This compassionate love develops when Avis sees Philip for the first time after he returns from the war. Avis had resolved to stay devoted to her art and not give in to Philip’s marriage proposal, but when she sees him, he is “haggard and gray, tense” and “shattered as a broken column” (99) her artistic eyes are also touched with compassion. Elaine Showalter describes Avis’ feeling as “pity” in her new book A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (176). Whether we see Avis’ emotion as compassion or pity, it is evident that she mistakes it for romantic love. This feeling is manifested physically in Avis as a “marvelous and magnificent change wrought upon [her] face […] by that compassion which steals a regent to the palace where Love the King has been dethroned“ (Phelps 99). And while compassion is a necessary type of love, Phelps’ use of the images of a regent and a king shows us that it is not the type of love that is required for an equalitarian relationship. Unfortunately for Avis, her naïveté lead her to mistake the one for the other and she is swayed by Philip’s physical weakness: Avis’ “heart leaped with the deep maternal yearning over suffering that is more elemental in women than the yearning of maiden or of wife” (102-103). From this moment on, her love is a compassionate and maternal one that brings her only misery.
Avis herself tells Philip that she is “suffering” (105), a suffering she likens to “death” (106). This moment signals the death of her art and her life as an artist. These early scenes before the marriage even begins are merely intimations of what is to come later on. Avis is shown to be more of a mother or caregiver to a husband who is “delicate” (141). He also behaves irresponsibly at the university and shirks the “drudgery of the classroom” (173)--another indicator of his immaturity and questionable masculinity (since a man’s number one job at that time was to provide a financially secure home for his wife and children). Avis calls him her “’poor boy’” and thinks of him as an “excited boy who got into a scrape (176). By portraying Philip in such a light, Phelps is showing to her readers the emotional cost of marriage and mothering for women like Avis. He is described on the next page as “a new burden, as if a third child had been born unto her” (177). And again we see that her love for him has completely altered: “Was it possible that her soul had ever gone upon its knees before the nature of this man? So gentle had been the stages by which her great passion had grown into mournful compassion, her divine ideal become this unheroic human reality, the king of her heart become the dependent of its care” (177).
At the story’s conclusion Phelps shows us that the demands of marriage and motherhood have stripped Avis of all feelings for her husband--“her feeling for that one man, her husband, had […] eaten into and eaten out the core of her life, left her a riddled, withered thing, spent and rent, wasted by the autocracy of a love as imperious as her own nature, and as deathless as her own soul” (244). This terrible price that she pays however is somewhat softened in her daughter’s life. In Wait we see the hope of her becoming a new kind of woman who is “competent to the terrible task of adjusting the sacred individuality of her life to her supreme capacity of love and the supreme burden and perils which it imposes upon her” (246). Phelps envisions a new kind of marriage with a new man, who will not “eat out her core” but will become, “With her, he is a crowned creature; but with him she is a free one” (247). Phelps envisions a more harmonious marriage for Wait, and we can only hope that it happens. And perhaps she is offering her readers the hope also that such a marriage can happen--I hope it can.
We never had a chance to talk in class about the finishing touch Avis makes on the Sphinx painting which completes it. It is the image of a child putting her finger to her lips as she looks at the Sphinx. What do you make of it?
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm wondering about whether Phelps feels in any way that suffering and "womanly" experiences such as motherhood can enrich women's art? Certainly it seems as if Fanny Fern thinks that is the case. It is Ruth's bond with and understanding of women's experiences that distinguishes her writing and its power from the stale artificiality of male writers.
I really enjoyed the way you tracked the different ways love and romantic emotions are codified in the text. And I think you're right-- Avis doesn't always show feelings of (what we would deem) romantic love toward Philip. Your post made me think of the ways this "new woman" is usually paired with solitude. Avis is trying to be this new woman and initially craves solitude, so your analysis of the different ways she loves Philip, then, could be seen as the different ways she negotiates this desire for both solitude and love. I keep thinking of Edna in Chopin's _The Awakening_ and how she seeks solitude to grow and paint, but then eventually finds herself alone (and not in a good way). Avis avoids that isolation (which is Chopin led to suicide), but at what cost?
ReplyDeleteExcellent posting!! You've really got me thinking...
Well, doesn't it all go back to what Woolf says about women needing space and money to develop their arts and gifts? Avis obviously shows us that motherhood is draining her art out of her. But like Theresa points out, Ruth Hall seems inspired by her motherhood. Though that may be because she was the sole bread winner for her children and only came to her art after the birth of her children. Avis had her art first and never wanted marriage and all the attendant baggage.
ReplyDeleteThe big question seems to be, and is still very relevant, how to have it ALL and not go completely crazy?! We want family connections, a career, and some space to breathe and FLY. If either of you finds the answer, let me know.