(On the Canadian Woman Studies journal on soviet women and Baranskaya's A Week Like Any Other.)
If one reads the short biography at the beginning of the book, and notices the almost extreme attention to practical details, one might suspect A Week Like Any Other to be almost autobiographical. Without reading the biography, one might instead (or also?) suspect it was written by a Canadian mother: the overall pattern of relationship is very familiar to my generation, not directly, but from watching each other's parents as we grew up. Among my friends' families, those with both parents as full-time professionals, having been in love at one point and mostly maintaining that through waves of wrinkles and the occasional larger doubts, the father doing more to help the mother than the previous generation, but the mother still struggling under the weight of the majority of domestic responsibility combined with a confusing mix of pressures at work. Not only are there the "normal" stresses of work: looming deadlines and the thought of not being able to make them, fierce competition for shared resources, being unprepared for meetings, the extra stress of slip-ups like being late or misplacing important things, etc.; but also the questionnaire has Olya's female coworkers up-in-arms about whether the state would have them have more children while at the same time she almost aborted Gulka (the second of her two children) and is always worried about accidentally becoming pregnant again. Like the Canadian mothers I've seen, she bears this all as well as possible without complaining, and it drives her to two breakdowns. Not massive ones in a medical sense, perhaps, but still ones she is not able to control: she laughs maniacally to the point of tears at Lusya's finding of the graph Olya had lost, and the next day--the first of two supposed days of rest she looks forward to--she breaks down crying in front of her children and husband (when he decides he has done his share of the day's myriad chores) and cannot figure out how she could have let herself make such a scene.
It's what Kollontai had feared for the Soviet woman, and sought to remedy. What happened?
There are the children's crèche and kindergarten for Gulka and Kotka, respectively, but Dima and Olya are both aware of their lower-than-desirable quality, and for what reason: the norm is set at twenty-eight children for one supervisor and assistant. (Baranskaya's assertion here through Olya's narration that whoever set the norm obviously had never had children, or could pay for better care of them, seems to set the tone for the story as an expositive one, to some extent showing life as it is and asking for a critical look at it, hoping the state might help in some way: Lusya's comments during the questionnaire debate reflect the latter; the questionnaire itself, the former.) But the ideas of household chores, particularly mending, cooking, and cleaning, being outsourced to specialized labourers is not played out here, at least not positively. The only one of those we see is Dima's eating from a canteen, and this is always portrayed negatively: the food is never as good as Olya's.
So what's the solution? Baranskaya seems to suggest the need for a general slowdown--Muscovites are always rude and in a hurry in the few portrayals we get of them--but the question of how family life ought to work seems to be left unanswerable to some degree: the only people who have the right to come up with an answer, the working parents themselves, have very little time to think about it. Dima has a little more than Olya, and his suggestion is to throw out her career and beef up his, so that they can live better and she can spend more time with the children. After a little bit of rebuttal from Olya he admits, "Maybe I'm being selfish, I don't know. Let's drop it." (p. 60) But in the end, Olya's belt hook is still not sown back on--a recurring to-do item mentioned usually twice a day in the novella: she must finally do it today, then right before falling asleep, dammit, she has forgotten again and is much too tired to get out of bed to do it now--and the unanswered/unanswerable question, "What is the matter with me?" (p. 62) reverberates with the reader as the story comes to an end.
While the Canadian Woman Studies journal was good to read after writing the above for its inclusion of the purpose of Baranskaya's short story (in the article "Contemporary Soviet Women Writers"), it was more interesting as a divergence from our normal readings in that it included Western feminists trying to grapple with Russian culture. The articles "Soviet Women - A Canadian View" and "Sex Role Education in the USSR" were especially demonstrative of this. The former article seemed to be something of a cornerstone passage, outlining the basic conundrum of free-yet-doubly-burdened women in Russia, and that Western feminism and Russian feminism are two very different things. Broadly, at first interaction, the former cannot fathom the oversight of the sex-gender separation and total-equality discussions in the latter, and the latter sees these topics as much less relevant in the context of socialism and anyone pushing them to be radicals who are not actually looking out for women's best interests.
I think the two do have something to offer each other, however, given the journal issue's existence, but also on some specifics within the issues mentioned above.
For me, these points of possible learning occur at certain statements that seem to pop out of an otherwise levelly written essay. Reiter and Luxton stick to description with some helpful analysis for the first few paragraphs, and then seemingly out of nowhere insert this: "At the same time, the concept of women and men having different natures fosters a celebration of femininity as pretty and weak." (p. 27) First of all, "natures" here and earlier on the page seems to be too strong a word, carrying connotations of being on the same level as "human nature." Secondly, their quote of Kaidash contradicts this: "the indispensability of each sex" (Ibid., emphasis mine) hardly makes sense if one assumes a framework of dominance a la Kollontai's Thirty-Two Pages. Finally, while I agree that it's important to emphasize similarities between the sexes in the context of broken gender relations (i.e., when needed), I believe that God created two different genders to show different aspects of the divine nature in a way that is humbling to both men and women as they observe one another. And far be it from me to take this to mean we should celebrate "femininity as pretty and weak"! On the absolute contrary, anyone who attended the Global Citizenship Conference at Laurier last year and was present at the mock beauty pageant had it laid out for them if they didn't realize it before: "every day" women are strong--they have to be to survive--even or especially in the contexts wherein we might consider them powerless. For a woman to have any other supposedly contradictory quality amidst this--be it prettiness, or caring, understanding, wisdom, ...--ought to amaze us, and this strength alone, never mind "strength, plus...," is the femininity that was celebrated at the GCC. Indeed, this is exactly what is painted for the reader in detail in Baranskaya's story. So I think the Western framework would be enriched here. The examples given are true, no doubt (the letters from Russian women on p. 15 attest to this) but the cause and effect link is assumed rather than demonstrated--count me as a counterexample in that I loathe the beauty contests too. But it's all moot unless we can learn to celebrate positive human qualities in a person regardless of their gender, because despite the existence of two sexes (not to mention the sexuality of more complicated persons) neither creating boxes based on tendencies nor pretending that all tendencies are socially constructed will help us help each other become what we were meant to be. And we certainly can't predetermine what that is based on gender or anything else--this is the joy of life's journey.
"Over-emancipation" is quoted multiple times as the common Russian analysis of the Soviet women's problem. To me it feels almost like a tongue-in-cheek way of describing it: since "emancipation" has meant the freedom to become overburdened, rather than the freedom to have a balance of burden, it's facetiously accurate language to use. But Canadian criticism of it would seem to follow from the view that a woman with children who stays at home is in chains: "The measures proposed [to ease the double burden]...are all designed to keep women in harness--married and primarily responsible for the children." (p. 29) Perhaps that's somewhat valid: admittedly maternity leave wins out over paternity leave almost always. (p. 28) My question for both paradigms, then, is: why can't the family, and the role of both mother and father, be valued in such a way that joint leave is considered the best option and the norm? (I can probably answer that: Because it's too expensive.) But socially speaking, I would love to live in a world where whether you were a man, woman, single, married, had many children, were childless, were dedicated to a career, or worked part time (at a "paid" job or at home), or not at all (if circumstances prevented you from working), you would be valued and considered worth talking to, sharing food with, listening to, supporting, and spending time with in general; that you would be given respect. Why should stay-at-home dads be applauded but "traditional" moms be considered weak and trampled-upon, or those who try to do it all be considered stupid and undeserving? The social structures do need to be in place to allow this choice to actually be free, but I think this just brings us to the problem of general economic inequality (cf. the woman who wrote in on p. 15 again).
The Russian feminist voice could also learn from this. The household work imbalance in a marriage (well illustrated by Baranskaya) needs to be more seriously questioned. Also, and relatedly, it feels like in some cases they have taken the gender role separation too far: the rhetoric behind "How can she play football, and still expect a man to help her?" seems to have created some artificial division. There are countless things that both men and women can do, and do well, but they fall to one or the other rather than being negotiated on an individual basis or being tackled jointly. But individual choices are still based on socialization to an extent--which is where Pearson's article comes in.
The author presents a much fuller picture than the previous article of gender stereotype socialization and its practical effects, and the resulting argument is much more robust and productive in the end. To me both halves of the article seem to lend support to two statements: "If playing a supportive role is only honoured when it is done by a woman, then no amount of legal and economic equality will make any difference," (p. 94) and "there must be more women at the highest levels of Soviet power where they can impose some of those human qualities of compassion and understanding, of which they have learned to be proud." (p. 95, emphasis in original) But perhaps it would be easiest to start by replacing the notions of "the 'ideal' man and the 'ideal' woman" (p. 95) with something more helpful, like specific roles that men and women both step into: why not discuss the ideal coworker, teammate, friend, parent, sibling, housemate, child, babysitter, student, civic leader, project supervisor, spouse, lover, stranger, teacher, research assistant, etc., if ideals are a good way of framing a classroom discussion? Maybe then Russian men and women would be able to appreciate other and become better equipped to help shape one another towards becoming "ideal" human beings.
2007/11/17
Reading Journal 9
(On the Russian dating service photocopies.)
Radzinsky's article, after reading the past few hopeful novels that we have, revealed a fairly tragic but predictable reality: Russian women almost seem to be where North American women were, from the narrow depiction I've absorbed from the media, in the 1970's: they are "winning," in some sense, the beginning of a fierce battle for independence from men in the workplace and gender relations. Middle-class women are somewhat economically empowered but still unequally so, open sexual expression long repressed by Soviet morality has begun to saturate the media, and men are becoming divided into either the "whipped" category or the "traditional" category, and there is no room at the moment for Glebs, let alone Pavels, in cross-gender relationships. His final lines are telling: "The Russian girls are coming. They don't want to change the world. They want to conquer it." Will there be a modern-day Kollontai that does want to change the world? Would the culture allow her to be heard? I suppose that's where the Vice photo-article comes in.
One theme amongst the brief Q&A captions was that local Russian men do not treat women well or otherwise would not make suitable partners, so they seek men from other countries, some of which hold more promise than others. Americans, Muslims, and Arabs in particular, just in this small selection, are not preferred, but Dutch, English, and German men are. There's some sense to the logic given: the Natasha of p. 73 cite the practical statistic of the latter group wanting to be with women closer to their age, which is more likely to work due to similarities in life stage; others cite more respect being given from them.
In my brief encounter with liberation theology a few years ago, I heard of three ways of responding to systematic problems: temporary aid, sustainable aid, and restructuring the system in question. Within this framework, it's obviously preferable in the long term to engage the last option, albeit much more difficult. But if we apply this to the situation above, the moral prescription is clear: Russians, Americans, Muslims, Arabs, Dutch, English, and Germans are all likely in need of varying degrees of cultural transformation. This is not to prejudge every relationship that comes about through an international dating service as unworthy, doomed to failure, etc., but rather to recognize that if Tver are often drunk or high and don't have respect for women, the outsourcing of relationships with men to other countries does not seem likely to be a path to the coming about of a generation of sober Tver men that have in mind the best interests and humanity of their female counterparts and of themselves. Tver women, as well, are in a sense training themselves to run from possible transformational roles as mothers and sisters, and instead embrace a preference for the unknown rather than a redemption of the known in situations of conflict. This is a harsh criticism, absolutely, and I'm not saying I would do any better in their situation; indeed, I have my own history of abandoning situations wherein I feel overwhelmed by a systematic problem. But I do know that sometimes the unknown turns out to be much worse; meanwhile, whether it turns out well for her or not, what good there was in a local Tver woman has left with her and is in both cases unlikely to return. Furthermore, if the facts in these short captions are what they appear to be, I believe Tver culture has plenty sufficient intelligence, practical skills, and creativity needed to become what its women are dismayed that it isn't.
Radzinsky's article, after reading the past few hopeful novels that we have, revealed a fairly tragic but predictable reality: Russian women almost seem to be where North American women were, from the narrow depiction I've absorbed from the media, in the 1970's: they are "winning," in some sense, the beginning of a fierce battle for independence from men in the workplace and gender relations. Middle-class women are somewhat economically empowered but still unequally so, open sexual expression long repressed by Soviet morality has begun to saturate the media, and men are becoming divided into either the "whipped" category or the "traditional" category, and there is no room at the moment for Glebs, let alone Pavels, in cross-gender relationships. His final lines are telling: "The Russian girls are coming. They don't want to change the world. They want to conquer it." Will there be a modern-day Kollontai that does want to change the world? Would the culture allow her to be heard? I suppose that's where the Vice photo-article comes in.
One theme amongst the brief Q&A captions was that local Russian men do not treat women well or otherwise would not make suitable partners, so they seek men from other countries, some of which hold more promise than others. Americans, Muslims, and Arabs in particular, just in this small selection, are not preferred, but Dutch, English, and German men are. There's some sense to the logic given: the Natasha of p. 73 cite the practical statistic of the latter group wanting to be with women closer to their age, which is more likely to work due to similarities in life stage; others cite more respect being given from them.
In my brief encounter with liberation theology a few years ago, I heard of three ways of responding to systematic problems: temporary aid, sustainable aid, and restructuring the system in question. Within this framework, it's obviously preferable in the long term to engage the last option, albeit much more difficult. But if we apply this to the situation above, the moral prescription is clear: Russians, Americans, Muslims, Arabs, Dutch, English, and Germans are all likely in need of varying degrees of cultural transformation. This is not to prejudge every relationship that comes about through an international dating service as unworthy, doomed to failure, etc., but rather to recognize that if Tver are often drunk or high and don't have respect for women, the outsourcing of relationships with men to other countries does not seem likely to be a path to the coming about of a generation of sober Tver men that have in mind the best interests and humanity of their female counterparts and of themselves. Tver women, as well, are in a sense training themselves to run from possible transformational roles as mothers and sisters, and instead embrace a preference for the unknown rather than a redemption of the known in situations of conflict. This is a harsh criticism, absolutely, and I'm not saying I would do any better in their situation; indeed, I have my own history of abandoning situations wherein I feel overwhelmed by a systematic problem. But I do know that sometimes the unknown turns out to be much worse; meanwhile, whether it turns out well for her or not, what good there was in a local Tver woman has left with her and is in both cases unlikely to return. Furthermore, if the facts in these short captions are what they appear to be, I believe Tver culture has plenty sufficient intelligence, practical skills, and creativity needed to become what its women are dismayed that it isn't.
2007/11/09
Reading Journal 8
(On Gladkov's Cement.)
Considering all of the negative references I had heard directed at socialist realism in passing during research on Sofia Gubaidulina, I had expected Gladkov's writing to be one-dimensional and biased-feeling. It may still have a pinch of the latter, but compared with Gorky, the scene painted is so much more realistic and fault-admitting. As Dr. Volynska remarked in class, it's a wonder that it was published when it was, and even more so that it more than survived in the coming years. It was notably contradictory to what was expected of socialist realism, just from the list given in class:
In terms of gender relations, this book is both encouraging and tragic. I see it as good that Dasha is able to become more fully human, and eventually bring Gleb around to affirming this without giving up his own strengths, but actually thus giving up some of his weaknesses and becoming more fully human himself. What's disheartening is that the overwork and misguided trust in the commune that Dasha follows through to the end destroys her daughter literally and also puts an end to what had developed into something good between her and Gleb. On the trust in the commune I remarked in an earlier journal that I'm actually in favour in some respects, but the description given in the book of the lady in charge of raising Nurka makes Dasha's trust in her seem foolish. I guess this amounts to my disagreement with either implicit trust or implicit distrust in such a system: if you can build a relationship with someone such that you can trust them to help you raise your child--indeed, isn't this a large part of the traditional marital relationship?--then the world is better for it. But entrusting someone you actually believe is a scoundrel, or shying away from trusting anyone, I see as divergent from furthering the humanity of oneself and others in the world. This is also why I think the "open relationship" proposed by Kollontai complicates things: we see it play out here in Dasha's inexplicable sexual relationship with Badin after his unwanted advances and betrayal are so vividly juxtaposed with her courage in Chapter 8, in that Dasha's unrestricted sexuality makes it difficult for her to perceive accurately the truth of the situation: that she is not having sex with Badin, the man, but rather with his position, as symbolic of the revolution she is so passionate about.
Considering all of the negative references I had heard directed at socialist realism in passing during research on Sofia Gubaidulina, I had expected Gladkov's writing to be one-dimensional and biased-feeling. It may still have a pinch of the latter, but compared with Gorky, the scene painted is so much more realistic and fault-admitting. As Dr. Volynska remarked in class, it's a wonder that it was published when it was, and even more so that it more than survived in the coming years. It was notably contradictory to what was expected of socialist realism, just from the list given in class:
- reality is not as it should be
- focus on individual stereotypes
- tragedies abound--rape, Nurka's death, and Serge's family being torn apart, to name a few
- not all is known (just by the fact that it takes an entire book of conflicts to get one factory restarted)
- dogma is not truth: Nurka dies from lack of love (Soviet dogma fails)
- hero and heroine both have major flaws
- outcome not at all inevitable, or even expected; constant conflict throughout
- human beings change and are not class-determined (Serge's father hates his possessions, the Cossack leader shows mercy, and the working class members often do not live up to their assumed great humanity)
- while the overall style is clear and rational, Gleb's words sometimes aren't, particularly as he comes to grips with the new Dasha
- the evolution of Gleb comes post-indoctrination, not parallel to it
In terms of gender relations, this book is both encouraging and tragic. I see it as good that Dasha is able to become more fully human, and eventually bring Gleb around to affirming this without giving up his own strengths, but actually thus giving up some of his weaknesses and becoming more fully human himself. What's disheartening is that the overwork and misguided trust in the commune that Dasha follows through to the end destroys her daughter literally and also puts an end to what had developed into something good between her and Gleb. On the trust in the commune I remarked in an earlier journal that I'm actually in favour in some respects, but the description given in the book of the lady in charge of raising Nurka makes Dasha's trust in her seem foolish. I guess this amounts to my disagreement with either implicit trust or implicit distrust in such a system: if you can build a relationship with someone such that you can trust them to help you raise your child--indeed, isn't this a large part of the traditional marital relationship?--then the world is better for it. But entrusting someone you actually believe is a scoundrel, or shying away from trusting anyone, I see as divergent from furthering the humanity of oneself and others in the world. This is also why I think the "open relationship" proposed by Kollontai complicates things: we see it play out here in Dasha's inexplicable sexual relationship with Badin after his unwanted advances and betrayal are so vividly juxtaposed with her courage in Chapter 8, in that Dasha's unrestricted sexuality makes it difficult for her to perceive accurately the truth of the situation: that she is not having sex with Badin, the man, but rather with his position, as symbolic of the revolution she is so passionate about.
2007/10/26
Reading Journal 7
(In response to the second set of materials on Kollontai.)
Make way for Winged Eros
This particular reading I didn't have much to say on, because it seemed Kollontai didn't have that much to say, either. How can this be, across sixteen pages? Well, after setting up the question of the place of love in the new proletarian ideology, and giving a relatively uncontroversial interpretation (especially within a communist framework) of love's various functions throughout history, the picture she gives is not at all well filled-out. Granted, it's adorned with a lot of positive language (e.g. "unprecedented beauty, strength and radiance", p. 291), but all the paragraphs seemed to say the same thing without going into very much detail. The basic message was that love ought to turn from something limited to being expressed fully only within monogamy to something directed toward the collective. Practically this means caring for others and not isolating "loving pairs", but also not being sexually exclusive. I'm not sure what I can say about that besides the former being a healthy idea, as I've learned in life, and the latter being curious given Kollontai's denunciation of loveless sex ("wingless Eros") on the basis that it can entail "the early exhaustion of the organism, venereal diseases, etc." (p. 287) aside from not being fulfilling or useful to the collective. Perhaps the latter is the primary basis, but nonetheless, Kollontai doesn't seem to bother answering the question of how exactly all of these new "sexual relations will probably be based on free, healthy and natural attraction (without distortions and excesses) and on 'transformed Eros'," without the above-mentioned dangers, and without superhuman abilities to make sense of one's emotional and sexual attractions. She seems instead to sidestep this, placing her bets on an unknown love-comradeship: "What will be the nature of this transformed Eros? Not even the boldest fantasy is capable of providing the answer to this question." (p. 290) Whereas Kollontai believes that "surely the complexity of the human psyche and the many-sidedness of emotional experience should assist in the growth of the emotional and intellectual bonds between people," (p. 288) I think human culture has a long way to go before that complexity can start working for our benefit in the context of free sexual relations. I see our complexity as a limit, one that makes it much wiser to commit to one person than to try to take on the world. For me, this is precisely the reason that non-isolation of a couple is essential: only then can others healthily promote their relationship and help each of them to grow in loving the other, and only then can their relationship likewise be about the good of others besides themselves. So in many ways I agree with her aims, and her model of a particular male-female relationship given in three points on p. 291 is absolutely something to strive for, but it would much more healthily and with emotional manageability be done within the maintenance of sexual relationships and deep friendships being in two categories with only a one-person overlap.
The Lady With the Pet Dog
I have little context within which to evaluate Chekhov's story here, besides Kollontai's Winged Eros, even though it was written a number of years later. Before we get into that, there were a few elements that stood out to me, elements of both Dmitry and Anna Sergeyevna's perspectives that I identify with fairly strongly. With Dmitry it's the haziness of his existence that I experience pretty often, or at least have for the past few years, and probably before it too, but the haze brings with it selective or faulty memory too, as Dmitry notices on p. 423. At times I also feel somewhat like Anna Sergeyevna when she says, "I wanted something better. 'There must be a different soft of life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live!" (p. 418) Although the rest of the context of that statement is where we differ, I still feel that element of her life in my own. It was odd to me to identify with both of them, since they're both very different characters. But other than this facet of engagement, the story was straightforward and only interrupted by the poetic prose on pp. 419f as highlighted by the handwritten note in our photocopy. The "movement towards perfection" mentioned therein, and the idea of such movement (or at least movement forward from what is) present in Kollontai's piece above, leave me to comment mostly just that the ending of Pet Dog seems to lament the hypocrisy of their relationship, or rather, everything but their relationship, and long with the two of them for some way that their "real" love might some how be able to be freely lived out. It feels tragic that movement towards this will "be most complicated and difficult" under these "intolerable fetters." (p. 433) Thus it would seem that Kollontai and Chekhov are aligned in wanting relationships to be more freely moved between, and allowing "love" (in its various meanings to the two of them) to be allowed to function well without being hindered by the social constructs of the time. Chekhov doesn't at all engage the economic motivation behind this as Kollontai does, just noting that Anna Sergeyevna's and Dmitry's estates both have money. Nor does it seem to mean anything similar to Kollontai's vision of being able to care deeply for the collective. In fact, how their relationship comes about suggests that it doesn't even end in line with Kollontai's three-point vision for male-female relationships: while he sincerely feels compassion towards her, her earlier repeated lament over losing his respect when they first begin their affair doesn't seem to resolve here. Perhaps, then, criticisms of Kollontai over her advocacy of "looseness," while not necessarily without legitimacy whatsoever, would be better lobbed at Chekhov; nonetheless, the general question of love remains.
Three Generations
Wow. Well, it seems I read these in a convenient order, with Kollontai's previous essay informing my interpretation of the story, and Chekhov in there for her reference to Chekhovian characters, although that was minor. Yet again I find it difficult to find much to say about the reading of any interest. On the surface, at least, it seems to just prove correct the objections in my interpretation of Winged Eros, that anything beyond monogamy is emotionally unmanageable, not to mention being necessarily complicated well beyond practicality. At the same time, though, Zhenya and Andrei's stance might seem to support Kollontai on this point, and confirm Olga's suspicions that she's just behind the times psychologically. Yet from my view the way all of the Eros relationships in the story end, and the grief they cause before they end, and the fact that they all come to an end, doesn't in my mind do much to promote the stable environment of mutual care among members of the collective for which Kollontai hopes. She might counter, however, that this ability, realized fully only by the third generation, of relationships to break more cleanly (Zhenya only hints at jealousy on the part of the man in the case of her breakups, but not as something she heeds) can at once allow sexual fulfillment as needed and yet allow for the movement of labour across the country as expediency dictates on behalf of the proletariat. It's the fundamental disagreement I have with Kollontai as described in the first part of my response above that seems to result in our differing interpretations of the same situation. Obviously she would not have written this story if she thought it flew in the face of what she believed about love's place in the world, so I think it's valid to interpret these three generations, as described, as a movement toward the aspirations found in her essay. But I still disagree with her; I don't think it helps women, or men, to relate to one another the way her characters do.
She does appear to honestly engage the more striking inconsistencies that arise in her characters' stories, but to me, even the explained conclusions are not viable. To do this, she has the narrator interject during Zhenya's story and has Zhenya reconcile the points in question. Why didn't she tell her mother immediately? "I didn't think it concerned her." (p. 207) This does make sense in her context, but how this is the type of sensitivity she wants people to have toward one another, I cannot see. To the question of how she could love her mother so much and yet put her through so much pain, she objects, "If I'd thought for one moment, if I'd known that Mother would take it this way . . . I would never have done it." (p. 209) To me, defining sensitivity in such a way as to exclude this thought from occurring to Zhenya--who loves her mother more than Lenin, who she would also die for--is to make it meaningless.
In a related thread about the nature of love, it may be that Kollontai has merely not fleshed this out in my mind, but it seems that her exclusion of the notion of self-sacrifice from love is the root of our disagreement. One might say, that's not true: the idea of dying for and of giving anything for the avoidance of pain for a loved one are both present even in Zhenya's talk. (p. 209) But the self-sacrifice I'm talking about it of one's life in the sense of its ongoing totality, a continuous renegotiation of oneself and subordination of one's interests and inclination for the true good of another. It feels as if she shies away from this kind of altruism because of how it has previously been an enabler of domination over the proletariat and especially over women; instead it must be channeled solely towards the collective. Fair enough, it has been abused; but so has any other form of trust of another human being, and communism certainly can't function without that. This isn't Kollontai's view; the narrator does wonder who is right. (p. 211) Yet, it still feels as if she tries to convey that everything does work out in this situation, that all she need do is convey to Olga that Zhenya really loves her and isn't coldly rational about everything. Hopefully our discussion in class will shed some light on all of this.
Make way for Winged Eros
This particular reading I didn't have much to say on, because it seemed Kollontai didn't have that much to say, either. How can this be, across sixteen pages? Well, after setting up the question of the place of love in the new proletarian ideology, and giving a relatively uncontroversial interpretation (especially within a communist framework) of love's various functions throughout history, the picture she gives is not at all well filled-out. Granted, it's adorned with a lot of positive language (e.g. "unprecedented beauty, strength and radiance", p. 291), but all the paragraphs seemed to say the same thing without going into very much detail. The basic message was that love ought to turn from something limited to being expressed fully only within monogamy to something directed toward the collective. Practically this means caring for others and not isolating "loving pairs", but also not being sexually exclusive. I'm not sure what I can say about that besides the former being a healthy idea, as I've learned in life, and the latter being curious given Kollontai's denunciation of loveless sex ("wingless Eros") on the basis that it can entail "the early exhaustion of the organism, venereal diseases, etc." (p. 287) aside from not being fulfilling or useful to the collective. Perhaps the latter is the primary basis, but nonetheless, Kollontai doesn't seem to bother answering the question of how exactly all of these new "sexual relations will probably be based on free, healthy and natural attraction (without distortions and excesses) and on 'transformed Eros'," without the above-mentioned dangers, and without superhuman abilities to make sense of one's emotional and sexual attractions. She seems instead to sidestep this, placing her bets on an unknown love-comradeship: "What will be the nature of this transformed Eros? Not even the boldest fantasy is capable of providing the answer to this question." (p. 290) Whereas Kollontai believes that "surely the complexity of the human psyche and the many-sidedness of emotional experience should assist in the growth of the emotional and intellectual bonds between people," (p. 288) I think human culture has a long way to go before that complexity can start working for our benefit in the context of free sexual relations. I see our complexity as a limit, one that makes it much wiser to commit to one person than to try to take on the world. For me, this is precisely the reason that non-isolation of a couple is essential: only then can others healthily promote their relationship and help each of them to grow in loving the other, and only then can their relationship likewise be about the good of others besides themselves. So in many ways I agree with her aims, and her model of a particular male-female relationship given in three points on p. 291 is absolutely something to strive for, but it would much more healthily and with emotional manageability be done within the maintenance of sexual relationships and deep friendships being in two categories with only a one-person overlap.
The Lady With the Pet Dog
I have little context within which to evaluate Chekhov's story here, besides Kollontai's Winged Eros, even though it was written a number of years later. Before we get into that, there were a few elements that stood out to me, elements of both Dmitry and Anna Sergeyevna's perspectives that I identify with fairly strongly. With Dmitry it's the haziness of his existence that I experience pretty often, or at least have for the past few years, and probably before it too, but the haze brings with it selective or faulty memory too, as Dmitry notices on p. 423. At times I also feel somewhat like Anna Sergeyevna when she says, "I wanted something better. 'There must be a different soft of life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live!" (p. 418) Although the rest of the context of that statement is where we differ, I still feel that element of her life in my own. It was odd to me to identify with both of them, since they're both very different characters. But other than this facet of engagement, the story was straightforward and only interrupted by the poetic prose on pp. 419f as highlighted by the handwritten note in our photocopy. The "movement towards perfection" mentioned therein, and the idea of such movement (or at least movement forward from what is) present in Kollontai's piece above, leave me to comment mostly just that the ending of Pet Dog seems to lament the hypocrisy of their relationship, or rather, everything but their relationship, and long with the two of them for some way that their "real" love might some how be able to be freely lived out. It feels tragic that movement towards this will "be most complicated and difficult" under these "intolerable fetters." (p. 433) Thus it would seem that Kollontai and Chekhov are aligned in wanting relationships to be more freely moved between, and allowing "love" (in its various meanings to the two of them) to be allowed to function well without being hindered by the social constructs of the time. Chekhov doesn't at all engage the economic motivation behind this as Kollontai does, just noting that Anna Sergeyevna's and Dmitry's estates both have money. Nor does it seem to mean anything similar to Kollontai's vision of being able to care deeply for the collective. In fact, how their relationship comes about suggests that it doesn't even end in line with Kollontai's three-point vision for male-female relationships: while he sincerely feels compassion towards her, her earlier repeated lament over losing his respect when they first begin their affair doesn't seem to resolve here. Perhaps, then, criticisms of Kollontai over her advocacy of "looseness," while not necessarily without legitimacy whatsoever, would be better lobbed at Chekhov; nonetheless, the general question of love remains.
Three Generations
Wow. Well, it seems I read these in a convenient order, with Kollontai's previous essay informing my interpretation of the story, and Chekhov in there for her reference to Chekhovian characters, although that was minor. Yet again I find it difficult to find much to say about the reading of any interest. On the surface, at least, it seems to just prove correct the objections in my interpretation of Winged Eros, that anything beyond monogamy is emotionally unmanageable, not to mention being necessarily complicated well beyond practicality. At the same time, though, Zhenya and Andrei's stance might seem to support Kollontai on this point, and confirm Olga's suspicions that she's just behind the times psychologically. Yet from my view the way all of the Eros relationships in the story end, and the grief they cause before they end, and the fact that they all come to an end, doesn't in my mind do much to promote the stable environment of mutual care among members of the collective for which Kollontai hopes. She might counter, however, that this ability, realized fully only by the third generation, of relationships to break more cleanly (Zhenya only hints at jealousy on the part of the man in the case of her breakups, but not as something she heeds) can at once allow sexual fulfillment as needed and yet allow for the movement of labour across the country as expediency dictates on behalf of the proletariat. It's the fundamental disagreement I have with Kollontai as described in the first part of my response above that seems to result in our differing interpretations of the same situation. Obviously she would not have written this story if she thought it flew in the face of what she believed about love's place in the world, so I think it's valid to interpret these three generations, as described, as a movement toward the aspirations found in her essay. But I still disagree with her; I don't think it helps women, or men, to relate to one another the way her characters do.
She does appear to honestly engage the more striking inconsistencies that arise in her characters' stories, but to me, even the explained conclusions are not viable. To do this, she has the narrator interject during Zhenya's story and has Zhenya reconcile the points in question. Why didn't she tell her mother immediately? "I didn't think it concerned her." (p. 207) This does make sense in her context, but how this is the type of sensitivity she wants people to have toward one another, I cannot see. To the question of how she could love her mother so much and yet put her through so much pain, she objects, "If I'd thought for one moment, if I'd known that Mother would take it this way . . . I would never have done it." (p. 209) To me, defining sensitivity in such a way as to exclude this thought from occurring to Zhenya--who loves her mother more than Lenin, who she would also die for--is to make it meaningless.
In a related thread about the nature of love, it may be that Kollontai has merely not fleshed this out in my mind, but it seems that her exclusion of the notion of self-sacrifice from love is the root of our disagreement. One might say, that's not true: the idea of dying for and of giving anything for the avoidance of pain for a loved one are both present even in Zhenya's talk. (p. 209) But the self-sacrifice I'm talking about it of one's life in the sense of its ongoing totality, a continuous renegotiation of oneself and subordination of one's interests and inclination for the true good of another. It feels as if she shies away from this kind of altruism because of how it has previously been an enabler of domination over the proletariat and especially over women; instead it must be channeled solely towards the collective. Fair enough, it has been abused; but so has any other form of trust of another human being, and communism certainly can't function without that. This isn't Kollontai's view; the narrator does wonder who is right. (p. 211) Yet, it still feels as if she tries to convey that everything does work out in this situation, that all she need do is convey to Olga that Zhenya really loves her and isn't coldly rational about everything. Hopefully our discussion in class will shed some light on all of this.
2007/10/24
Reading Journal 6
(In response to the readings packet on Aleksandra Kollontai.)
The text on Kollontai was pretty useful for me at this point, because from Gorky and from a couple stories I remember reading in The Gulag Archipelago, it's clear that at some point the Revolution included the idea of a massive shift in the position of women within Russian society and politics, but that, as with many currents that perhaps swept communism into being the reigning political paradigm, at some point it died fairly completely from the picture of reality the authorities were bringing into being. With Solzhenitsyn I have in mind a few stories involving female interrogators (i.e., in a position of relatively high power) and his remark about the equality promised ironically coming to fruition when, as the prisons came to be used at many times their intended capacity, men and women were crammed together into cells in which there was one latrine bucket to be shared amongst everyone. Gorky, with Mother being from a more formative period, as we saw last week, envisioned a world in which men and women treated each other with respect, and both were considered worthy revolutionaries, with no limit on the human fulfillment of either sex.
It's very interesting to read, then, that she had such close ties to Lenin (as Gorky did to Stalin, albeit with a much different relationship). What went wrong? It seems that, as problems arose, the men in power, in a sort of fear-inspired conservativism, reverted to previous models of socioeconomic gender relations with the NEP.
But I could be confusing the reading with the WTN spot we watched in class. There were a few points where I got a very different impression of history from the two sources. For example, in the text, it seemed as if Kollontai and Lenin remained aligned until his death, whereas the video exhibited a divergence at some point, with them defying each other in public over what was to be done about the nuclear family. Lenin apparently wanted it kept intact, unlike Kollontai, who wanted sexual freedom for women and communal childcare in crèches and the like. Another example was her appointment to the post of Ambassador to Norway: the video says she was relegated and then rose to the position by merit somewhat despite this (and stayed there, alive, under Stalin, because it made Russia look socially advanced to the international audience) but the text has her appointed as a graceful way of removing her from "actual" power. The documentary was good for showing the significance of the Women's Congress, but I appreciated the text's tracking of her development as an author, presenting her ideas non-statically, unlike many historical profiles.
I don't actually have all that much to say about Thirty-Two Pages--it fits the description given in the biography snugly. The only thing that struck me was the incredible and unexpected tragedy of the last two pages, wherein the man is utterly unsympathetic and insulting to her ("I'll be holding you by the bridle, the way a woman should be kept") and somehow she decides to declare, "You are good." It's gracious of her to say that "he loved in his own way," but awful that she sees no vision of a way out or hopes not for something better for herself. This actually brings up something personal for me, having come from a mixed religious background propounding and sometimes promoting the idea of women as to be loved and respected but still only as subordinate to men, but seeing a more equal relationship actually play out between my parents and my then-girlfriend's parents. As our relationship disintegrated near the end, with as much conviction as I could muster I swung from one extreme to another in various aspects of life philosophy in an attempt to keep our relationship alive and somehow moving forward, but as last-ditch effort, I came to her with a similar proposition as the man in the story, and thankfully for her sake she didn't even bother to engage the discussion, but finally rejected our relationship outright. Juxtaposing my story with Thirty-Two Pages, I favour what happened to us, but I'm left with the question of whether, if the man's heart and mind had been more open, and the woman had had more vision and a dash of bravery, the relationship could have been redeemed in that moment, and taken a decisive turn toward something lastingly healthy. Not to be pessimistic, but I'm guessing it's not all that likely, and that sometimes we as human beings (to be a bit more general than the story above) need pain to bring us enough distance to see life clearly. But a solid alternative social model to look up to in the first place seems much more promising.
Communism and the Family was quite interesting to me. Kollontai makes very good arguments relevant to the state of the family at the time, wherein women had joined the workforce and only been relieved of parts of their duties within a nuclear family. I'm not sure what to think of the set of her recommendations as a whole, as far as ideals go. I'm quite in favour of her prescription on p. 251 to take an honest look at our situation, discard what doesn't make sense, and embrace that which does. Her recommendations of what falls under each category make perfect sense if one takes the division of labour to its logical extreme. Unfortunately, as one of my professors at Laurier, Dr. Friesen, once pointed out, this is actually where communism and capitalism parallel exactly: in both, "economics is trump." Since I feel this to be the downfall of both models, I can't wholly agree with Kollontai, and yet I find many of her ideas to be ones I've thought of as well. In our socioeconomic context, parents hire babysitters and thus rely on a sort of paid communal childrearing, or increasingly, day-care centres wherein a larger organization that the parents don't necessarily have a stake in is given a share of the duty. As always, except for those who can afford otherwise, the state is largely responsible for influencing children after a certain age through public schools. Only in a few contexts that I know of, such as homeschooling networks (again, a privilege of those who can afford it) and some native reserves in Canada, are communities given both the set of materials and tools by the state but also the freedom to use their own wisdom, communally, in reinterpreting them for children. I've only witnessed two communities so far wherein unrelated couples trusted one another enough to be on board with communal childrearing from birth. In both of these contexts it does seem to be giving women more freedom than in a nuclear model, while maintaining the family unit as a kind of underlying structure. But in Kollontai's description, there are a few flaws. As the character Michael points out in the movie Office Space, "If everyone [acted on this], there would be no janitors, because nobody would clean shit up if they had a million dollars." While not precisely true, the point is made that there's no guarantee that sexually unconstrained women and women who wish to raise (or would be good at raising) children as their specialty in the division of labour will be in the proper proportion, or for that matter, that there will be enough people whose best development would occur in custodial occupations. She almost seems to be aware of this on some level, but doesn't engage it beyond this: "Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent, the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to perform these domestic operations." (p. 254) She then advocates for the next step, rather than questioning this loss of care, and perhaps something more, in what is home-made.
To be sure, Kollontai is absolutely right that capitalism has doubled women's load. However, I'm not convinced that the complete division of labour produces well-rounded, healthy, or even free individuals, in at least the sense of having the opportunity to explore different occupations and hobbies. In this sense the working woman's life under Kollontai's model may even be less fulfilling than in a nuclear family model. To me, there's an important element of humanity lost, despite the hopefulness found in the male-female relationship she describes, if a couple can get pregnant, give birth, and then have someone else raise their child while they return to work. I much rather favour paternal and maternal leave, where a couple's respect for each other is solidified by their having to work together to raise a child well.
As a final point, recalling the "economics is trump" line of thinking, Kollontai reassures women that, "The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support." (p. 258) And although she has outlined provision for all children, including orphans, she has left out the disabled, developmentally challenged, and the retired. (The latter she even brought up in the context of the old way of capitalism, wherein money had to be made for the children to one day support their parents in their old age, but support for them in her new model is conspicuously absent.) People who are less productive, in her model, are not valued, since their wisdom and other gifts that might be offered to the rest of society are not economically quantifiable. Children are valued, sure, because they're the future workers. What about a woman who loses her arms? Does Kollontai's communism still save her from prostitution, if she's ambitious, or neglect unto death, if she isn't? These are some subtle points at which her otherwise intelligent vision seems unravel, unfortunately. Hopefully in next week's discussion of the video in the context of further readings on Kollontai we'll be able to see how women of the time engaged with this vision, before their position to effect any of it was apparently swept aside as the political climate grew increasingly ruthless.
The text on Kollontai was pretty useful for me at this point, because from Gorky and from a couple stories I remember reading in The Gulag Archipelago, it's clear that at some point the Revolution included the idea of a massive shift in the position of women within Russian society and politics, but that, as with many currents that perhaps swept communism into being the reigning political paradigm, at some point it died fairly completely from the picture of reality the authorities were bringing into being. With Solzhenitsyn I have in mind a few stories involving female interrogators (i.e., in a position of relatively high power) and his remark about the equality promised ironically coming to fruition when, as the prisons came to be used at many times their intended capacity, men and women were crammed together into cells in which there was one latrine bucket to be shared amongst everyone. Gorky, with Mother being from a more formative period, as we saw last week, envisioned a world in which men and women treated each other with respect, and both were considered worthy revolutionaries, with no limit on the human fulfillment of either sex.
It's very interesting to read, then, that she had such close ties to Lenin (as Gorky did to Stalin, albeit with a much different relationship). What went wrong? It seems that, as problems arose, the men in power, in a sort of fear-inspired conservativism, reverted to previous models of socioeconomic gender relations with the NEP.
But I could be confusing the reading with the WTN spot we watched in class. There were a few points where I got a very different impression of history from the two sources. For example, in the text, it seemed as if Kollontai and Lenin remained aligned until his death, whereas the video exhibited a divergence at some point, with them defying each other in public over what was to be done about the nuclear family. Lenin apparently wanted it kept intact, unlike Kollontai, who wanted sexual freedom for women and communal childcare in crèches and the like. Another example was her appointment to the post of Ambassador to Norway: the video says she was relegated and then rose to the position by merit somewhat despite this (and stayed there, alive, under Stalin, because it made Russia look socially advanced to the international audience) but the text has her appointed as a graceful way of removing her from "actual" power. The documentary was good for showing the significance of the Women's Congress, but I appreciated the text's tracking of her development as an author, presenting her ideas non-statically, unlike many historical profiles.
I don't actually have all that much to say about Thirty-Two Pages--it fits the description given in the biography snugly. The only thing that struck me was the incredible and unexpected tragedy of the last two pages, wherein the man is utterly unsympathetic and insulting to her ("I'll be holding you by the bridle, the way a woman should be kept") and somehow she decides to declare, "You are good." It's gracious of her to say that "he loved in his own way," but awful that she sees no vision of a way out or hopes not for something better for herself. This actually brings up something personal for me, having come from a mixed religious background propounding and sometimes promoting the idea of women as to be loved and respected but still only as subordinate to men, but seeing a more equal relationship actually play out between my parents and my then-girlfriend's parents. As our relationship disintegrated near the end, with as much conviction as I could muster I swung from one extreme to another in various aspects of life philosophy in an attempt to keep our relationship alive and somehow moving forward, but as last-ditch effort, I came to her with a similar proposition as the man in the story, and thankfully for her sake she didn't even bother to engage the discussion, but finally rejected our relationship outright. Juxtaposing my story with Thirty-Two Pages, I favour what happened to us, but I'm left with the question of whether, if the man's heart and mind had been more open, and the woman had had more vision and a dash of bravery, the relationship could have been redeemed in that moment, and taken a decisive turn toward something lastingly healthy. Not to be pessimistic, but I'm guessing it's not all that likely, and that sometimes we as human beings (to be a bit more general than the story above) need pain to bring us enough distance to see life clearly. But a solid alternative social model to look up to in the first place seems much more promising.
Communism and the Family was quite interesting to me. Kollontai makes very good arguments relevant to the state of the family at the time, wherein women had joined the workforce and only been relieved of parts of their duties within a nuclear family. I'm not sure what to think of the set of her recommendations as a whole, as far as ideals go. I'm quite in favour of her prescription on p. 251 to take an honest look at our situation, discard what doesn't make sense, and embrace that which does. Her recommendations of what falls under each category make perfect sense if one takes the division of labour to its logical extreme. Unfortunately, as one of my professors at Laurier, Dr. Friesen, once pointed out, this is actually where communism and capitalism parallel exactly: in both, "economics is trump." Since I feel this to be the downfall of both models, I can't wholly agree with Kollontai, and yet I find many of her ideas to be ones I've thought of as well. In our socioeconomic context, parents hire babysitters and thus rely on a sort of paid communal childrearing, or increasingly, day-care centres wherein a larger organization that the parents don't necessarily have a stake in is given a share of the duty. As always, except for those who can afford otherwise, the state is largely responsible for influencing children after a certain age through public schools. Only in a few contexts that I know of, such as homeschooling networks (again, a privilege of those who can afford it) and some native reserves in Canada, are communities given both the set of materials and tools by the state but also the freedom to use their own wisdom, communally, in reinterpreting them for children. I've only witnessed two communities so far wherein unrelated couples trusted one another enough to be on board with communal childrearing from birth. In both of these contexts it does seem to be giving women more freedom than in a nuclear model, while maintaining the family unit as a kind of underlying structure. But in Kollontai's description, there are a few flaws. As the character Michael points out in the movie Office Space, "If everyone [acted on this], there would be no janitors, because nobody would clean shit up if they had a million dollars." While not precisely true, the point is made that there's no guarantee that sexually unconstrained women and women who wish to raise (or would be good at raising) children as their specialty in the division of labour will be in the proper proportion, or for that matter, that there will be enough people whose best development would occur in custodial occupations. She almost seems to be aware of this on some level, but doesn't engage it beyond this: "Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent, the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to perform these domestic operations." (p. 254) She then advocates for the next step, rather than questioning this loss of care, and perhaps something more, in what is home-made.
To be sure, Kollontai is absolutely right that capitalism has doubled women's load. However, I'm not convinced that the complete division of labour produces well-rounded, healthy, or even free individuals, in at least the sense of having the opportunity to explore different occupations and hobbies. In this sense the working woman's life under Kollontai's model may even be less fulfilling than in a nuclear family model. To me, there's an important element of humanity lost, despite the hopefulness found in the male-female relationship she describes, if a couple can get pregnant, give birth, and then have someone else raise their child while they return to work. I much rather favour paternal and maternal leave, where a couple's respect for each other is solidified by their having to work together to raise a child well.
As a final point, recalling the "economics is trump" line of thinking, Kollontai reassures women that, "The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support." (p. 258) And although she has outlined provision for all children, including orphans, she has left out the disabled, developmentally challenged, and the retired. (The latter she even brought up in the context of the old way of capitalism, wherein money had to be made for the children to one day support their parents in their old age, but support for them in her new model is conspicuously absent.) People who are less productive, in her model, are not valued, since their wisdom and other gifts that might be offered to the rest of society are not economically quantifiable. Children are valued, sure, because they're the future workers. What about a woman who loses her arms? Does Kollontai's communism still save her from prostitution, if she's ambitious, or neglect unto death, if she isn't? These are some subtle points at which her otherwise intelligent vision seems unravel, unfortunately. Hopefully in next week's discussion of the video in the context of further readings on Kollontai we'll be able to see how women of the time engaged with this vision, before their position to effect any of it was apparently swept aside as the political climate grew increasingly ruthless.
2007/10/13
Reading Journal 5
(In response to the first half of Gorky's Mother, first my initial thoughts, and then, as requested, answers to two questions from the problem sheet.)
The first half of Mother was very interesting for me to read, given the background about Gorky that I had read about in Nadezhda Mandelstam's book for the research paper (i.e., how he becomes the leader of the writer's union under Stalin, etc.), and given my long-standing interest in the kind of communism found in the early church as described in Acts 2 in the New Testament, as railed against by Ayn Rand in the novel or two of hers that I've read. At first I started looking for fairly glaring similarities between the two, in the vein of viewing Rand's writings as "capitalist propaganda" and Gorky's as "communist propaganda." It soon became clear, however, that Gorky's characters are much more believable, and although they are strongly archetypal despite their basis upon specific, historical individuals, the relational dynamics of the protagonist group in Gorky's novel allow for a much more true-feeling view of human nature in all its blacks, whites, and grays compared with Rand's striking caricatures. For instance, Rand's protagonists all have angular physical features, while her antagonists are blob-like. Gorky's description of the general of the gendarmes reads: "He was a round, well-fed creature, and somehow reminded her of a ripe plum...," (p. 81) contrasts with such descriptions of such figures as Andrey, "In the entire angular, stooping figure, with its thin legs, there was something comical, yet winning." (p. 16) It's the "comical" and similar descriptions that set Gorky apart, in that all of his characters, hero or enemy, feel more human, thanks to their imperfections. It's the hopeful development of individuals, though, and the negotiation of values within their community that rings most true to life for me. I committed to a community for a reason similar to why the mother ends up being on-board enough to smuggle leaflets into the factory: seeing healthy interactions between people, "life being carried out fully, as it should be," in some senses, such as how men and women are treated with dignity, is a good reason to join them and look forward to the same things that they do.
In the communities I've been in, particularly a religious one and the sort of loose social justice community at large within the universities, there tend to be a similar range of voices amongst people who are actively engaging a cause with their lives. There are some like Vesovshchikov, ready to burn things down (literally or otherwise) in order to expedite the downfall of massive systems of oppression being witnessed; others, like Rybin, have been simmering patiently for long enough, and go "on tour" by themselves trying to save the world, even at the expense of the locals in the places they go to; there are the self-denying types like Pavel, bringing wisdom to the movement but arguably at the price of living their own lives to the fullest; finally, I know some like Andrey who disagree on that point, but sometimes their passions can lead to regrets. At an anti-war protest at a munitions factor I was at a couple weeks ago, it was interesting watching these very dynamics play out: some voices among us hated the factory workers openly, condemning them as active parts of the system; others ignored them, seeing them as instruments of the state war machine not exactly acting of their own accord; still others bestowed human dignity on protester, factory worker, police, bystander, and factory owner alike, mourning the implication of all in the war machine, and gently but energetically engaging anyone open to dialogue. Anyway, it was interesting to see these types develop in the book and compare them with real-life experiences, all this in light of where, historically, so many of these paths (ardent capitalism, communism, religiosity, anti-religiosity, tolerance, intolerance, and all combinations and their gray areas) have lead people.
But before I go too far without direction, to the problem sheet:
3) The mother's role seems to have at least three key elements to it. Although she doesn't initially seed the worker's movement, it's her very disposition, incompatible with it at first, that bears witness in hindsight to the contrast between her life as a women under the system she was born into and the one her son is helping to bring about. This very much helps develop the idea of a better life, or a best life, in extreme contrast to the hopeless-feeling beginnings that most of the Russian population (women in particular) would find themselves in in life. At the same time, she becomes crucial in enabling both her son's alibi-protection and release from prison, and the movement coming to a head with May Day at the end of the first half. Both of these happen because she gains courage and creativity, smuggling propaganda booklets into the factory. Thirdly, her religious piousness and the privileged narrative view allow the mother's Christian faith and the movement's atheism to struggle with one another, and come to different syntheses. We see her religion soften but then become more ardent, and she takes what she sees in her son as come from God if not in so many words in his opinion, and continues to take part in this new life with ever-fuller faith in Jesus being at work amongst them. Contrary-wise but eventually not to the detriment of any relationships, Pavel sees God as a humanly constructed concept, usually used by the state to oppress, but in his mother's case, used by her as a source of courage, perseverance, and care. In this fascinating contrast the two can hold tightly to their belief in the actual existence or non-existence of God while still loving each other and graciously (tactfully?) interpreting each other's belief.
Thus her perspectives as religious and as girl/woman/wife/mother/old-mother earn either the reader's sympathy or respect, and so either way allow her to be an effective vehicle for Gorky's message. It's extremely difficult to discount her honestly-obtained viewpoint. Perhaps Rand enthusiasts are an exception, but in terms of turn-of-the-last-century Russian peasant culture, even bourgeois culture, this remains true.
As discussed in class, some of the broader mother-child relationship meanings include casting her as a Virgin Mary type, having to come to terms with her son's sacrifice for the good of many, and thus in some sense sacrificing herself in the same way; the reversal of her role in how her son leads her development being a reflection of Mother Russia's "backwardness" internationally (although, I would add, a better fit might be the proletariat, normally beneath or seen as a child in the care of the bourgeoisie, becomes the class that will teach rather than being taught); and finally her adoption of Andrey as a projection onto the future as a model for the kind of "international brotherhood" where all workers, worldwide, can treat each other fairly literally as family, insofar as that connotes a caring and developmental relationship, and the proletariat-group itself as a mother figure (Mother Russia, in contrast to the father's state-like oppressive dominance over her.)
10) Gorky's heroes are at first a little hard to define because of the dynamic perspective of the mother. She distrusts everyone (generally, minus Pavel) at first, but then almost instantly after meeting them grows to like characters that we're supposed to, such as Andrey, Natasha, Somov, and Alexey Ivanovich. So once she knows a bit more of the "good life" they enjoy in their community, we trust her judgment of them because it's the same as ours. What then do we do with the more violent characters that she has an intuitive dislike of, even after she begins to know it's good to trust the above heroes? Shashenka, Nikolay, Rybin, and others we might think of as fallen angels, misguided heroes that may become villainous, but then all of the sudden she cares for Nikolay (p. 120)--what do we make of this redemption? In the end, I suppose we take as the heroes all of the revolutionaries, and just bestow varying levels of pity or admiration on them depending on their stage of development towards what the reader regards as the true ideal, rather than marking a "hero threshold" along such lines that might not even include the mother.
That said, the virtues common to this larger group is necessarily more limited. I would put forth that the key virtues they share are a capacity for self-sacrificing leadership, a disciplined and patient love for one another that allows sharp disagreements about even life-or-death matters without leading to violence within the group, a rejection of the current political system and prevalent culture as a whole, and a hopeful vision of that with which they endeavor to replace it.
It's interesting that in class, though I hadn't thought of this question except in the Ayn Rand context above and so agreed at the time, some of these virtues--such as love--were taken as weaknesses, and some things I am about to discuss as weaknesses--such as being able to put a cause above people--were taken as virtues, if disagreeable ones. Perhaps it depends on how it's emphasized.
Pavel at times loses favour in his mother's eyes to Andrey because he, in some way, writes her off where they differ. He moves on to more important things, whereas Andrey takes the time to engage her in conversation and help her understand things. On the subject of love as a weakness, Andrey actually calls out (p. 100) Pavel's partiality toward Sashenka (p. 99) in more gently disagreeing with her feelings of angst over his upcoming self-sacrifice compared with his mother (pp. 99f). What I see as Pavel's weakness in this case is actually the opposite, that he won't perhaps let himself get closer to Sashenka despite his sacrifice, or carry the banner jointly, maybe even with her. These possibilities aren't explored. In any case, though there are probably more, the chief weakness, in my opinion, of all the characters, is their hopelessness about the rich. For all their patience with their own class, they still ultimately draw a line and declare hopeless another group. At one point, one of them seems close to excepting this, but only goes so far as to extend mercy toward the police and other instruments of the state, but in the end, there are human beings that the heroes consider to be unredeemable. I see this as a weakness even from within that very perspective--I believe that their disconnect from their masters and oppressors as human beings is what leads to the violence inherent in taking something back, rather than working towards a place where it might be given back not only willing but joyfully and with conviction. What I mean is, the more hasty they are (compare Pavel with Nikolay, for example) in attempting to bring about their utopia, the more they taint the very reality they do affect.
I mentioned the mercy towards instruments of the state, and being brought up by Gorky via one of the heroes it seems that the redeeming feature given to them as villains is some kind of inherent goodness. They act a certain way because they know no better, and this implies that if they knew better they would not be villains, so that there's hope for their characters. The prison guard, for instance, seems to oppress Pavel not out of hatred for his personal character, but just because that's his job, and that it keeps him able to live is all he knows in life. That seems to be the extent of it, for if Gorky went too far in redeeming his villains, the type of revolution he believed in would be less justifiable.
The first half of Mother was very interesting for me to read, given the background about Gorky that I had read about in Nadezhda Mandelstam's book for the research paper (i.e., how he becomes the leader of the writer's union under Stalin, etc.), and given my long-standing interest in the kind of communism found in the early church as described in Acts 2 in the New Testament, as railed against by Ayn Rand in the novel or two of hers that I've read. At first I started looking for fairly glaring similarities between the two, in the vein of viewing Rand's writings as "capitalist propaganda" and Gorky's as "communist propaganda." It soon became clear, however, that Gorky's characters are much more believable, and although they are strongly archetypal despite their basis upon specific, historical individuals, the relational dynamics of the protagonist group in Gorky's novel allow for a much more true-feeling view of human nature in all its blacks, whites, and grays compared with Rand's striking caricatures. For instance, Rand's protagonists all have angular physical features, while her antagonists are blob-like. Gorky's description of the general of the gendarmes reads: "He was a round, well-fed creature, and somehow reminded her of a ripe plum...," (p. 81) contrasts with such descriptions of such figures as Andrey, "In the entire angular, stooping figure, with its thin legs, there was something comical, yet winning." (p. 16) It's the "comical" and similar descriptions that set Gorky apart, in that all of his characters, hero or enemy, feel more human, thanks to their imperfections. It's the hopeful development of individuals, though, and the negotiation of values within their community that rings most true to life for me. I committed to a community for a reason similar to why the mother ends up being on-board enough to smuggle leaflets into the factory: seeing healthy interactions between people, "life being carried out fully, as it should be," in some senses, such as how men and women are treated with dignity, is a good reason to join them and look forward to the same things that they do.
In the communities I've been in, particularly a religious one and the sort of loose social justice community at large within the universities, there tend to be a similar range of voices amongst people who are actively engaging a cause with their lives. There are some like Vesovshchikov, ready to burn things down (literally or otherwise) in order to expedite the downfall of massive systems of oppression being witnessed; others, like Rybin, have been simmering patiently for long enough, and go "on tour" by themselves trying to save the world, even at the expense of the locals in the places they go to; there are the self-denying types like Pavel, bringing wisdom to the movement but arguably at the price of living their own lives to the fullest; finally, I know some like Andrey who disagree on that point, but sometimes their passions can lead to regrets. At an anti-war protest at a munitions factor I was at a couple weeks ago, it was interesting watching these very dynamics play out: some voices among us hated the factory workers openly, condemning them as active parts of the system; others ignored them, seeing them as instruments of the state war machine not exactly acting of their own accord; still others bestowed human dignity on protester, factory worker, police, bystander, and factory owner alike, mourning the implication of all in the war machine, and gently but energetically engaging anyone open to dialogue. Anyway, it was interesting to see these types develop in the book and compare them with real-life experiences, all this in light of where, historically, so many of these paths (ardent capitalism, communism, religiosity, anti-religiosity, tolerance, intolerance, and all combinations and their gray areas) have lead people.
But before I go too far without direction, to the problem sheet:
3) The mother's role seems to have at least three key elements to it. Although she doesn't initially seed the worker's movement, it's her very disposition, incompatible with it at first, that bears witness in hindsight to the contrast between her life as a women under the system she was born into and the one her son is helping to bring about. This very much helps develop the idea of a better life, or a best life, in extreme contrast to the hopeless-feeling beginnings that most of the Russian population (women in particular) would find themselves in in life. At the same time, she becomes crucial in enabling both her son's alibi-protection and release from prison, and the movement coming to a head with May Day at the end of the first half. Both of these happen because she gains courage and creativity, smuggling propaganda booklets into the factory. Thirdly, her religious piousness and the privileged narrative view allow the mother's Christian faith and the movement's atheism to struggle with one another, and come to different syntheses. We see her religion soften but then become more ardent, and she takes what she sees in her son as come from God if not in so many words in his opinion, and continues to take part in this new life with ever-fuller faith in Jesus being at work amongst them. Contrary-wise but eventually not to the detriment of any relationships, Pavel sees God as a humanly constructed concept, usually used by the state to oppress, but in his mother's case, used by her as a source of courage, perseverance, and care. In this fascinating contrast the two can hold tightly to their belief in the actual existence or non-existence of God while still loving each other and graciously (tactfully?) interpreting each other's belief.
Thus her perspectives as religious and as girl/woman/wife/mother/old-mother earn either the reader's sympathy or respect, and so either way allow her to be an effective vehicle for Gorky's message. It's extremely difficult to discount her honestly-obtained viewpoint. Perhaps Rand enthusiasts are an exception, but in terms of turn-of-the-last-century Russian peasant culture, even bourgeois culture, this remains true.
As discussed in class, some of the broader mother-child relationship meanings include casting her as a Virgin Mary type, having to come to terms with her son's sacrifice for the good of many, and thus in some sense sacrificing herself in the same way; the reversal of her role in how her son leads her development being a reflection of Mother Russia's "backwardness" internationally (although, I would add, a better fit might be the proletariat, normally beneath or seen as a child in the care of the bourgeoisie, becomes the class that will teach rather than being taught); and finally her adoption of Andrey as a projection onto the future as a model for the kind of "international brotherhood" where all workers, worldwide, can treat each other fairly literally as family, insofar as that connotes a caring and developmental relationship, and the proletariat-group itself as a mother figure (Mother Russia, in contrast to the father's state-like oppressive dominance over her.)
10) Gorky's heroes are at first a little hard to define because of the dynamic perspective of the mother. She distrusts everyone (generally, minus Pavel) at first, but then almost instantly after meeting them grows to like characters that we're supposed to, such as Andrey, Natasha, Somov, and Alexey Ivanovich. So once she knows a bit more of the "good life" they enjoy in their community, we trust her judgment of them because it's the same as ours. What then do we do with the more violent characters that she has an intuitive dislike of, even after she begins to know it's good to trust the above heroes? Shashenka, Nikolay, Rybin, and others we might think of as fallen angels, misguided heroes that may become villainous, but then all of the sudden she cares for Nikolay (p. 120)--what do we make of this redemption? In the end, I suppose we take as the heroes all of the revolutionaries, and just bestow varying levels of pity or admiration on them depending on their stage of development towards what the reader regards as the true ideal, rather than marking a "hero threshold" along such lines that might not even include the mother.
That said, the virtues common to this larger group is necessarily more limited. I would put forth that the key virtues they share are a capacity for self-sacrificing leadership, a disciplined and patient love for one another that allows sharp disagreements about even life-or-death matters without leading to violence within the group, a rejection of the current political system and prevalent culture as a whole, and a hopeful vision of that with which they endeavor to replace it.
It's interesting that in class, though I hadn't thought of this question except in the Ayn Rand context above and so agreed at the time, some of these virtues--such as love--were taken as weaknesses, and some things I am about to discuss as weaknesses--such as being able to put a cause above people--were taken as virtues, if disagreeable ones. Perhaps it depends on how it's emphasized.
Pavel at times loses favour in his mother's eyes to Andrey because he, in some way, writes her off where they differ. He moves on to more important things, whereas Andrey takes the time to engage her in conversation and help her understand things. On the subject of love as a weakness, Andrey actually calls out (p. 100) Pavel's partiality toward Sashenka (p. 99) in more gently disagreeing with her feelings of angst over his upcoming self-sacrifice compared with his mother (pp. 99f). What I see as Pavel's weakness in this case is actually the opposite, that he won't perhaps let himself get closer to Sashenka despite his sacrifice, or carry the banner jointly, maybe even with her. These possibilities aren't explored. In any case, though there are probably more, the chief weakness, in my opinion, of all the characters, is their hopelessness about the rich. For all their patience with their own class, they still ultimately draw a line and declare hopeless another group. At one point, one of them seems close to excepting this, but only goes so far as to extend mercy toward the police and other instruments of the state, but in the end, there are human beings that the heroes consider to be unredeemable. I see this as a weakness even from within that very perspective--I believe that their disconnect from their masters and oppressors as human beings is what leads to the violence inherent in taking something back, rather than working towards a place where it might be given back not only willing but joyfully and with conviction. What I mean is, the more hasty they are (compare Pavel with Nikolay, for example) in attempting to bring about their utopia, the more they taint the very reality they do affect.
I mentioned the mercy towards instruments of the state, and being brought up by Gorky via one of the heroes it seems that the redeeming feature given to them as villains is some kind of inherent goodness. They act a certain way because they know no better, and this implies that if they knew better they would not be villains, so that there's hope for their characters. The prison guard, for instance, seems to oppress Pavel not out of hatred for his personal character, but just because that's his job, and that it keeps him able to live is all he knows in life. That seems to be the extent of it, for if Gorky went too far in redeeming his villains, the type of revolution he believed in would be less justifiable.
2007/10/08
Reading Journal 4
(In response to Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What is to Be Done?. Since I was unclear on the photocopy situation, I accidentally picked up and read Chapter 1 before realizing it was actually more or less the same as in the book I had borrowed, and from which I had been assigned Chapter 5 to read. So I'm only posting notes from Chapter 5.)
Chapter 1
The book begins with story that soon turns focus to Vera Pavlovna and her life in a domostroj-style household run by the brutal hand of her mother, Marya.
Chapter 5
Chernyshevsky here suddenly fills out an entire back-story (hence the title, "New People, and the Finale") for most of the chapter before connecting it up with Vera Pavlovna's situation, now much evolved from what we read about it in the first chapter. Pólozof, a self-made millionaire, and his only child, Kátya, have a very good relationship, but she is withering away despite her youth, and no doctor can figure out why. Then Kirsánof, an upstart doctor that "the Big Wigs of the Petersburg medical world" have started inviting to their consultations, is asked to examine her, and he intuitively determines that she is dying of forbidden love. He cannot, by his principles, act on this knowledge either towards her or her father, without earning her trust and having her agree without coercion. He manages to get her to trust him enough to speak to Pólozof about it, but in the process there's an interesting repetition of the sentence, "The sick girl said not a word," which I take to represent her voicelessness in her state of oppression, especially given that her not-saying-a-word is so constantly true as to be leading to her own physical death.
In any case, he then faces a similar situation, in which he must earn Pólozof's trust, with the goal of giving Kátya the freedom to find out for herself that the man she has fallen in love with is actually a scoundrel not worthy of her. Kirsánof is a puzzle to Pólozof, since he seems to be taking both his and his daughter's "side" at the same time. In reality, Kirsánof has hopes for the freedom of both of them, and so is for their good and does indeed believe and sympathize with them both. He sees that Kátya is dying for lack of freedom, despite her youth and her absolute love and respect for her father. He also sees that Pólozof really does love her, and is restricting her relationship with Sólovtsof (who has wooed her by letter since being given the cold shoulder by Kátya, acting on her father's words) because he really would be terrible for her in marriage. By earning the trust of them both, he asks Pólozof to refrain from interfering and trust that Kátya will come to a reasonable conclusion in time. While at first vehemently opposed to it, just like with Kátya he eventually comes around to accepting the proposal. Sólovtsof and Kátya are quickly engaged, and Kátya is elated at first, but eventually asks Kirsánof his opinion of Sólovtsof, to which he replies that he doesn't want to taint her opinion, and that she must have free choice, just as her father has faithfully been giving her. She sets out to prove to herself that there are no flaws in Sólovtsof, but with Kirsánof's help in steering the conversation to family life, money, and other key topics, she realizes that Sólovtsof could not actually love her well, and calls off the engagement. Sólovtsof reacts by accusing her father of interfering, which because of his disciplined faithfulness to Kirsánof's proposal, she knows is the furthest from the truth, and she completely ends all relations with Sólovtsof, and her health is additionally restored. Chernyshevsky uses this conclusion to demonstrate both that free choice is the only way to arrive at the truth, and that women can reason thusly on par with men, and therefore must be allowed to do so.
The freedom of mind he gives to Katerina then allows her to consider the world in much more profound and broad ways. She gradually comes to question the meaning of her wealth, and why her "helping the poor" doesn't achieve true social justice, but is only temporary aid. It is this that allows her to truly be a human being of good character, able to console her father when he loses his millions, and actually be happy about it since it means both she and Pólozof will be treated honestly and not in view of their estate. She is now free of the falsehood of high society, but because this gives her particular hope for true love, Chernyshevsky leaves her in some sense at a level below Vera in development, having an imagination but not for things beyond what is presented to her.
Enter Charles Beaumont ("Charlie Beemont"), a Canadian who grew up in Russia and has spent enough time in the United States to be somewhat revered. Charles, working for a London company interested in buying the last factory remaining of Pólozof's, appears to want to get to know Vera, who is now married to Kirsánof, and has become good friends with Katerina. I never quite did get the purpose of all this--he does not, in the end, go after Vera (even though she may be in an open relationship, although that's not clear, since Kirsánof himself remarked earlier in the chapter that he loved somebody and could never tell her), but ends up good friends with Kátya, and then they get married. Perhaps it was an excuse to come over and chat with her at first. In any case, their marriage is one that's freely chosen--in the context of a "surprisingly cool" friendship between Kátya and Charlie, wherein even once it's clear near the end that they're talking about themselves, they still talk in the third person to give their conversation a feeling of distanced objectivity--and it seems significant that even though he asks for her hand in a roundabout sort of way, his words, "I do," are those that conclude the conversation. In any case, their marriage is prompt and then the final part of the story is a description of the utopia that Kátya, Vera, Charlie, and Kirsánof enjoy together living in adjacent apartments. Their parties are of such gaiety and their life of such health and happiness (and shalom, in a grander sense) that one can only hope one's own relationships would go as well as theirs.
All this, Chernyshevsky is saying, is the product of freedom for men and women, even in the context of love that was restrictive by default (as in the case between Kátya and her father) and especially of hatred (as with Vera and her mother.) This is so entirely revolutionary amidst domostroj culture that I'm surprised it wasn't more risky to publish. Even in our own, supposedly "free" culture, many of my friends' parenting styles had either a much more restrictive feel about them, or went off the other end of the spectrum, never having any restrictions even when situations might have necessitated them. Kirsánof and Vera's level-headed guidance through free choice seems a much better environment in which to learn for oneself about the world. This raises some interesting questions for me personally, since I have seen a range of these tactics play out in different people's lives, and recognize that sometimes barriers are actually needed, but that they should be seen only as tools to create an environment in which one can learn a lesson. In some sense it's ironic that this is exactly what Kirsánof even does with the freedom he arranges for Kátya: it doesn't work at first, she becomes engaged to a man who will not treat her well. It's his careful tact that guides her, although still in her freedom, to see the truth before it's too late. Just freedom or just barriers alone will never lead to the healthy, fulfilled image Chernyshevsky hopes for his readers. It's actually the continual attention, the staying-with and actively engaging care that will make use of either barriers or freedom to the advantage of the person for whom one cares--and it will be an advantage they are fully aware of and appreciate, since they will have had to help construct it themselves.
Chapter 1
The book begins with story that soon turns focus to Vera Pavlovna and her life in a domostroj-style household run by the brutal hand of her mother, Marya.
Chapter 5
Chernyshevsky here suddenly fills out an entire back-story (hence the title, "New People, and the Finale") for most of the chapter before connecting it up with Vera Pavlovna's situation, now much evolved from what we read about it in the first chapter. Pólozof, a self-made millionaire, and his only child, Kátya, have a very good relationship, but she is withering away despite her youth, and no doctor can figure out why. Then Kirsánof, an upstart doctor that "the Big Wigs of the Petersburg medical world" have started inviting to their consultations, is asked to examine her, and he intuitively determines that she is dying of forbidden love. He cannot, by his principles, act on this knowledge either towards her or her father, without earning her trust and having her agree without coercion. He manages to get her to trust him enough to speak to Pólozof about it, but in the process there's an interesting repetition of the sentence, "The sick girl said not a word," which I take to represent her voicelessness in her state of oppression, especially given that her not-saying-a-word is so constantly true as to be leading to her own physical death.
In any case, he then faces a similar situation, in which he must earn Pólozof's trust, with the goal of giving Kátya the freedom to find out for herself that the man she has fallen in love with is actually a scoundrel not worthy of her. Kirsánof is a puzzle to Pólozof, since he seems to be taking both his and his daughter's "side" at the same time. In reality, Kirsánof has hopes for the freedom of both of them, and so is for their good and does indeed believe and sympathize with them both. He sees that Kátya is dying for lack of freedom, despite her youth and her absolute love and respect for her father. He also sees that Pólozof really does love her, and is restricting her relationship with Sólovtsof (who has wooed her by letter since being given the cold shoulder by Kátya, acting on her father's words) because he really would be terrible for her in marriage. By earning the trust of them both, he asks Pólozof to refrain from interfering and trust that Kátya will come to a reasonable conclusion in time. While at first vehemently opposed to it, just like with Kátya he eventually comes around to accepting the proposal. Sólovtsof and Kátya are quickly engaged, and Kátya is elated at first, but eventually asks Kirsánof his opinion of Sólovtsof, to which he replies that he doesn't want to taint her opinion, and that she must have free choice, just as her father has faithfully been giving her. She sets out to prove to herself that there are no flaws in Sólovtsof, but with Kirsánof's help in steering the conversation to family life, money, and other key topics, she realizes that Sólovtsof could not actually love her well, and calls off the engagement. Sólovtsof reacts by accusing her father of interfering, which because of his disciplined faithfulness to Kirsánof's proposal, she knows is the furthest from the truth, and she completely ends all relations with Sólovtsof, and her health is additionally restored. Chernyshevsky uses this conclusion to demonstrate both that free choice is the only way to arrive at the truth, and that women can reason thusly on par with men, and therefore must be allowed to do so.
The freedom of mind he gives to Katerina then allows her to consider the world in much more profound and broad ways. She gradually comes to question the meaning of her wealth, and why her "helping the poor" doesn't achieve true social justice, but is only temporary aid. It is this that allows her to truly be a human being of good character, able to console her father when he loses his millions, and actually be happy about it since it means both she and Pólozof will be treated honestly and not in view of their estate. She is now free of the falsehood of high society, but because this gives her particular hope for true love, Chernyshevsky leaves her in some sense at a level below Vera in development, having an imagination but not for things beyond what is presented to her.
Enter Charles Beaumont ("Charlie Beemont"), a Canadian who grew up in Russia and has spent enough time in the United States to be somewhat revered. Charles, working for a London company interested in buying the last factory remaining of Pólozof's, appears to want to get to know Vera, who is now married to Kirsánof, and has become good friends with Katerina. I never quite did get the purpose of all this--he does not, in the end, go after Vera (even though she may be in an open relationship, although that's not clear, since Kirsánof himself remarked earlier in the chapter that he loved somebody and could never tell her), but ends up good friends with Kátya, and then they get married. Perhaps it was an excuse to come over and chat with her at first. In any case, their marriage is one that's freely chosen--in the context of a "surprisingly cool" friendship between Kátya and Charlie, wherein even once it's clear near the end that they're talking about themselves, they still talk in the third person to give their conversation a feeling of distanced objectivity--and it seems significant that even though he asks for her hand in a roundabout sort of way, his words, "I do," are those that conclude the conversation. In any case, their marriage is prompt and then the final part of the story is a description of the utopia that Kátya, Vera, Charlie, and Kirsánof enjoy together living in adjacent apartments. Their parties are of such gaiety and their life of such health and happiness (and shalom, in a grander sense) that one can only hope one's own relationships would go as well as theirs.
All this, Chernyshevsky is saying, is the product of freedom for men and women, even in the context of love that was restrictive by default (as in the case between Kátya and her father) and especially of hatred (as with Vera and her mother.) This is so entirely revolutionary amidst domostroj culture that I'm surprised it wasn't more risky to publish. Even in our own, supposedly "free" culture, many of my friends' parenting styles had either a much more restrictive feel about them, or went off the other end of the spectrum, never having any restrictions even when situations might have necessitated them. Kirsánof and Vera's level-headed guidance through free choice seems a much better environment in which to learn for oneself about the world. This raises some interesting questions for me personally, since I have seen a range of these tactics play out in different people's lives, and recognize that sometimes barriers are actually needed, but that they should be seen only as tools to create an environment in which one can learn a lesson. In some sense it's ironic that this is exactly what Kirsánof even does with the freedom he arranges for Kátya: it doesn't work at first, she becomes engaged to a man who will not treat her well. It's his careful tact that guides her, although still in her freedom, to see the truth before it's too late. Just freedom or just barriers alone will never lead to the healthy, fulfilled image Chernyshevsky hopes for his readers. It's actually the continual attention, the staying-with and actively engaging care that will make use of either barriers or freedom to the advantage of the person for whom one cares--and it will be an advantage they are fully aware of and appreciate, since they will have had to help construct it themselves.
Reading Journal 3
(From Nikolai Leskov's novella, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District)
Rather than go chapter-by-chapter (I just finished doing that by writing the plot summary for the story over at Wikipedia to refresh myself on various points of the book before responding) I think I'll just respond to the novella as a whole.
The basic story has Katerina have an affair with Sergei and murder (only sometimes with Sergei's help) anyone who threatens either their relationship or their inheritance of her husband's estate. Victims include a range of characters her father-in-law Boris, husband Zinovy, child-nephew Fyodor, who isn't even old enough to realize that he might be in the way, and Sergei's later lover in the convoy, Sonya. The motivation for all of these killings, although with Boris seeming to be a reaction to oppression at first, eventually through Katerina and Sergei's dialogue appears to actually be due to a sort of overpowering romanticism. Sergei convinces her that he's a true romantic, and that the highest moral good is for them to be together. This seems to be the thing to which Katerina is existentially committed, even long after Sergei has discarded it in repenting of the murders to which it led: The first three murders happen on account of things threatening Sergei and thus their relationship, but the last is solely on account of the threat to Katerina's involvement with him. Leskov even paints "loose" characters (men and women) in a much better light than romance-blinded Katerina: Sergei as the first we hear of, and Aksinya the peasant cook, and finally Fiona in the prison convoy all feel much more human than she does (at least at times--admittedly Sergei is a mixed story all his own), despite their sexual immorality. Aksinya and Fiona in particular seem to be, respectively, a source of wisdom and comfort, respectively, to her in a way that no other characters are, yet none of the women, romantic or not, approach being Tatyanas to be sure. Katerina is particularly damnable when we find that she actually was acting caring towards Fyodor before deciding to kill him, and when her own son is born, reacts with a sharp, "Don't bother me with it!" and never sees him again.
Some themes from the course that recur here are that of romanticism (as already mentioned), virginity, the forbidden love between social classes (minorly--Katerina was originally not well off and had no choice but to marry; Sergei is a hired farm-hand under her authority in some sense), and the sublimation of egos within a relationship. Virginity in the case of all of the characters is not physically a reality from the beginning of the story, but Katerina seems to lose a kind of alternate virginity in the sense that there's no going back from murder, but also in the sense of a kind of awakening that occurs within her due to her affair with Sergei: in chapter four Leskov describes to us that "suddenly her expansive nature made itself fully apparent," and this is what lets her both ask for Boris to release Sergei and to kill her father-in-law when he refuses.
The sublimation of egos is probably the most striking theme, given the time period. Sergei waits with extreme patience outside on the roof upon Zinovy's return, given that Katerina doesn't tell him what's going on (contrast this with Prince Ivan in Maria Morevna), and with vigorous watch, solely because she tells him to do so. But if that's extreme, it's almost not even noteworthy compared to what Katerina does with the perception that it's "for Sergei". Even her decision to off young Fyodor occurs long after Sergei had stopped bringing up the topic of their lost inheritance with her. Her outstanding self-abasement and Sergei-worship is so extreme that, even when Sergei has repented of their murders and rejected Katerina, she still wanders around dazed: "She did not understand anything, or love anybody, not even herself," but continued her pursuit of her ex-lover despite his growing disgust for her person and return to his womanizing persona. When she finally sees herself as equals with the "easy" Fiona she had only been able to be tolerate at first by condemning in her mind, she "turns to stone" in Leskov's words and her homicide-suicide are not far in the future; at this point her ego-sublimation is over, she has gone insane, and now acts out of jealousy and in line with the unrepentant murderer she has become. In the end she mimics Sergei's mocking-reminiscing words, mumbling to herself, "How we sat out the long autumn nights together and sent people out of this world with violent death," and in one last violent act takes Sonya and herself out of the picture.
All of this violence and sexual betrayal was seemingly born from just one foray from Katerina's sanctuary within the house while her husband was gone. The first chapters' focus on her plight, though, turn this from "women should stay in the terem" to women having a sort of general catch-22 to deal with in their lives. Katerina is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, but she isn't the one who has placed her self in this position at the beginning of the story. Rather, the rules of society are called into question.
Rather than go chapter-by-chapter (I just finished doing that by writing the plot summary for the story over at Wikipedia to refresh myself on various points of the book before responding) I think I'll just respond to the novella as a whole.
The basic story has Katerina have an affair with Sergei and murder (only sometimes with Sergei's help) anyone who threatens either their relationship or their inheritance of her husband's estate. Victims include a range of characters her father-in-law Boris, husband Zinovy, child-nephew Fyodor, who isn't even old enough to realize that he might be in the way, and Sergei's later lover in the convoy, Sonya. The motivation for all of these killings, although with Boris seeming to be a reaction to oppression at first, eventually through Katerina and Sergei's dialogue appears to actually be due to a sort of overpowering romanticism. Sergei convinces her that he's a true romantic, and that the highest moral good is for them to be together. This seems to be the thing to which Katerina is existentially committed, even long after Sergei has discarded it in repenting of the murders to which it led: The first three murders happen on account of things threatening Sergei and thus their relationship, but the last is solely on account of the threat to Katerina's involvement with him. Leskov even paints "loose" characters (men and women) in a much better light than romance-blinded Katerina: Sergei as the first we hear of, and Aksinya the peasant cook, and finally Fiona in the prison convoy all feel much more human than she does (at least at times--admittedly Sergei is a mixed story all his own), despite their sexual immorality. Aksinya and Fiona in particular seem to be, respectively, a source of wisdom and comfort, respectively, to her in a way that no other characters are, yet none of the women, romantic or not, approach being Tatyanas to be sure. Katerina is particularly damnable when we find that she actually was acting caring towards Fyodor before deciding to kill him, and when her own son is born, reacts with a sharp, "Don't bother me with it!" and never sees him again.
Some themes from the course that recur here are that of romanticism (as already mentioned), virginity, the forbidden love between social classes (minorly--Katerina was originally not well off and had no choice but to marry; Sergei is a hired farm-hand under her authority in some sense), and the sublimation of egos within a relationship. Virginity in the case of all of the characters is not physically a reality from the beginning of the story, but Katerina seems to lose a kind of alternate virginity in the sense that there's no going back from murder, but also in the sense of a kind of awakening that occurs within her due to her affair with Sergei: in chapter four Leskov describes to us that "suddenly her expansive nature made itself fully apparent," and this is what lets her both ask for Boris to release Sergei and to kill her father-in-law when he refuses.
The sublimation of egos is probably the most striking theme, given the time period. Sergei waits with extreme patience outside on the roof upon Zinovy's return, given that Katerina doesn't tell him what's going on (contrast this with Prince Ivan in Maria Morevna), and with vigorous watch, solely because she tells him to do so. But if that's extreme, it's almost not even noteworthy compared to what Katerina does with the perception that it's "for Sergei". Even her decision to off young Fyodor occurs long after Sergei had stopped bringing up the topic of their lost inheritance with her. Her outstanding self-abasement and Sergei-worship is so extreme that, even when Sergei has repented of their murders and rejected Katerina, she still wanders around dazed: "She did not understand anything, or love anybody, not even herself," but continued her pursuit of her ex-lover despite his growing disgust for her person and return to his womanizing persona. When she finally sees herself as equals with the "easy" Fiona she had only been able to be tolerate at first by condemning in her mind, she "turns to stone" in Leskov's words and her homicide-suicide are not far in the future; at this point her ego-sublimation is over, she has gone insane, and now acts out of jealousy and in line with the unrepentant murderer she has become. In the end she mimics Sergei's mocking-reminiscing words, mumbling to herself, "How we sat out the long autumn nights together and sent people out of this world with violent death," and in one last violent act takes Sonya and herself out of the picture.
All of this violence and sexual betrayal was seemingly born from just one foray from Katerina's sanctuary within the house while her husband was gone. The first chapters' focus on her plight, though, turn this from "women should stay in the terem" to women having a sort of general catch-22 to deal with in their lives. Katerina is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, but she isn't the one who has placed her self in this position at the beginning of the story. Rather, the rules of society are called into question.
2007/09/26
Reading Journal 2
(On Karolina Pavlova's A Double Life, with a focus on chapter six.)
Preface
I found it interesting that I had already started forming swaying opinions of Pavlova based on the snippets found in the preface. I can see where some of her critics are coming from in saying that she was too much devoted to her art; however, I would say the same thing of a man acting the same way, whereas I believe their angle was that only men could devote themselves so wholeheartedly to art-for-art's-sake. This is just my view on healthy balances. I sense a kind of brokenness in her from the descriptions of her conduct, damage taken from her having to forge ahead in constant struggle and some measure of insecurity that would mostly come from her cultural situation but perhaps somewhat from the fact that she has no normalized, rarely-shaken female model to look to in her life. Instead, all around her are her "mute sisters" not yet free. So it seems to make sense that when even praise for her poetry comes with mockery of her own character, and she and her poetry are at once one and the same (in how fully she's thrown her life into being a poet) and conflicting (in the woman-poet struggle and other dualities described) that she would have some need of seeking approval and promotion of her art all the time. All of this makes me pretty curious to read her only book.
Chapter 1
It would seem at first that Pavlova alternates between rather straightforward dialogue and either romantic or at least very sense-based descriptions (as in the atmosphere of the drawing room and the rest of the party, and the magic of the night outdoors) and practical explanations or interpretations of culture (like with the Englishwoman/maid.) But in the dialogue are details and hints just as rich, such as Cecily's preference of a man's appearance, and the blonde girl's sudden question and Cecily's reaction implying that Dmitry Ivachinsky might fit such a description. His "almost feminine shyness" then seems to reappear during the dream poem: "And from his lips there came a word\ Sadder than the song of far-off strings;\ It seemed as if a quiet kiss\ Had touched her youthful brow." It's pretty striking how Pavlova is able to convey almost whatever amount of depth she chooses by combining prose with poetry the way she has. The dream seems to bring life ("the midnight radiance of all the worlds,\ And all the sighs...Melt into a single harmony") to the happens of her day that are otherwise dreary (the young man "fed up with conversations," the amusement of the "terrible man") or even subduedly vicious (the one circle speaking ill of the dead, the tall lady's condescending comments about country neighbours, and the blonde girl's cutting comments).
Chapter 2
Already she's late because dreaming and sleep are more appealing than the real world in which Cecily walks. Apparently I was wrong to assume the man in the dream was Dmitry; Cecily reveals to Olga that it was the dead man the one circle had discussed at the party in the previous chapter. That gives much more sense to the part of the poem mentioning that it was a phantom and someone she had never met who was being described. We learn some background about high society and how it is able to forgive Madame Valitsky's past, and about how her and Vera Vladimirovna shape their daughters with such terrible precision. To me it seems counterintuitive to try to "keep them safe in all their childlike innocence" while also trying to arrange marriages for them. The probably lengthly transition from innocence into whatever we might want to call the state in which Vera and Natalia Afanasevna operate (perhaps live is too positive a word?) seems almost bound to be tragic. The dead man returns and laments this in Cecily's dream and claims that whatever of God's spirit that's still alive in her is only able to move amongst the "world amidst the world" of her dreaming. He promises not to ruin her life during the day by "lifting the veil" and exposing high society's lies for what they are.
Chapter 3
Perhaps the poor poet's role as almost a pawn (and his unvoiced thoughts that perhaps to feel, reason, love, and pray might be important to humanity (p. 58)) are reflective of Pavlova's experience of how poets are treated, but the language she uses seems to cut down critics of the art. "Prince Somebody" being "inflamed by his own eloquence" rather than hearing Vera Vladimirovna's humble rebuke seems to be an effective satire in defense of such poor poets' purity, as is the revelation of the meaninglessness of the whole conversation to at least one of the youth there ("What a pleasant evening!" being met with "Especially since it's over," in passing). But after this scene Pavlova returns to painting Vera much more monstrously, as having destroyed so many natural and beautiful aspects of Cecily. Even her talents are crammed into vases for decoration (not exactly her words, p. 60) rather than being allowed to spread and come to fruition as she pleases. The dream in this chapter seems to break from the dead man and come out of the poetry Cecily heard read that day. It describes hope for the world as perhaps it ought to be, not in an original or innocent sense, but in a redeemed sense, with poet-prophets heard and heeded, and the holy gifts of nature recognized as blessing and being blessed in return by human beings. This seems to be a fleshing out, maybe a daylit version, of the mysterious depth of the stars Cecily has been drawn in by in the past few chapters.
Chapter 4
Continuing the theme of what has been done by her mother to Cecily, we find in Petrovsky Park too the dripping irony, "...nature made herself unnatural. In a word, everything was as it should be." A few things mentioned in the preface, the "violent female daring" quote and the part about Pavlova using horseback riding as a sexual metaphor, show up in this chapter, but it seems like a more careful analysis might be needed to draw out what the author is saying by these. Not that the preface author was wrong, quite the opposite. These and other seeming "iceberg tips" are sprinkled all throughout the book, but without such interpretive hints as the preface gave I'm not sure I would've picked up on much of their meaning even after a second reading. In any case, the metaphor in particular seems to fit, but it's difficult to say how that colours her conversation with the prince--does it extend to include his/their fright at her flight? It would seem to fuel Dmitry's later jealousy as the one who didn't "tame" the situation.
The inevitable-transition-tragedy thread continues here with Madame Valitsky's further meddling and Pavlova's comment to Vera Vladimirovna, "Where was your sharp eye, watchful mother?"
The preface again helps us interpret, as the dream sequence seems to revert to the dead man and the pattern of inverse relationship to the day's events in the eyes of Cecily. She is becoming drunk with love, but her dream is getting darker and simultaneously more truthful, at least, that is, if you read it not as prescription, but as rebuke. "You are a woman!" is repeated to her, preceding the implications of that that high society via Vera has hammered into her from a young age. The world as it ought to be as described in the previous chapter is in stark contrast here: "Light of ecstasy, holy revelations,\ Gifts of heaven--you are useless to us." Sharing any of this pain with men is impossible: "Do not call the slaves of need, the blind sons of care\ Into your secret world, the world of your heart," and reconciliation with the Lord who since Cecily's birth has been inextricable tied with the rules of propriety (back on p. 59) seems even less likely this side of Heaven, with the final verses rhetorical exhortation to, at the end of the oppressive journey\ Ask...why the creator's orders are so stern\ And why the lot of the powerless still harder." Is this Pavlova's own question, wrestling with God? Or is 'creator' uncapitalized in order to redirect the question to high society, constantly (re)creating itself? In any case, the weight of all this is fairly unfathomable, but the next chapter comes around nonetheless without delay.
Chapter 5
Pavlova's sardonic wit continues in the un-nature theme with Cecily and her mother "enjoying what they imagined was nature and the morning." Then she outright lays into Vera (and any like her) for what she's done to Cecily:
Another lesson in Valitsky/Vladimirovna's vision of a woman's role comes in the latter's comment in front of Cecily about the woman who has just died, "the wife is guilty. Her duty is to know how to bind him to her and make him love virtue." Interesting coming from one whose husband is "always at the club," (p. 50), unless perhaps the club is considered a place of virtue--we're not really told.
The sexual metaphor from Cecily and Victor's previous interaction seems to continue at the next social gathering, Pavlova giving the summary of the prince being "one who can give in exchange for a flower he has taken a half million in yearly income." It seems plausible that a flower here could represent Cecily's virginity, although obviously only in the hypothetical sense within the narrative.
As an aside, it's really interesting how Pavlova at times seems almost bound to reinforce the very system she's fighting against. What I'm looking at is the part when the prince leaves, and Dmitry, humiliated, has remained next to Nadezhda. What about Nadezhda's perspective? It seems unimportant given her role (as "this living piece of furniture", p. 78) in the story, and yet Pavlova hints (as mentioned on p. 50 earlier as well as on p. 78 with the prince's surprise at her) that there may be more depth than we'll know. Perhaps Pavlova wasn't able to get inside such people in her own life, and so focused on the experiences she did know better; but it does seem to reinforce, somewhat, that the important people are those with money (cf. the opening line of the book, "But are they rich?" as well as the way in which this section is sandwiched between two gossip-discussions of the estates of dead and living people.) These latter references might actually lead us to believe that this is just another exposition within itself, not unintended irony in real life for us as readers.
To be honest, I couldn't really follow what was going on in this chapter's dream sequence with the two voices, and I didn't have time to go back and read it more carefully, so hopefully whoever was on chapter five will lay it out for me more simply in class.
Chapter 6
Cecily's birthday is immediately described with an underlying ridiculousness about it, from the expensiveness of the gaiety to the meaninglessness in the exchange of birthday notes and responses. Then when Olga arrives we return to the part about a woman's role mentioned last chapter. Saving a man from himself is fleshed out as the allure that will draw a woman to him: "The greater the danger, the deeper the abyss ready to swallow him, the more glorious is the triumph, the more tempting the success, the greater the pleasure in stretching out to the one who is perishing a saving hand, fragile and yet all-powerful." This theme reminds me of the protagonist in The Stone Angel, and makes me wonder whether the same lack of success will befall anyone (any woman?) similarly motivated toward marriage. Within the context of this high society, however, it seems that the allure described above would be doubled by the fact that in all other ways society women are creatively constrained (from Cecily's natural talents to the barbs Pavlova inserts about how women-poets in particular are something ugly.) Though sad in a sense, and implicitly labeled as pathetic by Pavlova ("In society's lexicon, this sort of move [going along with her mother's plan (in order) to get the Prince for herself] is called 'adroit' or 'clever,'") it seems to make sense that Olga would act in accordance with the system. Even more so, the possibility of control isn't limited to increasing a man's virtue, but "she was capable of bringing Dmitry to desperation," seemingly confirmed by Cecily's own graceful image in the mirror. Not that she would wish to use this control for evil--indeed, the next thing she does in the context of her relationship with Dmitry is to have him promise not to gamble any more (p. 90)--but rather this adds all the more weight of responsibility for her to save him since it's within the realm of possibility for her. Ironically this comes at perhaps the larger cost of her independence: again (in the continuing metaphor), there's an exchange involving a flower of hers, and Dmitry has replaced Prince Victor as the victor.
But back to the chronological story...
Chapters 7-10
Pavlova uses some comic relief in the next chapter by setting up Vera and the Princess to scheme with one another one Madame Valitsky's behalf, with Vera's plans to marry her daughter to the Prince completely undermined by her method of "tactful" communication, in which she unwittingly blesses a marriage to Dmitry instead. Some well-chosen words for Cecily's feelings, "She could touch her dream come true," (p. 106) and "Weary with happiness..." (p. 106). As the wedding plans envelop her life with busyness, there's yet another ironic smirk using Nadezhda as one to be pitied more than those in threadbare poverty, even though she is perhaps the most internally peaceful-happy character in the book, if not free in every sense. She's free because nobody really cares what happens with her, so there are no power politics of which she is the object. Meanwhile at the pre-wedding celebrations Dmitry has, egged on by his compatriots, bet them that he won't settle down, but will rather party all the more wildly:
Preface
I found it interesting that I had already started forming swaying opinions of Pavlova based on the snippets found in the preface. I can see where some of her critics are coming from in saying that she was too much devoted to her art; however, I would say the same thing of a man acting the same way, whereas I believe their angle was that only men could devote themselves so wholeheartedly to art-for-art's-sake. This is just my view on healthy balances. I sense a kind of brokenness in her from the descriptions of her conduct, damage taken from her having to forge ahead in constant struggle and some measure of insecurity that would mostly come from her cultural situation but perhaps somewhat from the fact that she has no normalized, rarely-shaken female model to look to in her life. Instead, all around her are her "mute sisters" not yet free. So it seems to make sense that when even praise for her poetry comes with mockery of her own character, and she and her poetry are at once one and the same (in how fully she's thrown her life into being a poet) and conflicting (in the woman-poet struggle and other dualities described) that she would have some need of seeking approval and promotion of her art all the time. All of this makes me pretty curious to read her only book.
Chapter 1
It would seem at first that Pavlova alternates between rather straightforward dialogue and either romantic or at least very sense-based descriptions (as in the atmosphere of the drawing room and the rest of the party, and the magic of the night outdoors) and practical explanations or interpretations of culture (like with the Englishwoman/maid.) But in the dialogue are details and hints just as rich, such as Cecily's preference of a man's appearance, and the blonde girl's sudden question and Cecily's reaction implying that Dmitry Ivachinsky might fit such a description. His "almost feminine shyness" then seems to reappear during the dream poem: "And from his lips there came a word\ Sadder than the song of far-off strings;\ It seemed as if a quiet kiss\ Had touched her youthful brow." It's pretty striking how Pavlova is able to convey almost whatever amount of depth she chooses by combining prose with poetry the way she has. The dream seems to bring life ("the midnight radiance of all the worlds,\ And all the sighs...Melt into a single harmony") to the happens of her day that are otherwise dreary (the young man "fed up with conversations," the amusement of the "terrible man") or even subduedly vicious (the one circle speaking ill of the dead, the tall lady's condescending comments about country neighbours, and the blonde girl's cutting comments).
Chapter 2
Already she's late because dreaming and sleep are more appealing than the real world in which Cecily walks. Apparently I was wrong to assume the man in the dream was Dmitry; Cecily reveals to Olga that it was the dead man the one circle had discussed at the party in the previous chapter. That gives much more sense to the part of the poem mentioning that it was a phantom and someone she had never met who was being described. We learn some background about high society and how it is able to forgive Madame Valitsky's past, and about how her and Vera Vladimirovna shape their daughters with such terrible precision. To me it seems counterintuitive to try to "keep them safe in all their childlike innocence" while also trying to arrange marriages for them. The probably lengthly transition from innocence into whatever we might want to call the state in which Vera and Natalia Afanasevna operate (perhaps live is too positive a word?) seems almost bound to be tragic. The dead man returns and laments this in Cecily's dream and claims that whatever of God's spirit that's still alive in her is only able to move amongst the "world amidst the world" of her dreaming. He promises not to ruin her life during the day by "lifting the veil" and exposing high society's lies for what they are.
Chapter 3
Perhaps the poor poet's role as almost a pawn (and his unvoiced thoughts that perhaps to feel, reason, love, and pray might be important to humanity (p. 58)) are reflective of Pavlova's experience of how poets are treated, but the language she uses seems to cut down critics of the art. "Prince Somebody" being "inflamed by his own eloquence" rather than hearing Vera Vladimirovna's humble rebuke seems to be an effective satire in defense of such poor poets' purity, as is the revelation of the meaninglessness of the whole conversation to at least one of the youth there ("What a pleasant evening!" being met with "Especially since it's over," in passing). But after this scene Pavlova returns to painting Vera much more monstrously, as having destroyed so many natural and beautiful aspects of Cecily. Even her talents are crammed into vases for decoration (not exactly her words, p. 60) rather than being allowed to spread and come to fruition as she pleases. The dream in this chapter seems to break from the dead man and come out of the poetry Cecily heard read that day. It describes hope for the world as perhaps it ought to be, not in an original or innocent sense, but in a redeemed sense, with poet-prophets heard and heeded, and the holy gifts of nature recognized as blessing and being blessed in return by human beings. This seems to be a fleshing out, maybe a daylit version, of the mysterious depth of the stars Cecily has been drawn in by in the past few chapters.
Chapter 4
Continuing the theme of what has been done by her mother to Cecily, we find in Petrovsky Park too the dripping irony, "...nature made herself unnatural. In a word, everything was as it should be." A few things mentioned in the preface, the "violent female daring" quote and the part about Pavlova using horseback riding as a sexual metaphor, show up in this chapter, but it seems like a more careful analysis might be needed to draw out what the author is saying by these. Not that the preface author was wrong, quite the opposite. These and other seeming "iceberg tips" are sprinkled all throughout the book, but without such interpretive hints as the preface gave I'm not sure I would've picked up on much of their meaning even after a second reading. In any case, the metaphor in particular seems to fit, but it's difficult to say how that colours her conversation with the prince--does it extend to include his/their fright at her flight? It would seem to fuel Dmitry's later jealousy as the one who didn't "tame" the situation.
The inevitable-transition-tragedy thread continues here with Madame Valitsky's further meddling and Pavlova's comment to Vera Vladimirovna, "Where was your sharp eye, watchful mother?"
The preface again helps us interpret, as the dream sequence seems to revert to the dead man and the pattern of inverse relationship to the day's events in the eyes of Cecily. She is becoming drunk with love, but her dream is getting darker and simultaneously more truthful, at least, that is, if you read it not as prescription, but as rebuke. "You are a woman!" is repeated to her, preceding the implications of that that high society via Vera has hammered into her from a young age. The world as it ought to be as described in the previous chapter is in stark contrast here: "Light of ecstasy, holy revelations,\ Gifts of heaven--you are useless to us." Sharing any of this pain with men is impossible: "Do not call the slaves of need, the blind sons of care\ Into your secret world, the world of your heart," and reconciliation with the Lord who since Cecily's birth has been inextricable tied with the rules of propriety (back on p. 59) seems even less likely this side of Heaven, with the final verses rhetorical exhortation to, at the end of the oppressive journey\ Ask...why the creator's orders are so stern\ And why the lot of the powerless still harder." Is this Pavlova's own question, wrestling with God? Or is 'creator' uncapitalized in order to redirect the question to high society, constantly (re)creating itself? In any case, the weight of all this is fairly unfathomable, but the next chapter comes around nonetheless without delay.
Chapter 5
Pavlova's sardonic wit continues in the un-nature theme with Cecily and her mother "enjoying what they imagined was nature and the morning." Then she outright lays into Vera (and any like her) for what she's done to Cecily:
Her soul was so highly polished, her understanding so confused, her natural talents so over-organized and mutilated by the unsparing way she had been brought up that every problem of life embarrassed and terrified her. Her mother's lessons and moral teachings were about as useful to her in relation to life as are the endless commentaries of zealous scholars to Shakespeare and Dante. Once you have read them through, you won't understand even th clearest and simplest idea in the poet's creation any more.Ouch! And how true. But Pavlova can't decide for certain whether such traditions carry on intentionally or not: "...mothers like Vera...most likely understand something of the possible consequences of their method," (emphasis mine) yet what will happen to the benefit of the doubt she extends to Cecily if or when Cecily inevitably follows her mother's molding? For all the simple-minded innocence Pavlova assumes "probably" on the part of Nadezhda Ivanova (p. 66), perhaps Vera Vladimirovna actually just feels a primal sense of relief (from the responsibility that weighs her down, p. 75) finally getting rid of the perfect copy of herself she's followed through to the end in shaping in her daughter. As the author herself asks about Nadezhda, "how can we know?"
Another lesson in Valitsky/Vladimirovna's vision of a woman's role comes in the latter's comment in front of Cecily about the woman who has just died, "the wife is guilty. Her duty is to know how to bind him to her and make him love virtue." Interesting coming from one whose husband is "always at the club," (p. 50), unless perhaps the club is considered a place of virtue--we're not really told.
The sexual metaphor from Cecily and Victor's previous interaction seems to continue at the next social gathering, Pavlova giving the summary of the prince being "one who can give in exchange for a flower he has taken a half million in yearly income." It seems plausible that a flower here could represent Cecily's virginity, although obviously only in the hypothetical sense within the narrative.
As an aside, it's really interesting how Pavlova at times seems almost bound to reinforce the very system she's fighting against. What I'm looking at is the part when the prince leaves, and Dmitry, humiliated, has remained next to Nadezhda. What about Nadezhda's perspective? It seems unimportant given her role (as "this living piece of furniture", p. 78) in the story, and yet Pavlova hints (as mentioned on p. 50 earlier as well as on p. 78 with the prince's surprise at her) that there may be more depth than we'll know. Perhaps Pavlova wasn't able to get inside such people in her own life, and so focused on the experiences she did know better; but it does seem to reinforce, somewhat, that the important people are those with money (cf. the opening line of the book, "But are they rich?" as well as the way in which this section is sandwiched between two gossip-discussions of the estates of dead and living people.) These latter references might actually lead us to believe that this is just another exposition within itself, not unintended irony in real life for us as readers.
To be honest, I couldn't really follow what was going on in this chapter's dream sequence with the two voices, and I didn't have time to go back and read it more carefully, so hopefully whoever was on chapter five will lay it out for me more simply in class.
Chapter 6
Cecily's birthday is immediately described with an underlying ridiculousness about it, from the expensiveness of the gaiety to the meaninglessness in the exchange of birthday notes and responses. Then when Olga arrives we return to the part about a woman's role mentioned last chapter. Saving a man from himself is fleshed out as the allure that will draw a woman to him: "The greater the danger, the deeper the abyss ready to swallow him, the more glorious is the triumph, the more tempting the success, the greater the pleasure in stretching out to the one who is perishing a saving hand, fragile and yet all-powerful." This theme reminds me of the protagonist in The Stone Angel, and makes me wonder whether the same lack of success will befall anyone (any woman?) similarly motivated toward marriage. Within the context of this high society, however, it seems that the allure described above would be doubled by the fact that in all other ways society women are creatively constrained (from Cecily's natural talents to the barbs Pavlova inserts about how women-poets in particular are something ugly.) Though sad in a sense, and implicitly labeled as pathetic by Pavlova ("In society's lexicon, this sort of move [going along with her mother's plan (in order) to get the Prince for herself] is called 'adroit' or 'clever,'") it seems to make sense that Olga would act in accordance with the system. Even more so, the possibility of control isn't limited to increasing a man's virtue, but "she was capable of bringing Dmitry to desperation," seemingly confirmed by Cecily's own graceful image in the mirror. Not that she would wish to use this control for evil--indeed, the next thing she does in the context of her relationship with Dmitry is to have him promise not to gamble any more (p. 90)--but rather this adds all the more weight of responsibility for her to save him since it's within the realm of possibility for her. Ironically this comes at perhaps the larger cost of her independence: again (in the continuing metaphor), there's an exchange involving a flower of hers, and Dmitry has replaced Prince Victor as the victor.
But back to the chronological story...
Chapters 7-10
Pavlova uses some comic relief in the next chapter by setting up Vera and the Princess to scheme with one another one Madame Valitsky's behalf, with Vera's plans to marry her daughter to the Prince completely undermined by her method of "tactful" communication, in which she unwittingly blesses a marriage to Dmitry instead. Some well-chosen words for Cecily's feelings, "She could touch her dream come true," (p. 106) and "Weary with happiness..." (p. 106). As the wedding plans envelop her life with busyness, there's yet another ironic smirk using Nadezhda as one to be pitied more than those in threadbare poverty, even though she is perhaps the most internally peaceful-happy character in the book, if not free in every sense. She's free because nobody really cares what happens with her, so there are no power politics of which she is the object. Meanwhile at the pre-wedding celebrations Dmitry has, egged on by his compatriots, bet them that he won't settle down, but will rather party all the more wildly:
"Of course," one of them added, "who would want to get married if the blessed state of matrimony made it necessary to give up wine and good times." (p. 124)Worse yet, on the wedding day, irony is in full swing, with Dimtry's friends' conversation, "'These nervous wives are a punishment from God! He'll be unhappy with her for life.' 'He'll cure her,' Ilichev said cold-bloodedly." (p. 130) The weather reflects the situation that Cecily is now stuck with: the "menacing clouds ... were carried no one knows where." (p. 131) And the fall into the abyss is complete: she has been so entirely programmed to reject that which might have freed her, that all she can do is continue into self-destruction.
Reading Journal 1
So these are for REES/WS 281. These beginning ones were more just bullet-pointed first impressions with a focus on how women are represented.
Maria Morevna
Valilisa the Beautiful
Igor's Death and Olga's Revenge
Poor Liza
Eugene Onegin
Tatyana's introversion and fixation on romantic heroes and heroines seems to, at least in my mind, all the more prepare her for the kind of speech she gives in her letters in a way that she actually means, which makes it all the more remarkable for her to stay true to the husband she does not love at the end when Eugene returns.
Funny how the narration switches between perspectives within the story and even to meta-story and meta-society from the author directly to the reader. Odd that the title is Eugene and not Tatyana when it seems she, not he, is the 'landfall' of the final verses, and indeed the model of womanhood to be held to in Russian society even today. It could just be that only this section exposited Tatyana's character and the rest was actually about Eugene.
Maria Morevna
- Maria at the beginning: fierce, independent, and secretive but not maliciously so. In the repeating part of the story, she's concerned for her safety but willing to risk death (brave, and for love).
- Prince's sisters: allowed free will in marriage choice.
- Baba Yaga: civil enough (even about her evil points: "do not hold it against me!"), but secretly tricky; "sweeping her traces with a broom"
Valilisa the Beautiful
- There's a theme of truth versus image for the stepsisters ("thin from spite...sat with folded hands, like ladies")
- Vasilisa relies on maternal blessing/external help for all of what's remarkable about her; righteousness wins; curious magic/Christian theology combination going on (even the doll tells her to pray, p. 443)
- Baba Yaga is strict, cruel, and impossibly wicked (with the chores); yet also seems to have some wisdom (even to share: "don't ask too much" for it makes you grow old too soon), and sticks to her word (gives the light Vasilisa needed)
Igor's Death and Olga's Revenge
- Olga as cunning, almost monstrous in her backstabbing/trickery, but it was out of revenge for her husband (thus okay somehow?--maybe not the point)
Poor Liza
- Liza and her mother honourable: "never took extra" for both; Liza even after her innocence is lost and she's given way to her passions remembers, "I have a mother!" (to take care of)
- Anyuta continues the theme of reliance on others (the villagers)
- Liza's mother's eyes close forever: a kind of reverse metaphor of Liza's eyes being opened/innocence lost: the costs of the 'romantic'/cross-class relationship that seemingly can't actually work (return to realism)
Eugene Onegin
Tatyana's introversion and fixation on romantic heroes and heroines seems to, at least in my mind, all the more prepare her for the kind of speech she gives in her letters in a way that she actually means, which makes it all the more remarkable for her to stay true to the husband she does not love at the end when Eugene returns.
Funny how the narration switches between perspectives within the story and even to meta-story and meta-society from the author directly to the reader. Odd that the title is Eugene and not Tatyana when it seems she, not he, is the 'landfall' of the final verses, and indeed the model of womanhood to be held to in Russian society even today. It could just be that only this section exposited Tatyana's character and the rest was actually about Eugene.
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