I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons ever since I read it, mainly because it’s a really creepy book. Larisa recommended that I blog about it, which I thought was an excellent suggestion to work out some of the weirdness. I’ve been using words like “creepy,” “haunting,” and “weird” to describe The Morgesons, mainly because of the slightly mocking, satirical tone. Stoddard seems to call into question firmly established nineteenth-century (and contemporary) social conventions, mainly through her main character, Cassandra, and her interaction with others. Stoddard criticizes the idea of female solidarity (Cassandra’s relationship with her sister is bizarre, to say the least), the job of the feminine/domestic sphere (the women in the Morgeson family take no part in domesticity), and women’s reliance on familiar male figures for care and support before marriage (Cassandra’s father and cousin both fail her in different ways). Stoddard lays bare the difficulties of these conventions, which she seems to argue are fine in theory but become increasingly difficult when mixed with actual, roiling humanity. I suppose that’s why the text is so unsettling; we still privilege these conventions today, and drawing them into the proverbial light of day is uncomfortable. The entire text deserves far more treatment than I can give it here, but I’d like to isolate one textual moment for further exploration: Cassandra’s relationship with her cousin Charles.
Throughout the semester we’ve discussed writers’ attempts to revise male/female relationships and the institution of marriage. Young lovers are described as brother and sister—Willie and Gerty in The Lamplighter and Ellen and John in The Wide Wide World (among others). Young girls’ relationships with their fathers seem slightly romantic—Gerty and Philip Amory in The Lamplighter, for instance. We’ve generally seen this as an attempt to revise marital relationships; if we transfer lover-like relationships on to caring platonic, familial men (like fathers and brothers) it will model appropriate behavior for future husbands. Stoddard calls idea/practice into question in The Morgesons, playing out her criticism in the relationship of Cassandra and Charles.
Cassandra travels to stay with her cousin Charles and his wife Alice to attend a finishing school. From their first meeting, Charles affects Cassandra physically, though not in ways we’ve seen in other texts. Cassandra is not overcome with feelings of love or goodness; rather, Cassandra narrates, “His face was serene, dark, and delicate, but to look at it made me shiver” (69). She goes on to say that something “intangible, silent, magnetic” existed between them: “An intangible, silent, magnetic feeling existed between us, changing and developing according to its own mysterious law, remaining intact in spite of the contests between us of resistance and defiance” (74). These are not the feelings of “brotherly love” we’ve seen in other novels. These are dark and mysterious, and according to the text, wrong. Even though Charles and Cassandra share a mutual attraction, the consummation of their relationship is marked as a violation in the text.
In a swiftly moving textual moment, Cassandra offers a flower to one of Charles’s associates. The narration continues: “He was about to take it with a blush, when Charles struck it out of my hand and stepped on it. ‘Are you ready now?’ he said, in a quick voice. I declared it was nothing, when I found I was too ill to rise the next morning” (84). Cassandra, who is described as healthy and vivacious in comparison to her sister Verry, has never been sick in the novel. But after Charles “crushes her flower,” she inexplicably falls ill and has a sickly temperament for the rest of her life. The physical/emotional relationship between Charles and Cassandra is certainly a transgression. Charles is married and her cousin, and the consummation of their relationship is shrouded in violence.
As Stoddard revises the platonic, paternal narrative of male relatives in women’s fiction, she seems to argue that the protective paradigm is all well and good until humanity and attraction intervenes. When real-life is thrown into the mix, even familial relations have the potential to fail women. Her father later fails her economically, and Charles fails her sexually. All in all, Stoddard is most certainly questioning the hopeful status quo of “platonic” relationships in fiction as a means of revising the institution of marriage.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Power of the Erotic: Avis Finds Her Art
We spent a lot of time in class discussing the scene of Avis’s “awakening,” and it made me start to consider alternative/expanded readings of that textual moment. We can certainly read it as a scene of her awakening as an artist—at the end of the experience she sees the Sphinx, which becomes her lifetime masterpiece. But as I was reading, I couldn’t help but notice the sexual language, imagery, and subtext of the passage. I’d like to take a closer look at those textual elements and perhaps make some meaning of their inclusion in her “artist’s awakening.”
When Avis first decides to drink the “Eau de Fleurs d’Oranger,” it is described as an experience reserved only for women: “Leave men their carousel, their fellowship, the heart’s blood of the burning grape. In the veins of the buds that girls wear at their bridals runs a fire of flavor deep enough for us” (79-80). I immediately questioned who “us” was, and I concluded that it encompassed all women. While men are left to their carousel (competitive tournaments or conveyor belts—both are equally daft) and wine, women will find fire in the buds of flowers. Of course, Phelps specifies that it’s the flowers that women “wear at their bridal runs,” immediately linking the liquor to marital consummation and virginity. She goes on: “The wine of a flower has carried many a pretty Parisan to an intrigue or a convent. Could it carry a Yankee girl to glory?” (79-80). Given the sensual nature of the previous sentences, we could read the wine leading a girl to “intrigue or a convent” as leading a young girl to sexual adventure or pre-marital pregnancy. Or both. Either way, the final question about leading a Yankee girl to glory implies that there are other outlets for this erotic energy than sex acts, for Avis’s “glory” rests in her art.
Avis’s awakening is slow, occurring in waves. The imagery is of various mythology, people, places, and periods of history, but it’s always tempered with a description of Avis’s physical reactions. At first she’s “laughing” and “excited.” Next there is a “dull but not painful pressure set slowly in the brain,” and soon after she “felt herself spin round and round” (80). Strangely, she soon after narrates, “Nothing had happened, except that the darkness had become alive” (80). As the scene ends, she “lay back upon her pillow with a sudden, long, sobbing sigh. She was very tired, but she had seen her picture” (83). I initially thought the darkness, which came alive in this scene, was her artistic instinct but it could also be read as Avis’s sensuality. She had been cultivating her artistic abilities from a young age, so describing her artistry as “darkness” doesn’t seem representative. Given the physicality of Avis’s experience, I think we have to read the scene as grounded in the body and potentially sexual, but I’d like to offer the idea that Avis’s artistic awakening and her sexual awakening are intrinsically linked.
Even though I’m highlighting the physical/sexual elements in this scene, I don’t mean to downplay the obvious artistic benefits this awakening has in Avis’s work. In fact, I think describing the two in such complimentary terms (and so closely together, in the same scene) indicates Phelp’s feelings that these two “awakenings” are closely aligned. As she “lay back upon her pillow” with a “long, sobbing sigh” she feels as though she could work. Avis’s personal realization of her sensuality and the agency therein opened up new artistic possibilities. In “The Power of the Erotic,” Audre Lorde argues that if women (who are systematically encouraged to ignore their erotic power) could harness their erotic agency and apply it to all areas of their lives, that they would be unstoppable. Lorde is careful to emphasize that the “erotic” is not “sex,” but rather the power in recognizing one’s own sensuality and harnessing that power. In this scene, it’s clear that Avis finds and recognizes her own power, channeling it to her art. Sadly, the social systems that prevent women from ever accessing this power also prevent Avis from following her awakening to its full potential, for the scene ends with Avis sobbing “like any broken hearted women who was not going to pain a great picture tomorrow” (84).
When Avis first decides to drink the “Eau de Fleurs d’Oranger,” it is described as an experience reserved only for women: “Leave men their carousel, their fellowship, the heart’s blood of the burning grape. In the veins of the buds that girls wear at their bridals runs a fire of flavor deep enough for us” (79-80). I immediately questioned who “us” was, and I concluded that it encompassed all women. While men are left to their carousel (competitive tournaments or conveyor belts—both are equally daft) and wine, women will find fire in the buds of flowers. Of course, Phelps specifies that it’s the flowers that women “wear at their bridal runs,” immediately linking the liquor to marital consummation and virginity. She goes on: “The wine of a flower has carried many a pretty Parisan to an intrigue or a convent. Could it carry a Yankee girl to glory?” (79-80). Given the sensual nature of the previous sentences, we could read the wine leading a girl to “intrigue or a convent” as leading a young girl to sexual adventure or pre-marital pregnancy. Or both. Either way, the final question about leading a Yankee girl to glory implies that there are other outlets for this erotic energy than sex acts, for Avis’s “glory” rests in her art.
Avis’s awakening is slow, occurring in waves. The imagery is of various mythology, people, places, and periods of history, but it’s always tempered with a description of Avis’s physical reactions. At first she’s “laughing” and “excited.” Next there is a “dull but not painful pressure set slowly in the brain,” and soon after she “felt herself spin round and round” (80). Strangely, she soon after narrates, “Nothing had happened, except that the darkness had become alive” (80). As the scene ends, she “lay back upon her pillow with a sudden, long, sobbing sigh. She was very tired, but she had seen her picture” (83). I initially thought the darkness, which came alive in this scene, was her artistic instinct but it could also be read as Avis’s sensuality. She had been cultivating her artistic abilities from a young age, so describing her artistry as “darkness” doesn’t seem representative. Given the physicality of Avis’s experience, I think we have to read the scene as grounded in the body and potentially sexual, but I’d like to offer the idea that Avis’s artistic awakening and her sexual awakening are intrinsically linked.
Even though I’m highlighting the physical/sexual elements in this scene, I don’t mean to downplay the obvious artistic benefits this awakening has in Avis’s work. In fact, I think describing the two in such complimentary terms (and so closely together, in the same scene) indicates Phelp’s feelings that these two “awakenings” are closely aligned. As she “lay back upon her pillow” with a “long, sobbing sigh” she feels as though she could work. Avis’s personal realization of her sensuality and the agency therein opened up new artistic possibilities. In “The Power of the Erotic,” Audre Lorde argues that if women (who are systematically encouraged to ignore their erotic power) could harness their erotic agency and apply it to all areas of their lives, that they would be unstoppable. Lorde is careful to emphasize that the “erotic” is not “sex,” but rather the power in recognizing one’s own sensuality and harnessing that power. In this scene, it’s clear that Avis finds and recognizes her own power, channeling it to her art. Sadly, the social systems that prevent women from ever accessing this power also prevent Avis from following her awakening to its full potential, for the scene ends with Avis sobbing “like any broken hearted women who was not going to pain a great picture tomorrow” (84).
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