Warwick Uncanny - Volume 9, Issue 1 (Academic)

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WARWICK UNCANNY: Undergraduate Journal for Literary Research and Creative Writing Volume 9, Issue 1, 2022 ACADEMIC EDITION

© 2022 Warwick Uncanny Warwick Uncanny takes Non-Exclusive Rights for all included works. All rights revert to their respective authors and artists upon publication.

No part of this publication is to be resold, reproduced, or repurposed without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Warwick Uncanny will not be held legally responsible for any occurrence of plagiarism committed by any of its contributors.

We reserve the right to omit work of any contributor suspected to have committed unethical or unlawful action.

Team Editor-in-Chief Evelin Sanderson-Nichols & Keeley Ruane Deputy Editor Aisling Fitzgerald & Thalia Cox Sub-Editor Katie Day & Rose Thomas Copy Editor Ellis Shepherd & Olivia Collins Marketing Co-Ordinator Nina Sodan

Website: www.warwickuncanny.wixsite.com Instagram: @warwickuncanny Twitter: @WarwickUncanny Facebook: Warwick Uncanny LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/warwickuncanny Cover design by Evelin Sanderson-Nichols 1

Contents Welcome........................................................................................................................................... 2

List of contributors .......................................................................................................................... ii “But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope”: Middlemarch, A Study of the Inevitable Failure of Idealism

by Hannah Rigg ............................................................................................................................... 1

Found in Times of Trouble: The Representation of Time in Samuel Beckett's Endgame

by Lara Masuo ............................................................................................................................... 11

The Most Heroic Thing Is Sacrifice: An Analysis of Postcolonial Heroism In Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat

by Olivia Collins ............................................................................................................................ 24 The Power of Magical Women in Marie de France’s Lanval, Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan

by Charlotte Smith ......................................................................................................................... 33 Modernity and its Negotiation of Money: A Comparative Essay Between Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929)

by Lori Palmer-Tulley ................................................................................................................... 43

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Welcome Warwick Uncanny is an online undergraduate journal run by literature-enthusiasts at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. We embrace all styles and genres whether they be academic essays, creative writing pieces, or visual artworks. Warwick Uncanny is an inclusive space and safe home for diverse voices from across the world.

Warwick Uncanny (originally Warwick Uncanny: Journal of Literature, Theory, and Modernity) was founded in 2014 and set out to publish works of literature and theory that deal with modernity often reflecting the dissonance and connection between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Throughout the years, the journal has welcomed change. Warwick Uncanny is now accepting academic essays without any thematical limitations to modernity and in 2019 it has opened its doors to creative submissions. This year, we’ve added visual art and scripts to our repertoire.

We can proudly say, that for the first time in the journal’s history, we are publishing academic and creative works from international authors too!

In this issue, we are introducing five talented undergraduates studying at the University of Warwick. They interpret and analyse literary works by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, George Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Marie de France, Thomas Chestre, Gottfried von Strassburg, Bertolt Brecht, and Virginia Woolf.

We truly hope that you will enjoy reading this publication as much as we enjoyed making it for you!

– Evelin Sanderson-Nichols & Keeley Ruane Editors-in-Chief

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List of contributors

Olivia Collins is an intermediate undergraduate student at University of Warwick studying English Literature and Comparative Studies. For writing, editing, or blogging work, Olivia can be contacted via her LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-collins-0650ab170. Olivia is also starting her own blog 'on literature, politics, and the world the way it is now' this august at www.theliterarycommoner.co.uk.

Lara Masuo is a finalist English Literature undergraduate at the University of Warwick.

Although she is originally from Japan and Turkey, she has spent most of my time living in Europe. Books have always been a large part of her life, so it was only natural for her to pick English as a degree. Initially, she was interested in studying Creative Writing here at Warwick: she has always loved writing for herself and has even composed a short-story and poetry collection as a project in high school. But over the course of her degree, she has come to really enjoy essay-writing in a more critical sense. Even though her particular area of interest is early modern drama, she loves studying any type of theatre more broadly-speaking.

Lori Palmer-Tulley is an undergraduate student at the University of Warwick in English Literature and French. Their main academic focuses include 20th century modernity, queer ecocriticism, and 19th century French poetry, also having written prize-winning poetry themselves published on the freelance platform Vocal.

Hannah Rigg is a second year English Literature student at Warwick. She is interested in the literature of the late nineteenth century, particularly the way in which the hopefully idealistic political and philosophical work of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, from writers such as Rousseau and Kant, were countered in this era. Her interest in literature usually

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surrounds the Romantic period and poetry, but she thoroughly enjoyed writing this essay on George Eliot.

Charlotte Smith is an undergraduate student in her second year of studying English Literature at the University of Warwick. She has plans to undertake a Master’s degree in English Literature, and has a particular interest in Arthurian Literature, fairy tales and all things folklore. Her current modules include Arthurian Literature and its Legacy, Romantic and Victorian Poetry, Literature in Theory, and Shakespeare and Selected Dramatists of His Time.

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-1“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope”: Middlemarch, A Study of the Inevitable Failure of Idealism.

by Hannah Rigg

Karen Chase argues that “in Middlemarch the portrait of community is a portrait of a failed community” (49) and Arnold stresses the significance of the fact that the “four main characters…all quit Middlemarch” (136). Middlemarch is a novel defined by failure, from Lydgate’s failure for medical reform to Bulstrode’s failure to conceal his past. However, I will focus on the way in which Eliot presents the failure of idealism, as failure is presented as inevitable when one attempts to pursue an unattainable, or ultimately non-existent, perfection. For instance, Mr. Casaubon epitomises failure, because of the impossibility of his idealistic, scholarly task. Furthermore, Dorothea and Rosamond idealise their husbands, seeing them as their route to fulfilment, and thus their marriages result in failure, as the reality can never satisfy their expectations. Yet, Lydgate too idealises Rosamond as the perfect image of femininity and is disappointed when she fails to fulfil his expectations. “The ideal is”, as William Batchelder Greene understands, “the invisible Sun which is always on the meridian of the soul” (8). Thus, it is a hope that is unobservable and intangible. On the other hand, this interpretation of idealism permeates it with sympathy, as its dilemma is that one “always” feels it is on the edge of dawning, even though it never will (Batchelder Greene 8).

It is this impossible possibility that makes its existence so painful. Eliot too does not simply use Middlemarch to ridicule the failure of idealism, but she is sympathetic in her depiction of this torturous state of mind, and subtly explores why a person would grasp at an ideal.

For instance, through the failures of Dorothea and Rosamond’s marriages, she criticises 1

society’s attitude to the education of women. Through Casaubon she sympathises with the ambitious scholar, and, moreover, through the marriage of Casaubon and Dorothea, she affords the reader a glimpse of the success their marriage could have had, if there had not been the immeasurable pressure of idealised fulfilment placed on it. Eliot’s sensitive depiction of the failure of idealism imbues it with the nobility it deserves as “[f]ailure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called failure” (Eliot Middlemarch 222).

Indeed, Mr. Casaubon perhaps epitomises the idea of failure resulting from unattainable idealism, as his scholarly work cannot grasp the totality of “all Mythologies” (Eliot Middlemarch 63). In a manner, this sense of his delusion is conveyed through the description of Lowick Manor, which can be read as a metaphor for its owner. For instance, there was a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawingroom windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corns and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun (Eliot Middlemarch 73).

Eliot creates a frame with “the drawing-room windows”, through which one only observes this perfect, elaborate painting of “the setting sun” (Eliot Middlemarch 73). Moreover, the use of a ceaseless lexical field, such as “swept uninterruptedly”, “slope” and “melt”, convey that this path to “the setting sun” is one that is seamless (Eliot Middlemarch 73). However, outside this specific perspective from “the drawing-room windows”, one can observe “a sunk fence”, which provides an obstruction to the uninterrupted view of the landscape (Eliot Middlemarch 73). This imagery could reflect the failure of Casaubon’s idealism, as he views that his aim, the uniting of the totality of philosophical study, as symbolised in “the setting sun”, can 2

happen with ease (Eliot Middlemarch 73). Yet, outside of his perspective it is revealed to the reader that there are real obstacles to this aim, such as his inability to read German, that cannot be overcome, as mirrored in the “sunk fence” (Eliot Middlemarch 73). Therefore, this image can be read as a metaphor for one of the reasons for his failure, which is his inability to recognise the impossibility of his task, as his perspective is clouded by idealism. Eliot cautions against idealism by presenting it as a failure. This is, arguably, reflected in the period in which the novel is set, 1829 – 1832, and how those years contrasted with when the novel was published 1871 – 1872 (Steedman 531-41). As Chase notes, “the historical narrative is haunted by the contemporary situation of England...To talk about the context of the novel is inevitably to talk about two contexts” (3). Therefore, if, as Chase asserts, Eliot felt “the late nineteenth century has not resolved the problems of the early nineteenth century”, one could assume that Eliot is retroactively advising against the misplaced idealism of the early nineteenth century in her novel (21).

However, I would argue that it is too simplistic to assert, as Colin Kidd does, that Eliot only presents Casaubon’s “Key to all Mythologies” as a “deluded enterprise” (Eliot Middlemarch 63, Kidd 30). Whilst Eliot may have ridiculed Casaubon to some extent as the caricature of the delusional scholar, Dominick LaCapra notes an astute link between character and author as Eliot too “was possessed by a documentary mania” (69). Indeed, in a similar manner to Casaubon’s search for totality in his “Key to all Mythologies”, the subtitle of Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, implies that Eliot too is attempting a somewhat complete study, but instead it is on human nature (Eliot Middlemarch 63).

Therefore, Eliot’s composition, as a reflection of Casaubon’s, throws into sharp relief the problems of trying to achieve the ideal of totality in one’s work. As well as failure, Middlemarch is a novel which is defined by its complexity and fragmentation. The novel itself is structured by oppositions, such as Will Ladislaw acting as an intellectual foil to 3

Casaubon, or the polar locations: Rome as the cosmopolitan hub of scholarly activity and Middlemarch as a rural town. The Prelude defines this sense of disharmony, causing it to frame the entire novel, as it presents that one could never achieve the “epic life” of St. Theresa in a world “With dim lights and tangled circumstances” (Eliot Middlemarch 3).

Therefore, Eliot does not entirely reject Casaubon’s idealised vision of his “Key to all Mythologies” as delusional, but rather sympathises intellectually on the impossibility of the pursuit for totality within a study (Eliot Middlemarch 63). Yet, unlike Casaubon, she accepts this impossibility by representing an “uneven web” of human nature, rather than “a web of regular pattern”, which would permit “universal judgements” (Miller 135). Thus, she rejects the singularity that Casaubon tries to pursue, and instead offers complexity within her own study. Eliot has some level of respect for Casaubon, as this reading of him can be confirmed

by Dorothea’s defence of him against Will Ladislaw as she famously states, “[f]ailure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure” (Eliot Middlemarch 222). In this moment, one cannot help but feel the voice of the narrator speaking through Dorothea, asserting that although it is too idealistic to think totality can be achieved, what is impressive is that the attempt to achieve it was made. As a result, Casaubon is not simply Eliot’s caricature, but rather he can be viewed as a character in his own right, who can also be interpreted with sympathy and a level of admiration. Thus, his failure of achieving his idealistic dream of totality in a society of increasing change is not simply to be ridiculed, but it is to be admired that he attempted it.

Similarly, whilst Casaubon fails to achieve his idealistic dream of compiling the totality of philosophical study in his “Key to all Mythologies”, Dorothea and Rosamond also fail to achieve their idealistic dreams (Eliot Middlemarch 63). However, unlike Casaubon, in this case, their aspirations are firmly linked to marriage. Dorothea thinks her marriage to Casaubon will result in her gaining spiritual fulfilment, and Rosamond thinks her marriage 4

to Lydgate will fulfil her social aspirations. Yet, both marriages fail as, in a similar manner to Casaubon, reality obstructs their idealised expectations and hopes. Indeed, Jerome Thale argues “Dorothea sees Casaubon only as the fulfilment of her noble aspiration and not at all as a human being or husband” (116). This can be corroborated by the semantic field of wealth Dorothea utilises to describe Casaubon’s mind in Book One: “almost everything he had said seemed like a specimen from a mine, or the inscription on the door of a museum which might open on the treasures of past ages...his mental wealth” (Eliot Middlemarch 32-3). By quite literally

objectifying

Casaubon,

in

comparing

him

to

material

wealth,

Dorothea simultaneously elevates him to a position of greatness and depicts him as an apparatus through which she can fulfil her dreams. However, this does not simply serve as a depiction of the failure of idealism, but it also allows Eliot to enter a critique of female education. Indeed, in her letter to Madame Bodichon on 6th April 1868, she wrote, in reference to female education: “a more thorough education will tend to do away with the odious vulgarity of our notions about functions and employment” (Eliot and Cross 38). This view is most definitely evident in Dorothea’s relationship with Casaubon as the critique works twofold. Firstly, Eliot uses their relationship to criticise the lack of female education which has forced Dorothea to idealise Casaubon as the solution to all her aspirations of intellectualism. And then secondly, she critiques the fact that Dorothea’s lack of educational means, as June Skye Szirotny cites that she could not know that Casaubon’s “clergyman’s gown concealed no holiness, and that his scholarly notes were only dryasdust pedantry” (145).

In a similar manner, as Thale notes, Rosamond also sees Lydgate as the fulfilment of her wishes of social aspirations, perhaps as a result of her heavily criticised education (116), which Eliot ironically states, meant she “never showed any unbecoming knowledge” (Middlemarch 268). Indeed, Rosamond imagines her married life with Lydgate in terms of how it will benefit her, fuelled by an education on superficial materiality, as she foresees “the visits she would

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pay to her husband’s high-bred relatives at a distance, whose finished manners she could appropriate” (Eliot Middlemarch 118). Perhaps, what is significant to note here is the way Rosamond creates this entire scenario within her imagination, thus as Thale explores, both Dorothea and Rosamond “confuse their wishes with reality” (116). Their husbands, and by extension, their marriages, therefore, become failed manifestations of idealistic dreams, created because of the insufficient education for women in the period.

However, as already argued, Eliot does not simply present the ridiculousness of the failure of idealism, but rather offers some sympathy to the failures, as she imbues it with nobility. Indeed, although her marriage fails partly as a result of her unrealistic belief that Casaubon can fulfil her aspirations and make her life whole, it cannot be entirely presented that Dorothea only sees him “as the fulfilment of her noble aspiration and not at all as a human being or husband” (Thale 116). The most touching scenes between Dorothea and Casaubon fall at the end of Book Four and the end of Chapter Forty-Eight. At the end of Book Four, Dorothea “put her hand into her husband’s, and they went along the broad corridor together” (Eliot Middlemarch 427). The action of holding hands is one of gentle simplicity and recalls the blissfully promising image of Milton’s Adam and Eve walking “hand in hand” from the Garden of Eden (Bk 12, l. 648). This simplicity is paralleled by “the broad corridor”, a place which hides no intricate mysteries (Eliot Middlemarch 427). In contrast, earlier in the novel, Dorothea describes Casaubon’s mind as the “vague labyrinthine extension” (Eliot Middlemarch 24). The description of “the broad corridor”, perhaps, conveys what their marriage could have been like if it were not for Dorothea’s unrealistic expectation of Casaubon as the exalted scholar, who could fulfil her aspirations (Eliot Middlemarch 427). It may have been more simplistic, less “noble”, but, perhaps, it would have been happier (Thale 116).

Indeed, this moment denotes that Eliot sympathetically implies that unrealistic idealisation will always cause failure in a marriage, as she offers a fleeting depiction of what could have

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been. Yet, what is most significant in this moment, is the fact that Dorothea views Casaubon as her husband, not the single solution to her wishes. The elevated, hyperbolic titles that Dorothea applied to Casaubon at the beginning of their courtship, “a living Bossuet…[and]…a modern Augustine”, are replaced with the ease of the title of husband, which gives a sense of realistic, marital serenity to the reader (Eliot Middlemarch 25). Like Adam and Eve, they are just man and woman. Thus, Eliot once more places the failure of idealism in a somewhat sympathetic light.

Yet, one cannot place the blame for the failure of marriage entirely on Rosamond and Dorothea’s idealisation of their husbands. Indeed, both Lydgate and Casaubon place unattainable expectations on their wives too, which they will inevitably fail to reach.

For instance, as Anne E. Patrick states, Rosamond “tends to receive more blame for her husband’s failure than she deserves” and she “bears much responsibility for the failure of their relationship”, as one must consider that “Lydgate’s problems stem in part from a failure to appreciate women as persons” (224-31). He idealises Rosamond as a woman and a wife to such an extent that the reality of her will always fail to fulfil his expectations. Indeed, she is consistently mentioned in reference to floral imagery as the “flower of Mrs Lemon’s school”, emerging “as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her” and the “flower of Middlemarch” (Eliot Middlemarch 96-294). Interestingly, though, these images depict Rosamond as not simply a “flower” in her own right but rather the “flower of” something, or she emerges from a “flower” (Eliot Middlemarch 294). In a manner, her idealised, floral status is a condition of the environment she is within, and thus Lydgate cannot even simply idealise her for herself, but rather she is objectified as a paradigm of society. Therefore, he elevates her as society’s beau ideal of womanhood, which is a status one can never fulfil. Moreover, Eliot skilfully uses this pattern of botanical language to symbolise the failure of Rosamond to attain Lydgate’s idealised expectations for her. In 7

the Finale, it is asserted that Lydgate once referred to her as “his basil plant”, explaining “that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains” (Eliot Middlemarch 835). This references John Keats’ ‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ and Boccaccio’s Decameron, as noted in the Penguin Classics’ edition of Middlemarch. Yet, as Barbara Hardy notes “The image is [also] the last ironical comment on the images of flowers associated with their love” (124). In a manner, one could argue, that Lydgate is still idealising Rosamond, when one considers the grounded response she gives of “a placid but strong answer” in comparison to his elevated allusion to Keats and Boccaccio (Eliot Middlemarch 835). Indeed, by giving her the position of “his basil plant”, it implies that this depiction of Rosamond is Lydgate’s construction, and whilst she can take some responsibility for the failure of their marriage, it his “brains”, or idealisation of her, which provided the nourishment for this construction to flourish, which creates this parasitic plant (Eliot Middlemarch 835).

In conclusion, one can see that failure in Middlemarch originates from the fact the aspirations, which the character’s set out to achieve, are too ambitious and conform too much to a strict ideal, and thus they are always unattainable. Therefore, Middlemarch is a novel in which Eliot presents the failure of idealism and instead offers a more achievable reality. In a manner, this is encapsulated in the very ending of the novel, which states that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” (Eliot Middlemarch 838). Indeed, Eliot offers a level of sympathy that lives are defined by a failure to achieve the ideal, rather than the success of achieving something realistic, and whilst she acknowledges the nobility of attempting to achieve that ideal, she grieves for the sacrifices it leads to, such as love and contentment.

One cannot help but wonder if Rosamond, Lydgate, and Casaubon would have been fulfilled 8

if they had chosen to live “a hidden life”, rather than devote themselves to an unattainable idealism (Eliot Middlemarch 838). However, as presented by William Batchelder Greene, idealism spins the false myth that it is fulfillable. Dorothea ends the novel with a higher level of satisfaction because she chooses the “hidden life” of marriage to Will Ladislaw (Eliot Middlemarch 838). Yet, in contrast, one must acknowledge that “[f]ailure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure” (Eliot Middlemarch 222). This message, subtly teased out by Eliot through the interactions between her characters, is just as applicable to the twenty-first century. The temptation of the modern world is to remain within the pragmatic boundaries of intellectual, social, and political safety to remove the risk of failure. Yet, perhaps, it may be more productive to, in a Casaubon-like manner, abide by one’s beliefs, especially in our current political atmosphere, and have the bravery for “long perseverance”, even if it is seen as a “deluded enterprise” (Kidd 30).

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Bibliography Arnold, Jean. “Quitting Middlemarch.” George Eliot - George Henry Lewes Studies, vol. 68, no. 2, 2016, pp. 136–147.

Batchelder Greene, William. The Blazing Star: With an Appendix Treating of the Jewish Kabbala. Also, a Tract on the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and one on New England Transcendentalism. Boston, A. Williams and Co. 1872.

Chase, Karen. Eliot: Middlemarch. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Eliot, George. George Eliot’s Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. edited by John Walter Cross, vol. 3, Cambridge University Press. 2010.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. London, Penguin Classics. 1994.

Hardy, Barbara. Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2001.

Keats, John. ‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’. The Complete Poems. edited by John Barnard. London, Penguin Classics. 2006. pp. 239-55.

Kidd, Colin. The World of Mr Casaubon: Britain's Wars of Mythography, 1700– 1870. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2016.

LaCapra, Dominick. History, Politics, and the Novel. New York, Cornell University Press. 2018.

Miller, J. Hillis. ‘A Conclusion in Which Almost Nothing Is Concluded: Middlemarch’s “Finale”’. Middlemarch in the Twenty-First Century. edited by Karen Chase. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Patrick, Anne E. “Rosamond Rescued: George Eliot's Critique of Sexism in ‘Middlemarch.’” The Journal of Religion, vol. 67, no. 2, 1987, pp. 220–238.

Steedman, Carolyn. “Going to Middlemarch: History and the Novel”. Perspectives on Fiction,

vol.

40,

issue

3,

Summer

2001.

Michigan

Quarterly

Review, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0040.310. Accessed 12 May 2021.

Szirotny, June Skye. George Eliot’s Feminism: The Right to Rebellion. London, Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.

Thale, Jerome. The Novels of George Eliot. New York, Columbia University Press. 1959.

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-2Found in Times of Trouble: The Representation of Time in Samuel Beckett's Endgame

by Lara Masuo

The two-headed Janus beast stares out at the audience in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, for without doubt, they are simultaneously forced to face the past, the present and the future. It is a play about time; its reversals, irregular beats, and its persistence. Beckett fashions characters who are burdened not only by their imprisonment in this temporal abyss but also by their conditions of ageing and disability: the man who cannot sit, the man who cannot see or stand, and the senior citizens who are trapped in trashcans. In these respects, they are both futuristic and fossilized—living fossils perhaps—but although their physical bodies are in rapid decline, they show a remarkable will to keep their memories and their dreams preserved. In the aftermath of the first instance of nuclear warfare in human history, Beckett presents the audience with a stage that has been obliterated by an atomic bomb before the play even begins.

As a consequence of this, the characters inhabit an environment that has undergone significant ecological catastrophe, and must endure the traumatic effects of existing in a place that is less picturesque and prosperous than they remember. Beckett first creates a stage that is haunted by the memories of human history—of unforgettable despots and of the suffering their regimes have caused. This represents the manner of time outside of the characters. More specifically, their environment and the various objects with which they are surrounded become reminiscent of this destructive past. The characters’ illnesses or physical limitations are manifestations of the passage of bodily time, indeed an uncontrollable response to the

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destruction of their habitat. In reply, they use the internal qualities of memory and storytelling to momentarily pause this passage. These internal qualities are “timeless,” in Sigmund Freud’s words, as the passage of time cannot alter them, and “the idea of time cannot [entirely] be applied to them” (Freud quoted in Kern 31). Such mental images of the past are irrevocable, the oldest and most tightly fixed in the characters’ minds, thus the last to deteriorate. Alienated, exiled, and condemned to survive what is remaining of their lives, Beckett’s characters are exemplary products of the Theatre of the Absurd. Like Albert Camus, for whom the absurd is constituted by a divorce between “the actor and his setting,” Beckett also understands that the absurd derives from the inefficiency and insufficiency of his characters’ environment (Esslin quoted in Bennett 11). Death is certainly a large part of the absurdist philosophy, and the characters in Endgame are very much on the brink of it. Beckett is remorseless, torturing them to continue their existence on a barren stage, forced to face the ticking of the fatal clock drifting from the near distance. Their physical limitations and desperate connection to their pasts cause them to perish under the dim light of the stage, where even theatre becomes almost, though not quite unrecognisable, and made from the dying remnants of an exploded, but still explosive past.

Stephen Kern argues that the human experience of time has changed drastically in the face of industrialisation and technological development. The invention of railroads, steamships, and airplanes, for instance, “greatly accelerated transportation and proliferated the places where people could travel at new high speeds” (Kern 9). Furthermore, the exploration of the interior anatomical composition of the human body, initiated by the development of the x-ray machine, emphasised a more individually and internally occurring sense of time (Kern 7). Thus, these changes heightened the differences between public and private time. Many writers and artists, such as Franz Kafka expressed an anxiety over this maddening discordance between the two forms: “It is impossible to sleep, impossible to wake, impossible to bear life, 12

or more precisely, the successiveness of life. The clocks don’t agree. The inner one rushes along in a devilish or demonic—in any case, inhuman—way while the outer one goes, falteringly, at its accustomed pace” (Kafka quoted in Kern 17). Kafka’s 1915 novel The Metamorphosis certainly exemplifies this disconnect between the individual and their environment—how Gregor Samsa’s insectile body experiences a different temporal pace to that of his family. Cubist artists, too, expressed a fascination with the idea of time. Paul Cézanne, who painted a dark clock without hands—a symbol of timelessness—and Juan Gris’ The Watch—a painting that presents time as fragmented or discontinuous—represent time as something to be both preserved and annihilated (Kern 22, 23). Perhaps the most well-known painting of clocks to our thoughts is Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, which contains the striking image of three melting clocks, the fourth one un-melted but being devoured by a swarm of insects. Dali, then, can be seen as questioning the very structures of time that have been persistently used throughout the ages. These clocks deal with the arbitrary nature of time, asking its viewers to imagine a world where it ceases to exist. Would it be a barren landscape, like the one in the painting, or indeed like the one staged in Endgame?

However small a role Beckett envisioned it to have, the alarm clock in his play speaks volumes, filling every moment of silence with a ticking and an occasional ringing sound that is “fit to wake the dead” (Beckett Endgame 30). Time here is capable of reaching out beyond the grave, a musical device that is universally known and eternally remembered; a chilling reminder of the sound that starts our day and paces our sleep throughout the night.

Beckett first depicts time that places itself outside of its subjects and assigns his play temporal significance by imbuing the natural world with historical memories. James McNaughton argues that a “horrific politics of food” is deeply embedded in Endgame (137).

For McNaughton, “famine was a rhetorical warning of ecological devastation” that catalysed the events of the second world war; a strategy designed to accrue political power (137). In Nazi 13

Germany, for instance, the ‘Hungerpolitik,’ or ‘starvation policy’ was seen as a mode of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ employed to secure ecological and economic self-sufficiency, that Hitler used to try to enact Germany’s Lebensraum (McNaughton 141-142). Similarly, Stalin also used starvation as a means to incite obedience from his Ukrainian enemies living in the USSR (McNaughton 140). Of this, Beckett wrote a letter to his parents describing the horrors of such politics: “Famine almost everywhere and millions dying of starvation,” he writes, “millions are dying of hunger...Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying…We are waiting for death’” (Beckett quoted in McNaughton 143). Ideas of ecological breakdown and the depletion of food sources is indeed embedded in Beckett’s plays. Waiting for Godot presents the audience with a single tree in what is otherwise an impoverished wasteland. Estragon and Vladimir are thus faced with the need to ration their food supplies: Estragon: [Violently.] I’m hungry.

Vladimir: Do you want a carrot?

Estragon: Is that all there is?

Vladimir: I might have some turnips.

Estragon: Give me a carrot. [Vladimir rummages in his pockets, takes out a turnip, and gives it to Estragon who takes a bite out of it. Angrily.] It’s a turnip!

Vladimir: Oh Pardon! I could have sworn it was a carrot. [...] Make it last, that’s the end of them (Beckett Waiting for Godot 16).

The fact that Vladimir’s pockets carry vegetables suggests not only that they are objects necessary for survival, but that the products of the natural world have been so upset from their place within the earth’s soil that humans are left to shelter them on their person.

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Like these characters, those in Endgame are also menaced by the insufficiency of their food sources. The most decadent and enjoyable foods—sugar-plums and Turkish Delight, to name a few—have run out and been replaced by pap and biscuits, forcing the characters to utter the words ‘no more’ and ‘no longer’ time and again. In many respects, the play is brimming with the possibilities of ‘yesterday.’ The destroyed natural world renders the characters vegetative, succumbing to the overwhelming presence of yesterday’s events—hunger, extermination, and violence—that have inescapably planted themselves around them, making this habitat hostile, and at times, painfully unbearable.

Hamm and Clov negotiate the conditions of their relationship through food: “I’ll give you just enough to keep you from dying [...]. I’ll give you one biscuit per day [...]” (Beckett Endgame 8). Hamm’s words echo those of a starvation policy as his discussion with Clov reveals that they have ultimately been reduced to their bodily rather than personal desires. Clov seems not only subordinate to Hamm, but also subordinate to his physical needs. However, although Hamm might be exhibiting a desire to control Clov, his corrective “one and a half” to the initial “one biscuit per day” reflects a flexibility in their relationship (Beckett Endgame 8).

Perhaps Hamm tries to challenge the historical memory of mass starvation, but this possibility fades away with Clov’s confession that he has forgotten “the combination of the larder” (Beckett Endgame 9). The seeds he has planted demonstrate an attempt to become selfsufficient in an age of starvation—but in this lightless, dehydrated void, Clov’s seeds have no chance of sprouting. Indeed, the idea of “a job as gardener” makes him laugh, either a coping mechanism for his own failures as a cultivator of the land, or is more likely a reaction to the fact that gardeners have become obsolete altogether in the name of drought and clouded skies (Beckett Endgame 37). Whatever attempts these characters make to repair the marks of history, their habitat always hinders this process of recovery.

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Thus ensues a fear of life apart from themselves, bottled within the tin of “insecticide” Clov bears (Beckett Endgame 22). Theodor W. Adorno persuasively argues that “this becomes the final product of the domination of nature, which destroys itself” (145). A single flea living out its solitary existence, then, means that it singularly possesses the possibilities of regeneration, especially because there remain no predators that pose a threat to its existence: “But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him, for the love of God!” (Beckett Endgame 22). Perhaps Hamm fears that with this regeneration comes the possibility of another catastrophe, another war, and thereby seeks to ascertain control over future time. The dog, made of frayed bits of cloth, is a memento mori, a replacement for an animal that has gone extinct. Hamm’s interest in it is a sign of cherishing not the past existence of life, but the very extinction of such creatures that no longer coexist with him. From Endgame’s opening, it becomes clear to the audience that these characters revisit history to acknowledge the passage of time outside of themselves. But these historical memories desperately cling to their victims, who live in a distinct temporal territory, fashioned out of moth-eaten bits of the past, and are thereby left to fear that these events may resurface in a greater magnitude in the future.

If the audience focuses more closely on the characters, they will see that Beckett is interacting, too, with the occurrence of a more private or bodily time. Eric Cazdyn explains that [w]e have entered something like a new chronic mode, a mode of time that cares little for terminality or acuteness. Every level of society is stabilised on an antiretroviral cocktail. Every person is safe, like a diabetic on insulin. A solid remission, yes, but always within the droning threat of relapse—of collapse, if not catastrophe, echoing back to us from a far-off future or from the memory of a distant past” (13).

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Illness and time arre in this way inextricable. The future is unavoidable, and taunts us with the fact that any crisis or disaster cannot be entirely managed (Cazdyn 15). When Clov says “finished, it’s nearly finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished,” he announces a certain terminality; that there is neither the time or chance to do more, to actively heal the illnesses that press down upon them (Beckett Endgame 6). Clov has renounced his will to postpone death, and has diagnosed himself and the other characters with a terminal condition as soon as the curtains are drawn.

Their illnesses manifest within their disabled, ageing bodies—a reflection of a more internal sense of time. They inhabit a world that “stinks of corpses,” as Hamm’s assessment of Clov’s scent suggests that his health is beginning to deteriorate as well (Beckett Endgame 29).

Clov’s “pains in [his] legs” and Hamm’s need for pain-killers are all the more exacerbated when they run out of pain-killers (29). The possibility of a sort of ‘palliative care’ thus disappears. Subsequently, Hamm suggests that Clov hit him “with the gaff” or “with the axe,” a violent form of assisted suicide that more distinctly resembles something of a guillotine execution (Beckett Endgame 46). Perhaps, in his extreme suffering, Hamm replicates a recognisable and paradigmatic form of human suffering (Bryden 163). Religion in Endgame, as Mary Bryden notes, does not exist in an embodied state, nor are there any cruciform structures therein. Rather, religion is represented through the extreme pain the characters feel.

In asking “did anyone ever have pity on me,” Hamm mimics Christ’s cries of suffering: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46). Beckett illuminates an ancient suffering that has not gone away with time by aligning the play with a religious significance.

There is hence no Messianic possibility of salvation here, but instead a realisation that the characters are past the point of recovery. Hamm desires a release from his physical disabilities that will only worsen over time. The characters, then, irremediably are ‘patients’ of time, waiting for it to prescribe them an ultimate release from their living experiences. However, 17

Hamm, with a “prophetic relish,” ruminates on the certainty of Clov’s fate, too: “One day, you’ll be blind, like me. You’ll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me [...] you’ll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe” (Beckett Endgame 24). This language reduces them to the fact that they will become particles of a decaying body, and, moreover, Hamm’s use of the terms “for ever,” “infinite” and “all the ages” suggest that in death, they will encounter another void wherein time becomes limitless (Beckett Endgame 2324). Time is greater than the characters, who are released into this temporal infinity, thereby becoming permanent prisoners of time. Even in death they succumb to the passage of time.

Though their bodies crawl in one direction, their minds are free to wander all temporal territories. Accordingly, the past is remembered in a more internal manner through storytelling and the act of remembering itself. For instance, their evocation of the past through memories of the natural world in the backdrop of a dusty, derelict habitat functions as a fantasy, a dream-like phantasmagoria of what lives one used to lead: “If I could sleep I might make love. I’d go into the woods. My eyes would see… the sky, the earth. I’d run, run, they wouldn’t catch me.” (Beckett Endgame 14). Sleep is ostensibly a temporal portal, allowing the individual, whilst half-conscious, to escape into a realm of possibilities. The present momentarily comes to a standstill, as time releases the sleeper into this dimension for a few short hours. Without the experience of sleep, the characters will be fully alienated from their “bonny” infant selves, and will slowly lose touch with the energy of their personal pasts (Beckett Endgame 27). Clov’s insistence that these selves existed “once” suggests an infatuation with his own past self, a child who could look out into the world and see it filled with the promising prospects of the future (Beckett Endgame 27). Eventually, however, the sleeper awakens and like a habit of ritual, they must repeat their daily chores. Only when their existence ceases will time race back to their proper positions, their memories remaining in the past whilst their bodies continue to decay into the future. Even if these memories will soon 18

fade away, they remain well-preserved within the characters’ minds. Though time strives to slowly damage their memories, it is only death that can fully destroy them.

Hamm’s storytelling, too, cultivates a timeless space. His story towards the end of the play reflects what Arthur Frank calls a “chaos narrative” referring to stories that lack control, restraint, and order (Frank 99). Indeed, it is an “anti-narrative of time without sequence, telling without mediation,” characterised by series of ‘and thens’ alternating with silences or pauses (Frank 98). Not only does Hamm’s story begin in medias res—at least for the audience, who, unlike the characters in the play, do not know where Hamm’s story starts or what it is about—but it is also told through fits of violence and calm composure, through laughs and pauses: The colours come back into his little cheeks—perhaps. And then? [Pause.] It was an exceedingly dry day, I remember, zero by the hydrometer [...]. [Pause.]

Well to make it short I finally offered to take him into my service. He had touched a chord. And then I imagined already that I wasn’t much longer for this world” (Beckett Endgame 33).

His chaos narrative thrives off his lack of control of his own speech and on a disordered sequencing of time. In these moments, the characters are briefly able to evade time’s passing.

They even challenge its structures and fashion a space in which they themselves can control it.

We can read Endgame as a chaos narrative in itself: it is complex, yet fragmented. Time runs slowly in the play, where the breaks and lack of quickly-paced action allow the play to be seemingly experienced, relished or yawned at for much longer. Beckett threatens to put time to a dead standstill, saving the realm of theatre whilst the natural world and its human beings continue to languish.

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There is a sense that Hamm, Nagg, and Nell are part of the set design, immovable objects who remain in the same place, whereas Clov is somewhat of a stage director, and takes care of his props. Enoch Brater claims that the actors themselves engage in the physical absurdity of having to spend the duration of the play stuck in a trashcan or in a wheelchair (Brater 202). Beckett’s play begs the question of whether actors are the primary components of theatre; whether the playwright can dispense with them altogether (Brater 206). These actors may even be subject to replacement; however, their ‘stuckness’ on the stage sheds light not so much on their uselessness as their spectacular roles—their duty to remain on stage for the purpose of being watched, admired, and pitied. Thus, their roles are much more to do with portrayal rather than acting (Brater 207). Like a work of art, their suffering and absurd lives are presented as exhibition, and are thereby granted a longer lifespan than most other plays with a vivid or active plot. From a theatrical point of view, the tension between what the character knows and what the audience knows has always been essential to the power of drama (Keyssar 232). But the lack of dramatic irony, and indeed the absence of any anagnorisis, or pivotal recognition scene strips Beckett’s play down to its very core. Endgame is represented as a play—not as a moral or humanistic lesson, but simply as a piece of theatre – and that play is the thing, the only thing that prevails (238). This fact may coincide with the passage of time – that the playwright must salvage the most significant factors of theatre in this postapocalyptic world. Theatre, for Beckett, is an interpretation of reality, and that reality has no great or violent spectacle. Instead, the spectacle lies within the passage of time, within the audience’s reaction to the sudden differences between Endgame and any other play, be it the stories of ancient Greece, or those of Elizabethan England.

Hamm displays an awareness for his own theatricality: “An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before? [Pause.]. I’m warming up for my last soliloquy” (Beckett Endgame 46).

In the final moments of the play, Hamm performs a self-conscious monologue, spoken along 20

with what sounds like corrective notes and annotations: “Raise hat. [He raises his toque.] [...]

A little poetry. [Pause.] You prayed — [Pause. He corrects himself.] You CRIED for night; it comes — [Pause. He corrects himself.] It FALLS: now cry in darkness” (Beckett Endgame 49). Speaking his own stage directions and corrections, Hamm reminds the audience of the production of theatre itself, the repetitions and practice that are the stuff of rehearsals. Endgame includes certain elements of conventional theatre—monologues and asides, for instance—yet Beckett does not breathe the life of drama into them. His Theatre of the Absurd, as Torunn Kjølner writes, does not strive to “tell a story or elucidate an intellectual problem,” but rather conveys a pattern of poetic images (9). It is about atmosphere, the mode of being static, and aestheticising his stage like one would do with a painting or sculpture. Through this, Beckett not only paints “images of human conditions [and] moods,” but, through their fixed conditions, evinces how these images can be preserved (Kjølner 6). “Moments for nothing,” Hamm says, “now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning closed and story ended” (Beckett Endgame 49). In using both past and present cases, Hamm begins to draw Beckett’s play to a close. As his creator desires, despite speaking the language of endings and closure, Hamm preserves ‘the now’, putting a stop to the past, preventing it from destroying present and future theatrical possibilities. Beckett makes room for “last million last moments,” that the idea of finality will last for eternity; that lastness and ending may never truly begin (Beckett Endgame 49).

From the classical Greek amphitheatre to the minimalism of modern theatre, playwrights have contended with the passage of time themselves, the developing desires and political climates of their societies. At a time of famine, war, and genocide, Beckett continues the theatrical tradition through not only examining the role of time in various ways—the relationship between the past, present, and his characters—but also allows theatre to be put under this temporal pressure. Despite the threadbare conditions of the stage, there crystallises 21

a future potential for theatre. In the broken world to which Beckett once belonged, he gathers the remnants and smithereens of the past in order for theatre to thrive in the present; for it to have a future existence. Like a Cubist painting, Beckett’s play is beautifully abstract, broken up and then reconstructed in intricate ways, and will be fascinating to witness for time immemorial.

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Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. “Trying to Understand Endgame.” New German Critique, no. 26, 1982, pp. 119–150.

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Faber and Faber, 2009.

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Faber and Faber, 2016.

Bennett, Michael Y. Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. Lightning Source UK Ltd., 2018.

Brater, Enoch. “The 'Absurd' Actor in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 1975, pp. 197–207. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3206113. Accessed 2 May 2021.

Bryden, Mary. “Beckett and Religion.” Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies. Edited

by Lois Oppenheim, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 154-171.

Cazdyn, Eric. The Already Dead: The New Time of Politics, Culture, and Illness. Duke University Press, 2012.

Frank, Arthur. “The Wounded Storyteller.” Body, Illness, and Ethics. The University of Chicago Press, 2013, pp. 97-113.

Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918. Harvard University Press, 2003.

Keyssar, Helene. “Theatre Games, Language Games and ‘Endgame.’” Theatre Journal, vol.

31, no. 2, 1979, pp. 221–238.

Kjølner, Torunn. “The Dramatic Art of Beckett.” Nordic Irish Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2009, pp.

5–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25699539. Accessed 16 May 2021.

McNaughton, James. Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath. Oxford University Press, 2018.

The Bible. King James Version with the Apocrypha. Penguin, 2006.

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-3The Most Heroic Thing Is Sacrifice: An Analysis of Postcolonial Heroism in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat

by Olivia Collins

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat (1986) is a novel centred around Kenyan independence and its impact in the small village of Thabai, which addresses themes of colonialism, masculinity and the flaws and relevance of classical heroism. The various, mostly male, characters throughout the novel symbolise various imperfect responses to violence, grief, and deception, with some acting more heroically than others. All in all, in light of the text itself and arguments made by Andrew Hammond, it becomes clear that Thiong’o presents a new form of heroism, inclusive to women, with more focus on selflessness than honour. This distinguishes the text, alongside its modern themes and context, from traditional and classical heroism and steers the text towards a more ‘decolonised’ and developmental form of heroism.

The character of Mugo acts in the novel as a representation of the conflicts between heroism and personal preservation in a colonial context, as Mugo’s guilt and bravery result in a sense of false or empty heroism followed by redemption. The ‘detention camps’ form a recurring motif and symbol of suffering under colonialism for the male characters in A Grain of Wheat, but for Mugo they also represent deceit and false heroism: “Beyond despair, there was no moaning; the feeling that he deserved all this numbed Mugo to the pain. But the other detainees saw his resignation to pain in a different light; it gave them courage” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 129). Here Mugo’s guilt is evident, as he is reconciled to suffer without complaint as a form of self-punishment for his betrayal of Kihika. This is ironic as, to the

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community and other prisoners, Mugo’s calmness and solemnity appears in “a different light”, one of pride and stoic resistance, giving them the “courage” to continue and survive (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 129). This forms an external heroism driven by internal guilt and selfconflict, arguably presenting an empty, accidental or false heroism. This irony is continued throughout the novel, especially when Gikonyo reminisces about his own perceived cowardice to Mugo, reflecting that he “would have sold Kenya to the whiteman” for his own freedom (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 67). It is clear that although Gikonyo was prepared to ‘sell out’ Kenya for his own self-preservation, it is actually Mugo who did so for mere economic gain.This intensifies the falsity of Mugo’s heroism, as their hamartia (fatal flaw) is their selfishness and fear, intended as self-preservation (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 189-91), which directly juxtaposes expected conventions of heroism like bravery and sacrifice. This ‘empty’ heroism is somewhat redeemed by Mugo’s acknowledgement of guilt and public confession, stating that the community “asked for Judas” which can be found in him, not Karanja (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 218). This brave confession can be considered a redemption for Mugo, as an intentionally self-sacrificing and heroic act. However, as General R responds, “[n]o one will ever escape from his own actions” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 234), which rightfully outlines the irreversible impact Mugo has made. Although Mugo’s confession is somewhat heroic, the use of dramatic irony throughout the text’s mentions of Mugo’s heroism and bravery, and his role as a communal leader, present Mugo’s prior hesitation to confess as unignorable. Central to this failure to meet heroic conventions is what Timothy Bewes identifies as “the extremes of duplicity and violence that the struggle involved” (115). Mugo, more so than other characters, truly represents this focus postliberation, of necessary deceit and justified violence during the struggle for independence. As a result, Mugo’s inner conflict and eventual confession mimic the process of judgement, scrutiny and accountability following any historical political movement. In part, Mugo’s confession is foreshadowed throughout the

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novel, to rid him and the village of his deceit, arguably in a further move for decolonisation; shedding the violence and collaboration of the colonial regime. Overall, as Mugo’s confession is overshadowed as an act of redemption by the irony and deceit throughout the novel, Mugo symbolises in the text ‘the flawed hero’, in whom their hamartia prevails.

In contrast, Gikonyo's heroic journey consists of his processing his sense of suffering, loss, and feelings of betrayal, moving towards acceptance and selflessness. Before Gikonyo reaches an emotional resolution about his status and role post ‘detention camp’, he races Karanja to impress Mumbi, mirroring traditions and events in classical epic literature. This is relevant as Thiong'o, a famously well-read writer and academic, was likely conscious of the legacies of other epic literary traditions. In continuation, Gikonyo “seethed with hatred as he panted” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 204) whilst trying to defeat Karanja, who cuckolded Gikonyo by having a child with Mumbi in his absence. This image symbolises the conventions of classical epic tradition of anger and competitiveness, as sporting success was followed by enforced masculinity, heroism, and often riches. This is observable in Homer's The Iliad, sport is done in memoriam of deceased warriors in epic tradition (481-510), a link which may allude to Gikonyo’s sense of loss in A Grain of Wheat. On this, Andrew Hammond suggests that Gikonyo’s “reality is one of anxiety, social insecurity and sexual jealousy” (19). This resonates with Gikonyo’s struggle towards accepting Mumbi and Karanja’s child, as jealousy, anxiety and insecurity can be seen to dominate his internal thoughts and indecisiveness about what to do. However, Thiong’o does not present this as the pinnacle of heroism for Gikonyo as a character, which is his acceptance of the impact of colonialism, looking forward to the future.

As the novel comes to an end, Mumbi reflects to Gikonyo that “[p]eople try to rub out things, but they cannot. (...) We need to talk, to open our hearts to one another” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 243). This impassioned reflection alludes to much of the text, arguably on both the sides of Kenyan colonialism, helping Gikonyo to finally decide to “carve a woman big- big with 26

child” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 243). This act ends the novel with intense symbolism, as Gikonyo deliberates the best carving for a stool for Mumbi, settling on an image of womanhood, pregnancy and, rebirth. This symbolizes Gikonyo’s acknowledgement of Mumbi’s child, and their relationship going forward, as well as the ‘rebirth’ of Kenya postcolonialism, ‘pregnant’ with potential and future opportunity. This sense of change and renewal is coupled with somewhat Biblical imagery structure, as Gikonyo deliberates “[o]n the sixth day” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 42), arguably alluding to Gikonyo’s role and symbol as a creator, both of the stool but also a new future for Kenya. The novel ends at the creation of a symbolic gift of forgiveness, acceptance, and hope, a vulnerable moment for Gikonyo following his hurt and humiliation. This sacrifice of pride presents a ‘new’ heroism, detached from the bravado of classical traditions, and Gikonyo earlier in the novel. Structurally, Gikonyo’s character navigates away from anxiety and emasculation, first towards bravado and classical heroic competitiveness, settling on reconciliation. This resolution that Gikonyo reaches after rejecting and developing through other responses to colonial rule and its consequences, alludes to what Hammond calls “postcolonial manhood” (113). This is, as Thiong'o creates throughout the text via various individual perspectives, a sense of development and change arguably most successful in the sweet and sacrificial end to the novel.

As a result, Gikonyo is arguably the ‘true’ hero of the novel, for the ending and its resolution proves the most sacrificial, hopeful, and even satisfying. This is as, although figures like Kihika sacrificed their lives, and Mugo their freedom and respect, Gikonyo’s sacrifice of accepting a betrayal and a child that is not his is the most selfless and beneficial sacrifice of the whole text.

Gikonyo’s reconciliation is done for love and social cohesion, rather than to purge guilt or for martyrdom, resulting in Gikonyo being a symbol in the novel of a ‘new’ postcolonial and progressive heroism.

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Karanja is portrayed in contrast as an unremorseful, more exaggerated figure of betrayal than that of Mugo, but, due to the historical context of colonisation, one that is still a figure of sympathy. After ‘selling out’ the movement of independence, “the wheel of things drove him into greater and greater reliance on the whiteman. That reliance gave him power- power to save, power to kill” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 205). Here, Thiong’o outlines the lack of control Karanja has, as for survival he cooperates with the ‘whiteman’ which gives Karanja huge amounts of power but also responsibility. Throughout the text, Karanja is presented as a figure of mistrust, in line with his collaboration with colonial powers, assumed responsibility for betraying Kihika, and his child with Mumbi in Gikonyo’s absence making him an outsider.

As Thiong’o makes clear that Karanja is somewhat a product of circumstance, this isolation and mistrust in the community proves a cause for sympathy. Frantz Fanon, whom Thiong'o engaged with in their own work (Thiong’o Decolonising the Mind 3, 63-64, 98), later wrote that “[t]he white man wants the world; he wants it for himself alone … predestined master of this world” (Fanon 97). This observation of racial power imbalance and colonialist rule reinforces the presentation of Karanja as a symbol of survival and desperation, as both Thiong’o and Fanon present colonial rule as unwavering and imposing. It is convincing to distinguish that Karanja is afforded more sympathy than Mugo, who similarly betrayed the movement, because of his lack of deceit. The wound created by Mugo’s betrayal is deeper due to the village’s idolization of him as a survivor and hero throughout the text, and so his confession proves an extreme disappointment, whereas Karanja remains a constant, expected enemy or traitor. This sense of a power imbalance in Kenya is reflected throughout the novel, as when Thompson is surprised that there were “two Africans who in dress, in speech and in intellectual power were no different from the British” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 52). This ‘surprising’ equality between these two Kenyans and the British somewhat contradicts the presentation of Karanja’s power, and further complicates the presentation of power and

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betrayal. It can be argued that loyalty in the texts means division against the colonial enemy, and so Mugo and Karanja’s opportunism and these men’s conformity can be seen as a betrayal of the movement and of Kenya. However, the lack of control and the motive of survivalism for conformity and collaboration do not necessarily make these acts heroic, but necessary for selfpreservation, the sacrifice of which would be more detrimental to these men as individuals. As a result, Karanja, along with Mugo, symbolises the tension between prioritie: the movement and the greater good for Kenyan peoples, or individual survival.

Following on from this, Thiong’o presents female heroism as vital in the decolonization process through the character of Mumbi, in contrast to social norms and the conventions of classical epics. When Mumbi was young, “She lay in the sun and ardently yearned for a life in which love and heroism, suffering, and martyrdom were possible” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 75). In a youthful, naive way Mumbi is presented here as fetishizing classical, masculine heroism. Here, Thiong’o makes a connection between romantic ideals and heroism, a connection only expected in Mumbi’s mind, which is not realised by any of the other characters. Hammond’s assertion that “the actions of individuals, however, rarely live up to masculine premises” (119) is particularly pertinent in light of Mumbi’s disappointment. This can be seen as Karanja evidently is overcome with emotion and cannot fulfil the masculine expected role of leadership, as are both Mugo and Gikonyo in various sections of the novel. As a result, Hammond’s assertion is evidently true, that the novel’s individuals do not “live up to masculine premises” (119); arguably because they are unrealistic. Mumbi’s character develops from this however, becoming a hero of circumstance central to the political and physical reconstruction of the village. Despite being “depressed because there was no man of the house”, and Karanja being “quiet and distant [...] Mumbi was too busy to notice the reserve of a man undergoing a crisis” (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 136-7). This refers to the efficient and spontaneous input of women and children to rebuild Thaba whilst men like Karanja are in 29

shock. This demonstrates authority and proactiveness on behalf of Mumbi, in juxtaposition to the vulnerability and lack of agency expected of her in the context of the epic tradition. As a result, Mumbi becomes a symbol in the novel of the ‘new’ decolonized Kenyan woman, contributing to postcolonial society, and becoming as a result a figure of emotional strength and heroism. It is key here that Mumbi was “too busy to notice” the plights of Karanja and focused on her own tasks. This is because women in epics such as Briseis, Andromache are characters solely focused on the plight of male heroes, as their future and safety is entirely contingent on their success. This can be see as failure or success of male heroes and soldiers within this war determine each of the women's freedom, as Briseis' enslavement represents the consequences for women of being conquered in war (Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat 1-20). This overtly distinguishes heroism in A Grain of Wheat from classical traditions, because Mumbi is in a position of autonomy and significance, in contrast to these female characters. Furthermore, Thiong’o illustrates that “overnight children grew into men, women put on trousers” (A Grain of Wheat 137). This image of immediate transition and maturity is symbolic of this greater transition of Mumbi, from vulnerability to wearing ‘trousers’ physically in work and metaphorically. Here Mumbi evidently meets many criteria of heroism, like leadership responsibility, whilst also being selfless and community minded. As a result, it is abundantly clear that Thiong’o presents Mumbi’s contribution to decolonization as central and heroic in its immediacy and selflessness.

The thematic presentation of heroism is inseparably intertwined with Kenya’s political context and the Mau Mau movement’s goal of decolonization. Towards the opening of the novel, Thiong’o writes that the movement “had always been there, a rallying centre for action.

It changed names, leaders came and went, but the movement remained, opening new visions, gathering greater and greater strength” (A Grain of Wheat 10). Emilia Ilieva’s suggestion that Thiong’o writes about a Kenya “whose past was an unbroken chain of resistance to conquest 30

and oppression” (134) echoes this presentation of an unceasing, intangible and cyclical movement. This is significant because it reinforces the role of the characters in the novel, more so as symbols and archetypes than individuals, presented to represent the different impacts and responses during the decolonization process. This image presents the Mau Mau movement, and all other anti-colonial feelings, as transcendent of people, but instead as a constant, adapting idea. In this image, it is the movement that gains strength with the community as a collective.

This leaves little room for individual heroism and significance, unlike the subjects of classical epic literature. In contrast to this, Hammond asserts that Thiong’o’s use of “perspectivism” creates the “passing from one split, contingent psyche to another to evoke the fractured quality of masculinist selfhood and the multiplicity of male identities” (118). This would suggest that the focus of the narrative, through the use of ‘perspectivism’, is of individual, male characters and their inner turmoil. Although this is evidently a feature of the novel, the characters, also including the presentation of women like Mumbi, provide symbolic responses and experiences, rather than personal events. As a result, the thematic presentation of heroism focuses on collective purpose and motivations rather than individual virtue, leading into those outside the movement like Karanja and Mugo being those who prioritise self-preservation.

All in all, it is evident that individuality for the characters in this text for the presentation of heroism is far less significant than the symbols and representations that these characters provide. Thiong’o presents heroism as changing, as its meaning develops for and in each character. Many also fail, and for them heroism is unattainable. This presents a ‘decolonised’ form of heroism, as it considers selflessness, community, and accountability, as the characters can be seen throughout to scrutinise themselves and each other. Overall, it is clear that heroism in A Grain of Wheat is driven not by individual wants or skills, but by greater socio-political movements and changes, resulting in sacrifice towards the successes of a postcolonial Kenya being the most heroic acts of all.

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Bibliography Bewes, Timothy. The Event of Postcolonial Shame, Princeton University Press, 2011.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, Pluto, 1986.

Hammond, Andrew. “Ngugi wa Thiong’o & the Crisis of Kenyan Masculinity”, Men in African Film and Fiction, ed. Ouzgane, Lahoucine. Boydell & Brewer, 2011.

Homer. The Iliad, trans. Alexander, Caroline. Penguin Random House, 2015.

Ilieva, Emilia. “Bricklayer & Architect of a World to Come”, Ngugi: Reflections on his Life of Writing, ed. Gikandi, Simon. Wachanga, Ndirangu. Boydell & Brewer, 2018.

Thiong’o, Ngugi wa. A Grain of Wheat, Penguin Group, 1986.

Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.

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Virgil. The Aeneid, trans. Fitzgerald, Robert. Everyman’s Library, 1992.

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-4The Power of Magical Women in Marie de France’s Lanval, Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan

by Charlotte Smith

Written into worlds where their power is limited by patriarchal boundaries, female characters are expected to adhere to “the dominant medieval clerical ideology of feminine passivity and weakness” (Rasmussen 137). Contrary to this expectation, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan depicts women who hold an unprecedented amount of power. With magical healing abilities, Queen Isolde outsmarts all male physicians of her world, whilst her daughter Isolde commands the respect of men with her beauty and her determination to defend herself. Similarly, the fairy mistress of Marie de France’s Lanval and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal holds a large amount of power since she reverses the damsel in distress trope, instead rescuing her knight in distress, the impoverished outcast Lanval/Sir Launfal. Her wealth, generated by her magic, her status as an otherworldly being, and her ability to use her beauty to her own advantage provides her with power that the men of the tales cannot compete with. Elizabeth S. Leet writes that she “acts as a knight” (78), hence being depicted as more powerful than mortal women could possibly be.

Power, in this essay, encompasses agency, autonomy, and the ability to influence other characters, particularly men, all of which the women of these texts possess some level of, contrary to what a patriarchal society expects. The women in these texts are empowered by magical abilities and beauty, and these attributes allow them to invert expected power dynamics, to an extent.

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Firstly, the magical abilities of Dame Tryamour/the fairy mistress and the Isoldes enable them to hold power over others. Logan Whalen notes Tom Cross’s claim that a “lai followed the folk motif of the “Offended Fée”” (37); Marie’s lai is influenced by Celtic mythology in that Lanval’s mistress embodies this trope of the fairy who “leaves her land and remains with her lover until he violates her command” (Whalen 347). Lanval’s mistress, then, comes from a tradition of empowered fairies who make demands of men and punish them when they fail to comply. Dame Tryamour threatens Launfal with losing her adoration, “I warny the before, / All my love thou hast forlore!" (Chestre l. 364-5). This suggests that her very nature as a fairy allows her to make threats towards men, as is custom to the Celtic tradition, whereas mortal women lacking magical abilities would not be listened to or taken seriously. Moreover, Amy Vines writes that “unencumbered by any male relationships, she is beholden to none of the social and cultural constraints of a real medieval woman” (128); as an otherworldly being she lies outside of gender boundaries, allowing her to hold power over men without being questioned. Since she can generate limitless wealth for herself, she does not need to rely on a man’s financial support, and instead is presented as wealthier than any man. The simileic “Ne Kyng Artour yn hys most honour, Ne hadde noon scwych juell! (Chestre, l. 275-6) places Tryamour above the King, who would typically be revered as the wealthiest and consequently most powerful figure. Henceforth, her magical nature allows her unparalleled prosperity and a large amount of influence.

Similarly, due to their magical abilities, the two Isoldes hold a large amount of power compared to the typical medieval woman restricted by Gottfried’s male dominated society (Rasmussen 138). Ann Rasmussen describes Queen Isolde as “a wise woman, both in the specific sense of…medicine and magic, and … political and psychological astuteness” (143); this empowers her and her daughter, since they are highly intelligent and possess skills unmatched by men. Knowing the antidote to a poison that no other physician can find, Queen 34

Isolde displays a “consummate mastery of medicinal lore” (Rasmussen 144). She has, therefore, more knowledge and greater healing abilities than any man, allowing her the same level of power and supremacy that Tryamour holds as a magical being. The fact that she “does not … own or consult books” (Rasmussen 144) confirms the suspicion that she has magical abilities. Rather than merely a skill for medicine, alike Tryamour/Lanval’s fairy mistress, her otherworldly nature enables her to be powerful, despite being female. Moreover, her ability to manufacture love conveys her power: “the prudent Queen, was brewing in a vial a love-drink so subtly devised and prepared, and endowed with such powers” (Gottfried 192). The quantified adjective “so subtly” (Gottfried,192) admires her skill, whilst also suggesting artifice and a talent for deception. Contrary to this, Christopher Clason questions the extent of her power, suggesting that she does not have full control over her magic (305). Though she makes the love-potion she cannot undo its effects, thus effectively ruining her daughter’s life.

However, whether she has full control over the consequences of her magic is less relevant, since the point remains that her power in commanding magical elements is greater than that of her male counterparts.

Being able to deceive “so subtly” (Gottfried 192) with potions marks Queen Isolde as a dangerous character who is threatening to men. Carolyne Larrington argues that “[i]ndependent of male control, educated, autonomous [enchantresses] can operate to support the Arthurian status quo…or to challenge and interrogate it” (264). The Queen understands the challenges she can pose with her magic, warning Tristan that if he does not comply with her request of tutoring her daughter, she will not heal him from the poison: “I can give or refuse: both are in my power!” (Gottfried 145). Evidently, the Queen is aware that her supreme magical power can be used to harm and uses this fact to control men. Parallel to this, the magical abilities of Tryamour/Lanval’s fairy mistress threaten male control by introducing a power that men cannot compete with. Whalen argues that “[e]specially disconcerting for their lovers are 35

the power and the cruelty of the supernatural figures” (145); the fairy mistress can take away what she provides at will, demonstrating that her power be used to Lanval’s detriment, whilst Queen Isolde’s power to decide whether to heal Tristan puts her in control of his life.

Secondly, the women are empowered by their beauty, which they use to influence the men around them. Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken write that “beauty functions…as the visible signifier of a cluster of noble qualities…and courtly accomplishments” (60); therefore, to be beautiful also means to be viewed as deserving respect. Lanval’s fairy mistress silently commands respect when she arrives at court, “There was no one in the town…who did not watch her arrival, and no one jested about her beauty” (Marie 80), whilst hyperbole is used when Isolde the Fair is respected for her unparalleled looks, “none was born, nor ever will be, so enchanting and exquisite” (Gottfried 150). The beauty of Isolde and the fairy mistress has a weakening effect on men, which allows the women a sense of superiority. Upon first sight, Lanval “saw that [the fairy] was beautiful. Love's spark pricked him so that his heart was set alight” (Marie 74). The verb “pricked” suggests the agonising desire that the fairy inspires through her appearance, whilst Lanval’s “heart” being “set alight” invokes the consuming power of her beauty. Isolde similarly affects men, “she set the man on fire with the charm of the woman’s form” (Gottfried 273). Her “charm” harks back to the power she holds as a woman with magical healing abilities, inherited from her mother. Her beauty parallels her mother’s magic in that it can be used to influence men. “Isolde robbed many a man of his very self” (Gottfried 185), implying that her beauty has mind-altering powers, leaving men weakened or unable to do anything but think of her. Tristan, for example, was consumed by her beauty, speaking about her so often that Mark became “obsessed with her” (Gottfried 183), and would not marry anyone but Isolde. Moreover, she is described as a “Siren” (Gottfried 148), conveying a dangerous nature to her beauty. Like Tryamour, whose magical power allows her to provide for and punish men, Isolde’s power of beauty leaves men feeling lovesick and weak.

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She “took thoughts prisoner suddenly, and…fettered them with desire” (Gottfried 148), implying a tyrannical control over men, thus portraying her beauty as empowering.

Alternatively, although Isolde’s beauty is powerful, she is not in control of this power, but completely passive in how it influences people. Rasmussen makes a similar point arguing that Isolde’s beauty “is made visible in her quite apart from her own self-knowledge … Isolde is not the agent of this force . . . but rather its . . . vessel” (151). For example, tales of her beauty make her sought after by Mark, for whom she must leave her home and family to marry. She complains “I have no idea what fate I have been sold into, nor what is going to become of me!”

(Gottfried 193), emphasising her feelings of helplessness. The verb “sold” (Gottfried 193) objectifies her, suggesting that she knows her beauty results in her being treated as a possession rather than someone with autonomy.

In contrast, “[b]y reappropriating their bodies for their own purposes,” Tryamour and Lanval’s fairy mistress” defy the colonising power of the male gaze” (Leet 79) suggesting that they use the power of their beauty to achieve what they desire. Elizabeth Leet writes that “[s]he is objectified and powerful, consumed by voyeurs…to accomplish her goal of freeing Lanval” (77). Whereas “Isolde is not the agent of this force” (Rasmussen 151), Tryamour/the fairy mistress is powerful enough to utilise the male gaze. “Sche hadde a crounne upon her molde/ Of ryche stones, and of golde, / That lofsom lemede lyght.” (Chestre l. 940-3). By dressing in an extravagant way and choosing jewels that shone, Tryamour makes herself a spectacle that demands admiration. In Marie’s version, “[h]er side, though, was uncovered, as well as her face, neck and breast” (74) portraying the fairy as sexualising herself to gain favour with the mortal she has chosen. She styles herself in a way that will achieve her desires, hence her beauty empowers her.

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Thirdly, the women must be considered powerful since they invert power dynamics based on gender binaries, to an extent. Rasmussen writes that “[i]n Gottfried’s world, men occupy all positions of political, social, and economic power, and ideal masculinity is associated with agency” (138). Women, therefore, are viewed as the fairer sex, and have limited influence in court or the household. Combatting “the dominant mediaeval ideology of feminine passivity and weakness” (Rasmussen 137), the women discussed in this essay have more autonomy and influence than would be expected. For example, Queen Isolde is a consistently strong and forceful character; she argues with the steward who wishes to marry Isolde the Fair, “[h]ere she takes after me: I never loved you either” (Gottfried 172). The Queen is willing to defend her daughter at the risk of offending a man, demonstrating her as being, as Rosmarie Thee Morewedge argues, “the embodiment of matriarchal power” (318). Isolde the Fair is also portrayed as inverting the idea of feminine passivity and male dominance when she expresses her autonomy and refuses to marry the steward: “I shall take my own life before he has his pleasure of me!” (Gottfried 163). This hyperbolic statement demonstrates that, although women typically have little power in making decisions about marriage, Isolde still retains the freedom to enact the most extreme method of avoidance, suicide, to prevent a man from possessing her. This bold threat is a testament to her determination to preserve her autonomy.

Furthermore, Isolde’s frustration at male behaviour continues, as depicted through her hatred of Tristan. She threatens to kill him, calling him a “dead man” (Gottfried 175), and when she decides against murder, she still maintains that she “hate[s]” and “detest[s]” (Gottfried 193) him. Her inclination towards violence inverts the idea of female subjectivity and for once puts a male character in a vulnerable position. As Albrecht Classen argues, Isolde “[defies] the traditional concept of the helpless damsel in distress who entirely depends on her male lover” (100); her willingness to challenge men demonstrates that she does not need rescuing.

Alternatively, Isolde’s inversion of power dynamics is limited in that her decision not to kill 38

Tristan, since he is able to persuade her (Rabine 61). This is a turning point, after which she becomes less of an argumentative figure and is instead controlled by love.

Also challenging power dynamics is Dame Tryamour/Lanval’s fairy mistress, who also inverts the idea that women must play the damsel in distress role that preserves male dominance. In the Lanval corpus, there is not a damsel in distress but a knight in distress. “A marginalized, spurned knight…attacked as a homosexual” (Whalen 69) is rescued by a wealthy fairy who reverses his fortunes. Tryamour must “rebuild her knight from the ground up” (Vines 127), suggesting that it is a man rather than a woman who is weak, hence inverting expected power dynamics. Unlike Isolde the Fair, the fairy mistress does not need to use violence to ensure her power over men; her presence alone does so. Leet writes that “[t]he fairy mistress acts as a knight…her bold arrival [at court] expresses both her wealth and autonomy” (78); the fact that “the king could not retain her” (Marie 81) when she decides to leave emphasises that men are unable to influence her and instead she has complete liberation. Furthermore, as Lanval’s patron she takes on the “responsibility of providing for and protecting her lover, a responsibility that is normally seen as part of the masculine role” (Guy-Bray 38). Her promise to Launfal, “Ryche I wyll make the” (Chestre, l. 398), depicts her as the more powerful party in the relationship. Her power feminises Lanval, who in return promises “I shall do as you bid” (Marie 74), portraying him as devoted and obedient, two characteristics typically associated with women. Kinoshita and McCracken note that in Marie’s version, despite previously being referred to as knight, “Lanval is suddenly reduced to the status of a “young man”” (63) when he rides away on the back of the fairy’s horse; he loses his status as a knight by lowering himself to the typically feminine role of passivity. Conversely, Tryamour’s role as patron could be viewed as supporting usual power dynamics, in that her “apparent function is to validate knightly endeavours . . . [to] enable the pursuit of chivalric masculinity” (Larrington 270). In supporting Launfal, she arguably does not use her autonomy for her own good, but uses it to 39

assist men, reinforcing the biblical idea that women exist to serve and provide companionship for men. (Genesis 2:18) However, the fact that she has autonomy, regardless of how she uses it, inverts ideas about power dynamics, since she holds more influence than her male counterpart.

Queen Isolde, Isolde the Fair and Dame Tryamour/Lanval’s fairy mistress each hold more power than was expected of women at a time of unquestioned male supremacy. Through their magical abilities and extreme beauty, they overturn patriarchal power dynamics. The women’s magical abilities allow them to exist somewhat outside of gender roles, since they do not need to rely on men for their wealth. This is apparent in the case of both Tryamour/the fairy mistress and Queen Isolde as their capacity for magic enables them to hold power unavailable to men. Holding power greater than the male characters poses them as a threat to the patriarchal narrative that women are subordinate. Their beauty increases their control; like their magic, it grants them respect, and as desirable women they command the attention of men. Moreover, through lust, male characters are weakened, and they consequently adhere to the women’s requests, for example Lanval promises to obey his mistress to retain her love. As Leet writes, Tryamour makes greater use of her beauty, exploiting the male gaze and using her body to achieve what she desires (77-9); whereas Isolde is passive in using her beauty. Although it has power over men, she is not powerful enough to use it to her advantage, as Rasmussen argues (151). Combined, the women’s magic and beauty provide them with enough power to invert power dynamics expected in a patriarchal world. Arguably, they each take on masculine tropes: Queen Isolde uses wit and intelligence to defend herself, Isolde reverts to violence, and Tryamour provides wealth and security for her lover. Whereas the two Isoldes are still subject to their society’s patriarchal rule, Tryamour/the fairy mistress is most secure in her position of power; as an otherworldly being with otherworldly beauty, her power goes unchallenged by men.

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Bibliography Chestre, Thomas. “Sir Launfal” The Middle English Breton Lays. Edited by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury. Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages, Medieval Institute Publications,

1995,

Kalamazoo,

Michigan.

Available

from:

https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/laskaya-and-salisbury-middle-english-breton-lays-sirlaunfal. (Accessed 06/01/2022.)

Clason, Christopher R. "The Magic of Love: Queen Isolde, the Magician Clinschor, and “Seeing” in Gottfried’s Tristan and Wolfram’s Parzival". Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time: The Occult in Pre-Modern Sciences, Medicine, Literature, Religion, and Astrology, edited by Albrecht Classen, De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 291-314.

Classen, Albrecht. "Chapter Two. Women Speak up at the Medieval Court: Gender Roles and Public Influence in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Isolde". The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures: New Approaches to German and European Women Writers and to Violence Against Women in Premodern Times, De Gruyter, 2012, pp. 69-104.

“Genesis

2:18.”

NIV

Bible

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YouVersion,

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GB/bible/111/GEN.2.NIV. (Accessed 04/04/2022) Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan. Translated by A.T. Hatto. Penguin Classics, 1967.

Guy-Bray, Stephen. “Male Trouble: Sir Launfal and the Trials of Masculinity” English Studies in Canada, vol. 34, Iss. 2/3, ESC: English Studies in Canada, 2008, Edmonton, pp.31-48, Kinoshita, Sharon, and Peggy McCracken. Marie de France: a Critical Companion, Boydell & Brewer, Limited, 2012.

Larrington, Carolyne. "Gender/Queer Studies". Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur's Court in Medieval European Literature, edited by Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen, De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 259-272.

Leet, Elizabeth S. “Objectification, Empowerment, and the Male Gaze in the Lanval Corpus.”

Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 42, no. 1, 2016, pp. 75–87, Marie de France, “Lanval”, The Lais of Marie de France. Edited by G. Burgess and K. Busby.

Penguin, 1986.

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Morewedge, Rosmarie Thee. "Magical Gifts in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan und Isolde and the Rejection of Magic". Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time: The Occult in Pre-Modern Sciences, Medicine, Literature, Religion, and Astrology, edited by Albrecht Classen. De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 315-336.

Rabine, Leslie W. “Love and the New Patriarchy: Tristan and Isolde” Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook, Edited by Joan Tasker Grimbert, Routledge, 2002, New York, pp.37-75.

Rasmussen, Ann Marie. “The Female Figures in Gottfried’s Tristan and Isolde” A Companion to Gottfried Von Strassburg's Tristan, edited by Will Hasty, Boydell & Brewer, 2002, pp.137158.

Vines, Amy N. “Introduction” and “4 - Creative Revisions: Competing Figures of the Patroness in Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal”, Women's Power in Late Medieval Romance. Boydell & Brewer, 2011, pp. 1-16, 115-140.

Whalen, Logan. A Companion to Marie de France. BRILL, 2011.

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-5Modernity and its Negotiation of Money: A Comparative Essay Between Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929)

By Lori Palmer-Tulley

Undoubtedly, the 20th century’s approach to war, social freedom and political emancipation was characterised by the capitalist centralization of money and economic power. For Brecht, capitalist preoccupation with war as a business and method of control was historically, and especially from his position in Germany during the Second World War, an aspect of modernity that had a corruptive impact both on society and the individual. Likewise, Woolf indicates the necessity of money for women’s social and political liberation in modernity, highlighting its inherent power to either emancipate or become a tool of oppressive capitalist patriarchy. This essay will focus on Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children and Virginia Woolf’s novel A Room of One’s Own and argue that both texts demonstrate the stakes and repercussions of capitalist modernity by examining the social influence that money holds and modernity’s use of money as a means of control, before then navigating the texts’ dealings with the alienating qualities of modernity. Lastly, this essay will analyse the ways in which both texts critique this necessity through a social lens, disrupting the idea of money’s essentiality in social function so that the authors encourage change in their respective audience’s attitudes towards capitalist modernity will be analysed.

Both texts demonstrate money’s intertwined ties between social control and economic control. In Mother Courage and Her Children, Brecht highlights constant war as a mechanism

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of control through its business with people and products, demonstrated through the actions and language of Mother Courage. Mother Courage exemplifies the contradictions that allow capitalist control throughout the play, notably when she finds her daughter Kattrin with a pair of a prostitute’s shoes, explaining that “She’s wrecking herself for money. That’s understandable. But you’d do it for nothing, for pleasure (…) You’re not to start exhibiting yourself until peacetime” (Brecht 32). This prospect of freedom during peacetime is then completely contradicted throughout the play, as Courage and many others stress the absolute necessity of war as a means of social order and economic gain (Brecht 3, 9). This contradiction a state of constant war with the prospect of a future peacetime as the ideal condition for capitalist control for Brecht, as it controls both Mother Courage’s economic dependence on war, thus furthering its conditions, as well as her actions towards her daughter in denying her sexual freedom, thereby also having an impact on the social. Mahmoud Daram further substantiates this interpretation, arguing that Mother Courage “does not experience herself as the active bearer of her power, but as an impoverished commodity. She maintains a way of profit to provide a way for herself and her children’s consumption” (37). Daram highlights that whilst Mother Courage herself can be read to embody the immoral and exploitative values of capitalist modernity, ultimately it is impossible for her not to suffer from the same system as she loses her children to war.

Similarly, Woolf outlines the cyclical control of money and thus power within modernity, demonstrating its effects on women’s writing and emancipation. Woolf highlights the systematic deprivation of women’s social and political freedom by firstly demonstrating that for upper-class boys’ schools, “money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and nobles” (6) so that “[h]is was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor” (26). Woolf’s anaphoric repetition of ‘and’ in both the above quotes deliberately creates a chant-like rhythm, emulating the cyclical nature 44

of money and power within modernity, further exemplifying its control over the literary and publishing industry. Specifically for Woolf, this rhythm also reflects the struggle for women writers alienated from this power, where comparatively “to endow a (women’s) college would necessitate the suppression of families together” (16-17). In this way, Woolf connects the cyclical control of money amongst elite men to the cycle of social expectations and domesticity especially for women, therefore demonstrating that for women to write within capitalist patriarchy she “must have money and a room of her own” (1). Furthermore, Laura Marcus corroborates this idea, arguing that when Woolf claims that her possession of £500 was of more importance to her than the vote. This was because, for Woolf, the vote did not “change the deep-seated psychological motives underlying masculine authoritarianism and women’s collusion with their disempowerment” (Marcus 42). As such, Marcus indicates that for Woolf, money’s ability to give women freedom through financial independence enables a breakdown of capitalist patriarchy’s economic and social control.

Both texts communicate the effect of alienation from others, one’s own body and one’s own mind due to the necessity of money for survival within modernity. Brecht’s use of dramaturgy with Mother Courage’s cart highlights the ways in which her fixation on business disconnects her from her relationships and moral and social functions. Whilst in the beginning of the play her two sons draw the cart and Mother Courage vocalises to the soldier “[y]ours is no trade for my kids” (7), both sons eventually become involved in the war and thus we see the stage directions “Mother Courage and Kattrin are pulling the cart” (Brecht 59) by the middle of the play. Therefore, the development of which characters are pulling the cart throughout the play communicates Mother Courage’s collapsing morality due to her necessity for money in wartime, thereby alienating her from her children and thus her own fundamental values. In this way, this alienation also extends to the physical exhaustion of her and her daughter now having to carry the cart across Europe themselves. Moreover, Brecht demonstrates Mother Courage’s 45

further disconnection and alienation from her own sense of sympathy and thus connection to others. As Yvette talks to Courage about her deceased husband, Courage responds “[t]hat old fellow what nearly bought the cart?”, adding, “[t]hen you’re sitting pretty. Nice to find somebody what’s made it in this war” (Brecht 67). Despite the sensitive topic, the only ways in which Mother Courage can relate to the conversation is in terms of financial gain, commodifying a deceased man instead of consoling Yvette’s loss. Daram uses the Marxist idea of alienation to analyse this scene, arguing that capitalist demand for labour causes corruption of social bonds and alienation from one’s own mind and body due to physical exhaustion. As such, Mother Courage “fails to support her children financially because of a sociopsychological state defined by Marx as “alienation”” (Daram 30), demonstrating not only Brecht’s critique of the disconnectedness of capitalist modernity but also the tragic social consequences produced due to modernity’s prioritisation of continuous economic growth.

Likewise, Woolf navigates the power of space as a tool against women’s physical and mental alienation from traditionally masculine spaces. Woolf highlights the spatial politics of owning property when she writes “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in” (18). The inherent connection between freedom and space emphasises the power dynamics at play in access to money, where women are more limited to the domestic space due to lack of financial means to own property. Moreover, Robin Solomon furthers the idea that for Woolf, the room for women is freedom from the alienating effects of capitalist modernity, as with “[c]ontrol over ‘space,’ over ‘rooms,’ over property in a capitalist society” inevitably comes “control over time as well” (333). The idea of freeing up time as a resistance to modernity’s alienation, or otherwise what Woolf prioritises as “leisure”, as Sheheryar B. Sheikh argues (19), is sustained through Woolf’s detailing of her aunt’s inheritance. Woolf highlights that money has such an impact that “not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness” (30). In this way, Woolf emphasises not only the 46

physical, spatial importance of the room but also the ways in which it provides a mental reconnection for women, allowing them to resist alienation from spaces of power and authoritative masculinity.

Lastly, both texts negotiate society’s attitudes towards capitalist modernity’s status quos, stimulating change in the pre-formed nature of their audience and readers’ views of the present. Brecht’s modernist techniques such as fragmentation and interruption enable him to highlight the conditions of modernity allowing the reality of constant war and societal attitudes towards the necessity of war and economic growth. Robert Leach argues that Brecht’s epic theatre utilises a clashing of techniques so that he can better represent reality and thus the conditions of modernity, where “the technique of interrupting is active and interventionist” (130-131). Notably, Leach highlights an example of the chaotic reality of war that is communicated through interruption Gestus, where Kattrin’s drumming on a roof of a building interrupts the soldiers, who then interrupt Kattrin by firing a musket (130). Similarly, Brecht uses interruption when Courage blocks Kattrin from using her linen to help peasants in a shotup village, which is interrupted by Kattrin threatening Courage with a plank, then interrupted by the Chaplain tearing up the shirts to use for the peasants and Kattrin rescuing a baby that had been trapped inside a ruined house (48-49). Courage’s reluctance to aid the civilians in the aftermath of war prompts the courageous Gestus of Kattrin and the Chaplain, further helping the audience to comprehend modernity’s corrupt values. Moreover, Brecht conveys society’s values of courage comparatively to the acts of Kattrin and the Chaplain, where the audience reflect in this moment that Mother Courage was named such as she almost died to save money she would earn from bread, seeing as she was “scared of going broke” (5). Comparatively to Mother Courage’s demonstration of modernity’s protection of the economic, Kattrin’s Gestus indicates the action of reconnection of social bonds and community, resisting the prioritisation of the individual. Similarly, Woolf encapsulates the struggle for women writers to succeed 47

through techniques of interruption, using the text itself as an example of the potential for women’s writing under modernity. Woolf disrupts conventional essay form, beginning with her conclusion that women need money and space to write, stating that she will “give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions” (1-2). In this way, Woolf encourages her readers to consider the ways in which she came to her points rather than the points themselves, emphasising her techniques of montage and interruption to demonstrate the process and struggle of coming to her thesis and the text itself. Woolf’s inclusion of Tennyson’s poetry demonstrates male apprehension towards an incoming female presence, such as in the lines “The red rose cries ‘she is near, she is near’” (8). Woolf’s hybridity of form through this inclusion of poetry allows for a fragmentation of structure, highlighting the difficulties for women in achieving a career in writing or a career generally due to male authoritarianism and the societal fear of the nuclear family’s collapse. Wendy Gan corroborates this interpretation, arguing that “A Room of One’s Own is a text interested in process, not product” (77), thereby highlighting Woolf’s emphasis on process as a tool to encourage other women to find the space to liberate themselves in modernity after evaluating Woolf’s successful example.

In conclusion, this essay has argued that both texts critique modernity’s centralization of money for power and survival firstly by navigating control of social relations and cyclical power, then assessing how these values are critiqued in the texts for producing feelings of disconnectedness and alienation within modern society. Both texts establish an activist stance on modernity’s reality, encouraging their audience and readers to resist limitations imposed by capitalist modernity and patriarchy. However, this essay makes the distinction between Woolf, who encourages women to work within modernity and capitalism to liberate themselves, and Brecht, who fully condemns the exploitative nature of capitalist modernity and stresses a reconnection of social bonds. This point of comparison is particularly significant in establishing modern literature’s capabilities in critiquing an exploitative system, potentially opening wider 48

conversation into the limitations of writing that is produced under the same modern system it endeavours to critique.

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Bibliography Blau, Herbert. “Brecht's ‘Mother Courage’: The Rite of War and the Rhythm of Epic.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1957, pp. 1–10.

Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and Her Children. Edited by Hugh Rorrison, Translated by John Willet. Methuen Drama, 1983.

Daram, Mahmoud. “Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children: Marxist Concept of Alienation.” International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 2014, pp. 30-39.

Gan, Wendy. “Solitude and Community: Virginia Woolf, Spatial Privacy and A Room of One’s Own.” Literature & History, vol. 18, no. 1, May 2009, pp. 68–80.

Leach, Robert. “Mother Courage and Her Children.” The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 128–138.

Marcus, Laura. “Women and Writing: A Room of One’s Own.” Virginia Woolf. Liverpool University Press, 2004, pp.41-60.

Sheikh, Sheheryar B. “The Walls that Emancipate: Disambiguation of the “Room” in A Room of One’s Own.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 42 no.1, Indiana University Press, 2018, pp.19-31.

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