Julia, my mother and I went to see the thoroughly enjoyable Knives Out on Sunday, but because I applied Samuel Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes and Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” to the ending, I left slightly dissatisfied.
Did I just let literature mess up a pleasurable film experience, I ask myself. Is this better living? I think my reservations are warranted, however. There are spoilers ahead but nothing regarding the crime.
In the movie a very wealthy mystery writer disappoints his execrable family, who have been mooching off of him for years, by leaving all that he owns (this after a death that may or may not be suicide) to his deserving and very likable home nurse. The film sticks it to the entitled rich (think of the Trump family, or Trump himself) and lets us know that the American Dream is alive and well for deserving immigrants like Marta. We are assured that one really can come to America with nothing, work hard, be virtuous, and end up with millions.
My reservation about the film is not the one voiced by the narrator of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones:
There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Fielding’s observation doesn’t keep him from rewarding virtue in his own novel, and we pretty much expect it from Knives Out as well. Virtue rewarded is an integral part of the genre so we make allowances.
Given how central to the film is the theme of wealth’s corrupting power, however, one worries about Marta. Will she remain a good person? While she is too nice to taunt the racist family members who have been ejected from the house, the inscription on her coffee cup inadvertently does so as she looks down at them from a balcony: it reads “my house.”
Perhaps we enjoy the moment because they are privileged bigots who thought they were entitled to wealth they have not earned. It’s Trump’s nightmare of people south of the border taking over. But will she make better use of wealth than the family has?
Samuel Johnson is pessimistic. In his exploration of “the vanity of human wishes,” he poses a question: How do you make a needy but carefree traveler unhappy? His answer: Make him rich:
The needy
traveler, serene and gay,
Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away.
Does envy seize thee? crush th’ upbraiding joy,
Increase his riches and his peace destroy,
New fears in dire vicissitude invade,
The rustling brake alarms, and quiv’ring shade,
Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief.
One shews the plunder, and one hides the thief.
And then there’s Sexton’s cynical take on the American Dream, captured in her reflections on the Cinderella story:
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
In her revised Cinderella, Sexton expresses doubts about happily-ever-after:
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
We the viewers want to believe in “that story” for Marta. History cautions us, however, that the great American Fantasy is invariably followed by the Great Disillusion. To be American is to ceaselessly dream and to ceaselessly wake up.
Rereading Dante’s Inferno in preparation for my course on Representative Masterpieces, my attention was caught by Dante’s description of the hoarders and the wasters, who are to be found in the fourth circle of Hell. That’s because I have been reading about Donald Trump’s “historically unprecedented action[s] to roll back a slew of environmental regulations that protect air, water, land and public health from climate change and fossil fuel pollution.” CSNBC reports that, according to Harvard Law School’s rollback tracker, the administration is targeting 85 or so environmental rules:
Existing environment regulations are meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions, protect land and animals from oil and gas drilling and development, as well as limit pollution and toxic waste runoff into the country’s water. The administration views many of them as onerous to fossil fuel companies and other major industries.
Dante doesn’t distinguish between the wasters and the hoarders, seeing them all in the grip of the same materialist mania. The heavy weights they roll against each other symbolize the dead weight of gold, with which they are obsessed:
Here too, I saw a nation of lost souls,
far more than were above: they
strained their chests
against enormous weights, and with mad howls
rolled them at one another. Then in haste
they rolled them back, one party shouting out:
“Why do you hoard?” and the other: “Why
do you waste?”
So back around that ring they puff and blow,
each faction to its course, until they reach
opposite sides, and screams as they go
the madmen turn and start their weights again
to crash against the maniacs.
Not only are our own hoarders and maniacs indistinguishable, but often they are the same people. I think of those who champion huge tax cuts for the wealthy (wasting) but moan about the cost of food stamps and medicare expansion (hoarding). Or the way the billionaire recipients of those tax cuts refuse to invest the money in more jobs or higher wages, instead rewarding their stockholders with stock buybacks that make them even wealthier. Whining incessantly about regulations, they perfectly fit Virgil’s description of them:
Not all the gold that is or ever was
under the sky could buy for one of these
exhausted souls the fraction of a pause.
Although Dante encounters many recognizable figures in Hell, those who give their lives over to money are so empty as to be unrecognizable. History, which honors many who served humankind, will not remember these exhausted souls. Virgil explains,
In their sordid lives they labored to be blind,
and now their souls have dimmed past recognition.
And further on:
Hoarding and squandering wasted all their light
and brought them screaming to this brawl of wraiths.
You need no words of mine to grasp their plight.
Now may you see the fleeing vanity
of the goods of Fortune for which men
tear down all that they are, to build a mockery.
As Dante describes them, the damned are eager to get to the circle of Hell that awaits them. Since they desired this empty existence on earth, why should they want anything different after death?
"My son," the courteous Master said to me, "all who die in the shadow of God's wrath converge to this from every clime and country.
"And all pass over eagerly, for here Divine Justice transforms and spurs them so their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they fear."
Sacrificing all that is honorable and sacred for wealth is hell on earth, yet people eagerly take this path. Also self-condemned are those who believe that happiness can only be achieved through incessant purchases. Dante’s genius lies in finding memorable metaphors, poetically expressed, for how we violate our higher selves.
On Friday I wrote that Wilkie Collins’s humorous depiction of a reader’s obsession with Robinson Crusoe could function as a parody of this blog. As house steward Gabriel Betteridge in The Moonstone sees it, Daniel Defoe’s novel is the key to better living. In his eyes, the book has all the answers to life’s questions.
Do you see me making the same claims for literature generally?
Upon further
reflection, I realized that Gabriel Betteridge uses Robinson Crusoe as
Crusoe himself uses the Bible. That, in turn, has led me to reflect the extent
to which my own interactions with the Bible have influenced this blog. I share
that with you today.
A
number of years ago, I took—and then taught—the Episcopal Church’s four-year
course Education for Ministry. Founded by the father of my best friend
in middle school (Charlie Winters), EFM is designed for those who want to
better understand the Bible. When I took the course, the first year was devoted
to the Old Testament, the second to the New, the third to church history, and
the fourth to theology.
The study is not altogether academic, however. In the course, the participants share personal stories that are surfaced by the Bible reading for that day. As a result, the Bible is transformed into a living guide that helps us grapple with the most pressing issues we face. The participants apply the methods used to unlock the Bible to unlocking a “slice of life” that one of them shares. The resulting realizations are sometimes profound.
As I was involved in the course, I realized that I could apply the same method to works of literature. I therefore adjusted my teaching (allowing, of course, for the different situations), with the result that my students began applying the literature we were reading to their lives. This blog owes its existence in part to Education for Ministry.
A
couple of thoughts come to mind as I say this. One is that the practice of “close
reading,” which literary study came to prize highly in the 20th century, itself has been traced back to Talmudic study of the Torah. In the 19th century, the study of literature—when it was studied at all—involved historical
anecdotes, author biographies, and random associations. The belief that
literature could offer up precious truths—that students could be initiated into
its sacred mysteries if they were taught to examine texts in a disciplined
manner—owes something to the influx of Jewish students into the universities.
These students were willing to study in a way that privileged young men with their “gentleman’s C’s” were not, and they began changing college culture. For a while, certain universities saw this as a problem and set up quotas limiting Jewish admission.
In the end, however, these students prevailed, academic “drudges” were no longer held in contempt, and colleges became more than social finishing schools. Many of our most prominent literary scholars have been Jewish, with Lionel Trilling, Stanley Fish, Stephen Greenblatt, Carolyn Heilbrun, Elaine Showalter, and Harold Bloom coming immediately to mind.
In
short, that I related studying the Bible to studying literature is no accident.
I also think of how Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold saw literature as replacing religion in our increasingly secular society, given that both religion and literature command immense emotional and experiential power. If religion could no longer control the potentially rebellious working class, Arnold argued, perhaps literature could do the job.
When I was in my twenties and thirties, I myself didn’t see the point of religion. After all, as I told the rector of our local church, I had the rich symbolic language of literature. I no longer think this, and each plays a vital role in my life
But if I sometimes sound evangelical as I advocate for literature—well, you’re not just imagining things.
I’m currently on a Wilkie Collins kick, having just started on The Moonstone after finishing The Woman in White. In Moonstone there is a wonderful instance of a character whose use of literature could serve as a parody of my blog. House steward Gabriel Betteridge believes in Better Living through Robinson Crusoe.
Betteridge has been called to give his account of the events leading up to the disappearance of the fabled moonstone. Daunted by the task, he turns to Defoe’s novel, his guide in all things. The book falls open to the following passage:
Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.”
Betteridge finds consolation that someone else has experienced
what he is going through:
Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As soon as his back was turned, I went to my writing-desk to start the story. There I have sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since; seeing what Robinson Crusoe saw, as quoted above—namely, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. Please to remember, I opened the book by accident, at that bit, only the day before I rashly undertook the business now in hand; and, allow me to ask—if that isn’t prophecy, what is?
Betteridge then explains the importance of the book
for him:
I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice—Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady’s last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
Later in his account, Betteridge recalls how Robinson Crusoe came to his aid when he was eased out of his position as bailiff into the less arduous one of house steward:
The perturbation in my mind, in regard to thinking about it, being truly dreadful after my lady had gone away, I applied the remedy which I have never yet found to fail me in cases of doubt and emergency. I smoked a pipe and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe. Before I had occupied myself with that extraordinary book five minutes, I came on a comforting bit (page one hundred and fifty-eight), as follows: “Today we love, what tomorrow we hate.” I saw my way clear directly. Today I was all for continuing to be farm-bailiff; tomorrow, on the authority of Robinson Crusoe, I should be all the other way. Take myself tomorrow while in tomorrow’s humour, and the thing was done. My mind being relieved in this manner, I went to sleep that night in the character of Lady Verinder’s farm-bailiff, and I woke up the next morning in the character of Lady Verinder’s house-steward. All quite comfortable, and all through Robinson Crusoe!
At another point, he turns to Crusoe when asked to venture out into the rain to track down the mysterious foreigners who have been seen around the house:
It was all very well for him [the master] to joke. But I was not an eminent traveller—and my way in this world had not led me into playing ducks and drakes with my own life, among thieves and murderers in the outlandish places of the earth. I went into my own little room, and sat down in my chair in a perspiration, and wondered helplessly what was to be done next. In this anxious frame of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves up into a fever; I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe, and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe.
Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit—page one hundred and sixty-one—as follows:
“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.”
The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that, is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith.
I second Betteridge but expand his contention: those who don’t believe in literature generally have a screw loose in their understanding. Argument is thrown away upon them.
Further thought: I just realized that Betteridge uses Robinson Crusoe as Crusoe himself uses the Bible. Perhaps that is where he (or Wilkie Collins himself) got the idea. In a practice known as bibliomancy, Crusoe lets the good book fall open at moments of crisis. Here’s an example following his panic after witnessing the cannibals on his island:
[W]hen I had done praying I took up my Bible, and opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, “Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me. In answer, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least on that occasion.
Like much of the world, I’m breathing a sigh of relief as it appears that we will avoid a shooting war with Iran. While the long-term repercussions Qasen Soeleimani’s assassination look to be severe, we may have escaped something comparable to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which remains the gold standard for foreign policy stupidity.
I’m coming to see Donald Trump as Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. Although she dominates center stage by ordering anyone who crosses her to be beheaded, the axe never actually falls. We learn this somewhat late in the book from the Gryphon:
They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun…”Up, lazy thing!’ said the Queen, ‘and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some executions I have ordered’; and she walked off, leaving Alice alone with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like the look of the creature, but on the whole she thought it would be quite as safe to stay with it as to go after that savage Queen: so she waited.
The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. ‘What fun!’ said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.
‘What is the fun?’ said Alice.
‘Why, she,’ said the Gryphon. ‘It’s all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know.
To be sure, Trump executed Soleimani. And just because we’re not engaged in another Middle East war—at least not yet—doesn’t mean that many people haven’t suffered from Trump’s commands. His bungling, indeed, will likely lead to much worse. The great irony of the assassination is that it makes more likely the fulfillment of Soleimani’s dream, which is the United States leaving Iraq.
I don’t chuckle like the Gryphon at Trump’s bombast, as many of his supporters do. But I’m relieved that, in this case, he hasn’t followed through with his threats.
Further thought: In some ways, Nancy Pelosi, especially in the impeachment proceeding, is playing the role of Alice at the end of Wonderland. Here’s the passage of Alice’s confrontation:
‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’
‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
‘I won’t!’ said Alice.
‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’
At first, standing up to a bully like Trump can appear to unleash a firestorm, and all the cards rise up against Alice in a scene that terrified me as a child. When all is said and done, however, the firepower dwindles to some stray leaves:
At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
‘Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister; ‘Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’
One day we will wake up from this nightmare. Imagine living at some future time, looking back at our time in the rabbit hole, and wondering whatever possessed this country we love.
Carl Rosin, an occasional contributor to this blog, uses its
philosophy in his English classrooms at Radnor High School in Radnor, PA. We recently
enjoyed serving on a panel together at the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE) national convention in Baltimore, along with Jennifer Fletcher,
Glenda Funk, and Carol Jago.Carl left a software engineering job to become a teacher and has
won various local and regional awards along with PLATO’s (Philosophy Learning
and Teaching Organization) national high school Philosophy Teacher of the Year
award for 2014-15; he also served on the National Humanities Center’s Teacher
Advisory Council for 2018-2019.
By Carl Rosin, English Teacher,
Radnor High School
I, like many of you, am stubborn. I have always
thought of this as a badge of honor, at least as long as my stubbornness stands
in defense of truth and justice and fairness, and as long as I retain my
willingness to defer if I happen to be proven wrong.
John Adams, the American patriot, served admirably and successfully as defense attorney for the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre. He famously praised a particularly welcome form of stubbornness in his argument:
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence….
Adams, often quoted for this line (N.B.: he elaborates on a phrase that predates him by more than a half-century), would probably be befuddled if not horrified by today’s political America, a place that is well on its way to earning the tragic label “post-truth.” New York Times reviewer emerita Michiko Kakutani writes an end-of-decade op-ed that decries President Trump and his surrogates’ various efforts at “nihilistically trying to undermine public faith” in institutions, science, norms, and, by extension, the idea of truth itself.
Authoritarians incessantly pursue their desire to “make themselves the sole arbiters of truth and reality,” she writes. She quotes the president himself from January 2017, when he told reporters that his assaults on the press were designed “to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
Facts too stubborn for you? Have you tried
devaluing the idea that truth exists?
This epitomizes “gaslighting,” the term derived
from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, which George Cukor made
into the 1944 film noir classic Gaslight. Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar
for her portrayal of a character whose husband’s sophisticated, nefarious campaign
of psychological manipulations makes her question her sanity. “To gaslight”
entered the language as a useful way to describe such manipulations, especially
insofar as they are part of a strategy to undermine an observer’s perceptions. A
person or organization that can convince us not to trust our senses or our
memory is one that has access to tremendous power over us.
Orwell’s 1984 brought forth the menacing sentence, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” which Prof. Bates investigated only days after President Trump’s inauguration. (Professor Bates has written on gaslighting on several other occasions, including here, here, and here.)
The word is having an extended moment. It was Oxford English Dictionary’s runner-up Word of the Year for 2018. I see it constantly in the media, including in the title of anti-Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter’s book Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us, which traces the history of political uses of the word and outlines its threat to a reality-based world. Journalists Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa run a prominent weekly podcast called Gaslit Nation. There is plenty of material worth addressing under these titles. Too much.
Just in the past few days, Vox responded to House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) claim that the FBI spied on the president illegally – a claim that had already been debunked by Trump’s own Justice Department – by calling him out for gaslighting; the same day, lawyer and conservative Never-Trumper George Conway called out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-OR) for “mendacious gaslighting” when Sen. Johnson invoked another debunked theory about 2016 Democratic party collusion with Ukraine.
On Dec. 23, the president spoke in Florida, claiming, among other things, “There’s no impeachment.” White House advisor Kellyanne Conway – George Conway’s wife – crowed about the coming of “alternative facts” back in 2017; examples have proliferated almost too fast to be counted.
But “gaslighting” is not unique to the Trump era.
Its lineage traces back through Pres. Clinton and Pres. Nixon, back past Cukor’s
film and Hamilton’s play. Indeed, it finds one of its most evocative
implementations in William Shakespeare’s 1590s comedy – I think of it as quite
a dark comedy, although it does contain plenty of good humor – Taming
of the Shrew. Deception plays a role in almost every Shakespeare play,
tragedies and histories as well as comedies, but nowhere does it evoke the term
“gaslighting” as plainly as in the controversial Taming.
The motif germinates in the Induction, an introductory
act that frames the action we know as Taming of the Shrew – Shakespeare
uses this framing device only for Taming – in which a wealthy Lord
decides to play a prank on a passed-out drunkard named Christopher Sly by pretending
that Sly is a rich lord himself. He tells his attendants,
Sirs, I will practice on this drunken man. What think you, if he were conveyed to bed, Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, A most delicious banquet by his bed, And brave attendants near him when he wakes, Would not the beggar then forget himself? (Induction.1.37-43)
While robbing someone
of poverty and discomfort is better than robbing someone of wealth and comfort, a la the Hamilton play and Cukor film, a patina of disrespect discolors the
scene. The Lord laughingly disparages Sly as “monstrous,” “foul,” “loathsome,”
and a “swine.” Deceiving him will be “pastime passing excellent.” My students
did find this funny, especially when Sly starts to go along with the prank
after “discovering” that he has a beautiful wife, really the Lord’s page in
disguise.
The well-known plot of Taming is introduced
when the Lord hires players to entertain Sly and the rest with a silly play
about romantic machinations in Padua. An elder sister, the independent-minded
and “shrewish” Katherine (Katherina), has an obedient and “modest” younger sister,
Bianca. Their father, Baptista, insists on marrying off the elder – who has no
suitors – before the younger – who has two and soon three vying for her hand.
The play continues with the usual comedic disguises
and lies, but it eventually fires up toward gaslighting. The wealthy young man
Lucentio has switched identities with his servant Tranio so as to be able to
court Bianca surreptitiously; Tranio, in the guise of “Lucentio,” has promised great
wealth to Baptista, and now needs someone to provide his bona fides to back up
these promises. Tranio tricks a traveling merchant into going along with the
deception: the merchant will be protected from an imaginary threat as long as
he pretends to be Lucentio’s father Vincentio. Meanwhile, the real Vincentio
comes to town on a surprise visit. Tranio and his fellow servant to Lucentio, a
boy named Biondello, have to make a choice: admit their deception to Vincentio
(their real master’s real father) or double down on the lies they have been
building.
It wouldn’t be comedy if they didn’t double
down.
When Vincentio addresses Biondello, the scamp
replies, “No, sir. I could not forget you, / for I never saw you before in all
my life” (5.1.51-52). The horror of Vincentio, who is appropriately baffled by
this bald-faced lie, only multiplies when he encounters Tranio, disguised as
Lucentio. Tranio tells Vincentio, with the feigned civility common to
gaslighters, “Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but your
words show you a madman” (5.1.74-76). The scene further spirals out of control
when Baptista piles on against Vincentio, who is the only one telling the
truth. Vincentio, justifiably upset and on the verge of being arrested for his
defiance of the story that the gulls have accepted, is saved only by the
appearance of his son, who finally sets the record straight.
But the real king of gaslighting is the antihero
of the play, Petruchio. He had arrived on the scene to face the challenge of “taming”
Katherine the “shrew,” and threw himself wholeheartedly into the task. At
first, his gambit is relatively unoffensive. He presents himself to Baptista
with uncommon praise for Katherine:
PETRUCHIO Pray, have you not a daughter Called Katherina, fair and virtuous? BAPTISTA I have a daughter, sir, called Katherina. (2.1.45-47)
The reply from Baptista, whose unwillingness to defend his daughter’s dignity seems central to the action, always strikes me as potentially one of the play’s funniest lines, although it is wrought unpleasantly at her expense. Petruchio continues with more unwarranted praise for her:
PETRUCHIO I am a gentleman of Verona, sir, That hearing of her beauty and her wit, Her affability and bashful modesty, Her wondrous qualities and mild behavior, Am bold to show myself a forward guest Within your house, to make mine eye the witness Of that report which I so oft have heard…. (2.1.50-56)
Well, no, he has not “so oft” heard that. But he is committed. He soliloquizes about his plan to “woo her with some spirit”:
Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale. Say that she frown, I’ll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly washed with dew. Say she be mute and will not speak a word, Then I’ll commend her volubility And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks As though she bid me stay by her a week. If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day When I shall ask the banns, and when be marrièd. (2.1.178-188)
There are worse things than praising someone
even when they haven’t earned it. This wouldn’t fully deserve the name
gaslighting if that’s all he did, though.
He keeps it up when he meets Katherine, who is
not receptive. He tells her “I am he born to tame you, Kate, / And bring you
from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as other household Kates” (2.1.291-293).
Her will is clearly against this, but in patriarchal Padua, with pathetic
Baptista’s complicity, the die is cast. Perhaps Petruchio will tame her with more
kindness and praise?
Nope. After humiliating her at their wedding, Petruchio
drags Katherine away from the bridal dinner while ratcheting up the gaslighting.
Nobody comes to Katherine’s defense, despite her explicit objections, when
Petruchio claims that he is not forcing her to leave against her will but
actually “rescuing” her when they are “beset with thieves.” As her husband, he insists
on being
master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything. And here she stands, touch her whoever dare. (2.1.235-239)
This speech sounds ominous for her independent
streak. He carries her off to end Act 3, on the long trip to his home that is
described in comic style as being messy and painful for Katherine.
His plan to win her obedience has two main
prongs: starving her and depriving her of sleep, with an added element of
ruining anything else that might provide her some comfort. Later, when they are
on their way back to Padua for Bianca’s and Lucentio’s wedding, Petruchio shows
that he has not quit his campaign to exasperate and humiliate his wife:
PETRUCHIO Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon! KATHERINE The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now. PETRUCHIO I say it is the moon that shines so bright. KATHERINE I know it is the sun that shines so bright. PETRUCHIO Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself, It shall be moon, or star, or what I list, Or e’er I journey to your father’s house. To Servants. Go on, and fetch our horses back again.— Evermore crossed and crossed, nothing but crossed! (4.5.2-11)
It’s the emperor’s new clothes: she who dares to tell the truth will be accused of crossing the infallible ruler and harassed into compliance…unless she cares as little as he does for decorum and, even more alarmingly, for the respect of others.
A student of 21st century political gaslighting would recognize this shamelessness as a component of the potential for a race to the bottom. If Katherina does not comply with her commanding, brazen master, he will force her to miss her sister’s wedding. Their fellow traveler, Petruchio’s friend Hortensio, begs her – notice that he does not beg Petruchio – to comply, and she does, at the price of her dignity. Capitulation is apparently her only option.
HORTENSIO [to Katherine] Say as he says, or we shall never go. KATHERINE Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please. And if you please to call it a rush candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. PETRUCHIO I say it is the moon. KATHERINE I know it is the moon. PETRUCHIO Nay, then you lie. It is the blessèd sun. KATHERINE Then God be blest, it is the blessèd sun. But sun it is not, when you say it is not, And the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is, And so it shall be so for Katherine. (4.5.12-25)
He’s not done. Soon, they come across an older
man, and Petruchio continues to humiliate Katherine by making her assent to
more of his foolishness. This older man is the aforementioned Vincentio, who is
about to be gaslit himself by Tranio and Biondello in the scene described
above. But it’s all in good fun, I guess, as Vincentio appears to forgive his
gaslighters before joining the party after his son’s wedding in Act 5.
A theme of Shakespeare’s play: gaslighting works.
At Bianca’s bridal dinner, in the denouement, Petruchio makes and wins a bet
that his Katherine has been tamed into the most obedient of the three new wives
in attendance. What’s more, she berates the other two wives for their
shrewishness. The gaslighter triumphs, and the gaslit woman not only sacrifices
her dignity but also spreads the gaslighter’s philosophy to embarrass other
women. It’s hard to accept that Katherine’s ignominious defeat is truly all in
good fun.
While I’m here: if you are among the many who have
heard that Taming is a feminist play, you may have gotten gaslit
yourselves. But we’ll save that argument for another day.
Although I
don’t often write about authors like Tom Clancy, his mention in connection with
the recent assassination of Qasem Soleimani warrants some reflection. According
to Malcolm Nance, former naval officer and intelligence expert, Tom Clancy has,
at the very least, given Donald Trump and the neocons a narrative framework for
the killing.
Following the incident Nance tweeted,
Trump is executing Tom Clancy’s “Ryan Doctrine” which was all foreign leaders will be killed if they sponsor a terrorist attack. Soleimani is literally the last page of Executive Orders where Jack Ryan orders CIA to assassinate leader of Iran during a speech announcing doctrine.
Nance is no fan of Soleimani, having fought against his operatives in the Middle East in the 1980s. Nevertheless, as Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—which Nance says is comparable to a combination of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Vice President of the United States—Soleimani was too big to take out. It breaks international norms, resembles too closely Israel’s targeted assassinations, heightens the risk of war, and makes Americans less safe.
Nance elaborated on his Clancy observation over the weekend for MSNBC’s Joy Reid. The intelligence community, Nance said, has the acronym TCCC, for Tom Clancy Combat Concepts. This applies to those instances when a civilian decision maker reads something in a Tom Clancy novel and tries to pass it off as the basis for a political decision. In Executive Orders, President Jack Ryan orders the killing of an Iranian Ayatollah.
Since I haven’t read any of
Clancy’s novels, even though he was a big favorite in the Maryland county where
I taught (where there was a Naval Air Force base and where long lines formed
whenever he came to the area for a reading), I turn to the responses that Nance’s
tweet elicited. The general consensus appears to be that Clancy’s early novels
were excellent but have in recent years become too tainted with ideology. For
instance, Grant Stern responded,
I loved his novels until The Bear and the Dragon, when President Ryan bellicosely started a war and bragged about it, like a power drunk neo-con. Clancy’s (d)evolution matched the GOP.
Genre novels are capable of embracing the complexity of life (witness Jane Austen’s romance novels), but when they become formulaic or opt for cheap fantasy, they can become reactionary, if not dangerous. Rather than stimulating thought, they generate emotional venting. Bertolt Brecht leveled this charge against the sentimental bourgeois theater of his day, and it can be leveled against Clancy’s fiction today.
The difference between great literature and lesser is that the former always appeals to more than base impulses. It appeals to the head and the soul as well as to the emotions. It calls upon us to think things through and to invoke a higher ethical perspective.
I don’t know that the major decision makers in the Soleimani assassination–Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo–read Clancy novels. Nance admits that it may be just coincidence that the killing follows the Ryan Doctrine so closely. Nevertheless, the novels contribute to a world view that appears to have taken over the White House.
It’s hard to overstate just how dangerous this all is.
A Chris Hayes’s podcast interview with playwrights Tony Kushner and Jeremy O. Harris alerted me to an absurdist play which captures the nightmare currently unfolding between Trump and Iran. Think of Trump as Ubu Roi, “the shit king.”
Alfred Jarry’s play came up when the playwrights were asked what drama best captures the GOP’s utter capitulation to Trump. One of them (I can’t remember which) mentioned that Republicans were behaving like the townspeople in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, a point I myself have made in the past.
The other, however, argued they were like Ubu’s followers, which I agree works even better. In the version directed by Peter Brooks, Ubu’s generals blindly run into a wall when he orders them to.
Ubu Roi grew out of a high school farce attacking an unpopular teacher. With references to Macbeth, Hamlet, and other classical plays, it features a gluttonous, cowardly, miserly, sadistic narcissist who is more a satiric grotesque than an actual individual. Ubu overthrows the King of Poland, kills his family (except for the youngest son Bougrelas, who escapes with his mother), raises everyone’s taxes, betrays his supporters, is attacked and defeated by both the Russians and Bougrelas, and in the end escapes. He has a grotesque wife (Madame Ubu), throws around obscenities (the first word in the play is “merdre” [shit]), eats everything in sight, runs away whenever there is danger, is gutted a couple of times (but always recovers), and in the end runs off to Spain.
The more I describe him, the more he sounds like a certain American president. I am currently watching in horror the news out of Iran as Trump boasts of his destructive capacities, promises to destroy world heritage sites, and trades taunts with Iranian leaders. What kind of a leader does this?!
Ubu possesses both Trump’s bragaddocio and his cowardice. Here’s the battle scene:
PAPA UBU. Let’s go, gentlemen. Let’s take up our positions for the battle. We’re going to stay on this hill and won’t commit the blunder of descending to the bottom. I will hold the middle like a living citadel and the rest of you will circle around me. I recommend that you put in your rifles as many bullets as they’ll hold, because eight bullets can kill eight Russians and that’s a few less I won’t have on my back. We’ll put the infantry at the bottom of the hill to receive the Russians and kill them a little, riders behind to throw themselves into the confusion, and the artillery around the windmill here to fire into the heap… OFFICERS. Your orders, Lord Ubu, will be executed.
Incidentally, I played the role of Bougrelas in a Carleton College production of the play. I still remember my stilted speech as my mother dies in my arms (in the snow, no less) and, Hamlet Sr.-like, the ghost of one of my ancestors delivers me a sword with which to enact vengeance. I provide the dialogue to further convey the farcical nature of the play:
Bougrelas: Ah, it tragic to see oneself, alone at 14, with a terrible vengeance to pursue.
(His ancestors appear)
THE GHOST. Learn, Bougrelas, that I was during my life Matthias Lord of Koenigsberg, the first king and founder of our house. I place upon you the responsibility of exacting our vengeance. (He gives him a big sword.) Let this sword not rest until it has caused the death of the usurper.
(All disappear, and Bougrelas rests alone in an attitude of ecstasy.)
Ubu Roi (1896) had a major influence on Surrealism, Dadaism, and the Theater of the Absurd. In a number of ways, it captures the Trump drama more effectively than realistic theater might, especially the president’s utter lack of accountability.
Observations by South African playwright and academic Jane Taylor help us understand the allure of both Ubu and Trump. The two pull their followers down to their own infantile level. Their supporters get to act out their infantile rages and indulge in infantile desires without taking responsibility.
Taylor describes Ubu as “notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification.” While the responsible part of us is shocked, a more primitive part takes a secret delight:
There is a particular kind of pleasure for an audience watching these infantile attacks. Part of the satisfaction arises from the fact that in the burlesque mode which Jarry invents, there is no place for consequence. While Ubu may be relentless in his political aspirations, and brutal in his personal relations, he apparently has no measurable effect upon those who inhabit the farcical world which he creates around himself. He thus acts out our most childish rages and desires, in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost.
Jarry was targeting stodgy middle class respectability, as were the Surrealists and Dadaists. I have to say, however, that such stodginess looks pretty good when contrasted with rampant irresponsibility. We elected an entertainer as a president when what we needed was a responsible adult, no matter how dull. Hillary didn’t excite, but she would have been competent.
We chose to live in an Ubu world and the results look worse all the time.
Further note: After some googling, I see that Charles Simic compared Trump to Ubu in a 2016 New York Review of Books article. Ubu is the only literary character who comes close to Trump, Simic argues. Simic’s examples remind us how extraordinary Trump seemed in his first year and how we must struggle to refrain from normalizing such behavior:
Since Trump became president, every time I told myself this man is bonkers, I remembered Ubu, realizing how the story of his presidency and the cast of characters he has assembled in the White House would easily fit into Jarry’s play without a single word needing to be changed. Everyone, I imagine, is familiar with the spectacle of his entire cabinet taking turns telling him how much they admire him. “The greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people,” Mike Pence said. After every member of his cabinet was through slobbering, and he himself had stopped nodding in agreement, he took the opportunity to heap additional praise on himself, declaring that he is one of the most productive presidents in American history—with perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt coming close—and everyone present concurred.
Even more Ubu-esque was that scene of a dozen pastors who came to the Oval Office to lay on hands and pray for the president, supernatural wisdom, guidance, and protection. “Who could ever even imagine,” one shaken participant said afterward, “we are going to see another great spiritual awakening?” Or how about that touching moment when the president signed a bill into law rolling back the regulation for people with mental illness to purchase guns? Or the spectacle of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the White House economic adviser, Gary Cohn, pledging to American people that the wealthy are not getting a tax cut under the president’s plan?
Mural by 19th century Benedictine monks, Conception Abbey, Conception, Mo.
Spiritual
Sunday
Journey for Jesus’s Dan Clendenin alerted me to this epiphany poem by Scottish poet George Mackay Brown. In simple parable-like language, Brown describes the magi encountering frustrating obstacles. Experiencing God’s apparent silence (“salt, snow, skulls”), they meet under a dry star.
Then the star begins to sing.
Epiphany Poem
The red king Came to a great water. He said, Here the journey ends. No keel or skipper on this shore.
The yellow king Halted under a hill. He said, Turn the camels round. Beyond, ice summits only.
The black king Knocked on a city gate. He said, All roads stop here. These are gravestones, no inn.
The three kings Met under a dry star. There, at midnight, The star began its singing.
The three kings Suffered salt, snow, skulls. They suffered the silence Before the first word.
