Semicolon Spring 2016

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t he s emicolon

arts & humanities students’ council volume X issue II

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The S e m i c ol on Essay Journal Spring 2016 Arts & Humanities Students’ Council at Western University The Semicolon accepts A-grade essays written by undergraduate students for courses within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University. For more information and copies, please contact the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council in IGAB 0N20D.

Editor-In-Chief

Sarah Botelho

Academic Managing Editor

Lauren Sayers

Creative Managing Editor Copy Editor Layout Editor

Katrina Fowler Emma Lammers Julia Vance

A special thanks to Hina Afzaal, Sofia Berger, Alicia Johnson, Megan Levine, Alero Ogbeide, Massimo Peruzza, Alexis Pronovost & Megs McGinley Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The sole responsibility for the content in this publication remains with the authors and artists. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC).

The AHSC and USC assume no liability for any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions contained in this publication.

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Tabl e of C onte nt s

English 1. Meg Desmond’s Representing Modern Humanity On-Stage: The Importance of Time and Space in Miss Julie and The Last Supper

7. Sarah Gilpin’s “Great Mischiefs Mask in Expected Pleasures”: How Characters Utilize the Masque Device to Achieve Revenge in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women

10. Robyn Obermeyer’s “This is her picture as she was”: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Idealization of Elizabeth Siddal in Death

16. Annie Rueter’s Marriage and Emotional Maturation in Jane Austen’s Emma 21. Tamara Spencer’s The Affective Epistemology of the Unconscious: Memory, Temporality, and Prosthesis in Wordsworth and De Quincey

;;; The School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities 25. Alexis Pronovost’s Arts and Humanities and Their Importance in Education

Women’s Studies 29. Brie Berry’s Menstruation, Monstrosity, and Sexuality in Ginger Snaps 36. Kate Hall’s Rachel Knows Best 41. Rebecca Meharchand’s Trans(cending) the Body: Biological Essentialism vs. Social Constructionism in the Context of Trans Identity

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Representing Modern Humanity On-Stage: The Importance of Time and Space in Miss Julie and The Last Supper Meg Desmond English 3556E

In the technologically-advanced modern world, space and time become malleable. Transportation methods like trains, planes, and automobiles make the world at once both smaller and larger – it is easier to travel great distances in a shorter amount of time, yet so much of the world is opened up to each individual, making it seem larger. Along with space and time, gender and class also become malleable in the modern world. With the rise of meritocracy, citizens of the Western world learned to blame themselves for failures, rather than oppressive and limiting social systems, or God. More positively, they learned that hard work leads to social and economic success – therefore anyone: regardless of gender or class, could achieve it. In the technically advanced, fast paced, and interconnected modern world, agency is exercised through one’s ability to capture space and time, to document one’s own life, and to be in control of one’s own representation. Archiving produces the present as it captures the past: “In a highly developed media-capitalism society, an event is recorded not because it happens, but it happens because it is recorded” (Currie 11). Archiving is done by both individuals and the society at large. News reports, photographs, books, and magazines capture slices of time, turning the present into the past even as it occurs. Mirroring the need to record experience, and exploring the relationship between archiving and agency, modern naturalist theatre thinks through and revises the boundaries of time and space on stage, often so that the passage of real time mirrors the passage of play time. It delves deeper than realism by representing not just verisimilar characters and their environments, but their socio-environmental motivations: biology plus cultural shaping.

Naturalism is influenced by Konstantin Stanislavski, who stressed that, in order to properly inhabit a role, actors should not only know their characters’ lines and actions, but their motivations – to imagine a character’s life outside of the text. Stanislavski’s method focuses on combining the ‘given circumstances’ of a character – age, appearance, information given in the script – with the ‘magic if ’: the use of an actor’s emotional memory to focus on the intent behind performed actions, allowing the actor to inhabit, rather than just portray, a character (BBC). Both Hillar Liitoja’s The Last Supper and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie are naturalist plays which ask the audience to experience time alongside the characters. However, Miss Julie creates distance between the audience and characters, while The Last Supper situates the audience so they experience both time and space with the characters. In doing this, Strindberg and Liitoja express opposing views on the necessity of narrative distance in interpreting texts.

Does the eradication of distance between viewer and viewed prevent the audience from engaging deeply with a play’s implications? Or can it work to produce a deeper understanding of a play? Ultimately, Strindberg’s tactics make Julie merely accessible to the audience, while Liitoja’s make Chris relatable. This essay will examine the relationship between gender, class, the archiving of memories, and the way time and space are rep-

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resented onstage in both Liitoja and Strindberg’s plays. While Strindberg’s play is scientific, mechanized, and retrograde, Liitoja’s focuses on human rights: who gets to have rights, and who has the agency to choose.

For Strindberg, naturalism meant portraying time, space, and character in realistic fashion, eliminating act divisions that could take audience members out of the “illusion” of the play (64), presenting his characters as constantly vacillating (59), and giving Julie a plethora of biological, genetic, and historical reasons for her personality and actions (58). Thinkers like Strindberg assert that lack of distance hinders the viewer’s opportunity to think critically about a play or narrative: “The theater has always been an elementary school for the young, the semi-educated, and for women, who still retain the primitive capacity for deceiving themselves or for letting themselves be deceived, that is, for succumbing to the illusions and hypnotic suggestions of the author” (Strindberg 56). Distance hailed as integral to the viewer’s ability to interpret and critique characters’ actions – those without ‘proper’ intelligence are merely deceived by plays, their identification with events and characters garnering only a simple, surface-level viewing of art. Similar to Strindberg, Wayne C. Booth argues that aesthetic distance is required in order for critical engagement with art: “Only an immature reader ever identifies with any character, losing all sense of distance and hence the possibility of an artistic experience” (Currie 58). According to Booth, identifying with a character prevents not just critical engagement with art, but also the ‘proper’ experience of art.

In contrast, Liitoja’s The Last Supper is an environmental ‘hyper-naturalist’ play: “Pushing its performative organization of space, time, and action to extremes” (Halferty 40). Rather than creating the illusion of reality, environmental hyper-naturalism immerses the audience in the action of the play, blurring the line between staged fiction and reality. Distance between the audience and actors is completely eradicated, with viewers scattered around the stage, beside actors or pieces of furniture. Time mimics reality – when Chris watches scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the audience watches with him. The Last Supper leaves out no details that might have been removed from a conventional naturalist play. In fact, Cathy Gordon, the play’s stage manager, said that “During the play’s intermission Ken McDougall [Chris] would stay on stage, in character and urinate into a bedpan, which Jim Allodi, the actor who played Val, would later empty” (footnote 11, 40). The removal of body waste, or the smell of the room are important, realistic details that Liitoja does not shy away from. The tight, closed space and mimicking of real time compliments The Last Supper’s desire to savour time and space: to appreciate that which viewers might otherwise seek to get away from. They might have to confront prejudices during the play, such as the discomfort of having to sit in the same room as a gay, male character suffering from AIDS. The audience is forced to become part of the play, rather than remaining spectators.

Booth’s assertion that distance is required for the proper interpretation of art seems blatantly false when considering The Last Supper. Despite the lack of distance between spectators and actors, Liitoja facilitates a space where audience members can both identify with and think critically about the play. In fact, Liitoja’s removal of distance amplifies the audience’s experience of art and of the play; viewers become involved through occupying the same space as Chris: smelling what he does, watching

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what he does, and hearing what he does. This forces the audience to be active rather than passive and removed witnesses. They are given a stake, and must choose whether to engage or shrink – a choice that viewers of Miss Julie are not encouraged to make.

While Strindberg asks his audience to deplore Julie and appreciate Jean, Liitoja does not want the audience to make presumptions or judgements about the characters, but rather to exist along with them. This process – of watching A Space Odyssey with Chris, of being marked by the aromatherapist, of sharing the space – is humanizing, and works to make Chris relatable rather than merely plausible, or realistic, like Julie.

Fluid gender and class boundaries are products of the modern era, where space, time, and social constructs become malleable. Class, with the rise of the bourgeoisie, became based on meritocratic values rather than aristocratic ones; no longer dependent on birth: “It was the drama of progress, that key word of the age: massive, enlightened, sure of itself, self-satisfied but above all inevitable” (Hobsbawm 4). Miss Julie represents this meritocratic worldview: Julie’s fall and Jean’s rise are presented as inevitable because of their intrinsic character – Julie dreams of falling down and burying herself in the earth, Jean has the opposite dream of climbing up a tree (Strindberg 83). While class can be earned or overcome in Miss Julie, gender is still fixed. Jean has the opportunity to travel, work, and make something of himself, while Julie is stuck waiting for a suitable marriage, unable to work or travel respectably without a man accompanying her. She is dubbed ‘half-woman’ by Strindberg for desiring a lifestyle she is not, as a woman, allowed to have: “The half-woman is a type who thrusts herself forward and sells herself nowadays for power, decorations, honours, or diplomas as formerly she used to do for money. She is synonymous with degeneration” (60). For Strindberg, technological or class progress is good, but progress in relation to gender is unthinkable. He uses theatrical space to create distance between the audience and Julie, encouraging viewers to study, rather than sympathize with her.

Miss Julie is a play about rapid change and open opportunities, the conquest of time and space, the dying of aristocratic power symbolized by Julie’s suicide. The house represents the old world; Julie and Jean are limited by space and time as long as they are confined to the house, waiting for Julie’s father to return: “There are still barriers between us, as long as we remain in this house – there’s the past, there’s his lordship” (Strindberg 87). Space and time interfere with mobility in the old world, while in the new world they allow it – as soon as Jean can escape the household, he can escape his societal position. He dreams of travel, motion, and a fast-paced world where money “just [rolls] in” (87). The language of capitalist conquest is consistent through Miss Julie: Jean speaks of Julie as if she is merely stepping stone towards his future: “Lackey’s whore, servant’s tart, shut your mouth and get out of here! How dare you go and call me crude? No one of my sort has ever behaved as crudely as you have this evening. […]

Though I must confess the conquest was altogether too easy to be really intoxicating” (91). Jean’s excitement for the sped-up modern world makes him the perfect capitalist, focused on production, profit, and progress: “The more capitalism shrinks space and speeds up time, the more it can profit” (Solnit 18). The tension between tradition and modernity can be seen in the contrast between Kristin, Julie, and Jean. Jean represents the new, opportunistic world. Julie represents the outdated customs of aristocratic lineage, as well as things burgeoning in the new world that Strindberg deems unaccept-

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able (like changing women’s roles and rights) – which he symbolically does away with through Julie’s suicide. Kristin is the most level-headed character in the play, representing old world morals and conventions, which she values over challenging the status quo. Yet Strindberg writes her off as unimportant, even comparing her to an animal in his preface (63). In praising modern social and technological advances, Strindberg does away with the ideologies of the ‘old world’ – progress and rapid change become most important.

By contrast, The Last Supper is about appreciating the little time and space one has, about slowing down time and confining space in an accelerated, boundless world. It is nostalgic for Chris and Val’s memories and for an era gone by, when time was slower and space was smaller. Not traditionally ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, or concerned with class progression, Chris and Val act against societal roles in a way that Jean and Julie cannot: they are fond of arts and culture, have travelled, cook their own food, enjoy aesthetics and the beauty of the world around them. Gender, in the play, is fluid rather than fixed. Unlike Jean, who values progress for its own sake, Chris and Val are concerned with capturing and savouring time. The dialogue leading up to Chris’ death, the photographing of his final dance by Val, and the performance of euthanasia are all examples of Chris and Val’s wish to preserve memories. Before the euthanasia is acted out, Val exclaims: “Oh Chris, I can’t help thinking. I just wish it didn’t have to end like this. Look at everything you are! To have all that beauty just disappear” (Liitoja 66).

Chris’ reply asserts that time can be captured, slowed down eternally: “No. Val. Not disappear. It’s a total explosive transmutive…. Always total there…. Oh Val, one day we’ll be together, crushed by the weight of time, incandescent, indestructible, free-force forever” (66). For Chris, time can be eternal. He will not lose everything he is through dying, as Val laments. Instead, of the traits he represents dying along with his character – as is the case in Miss Julie – these positive things can change form, nature, or substance: taking on a new life. This assertion allows Chris is able to die willingly and peacefully.

In About Time, Mark Currie argues that “Narrative [attends] to the notion of the present as a place from which we continuously revise stories about the past…. A new experience of time has been rehearsed, developed, and expressed” (6). The modern attempt to capture time is what Currie calls archive fever: “The frenzied archiving and recording of contemporary social life which transforms the present into the past by anticipating its memory” (11). Archive fever comes to play in The Last Supper, where Chris’ death is being recorded not only by the playwright, but by Chris himself. This meta-theatrical double recording turns Chris – his story and his body – into an archive.

In one scene, Chris is reluctant to say a personal goodbye to his brother, instead asking Val to travel to Amsterdam to deliver a letter he has written: “‘Chris, you know you can call him right now. Even though it’s late you can give him a minute to wake up and have a last talk with you.’ ‘It would be too much. For both of us’” (52). Chris believes he will ruin the night he has planned by calling his brother. While he has planned dinner, for Val to take photos of him, for Val to take a letter to his brother, and the process of his death, Chris has not planned to contact his brother, and therefore doing so would disrupt the performance of his death. Chris’ death is not only a performance, but a narrative that he has written for himself, where he can control space, time, and actions.

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His nearly obsessive documentation seems anticipatory of current hyper-technological society, where social media has turned almost everything and every experience into an archive. Just as many people today document their experiences through social media or photography (especially ‘selfies,’ the best example of conscious self-recording), Chris documents his death through photographs, music, letters, and, importantly, through being watched by an audience.

Strindberg turns his characters into an archive for study and observation differently than Liitoja. He wanted his audience to learn from the play, as if it were a case being studied in a lab or classroom: “I find the joy of life in its cruel and powerful struggles, and my enjoyment comes from getting to know something, from learning something. That is why I have chosen an unusual case, but an instructive one” (57).

Rather than relate to Julie, the audience should critique her; she becomes an object of study, a failed example of an era gone-by. While Strindberg turns Julie into an archive of the past, Liitoja has Chris turn himself into an archive of the present through his performance of euthanasia. In doing so, Liitoja turns Chris into an archive of the future – a world where euthanasia exists, where gender and class are fluid, where art is immersive, and where characters can be related to and viewed as human subjects, not art objects. While evidence of Chris’ life cannot be preserved by his body – which is brashly taken away by the paramedics – it can be preserved in photos, letters, and in memory.

Both Miss Julie and The Last Supper are in dialogue with ideas about time and space, character, the recording and interpreting of art, and how art can realistically portray humanity on-stage. Miss Julie is a play concerned with progress in a technologically-advancing, capitalist society: doing away with the old and ushering in the new.

By creating distance between the actors and the audience, Strindberg asks viewers to critique Julie, to see her as a specimen – someone they cannot relate to or sympathize with – rather than a human. In contrast, The Last Supper eradicates space and mimics real time, asking the audience to see Chris not as something to critique or study, but as a complex human being. Where Miss Julie is concerned with capturing and portraying progress, The Last Supper is concerned with preservation, of archiving experience that cannot be preserved by the body. Chris is allowed to be a subject with agency over his story, his life, his death, and the way he is represented, while Julie is an art object to be studied as she spirals out of control. Both plays aim to naturally portray and capture humanity on stage, but the distance created between the viewers and characters in Miss Julie hinders the audience’s experience of the play compared to The Last Supper’s immersive method.

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Works Cited “Naturalism and Stanislavski.” BBC Online. BBC, 2015. Web. 4 April 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zxn4mp3/revision/1 Currie, Mark. About Time. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Print.

Halferty, Paul. “Environmental Hyper-Naturalism: Hillar Liitoja’s The Last Supper: A Performance of Euthanasia.” New Canadian Realisms: Eight Plays. Ed. Roberta Barker and Kim Solga. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2012. 37-42. Print.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Age of Capital: 1848—1875. New York: Vintage Books. 1996. 1-14.

Print.

Liitoja, Hillar. The Last Supper. New Canadian Realisms: Eight Plays. Ed. Roberta Barker and Kim Solga. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2012. 43-72. Print.

Solnit, Rebecca. “The Annihilation of Time and Space.” River of Shadows. London: Penguin. 16-27. Print.

Strindberg, August. Miss Julie. Miss Julie and Other Plays. Trans. Michael Robinson.

New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 55-110. Print.

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“Great Mischiefs Mask in Expected Pleasures”: How Characters Utilize the Masque Device to Achieve Revenge in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women

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Sarah Gilpin English 2041F

Thomas Middleton’s final scene of Women Beware Women includes a masque in honour of the Duke of Florence and Bianca Cappello’s marriage. A masque is “a form of courtly dramatic entertainment, often richly symbolic, in which music and dancing play a substantial part, costumes and stage machinery tend to be elaborate” (OED). When used as a theatrical device, a tragic masque “is always both a show and a disguise, simultaneously wonder and woe, at once ‘tied to rules of flattery’ and ‘treason’s license’” (Sutherland xiii). Most importantly, the masque tradition blends “violently together the decorum inherent in celebratory court entertainment with the indecorum of madness, mayhem, and murder” (xiii). The known sources Middleton consulted while writing this play were “Malespini’s Ducento Novelle (1609) [and] Moryson’s Itinerary (c. 1620), [both works do not] end [their] version[s] of the Bianca Cappello story with a masque” (89). There is no clear answer to Middleton’s intention to include the masque in the final scene because literary critics remain divided by the effect of the masque to the overall narrative. Although a difference of opinions remains, my argument rules in favour of Middleton’s masque. Act V scene ii of Middleton’s Women Beware Women concludes dramatic action of the play by performing plots of revenge that the characters have previously discussed to the audience.

Thus, Middleton’s “nuptial masque” (89) does not destabilize the action, but rather, creates limitations on characters’ plans of revenge because they must work within the confines of a Jacobean dramatic convention.

In her dissertation, Marie Cornelia describes the problematic quality of the Jacobean masque to a modern twenty-first century audience. With advancements in technology and the ever-growing cultural interest in film, modern audiences tend to be “concern[ed] with ‘unity’” (Cornelia 2-3). Our expectation to see a film with strong continuity is translated from the movie theatre to live theatre. However, at the time of Jacobean playwrights, such as Middleton, “the inclusion of a masque [was] a legitimate and desirable [device that] would have been based on a notion of dramatic structure” (2). That being said, “Jacobean dramatists did not think primarily in terms of overall structure, in terms of five acts, but rather in terms of the single striking scene” (5). Middleton’s writing style thrives on striking scenes. For example, T.S. Eliot was inspired by Middleton’s chess scene in Women Beware Women that he entitled part of The Wasteland, “A Game of Chess.”

Similar to the chess scene, the final masque is a “grand scene.” The masque serves, on a dramatic level, as “a highly effective theatrical moment [that] ha[s] everything to offer; colour and flamboyant, [to] combine the effects of poetry, music, dance, spectacle, and ceremony” (5). Thus, Jacobean audiences would not view the final masque as destabilizing.

On the contrary, the audience would desire a masque.

Cornelia also addresses the political nature of a masque in terms of class status.

As the Oxford English Dictionary definition states, the masque was a part of “courtly dramatic entertainment.” The masque in Women Beware Women honours a courtly marriage of a duke, thus the use of the masque at this moment in the play was expected. However,

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“popularity at court was not the whole reason for the inclusion of the masque in drama” (Cornelia 7). At the time, “the masque [was] the most aristocratic of art forms” (7), lower class individuals did not have the privilege to witness a masque. Middleton’s decision to include a masque in the final scene would “naturally excite [the] curiosity on the part of the commons who wished a glimpse of what was entertaining their social superiors” (7).

Therefore, Jacobean history proves that during Middleton’s time the inclusion of a masque would not have been viewed as problematic.

A historical lens is not the only perspective needed to understand the purpose of the masque in Women Beware Women. The playtext hints at aspects of role-playing prior to the final masque scene. In act I scene ii, Fabritio instructs Isabella to put “On [her] mask, for ‘tis your part to see now,/ And not be seen” (74). Isabella is presented, not as herself, but as a suitor for the Ward, which insists she wears a mask. As the Oxford English Dictionary states, “costumes” are essential elements of the masque.

In fact, the script beings to associate role-playing and revenge through Livia’s act against Hippolito and Isabella. After lying to Isabella about her ancestry that allows her to have a relationship with her uncle, Hippolito, the truth is revealed in act IV scene ii. Livia apologizes to Hippolito and Isabella by stating, “I am now myself ” (169) as if before she was performing an act of “rage” (167). Livia’s rage caused her to perform an elaborate story for Hippolito and Isabella. By the final act, the association of role-play and revenge is continued through the “in character” deaths of Guardiano, Livia and Isabella during the masque.

Sarah Sutherland eloquently states that it is not the masque itself that is problematic in the final scene, but rather, the use of masque to “fuse several separate plots” (92).

Therefore, it is not the concept of the masque as a dramatic device that causes confusion for the audience; instead, it is the vast amount of action that takes place onstage during the masque scene. After Guardiano assigns roles to Isabella and Livia for the masque, he reveals his true intentions with the performance, “The pages that present the swift-winged Cupids/ Are taught to hit him with their shafts of love,/ Fitting his part, which I have cunningly poisoned” (V.III. 33-35). Guardiano seeks revenge on Hippolito “for damage done to Isabella, whom Guardiano had hoped to wed to his Ward” (Sutherland 92). Guardiano desires revenge, yet he refuses to jeopardize his ability to acquire “a greater title [to] set upon thy crest” (II.ii.406). In order to achieve revenge and appear innocent, Guardiano manipulates the props used in the masque. Not only does he poison the arrows, but he also disguises a galtrop behind a trapped door within the performance space of the masque (V. i. 6). Guardiano must work within the restrictions of the story used in the masque to achieve revenge. Although poisoned arrows sound ridiculous, the masque is for Juno, the Roman marriage goddess. Cupid relates to the script because he is also a Roman god of attraction. Thus, Guardiano’s “double plot against Hippolito” (Sutherland 92) is disguised within the masque script so that he will not risk being stripped of his title.

Similar to Guardiano, Isabella chooses to act on her vengeance against her aunt, Livia, during the masque. Isabella informs the audience in act IV scene ii of her desire to “practice [her revenge] like cruel cunning/ Upon [Livia’s] life, as she has on mine honour,/ I’ll act it without pity” (145-147). After promising to seek revenge, Livia is casted by Guardiano as “Juno Pronuba, the marriage-goddess” (IV. iii. 214), while Isabella is told she “shall play the nymph/ That offers sacrifice to appease her wrath” (IV. iii. 215-216).

Isabella’s role in the masque is an opportunity for her to modify the “sacrifice” to accomplish her goal. During the masque, Isabella’s character states, “I offer to thy powerful deity,/ This precious incense, may it ascend peacefully” (V. ii. 100). With prior knowledge of her

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lines, Isabella is able to alter the incense, as the direction indicates, to be “poisoned.” Thus, the masque does not weaken the plot, but rather, is manipulated by characters in order to achieve their plans of revenge.

Likewise, Livia modifies the masque script for her advantage. Livia is aware of her part as Juno in act IV scene iii, where one of her lines instructs “a sign of wealth and golden days” (V. ii. 115). For the performance, Livia manipulates this line to kill her niece.

After yelling, “take that!” (V. ii. 117), Livia “throws flaming gold upon Isabella, who falls dead.” Although this death appears outlandish and ridiculous, Livia is resourceful; she uses Juno’s lines in the masque script to get what she desires. Similar to Guardiano and Isabella, the masque creates the perfect setting for Livia’s revenge.

Plots of revenge continue to unfold during the masque scene when Bianca decides to kill the Cardinal. Sutherland calls Bianca’s plot of revenge the “‘antemasque’” (92).

Although Bianca is the reason for the masque, she still utilizes the opportunity to promise the Cardinal will “die this night” (V. ii. 21). However, her attempt fails as the Duke dies “with the poison/ That was prepared for thee, thee Cardinal!” (V. ii. 190-191). Bianca’s failure to seek revenge results in her succumbing to her own demise by drinking the poisoned cup.

Hippolito is the sole participant of the masque who does not have a pre-planned plot of revenge during the performance. Hippolito’s purity turns against him once he becomes overwhelmed by the deaths onstage and seizes an opportunity for his own death when a lord enters the stage with a halbert. As Sutherland states, “The dramatic effect of the masque in Women Beware Women resides not in the individual death plots but in the ways they are knit together as a whole” (92). The numerous revenge plots that intertwine in the final scene result in the death of every single actor onstage, except for the Cardinal.

Middleton’s choice to include a masque, unlike other authors of the Bianca Cappello story, has a clear message against the court. A masque is always performed for the court and because this masque results in multiple deaths, Middleton hints at the corruption of the court. With the Cardinal as the only character live onstage, Middleton alludes to “Psalm 9:16, the wicked are ensnared by the works of their hands” (Sutherland 100).

Works Cited Cornelia, Marie. The Function of the Masque in Jacobean Tragedy and Tragicomedy. Diss.

University of Salzburg, 1978. A-5020. Print.

“Masque, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2015. Web. 27 November 2015.

Middleton, Thomas. Women Beware Women. 2nd ed. By William C. Carroll. London: New Mermaids, 1994. Print.

Sutherland, Sarah P. Masques in Jacobean Tragedy. New York: AMS Press, Inc. 1983. Print.

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“This is her picture as she was”: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Idealization of Elizabeth Siddal in Death Robyn Obermeyer

English 4420F

Originally brought into the Pre-Raphaelite circle in 1849 by painter Walter Howell Deverell (Ash iv), the “stunner” Elizabeth Siddal quickly became Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s muse, model, and friend, and by 1860, his wife. Her face covered his canvasses both during her lifetime and after her premature death from a laudanum overdose in February of 1862 (Ash vii). Though Rossetti had many models who became muses and lovers throughout his artistic career—including William Morris’ wife Jane Morris (neé Burdon) and Rossetti’s buxom mistress Fanny Cornforth (Ash vii-viii)—Siddal’s chronic illness and budding artistic talent, along with her “massive straight coppery golden hair” and “large greenish-blue…large-lidded” eyes (The Burlington Magazine 273) set her apart in Rossetti’s affections.

Rossetti encouraged Siddal to take up painting, letting her use his painting supplies and proudly showcasing her work to his friends. She also began writing poetry, and this interest in art drew Rossetti closer to her (Garnett 145). Her illness likewise drew the two together, as “whenever Gabriel had to leave her to fulfill a commission elsewhere, Lizzie would have an attack, or spasm, or not be able to eat until his return” (Garnett 136). She needed him to care for her, and he needed her as his muse.

At the start of their relationship, Siddal was determined to stay somewhat aloof from Rossetti in order to “save herself from becoming one of the numberless women whose virtue had been ruined by sinking…into the morally reprehensible profession of ‘artist’s model’” (Ash v). In Siddal’s poem “Lust of the Eyes”, written sometime prior to her marriage to Rossetti in 1860 (Rossetti: Ruskin: PreRaphaelitism: Papers 1854-1962 150), she reveals a further anxiety about their relationship. Written from the perspective of a male artist (possibly Rossetti himself), the speaker discloses that “I care not for my Lady’s soul” (Siddal 1) though “I worship before her smile” (2), maintaining throughout the poem that it is his lady’s beauty that he cares for rather than her personality, aspirations, or religious intent. In a morbid final stanza, Siddal wonders if, in the lady’s death, the artist will even “fold her hands” (13) or “hearken if she cries / Up to the unknown lands” (15-16); will he remember me, she seems to be saying, after my beauty is gone and my body is cold? In the late 1850s, Siddal became “disillusioned about her relationship with Gabriel” after his long-standing inclination away from marriage continued (Garnett 159-162), and this poem may express her worry that Rossetti viewed her more as a beautiful muse than as a real person. Regardless of whether or not Siddal was referring to Rossetti specifically, there is no doubt that this work criticizes artists and even men in general for their obsession with female beauty and subsequent disregard for the soul, or personality, of the woman.

Many critics argue that Rossetti justified Siddal’s anxiety about becoming just a beautiful image to him. The primary source for this argument is often his sister Christina Rossetti’s 1856 poem “In an Artist’s Studio”, which William Michael Rossetti suggested was inspired by his brother’s “constantly-repeated heads of…Miss Siddal” (New

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Poems of Christina Rossetti 383). In Dante Gabriel’s studio, “One face looks out from all his canvasses” (Rossetti, C. 1), as he used Siddal’s image to portray queens, nameless girls, saints, and angels alike (5-7). In the sestet of this sonnet, Christina describes how Dante Gabriel twists Siddal’s image to fit his needs; at the time of the poem’s composition, Siddal would have been both “wan with waiting” (12) for her on-again-off-again relationship with Gabriel to stabilize, and “with sorrow dim” (12), but Christina maintains that Dante Gabriel paints her “not as she is, but as she fills his dream” (14). “In an Artist’s Studio” makes Siddal into a vessel for Dante Gabriel’s desires; the speaker paints his model’s face onto multiple versions of an idealized woman, making her into everything he wants her to be—innocent and virginal young girl, stately and rich queen, pure saint, and powerful angel—yet neglecting her true characteristics. This sonnet removes Siddal’s agency as poet and painter in her own right and reduces her to her “true kind eyes” (10) and pretty face.

In this essay I will argue that, during her lifetime, Dante Gabriel Rossetti did not, as Christina Rossetti may have believed, view Elizabeth Siddal as a beautiful but passive vessel for his desires. Though he believed her to be extraordinarily beautiful and often idealized her beauty in his paintings, several sketches and first-hand accounts reveal that he admired her artistic talent and considered her as an artist, friend and lover before a model and muse. However, in 1862 her complex personhood is removed by death and Rossetti is able to make his memory of her into whatever he wants it to be. In his 1870 poems “Life-in-Love” and “The Portrait”, as well as his painting Beata Beatrix, Rossetti idealizes his late wife and distorts her memory into an image of eternal beauty and perfection. In her death, Siddal becomes exactly what Christina claimed her to be: “not as she is, but as she fills his dream”.

In many of Rossetti’s sketches and portraits of Siddal, her eyes are averted from the viewer and she is posed in a passive position, such as lounging on a chair or leaning her head against clasped hands as she is in Rossetti’s 1854 Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal (Figure 1); these types of portraits reinforce the common conception of Siddal as nothing more than Rossetti’s languid, passive partner. Her averted gaze makes her into a beautiful object to be looked at rather than an active participant in the looking.

There are a few of Rossetti’s sketches, however, that show that this was not the only way he viewed Siddal. In these sketches she is energetic, focused, and outwardly artistic, qualities that Rossetti would not have portrayed if he saw her as simply a passive model and muse. In an 1853 sketch, Rossetti depicts Siddal drawing his own portrait (Figure 2). This pen and ink drawing is composed of energetic, deliberate lines, and features Siddal leaning forward over her easel, her intent gaze directly meeting that of her subject as she tries to capture his likeness on paper. In this portrait, Siddal “exudes passion and purpose—qualities opposite from the languor and weakness usually attributed to her” (Bradley 145). Here she is the opposite of the objectified model and muse—she is the concentrated artist and the active subject. Rossetti’s 1854 Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal and this 1853 sketch are composed only a year apart, showing the duality of Rossetti’s opinion of her. She was his muse, and perhaps when she was modeling for him, a passive and languid one; however, he also knew her as a woman whose gaze did not shy away from his, but searched his face with the intensity of a serious artist and the familiarity of a friend.

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Rossetti, the Brotherhood and the rest of the Pre-Raphaelite circle considered Siddal to have considerable artistic talent. In 1857, Siddal exhibited some of her artwork at the Pre-Raphaelite Salon at Russell Place, becoming the only woman to ever exhibit with the Brotherhood (Bradley 145). John Ruskin also “considered Siddal among the five geniuses he had met” (Latham 18). This belief contradicts the common public conception of Siddal as nothing more than a passive muse to Rossetti’s genius.

In 1854 when Siddal, Rossetti, and friends Emma and Ford Maddox Brown travelled to Hastings, “Rossetti began to draw Siddal not as a model but as a friend, companion, lover” (Bradley 145). During Siddal’s lifetime, she was not used as a vessel for Rossetti’s desires, and he did not see her as just a beautiful object to be painted or an idealized muse to be written about. She was his friend, his lover, and a promising artist; she was an active subject in their relationship and in her own life.

After her death in 1862, however, Siddal’s subjectivity was removed. Without the living woman tempering Rossetti’s idealization of her image, Rossetti was free to turn his late wife into whatever he needed her to be. Rossetti was haunted, either figuratively or literally, by Siddal’s memory, and she “lived on in Rossetti’s consciousness as a specter of guilt” (Bradley 142). After her unexpected passing, Rossetti was reluctant to believe her gone and asked several doctors to confirm her death. As she lay in her coffin he believed her as beautiful as ever, and for some time he stayed by her side, “imploring her to come back” (Garnett 194). Rossetti was wracked with grief did not want to believe that his lover was truly gone. Both Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti attended séances after Siddal’s death; during one of these occasions in January of 1866, Siddal’s ghost allegedly told William Michael that she had visited Gabriel that evening and that he was not painting but sleeping (Rossetti Papers 1862 to 1870 167).

Siddal’s image stayed with Dante Gabriel for years after her death, and he, perhaps subconsciously, twisted her memory so that she remained eternally beautiful, perfect and full of life.

In October of 1869, Rossetti arranged for the exhumation of Siddal’s body to retrieve a manuscript of poems that he had buried with her seven years previous (Rossetti Papers 1862 to 1870 471-472). Rossetti was not present at the disinterment, which caused Siddal’s image to become even more twisted and cemented in his mind. Charles Howell, Rossetti’s friend and agent, performed the exhumation, and he later told Rossetti that Siddal’s body was “‘perfectly preserved’; he even claimed that her luxuriant hair had grown so considerably after death that her tresses had to be cut to disentangle the book” (Ash ix). Modern science has since proven that hair does not continue to grow after death (Hammond); however, Howell’s spectral image of Siddal surrounded by a coffin full of coppery blonde hair stayed with Rossetti long after the worm-eaten manuscript of poems was published.

In “Life-in-Love”, an 1870 sonnet from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The House of Life, Rossetti ruminates on this morbid image and transmutes Siddal’s memory from her “perfectly preserved” body into his paintings of her. Her life is no longer “in thy body” (“Life-in-Love” 1), but instead in “this lady’s lips and hands and eyes” (2); the lady being the woman in Rossetti’s artwork who simultaneously is Siddal, as she bears her likeness, and is not Siddal, as she lacks all other aspects of his deceased wife. Siddal’s life is reduced to her beauty, as it resides in a list of physical features. The separa-

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tion of each body part with a repeated conjunction slows down the pace of this line, which causes the reader to linger on each stressed syllable and places extra importance on these physical manifestations of Siddal’s beauty. It is through the painted lady’s “lips and hands and eyes” that Siddal’s memory is evoked, as “Through these she yields thee life that vivifies / What else were sorrow’s servant and death’s thrall” (3-4). It is only through her physical beauty that Rossetti can remember his lost love; an artistic repetition of her physical features gives life to a memory that would otherwise remain dead and impossible to access.

The sestet of this sonnet focuses on the image of Siddal’s coppery golden hair filling her coffin. Rossetti again accesses her memory through her physical features, as “Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair” (9). In this line he uses several metric substitutions, deviating from the regular rhythm of iambic pentameter. The line itself begins with trochees and features two spondaic substitutions: “life hath” and “poor tress”. An abnormal meter for this strange image seems fitting, and the spondaic substitutions put stress on Siddal’s life and her hair, two things that are tied together in Rossetti’s mind. In life, her hair was a beautiful identifying feature, but she was not solely defined by it; in death, it becomes all that Rossetti can see. Her hair is “all love hath to show / For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago” (10-11); the memory of their passion and their love is reduced to the image of her golden tresses.

In this poem, Rossetti preserves Siddal’s memory exactly how he wants it to be—beautiful and perfect. He imagines her hair, and subsequently her beauty, as “undimm’d in death” (14). He also stretches out the syllable count of two lines in the sonnet’s sestet to mimic the length of her hair and her lingering image. Line nine is composed of eleven syllables, and line twelve, “Even so much life endures unknown, even where” (12) is composed of twelve. Siddal’s life endures even beyond the iambic pentameter of the sonnet form, beyond art and beyond the passing of time, as for Rossetti her image lies in a “changeless night environeth” (13).

Another 1870 poem titled “The Portrait” was also likely about Siddal, as it revolves around the artist’s deceased lover and muse. The poem was also potentially about Rossetti’s 1870 painting Beata Beatrix (Figure 3), which Siddal posed for before her death and which he completed as a memorial to her (Ash Plate 30). The first stanza alone is enough to reveal Rossetti’s idealization of Siddal’s memory. He looks on the painting of her “as she was” (“The Portrait” 1) and imagines again that her life resides in this image, as he seems to see the painted woman stir and her “sweet lips part / To breathe the words of the sweet heart” (7-8). In Beata Beatrix, Siddal’s lips are actually parted in ecstasy, as she becomes Beatrice, the subject of Dante Alighieri’s love in his own life and in his text Vita Nuova, being “suddenly rapt from Earth to Heaven” (Ash Plate 30). Rossetti was greatly influenced by Dante in his artwork and his poetry, so much so that he changed the order of his names to put “Dante” first (Johnson 551). Rossetti’s completion of this painting in 1870 shows the ultimate idealization of Siddal—he literally makes her into the perfect lover of his artistic idol, while accentuating the physical features he loved most about her: her long coppery hair, pale skin, large-lidded eyes, and expansive neck. In this work she is “sensuous and ethereal, pale and yet radiant” (Johnson 552). The painting reconciles the problem that Rossetti had been having while remembering Siddal’s image—he still saw life in her beauty, but

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he logically knew that “the earth is over her” (“The Portrait” 9). Rossetti himself said that his painting was not “intended at all to represent death, but to render it under the semblance of a trance” (Ash Plate 30). This is an ideal and comforting way for him to remember Siddal—not as an image enshrined in death, but as a perfect woman lost in a religious trance that lasts for an eternal moment in his memory.

In life, Elizabeth Siddal was more than just a beautiful model and muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Though he did consider her a “stunner”, he did not reduce her to her beauty, and he saw her first as a lover, friend, companion, and fellow artist. In her death, however, her personal qualities were removed from Rossetti’s life, causing him to subconsciously distort her memory and mould it into the beautiful, perfect image he wanted her to be. It is possible that Rossetti loved Siddal more than the women of his other relationships—it is certain that her beautiful image haunted his imagination for the rest of his life.

Works Cited Ash, Russell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Pavilion Books, 1995. Print.

Bradley, Laurel. “Elizabeth Siddal: Drawn into the Pre-Raphaelite Circle.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 18.2 (1992): 136-145. Print.

Garnett, Henrietta. Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Muses. London: Macmillan, 2012. Print.

Hammond, Claudia. “Do your hair and fingernails grow after death?” BBC Future.

BBC.com, 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Johnson, Ronald W. “Dante Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix and The New Life.” The Art Bulletein 57.4 (1975): 548-558. Print.

Latham, David. Haunted Texts: Studies in Pre-Raphaelitism. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2003. Print.

Rossetti, Christina. “In an Artist’s Studio.” New Poems by Christina Rossetti. Ed. William Michael Rossetti. London: Macmillan, 1896. Print. 114.

Rossetti, Christina. New Poems by Christina Rossetti. Ed. William Michael Rossetti.

London: Macmillan, 1896. Print.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Beata Beatrix, 1870. Oil. Art Institute of Chicago.

Preraphaelitesisterhood.com. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sitting with Elizabeth Siddal, 1853.

Pen and brown ink shaded with finger on writing paper. Birmingham Museum and Art

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Gallery. Rossetiarchive.org. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. “Life-in-Love.” Dante Gabriel Rossetti Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jerome McGann. New Haven: Yale, 2003. Print. 143.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. “The Portrait.” Poems: A New Edition. London: Ellis and White, 1881. 133-137. Rossettiarchive.org. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal. 1854. Watercolour. Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Rossetti, William Michael. “Dante Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, May 1903. Rossettiarchive.org. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Rossetti, William Michael. Rossetti Papers 1862 to 1870. London: Sands & Co, 1903.

Print.

Rossetti, William Michael. Ruskin: Rossetti: PreRaphaelitism: Papers 1854-1862.

London: George Allen, 1899. Print.

Siddal, Elizabeth. “Lust of the Eyes.” Ruskin: Rossetti: PreRaphaelitism: Papers 18541862. Ed. William Michael Rossetti. London: George Allen, 1899. Print. 155.

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Marriage and Emotional Maturation in Jane Austen’s Emma Annie Rueter English 2500E

Jane Austen’s novel Emma, published in 1816, focuses on the theme of marriage within the narrow social scope of Hartfield, England. The novel is framed around the development of interpersonal relationships that lead to multiple different marriages between unlikely pairs, despite Emma’s attempts at controlling marriages through matchmaking. This essay argues that the framing of marriage in the novel is contingent upon Emma’s character development as she grows toward emotional maturation at the end of the novel. In accordance with Emma’s emotional development, the framing of marriage shifts from an act that creates loss for others, to marriage as a vehicle of social mobility, and finally to marriage as domestic bliss in the final volume of the novel. The final framing of marriage as bliss coincides with Emma’s emotional understanding of both herself and others.

Initially, both the marriages of Miss Taylor and Isabella are framed as losses for other characters in the novel, namely Emma and Mr. Woodhouse. Miss Taylor’s marriage to Mr. Weston is framed as a grave loss for Emma whose relationship with Miss Taylor had developed into one of companionship over the past 16 years that Miss Taylor was employed by the Woodhouses. To Emma, Miss Taylor was “a friend and companion such as few possessed, intelligent . . . knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns . . . one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose” (Austen 6). Upon discussing the marriage with her father and Mr. Knightley, Emma struggles between shedding tears and feeling happiness for Rueter 1

Miss Taylor. She consoles herself by reminding Mr. Knightely that she was the one who “successfully” arranged the match between Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston, which contributes to her “disposition to think a little too well of herself ” (Austen 5).

Emma vehemently defends her position in front of Mr. Knightley and says that matchmaking is a skill as opposed to an idle activity in which she merely says to her self that a match will occur. This view of marriage as a personal loss but simultaneous success underscores Emma’s emotional immaturity, as she is gratified by being “successful” in her matchmaking abilities despite the fact that “a straight- forward, open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational unaffected woman, like Miss Taylor, may be safely led to manage their own concerns” (Austen 11,12). This defence of matchmaking is the first indication of Emma’s belief that treating personal relationships as a strategic game will yield favourable results.

Arguably, Mr. Woodhouse’s emotional capacity is even more limited than his daughter’s. As a grown man, Mr. Woodhouse still has “his habits of gentle selfishness and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself ” (Austen 7). This inability to empathize or see the perspective of others causes Mr. Woodhouse to assume that “Miss Taylor did a sad thing for herself as for them” by marrying Mr. Weston (Austen 7). His referral to Miss Taylor as “poor Miss Taylor” underscores his remorse about her marriage being a “grievous business” and a “dread-

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ful loss” to him and Emma (Austen 75). He is unable to feel happiness on Miss Taylor’s behalf and only views the marriage in terms of his own personal loss.

Perhaps an even more grievous loss than that of Miss Taylor is the loss of Mr. Woodhouse’s eldest daughter to Mr. John Knightley who resides sixteen miles away in London. Mr. Woodhouse’s displeasure in Isabella’s marriage not only stems from the physical distance it has created between them, but rather “by the idea of his daughter’s attachment to her husband” (Austen 65). Mr. Woodhouse’s possessive nature “could never allow for Mr. Knightley’s claims... or any body’s claim on Isabella, except his own, ” which also holds true about his relationship with Emma. Upon Emma’s engagement to Mr. Knightley, Emma knows that her father’s reaction will be that of sadness and feelings of personal loss rather than excitement for Emma’s newfound happiness.

Through “a very short parley with her own heart, [Emma] produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting her father,” as she knows that Mr. Woodlouse’s reaction to the news of engagement would result in feelings of hopelessness and misery (Austen 341). Thus Mr. Woodhouse remains a character unable to see beyond his own desires of maintaining claims on his daughters throughout the entirety of the novel, whereas Emma’s emotional maturation causes her to views on marriage to shift.

The second view of marriage promulgated in Emma is that of marriage as a device of social mobility, which was the function of marriage for many women in the 18th and 19th century. Marriage as social mobility connects to Emma’s interest in matchmaking, as she arranges marriages not based off of romantic interest but rather in terms of utility for the purpose of elevating the social status of her friends. A prime example of Emma’s matchmaking gone awry due to her commitment to social mobility is the botched marriage proposal between Robert Martin and Harriet Smith. Well-knowing of Harriet’s inability to make her own personal judgements and be “tempted by every thing and swayed by half a word”, Emma sways Harriet towards rejecting Mr. Martin’s proposal by insinuating that Mr. Martin did not write the letter himself (Austen 183): “I can hardly imagine the young man whom I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well” (Austen 41). In answering Harriet’s statement “you think I ought to refuse him then”, Emma more directly advises Harriet against accepting Mr. Martin’s proposal:

Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any doubt as to that? I thought – but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstand- ing you, if you feel in doubt as to the purport of your answer. I had imagined you were consulting me only as to the wording of it. (Aus- ten 41).

Emma has little consideration for Harriet’s feelings towards Mr. Martin as “a very amiable young man,” but rather considers the social consequence of the marriage, which she believes would be detrimental to Harriet and herself (Austen 43). Emma says, “It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the social consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin... I could have not visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you for ever” (Austen 43). Emma’s concern with

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social hierarchy would have caused her to terminate her friendship with Harriet should she accept Mr. Martin’s proposal, as associating with the “coarse and unpolished” Martin family would have tarnished her own social standing (Austen 19).

Mr. Knightley, on the other hand, is able to view Mr. Martin’s marriage proposal from an objective, selfless point of view. He causes Emma to reflect on the sabotage of the marriage by calling into question Emma’s ability to evaluate Harriet’s true social standing, and states “the advantage of the match I felt to be all on [Harriet’s] side” (Austen 49). Emma, although unable to repent, does feel sorry for her actions and quickly moves on to making a more suitable match between Mr. Elton and Harriet. Mr. Elton, “a very good sort of man, and a very respectable vicar of Highbury,” is deemed to be a socially acceptable match for Harriet, and Emma promptly schemes to bring the two together (Austen 53, 73). Emma’s motivations for creating a proper match are undoubtedly selfish, as she “feel[s] the glory of having schemed successfully”, which is a product of her misfortune of “being the cleverest of her family” since the age of ten (Austen 73, 30). Emma’s compulsion to be correct is illustrated in the scene where Mr. Elton and Harriet stand together in front of a window in Mrs. Elton’s home. Upon watching their interactions, Emma “could not but flatter herself that it has been the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them to the great event” (Austen 73).

Again, Mr. Knightley points out to Emma her misinterpretation of the interactions between Mr. Elton and Harriet. Mr. Elton’s blatant drunken advances on Emma cause Emma to realize that Mr. Knightley was correct in suspecting that Mr. Elton “fancied Emma in love with him,” due to her courtesy and attention paid to Mr. Elton in an effort bring him and Harriet together (Austen 108). After inadvertently sabotaging the relationship between Harriet and Mr. Elton, Emma finally exhibits a significant instance of emotional growth and personal reflection:

It was foolish, it was wrong to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed and re solved to do such things no more (Austen 108).

Not only does Emma resolve to end her matchmaking; she also exhibits sympathy for Harriet who has now lost two romantic interests due to Emma’s concern with social mobility and lack of emotional intelligence. Emma prioritizes “Harriet’s comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection in some better method than by match-making,” and “shewed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and amuse her... to drive Mr. Elton from her thoughts” (Austen 112). This instance shows Emma’s ability to respond appropriately and kindly to situations that are emotionally difficult.

The final shift in views of marriage in Emma occurs once Emma’s character has reached considerable emotional and personal development in the third volume of the book. Rather than marriage being characterized as a personal loss or as a vehicle of social mobility, marriage is represented as domestic bliss between partners equally deserving of each other’s affections. Emma experiences a sense of clarity “which had

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never blessed her before” brought upon by Harriet’s confession of her romantic interest in Mr. Knightley (Austen 320). This pivotal moment causes Emma to realize several of her own character flaws:

How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! Some portion of respect for herself, howev er, in spite of all these demerits... gave Emma the resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, and even apparent kindness (Austen 321).

Following this climactic realization of her own poor behaviour, Emma subsequently acknowledges how little she understands her own heart, especially considering her sudden affection toward Mr. Knightley. Emma comes to realize the cause of her poor matchmaking was her “insufferable vanity” that had caused her “to believe in the secret of everybody’s feelings” while actually lacking the ability to see outside her own limited perspective (Austen 324). Emma comes to believe that her newfound ability to understand her own heart and the hearts of others makes her a deserving match of Mr. Knightley’s affections. She begins to place her happiness in the hope of returned affections, and says, “that if [Mr. Knightley] does chose me, it will not be any thing so very wonderful” (Austen 323). Thus the romantic connection between Mr. Knightley and Emma solidifies the view of marriage as domestic bliss being based upon desert and equal matching of character. Emma herself is surprised by this state of romance-induced euphoria: “Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightely, first in interest and affection” (Austen 326).

This concept of domestic marital bliss being based off of desert and equal character is exemplified by many different relationships in addition to that of Mr. Knightley and Emma. Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston are a significant example of husband and wife being equally matched in character that live in marital bliss. Mr. Weston has an “active cheerful mind” as well as a “warm heart and sweet temper” that is most satisfied by the affectionate marriage to Miss Taylor (Austen 12-13). Emma describes Miss Taylor as a kind character who is “intelligent, well- informed, useful, gentle”, thus appearing to be an appropriate match to Mr. Weston (Austen 6). When describing the marriage from the perspective of Mr. Weston, the marriage is the “beginning of a new period of existence with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through”, which proves that desert and equal character are more important that social standing, as evidenced by the loveless marriage between Mr. Weston and the late Mrs. Churchill (Austen 14). The appropriate match results in total domestic bliss for Mr. and Mrs. Weston, as evidenced in the last volume in the novel:

Mrs. Weston, with her baby on her knee, indulging in such reflec

tions as these, was one of the happiest women in the world. If any

thing could increase her delight, it was perceiving that the baby

would soon have outgrown its first set of caps (Austen 368).

This paragraph illustrates Miss Taylor’s marital bliss and is placed in between two para-

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graphs that detail the promise of the union between Emma and Mr. Knightley, which “was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay” (Austen 368). The promise of felicity does comes true in the final scene of the novel where Mr. Knightley and Emma wed:

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade...But in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully an swered in the perfect happiness of the union (Austen 381).

Emma, who was once judgemental of social standing and associated wealth, has a simple wedding where the union is characterized by true affections. She, like Miss Taylor and Harriet, has grown to “plac[e] her happiness in the affections and utility of domestic life” (Austen 373).

In summation, Emma presents several different views of marriage that progress from being pessimistic to blissful. In conjunction with Emma’s inability to view the perspective of others and feel happiness for others around her, marriage is characterized as a personal loss for those whose relationships with a married couple have been compromised by physical distance or emotional commitment due to the marriage.

This framing of marriage as loss is the case with Miss Taylor and the Woodhouses. As Emma begins to emotionally develop and evaluate the appropriateness of matches in the second volume of the novel, marriage is characterized as a vehicle for social mobility as in the case of Harriet’s relationships imagined by Emma. Finally, as Emma begins to read her own heart and exhibit sympathy and empathy for others, marriage is characterized as domestic bliss, which is the result of matches being based off of affection and character compatibility.

Works Cited Austen, Jane. Emma. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Print.

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The Affective Epistemology of the Unconscious: Memory, Temporality, and Prosthesis in Wordsworth and De Quincey Tamara Spencer English 3444E

In Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and William Wordsworth’s “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey: On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798,” ways of knowing that run counter to rational modes of thought play a pivotal role in how the authors (attempt to) make sense of the worlds around them. In contrast with Enlightenment ideas of the rational knowability of the world, both De Quincey and Wordsworth advocate for a visceral epistemology, one that is felt on levels beyond our own conscious understanding. In this paper, I will explore two sites of comparison between Wordsworth and De Quincey at length: the importance (or lack thereof) of memory and temporality. Through an analysis of memory and temporality in their works, I will argue that a paradox becomes visible when comparing Wordsworth’s and De Quincey’s alternate epistemic modes: for each author, it is impossible to attempt to know the self without looking outside of the self. Both authors use external prosthesis to access the unconscious but with very different emotive results. De Quincey’s experience illuminates what Wordsworth’s picturesque account does not; namely, the ways in which attempting to know the self can be an excruciatingly painful process.

Memory plays a pivotal role in shaping Wordsworth’s and De Quincey’s alternate modes of knowing. Both authors emphasize that a return to one’s past state(s) of being is necessary to attempt to understand one’s current position in the world. In his five-year absence from Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth describes the memories of the landscape as having had an immeasurably positive effect on his psyche:

I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration: - feelings too Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love (27-36).

Although Wordsworth cannot pinpoint with absolute certainty how his past experiences at Tintern Abbey have shaped him, he is certain that the things he cannot remember are still acting upon him, shaping the very person he is today. De Quincey, in describing his opium dreams, shares a similar view:

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The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived: I could not be said to recollect them; for if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent and accompanying feelings, I rec ognized them instantaneously […] (1135).

De Quincey’s opium use allows him to access a part of the mind that recalls things his conscious mind cannot. Whereas Wordsworth’s journey into his memories produces the ghost of a feeling that his past experiences have had “no trivial influence” on his life, De Quincey’s opium dreams allow him to arrive at a level of unconsciousness that brings precise subject-shaping moments to the surface (Wordsworth 33).

De Quincey compares this ability of the conscious mind to “veil” subject-forming memories to the (in)visibility of stars, “waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn” (1135). De Quincey’s technical prosthesis, opium, provides a cloak of darkness through which repressed memories can shine.

This is not always positive. De Quincey’s dreams are visceral and often violent. In one dream, he describes having watched “the sea appear[…] paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens: faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by the thousand […] - my agitation was infinite, - my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean” (1137). While De Quincey does not make clear how this dream might relate to a past experience, it is perhaps reflective of the trauma he experienced with the loss of his grandmother, father, and two sisters (1114). As such, his descent into his unconscious brings painful memories of his past back to the surface.

Where De Quincey describes how his opium use enables his mind to dig beneath the surfaces of the repressed to recover forgotten remnants of his childhood, Wordsworth too utilizes prosthesis to interrogate his own childhood experiences.

Though he is initially unable to see how his memories of Tintern Abbey have shaped him, Wordsworth ultimately realizes his prosthesis has been there all along in his sister Dorothy. As he watches his sister gaze upon the landscape, he tells her,

…in thy voice I catch

The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures in the shooting lights

Of thy wild eyes (117-120).

Wordsworth sees his sister as a physical manifestation of his boyhood self; her emotional state while viewing Tintern Abbey for the first time embodies the ways the landscape once impacted him. Though Wordsworth is in awe of this state of being, he ultimately describes it as “the hour / Of thoughtless youth” (91-92). With time and distance conscious reconstitution of this moment will become more difficult, but Wordsworth believes the generative feelings experienced in the landscape will live on in his sister for both of their enjoyment. Wordsworth ultimately discovers Dorothy as his prosthetic remedy, enabling him to connect past and present selves.

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Temporality is another central tenet in both Wordsworth’s and De Quincey’s understandings of alternate ways of knowing. For Wordsworth, space is crucial to his poetic and epistemological project. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth argues poetry can only be composed when “emotion [is] recollected in tranquility” (443).

“Tintern Abbey” is a practical application of this process. As Wordsworth stands in the same subject-forming landscape as he did in his childhood, he feels his psyche developing more generative memories:

The picture of the mind revives again: While I stand not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years (62-66).

While in the beginning of the poem Wordsworth felt on a foggy level that his memories contributed to his creation as a subject, his present immersion in the very landscape that ‘created’ him becomes more clearly generative for his future self. Had he not returned to this setting he would never have been able to truly grasp how the landscape has and will continue to shape him.

It is useful to think of “Tintern Abbey” as a psychogeographical text. In one of the first writings on the subject, Guy Debord defines psychogeography as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals” (Debord).

Wordsworth takes this even further to suggest that not only does temporal space trigger emotional and behavioural responses, but it also shapes individual subjectivities.

While at Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth falls into “repose” as he observes the minute details of the landscape itself (9). The “dark sycamore” (10), “pastoral farms / Green to the very door” (17-18), and “wreathes of smoke / Sent up, in silence, from among the trees” (18-19) create not only an emotional response, but these details are intrinsically a part of who he used to be and who he has become. By revisiting the space with Dorothy, Wordsworth is able to see in his sister’s embodied form how the landscape has worked unconsciously upon his own mind.

De Quincey’s opium dream-state could perhaps be called an exercise in anti-psychogeography. De Quincey’s dreams are so unaffected by the constraints of time and space that they actually produce a disturbing quality. De Quincey’s dreams are not ruled by the laws of the conscious world:

Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infini ty. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes I had feelings of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of human ex perience (1135).

The incomprehensibility of time, space, and scale in his dreams leaves De Quincey

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feeling horror-struck and powerless. As he says, “I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descent into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended” (1134). De Quincey’s waking life is plagued with the images he has uncovered in his dream state, and he is unable to break away from their power.

Memory and temporality are essential components of both Wordsworth’s and De Quincey’s alternate epistemologies. For Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey’s unchanging landscape allows him to perform an investigation of the self, past and present. Its ‘suspension’ in space and time allows Wordsworth to return a changed man, five years later, in a quest for self-discovery. The journey to his unconscious is one of “tranquil restoration,” and observing his sister’s affective relationship with the landscape allows him to better understand how he has unconsciously been shaped by it (31). For De Quincey, the ability of the opium prosthetic to bring him to an unconscious state of mind is both clarifying in the sense that it allows him to uncover the memories that shape his waking mind, but it is also traumatic. The infinitude of space(s) and time(s) in De Quincey’s dreams creates a subconscious reality unfettered by the physical constraints of the conscious world. Opium has “marvellous agency” to bring him to the pinnacle of individual understanding, but at the cost of being plagued by the things which his mind thought better to repress (1141). Both Wordsworth and De Quincey embark on a journey to the unconscious in an attempt to understand themselves and their positions in the world, but De Quincey challenges Wordsworth’s assumption that this process is always one of tranquil renewal.

Works Cited Debord, Guy. “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.” Situationalist International Online. N.d. 8 Dec. 2015. Web. De Quincey, Thomas. “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. Gen ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. 5th ed. Vol. 2A. New York: Pearson, 2012. 11151142. Print.

Wordsworth, William. “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey: On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. Gen ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. 5th ed. Vol. 2A. New York: Pearson, 2012. 429-433. Print.

Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. Gen ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. 5th ed. Vol. 2A. New York: Pearson, 2012. 433-445. Print.

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Arts and Humanities and Their Importance in Education Alexis Pronovost Arts & Humanities 2200F

The focus in my household growing up was never “what are you going to be when you grow up?” The questions were “what are you passionate about?” and “what do you like to do?” to which my answer has and always will be the arts, whether the art is visual or written. My passion for the arts and writing is why I have put so much faith, time, and money into pursing an arts education, and why I will continue to do so for many years to come. I am often asked, “Well, what are you going to do with an English degree?” to which, if I had the gumption, I would reply, “Absolutely anything I desire.”

Although there has been a recent push in our society away from the arts and humanities and towards STEM (science, technology, engineering, and medicine), the arts and humanities course is still needed. David Bentley from the English department at Western University agrees that such an education is a necessity because “to study the arts and humanities is to learn to be discerning, to be articulate, to be reflective, and to exercise freedom of thought” (The Gazette). An arts education may not lay down a perfect path toward a particular career in the way that a law degree leads to a lawyer, or a degree in medicine leads to a doctor, but the skills learned through an education in the arts and humanities are invaluable.

Arts and humanities is an integral part of education as a whole, particularly because it teaches what it means to be human. Not only do arts and humanities courses focus mainly on the human experience, but they also focus “a learning experience which changes our existence … an experience which ‘humanizes’ us” (Dallmayr 30).

Whether that experience is connecting to a professor who actively engages in your education, or realizing that there are other people who share in the same passions, the experience is transformative.

Students studying the arts and humanities ask the difficult questions, questions that cannot be solved with a scientific formula. These questions are complicated and in depth and often subjective to the point that there is no correct answer. The humanities “include those branches of human knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture” (McClay 34). Studying the external universe through the sciences and technologies is one thing, but studying it with an understanding of human knowledge and culture makes such research more applicable to real life. A society pulled away from the knowledge of human beings and human culture (apart from the scientific aspects) “would be a technologicised society” (Barnett 43) where the focus is no longer on the human, but on the machine.

Barnett argues that a switch away from celebrating humanity at all times would not be such a terrible problem. Currently, the humanities celebrate “in its languages, its culture(s), and ideas of itself, its power and styles of communication and reasoning—what it is to be supremely human” (Barnett 44). Humanity is then set apart as something special and more important in comparison to its lesser counterparts of nature and animals and other living beings. If the focus were brought back to STEM subjects, and away from the humanities, perhaps the world, nature, and animals, would

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benefit.

Yet, a movement away from “human life, human conduct and experience” (Dallmayr 28) directs a movement away from characteristics that are inherently human, such as empathy. Empathy is essential to enter “into the thoughts and feelings, attitudes and assumptions of people of different perspectives and cultures” (Bentley).

Our world would suffer a little less if we focused on “our ability to imagine ourselves in the positions of other human beings” (Bentley). A society focused solely on science and technology would lack the resources to develop impactful relationships, communicate effectively, and eventually cultivate a more enjoyable lifestyle. The world would be simply mechanical, devoid of warmth, without the study of arts and humanities. Connecting with others provides community and generates a better quality of life, therefore “we need the humanities in order to understand more fully what it means to be human, and to permit that knowledge to shape and nourish the way we live” (McClay 35).

However, that is not to say that the sciences and other subjects are unimportant; rather, all subjects should have equal significance. Unfortunately, the subjects providing the most jobs become the focus, and currently those are STEM. In public school, we were “steered benignly away from things … on the grounds that [we] would never get a job doing that” (K. Robinson). We are told “Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you won’t be an artist” (K. Robinson). Students are forced to focus on what the institution and, thereby, society deem important, something that will lead to a job that supports the economy in a structured and approved manner. Arts and humanities challenge this notion of everyone thinking in a similar manner that eventually results in career path approved by society. When “rightly pursued and rightly ordered, [arts and humanities] can do things, and teach things, and preserve things, and illuminate things, which can be accomplished in no other way” (McClay 33). In other words, the arts and humanities teach skills branching across all disciplines, and these skills cannot be learned in any other context.

Unfortunately, the importance is not necessarily placed upon the invaluable skills that come with any type of education. What is most important is the end result, the final grade; however, the focus should be on the journey through education, a journey “towards wisdom and the need for knowledge via wonder and curiosity” (M. Robinson 220). M. Robinson furthers the definition of such an educated journey:

This should be a journey that builds enthusiasm and hunger to know more, and which develops the habits of mind, adaptability, and creativity that have enabled educated people to make real con tributions to the great conversations of their time, by making, and engaging, and sharing their communities to the wider world. (M. Robinson 220).

When the final result and grade becomes the top of the hierarchy in the education system, and there is no emphasis on the journey, this leads to a fear of failure. But “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”, and an education system directed to mundane and generalised tests “educat[es] people out of their creative capacities” (K. Robinson). Even though mistakes are a natural part of the

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learning process, they are stigmatized.

This is a problem in all disciplines, not simply in the arts and humanities. M. Robinson states “[c]hildren do not always ‘know’ what they are saying, they are not always right; but they need the opportunity to express themselves, whether they are right or wrong, in a framework that allows them to engage” (230). Too often education suppresses students’ abilities to express themselves because the atmosphere is not engaging or the outcome of the project does not allow for creativity. Students are afraid to take risks because the goal is a numerical grade with an “increasing stress on career objectives” (Dallmayr 33) and not their journey through the assignment. Hence, “many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized” (K. Robinson) or they failed to accomplish a high grade, and, as a result, were afraid to attempt something new. M. Robinson states “[t]he goal of education should not be about work, but about life. Life includes work, but it is clearly so much more: education for its own sake includes life, the universe and everything” (M. Robinson 220). Unfortunately, education within the arts and humanities is still highly centralized around the final grade and less on creativity as a whole. This speaks of the fundamental goals of education and what education seeks to accomplish.

The definition of education is one of the main problems in the debate about the importance of arts and humanities and whether they are necessary in higher education. Education, generally speaking, is the process of acquiring knowledge, but it is much more subjective. Broken down, the process of acquiring knowledge links to what kind of knowledge and how this knowledge is sought out and taught. Teachers, when they “have the choice […] must not choose knowledge by how accessible it is, but by how important it is” (M. Robinson 227). If education were to place more of an emphasis on the imagination, students’ intelligence and confidence in their intelligence would skyrocket because without imagination “we are educating people out of their creative capacities” (K. Robinson). The arts and humanities provide more engagement with creativity than other disciplines and since we are moving into an ever-changing future, “creativity now is as important in education as literacy” (K. Robinson) and should be emphasized throughout education as a whole. Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”, and nothing is more imaginative than the arts and humanities.

STEM subjects and arts and humanities can work together in tandem to create a better future for education. Education is constantly shifting with new discoveries, and the emphasis on different discourses is inevitable. Therefore, “schools should develop a curriculum that responds to change” (M. Robinson 212); however, the change does not mean cutting out the artistic side of learning entirely. Many people will agree in answering “the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’” with “the only honest answer … none whatsoever” (Fish). However, without the arts and humanities, we would not have effective communication, the ability to articulate our thoughts, or the knowledge of the past to move forward into an advanced future. We would not have entertainment or books or visual arts to allow us to escape our mundane lives. We need scientists that think imaginatively as much as we need artists who understand science, and “we need to understand the interconnections between and among science [and]

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the arts and humanities” (Prey). The left and the right sides of the brain can work together, both equally in the spotlight, for the benefit of education and of human life.

Works Cited Barnett, Ronald. “Imagining the humanities—Amid the inhuman.” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 13.1-2 (2014): 42-53. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Bentley, David. “Op-Ed: Arts education is important.” The Gazette. Western University, 15 Sept. 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Dallmayr, Fred. “Humanizing Humanity: The Global Significance of the Humanities.”

Diogenes 60.1 (2014): 27-36. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Fish, Stanley. “Will the Humanities Save Us?” The Opinions Pages. The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2008. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

McClay, Wilfred M. “The Burden and Beauty of the Humanities.” Arts Education Policy Review 111.1 (2009): 33-35. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Prey, Barbara Ernst. “The Value and Importance of the Arts and the Humanities in Education and Life.” Huffpost Arts and Culture. Huffington Post, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Robinson, Ken. “Do schools kill creativity?” TED2006. Monterey, California. Feb. 2006. Lecture.

Robinson, Martin. Trivium 21c. Banceyfelin: Independent Thinking Press, 2013. Print.

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Menstruation, Monstrosity, and Sexuality in Ginger Snaps Brie Berry Women’s Studies

The horror film genre is innately gendered, and rests on constructions of female characters as either being “a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door”, or as this paper will investigate, a monster (“Ginger Snaps”). The viewer of the horror film observes femininity as a spectacle, fetishized, canonized, or feared. The monstrous feminine, as explored in this paper, emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of monstrosity, as “with all other stereotypes of the feminine, from virgin to whore, she is defined in terms of her sexuality” (Creed 3). In John Fawcett’s 2000 film Ginger Snaps, the relationship between two teenage sisters undergoes strain as the older sister, Ginger, begins menstruating—which parallels her being bitten by a werewolf. Thus, the film uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty and positions the menstruating female body as a catalyst for a metamorphosis into monstrosity. In this essay, I will explore how the film constructs monstrosity, menstruation, femininity, and sexuality within a suburban Canadian setting. Within the narrative of the film, keeping in tradition of the female werewolf subgenre of horror, “the werewolf is used as a contrast to the woman; a werewolf is bad, but a woman is worse” (du Coudray 49).

Ginger Snaps seeks to demystify both the werewolf and the menstruating woman as monstrous, and instead, provide discursive space for “radical forms of female sexual consciousness” to be expressed (Miller 281). Ginger is not monstrous only because she is a werewolf, but because she begins menstruating and experiments sexually. The horror in the film is not in the depictions of menstruating female adolescence as monstrous, but in how cultural limitations are placed on dissident female sexuality demonstrated through the metaphor of lycanthropy.

The mythology of werewolves is complex and is culturally, historically, and contextually informed. Horror cinema has taken up the figure of the werewolf as an aesthetic of gore and savagery—an innately violent link between human and animal that manifests as monster. Read as a discourse about identity and subjectivity, the werewolf in Ginger Snaps represents the construction of a monster that risks corrupting a socially normalized community. Although, “the monster is not simply a signifier of Otherness, but an altogether more complex figure that calls to mind not so much the Other, but the traces of the Other in the self ” (“Monsters, Marvels and Meanings” 305). The hybrid corporeality of the monster threatens the existence of humans as the singular subject in cultural, language, and Western discourse. Thus, the monster brings about the potential of the epistemological collapse of binary distinctions between “normal” and what is discursively determined against it. The monster is neither good nor evil, neither inside nor outside, not self or Other. The monster is liminal, transgressive, and transformative; as is inferred through the metaphor of the werewolf in Ginger Snaps. Ginger forces social confrontation, unpacking how “boundaries of normality must inevitably disturb, for they are both irreducibly strange and disconcertingly familiar, both opaque and reflective” by forces the reZevaluation of the normative characters in the film, as well as within the viewer themself (“Monsters, Mar-

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vels and Meanings” 216). As well, the female body is depicted as monstrous in Western imagery, haunting the margins of discourses, the “locus of worship and disgust whose corporeality threatens to overflow boundaries and engulf ” (“Monsters, Marvels and Meanings” 308). In so doing, Ginger subverts the category of Other and instead, occupies the realm of the abject—cast aside, both recognizable and unrecognizable in her status of feminine monstrosity. “Abjection occurs where the individual fails to respect the law...[thus] highlighting the ‘fragility of the law”, and is such, positioned as dangerous (Creed 71). Moreover, her menstruating body and the blood it produces is also understood as abject—“the uncontained...body that seeps and leaks and reminds us of what we cannot control...is therefore marginal”—informs scripts of how bodies should behave (Waddell 188). The werewolf embodies a composite of the abject—that is, positioned as being opposite the norm through politics of relationality—that expresses anxieties about working class wantonness, the notion of an interior bestiality, as well as female autonomy and sexuality (Attridge 22). The werewolf demonstrates the embodied horror of grotesque monstrosity as the werewolf ’s metamorphosis from human into wolf “melts and twists into the other” (du Coudray 50). The transformative nature of the werewolf positions it as being outside of the boundaries between “normal” and “abnormal”, transgressing binary considerations of identity categories as it can exist as both human, animal, and the flux between. As such, Ginger manifests as a threat to socialization, civilization, and notions of class within the Western context.

Her menstruating body, symbolized through her transition into a werewolf, manifests Ginger as a threat to social order, a “savage and powerful thing that must be wrestled into submission”. By embodying autonomous “chaos, sex, and seepage”, Ginger subverts culturally constructed constraints on her femininity and sexuality (Waddell 189). Thus, her “raw intensity is her most liberating quality” within the social scripts produced in the film (192).

Ginger’s budding lycanthropy, serving as a metaphor for her menstruation and sexuality, contrasts the sleepy suburban neighbourhood in which the sisters reside. The pristine suburban landscape draws boundaries around the Brigitte and Ginger’s expressions of identity, as it is a “place full of dead ends” (“Ginger Snaps”). To subvert the banality of their existence in suburbia, Ginger and Brigitte nurture a macabre fascination with death and dying, and especially, with (fake) blood. ”). The first time the viewer is introduced to the duo, Brigitte is wielding a chainsaw as Ginger holds a knife to her wrist and states, “Wrists are for girls. I’ll slit my throat” (“Ginger Snaps”). The two also make a suicide pact: “out by sixteen or dead on the scene, but together forever” (“Ginger Snaps”). The two obsess over the topic of escaping the grim, listless future that they see being recreated for them within the limits of their geographic location. To challenge this, Ginger and Brigitte take gruesome photographs of one another faking death to present to their horrified male teacher, who proclaims: “I am completely sickened by that” (“Ginger Snaps”) Yet, ass the film explores through Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf, “it is monstrosity, not death, that is the counter value to life” (“Monsters, Marvels and Meanings” 215). Within the film, Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf serves as a greater subversion to the culture she is wishing to act against than her initial death pact with Brigitte did. As Ginger begins menstruating, she laments how her body has betrayed her by behaving “normally”

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(“Ginger Snaps”). She instructs Brigitte to “shoot her if [she] simpering about tampon dispensers and moaning about PMS” (“Ginger Snaps”). In the middle of their conversation, “The Beast of Bailey Downs” drags Ginger into the forest, biting and scratching her. Brigitte fights it off of Ginger, accidentally taking a picture as she does so. Using the image, as well as what she saw during the attack, Brigitte supposes that Ginger has been bitten by a werewolf and the changes she undergoes following are a symptom of her own transformation. The juxtaposition of the discussion of death with the initial contact with the werewolf positions Ginger’s dissidence as a response to her dissatisfaction at the constraints of suburban life, and cultural scripts around femininity, sexuality, and menstruation.

The examination of feminine suburban scripts is further investigated through the girls’ mother, Pamela. When Pamela discovers that they have been involved in the death of their classmate Trina, she expresses her own dissatisfaction at the suburban life she has crafted for herself. Pamela is presented in the film as normatively feminine, that is—maternal, modest, and mild. At the beginning of the film, Pamela expresses her concern that neither of her daughters have begun menstruating, stating “it’s not normal” (“Ginger Snaps”). In so doing, Ginger’s femininity is thus caught in the flux between normalcy and abnormality—a dichotomy that is emphasized through the metaphor of lycanthropy. When Pamela discovers that Ginger has begun menstruating, she prepares a red cake to commemorate her transition into womanhood, directly tying femininity and menstruation to domestically held suburban ideals of how females should behave. As such, Pamela is posited as being acutely invested in Ginger’s menstruation, as well as an agent who polices her dissident expressions of femininity. Yet, she is also blithely unaware of the other transformation that Ginger is undergoing as she transitions from human to werewolf. Brigitte distracts Pamela from discovering the Trina’s body by playing into her normative ideals of how her daughters should behave, that is, by asking her “what do boys want?” (“Ginger Snaps”). However, when she discovers that Ginger and Brigitte are somehow involved in the death of Trina, she turns away from the cultural codes constructed by her suburban environment. Pamela picks Brigitte up in the family mini van, and explains: “no one is going to take you from me. First thing tomorrow, I’ll let the house fill up with gas and light a match...start fresh, just us girls” (“Ginger Snaps”). Moreover, Pamela voices a willingness to abandon her husband, whom she has been attending “counseling” with throughout the film (“Ginger Snaps”). Through Pamela, the viewer becomes aware of how culturally enforced boundaries constrain femininity and how Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf challenges this. As such, Pamela demonstrates how Ginger’s transgressions allow her escape the discursive limits of suburban married life and start anew.

Sexuality, as it is discursively constituted within the film, is both rebelled against and policed by Ginger. As Ginger begins to experiment with her own sexuality, she and Brigitte foster a dichotomy between themselves and their classmate, Trina Sinclair. Throughout the film, Ginger attracts the attention of her male classmates. In particular, a boy named Jason. He begins pursuing her before she is bitten, intrigued by she and Brigitte’s death photography project: “can we see the ones of Ginger again?” (“Ginger Snaps”). As he watches Ginger in gym class, he and his friends leer at her body and he remarks, “she’s good to go” (“Ginger Snaps”). However, when he approaches her

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after class, she rejects his advances and leaves with Brigitte. After she begins menstruating and is consequently bitten by the werewolf, Ginger begins to engage in an explicitly physical relationship with Jason. Jason boldly brags to his friends that Ginger “rocked his world” (“Ginger Snaps”). However, Ginger transmits her werewolf “curse” to Jason through unprotected sexual intercourse, thus “her sexuality...[becomes] synonymous with infection” (Waddell 189). As such, Ginger’s sexuality is not without consequence.

Her sexual liberation is limited, dangerous. As Shildrick postulates, “we understand that a contaminated object is one to be avoided or kept at a safe distance, lest we too become affected” (“Becoming Vulnerable” 216). After boasting of his sexual exploits with Ginger, Jason’s friends point out that his crotch is bloody and one asks if he is on his “rag” (“Ginger Snaps”). Feminized by his peers, Jason is humiliated. As such, the film connects werewolf transformation to bloody sexuality and demonstrates “bodily revulsion [as a] sign of abjection” (“Monsters 82). Further, Ginger’s sexuality is problematized through its innate connection to violence. After killing, Ginger expresses the connection between her sexuality and her killing: “It feels so good, B. It’s like touching yourself. You know, every move right on the fucking dot. After...fireworks, supernova.

A goddamn force of nature. I feel like I could just about anything” (“Ginger Snaps”).

The film positions Ginger’s sexuality as being dangerous and threatening. Ginger’s metamorphosis into a werewolf serves as a metaphor for her sexual dissidence and transgressive subversion of feminine scripts within the sleepy Canadian suburban setting.

As Ginger begins to explore her sexuality, she casts judgment on her classmate, Trina Sinclair and her sister, Brigitte. She and Brigitte observe Trina during gym class, remarking: “basic pleasure model...your standard cum-buckety date bait” (“Ginger Snaps”). At the beginning of the film, Trina is depicted as being in a oneZsided relationship with the local drug dealer, Sam. Instead of Sam’s rejection eliciting empathy from Ginger and Brigitte, the sisters make fun of Trina to each other. Later, Trina tearfully confronts Brigitte about Sam: “I feel sorry for you. He doesn’t like you.

He’s a cherry hound” (“Ginger Snaps”). Once again, Ginger Snaps makes an explicit connection between blood and sexuality, as well as the idea of a canine figure. Overhearing this, Ginger is angered and scuffles with Trina who dies as a result of slipping on spilled milk. Ginger attacks Trina due to her own sexual activity, but also because she has implied that Brigitte and Sam will also be engaging sexually. Finally, within the film, Ginger also polices Brigitte’s sexuality. She expresses dislike towards Sam, who is helping Brigitte find a cure for lycanthropy, because she believes that he is lusting after Brigitte: “if he rapes you, don’t come crying” (“Ginger Snaps”). When Brigitte explains that Sam is trying to help, she scoffs and replies that he is only trying to “get down [Brigitte’s] pants” (“Ginger Snaps”). Ginger aggressively pursues Sam towards the end of the film when she engages with him sexually despite his protests. Furthermore, after completing her transformation, Ginger attacks and eats Sam. Moreover, Ginger attacks and kills the school janitor, despite Brigitte’s protests. Ginger justifies it by saying that she “didn’t like the way he looked at [Brigitte]” (“Ginger Snaps”). Within the film, Ginger weaponizes her sexuality, and as a result, refuses to allow sexuality to be accessible to any female character other than herself. Sexuality becomes the medium through

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which Ginger is able to renegotiate the cultural scripts of femininity that were ascribed to her.

In Ginger Snaps the titular character, Ginger, undergoes changes as she simultaneously transforms into a menstruating female and werewolf. Thus within the film, monstrous menstruation is explored through the metaphor of lycanthropy. Ginger begins menstruating while she and Brigitte are plotting revenge on Trina Sinclair for knocking Brigitte down on the hockey field. Brigitte notices bright red blood leaking down Ginger’s leg after the two attempt to transport a dismembered, halfZeaten body of a dog to Trina’s house. Ginger realizes that she has begun menstruating and tells Brigitte that she “just got the curse” (“Ginger Snaps”). She laments that her body has betrayed her after she has “killed herself to be different” (“Ginger Snaps”). Ginger initially reads menstruation as something that will transform her into a normatively constructed notion of female. However, this is immediately opposed as just moments after Ginger finishes her rant, she is snatched by the “Beast of Bailey Downs”, dragged into the woods, and given a different curse altogether. Brigitte believes that the werewolf was attracted to Ginger because she was menstruating, that her initial “curse” led to her monstrosity. Ginger’s initial ”encounter with the werewolf is the catalyst in Brigitte’s growing suspicions about Ginger’s sexuality” (Nielsen). At first Ginger does not believe that she has been “bitten...on the full moon” by a werewolf (“Ginger Snaps”).

Ginger postulates that her bodily changes—that is, excessive menstrual bleeding, aggression, and sprouting hair where she has been attacked—are part of her “normal” menstrual cycle (“Ginger Snaps”). However, as her symptoms become more severe, Brigitte worries that “something’s wrong with you—like more than you being just female” (“Ginger Snaps”). With the exception of Brigitte and Sam, the rest of the characters in the film treat Ginger’s monstrous menstruation as normative. Pamela, their mother, proudly proclaims “our little girl’s a woman now” at the dinner table, linking menstruation, femininity, and domesticity within the suburban setting. Ginger’s menstruation and metamorphosis into a werewolf alienate Brigitte from her. Ginger suffers severe cramps and begins to become interested in pursuing Jason as a sexual partner.

Her burgeoning sexuality is something that Brigitte cannot relate to, and thus, positions her apart from Ginger. Ginger, on the other hand, believes that Brigitte’s concern for her changing nature and body are a result of her jealousy, “I do see a monster...it’s got these little green eyes” (“Ginger Snaps”). Moreover, when Brigitte finally convinces Ginger to see the school nurse, the nurse dismisses Ginger’s monstrous menstruation as normal: “a thick, syrupy, voluminous discharge is not uncommon” (Ginger Snaps”).

This conversation informs the film’s critique of how menstruation and monstrosity are linked and how both manifest as foreign and dangerous to the females experiencing them. Yet, the predictability of Ginger’s menstruating female body is challenged through the metaphor of lycanthropy—through which her transformation no longer follows a normatively constituted ideas of the body, and thus its “randomness...shocks us into alienation and forces us to step back” (Briefel 24). As Ginger begins menstruating, “the film deliberates over the boundaries between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ experiences of teen sexuality” (Nielsen). Ginger’s metamorphosis into a menstruating woman and a werewolf positions her as being at once “developing sexually and being invaded by an aggressive werewolf [infection]” (Nielsen). As Ginger begins her trans-

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formation, her “female body [turns] into a particular focus for suspicion in contemporary culture” (Creed 43). Ginger as a menstruating female and Ginger as a werewolf are equivocated and read as a threat. Her body defies the ideals of suburban femininity, and as a result, allows her the discursive space to express femininity that is nonZ normative.

Even before Ginger begins menstruating and simultaneously transforming into a werewolf, it is clear that she and Brigitte do not belong. Ginger’s monstrous menstruation allows her “violent empowerment” as she “play[s] with gender and identity categories” (Briefel 27). Ginger Snaps explores abject transformations of the teenage feminine body through menstruation, monstrosity, and the metaphor of lycanthropy. In so doing, Ginger is able to embody the subversion of impossible binaries expected of femininity within suburban Canadian normative thought. The werewolf in Ginger Snaps comments on Ginger’s menstruation as it positions her female body as dangerous, sexual, and as a threat. Ginger’s femininity, connected to lycanthropy through menstruation, becomes the medium through which she is able to express dissident sexuality and violence. As a result, Ginger is able to subvert the discourses of femininity that attempt to contain her. Ginger Snaps uses the werewolf to comment on “the terrain of female adolescence”, flipping it to construct Ginger as a threat to dominant discourses of how femininity should be (Lindsey 33). The horror of the female body as symbolized by the werewolf generates subversion to scripts of femininity enforced and reified through Canadian suburban culture. Ginger’s sexual dissidence is linked with her lycanthropy, positioning “the monster as a double for the woman” and disrupting binary understandings of gendered identities and threatening normative constructions of femininity (Lindsey 36). Thus, monstrosity is explicitly associated with menstruation and dissident female sexuality. The werewolf is dangerous, but so is the woman.

Works Cited Attridge, Derek. “Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Relating to the Other”, Modern Language Association, vol. 114, 1999.

Briefel, Aviva. “Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film”, Film Quarterly. Vol. 58, University of California Press: 2005.

Creed, Barbara. “Horror and the MonstrousZFeminine: An Imaginary Abjection” Horror: The Film Reader. Routledge, New York: 2002. du Coudray, Chantal Bourgault. The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror, and the Beast Within. I.B. Tauris: 2006 Fawcett, John. Ginger Snaps. City Heat Productions, 2001. DVD. Lindsey, Shelly Stamp. “Horror, Femininty, and Carrie’s Monstrous Puberty”, Journal

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of Film and Video. Vol. 43. University of Illinois Press: 1991.

Miller, April. “’The Hair That Wasn’t There Before’: Demystifying Monstrosity and Menstruation in ‘Ginger Snaps’ and ‘Ginger Snaps Unleashed’, Western Folklore. Vol. 64. Western States Folklore Society: 2005.

Neilsen, Bianca. “’Something’s Wrong, Like More Than You Being Female’: Transgressive Sexuality and Discourses of Reproduction in Ginger Snaps”, Third Space: A Journal of Feminist Theory and Culture. Vol. 3, 2004.

Shildrick, Margit. “Becoming Vulernable: Contagious Encounters and the Ethics of Risk”, Journal of Medical Humanities. Vol. 21, 2000.

Shildrick, Margit. “Monsters, Marvels and Meanings”, Embodying the Monster. SAGE: 2001 .

Waddell, Terrie. “Scrubbers”, Women Vision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, Damned Publishing Melbourne: 2003.

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Rachel Knows Best

Kate Hall

Women’s Studies 2263F

Rachel Dolezal outraged the Internet with her proclamation that she identifies as black (Levine 2015). From her mastery of Black hair (such as dreadlocks and box braids), extensive knowledge of Black history and work for social justice through her position on the NAACP, Dolezal truly embraced her perception of black identity (Samuels 2015). However, it was just that – her perception of an identity and its accompanying experiences – that are not really her experiences to claim. Rachel Dolezal exemplified White Fragility in that she avoided race-based tensions through claiming black identity, so that she did not have to grapple with the messiness that would come along with theorizing as a white woman about black lives. She claimed an essentialist understanding of black identity and easily extracted herself from her compliance in racist systems in claiming oppression as a black woman, arguably with no regard for its implications, as an extreme defense mechanism in response to challenges to her whiteness.

Robin DiAngelo, in her work White Fragility, states “white people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race based stress” (DiAngelo 2011: 55). Katerina Deliovsky, in her work on White Femininity, refers to the concept of the “habitus”, or, the set of rules, rituals, and general social environment in which one is raised. (Deliovsky 2010: 1). Thus, white people are born into a “habitus” in which they are generally sheltered from challenges to white privilege and power. This, DiAngelo argues, leads to White Fragility - “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (DiAngelo 2011: 54). These moves include “anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance” (DiAngelo 2011: 55).

The Los Angeles Times bluntly describes Rachel Dolezal as “ a white woman posing as black” (La Ganga and Pearce 2015). Photos of Dolezal’s childhood show her as “a fair-skinned blonde”, yet “[t]oday, you see a woman with a darker complexion and curly hair” (Botelho and Ford 2015). When accused of participating in blackface in an interview, Dolezal insisted that she does not “put on blackface as a performance”, but that her skin tone “depends on the season” and that she sometimes uses bronzer (Ford and Botelho 2015). She “commands an impressive knowledge of African American literature, its writers, and the history of the Civil Rights Movement”, attended Howard University, a historically black institution, and is an “expert in black hair” (Samuels 2015). Dolezal was the President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, but stepped down after her parents exposed her white childhood (Parry 2015). Even amidst the controversy, Dolezal maintains that she really feels black. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she explains: “‘It’s not a costume,’ she says. ‘I don’t know spiritually and metaphysically how this goes, but I do know that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience, and that’s never left me.’” (Samuels 2015).

Dolezal also alleged that she was the target of racial harassment, including finding a noose on the porch of her Spokane home, which she alleged was burglarized shortly

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thereafter, however no arrests were made (Ford and Botelho 2015). She also reported that she received hate mail to her mailbox at the NAACP. There have been allegations supported by evidence that she may have planted it herself, but she calls those allegations “bulls—“ (Osborn 2015).

While Dolezal differs from DiAngelo’s archetype of White Fragility, in that she is acutely aware of racial inequalities as demonstrated by her role at NAACP, and DiAngelo claims most white people have only experienced limited multicultural training or education (DiAngelo 2011: 55), she also shows striking similarities. For example, “so-called progressive whites may not respond with anger but may still insulate themselves via claims that they are beyond the need for engaging with the content because they ‘already had a class on this’ or ‘already know this’” (DiAngelo 2011: 55). Dolezal, while presenting as black, claimed experiences of racism such as those of the noose and hate mail allegations, along with other unproven claims such as harassing phone calls and racial slurs being uttered at her son (Herbst 2015). Can a woman who was raised white really claim experiences of racism that she has not experienced for the majority or all of her life? Certainly, if in a leadership position at any sort of social rights organization there could very well be instances of threat and danger, but the volume of her claims and lack of proof suggest there is more to the story. During graduate school at Howard University, Dolezal was perceived as a white woman and thus, her thesis where in she presented paintings meant to be from the perspective of a black man was met with contention (Coker 2015). The link is clear: Rather than grapple with the fact that as a white woman with white experiences, she cannot claim a racism and oppression that is not hers, she claimed black identity. Instead of genuinely listening to black voices, she felt that she already knew everything about black experience and thus, can claim the identity based upon her white understanding of black lives – one that just so happens to be based largely upon hair, oppression, and little else.

Triggers for White Fragility, as outlined by DiAngelo, include “suggesting that a white person’s viewpoint comes from a racialized frame of reference” and “people of color not willing to tell their stories or answer questions about their racial experiences” (DiAngelo 2011: 57). Perhaps she knew from her time at Howard that white people are and should be expected to take on the role of “listener” in conversations of racism; that black people may not want to answer interrogations about their experiences from a white ally for fear of reinforcing power dynamics; that as a white person, her contribution to the production of knowledge about black lives would be limited due to her white perspective – the effect her “habitus” had on her viewpoint. Perhaps to avoid these and other triggers, she simply “became” black. However, what is blackness?

In his article From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much, Adolph Reed Jr. highlights the illogicality behind North America’s support of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition and denouncement of Rachel Dolezal’s “transracial” identity. The overarching goal of Reed’s piece is to point out how the transgender-transracial debate rests upon essentialism (Reed 2015). The argument that Dolezal cannot be black raises questions of what it means to be black, and what “authentic” blackness really is (Reed 2015). Ironically, the exact reasons that Dolezal cannot be black in the public’s view are the reasons why she feels she can be black. As Reed articulates it, “she seems to have embraced an essentialist version of being black no less than do her outraged

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critics” (Reed 2015). Dolezal decided that using toner to darken her complexion, sporting black hair, and touting racism made her black. Rather than engaging in continual meaningful conversation with black people about the intricacies of blackness today, she succumbed to White Fragility and relied upon essentialist, arguably white understandings of racialized experiences and performed black femininity in a very specific way that served to reinforce traditional notions of black femininity that focuses primarily on oppression and hair.

In his work Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self, George Yancy focuses on his experiences speaking about racism to white students who are quick to jump to their defense and distance themselves from the tension – students who are exhibiting White Fragility (106). He says that white people uttering phrases such as “you leave us with no hope” in response to his lectures can be a way of the “good whites” distancing themselves from the “really racist whites” (Yancy 2015: 106-107). In the same way that these students show White Fragility in their inability to grapple with their compliance in larger racist structures and very individualistic understanding of their existence, Rachel Dolezal exhibits hers in her twistedly remarkable ability to simply detach from her involvement in a white supremacist society. Dolezal did not even claim a “transracial” identity or a “white ally” identity. She simply lied. In stark contrast with what the author suggests – “I encourage whites to dwell within spaces that make them deeply uncomfortable, to stay with the multiple forms of agony that black people endure from them, especially those whites who deny the ways in which they are complicit in the operations of white racism” (Yancy 2015: 107) – Dolezal dwelled in spaces that would make a white person uncomfortable, such as when her thesis was met with dissent, but started presenting as black so that she would not have to negotiate the discomfort that accompanies her positionality as a white woman in a black space.

Yancy stresses the consequence of whites perceiving themselves as autonomous agents that are “beyond the fray of white privilege and power”, seeing themselves as “raceless” and “free from the power of white racist effective history” (Yancy 2015: 109). When white people perceive themselves as the neutral being, they begin to see racism as a problem reserved for people of color. Dolezal embodies exactly this concept in that she felt she could not participate in talks of racism and social justice as a white person, but had to “become” a person of color and claim oppression in order to do so.

Rather than unpacking white history and working as a white ally with black groups to move towards a more equitable future, she sees racism as an issue that only people of color should be participating in and perpetuates the idea that white people need not participate in conversations of race, and especially need not listen. She need not listen because, according to her, she already knows.

In one class where Yancy spoke about bell hooks’ conception of whiteness as terror, a white student expressed that she does not see how her whiteness could be a site of terror if “she did not own any black people as slaves and was not violent toward black people” (Yancy 2015: 108). In response, a black student shared that she had attended an all-white school and been referred to as “the black girl”, stressing the damage done through actually being treated as such, after which a white student said that they understand exactly how she feels – “’I live in a black neighborhood and they

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referred to me as ‘the white girl’” (Yancy 2015: 108). This rush to appear victimized and thus erase the lived experience of her classmate is yet another embodiment of White Fragility. Yancy states the “I am just like you” response, “suggested that there is nothing specifically special about being white (or black for that matter) in America” (Yancy 2015: 109). In the same way, Dolezal co-opted black experiences for herself through “becoming” black without truly having lived it. Rather than accepting that her experiences being raised as white were vastly different from black experiences she simply said “Me too”.

To avoid the hard work and critical self-reflection that would come along with being a white ally to social causes, Dolezal simply “became” black, without regard for its implications. She distanced herself from whiteness and its history and embraced an essentialist understanding of black identity that ultimately enabled her to claim an oppression that was not hers. Dolezal embodied White Fragility through her claiming of black identity in order to avoid the complexities that accompany interracial conversations on racism and justice. In this way, she could present “her” conception of blackness, or rather, a white perception of black experiences that hinged largely and almost exclusively on oppression, and sometimes, hair.

Works Cited Coker, Hillary Crosley. “When Rachel Dolezal Attended Howard University, She Was Still White.” Jezebel. 12 June 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2015. <http://jezebel.com/when-rachel-dolezal- attended-howard-university-she-was-1710941472>.

Deliovsky, Katerina. “Remapping the Territories of ‘White’ Femininity.” White Femininity: Race, Gender & Power. Black Point, N.S.: Fernwood Pub., 2010. 1-14. Print.

DiAngelo, Robin. “White Fragility.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy (2011): 54-70. Web. Ford, Dana, and Greg Botelho. “Who Is Rachel Dolezal?” CNN. Cable News Network, 17 June 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/ us/rachel-dolezal/>.

Herbst, Diane. “Inside Story: How Rachel Dolezal’s Cover as a Black Woman Was Blown.” People, 20 June 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2015. <http://www.people.com/article/rachel-dolezal-black-woman-cover-blown-hate-crimes>.

La Ganga, Maria L., and Matt Pearce. “Rachel Dolezal’s Story, a Study of Race and Identity, Gets ‘crazier and Crazier’” Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2015. <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-resigns-20150615- story.html>.

Levine, Jon. “17 Amazing Tweets Reveal the Problem With Rachel Dolezal’s “Today Show” Interview.” Mic. 16 June 2015. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. <http://mic.com/articles/120763/twitter- reacts-to-rachel-dolezal-s-today-show-interview#.cqgopaTq2>.

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Osborn, Katy. “Everything You Need to Know About the ‘Transracial’ NAACP Activist.” Time, 12 June 2015. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. <http://time.com/3918915/rachel-dolezalrace-naacp/>.

Parry, Hannah. “Rachel Dolezal the Black Hairdresser: Former Lecturer Now Does Weaves and Braids for Women in a Salon after Losing Her Job in Race Row.” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 21 July 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2015. <http://www.dailymail. co.uk/news/article-3167893/Six- weeks-race-faker-Rachel-Dolezal-unapologetically-identifies-black-woman-says-deceived-no- one.html>.

Reed, Jr., Adolph. “From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much.”

Common Dreams. 15 June 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2015. <http://www.commondreams. org/views/2015/06/15/jenner-dolezal-one-trans-good-other-not-so- much>.

Samuels, Allison. “Rachel Dolezal’s True Lies.” Vanity Fair. 19 July 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2015. <http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/rachel-dolezal-new-interview-pictures-exclusive>.

Yancy, George. Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self. I Don’t See Color: Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege. By Bettina Bergo and Tracey Nicholls. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 2015.

103-18. Print.

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Trans(cending) the Body: Biological Essentialism vs. Social Constructionism in the Context of Trans Identity Rebecca Meharchand Women’s Studies 3321F

Introduction:

A fundamental question that emerged out of the Women’s Rights movement was regarding whether or not men and women were inherently different, or whether gender had been constructed and enforced entirely by society and social convention.

For some, the notion that gender is an essential aspect of identity rooted in biology is comforting. It cyclicly reenforces and validates its own existence through proposing the idea that women are inherently caring and nurturing, and that men are - in turn - naturally aggressive, naturally stronger; but since these conceptualizations of what it means to be a woman or a man appear to be naturally occurring phenomena, there appears to be little to no room for agency in terms of radical change, in terms of contesting current understandings of gender. Biological arguments leave no room for dialogue or negotiation, and therefore result in stagnation.

The classic ‘alternative’ to accepting arguments of biological essentialism is to view gender as something that is socially constructed. For many - particularly members of marginalized groups (women, trans individuals), the idea that gender is something constructed, something made up entirely is very attractive. In a tradition very similar to that of traditional Western philosophy, transcending the body is a tantalizing ideal - especially for those in the margins - because for them, the body has been almost a weight, a corporeal peculiarity that prevents them from reaching their full potential in a Western society. As desirable as it may seem to some, however, constructionist conceptualizations of gender are not without their criticisms. For one thing, the idea that sex and gender is a pure social construction is almost too postmodern to be considered valid. More than that, however, there is power to be found in individual identities - even contested identities - and to suggest that gender identity as we know it exists purely as a result of current social convention seems too dismissive of that power.

Rather than ‘picking a side’ in the debate between biological essentialism and social constructionism, this essay will use the example of trans identity and the medicalization of trans identities as a means of illustrating the way in which the concept of gender must be understood as a product of both biology and social construction. The debate between essentialism and constructionism, then, is dialectical. It is impossible to consider one without considering the other, and as Riki Lane argues in Trans as Bodily Becoming, it would be foolish to do so. What we need is a nuanced understanding of betwixt identities, starting with a betwixt conceptualization of the reason why gender, as we currently know it, exists.

Medicalizing Trans Identities As far as the Western tradition goes, since the eighteenth century and the Age of En-

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lightenment, philosophers and scientists have asserted that it is possible to know everything - that through science and reason, if enough research and rational thought was conducted, an eventual conclusion would be reached and the findings would be taken up in academic circles and public discourses alike. The desire to know often exceeds the desire to accept, as the saying goes ‘people fear what they do not understand’. It is not far fetched to then make the suggestion that when it comes to identities and expressions, people pathologize what is unconventional.

Trans identities are currently medicalized both in the sphere of physical health and in the field of mental health. It is worthy to note, however, that trans identity specifically was not always pathologized the way it is today. While crossdressing and deviant expressions of gender have been occurring for centuries, it was not brought to public attention until the 1950’s when it became publicized that “Christine Jorgensen, a former soldier, was surgically reassigned from male to female. Since then, the definition, causes and treatment of transsexualism [sic] have been widely debated” (Clarke 15). The introduction of a psychiatric diagnosis related to trans identity was made in 1980 in the DSM-III, under the name ‘transsexualism’. It then changed in the DSM- IV to gender identity disorder (GID) and to gender dysphoria in the DSM-V. While it appears to marginalize trans individuals, a benefit to medicalization that some trans people enjoy is that it means they are able to access treatment (Clarke 15). In some ways, the existence of the diagnosis ‘gender dysphoria’ is essential, because it allows individuals who are looking to transition to receive an actual diagnosis by a medical professional, at which point they can begin hormone therapy and discuss options in terms of setting a date for gender reassignment surgery or a plan for transitioning.

Of course, the other side of the argument regarding whether or not gender dysphoria is something that should be included in the DSM-V is that to consider gender dysphoria a ‘mental disorder’ implies that there is a need to find a cure, or for the individual experiencing gender dysphoria to undergo ‘conversion therapy’, in which a psychiatrist or a psychologist would attempt to realign the individual with the gender that they were assigned at birth. This side of the debate, then, is concerned with trans identities being labelled as something that is inherently abnormal and therefore requires psychiatric intervention in attempts to ‘fix’ the individual (Clarke 15). In a landmark decision, the province of Ontario recently became the first province in Canada to ban ‘conversion therapies’ for diagnoses of gender dysphoria (Ferguson 2015). Now, those who are experiencing a disconnect with the gender they were assigned at birth can receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria without being forced to undergo conversion therapies. Rather than be treated for their ‘abnormalities’, trans individuals may now receive a diagnosis and proceed to hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery.

The decision to ban mental healthcare practitioners from engaging in conversion therapies marks the beginning of a shift away from considering trans identities to be a mental health issue. While there have been studies going on since the 1960’s that have attempted to discover a somatic or a hormonal cause for trans existence, they have for the most part been fairly inconclusive. After examining several studies that attempt to find a somatic cause for gender dysphoria, John Hoenig concludes:

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The main conclusions drawn from them, namely, that psychological factors determine gender identity - be they by learning, condition ing, or imprinting - cannot be regarded as established, and, in any case, are not regarded as an exhaustive explanation even by their protagonists. A ‘biological force’ has had to be invoked. The search for this constitutional factor or factors has brought to light some in teresting findings, but can at best be regarded as ‘promising.’ It is certainly in no sense conclusive (Hoenig 67).

Hoenig concludes that it is not enough to consider the cause of gender dysphoria to be rooted in mental health, but at the same time, the search to find a somatic or a genetic cause for gender dysphoria has remained puzzling and inconclusive. If there is a biological reason for why trans identities manifest, it remains elusive.

As such, it is currently unknown whether trans identities occur due to psychological factors or due to biological or genetic factors, leaving the discourses of biological essentialism and social constructionism open for debate. Medicine appears to have no standard, conclusive answer for why trans identities and gender dysphoria manifest in some individuals. The ban of conversion therapies in Ontario marks a progressive step towards understanding gender dysphoria as something not to be ‘fixed’ or ‘treated’, but rather, as a phenomenon that occurs in some individuals who deserve to be allowed to live the life they want as the gender they feel best represents them as a person.

Gender Identity: What makes a woman a woman or a man a man?

If scientists are ever able to discover a distinct hormonal or physical aspect of the brain that can perhaps explain the root of trans identity and the occurrence of gender dysphoria in all trans individuals, then and only then will anyone be able to make the assertion that gender is rooted in biology. The existence of trans individuals defies the very notion that gender can be found and rooted in biology, and until scientists and medical practitioners can prove that trans identity is rooted in biology, social constructionism will still be a viable school of thought. In more recent years, however, there almost seems to be a satisfactory union for those who would purport either side of the debate - an acceptable conclusion for the reason why some believe gender to be rooted in biology, and why some insist gender is a social construction. The trans body - in a sense - is a battleground for the ongoing debate, and it is the trans body that has provided a tentative conclusion; the term ‘gender’ has come to be thought of as a personal expression - a choice - while the term ‘sex’ refers to the body’s hormones. chromosomes, and genitalia. The reason why people’s genders often match up with their biological sex is due to society’s assertions that women are to be ‘feminine’ and men are to be ‘masculine’.

In her work Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler confronts the idea of gender as an expression, while sex remains something fixed in biology. At first glance, this model really does seem to put an end to the debate surrounding biological essentialism and social constructionism - it takes both views into account and is able to satisfy one view

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without completely discrediting the other. Butler challenges this idea, by drawing attention to the fact that ‘sex’ as a biological marker can also be viewed as its own kind of construction. For Butler, we cannot view sex purely as a biological entity because so much is at stake regarding one’s gender identity, that sex as a biological marker gets subsumed. She writes:

If gender is the social construction of sex, and if there is no access to this ‘sex’ except by means of its construction, then it appears not only that sex is absorbed by gender, but that ‘sex’ becomes some thing like a fiction, perhaps a fantasy, retroactively installed at a pre linguistic site to which there is no access (Butler 5).

There is no truly ‘objective’ discipline, and science is not an exception by any means.

Butler draws attention to the implications of considering sex to be the biological assignment of whether or not we are female or male by considering the fact that sex is also constructed. Perhaps, at a distant point in history, it would have been sufficient to suppose that sex is purely based on the external manifestations of your genitals, but Western society seems to be long past that point. While Butler acknowledges that in the purest sense, the biological body does not have to be understood as a site of oppression, I am inclined to disagree with her. Sex, race, gender - none of these entities exist in a vacuum. The body, as Western society understands it to exist, cannot be taken outside of its social contexts and while doing so is very attractive, it is ultimately too postmodern to consider a possible or viable reality.

In terms of signs and signifiers, a vagina has come to signify ‘woman’ just as a penis has come to signify ‘man’. Genitals are one of the most powerful signs of gender, so much so, that it is almost impossible to completely separate the two and insist that the two can exist without one influencing the other in some way. As transgender woman and author of Gender Outlaw Kate Bornstein states when discussing the way in which genitals signify gender:

I never hated my penis; I hated that it made me a man - in my own eyes, and in the eyes of others. For my comfort, I needed a vagina - I was convinced that the only way I could live out what I thought to be my true gender was to have genital surgery to construct a vagi na from my penis (Bornstein 47).

Speaking from her own experience, Bornstein recalls that it was not necessarily the presence of a penis that made her ill at ease. Rather, it was what that penis signified (man, male, masculine) and the fact that she was perceived by others as such and simultaneously expected to fulfill those perceptions of what a man ‘should’ be, that made her feel as if the only way she could be comfortable in her own body was by undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Of course, this is not to say that this is the experience of all trans individuals, for there are many reasons and feelings that cause people to be ill at ease with the gender they were assigned at birth; Bornstein’s account is just one way of understanding where these feelings may originate from.

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A purely scientific understanding of sex and gender would dictate that there are aspects of human biology that ‘make’ you a woman or ‘make’ you a man, but the very existence of trans identities defies the claims that gender is rooted solely in biology. Scientists and researchers have searched and searched for a common factor or cause for gender dysphoria and the manifestation of trans identity, but no study has ever been one hundred percent conclusive. On the other hand, the famous ‘experiment’ of David Reimer proves that gender is not something that you can be socialized or nurtured into.

After a botched circumcision, Reimer’s parents - under the advice of Dr. Money who claimed that “the sex a baby was born with didn’t matter; you could convert a baby from one sex to the other” (Colapinto 22) - decided to have their son undergo a sex change and raise him as a girl, under the name Brenda. When he reached puberty, they elected to give him hormone therapy so that his body would reflect their decision for him to lead a female life. After several bouts of depression and anxiety, David’s psychiatrist insisted that his parents reveal to him the true circumstances of his birth so that he may begin to “try to resolve [his] conflicts and confusions” (Colapinto 10).

Despite the fact that David eventually made the decision to live his life as a man and ended up marrying a woman and adopting two children, he ultimately died by suicide on May 5 2004.

As tragic as this story of Reimer’s life is, what it proves is that there are certain innate qualities to gender that exist outside of what genitals signify. While Bornstein insisted that she hated her penis because it caused others to view her as a man, despite the fact that she knew she was a woman, Reimer’s anxiety surrounding his female upbringing stemmed from the fact that he was born a boy. Furthermore, the fact that his parents optioned to raise him as a girl rather than face the fact that their son was now somehow less of a man due to his unfortunate circumcision says quite a bit about the cultural anxiety surrounding what genitals signify to others. Reimer’s parents would rather raise their child as the a different gender than let him live his life as a castrated man. David’s accident was so traumatic for them that “they felt like prisoners in their house. They could not even go out together to see a movie, since they were afraid to hire a baby-sitter who might gossip about the tragedy” (Colapinto 17). Their anxiety surrounding the accident stemmed more from how others might perceive their child than anything else.

In order for social and cultural progress to be made in the way that gender and sex are understood, then, not only is it necessary to develop a nuanced understanding of the debate between biological essentialism and social constructionism, but it also becomes necessary to consider why gender matters.

Significance: Why does gender matter?

There are various institutions that are understood as oppressive. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism are all examples. Racism, for example, was historically considered to be a biological entity. Scientists and anthropologists alike sought to compare a number of unrelated factors to prove that race was rooted in biology. Any ‘claims’ that they found have since been de-bunked, but some researchers are still proponents of race as a biological entity, including former psychology professor J. Philippe

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Rushton who taught at Western University and insisted that his research concluded that some races were inherently superior to others. Despite the fact that there still are scholars who advocate race as a scientific entity, it is by and large accepted that race is socially constructed rather than rooted in biology today.

Gender, on the other hand, is another story. While it would be easy - almost tempting - to say the same about gender (that it is a mere social construction), it seems that there is more to it than that. Riki Lane suggests that the answer is in understanding sex and gender as diversity, rather than a dichotomy between female and male, between feminine expressions and masculine expressions (Lane 136), and it is a logical claim. Just as race and sexuality cannot be pigeonholed into two distinct categories, neither can gender and sex. Yet, gender appears to be the hardest aspect of identity for people to challenge. Thus begs the question: why does gender matter?

In contemporary Western society, if someone were to insist that white people were naturally superior to black people, this would be seen as an expression of racism - something most people acknowledge as being wrong; but it would not be uncommon to hear someone say that men are naturally superior to women. This statement, while problematic, is something that is generally accepted by both female and male populations. Sex and gender are seen as unchangeable entities, and while trans individuals may transition from one gender to another, the implications of gender often remain the same. If a woman transitions into a man, it is expected that he will be treated as a man. If a man transitions into a woman, it is then expected that she will be treated as a woman. Regardless of whether gender is rooted in biology or whether it is something that is socially constructed, what the debate really seeks to answer is not where gender comes from, but rather why it has meaning.

Social constructionists would argue that gender ultimately has no meaning and that society has wholly imposed the meaning of gender onto women and men alike, and while that assertion may be very enticing to those who feel trapped by the limits of their gender, what social constructionism does not address is why that meaning is ascribed to gender in the first place. Biological essentialists would say that gender matters because it is rooted in biology - it is rooted in hormones and genetics, in genitals and chromosomes, but as we see in the case of trans individuals, this is not always the case. Gender may have originated in normative understandings of gender expression and sexuality, but to continue to understand it as such is a disservice to trans individuals - and even to cis individuals as well.

There is no simple answer to why gender matters. Nuanced feminist theorists argue that it does not matter, and perhaps to some extent, they are correct. However, this does not address the fact that gender does have cultural meaning and significance in Western society. First and foremost, gender can be understood as a way of maintaining power through patriarchy. Patriarchy is uncomfortable - threatened, challenged - by trans identity because it is difficult to pigeonhole a gender non-conforming individual into one of two distinct gender categories. Furthermore, trans identity challenges patriarchy because it challenges the notion that gender assignment is permanent (Bornstein 46-48). Trans identity poses a problem for patriarchy because it is fluid in nature. Women, who are the primary victims of patriarchy, are able to - theoretically - escape their oppression by transitioning into men. Conversely, men, who are the

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primary beneficiaries of patriarchy, in a sense, give up their privilege of being a man by transitioning into a woman. Therefore, as seen in the context of trans individuals, the concept of gender exceeds any potential power gained or lost by transitioning. Gender, then, is more than power, it is more than the privileges that may or may not be granted by patriarchy.

Gender as identity has meaning. Going against the tradition of Western philosophy, which sought bodily transcendence, gender as an identity is something that most people feel strongly about, something they insist is tied to them as a person, something that is more than what their genitals do or do not signify to others. Gender can be understood as a form of immanence, something that ties us back to our bodies, despite any attempts made to exceed or to transcend our corporeality in a sublime mental fashion. Gender as perception has meaning. Not only is the meaning of gender rooted in an individuals comfortability with their corporeality, but it is also rooted in a strong connection to way in which an individual is perceived by others. The debate between biological essentialism and social constructionism is just another way of reinforcing that meaning.

Conclusion

Biological essentialism and social constructionism seek to identify the origin of gender as it is currently understood, but this is really only one side of what needs to be understood. It seems that what would be a more prudent decision to focus upon why gender is ascribed the cultural meaning that it is. Biologically, there has been no conclusive research that can be applied to every trans individual regarding why they feel the necessity to transition, regarding why they feel as if they were born the ‘wrong gender’. Medicine has sought to pathologize trans existence by labelling it as a disorder, though by doing so, they acknowledge the legitimacy of gender dysphoria, and steps amy then be taken to rectify their gender - to allow them to begin the process of transitioning and to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Gender is a compilation of both identity and perception. Identity, after all, is only as valuable as an individual believes it to be. Identity and perception are deeply intertwined, for an identity is only worth its perception. As stated in Judith Butler’s Precarious Life, Grievable Life, we are all framed in some way through the way in which we are perceived by others (Butler 7). We are often not in control of the way we are perceived, and there is little room for agency in terms of the way that we are viewed and treated by others. Gender is one of the ways in which we are framed, and it is intentioned that we maintain the gender we are born with for the rest of our lives.

Trans bodies can be seen as a resistance against the gender binary, but - perhaps more significantly - the desire to transition from one gender to the other exceeds the desire for power or privilege. Regardless of whether it is a woman transitioning into a man or a man transitioning into a woman, the very act of transitioning is an act of defiance against patriarchy, against the culturally ascribed meaning of gender, against social constructionism, and against biological essentialism.

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Works Cited Bornstein, Kate. “Abandon Your Tedious Search! The Rulebook Has Been Found!”

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge, 1994. 45-54.

Print. Butler, Judith. “Introduction.” Introduction. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “sex” New York: Routledge, 1993. 1-23. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Precarious Life, Grievable Life.” Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?

London: Verso, 2009. 1-32. Print.

Clarke, Victoria. “Social Constructionism Versus Essentialism.” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer Psychology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. 26-34. Print. Colapinto, John. “Part One: A Game of Science Fiction.” As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

4-107. Print.

Ferguson, Rob. “Ontario Becomes First Province to Ban ‘conversion Therapy’ for LGBTQ Children.” Thestar.com. The Toronto Star, 4 June 2015. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

Hoenig, John. “Etiology of Transsexualism.” Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management. Ed. Betty W. Steiner. New York: Plenum, 1985. 33-74. Print.

Lane, Riki. “Trans as Bodily Becoming: Rethinking the Biological as Diversity, Not Dichotomy.” Hypatia 24.3 (2009): 136-57. Web.