry – his own too it was, he told me. Poetry!… Oh, he enlarged my mind!” (63). In fact, because Kurtz can linguistically “take care” (67) of the evil motives into a “right motives” (67), he attains an honorable job: The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs “entrust[s] him with the making of a report for its future guidance” (50).  This suggests that Kurtz’s words, spoken or written, have power.

However, if Kurtz’s gift of tongue helps him advance in his career, the same talent also weakens his intimacy with his fiancé.  His Intended (his fiancé) tells Marlowe that although “others knew” (75) of Kurtz’s “vast plans” (75), she “could not…understand” (75) his abstract ideas.  Obviously, to Kurtz, it is not important that his Intended understands his “vast plans” (75), otherwise he would have made it plain to her.  While he shows no interest in augmenting his intimacy by having his partner’s mind in union with him, he shows excessive anxiety over his “pamphlet” (51) that is bound to help him advance in his career.  Even in his dying moments, Kurtz asks Marlowe to “take good care of ‘[his] pamphlet’…as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career” (51).  Furthermore, Kurtz’s litany of “elevated sentiments” (67) – “My Ivory, my Intended, my station, my career, [and] my ideas” (49) – shows his primeval, human greed and egocentrism.  Interestingly, his second sentiment, the epithet “My Intended” (49), not only linguistically suspends his fiancé in the air, but also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when his “intentions” to marry her never materialize.  Moreover, the fact that his first sentiment is “ivory,” not “his Intended,” symbolically parallels his priority, that to him, human intimacy is an excess and that an object “ivory” is the foremost passion.

Like Kurtz, the fact that Gabriel is a writer evinces in his linguistic mastery.  Gabriel, like Kurtz, is obsessed with his literary career: “he love[s] to feel the covers and turn over the pages of [his] newly printed books” (128).  As a man of accomplishment and “superior education” (122), he is asked to give a speech at the party.  In his intellectual arrogance, he fusses over “the lines from Robert Browning, for he fear[s] they would be above the heads of his hearers” (121).  Indeed, his speech is not understood by all.  Just as Kurtz’s Intended is not able to decipher what Kurtz’s “vast plans” (75) are, Gabriel’s high-sounding words, to his aunts, are nothing but emotion-fillers that puts a “large smile on Aunt Julia’s face and…tears…[in] Aunt Kate’s eyes” (139).  Though his Aunt Julia, “d[oes] not understand” (139) his speech, out of courtesy, “she look[s] up, smiling, at Gabriel, who continue[s] in the same vein” (139).  Furthermore, the fact that he uses the possessive “I” fourteen times in his brief speech shows that he, like Kurtz, is an egotist, who is more interested in gratifying himself with the speech than his audience.  Indeed, he does not worry that the meaning of the theatrical oration he delivers is not understood by “two ignorant old women” (his Aunts) (130).  Just as Kurtz’s ideological rhetoric alienates him from his Intended, Gabriel’s abstract words, printed or spoken, distances him from his people. 

Moreover, Gabriel’s words, like Kurtz, are foreboding.  Just as Kurtz’s epithet, “My Intented” (67), encapsulates the unrequital nature of their intimacy, Gabriel’s act of naming his wife’s elegiac moment of her dead lover, Michael Furry, as a “Distant Music” epitomizes the distant and dissonant nature of his marriage.  While Gretta listens to the singing, Gabriel studies her and wonders – “[w]hat is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of ?” (143) – then in his mind, he mutely names it “Distant Music” (143), because that is what “he would call the picture if he were a painter” (143).  Henceforth, he discovers that it is Michael Furry, not him, who is alive in Gretta’s heart.  He is thus symbolically reduced to death in her mind, spiritually distanced from her.  His wife has not loved him, but Michael, who died for her many distant years ago.  He mournfully realizes that his marriage has been a life of spiritual paralysis, because it lacks the spiritual union based on a deep love and passion, which he is incapable of.  

Although Gabriel can care less about his Aunts’ senile minds, Miss Ivors’s critical view of him “unnerve[s] him” (130).  Miss Ivors is “ashamed” (127) of Gabriel, for in her opinion, his commentary in The Daily Express is treacherous, shamefully exposing his “West Brinton[ness]” (127), when he is, in fact, an Irish.  When Miss Ivors demands an explanation of his unpatriotic commentary, as intelligent and eloquent as he is, he “d[oes] not know how to meet her charge” (128); instead, blurts out some ridiculous, childish disclaimers like “Irish is not [his] language” (129) or that “[he] is sick of [his] own country” (129).  Worst yet, contradictory to his usual composure and years of linguistic training, he “glance[s] right and left nervously and…under the ordeal…mak[es] a blush invade his forehead” (129).  This shows the addled state of his mind that is characteristic of a modern man – a man torn between conflicting identities and loyalties.  He is angry because Miss Ivors’s patriotic condemnation of him undermines his self-assurance and pleasure of being “a universal man,” his self-constructed identity.  Albeit unable to argue intelligibly the meaning of such a title to Miss Ivors, he feels that she has “no right to call him a West Briton before people” (129), not only because he is “sick of [his] own country” (129), but because he believes petty nationalism blocks progress.  

Soon after Miss Ivors (Gabriel’s worst nightmare) leaves the party, Gabriel overtly expresses his anti-nationalism.  He vows that “[he] will not linger in the past” (139), namely, in the memory of his country, Ireland.  Indeed, his speech attempts to indoctrinate progressive ideas.  Sounding much like Nietzche, he exhorts the audience that “[they] have…living duties and…rightly claims [to their] strenuous endeavors” (139).  His speech intimates that human beings have divine power to dominate and control all elements of this world.  Also, Gabriel’s Nietzche-like observation that this new generation is “a thought-tormented age” (138) is a fitting self-image, since he is in a perpetual restlessness with divided royalty between two nations, Ireland versus Britain.  Just as modernistic ideals that denounce mediocrity sends Kurtz alone to Congo to prove his superiority, Gabriel’s fear of localism, namely, Irish regionalism, socially displaces him from his ethnic familiarities – Irish language and culture.  Thus, exceptional modern men, like Kurtz and Gabriel, are often exceptional eccentrics, psychologically and literally living in the “X-dimensional space” – their space of mental and literal exile. 

 If Miss Ivors is Gabriel’s nightmarish critic whose rebuke undermines the very core of Gabriel’s belief system, “ivory” is Kurtz’s worst “nightmare” (64) that leads to his spiritual and physical obliteration.  If Gabriel is an internationalist, traveling to and embracing the cultures of France, Belgium, and Germany, Kurtz, on the other hand, is a colonialist in Congo, uprooting the native’s culture and devastating its natural resources.  Before Congo, Kurtz, like Michael Fury, was a romantic “musician” (71).  In Congo, however, obsessed with ivory that renders him money, status, and power, the “original” (50), romantic Kurtz transforms into a mercenary, evil madman, who “take[s] a high seat amongst the devils of the land” (49).  While Gretta genuinely grieves for Michael Fury (for he truly loved her), Kurtz’s Intended erroneously grieves for Kurtz’s death, not knowing that he had a more prominent, new lover in Congo, “Ivory.”  In fact, when Kurtz’s Ivory enterprise is endangered, his pleading to his mistress shows that ivory has become his overriding purpose in life: “Save me – save the ivory…Don’t tell me! Save me!” (61).  Thus, Kurtz’s pursuit of ivory “alone in the wilderness” (65) gradually eclipses his original identity, until “he…go[es] mad” (65) and becomes unsalvageable.

While Gabriel aspires to be a universal man, Kurtz has already earned the title, “universal genius” (71), from those who know him.  Unlike Gabriel, however, Kurtz’s “inten[tions] to accomplish great things” (67) shows “no restraint…and no fear” (66).  Instead of limiting his material desires to an ideal amount, he, like the zealous modernists who denounce moderation, pushes for excess, lacking all restraints in hoarding wealth, fame, and distinction.  In his over-confidence, Kurtz even instructs Marlowe how to gain fame and wealth: “You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability” (67, emphasis added).  Kurtz even aspires “to have kings meet him at railway stations on his return” (67) to England.  Marlowe says that Kurtz has “nothing either above or below him” (65).  Indeed, he “ha[s] kicked himself loose of the earth” (65), impersonating God to those around him and to himself. 

According to Marlowe, Kurtz, as a deified figure in his ultimate “moment of complete knowledge” (68), “ha[s] summed up – he ha[s] judged” (69) the Eurocentric colonialist sentiment in one word: “The horror!” (69).  Likewise, Gabriel’s ultimate epiphany, “that such a feeling must be love” (152), upon realizing that a seventeen-year-old Michael’s love for his wife had been more triumphant and pure than his, forces him to see the hollowness of his intellectual achievements.  Thus, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and James Joyce’s Dubliners both explore the effects of modernism which create narcissistic milieu for Kurtz and Gabriel where their body and spirit disintegrate.  They are both incapable of love because they are infatuated with themselves.  To them, intimacy is an excess they can not afford.  Instead of trying to extract a meaningful purpose in life from human relationships, they retreat to the self’s interior – to private experience and excellence – as the source of their ultimate happiness.  However, the fact that they are ultimately miserable, and not happy, exposes the ideological fallacy of Eurocentric propagandas of the day, namely, colonialism and universalism.

Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Norton & Company, 1988.

Joyce, James. “The Dead.” Dubliners. New York: Dover Publications, 1991.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Will to Power.” Western Civilization. Perry, Chase, et al., eds. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2000.

The Happy Endings of Fairy Tales That Are Defined By Men

The happy and victorious endings of the many fairy tales, on the surface, suggest to the young female readers that if one is true to oneself, and endure to the end, that virtue will be rewarded, evil punished.  Beneath the celebratory mood of the triumphant endings, however, there are unsettling facts for women readers, namely, that men’s sexual desires and their definitions of female beauty have direct implications on whether the protagonists will suffer or be redeemed as virtuous women. 

Indeed, in many of the stories, it is the sexual desire of the protagonist’s father, who either by desiring to be re-married or by remarrying, brings severe afflictions to his daughter.  For instance, in both Brothers Grimm’s and Lin Lan’s Cinderella stories, the intervention of stepmothers and stepsisters via fathers’ remarriages mark the beginning of the protagonists’ wretched states that test their patience and virtues. 

On the other hand, in both Perrault’s “Donkeyskin” and “The Princess in the Suit of Leather,” the protagonists’ fathers’ uncontrollable, carnal desires to be remarried not only lead to incestuous schemes against their own daughters, but also instigate the ensuing miseries in their daughters lives.  If fathers’ “burning” (110) and “mad” (110) libidinous desires are responsible for their daughters’ dire predicaments, the sexual “desires” (113) and tastes of the princes and other male suitors dictate whether they will ignore or mercifully lend a hand to these innocent female victims. 

Donkeyskin, for example, if she did not conveniently fit into the prince’s (male) definition of beauty, would have indefinitely remained in a wretched state, “laugh[ed] and shouted” (115) at by everyone as “that dirty little fright” (115).  We learn why the prince decides to save Donkeyskin from her plight: “while he was gazing at her [Donkeyskin’s]…lovely profile, her warm, ivory skin, her fine features, and her fresh youthfulness” (113), was “at the mercy of his desires [that] he almost lost his breath” (113). 

In fact, Donkeyskin, well aware of the exterior qualities that men seek in women, “insisted that she [have] some time to change her clothes before appearing before her lord and master” (115), who holds the ultimate power to redeem and reinstate her as once more a princess.  Thus, the happy endings of many fairy tales subliminally suggest that it is largely the women’s physical/sexual qualities in the eyes of the libidinous males that ultimately dictate the virtues/fates of women.

What I learned From the Film “Forget Baghdad”

What I learned From the Film “Forget Baghdad”

Professor Ella Shohat’s presentation and discussion about Iraqi Jews living in Israel was an eye-opener for me.  In the film, the views of the four leftists, the former communist Iraqi Jews, were represented in the context of both Iraq’s anti-semitism and Israel’s Zionism.  While the specific experiences of these characters in the film vary, the persecutions they suffered as a group manifest that Israel is not a monolithic, homogenous state, but a nation of diverse subcultures with its fare share of disruptive forces from within. 

While the four characters’ testimonial accounts of the brutality inflicted on them by the Iraqis nationalists are not surprising, Zionists’ social injustices against the Iraqi Jewish who are their own kinsmen, especially the suspected bombing incident, were shocking.  For example, the Iraqi’s expelled Jews whose only choice was to immigrate to Israel,” instead of compassion from their ancestor’s homeland, received a cold, inhumane welcome.  Furthermore, instead of descent housing, food, and other urgent provisions, Israel negligently allowed the Iraqi refugees to virtually starve and sleep cold in the open wilderness.  If Israel’s not providing descent shelters and fair jobs to its Iraqi refugees is a literal enactment of racism against its own kinsmen, stereotypical portrayals of Iraqiness in books, films and other communicative devices further devastate and fragment the already battered Iraqi Jewish community in Israel.  For instance, the children of Iraqi Jews, not only internalize their ethnic stereotypes, become antagonistic toward their own family members and cultures.  Arguably, then, for the Iraqi Jews who were expelled/immigrated to Israel, the worst kind of perpetrators of social injustice were, and still are, the orthodox Jewish neighbors in this so called “a holy land.”

Indeed, the film made me realize that racism is not only manifested among the obviously different races, but that it is a universal phenomenon even among one’s own cultural/religious groups.  Most notably, the stories of these four men in the film informed me and the other audience that because Iraq is Israel’s national enemy, even after many years of Iraqi Jew’s integration and assimilation into Israel’s mainstream culture, the stereotypical prejudice and mentality of the dominant group cannot be eradicated.  Overall, the film converted me into a critique of man-made ideologies, such as Nazism, Communism, and Zionism, which all have negatively affected the lives of the Iraqi Jews.