(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.
2007/10/26
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.
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