I'm planing to write about Stowe's The Minister's Wooing, but before I begin my exploration of that text, I'd like to share some thoughts I had during Friday's class discussion of The Lamplighter. The students were doing a fantastic job of working through the performative functions of sentimentality, really latching on to it's persuasive nature: the characters care, they are sympathetic and cry, we become sympathetic, care about the same issues, and cry along with them. As they were talking, I was thinking about how the novel, through Gerty and Emily's early relationship models this behavior for readers. As a young child, Gerty is swayed easily by Emily's tears. The moment Emily is saddened by Gerty's behavior, she regulates her mischief. If Emily cares deeply about something, Gerty also cares. Gerty is sympathetic to Emily's feelings and ideas and grows into a refined young woman by altering her behavior to suit Emily's kin, concerned desires. Modeling this good behavior-- complete with a positive outcome-- may be a method of letting readers know how they should respond to the text's sympathetic scenarios. Young readers, like young Gerty, require instruction, which the book provides and models as a method of ensuring the appropriate and desired reader response. In this way (and I'm sure there are others), sympathy can be use as a rhetorical device of persuasion. Just some thoughts-- now on to The Minister's Wooing.
I've spent the majority of this week reading Stowe's The Minister's Wooing and thinking about how it connects to our previous discussions sentimental novels and intimate female relationships. It's a romance novel, that follows the marriage of Mary Scudder. Quick (very quick) plot summary: Mary deeply religious is in love with her childhood friend James, he leaves for 3 years at sea and is thought dead after a shipwreck. Mary, at the urging of her mother, becomes engaged to the stringent minister. A week before the wedding, James reappears, alive and well. Mary, however, is determined to marry the minister because it's God's will, even though she doesn't love him. It's a long novel, so there's a lot to discuss. The mother/daughter relationship is infuriating and worthy of much discussion. Also, Aaron Burr plays the role of the would-be rake, if he wasn't thwarted and converted by Mary's goodness. And a French character becomes Mary's best friend and confidant, trying at every turn to thwart Mary's engagement to the minister. But for the sake of brevity, I'll stick to one discussion that interests me most: Stowe's style and use of sentimentality.
It seems that Stowe's mission in The Minister's Wooing is to satirize Calvinism, addressing in particular predestination. Interestingly, though, she rarely directly mentions predestination as an open topic in the novel. Her commentary is more acutely felt in her portrayal of her characters as they wrestle with individual actions and religious agency. As characters fall in love with non-believers, they must come to terms with loving someone, believing they are wholly good, and yet knowing that their beliefs will sentence them to an eternity of doom. Stowe, in stroke of genius, allows readers to see all internal conflicts and doubts. In all of their hesitant humanity, it's easy to identify and sympathize with the characters. Even the minister wavers in his conviction. I even found myself identifying with their internal struggles, loving the characters, and was eventually unwilling to believe that the romantic lead was destined for hellfire and damnation. Their humanity was sympathetic, which I thought was a compelling and rhetorically effective usage of sympathy. Of course, Stowe is known for her usage of humanity as a persuasive device. Uncle Tom's Cabin uses the same appeal to audience humanity, though the plot doesn't revolve around a marriage and so doesn't seem as (what I would term) traditionally sentimental. I'm going to keep thinking through this, especially as I continue to read Wyeler's Intricate Relations and will probably post more on this idea soon.
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I will wait to post about The Minister's Wooing later, so I will just post about your comments on tears and sentimentality. Our discussion on Friday about the tears made me think about the other role that tears play. Not only do the crying scenes model a reaction for the characters and the readers, but the tears are often a catalyst in the plot. The biggest one I can think of now is when Gerty breaks down and cries into the pillows because she believes that Willie is engaged to Belle. The thought of losing him completely destroys her, especially when reflecting on her trials and tribulations caring for his mother and grandfather. What interested me about this scene was the response that it created in Emily. She takes the opportunity to open up to Gerty and reveal her own experience with Phillip Amory. In this case, Emily again models a response to sentimentality. She shows Gerty that even though one can have her heart broken, get blinded, and remain alone, she can still have a meaningful life. It is in this moment that Gerty becomes fully independent of any other character. She realizes, to use the cliche, that she can stand on her own two feet. And then when she and Willie are married we don't see it as a reward for good behavior, but as a relationship of equals who are mutually respectful of each other. This is a much more satisfying and girl power kind of resolution.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I completely agree, especially about the marriage. It comes from place of personal agency and doesn't seem at all like a reward. I think it would be interesting to track the public vs. private display of tears in the novel. Maybe we could make some meaning from the use of tear, whether people are there to witness them (and their reactions), and which scenes are reserved solely for the reader.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times just ran a piece on tears, which I thought was interesting to think about in relation to this book: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/03mind.html?scp=1&sq=crying&st=cse
ReplyDeleteIt links to your point about public vs. private crying, Amanda.
I think there's a distinction between the damp eye, gathering tear, or glistening drop of sympathy and the all-out sobbing of Gerty in the scene Larisa mentions. To me, that scene marked a recurrence of Gerty's passionate self (lack of self-control, etc.), so, of course, Emily had to quell it, since that's her function in the novel: self-queller. (Is quell even a word? Looks funny as I write it.) I grant that her suppression of self is validated in the Christian framework of the novel, but I think the Stephen's sense of her as increasingly irrelevant to the novel was a very interesting one--her self is so quelled she almost disappears (narratively and physically through death). Of course, she makes a comeback near the end, but I'm also curious about the way her invalidism seems to contain Philip's rather potent sexuality--doesn't it seem as if it will be a remarkably chaste marriage? Or do you see it another way?
If you think Gertrude's marriage to Willie is not a reward, what do you make of the line on p. 411 that reads, "[Gertrude], by long and patient continuance in well-doing had earned so full a recompense, so all-sufficient a reward"?
Oh, meant also to say that Karen Sanchez-Eppler's enormously influential article "Bodily Bonds: The Intersecting Rhetorics of Feminism and Abolition" [Representations 24, Fall 1988, 28-59] presents an interesting reading of tears within an abolitionist context.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Amanda, a number of scholars have written about the development of "disciplinary intimacy" during this period, which characterizes the techniques you see Emily using (don't have a handy reference ready). But I like how you take it another step and give it a rhetorical resonance.