Monthly Archives: January 2014

Northanger Abbey

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I’ve tried to read Austen a few times over the years but never had much luck, and I expected Northanger Abbey to be much the same as her other works.

Not so! Although the first few pages were a bit tricky, I got through them and really enjoyed the read. There were a few things about this reading that surprised me right off the bat.

Firstly, I think some of the points Austen is making are really interesting. She chooses to make them as part of a novel, but I think some of the things she is saying would perhaps be better put as some kind of essay? It’s hard to know, though, whether they would have had the same response had they been formatted differently.

For instance, she breaks the fourth wall a lot when writing, especially towards the end. I’m curious as to who the narrator really is in this case – is it Austen herself, or some fictionalized version of her?

Also, the relationship between Catherine and Henry is strange, to say the least. You can’t tell if he likes her for most of the book, and while she’s at Northanger Abbey he pretty much friendzones her. Then, eventually, his sister says, “hey Henry, this girl really likes you so maybe you should like her back?” and he goes “oh yeah, we should get married”. What? This is really confusing.

“I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought.” (p. 180)

Then again, Henry seems to understand the details of female friendship more than most guys do! “You feel, I suppose, that, in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy.” (p. 152) This whole speech pretty much sums up most girls’ feelings when they lose a close female friend, and you can tell that although the speaker at this point is a man, the author is a woman who gets it!

Lastly, I’d just like to comment on the ending of the book. “I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” (p. 187) This follows a paragraph about whether the General was, in fact, being a good parent by sending Catherine away, etc, and strengthening their knowledge of each other. While I don’t think it was good parenting per se, none of the parenting in this novel seems to be particularly productive. Mrs. Morland tries to console her daughter and fails, so she gives up and starts being critical. Mr. Morland is practically useless. Mrs. Allen only cares about her clothes, and Mr. Allen is also useless. Mrs. Thorpe is just plain annoying and the General seems to order his children around more than he parents them. Is this what parenting was like in Austen’s time?

That’s all for now!

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Gatsby, is that you?

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Might I begin this blog post with this statement: Not too shabby Northanger Abbey. (Oh hey, that rhymed!)

At first, not having read the summary on the back, I walked right into that thing without a clue of what to expect. Come to think of it, I’m still uncertain of the era I pictured the story taking place is the one Austen intended us to envision.

On that note, Northanger Abbey reminded me of The Great Gatsby. Here are some of the reasons why:

  • the lavish social events they attended resembled Gatsby’s over-the-top parties
  • the intriguing Mr.Tilley and/or General Tilley bore loose resemblance to Mr.Gatsby himself
  • the entourage that Catherine hung out with behaved quite similarly to Daisy’s group of friends, with the same pompous and carefree manner

This is probably one of the contributing factors as to why I liked this story. Even though it didn’t take place in the 1920’s like The Great Gatsby did, the similarities between the settings sometimes made me picture the plot taking place in the 20’s (yes, I really do love the 20’s and the fact that the pop culture of 2013 saw many revivals of the splendor of that decade).

Another thing I really enjoyed was the roller coaster of frustration it made me feel. Early on, since we were introduced to our main character, I had developed an attachment to her, whether I liked it or not. Every time something went right I would be shared some of her emotion only to be disappointed again by whatever plot twists and misfortunes Catherine had to face. Maybe this is me being an overly sentimental girl but I really liked how there was romance in this story! I’m a sucker for a love story, even if this one wasn’t as epic as Stefan and Elena from the Vampire Diaries (a tv show, for those of you who don’t know) or cheesy (but we love them anyway), like a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Can I also say that the huge paragraphs on the pages where it looked like a brick wall of words were just so horrible to see as soon as you turned the page. I’m guessing it looked like this because of the way the dialogue was written within those paragraphs too. But that’s just what I’m used to.

 

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General education

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At the beginning of the term I was looking forward to Northanger Abbey/Shawn of the Dead, even though I’ve tried to read Jane Austen in the past (including this book) and I’ve always found her books difficult to get through. I just figured that maybe I stood a chance this time, and I managed to make it through without it being too bad. (I was actually pretty surprised when I finished reading the first page and realized it made perfect sense to me. Unfortunate true story.)

I’ve heard/read that this book is satirical, and every now and then I would come across a bit that I’d mark with just that, like:

“…what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can?” (9)

“A woman…if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.” (81)

“‘…I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.’ / ‘Bravo! – an excellent satire on modern language.’” (96)

in addition, of course, to the whole bit where Catherine tracks down the cabinet and discovers that it’s full of bills.

I also really appreciate the part where Catherine finds out Isabella’s brother might be in love with her and Isabella says this:

“‘I do not think any thing would justify me in wishing you to sacrifice all your happiness merely to oblige my brother…who perhaps…might be just as happy without you, for people seldom know what they would be at….But, above all things, my dear Catherine, do not be in a hurry. Take my word for it, that if you are in too great a hurry, you will certainly live to repent it. Tilney says, there is nothing people are so often deceived in, as the state of their own affections, and I believe he is very right.’” (106)

Just because Isabella manages somehow to use the words of the person Catherine actually likes to try and persuade her into considering marrying Isabella’s brother instead. Unless I’ve read it incorrectly.

I’m pretty sure this has taken me more than half an hour, but one more thought: I’m not sure how this reading for me was different from the other times I’ve tried and failed. I’ve said this before, but there’s something about having to read a book for class that makes reading it unenjoyable (for me), and that hasn’t been the case yet with any of the Arts One books. Miranda also mentioned in one of her posts that “It is probably inevitable that, sometimes, you will fail to read something”. What I got out of that post was that “readerly failures” change with, well, the person. So I have to wonder what’s changed.

Thanks for reading, everyone. (Also, we should play that never-have-I-ever-been-able-to-read game that Miranda talks about.)

Antigone

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antigone

It is not always entirely clear who (if anyone) or what is the tragic hero(ine) in Sophocles’s Antigone, or what exactly is the nature of their tragedy. One might have thought that the tragic figure was the eponymous Antigone herself, but the Chorus suggests otherwise. Their focus, at least as the play ends, is rather on her uncle, King Kreon, who likewise seems to feels the burden of tragedy lies mainly on himself: “No, no! / I’m rising on horror, and horror flies. / Why don’t you hack me down? / Has someone a sword? / I and grief are blended. I am grief” (71). And as for the cause of his downfall, the Chorus has already proposed that “Kreon has shown that there is no greater evil / than men’s failure to consult and to consider” (69). Hence perhaps their conclusion, that “For their grand schemes or bold words / the proud pay with great wounds” (72).

And yet Kreon shows little of the complexity and ambiguity that we associate with the tragic hero. For modern audiences especially (but not only), the focus of the play is surely throughout on Antigone, torn between the edicts of the state and the responsibilities of kinship. She is, on the whole, a far more sympathetic figure, even if–or perhaps because–we recognize from the start (as she certainly does) that her principled stand is bound to lead to her destruction. She sacrifices herself for the sake of loyalty to her dead brother, whose corpse Kreon has declared should remain unburied because he died fighting against his own city. But though it may just be true that the Chorus’s final lines are directed at her, too, it is surely a harsh judgment to blame her for “grand schemes or bold words” or to accuse her above all of pride. Or rather, though she has indeed spoken boldly and refused to renounce her pride in familial identification with her kin, to pinpoint these sins seems to miss the mark or misjudge the tone of all that has gone before. We may justifiably feel that the Chorus perhaps hasn’t really understood Antigone, even by the play’s close. Which leaves us with a curious sense of irresolution at the end.

One response to this problem is to point out how wrong, perhaps in this play above all, is the common notion that the audience is expected to identify with the Greek tragic Chorus. For in Antigone there is from the outset something discordant and misguided about their pronouncements. That sense that they are somehow out of tune and don’t really understand is palpable at the time, and not merely in hindsight. Indeed, unlike Oedipus the King, this is not a play about hindsight at all–at least not for Antigone herself. She knows exactly what she is getting into, and we do, too, when she declares to her sister, Ismene: “Leave me alone, with my hopeless scheme; / I’m ready to suffer for it and to die” (25). Kreon may not anticipate the results of his ill-thought edict (and so for him it is perhaps a tragedy of hindsight), and the Chorus may be likewise blind to what is coming, but for the rest of us this is a play that holds few if any surprises. We see a woman march, with open eyes, towards her fate. To put this another way, we could say that this is not a play about hegemony. At least, it has to be admitted that Antigone is outside of any hegemonic relation; this is what constitutes her subalternity.

But is then Antigone in fact a tragedy of hegemony by default? It is Kreon’s tragedy precisely that he thinks he can institute a hegemonic pact with his citizens? And perhaps the Chorus’s tragedy that they think so, too… and indeed continue to think so to the last, never less than in their conviction that the moral of the story is that rulers should rule with more consultation. Here, then, is perhaps the source of our distance from the Chorus, our strange sense that their discourse has little purchase on the actions we see unfold before us, little relation to the speeches that other characters make–and that this is the case right from the start and on beyond the play’s closing lines. The tragedy of hegemony is its irrelevance, the way in which it (here, literally) misses the plot and continues to do so.

Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

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Freud, Dora

In one of his final essays, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937), Sigmund Freud writes that “it almost looks as if analysis were the third of those ‘impossible’ professions in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results. The other two, which have been known much longer, are education and government.” In some ways this is a rather dispiriting conclusion to a life’s work, though it fits with the melancholy tone of much of Freud’s later pronouncements, written in exile from Nazism and in the shadow of impending world war. See for instance the last sentence tacked on to the end of Civilization and its Discontents in 1931, tempering its hitherto relatively upbeat conclusion about the return of Eros: “But who can foresee with what success and with what result?”

At the same time, there is also a resigned determination here reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Just because an enterprise is doomed to failure doesn’t mean it’s not worth undertaking. The fact that something is impossible doesn’t necessarily mean we should cease striving towards it. Few would suggest we give up on education or government however much they, too, are destined to “unsatisfying results.” Like Sisyphus, we roll the stone up the hill once more.

What is interesting is that, for all the confident tone of Freud’s earlier writings, in which he presents himself as the heroic scientist or explorer uncovering an entire new world, failure was always inscribed into the heart of psychoanalysis. Famously, he seldom held up much hope for a cure to the human condition or the various psychological maladies that afflict us. As early as Studies in Hysteria (1895), the most that he felt able to promise was to transform “hysterical misery into everyday unhappiness.” Moreover, his first published case study, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), ostensibly presented as the confirmation of certain of Freud’s insights on dream analysis and symptomology, is also manifestly a narrative of a failed analysis. After a mere couple of months, the patient gives up on the treatment as though quitting a bad habit at year’s end: “she said good-bye to me very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year, and–came no more” (100).

Not that Freud is all that apologetic for his failure with Dora. If anything, quite the contrary: he takes her decision to break off the analysis as confirmation of his interpretation of her symptoms, and of his theories in general. For the problem with Dora is her “craving for revenge” (101), exacted against all those who show her affection. She treats those around her (particularly the men) with what Freud calls “an almost malignant vindictiveness” (96). No surprise, then, that he should characterize her behavior with him as “an unmistakable act of vengeance on her part” (100). That is just how she is. And the fact that Freud should be receiving the same treatment as she doled out to her mother, her father, and family friend “Herr K.” merely demonstrates that the analysis is working, and that transference is setting in. After all, Freud concludes, “No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed” (100).

There are some harsh words here reserved for Dora. It is as though it were a case more of exorcism than of therapy. No doubt the young woman in question would have her own choice words to say in return. But she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t: continuing the analysis legitimates her treatment as much as breaking it off also ended up doing; when she is on the couch, all her protestations are taken simply as instances of denial. And at the end of the day, when this “talking cure” is written up, it is Freud who does all the talking (and none of the cure).

The sad irony is that the reason Dora comes (or is brought) to Freud in the first place concerns a story she tells that nobody will believe. She has been out for a stroll with an older man (Herr K.), who apparently propositioned her, getting a slap across the face for his efforts. K., who is married (though in a somewhat sordid ménage a quatre his wife turns out to be Dora’s father’s mistress), vehemently denies that anything of the sort took place. And though Freud believes Dora’s story, he does so only to turn the tables on Dora’s own denial that she was interested in K. Isn’t she secretly in love with him after all, the analyst asks? Doesn’t she turn him down only because she was jealous that he had (it seems) earlier also tried to force himself on his family’s governess? Or was she simply playing hard to get? After all, she didn’t even mention the scene until a fortnight afterwards, as she was waiting “so as to see whether he would repeat his proposals; if he had, [she] would have concluded that he was in earnest, and did not mean to play with [her] as he had done with the governess” (98). K. himself, meanwhile, can hardly be blamed for being disappointed at Dora’s apparent rejection of him: surely “he must long before have gathered from innumerable small signs that he was secure of the girl’s affections” (39).

All this has understandably raised the hackles of feminists. Not least because it goes against the grain of the prevailing mantra by which men are (rightly) reminded that women’s agency should be respected: “No means no.” What to do then with a psychoanalytic theory that claims so definitively that “there is no such thing at all as an unconscious ‘No'” (50) and that therefore advises the “inquirer” not to “rest content with the first ‘No’ that crosses his path” (18)?

One response might be to suggest that there is a distinction between an encounter by a lake (or in a bar or wherever) and the analytic couch. Out and about, in normal circumstances, we should take a “no” at face value; perhaps therapy presents a space where such denials can and should be questioned and challenged. But how distinct are those two settings really? Isn’t the danger that the analyst repeats the traumatic situation that inspired the call for help (and this is manifestly his aim: “a whole series of psychological experiences are revived” through transference [106]) only also to replicate the cultural prejudices that were the true source of the trauma… “You did want it, didn’t you?” There are few points at which Freud, for all his scandalous iconoclasm, more clearly reveals himself to be a man of his time, and psychoanalysis to be an agent of normalization and (ultimately) repression. So no wonder its work is never done: as analytic theory itself tells us, repression is never either total or complete.