One Woman‘s Transformation from Other to Self

One Woman's Transformation from Other to Self: A de Beauvoirian Gender Interpretation of Kate Chopin‘s: The Awakening 

Thesis statement: By using Simone de Beauvoir‘s understanding of women as Other opposed to Self in The Second Sex, I will demonstrate how the character of Edna Pontellier, in The Awakening, transitions from Other to Self. 

Simone de Beauvoir tells us that, historically speaking, men have long set themselves up as the One, the Absolute, the Subject, and the Self; therefore relegating women to the place of Other: “She [woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.” 

Simone de Beauvoir tells us men have been defining women negatively for thousands of years: “‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle, ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam . . . Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being” (de Beauvoir). 

Early in The Awakening (p. 33), Edna Pontellier begins to realizes that she is not, in fact, an Other— that is, a being defined negatively—but that she is, rather, a Self: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (p. 33). The character of Edna is caught-up within the patriarchal Self/Other cultural milieu of her time but she does not feel as though she properly belongs to it: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman . . . women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (p. 19). 

Simone de Beauvoir describes the patriarchal Self/Other milieu, in which Edna is Other simply because she is a woman: ―When man makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect to manifest deep-seated tendencies towards complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other” (de Beauvoir). 

In The Awakening, Edna is not at all content with her role as Other but she finds it difficult to break free of this role, which is constantly imposed upon her by the dominant patriarchal culture of which she is a part. The difficulty Edna has in learning how to break free of these patriarchal, cultural restraints is described metaphorically by the author: “Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim” (p. 70). Edna’s “learning how to swim” is the author‘s metaphorical description of Edna‘s learning how to be free or liberated—in the feministic sense—of patriarchal dominance. The first time Edna senses freedom, and the first time she realizes herself as Self rather than Other, is when she swims out to sea; and the experience terrifies her: 

“As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance—that is, what would have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome. A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land” (pp. 70-71). 

As she swims out into the sea, Edna seems to be “reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself,” and when she turned and “looked toward the shore” she was aware of “the people she had left there.” Edna‘s awareness of the people she‘s left behind, by swimming out to sea, represents (metaphorically) her hesitancy to cut the ties to the oppressive, patriarchal Self/Other milieu of which she is a part, which de Beauvoir speaks of, and Edna‘s perception of “the stretch of water” as “a barrier, which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome,” represents her present inability to lay hold of the freedom and independence (i.e., the realization of herself as Self rather than Other) that her swimming out to sea or “reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself” represents. 

In this episode, the exploit of Edna‘s swimming out to sea functions (metaphorically) as a mode of existential, feminist transcendence. As de Beauvoir points out, such “exploits or projects . . . serve as a mode of transcendence,” (de Beauvoir) yet when Edna catches a glimpse of her potential freedom—a brief moment of existential, feminist transcendence—she shrinks away from it in (deathly) terror, and it is only by great effort that she manage to swim back to shore. Edna resists, here, that which (alone) can set her free: the liberating ability to transcend the artificial boundaries that patriarchy has imposed upon her which limit her existence to that of Other. Edna tastes feminist liberation, but this taste of freedom frightens her and she swims back to shore. She fears both her separation from the world she is accustomed to and the world of feminine liberation, and she senses that in order to gain the freedom she desires and the freedom she has glimpsed in this one, terrifying moment of liberation, she must swim deep into the unknown. 

It is not until the end of The Awakening that Edna finally embraces, what I believe to be, her one, true Lover; whose desire for her is simply that which Edna desires for herself: to become a Self rather than an Other. A hopeless romantic—with an artistic, mercurial temperament and given to fantasies—Edna makes the romantic, realistic, and courageous decision to embrace the only, true Lover who is able to speak to her feminine soul; the only, true Lover whose sensuous, feminine touch enfolds her body in its soft, close embrace; the only, true Lover who can help Edna to embrace her feminist liberation: the sea. 

The author of The Awakening, Kate Chopin, personifies the sea as a feminine Lover in precisely this way: “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (p. 34). Standing naked by the sea, Edna‘s transcendental, feminist transformation—from unenlightened Other to enlightened Self—begins: “How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known” (p. 301). Here, on the beach, Edna realizes her new-born Self. This time, in swimming out to sea, Edna will realize (i.e. make real) that which de Beauvoir speaks of: “There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future” (de Beauvoir). 

Edna knows she will only find herself as Self by losing herself as Other within the deep, sensuous, open, and limitless embrace of her feminine Lover, the sea: “The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. She went on and on . . .”

This time Edna will not retreat from her new-found existential, feminist transcendence, because “[e]very time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence . . . the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence” (de Beauvoir). Edna, now, has lost all desire for “life” as an Other and she embraces completely—although not without nostalgic longings—her new-found existence as a Self: “She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child . . . She thought of Léonce and the children . . . They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul . . . The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies . . . ‘Good-by—because, I love you’ . . . but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.” 

This time, Edna is not afraid, and she swims deep into her Lover‘s eternal embrace. When she looks into the distance, the old (deathly) terror “flames up” for an instant, but then sinks again. Edna is no longer afraid; she embraces her Lover and in doing so she embraces her Self. She hears her father's voice and her sister Margaret's . . . the barking of an old dog chained to the sycamore tree . . . the spurs of the cavalry officer as he walks across the porch and she becomes one with her Lover, the sea, who—alone—helps Edna to realize her true being: “There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air” and Edna becomes one with the world—earth, sky and sea. Here, in her Lover‘s soft and sensuous embrace—and only here—does Edna become one with herself as Self; she is no longer Other. 

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I wrote this paper for an English 380 class with Professor Larry Shillock at Wilson College in 2010

Semiotics and Representation in Oscar Wilde's: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Semiotics and Representation in Oscar Wilde's: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Thesis statement: Using the theories of semiotics and representation, I will demonstrate Oscar Wilde’s use of signs and representations (in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray) to create and give meaning to certain fictional objects and characters; especially the portrait of Dorian Gray and the actress Sibyl Vane. Beneath the surface level of the story, these objects and characters act as powerful signs and representations through which Wilde intendeds to communicate much deeper meaning than might at first appear. By interpreting these signs and representations through the theoretical lens of semiotics and representation we will be able to understand some of these deeper meanings.

By using the theories of semiotics and representation we will be able to delve into the realms of signs and representations that are found within this novel by asking questions of the text such as “What are some of the signs and sign makers that appear in the novel?” “What do these signs represent?” “What purposes do these signs and representations have?” “What were the sign maker’s intentions?” The theories of semiotics and representation, which are theories of signs wherein one thing (the sign) stands for (represents) something else (the signified), are useful tools of analysis for the literary critic because literature is created with language and language itself is a system of signs. As philosopher “Claude Levy-Strauss noted . . . ‘language is the semiotic system par excellence; it cannot but signify, and exists through signification’” (Chandler, p. 9). Authors create signs and representations by using language. For example, an author will create fictional objects and characters that signify, on the surface, the fictional objects and characters themselves but the author can also use these same fictional objects and characters to represent something more. Although a lesser author will use signs simply to create fictional objects and characters, a good author makes use of signs, such as fictional characters and objects, in order to communicate complex deeper meanings by creating signs that signify far more than the fictional characters and objects themselves.

As a theory, “semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign” and “involves the study . . . of anything which stands for something else” (Eco) and a “crucial consideration that enters into any analysis of representation is the relationship between the representational material and that which it represents” (Mitchell, p. 14). Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is the story of a complex sign—a picture (or portrait) of Dorian Gray—that is embedded within a complex system of signs (i.e., language) which is the text of the novel itself. The novel’s characters and objects, such as Sibyl Vane and the portrait of Dorian Grey, signify and represent to us far more than what might at first appear to the casual, uncritical reader. One question for the critical reader being: “What more do these fictional characters and objects signify and represent than what they at first appear to signify and represent?” In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the portrait of Dorian is not simply a portrait, nor is Sibyl Vane simply a woman Dorian falls in love with. Oscar Wilde is using these signs and representations to signify much more than this. “One crucial consideration that enters into any analysis of representation is the relationship between the representational material and that which it represents” (Mitchell, 14). The portrait of Dorian can be understood as the representational material that represents Dorian. The portrait of Dorian is an iconic image, a sign that resembles Dorian and points to Dorian who, although absent, might, through his image, be made present to all who see his image in the portrait. The painted representational image of Dorian in the portrait stands for and represents Dorian to others via his likeness; the actual image of Dorian having been reimaged on its canvass

Foucault and the Folly of the Narcissistic Self

We’re now studying the French philosopher Michel Foucault in our Literary and Cultural theory class and I’m finding it difficult, if not impossible, to read his book: Introduction the History of Sexuality. In fact, I’m not reading it; because it’s crap.
When it comes to philosophy and being a philosopher, Foucault is a tawdry imitation of the real thing. He has nothing to tell me. The word philosophy means: the love of wisdom (Greek: philos, meaning: love; and sophia, meaning: wisdom) and there is no wisdom to be found in Foucault’s writings. His writings are certainly pretentious, verbose, and academic, so that he might appear to have been a philosopher, but I can assure you that he wasn’t.
Although I am not a professional philosopher, I can honestly say that there is more wisdom in my one book than in all of Foucault’s books put together. And for one, simple reason: I believe that love and compassion for others is the only real purpose in life, whereas Foucault believes that the only real purpose in life is the domination and exploitation of others for one’s own purposes and pleasures.
There’s no love of wisdom to be found in his writings; quite the opposite. Philosophy is an art, and the philosopher is an artist who seeks goodness, beauty, and truth. Like someone who urinates on stage or affixes a urinal to a museum wall and calls it art, Foucault’s impure “philosophy” can be likened to excrement. And one does not consider excrement art. If anything, his is an anti-philosophy, or a love of foolishness.
As the late Professor of Literature at Boston University Roger Shattuck has pointed out, in his book Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, Foucault embraced the moral nihilism of the Marquis de Sade; from whom we get the terms: sadistic and sadism.
What, then, is Foucault’s great and lasting philosophical accomplishment? To tell us that abusing others physically and sexually—and then killing them—is to live the authentic philosophical life.
Shattuck tells us that “Michel Foucault presents as fundamental for the emergence of the modern era out of seventeenth century classicism the fact that Sade revealed to us the truth about man’s relation to nature. Foucault plants his declarations at crucial junctures in his two major works of 1961 and 1966. These four passages reveal the usually obscured center of his ethos:
‘Sadism . . . is a massive cultural fact that appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century and that constitutes one of the greatest conversions of the occidental imagination . . . madness of desire, the insane delight of love and death in the limitless presumptions of appetite.’ (Madness and Civilization, 210)
‘Through Sade and Goya, the Western world received the possibility of transcending its reason in violence . . .’ (Madness and Civilization, 285)
‘After Sade, violence, life and death, desire, and sexuality will extend, below the level of representation, an immense expanse of darkness, which we are now attempting to recover . . . in our discourse, in our freedom, in our thought.’ (The Order of Things, 211)
‘Among the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things . . . only one, which began a century and a half ago . . . has allowed the figure of man to appear.’ (The Order of Things, 386)
The last quotation from the final page of The Order of Things does not allude to Sade by name. But, in association with the other passages and in context, there can be little doubt that the great cultural ‘mutation’ welcomed by Foucault refers directly to Sade’s moral philosophy and to its practice in actual life.” (Forbidden Knowledge, 246-247)

A Bakhtinian Understanding of Robert Louis Stevenson’s: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I turned in a paper for class yesterday, which concerns Russian literary theorist Michael Bakhtin and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I figured: "What the heck? I may as well post it here for anyone who might be interested in it. . ."

Literary and Cultural Interpretation

Prof. Larry Shillock

Assignment 1

Student: Alex MacDonald

A Bakhtinian Understanding of Robert Louis Stevenson's: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Thesis statement: Russian literary theorist Michael Bakhtin theorizes that all speech acts, which he calls "utterances", anticipate a response on the part of an active listener.

Three main points to follow: 1) Stevenson's novella, as a whole, is a Bakhtinian utterance of the complex, secondary speech genre; 2) Stevenson's novella, as a whole, elicits a powerful Bakhtinian response from an active Bakhtinian listener; 3) Stevenson's use of Dr. Lanyon's letter, which is of the simple, primary speech genre, ends the narrator's Bakhtinian utterance and becomes caught-up into "actual reality" by being incorporated into the utterance that is the novella—the epitome, according to Bakhtin, of the living, complex, sociologically oriented, secondary speech genre that is: the novel (or, in Stevenson's case: the novella).

Contrary to other linguists, who think of language as a system of signs, Bakhtin emphasizes the sociological nature of language. Theorizing that the spoken word is primary, Bakhtin denies neutrality to language and exposes all "speech acts" as being heavy-laden with sociological presuppositions, because all speakers are also active listeners who have been influenced by—and who are responding to—innumerable, prior, sociological utterances.

Bakhtin theorizes that these sociologically influenced, non-neutral speech acts always anticipate a response from an active listener. As for Bakhtin's concept of the utterance, Bakhtin tells us "The utterance is not a conventional unit [i.e., an abstract, sign-system, unit of speech], but a real unit, clearly delimited by the change of speaking subjects . . ." Bakhtin also tells us that, "Each separate utterance is individual . . . but each sphere [i.e., genre] in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres."

According to Bakhtin, there are two types of speech genres: the primary (i.e., the simple) and the secondary (i.e., the complex). For example, the primary speech genre consists of the simple utterances (e.g., words, phrases, and expressions) of everyday life; whereas the secondary speech genre consists of primary utterances which are shaped, according to the spheres in which they are to be used, into the more complex utterances (e.g., scientific treaties, commentaries, novels), which are necessary for complex, socially-oriented communications.

Bakhtin thinks of the novel as a unique genre, because of its living, dynamic, and sociologically oriented nature: "Studying other genres is analogous to studying dead languages, studying the novel, on the other hand, is like studying languages that are not only alive, but still young."