So You Screwed Up–No Big Deal

Pauline Baynes, The Magician's Book

Pauline Baynes, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Ten members of the Scott Bates clan have gathered in my parents’ Tennessee house, and two more, along with two beagles (Kipling and Beckett), are on their way. While the Christmas festivities have for the most part been joyous, we have had one moment of friction. Luckily, literature came to our aid.

I keep the story general because I’m don’t want to embarrass anyone. Besides, what happened is probably common enough amongst families. Almost all of us have said bad things about relatives upon occasion and probably most of us have eavesdropped. I don’t judge either of the two parties here.

A is talking on his cell phone to a friend and has some words of criticism about B. B, passing by the room, overhears her name and eavesdrops. B confronts A, and A is overwhelmed with two emotions: (1) shame and self-disgust at being caught badmouthing someone (A regards himself as kind and good-natured and in fact is so) and (2) a sense of violation over the eavesdropping. A proceeds to engage in a long and tortuous self-examination.

In talking with A, I offered up two literary passages that provide perspective. The first occurs in C. S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lucy is reading through a magician’s book to find a spell that will render the Dufflepuds visible.  In the process, she comes along a spell that will let her know what her friends think about her. Although sensing that she is doing wrong, she nevertheless chants the words, at which point she overhears the following conversation between her friend Marjorie and another girl:

“Shall I see anything of you this term?” said Anne, “or are you still gong to be all taken up with Lucy Pevensie.”

“Don’t know what you mean by taken up,” said Marjorie.

“Oh yes, you do, “ said Anne. “You were crazy about her last term.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Marjorie. “I’ve got more sense than that. Not a bad little kid in her way. But I was getting pretty tired of her before the end of term.”

Aslan later chastises Lucy for eavesdropping and points out that what she heard isn’t necessarily what her friend really thinks:

“You have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean.”

“I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I heard her say.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Oh dear,” said Lucy. “Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have one one being friends if it hadn’t been for this—and been really great friends—all our lives perhaps—and now we never shall.”

Lucy thinks the friendship is over, and Aslan doesn’t reassure her. But a useful perspective is to be found in Laura Miller’s reflection on the passage. (I recently posted on Miller’s The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.) Here’s what Miller says:

Lewis’s vignette implies that true friendship depends on the maintenance of . . . boundaries. That Lewis would champion privacy is no surprise, but there’s more to the Marjorie Preston incident than a simple admonishment against eavesdropping. Aslan’s remarks about Marjorie’s love for Lucy serve as a reminder that people employ personas in all sorts of situations; we shouldn’t necessarily assume that what our friends say when we’re not around is more truthful than what they say to our faces.

That was certain the case in A’s case.  He needed to acknowledge that the person that B overheard (and that B saw through her own lens and fed back to him) is not the person that A really is.

In addition to citing Lewis, I also offered A the reassurance that is to be found in a passage that I quoted on this website two weeks ago.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain has surreptitiously accepted a green girdle from Lady Bertilak (he thinks it will save his life) and dishonorably hides it from her husband (dishonorably because he had promised to exchange each day’s “winnings” with Lord Bertilak). When the Green Knight proves to be Bertilak and calls Gawain out on his underhanded dealing (he knows about the girdle because he and the lady have been in on the plot together), Gawain has a visceral reaction: “The blood flew to his face and he shrank for shame.” He then proceeds to address himself as follow:

Accursed be a cowardly and covetous heart!
In you is villainy and vice and virtue laid low!

When I teach the work, I sometimes ask my students whether Gawain feels worse about having been underhanded or for having gotten caught. It’s not an entirely fair question but it opens up an interesting discussion. Sometimes when we have moral slips, we compartmentalize, essentially averting our eyes. We know we have a shameful side but we choose not to face it. We react violently when we are called out because the walls come down and we are revealed to be the awful person that we secretly fear that we are.

That’s why it is so important to act honorably and to live in integrity to the fullest extent possible. This means no badmouthing and no eavesdropping. But of course we will continue to do both because we are human.  The Green Knight’s real lesson is that, even when we screw up, we may still be pretty good knights. The darkness we have inside is no more the “real us” than overheard conversations are the “real other person.” In fact, if one reads Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from a Jungian point of view, Gawain is so worried about appearing perfect to all the world that he generates a shadow figure (the Green Knight) who reminds him that he is more than his public persona.

What Green Knight says to Gawain after the Camelot knight’s self-flagellation is what I said to A:

I hold you polished as a pearl, as pure and as bright
As you had lived free of fault since first you were born.

Which is not so say that either A or Gawain are perfect. There are lessons to learn from the incident and improvements to be made. But to shrink from oneself in horror is drawing the wrong conclusion.

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