I begin my two literature classes today and, as always, am filled with trepidation. Will I be the teacher my students need me to be? Margaret Edson’s play W;t reminds me that, if I stay true to the literature, all will be well.
W;t, functions in part as a criticism of those college literature professors who sacrifice literature’s human dramas to their careers, their intellectual pride, their fear of emotion, or their desire to control. So how might one have taught protagonist Vivian Bearing, noted Donne scholar, so that she didn’t turn out this way? And how might she have better taught her student Jason (now her doctor) so that he didn’t turn into a cold and soulless medical researcher.
Well, one only has so much power as a teacher. In some ways, Jason already is tending in a certain direction and he seeks out Vivian to confirm him in his predilections. But even given this, she probably could have sown some doubts in his callous self-assurance.
In my own teaching, above all I strive to respect the literature and respect my students. After over 30 years in the field, I can say with certainty that the literature will yield wisdom and comfort for virtually every life situation and that students can be counted on to find what they need within it.
Students will not always be fully articulate. But in even the most tangled of responses I can often find seeds of a profound insight. I just need to work with the student to develop it.
There is a scene in W;t which shows the process at work. Vivian claims, after a student tries to work through an idea, that the student comes up short in the end. I would argue that it is rather Vivian that comes up short. Here’s her recollection:
Student 2: But why?
Vivian: Why what?
Student 2: Why does Donne make everything so complicated? (The other students laugh in agreement) No really, why?
Vivian: (To the audience) You know, someone asked me that every year. And it was always one of the smart ones. What could I say? (To Student 2) What do you think?
Student 2: I think it’s like he’s hiding. I think he’s really confused. I don’t know, maybe he’s scared, so he hides behind all this complicated stuff, hides behind this wit.
Vivian: Hides behind wit?
Student 2: I mean, if it’s really something he’s sure of, he can say it more simple—simply. He doesn’t have to be such a brain, or such a performer. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal.
(The other students encourage him.)
Vivian: Perhaps he is suspicious of simplicity.
Student 2: Perhaps, but that’s pretty stupid.
Vivian: (To the audience) That observation, despite its infelicitous phrasing, contained the seed of a perspicacious remark. Such an unlikely occurrence left me with two choices. I could draw it out, or I could allow the brain to rest after that heroic effort. If I pursued, there was the chance of great insight, or the risk of undergraduate banality. I could never predict. (To student 2) Go on.
Student 2: Well, if he’s trying to figure out God, and the meaning of life, and big stuff like that, why does he keep running away, you know?
Vivian: (To the audience, moving closer to Student 2): So far so good, but they can think for themselves only so long before they begin to self-destruct.
Student 2: Um, it’s like, the more you hide, the less—no, wait—the more you are getting closer—although you don’t know it—and the simple thing is there—you see what I mean?
Vivian: (To the audience, looking at Student 2, as suspense collapses) Lost it.
If the student loses it, however, it’s because Vivian doesn’t help him build on the idea. Given Vivian’s skepticism and contempt (which he must sense), it’s impressive that the student does as well as he does.
The wonderful thing about this scene is that the student is getting at what draws Vivian to Donne, even though Vivian won’t admit it.She has her own versions of Donne’s fears and hides out from those fears, as the poet does, through intellectual gamesmanship.Her intellect is so powerful that she can hide out in it from her fears.Only when she is facing death and no longer has any place to hide does she come face to face with them.
She admits her lack of integrity, her inauthenticity, in another report of student response. She is talking about “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” which has a fabulous image of a pair of lovers (maybe John Donne and his wife) separated but connected. Donne describes gold thread that has been beaten so thin that it cannot be seen and yet still maintains contact. Here is Vivian remembering the scene:
I distinctly remember my exchange between two students after my lecture on pronunciation and scansion. I overheard them talking on their way out class. They were young and bright, gathering their books and laughing at the expense of seventeenth-century poetry, at my expense.
(To the class) To scan the line properly, we must take advantage of the contemporary flexibility in “i-o-n” endings, as in “expansion.” The quatrain stands:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an ex-pan-see-on,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
Bear this in mind in your reading that’s all for today.
(The students get up in a chaotic burst. Student 3 and Student 4 pass by Vivian on their way out.)
Student 3: I hope I can get used to this pronuncia—see-on.
Student 4: I know. I hope I can survive this course and make it to gradua-see-on.
(They laugh. Vivian glowers at them. They fall silent, embarrassed.)
Vivian: (To the audience) That was a witty little exchange, I must admit. It showed the mental acuity I would praise in a poetic test. But I admired only the studied application of wit, not its spontaneous eruption.
In short, the teacher gets to control how the students respond to the text, thereby always remaining in control herself. But as a result, there has not been a true exploration. Imagine how these two students would have felt if Vivian had told them how well they were responding to Donne’s wit. Having students parody a masterpiece can, in fact, draw them far more deeply into it than to have them merely analyze it from the outside. But for a teacher to respond this way, she must be open to literature working in the world in unexpected ways.
What would I do if I had Vivian as a student? I wouldn’t berate her, as her mentor E. M. does, for having brought a faulty edition of “Death Be Not Proud” to class. If one version has a grand flourish and the other a quiet comma (see my earlier post on the play’s handling of the poem), I would encourage her to explore each one. I would ask her which seems more logical, which feels right, and what to make of any discrepancy.
Honoring student feelings is important if we are to engage their emotional intelligence. In her youth Vivian appears to have loved grand flourishes and virtuoso word play. Good, that’s as it should be; youth is a time for grand flourishes. Then, for some reason, she felt she had to rein in her passion, letting it emerge in only the most circuitous of ways. Note, for instance her dissertation title: “Ejaculations in Seventeenth-Century Manuscript and Printed Editions of the Holy Sonnets: A Comparison.” The ejaculations she means are not the kind that you think she means (even though Donne’s poems make constant references to such ejaculations). I think the ejaculation she has in mind is the grammatical utterance that expresses a feeling outside of normal language structure (like “oh!”). Except that, deep down, Vivian means the other kind of ejaculation as well—the sexual explosion, the excitement, the passion. She has just buried strong emotions deep.
Anyway, as her teacher I would have encouraged her to explore her fear of her feelings and I would have validated her hidden self. If I had had Jason as a student in a Donne class and knew he was going to be a doctor, I would have encouraged him to explore Donne’s terror of death, knowing that one day he would be facing such terror in his patients.
Maybe I would have reached such students or maybe they would just have sought out another teacher, one less “touchy-feely.” Maybe Vivian needs to get cancer to learn what she learns and maybe that will be true of Jason as well. But then again, maybe there would be some opening for insight.
I know how I would like to have been taught Donne and it’s not how I was. I’ll tell about my early encounters with him in my next post.