Hi everyone,
In response to the post “Your Favourite Novels in the Course? And Why?” I found myself discussing my initial annoyance of Maggie in her younger years. I mentioned how Maggie’s relationship with Tom reminds me of my childhood relationship with my older brother. Eliot encapsulates very accurately the despair incurred with being a kid; a subject with limited agency, born into a world that exists independently of their input. Maggie as a child, is powerless to change the world around her, and is subject to follow the rules that have been pre-established by those around her.
The topic of restricted freedom is one that I have been studying in an existentialism class, and I thought that it can be relevant in an analysis of Mr. Tulliver’s behaviour in his society (I have written my term paper on Mr. Tulliver’s inability to fully grasp the switch between the shifting economies in his world. So, his understanding of the world is fresh in my mind, though I hope others will find this as interesting as I do.).
Mr. Tulliver is living in what the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir would describe in her book the “Ethics of Ambiguity” as a “serious-man.” The serious-man sees the world as containing objective meanings and values independently of their own perceptions. The serious-man restricts their own freedom by blinding themselves to seeing the possibility of alternative values, different from what they have arbitrarily decided to be absolute in society. Mr. Tulliver is a serious-man in that he fiercely believes the values of a gift-economy to be the values instilled in society. He limits his freedom by wholeheartedly forcing himself to live purely in accordance to gift-economy values; which emphasizes exchange sustained by positive interpersonal relations. Mr. Tulliver ignores that he is responsible for projecting his values onto the world, seeing them as existing independently of him within the society. The serious-man chooses to believe that regardless of anyone’s attitude towards it, the society’s values are born of the society itself.
De Beauvoir finds the serious-man is dissolved when they acknowledge the “world’s” values are contradicted by another set of values in the society. In this instance the serious-man is forced to recognize their own agency in the creation of the meaning and values in the world. This contradiction is precisely what happens to Mr. Tulliver, as his poor financial decisions, made by appealing to gift-economy values in capitalism leads him to perpetual failure. When faced with this contradiction, Mr. Tulliver remains steadfastly serious, maintaining his gift-economy values and simply becoming increasingly “puzzle[ed]” by his world. His destruction is brought about because he remains serious in a world that clearly contradicts his understanding of the society.
If you want to look at De Beauvoir’s book, it’s available through UBC Library!
Works Cited
De Beauvoir, Simone.“The Ethics of Ambiguity.” 2-19. Secaucus, N.J.Citadel Press, 1948. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 3 Apr. 2016