‘Wonder–go on and wonder…’ –The Sound and the Fury

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There have been some wonderful moments in recent Salon conversations– after the struggle to organize, to find your way, to get through the reading, to be here, to be here on time, to be here on time and awake–when the heat and force of a new idea, of an insight gleaned from close attention to language and human behaviour pulls us all along into the depths where the buzz quiets and you can feel your mind focusing, sharpening, discovering….in the supportive company of other explorers.

There is currently an interesting thread on the ’10 best long reads’ at the Guardian website. The comments stir me towards defining what we want or expect out of a great work of literature and why a long work should somehow prove itself even more worthy of our attention. Of course, time being the precious commodity that it is, we want to know that devoting ourselves to months of reading on e book will payoff. But what is the payoff?

I am thinking about this particularly as I prepare the Thomas Mann study to start in November. This is a long book and will require a significant dedication of time– this book was referenced often in the comments as an example of a work worth the time–but daunting to readers. So of course, is Ulysses, a Salon cornerstone. The Magic Mountain is more lulling; it does not require the hard work immediately that Ulysses does– but for Mann to construct a scenario that allows his characters to explore the philosophies and strategies that we employ to make life of value, he must immerse the reader in the strange world of his characters– and this takes time.  Reading The Magic Mountain will let us stretch into the ideas around he humanist philosophy, our understanding of death, the guidance of the spirit, the submersion in eroticism, the desire for order and integrity in a listless world– the choice to be in the world in spite of the flaws and failures of the spirit. I hope you can join us….

In Wide Sargasso Sea last Friday, we probed the consequences of colonialism on the intimate relationships of those left undone by an exploding society in the aftermath of Caribbean slavery. Jean Rhys gives voice to the dislocation of those living in the shadow of a history of dehumanisation–both the oppressors and the oppressed. We entered into the lush and sensual world of the Windward Isles and understood how this exotic realm could torment a visitor whose cultural norms have overturned–or been revealed as corrupt.

The Sound and the Fury we are looking closely at how time traps human action. Quentin’s father, as he gives him he family heirloom of his grandfather’s watch, offers these words of despair: “Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”
This, for me, is the work of reading a book like S & F. I can think: ‘Well, yes, of course I struggle with time: I always want more time, I regret when I have wasted my time– I struggle to keep on top of time…’ but then here comes Faulkner who, through Quentin, makes me go beneath the obvious surface of temporality and think about how desperate we are in our spirit to feel we control our destiny–and that idea is enmeshed in the role of time. IN other words, as Sartre proposes (in his essay “Time in the work of Faulkner”), Quentin’s narration reflects an inconceivable present–he does not feel as though he has any future (literally and philosophically) and his tragedy–a pathos not a heroic one– is to conceive what is noble and possible in life (in love) but to be unable to affect this in his life. And so his narration is formed in a pedantic present– a present that can not happen but has already happened and can never be fresh and possible for him. So of course he must step out of this present.

Wide Sargasso Sea & Jane Eyre

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre has always held readers’ imagination as Bronte presents her heroine as fiercely independent in a world where there is no place for a free-thinking female. Jane Eyre, the plain, orphaned child becomes sharpened through her struggles in the hands of tyrannical mother-substitutes, malignant boarding schools, demeaning poverty and an egotistical, impenetrable employer. But what continues to intrigue readers and audiences, as the multiple film version attest to, is not just Jane’s indomitable spirit but the other strange scenes and lives crammed into this 19th century novel of social criticism and Byronic heroes.

The hidden, voiceless character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, who even in her silence greatly impacts Jane’s story, has caught the attention of critics and other writers. Jean Rhys, an early Modernist writer, chose to explore Bertha Rochester’s history in her brief but crystalline work, Wide Sargasso Sea. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean. One of our Paris Salon participants says this about Rhys: “I think these words from a Guardian critic sum her up pretty well: ‘She is loved not just for a talent that seems as spontaneous and individual in its personality as physical beauty, but for a special kind of courage.’ I would also add honesty, which brings Nualo O’Faolain to mind.”

These two works, taken together in this Salon intensive, will offer interesting commentaries on the positioning of the female as a space for madness and rebellion.

Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

“Everything must be for the ‘reactionary 19th century romance,’ ” Rhys angrily wrote a friend. “That unfortunate death of a Creole! I’m fighting mad to write her story” (Rhys, Jean Letters 1931-66, 157)

Although this work was conceived in the shadow of Jane Eyre, the scope of Rhys’ vision would be limited by simply seeing the work as a feminist response to Bronte’s iconic novel.  Rhys brings to the surface the voice and agonies of Bertha Mason, the Madwoman in the Attic, considering how she may have arrived in that debilitated state and addresses the mysterious character of Edward Rochester as well as the complex, liminal Creole world that creates her. You do not need to have read Jane Eyre to find this work (and our study of it) fulfilling but if you have not, there are many film versions that would fill in that background story.

Our study will develop ideas and understanding about post-colonial theories and lived experiences. Using close consideration of the literature, we will study how  Jean Rhys uses the intimate realm of her characters to play out the engagement and oppression of imperial forces—even as these forces seem out-dated and exhausted. We will also consider how the characters push against forces of control to claim their unique identity and attempts to create a world that honours diversity of culture, character and perspective.

“Justice. I’ve heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

The Mad Woman’s Vision

The Mad Woman’s Vision: Creation and Destruction from Frankenstein to Housekeeping

The female realm is traditionally imaged as domestic and nurturing; narrative space gives room for a very different perspective. The constriction of female experience as defined by patriarchal institutions may produce anxiety, rebellion and madness. From the 17th -20th century, we find the majority of those institutionalised for mental illness are women. As Elaine Showalter perceptively asks; does this reflect the implicit view of madness as one of the wrongs of women or madness unveiling itself before scientific rationality? Or does the confining role of women in earlier times result in the kind of behaviours that the medical establishment sought to pathologise?
Using works by Mary Shelley, Jean Rhys and Marilynne Robinson, we will explore how female artists explored the limits and extremes of selfhood interrogating definitions of sanity and madness. From my experience with these works, I believe we will find the uncanny interwoven with the empathic. This course will develop ideas and understanding around the domestic and traditional constructs of gender and how this impacts female identity.

There is renewed interest in Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein. The recent National Theatre production  peeled back the layers of the block-headed, bolted monster and gets down to Mary Shelly’s original concern: what is the relationship between the created and the creator? The form of the story also draws the reader into the entangled and unlimited relationship between the Creature and its creator as we move through narrators to get to the frozen final confrontation. We will discuss, among other themes, the question of adult male friendship and how Victor’s tragedy is one of arrogance and solitude. The philosophical questions the book raises continue to be absolutely pertinent to our time.

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea offers a modernist retelling of a cultural icon. Jane Eyre has always held readers’ imagination: Charlotte Bronte presents her heroine as fiercely independent in a world where there is no place for a free-thinking female. The hidden, voiceless character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, who even in her silence greatly impacts Jane’s story, has caught the attention of critics and other writers. Jean Rhys, an early Modernist writer, chose to explore Bertha Rochester’s history in her brief but crystalline work, Wide Sargasso Sea. The text is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.

In Marilynne Robinson’s haunting first work, Housekeeping, each line is carefully crafted and ice-sharp. Through Ruth’s narration we learn more about the impermanence of things- people, places, home- and watch her struggle to adulthood with the awareness that nothing stays in place. There is a freedom found here- and this book reveals profound possibilities in a spare world.

“There is so little to remember of anyone – an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

SALON DETAILS

  • Three-meeting study
  • Recommended editions:
    • Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley: The 1818 Text, Contexts, Criticism; Norton Critical Editions (Jan 2012); ISBN-13: 978-0393927931
    • Wide Sargasso Sea (Annotated Edition), by Jean Rhys; Penguin Modern Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0141182858
    • Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson; Faber & Faber (2005); ISBN-13: 978-0571230082
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