Daniel Defoe presents the theme of morality viz. the use of adventure, comedy, and grave sincerity in his novel Moll Flanders. The topic is supported by the obligation of choice(s) he places his protagonist into throughout the novel. A closer reading of Defoe’s Moll Flanders also presents a blame shifting on that original creature, namely man- whereby:
A Woman’s ne’er ruin’d but she can
Revenge herself on her undoer, Man.
What follows is a closer look at the subject of morality with a focus on the state of man, whereby the term man is gender universal, not gender specific; hence, the inclusion of both sexes lends credibility to the novel not in spite of their separate titration.
Defoe was an educated man well aware of the philosophers of his time. One such noted philosopher was John Locke. In Moll Flanders Defoe presents a story, if not a tale, of morality whereby a woman’s attempt at rising above her plight and whorish slander results in her depravity. Locke observed, in his Of the State of Nature, that man exists in a “state of freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit…without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man”. Defoe presents, to a degree, his protagonist in this light. However, Molly Flanders is a character bent on successive vices and does depend on the male figure, like a predator nibbling on its prey, all the while wishing it back to health. The adventures and several copulating events in her life place her readily with the tag name of whore, but she is no murderer. Is she then with morals or is she without? Locke further expounds upon the state of man by stating “though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license”. Molly Flanders steals gold necklaces from young children, in dark alley ways- while sending the child back to its mother with wiser judgment. Defoe presents his protagonist with justified transgressions that temper on morality, but with each added vice can be viewed as repugnant. How? The state of morality is constantly broken, then “repaired” throughout the novel at the expense of the male figurehead.
Molly Flanders exists in a circumlocutory battle consisting of pro morality and quasi morality. Defoe and Locke agree, to an extent, on the subject of morality, the former in its exploitation and the latter in its limitation. This tension is what sets the novel Moll Flanders into the high fantastical state of mollifying morality in man viz. adventure, comedy, and grave sincerity.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Oroonoko Criticism
Anita Pacheco begins her article entitled-“Royalism and honor in Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko” with a plea to her audience. Though the work of Behn is quite historical in nature it is intended by Pacheco to be viewed as a focus on royal ideology; the text is presented as a “royal disruptive text”. Pacheco goes to great lengths to display the ostensible disunity paralleled by Behn’s “Oroonoko” and England during 1688. Though Pacheco engages into specific examples of “honor discourses”, which undermine the royal ideal, there seems to be a significant example lacking that proves to sustain her points, earlier discussed in a summary on her article. The subject of honor and the old king seems to support Pacheco’s earlier position of undermining agents usurping and degrading honor and the royal line. This example will be used as an analysis or commentary to Pacheco’s point on royalism and honor.
The royal line is one that comes by noble birth and Pacheco agrees that the noble are rich in honor for they are its possessors. However, what she does not mention is that evil exists even in the royal line, and as such can potentially damage and ruin honor and nobility. Aphra Behn paints a good picture of the aforementioned disruption to royalism in the following text:
And while he was so doing, he had intelligence brought him, that Imoinda was most certainly mistress to the Prince Oroonoko. This gave him some chagrin; however, it gave him also an opportunity, one day, when the prince was a-hunting, to wait on a man of quality, as his slave and attendant, who should go and make a present to Imoinda, as from the prince; he should then, unknown see this fair maid, and have an opportunity to hear what message she would return the prince for his present…The old monarch saw, and burnt; he found her all he had heard, and would not delay his happiness but found he should have some obstacle to overcome her heart (ppg. 84).
The king took report of Imoinda’s beauty and still lusted after her even though he knew she belonged to Oroonoko. The king, prior to sending for the royal veil, reasoned within himself that “what love would not oblige Imoinda to do, duty would compel her to”. Pacheco does not make mention of this example in her article though it does support her point- those that injure Oroonoko do so unto his demise and their gain; also, royalism is undermined by honorable discourses. Again, she states “evil men may violate this order, but they cannot…destroy it”. The order, according to Pacheco, describes the legitimacy of the royal line and the subsequent honor bestowed upon such authority. The king did not show honor in spite of his blood line, though he did amend his feelings in the end and acknowledged his transgression:
He believed now, that his love had been unjust, and he could not expect the gods, or Captain of the Clouds (as they call the unknown power) should suffer a better consequence from so ill a cause. He now begins to hold Oroonoko excused… (ppg.96).
The king has repented, though honor has been lost and distrust- found, has crept within his heart. This example seems to uphold Pacheco’s compound definition of honor; those in favor for it and those who oppose it. Pacheco’s article presents a myriad of examples surrounding honor as a disclaimer to royalism and the blurred imagery of Behn’s characters. The king was honorable at one point, but turned dishonorable and “fearful” of the one character that epitomizes nobility, or the “royal everyman”. It would seem that not even the blood-line was enough to ensure true nobility and/or honor.
Anita Pacheco ends her article with the words-“in 1688, honor and the aristocracy were far from moribund, but the kind of upper class sectionalism that Oroonoko ostensibly advocates was becoming increasingly anachronistic”. Again, she states-“the line between heroes and villains is blurred, and the royal slave becomes at once a martyr and a dangerous rebel”. Oroonoko is the premier example of honor and royalty, yet Behn chooses to sacrifice her protagonist on the basis that he represents all that is right or good in the Eurocentric African. Pacheco mentions in her article that he is not part of “that gloomy race”, and as such is the one to suffer the most. Again, his honor is always in jeopardy because it is being violated by the “others” who do not posses his stature, nor recognize the greatness of his divinity. Pacheco’s article allowed for a more analytical reading of Behn’s novella, and it is because of this reading that the one example of the king’s dishonor was mentioned. His dishonor proved as much an oxymoron as Behn’s second title of her novella, “Or the Royal Slave”; both prove the lines to be blurred and support a royal disruption in the fullest sense.
The royal line is one that comes by noble birth and Pacheco agrees that the noble are rich in honor for they are its possessors. However, what she does not mention is that evil exists even in the royal line, and as such can potentially damage and ruin honor and nobility. Aphra Behn paints a good picture of the aforementioned disruption to royalism in the following text:
And while he was so doing, he had intelligence brought him, that Imoinda was most certainly mistress to the Prince Oroonoko. This gave him some chagrin; however, it gave him also an opportunity, one day, when the prince was a-hunting, to wait on a man of quality, as his slave and attendant, who should go and make a present to Imoinda, as from the prince; he should then, unknown see this fair maid, and have an opportunity to hear what message she would return the prince for his present…The old monarch saw, and burnt; he found her all he had heard, and would not delay his happiness but found he should have some obstacle to overcome her heart (ppg. 84).
The king took report of Imoinda’s beauty and still lusted after her even though he knew she belonged to Oroonoko. The king, prior to sending for the royal veil, reasoned within himself that “what love would not oblige Imoinda to do, duty would compel her to”. Pacheco does not make mention of this example in her article though it does support her point- those that injure Oroonoko do so unto his demise and their gain; also, royalism is undermined by honorable discourses. Again, she states “evil men may violate this order, but they cannot…destroy it”. The order, according to Pacheco, describes the legitimacy of the royal line and the subsequent honor bestowed upon such authority. The king did not show honor in spite of his blood line, though he did amend his feelings in the end and acknowledged his transgression:
He believed now, that his love had been unjust, and he could not expect the gods, or Captain of the Clouds (as they call the unknown power) should suffer a better consequence from so ill a cause. He now begins to hold Oroonoko excused… (ppg.96).
The king has repented, though honor has been lost and distrust- found, has crept within his heart. This example seems to uphold Pacheco’s compound definition of honor; those in favor for it and those who oppose it. Pacheco’s article presents a myriad of examples surrounding honor as a disclaimer to royalism and the blurred imagery of Behn’s characters. The king was honorable at one point, but turned dishonorable and “fearful” of the one character that epitomizes nobility, or the “royal everyman”. It would seem that not even the blood-line was enough to ensure true nobility and/or honor.
Anita Pacheco ends her article with the words-“in 1688, honor and the aristocracy were far from moribund, but the kind of upper class sectionalism that Oroonoko ostensibly advocates was becoming increasingly anachronistic”. Again, she states-“the line between heroes and villains is blurred, and the royal slave becomes at once a martyr and a dangerous rebel”. Oroonoko is the premier example of honor and royalty, yet Behn chooses to sacrifice her protagonist on the basis that he represents all that is right or good in the Eurocentric African. Pacheco mentions in her article that he is not part of “that gloomy race”, and as such is the one to suffer the most. Again, his honor is always in jeopardy because it is being violated by the “others” who do not posses his stature, nor recognize the greatness of his divinity. Pacheco’s article allowed for a more analytical reading of Behn’s novella, and it is because of this reading that the one example of the king’s dishonor was mentioned. His dishonor proved as much an oxymoron as Behn’s second title of her novella, “Or the Royal Slave”; both prove the lines to be blurred and support a royal disruption in the fullest sense.
Blake’s Rhetoric in the Ascension Of Oothonian Meditation
Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary music for mortal ears.
-Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
William Blake has been described as a mystic, whose works are both eclectic and syncretic. Blake, an inspiration to Shelley and others, according to Sanders’ Short Oxford History of English Literature (SOHEL), gathered from such “literary sources and inspiration from the Bible and the Bible-derived epic structures of Dante and Milton” (352) in order to perform his Blake-like rhetoric. Moreover, it is Blake’s view on the world and creation of other worlds that allows for such inspiration to flourish. For example, “Blake sees Heaven as forming part of a framework which must emerge with the creative energy of Hell rather than stand in opposition to it” (353).
Blake’s non-traditional and unconventional rhetoric stretches the boundary line regarding sexuality and to a lesser extent morality. In his Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake presents a raped woman in a man’s world. This world views women as property. Blake’s heroine must rethink her position and combat against the masculine idea that once raped, the woman is no longer of much worth. In this world a body violated, yields a tensioned mind, wherein the label of harlot ensues. Oothon fights this idea and presents with her fight a new motive to exist utilizing the separation of the body from the mind. This rethinking of Oothon, because of her rape experience, matures her into a more refined, stronger character. As one author noted, Oothon’s experience displays a “violence,” which “has revealed her inner purity and implicitly rejects conventional notions about how rape defiles the victim” (227).
If in conjunction with this radical idea of inner purity, revelation exists in the implication that “thinking sex beyond morality,” and that this thinking is suggestively possible; then, within the scope of this essay, an answer to such an implication regarding the role of sexuality, existing within a moral setting, can be analyzed and addressed. Again, are the world that Blake creates moral and its creatures responsible to such an existing code of behavior? Oothon in her determination to exist outside of conventional, moral views held by a masculine world will attempt to justify her sweeping notion that though she “trembled in…virgin fears / And hid” (Plate iii: 3-4) she clearly is a more exposed and possibly advanced individual regarding the thoughts of sex after so brutal an act as rape. Thereby, in responding to her own condition, she obstinately believes she holds value and can worthily command to all, “Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!” (Plate 8:10).
The introduction and description of the rape brings to mind a painful reminder of the act itself. Oothon opens Visions with a description of “the terrible thunders” which “tore” her “virgin mantle in twain” (Plate iii: 7-8). The terrible thunders are a great description of power and noise that attempt to both prophesy and fulfill the rape to come by the villain Bromion. Moreover, Blake prepares the rape victim, as possessing “the soft soul of America, Oothon” (Plate 1:3). Blake creatively names Bromion, which means ‘roarer’ or ‘thunderer’ in Greek as the rapist. Additionally, this description, at full-tilt, is described as “Bromion rent her with his thunders. On his stormy bed/ Lay the faint maid, and soon her woes apalld his thunders hoarse” (Plate 1: 16-17). Clearly, the position of Bromion is one of rapist, but also one of conqueror.
As conqueror Bromion proudly stamps himself upon his conquests. The first words from Bromion, over the “woes” of Oothon, are “Behold this harlot here on Bromion’s bed” (Plate 1:18) and again toward Theotormon, “Now thou maist marry Bromion’s harlot, and protect the child/ Of Bromion’s rage” (Plate 2: 1-2). Alongside the description of rapist, Bromion suggestively exists as a powerful representation of a territorial marker. Blake to continue the metaphor of Bromion’s presence continues to mention his thunders and storms, particularly as Bromion addresses Theotormon. Blake, as a narrator-type, notes, “Then the storms rent Theotormon’s limbs;” (Plate 2:3). Theotormon’s response betrays his resolve as he “sits wearing the threshold hard / With secret tears” (Plate 2:6-7).
Blake presents the act of rape and the response by both men, but in analyzing both masculine roles, notable interest in the victim resurfaces and realignment upon Oothon, yields anything but a true, raped victim. Oothon’s response is troubling for it is counter-conventional. The narrator simply states “Oothon weeps not: she cannot weep! Her tears are locked up;” (Plate 2:11). Oothon’s repression leads to two main conjectures.
First, as a raped victim she represses her pain and quickly looks to realign her position. She cries, “I call with holy voice!” (Plate 2:14). Clearly, the verbal choice of “holy” can steer the reader into two sub-conjectures as to Oothon’s motivation for the term’s use. One, she is in denial and attempting to rise above her condition. Two, she acknowledges her condition and seeks to live outside of it, thereby rebelling against conventional, masculine norms. The latter absolves the former in support of the first conjecture.
Second, Oothon, in not weeping, still considers herself pure and therefore exists outside the world Theotormon and Bromion would have her reside in. The world of the marked and labeled victim. Oothon acknowledges her pain and though her tears are locked up “she can howl incessant, writhing her soft snowy limbs / And calling Theotormon’s Eagle’s to prey upon her flesh” (Plate 2: 12-13). This blatant disregard for her body suggests she finds value elsewhere. Recall, that Oothon believes it is her body that has been violated, not her true, inner person which bears the image of Theotormon. In calling out with a “holy voice” she cries out to justify her existence and purity in spite of Bromion’s conquest and Theotormon’s inability to understand Oothon’s attempts to remain valuable in lieu of bodily violation (as will be noted hereafter).
The idea of purity arising from within rather than existing from without challenges the masculine notion that a raped and broken maidenhead reflects a frail and equally broken person.
Oothon, of course opposes this notion vehemently. Bromion seems to have acted out of motives that proved desultory and angry, rather than motivated acts of lust and base horniness. Oothon then cries out to her only hope for understanding of her situation. She cries, “Rend away this defiled bosom that I may reflect / The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast” (Plate 2: 15-16). This declaration by Oothon begins her ascent toward liberation from the conventional view regarding the state of the fallen or ruined, which results after Bromion’s encounter.
The bosom is made of flesh and has been violated, therefore proving to be defiled. This defilement of the flesh proves to hold no more merit than mere exterior casement protecting what Oothon considers to be purity underneath. Clearly then Oothon’s plea resonates with justification that her heart, a tangible inner purity organ, and her love for Theotormon, an intangible feeling existing within her “pure transparent breast” (Plate 2:16) are higher and more valuable images regarding her person.
Later, where Theotormon cannot rise above the physical act of Oothon’s rape, he attempts a thinking discourse involving himself, Bromion, and Oothon. However, it is Oothon that has decided to move on and declares pleadingly for Theotormon to do the same as she cries, “My Theotormon, I am pure” (Plate 2:28). This purity is what then leads Oothon to think outside of her masculine ideal of falleness and spoil, thereby creating a different response to her present world.
Out of the physical act of rape Oothon creates a world where she is still viable and holy. She begins to express ideas of sexuality rising above Urizen’s world, including thinking beyond Urizen-like moral codes. Those that inhabit Urizen’s world never leave it unless they utilize the medium of thought, which Oothon suggests breeds holy change and justifies true existence. Oothon has gained a new insight on life and existence, and begins to act upon those ideas that will propel her there amidst accusations to those who do not wish it. Boldly, she declares, “They told me that night & day were all that I could see; / They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.” (Plate 2:30-31). She concludes her accusations at regarding limited thinking with a question aimed at Theotormon (and possibly toward Blake’s readership also). Oothon mentions, “How can I be defiled when I reflect thy image pure?” (Plate 3:16). Theotormon cannot raise himself beyond the physical realm and when he attempts to think himself beyond the rape he cannot. Therefore he has no answer for Oothon.
Moreover, Theotormon falls short and questions the viability of thought, suggesting perhaps that he has no confidence in the act of thinking and reflexively, no faith in Oothon herself. Theotormon begins with:
Tell me what is the night or day to one o’erflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? And upon what mountains
Wave shadows of discontent? And in what houses dwell the
Wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten and shut up from cold despair? (Plate 3:22-25; 4:1-2)
Such a line of questioning again finds its pin point motive in the main question-“Tell me what is a thought?” Theotormon’s inability to answer his own questions reflects the absence of his sagacity, and ultimately his unbelief of rising above Urizen’s moral code.
Clearly then, he must exist within the framework of Urizen’s code, because Bromion does. The code states when raped, the woman is then nothing more than useless property and little more than whore. This tormenting code hinders Theotormon’s ascent toward, what Blake may be insinuating is the Enlightened thinker. It seems then that Bromion is closer than Theotormon in getting to this Enlightenment thinking, but it is Oothon that arrives there for sure.
Theotormon whose name implies the torment of God in the Greek lives up to his eponymous disposition. He cannot rise above the rape of Oothon and therefore is dismantled from existing in a peaceful manner. In contrast, Bromion perhaps exists in the gap between Theotormon and Oothon. His descriptions of an unseen world raise possibilities, yet he does not fulfill what they may be, leaving his hearers in derision. Bromion hopelessly comments, “Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; / But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth / To gratify senses unknown?” (Plate 4:13-15).
Arguably, the answer for Theotormon may prove to be a resounding “No!” and for Oothon it may exist as an even deeper “Yes!” This is what she has been accusing against and championing for since Plate 2! To her these senses exist in the power of thought. Thereby, creating a world within a world. It is this new creation that allows Oothon to raise herself beyond the present rules and moral codes existing in the world of Urizen.
Blake’s characters are centered on his creative mental powers that form a new beginning within his existing, present world. Aesthetically then “the multiplicity of echoes enriches his poetry and gives it the semblance of antiquity even greater than the earliest Hebrew, Greek, and Celtic texts, as though Blake was attempting to recreate the original culture from which all others had descended.” What Blake seemingly creates is paralleled in the mental maturation of Oothon, and to a lesser extent in the hinted “unseen” of Bromion.
Consequently, Theotormon is the only person unable to understand or comprehend even the thought of “thinking” outside the conventional box. In this case the box is the world of Urizen, which Oothon defiantly mentions as a creation from the “mistaken Demon of heaven” (Plate 4:3). Still, only Oothon gets it and moves beyond Urizen’s realm.
If Oothon and Bromion seem to be the closest mentally and this closeness parallels their previous sexual union, then perhaps Theotormon, who has not had the pleasure of Oothon’s body, will never be able to understand Oothon nor her radical thoughts on inner purity. Furthermore, can such a disparity reveal Oothon’s re-creation of sexuality and morality? Possibly. If by definition morality can be applied to that person who must abide by a certain set of codes of conduct that have been labeled against a standard, and that standard exists as a property of goodness, which then in Blake’s poem fits this classification profile?
In establishing Oothon as a thinker outside of conventional ruin the remainder of the analysis inevitably points toward both Bromion, the rapist, and Theotormon, the affected.
Bromion is proud of his rape-act because he has stamped his signet with the seamen of his anger upon Oothon. Recall, that it was Bromion who had to justify his action by underscoring Oothon’s value. He states, “Behold this harlot here on Bomion’s bed” (Plate 1:18). Why harlot? Why not call her woman? Bromion is valuing himself and devaluing Oothon by placing himself as conqueror. Earlier in this essay this point was alluded to. The motive? In a phrase, “Bromion’s rage.” (Plate 2:2). There exists no proof for lust as a motive, and arguably control is the power expressed though not entirely obtained. Why? This level of power is limited to those existing within the realm of Urizen. Therefore, Oothon, by projecting her thinking outside of sexual moral codes found within the Urizenian realm, she abides elsewhere. She then is freer than either Bromion, the marker, or Theotormon, her weak-minded beau.
Furthermore, the reader notices a Theotormon who is less manly as he is described as “wearing the threshold hard” (Plate 2:6) amidst his “secret tears” (Plate 2:7). Theotormon knows that what Bromion has done is at one level thievery and at another level flexed power. Both abide in the ruse of immorality.
Threotormon senses his world already torn apart because Bromion has impregnated his fiancé. Even if he could get over the rape, “the child/ Of Bromion’s rage,” will still be born “in nine moons’ time” (Plate 2:1-2). The child then will represent Bromion’s act over and over again to the mind of Theotormon. He cannot escape his world and its labels. This is something that Theotormon is not willing to do, and as such Oothon, looking for comfort from her beau, cannot find it in the realm of Urizen. Again, Oothon seeks this comfort in the cloudy heights of thought above. Likewise, this thought rises outside and above Urizen’s moral, earthly code and everything attached to it, like sex. Therefore, Oothon is willing to try the voyage every day she lives with her wombish reminder.
Final thoughts about Oothon’s attempt to rise beyond the moral code of sexuality on the wings and speed of thought include her speeches of defiance. It is these speeches that culminate with Oothon’s greatest words as she states, “Arise you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! / Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!” (Plate 8:9-10). Oothon in declaring her purity angelically, though defiantly, remarks that, “Oothon is not so; a virgin fill’d with fancies / Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears.” (Plate 6:21-22). In doing so she takes up the stamping and third-person rhetoric that Bromion wielded earlier in the poem. This again alludes to her ascension and re-creation of her person. Does she then cease from the masculine and enter into the masculine? Possibly, though the more insightful claim is still Oothon’s attempt to rise above her condition.
Oothon is willing to look into the natural things in order to discover the realms and worlds that Bromion can only hint at and Theotormon cannot possibly believe. In the end, it is Oothon who is remembered, as from her beginning, as existing in the living that “everything that lives is holy!” She included.
-Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
William Blake has been described as a mystic, whose works are both eclectic and syncretic. Blake, an inspiration to Shelley and others, according to Sanders’ Short Oxford History of English Literature (SOHEL), gathered from such “literary sources and inspiration from the Bible and the Bible-derived epic structures of Dante and Milton” (352) in order to perform his Blake-like rhetoric. Moreover, it is Blake’s view on the world and creation of other worlds that allows for such inspiration to flourish. For example, “Blake sees Heaven as forming part of a framework which must emerge with the creative energy of Hell rather than stand in opposition to it” (353).
Blake’s non-traditional and unconventional rhetoric stretches the boundary line regarding sexuality and to a lesser extent morality. In his Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake presents a raped woman in a man’s world. This world views women as property. Blake’s heroine must rethink her position and combat against the masculine idea that once raped, the woman is no longer of much worth. In this world a body violated, yields a tensioned mind, wherein the label of harlot ensues. Oothon fights this idea and presents with her fight a new motive to exist utilizing the separation of the body from the mind. This rethinking of Oothon, because of her rape experience, matures her into a more refined, stronger character. As one author noted, Oothon’s experience displays a “violence,” which “has revealed her inner purity and implicitly rejects conventional notions about how rape defiles the victim” (227).
If in conjunction with this radical idea of inner purity, revelation exists in the implication that “thinking sex beyond morality,” and that this thinking is suggestively possible; then, within the scope of this essay, an answer to such an implication regarding the role of sexuality, existing within a moral setting, can be analyzed and addressed. Again, are the world that Blake creates moral and its creatures responsible to such an existing code of behavior? Oothon in her determination to exist outside of conventional, moral views held by a masculine world will attempt to justify her sweeping notion that though she “trembled in…virgin fears / And hid” (Plate iii: 3-4) she clearly is a more exposed and possibly advanced individual regarding the thoughts of sex after so brutal an act as rape. Thereby, in responding to her own condition, she obstinately believes she holds value and can worthily command to all, “Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!” (Plate 8:10).
The introduction and description of the rape brings to mind a painful reminder of the act itself. Oothon opens Visions with a description of “the terrible thunders” which “tore” her “virgin mantle in twain” (Plate iii: 7-8). The terrible thunders are a great description of power and noise that attempt to both prophesy and fulfill the rape to come by the villain Bromion. Moreover, Blake prepares the rape victim, as possessing “the soft soul of America, Oothon” (Plate 1:3). Blake creatively names Bromion, which means ‘roarer’ or ‘thunderer’ in Greek as the rapist. Additionally, this description, at full-tilt, is described as “Bromion rent her with his thunders. On his stormy bed/ Lay the faint maid, and soon her woes apalld his thunders hoarse” (Plate 1: 16-17). Clearly, the position of Bromion is one of rapist, but also one of conqueror.
As conqueror Bromion proudly stamps himself upon his conquests. The first words from Bromion, over the “woes” of Oothon, are “Behold this harlot here on Bromion’s bed” (Plate 1:18) and again toward Theotormon, “Now thou maist marry Bromion’s harlot, and protect the child/ Of Bromion’s rage” (Plate 2: 1-2). Alongside the description of rapist, Bromion suggestively exists as a powerful representation of a territorial marker. Blake to continue the metaphor of Bromion’s presence continues to mention his thunders and storms, particularly as Bromion addresses Theotormon. Blake, as a narrator-type, notes, “Then the storms rent Theotormon’s limbs;” (Plate 2:3). Theotormon’s response betrays his resolve as he “sits wearing the threshold hard / With secret tears” (Plate 2:6-7).
Blake presents the act of rape and the response by both men, but in analyzing both masculine roles, notable interest in the victim resurfaces and realignment upon Oothon, yields anything but a true, raped victim. Oothon’s response is troubling for it is counter-conventional. The narrator simply states “Oothon weeps not: she cannot weep! Her tears are locked up;” (Plate 2:11). Oothon’s repression leads to two main conjectures.
First, as a raped victim she represses her pain and quickly looks to realign her position. She cries, “I call with holy voice!” (Plate 2:14). Clearly, the verbal choice of “holy” can steer the reader into two sub-conjectures as to Oothon’s motivation for the term’s use. One, she is in denial and attempting to rise above her condition. Two, she acknowledges her condition and seeks to live outside of it, thereby rebelling against conventional, masculine norms. The latter absolves the former in support of the first conjecture.
Second, Oothon, in not weeping, still considers herself pure and therefore exists outside the world Theotormon and Bromion would have her reside in. The world of the marked and labeled victim. Oothon acknowledges her pain and though her tears are locked up “she can howl incessant, writhing her soft snowy limbs / And calling Theotormon’s Eagle’s to prey upon her flesh” (Plate 2: 12-13). This blatant disregard for her body suggests she finds value elsewhere. Recall, that Oothon believes it is her body that has been violated, not her true, inner person which bears the image of Theotormon. In calling out with a “holy voice” she cries out to justify her existence and purity in spite of Bromion’s conquest and Theotormon’s inability to understand Oothon’s attempts to remain valuable in lieu of bodily violation (as will be noted hereafter).
The idea of purity arising from within rather than existing from without challenges the masculine notion that a raped and broken maidenhead reflects a frail and equally broken person.
Oothon, of course opposes this notion vehemently. Bromion seems to have acted out of motives that proved desultory and angry, rather than motivated acts of lust and base horniness. Oothon then cries out to her only hope for understanding of her situation. She cries, “Rend away this defiled bosom that I may reflect / The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast” (Plate 2: 15-16). This declaration by Oothon begins her ascent toward liberation from the conventional view regarding the state of the fallen or ruined, which results after Bromion’s encounter.
The bosom is made of flesh and has been violated, therefore proving to be defiled. This defilement of the flesh proves to hold no more merit than mere exterior casement protecting what Oothon considers to be purity underneath. Clearly then Oothon’s plea resonates with justification that her heart, a tangible inner purity organ, and her love for Theotormon, an intangible feeling existing within her “pure transparent breast” (Plate 2:16) are higher and more valuable images regarding her person.
Later, where Theotormon cannot rise above the physical act of Oothon’s rape, he attempts a thinking discourse involving himself, Bromion, and Oothon. However, it is Oothon that has decided to move on and declares pleadingly for Theotormon to do the same as she cries, “My Theotormon, I am pure” (Plate 2:28). This purity is what then leads Oothon to think outside of her masculine ideal of falleness and spoil, thereby creating a different response to her present world.
Out of the physical act of rape Oothon creates a world where she is still viable and holy. She begins to express ideas of sexuality rising above Urizen’s world, including thinking beyond Urizen-like moral codes. Those that inhabit Urizen’s world never leave it unless they utilize the medium of thought, which Oothon suggests breeds holy change and justifies true existence. Oothon has gained a new insight on life and existence, and begins to act upon those ideas that will propel her there amidst accusations to those who do not wish it. Boldly, she declares, “They told me that night & day were all that I could see; / They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.” (Plate 2:30-31). She concludes her accusations at regarding limited thinking with a question aimed at Theotormon (and possibly toward Blake’s readership also). Oothon mentions, “How can I be defiled when I reflect thy image pure?” (Plate 3:16). Theotormon cannot raise himself beyond the physical realm and when he attempts to think himself beyond the rape he cannot. Therefore he has no answer for Oothon.
Moreover, Theotormon falls short and questions the viability of thought, suggesting perhaps that he has no confidence in the act of thinking and reflexively, no faith in Oothon herself. Theotormon begins with:
Tell me what is the night or day to one o’erflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? And upon what mountains
Wave shadows of discontent? And in what houses dwell the
Wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten and shut up from cold despair? (Plate 3:22-25; 4:1-2)
Such a line of questioning again finds its pin point motive in the main question-“Tell me what is a thought?” Theotormon’s inability to answer his own questions reflects the absence of his sagacity, and ultimately his unbelief of rising above Urizen’s moral code.
Clearly then, he must exist within the framework of Urizen’s code, because Bromion does. The code states when raped, the woman is then nothing more than useless property and little more than whore. This tormenting code hinders Theotormon’s ascent toward, what Blake may be insinuating is the Enlightened thinker. It seems then that Bromion is closer than Theotormon in getting to this Enlightenment thinking, but it is Oothon that arrives there for sure.
Theotormon whose name implies the torment of God in the Greek lives up to his eponymous disposition. He cannot rise above the rape of Oothon and therefore is dismantled from existing in a peaceful manner. In contrast, Bromion perhaps exists in the gap between Theotormon and Oothon. His descriptions of an unseen world raise possibilities, yet he does not fulfill what they may be, leaving his hearers in derision. Bromion hopelessly comments, “Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; / But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth / To gratify senses unknown?” (Plate 4:13-15).
Arguably, the answer for Theotormon may prove to be a resounding “No!” and for Oothon it may exist as an even deeper “Yes!” This is what she has been accusing against and championing for since Plate 2! To her these senses exist in the power of thought. Thereby, creating a world within a world. It is this new creation that allows Oothon to raise herself beyond the present rules and moral codes existing in the world of Urizen.
Blake’s characters are centered on his creative mental powers that form a new beginning within his existing, present world. Aesthetically then “the multiplicity of echoes enriches his poetry and gives it the semblance of antiquity even greater than the earliest Hebrew, Greek, and Celtic texts, as though Blake was attempting to recreate the original culture from which all others had descended.” What Blake seemingly creates is paralleled in the mental maturation of Oothon, and to a lesser extent in the hinted “unseen” of Bromion.
Consequently, Theotormon is the only person unable to understand or comprehend even the thought of “thinking” outside the conventional box. In this case the box is the world of Urizen, which Oothon defiantly mentions as a creation from the “mistaken Demon of heaven” (Plate 4:3). Still, only Oothon gets it and moves beyond Urizen’s realm.
If Oothon and Bromion seem to be the closest mentally and this closeness parallels their previous sexual union, then perhaps Theotormon, who has not had the pleasure of Oothon’s body, will never be able to understand Oothon nor her radical thoughts on inner purity. Furthermore, can such a disparity reveal Oothon’s re-creation of sexuality and morality? Possibly. If by definition morality can be applied to that person who must abide by a certain set of codes of conduct that have been labeled against a standard, and that standard exists as a property of goodness, which then in Blake’s poem fits this classification profile?
In establishing Oothon as a thinker outside of conventional ruin the remainder of the analysis inevitably points toward both Bromion, the rapist, and Theotormon, the affected.
Bromion is proud of his rape-act because he has stamped his signet with the seamen of his anger upon Oothon. Recall, that it was Bromion who had to justify his action by underscoring Oothon’s value. He states, “Behold this harlot here on Bomion’s bed” (Plate 1:18). Why harlot? Why not call her woman? Bromion is valuing himself and devaluing Oothon by placing himself as conqueror. Earlier in this essay this point was alluded to. The motive? In a phrase, “Bromion’s rage.” (Plate 2:2). There exists no proof for lust as a motive, and arguably control is the power expressed though not entirely obtained. Why? This level of power is limited to those existing within the realm of Urizen. Therefore, Oothon, by projecting her thinking outside of sexual moral codes found within the Urizenian realm, she abides elsewhere. She then is freer than either Bromion, the marker, or Theotormon, her weak-minded beau.
Furthermore, the reader notices a Theotormon who is less manly as he is described as “wearing the threshold hard” (Plate 2:6) amidst his “secret tears” (Plate 2:7). Theotormon knows that what Bromion has done is at one level thievery and at another level flexed power. Both abide in the ruse of immorality.
Threotormon senses his world already torn apart because Bromion has impregnated his fiancé. Even if he could get over the rape, “the child/ Of Bromion’s rage,” will still be born “in nine moons’ time” (Plate 2:1-2). The child then will represent Bromion’s act over and over again to the mind of Theotormon. He cannot escape his world and its labels. This is something that Theotormon is not willing to do, and as such Oothon, looking for comfort from her beau, cannot find it in the realm of Urizen. Again, Oothon seeks this comfort in the cloudy heights of thought above. Likewise, this thought rises outside and above Urizen’s moral, earthly code and everything attached to it, like sex. Therefore, Oothon is willing to try the voyage every day she lives with her wombish reminder.
Final thoughts about Oothon’s attempt to rise beyond the moral code of sexuality on the wings and speed of thought include her speeches of defiance. It is these speeches that culminate with Oothon’s greatest words as she states, “Arise you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! / Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!” (Plate 8:9-10). Oothon in declaring her purity angelically, though defiantly, remarks that, “Oothon is not so; a virgin fill’d with fancies / Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears.” (Plate 6:21-22). In doing so she takes up the stamping and third-person rhetoric that Bromion wielded earlier in the poem. This again alludes to her ascension and re-creation of her person. Does she then cease from the masculine and enter into the masculine? Possibly, though the more insightful claim is still Oothon’s attempt to rise above her condition.
Oothon is willing to look into the natural things in order to discover the realms and worlds that Bromion can only hint at and Theotormon cannot possibly believe. In the end, it is Oothon who is remembered, as from her beginning, as existing in the living that “everything that lives is holy!” She included.
Essay on Success, Attempted, In English 310 B
Combine your patience, empow’r it with wit;
Dress’d be your grace, reason-the Architect.
What follows will temper your opinion,
English and Arch’s expos’d sin.
Gather your books, shoulder your response,
Justify pride, educate your guess;
Unveil the pit of intellect proper,
Adjust your seat, recline with bias’d laughter.
Let your expression allow sagacity,
Heed the poetic dead! Give pausity,
Listen to Swift, Pope, temper their uneven march,
Gather your notes, while ye may, petal’d, by Arch.
Here time, is Lord, Arch its viceroy,
Govern’d by-laws, showing leniency.
Grades, like true grapes, multi-sweet are giv’n,
Marks, a coat-of-arms, their role like Riven ,
Some gathered, pressed, and squeezed into mold;
If one, in imitation, exploits their world,
Condem’d the plagiarized offender.
Quit! Liken’d voices, cry- “Surrender”.
Finis
Dress’d be your grace, reason-the Architect.
What follows will temper your opinion,
English and Arch’s expos’d sin.
Gather your books, shoulder your response,
Justify pride, educate your guess;
Unveil the pit of intellect proper,
Adjust your seat, recline with bias’d laughter.
Let your expression allow sagacity,
Heed the poetic dead! Give pausity,
Listen to Swift, Pope, temper their uneven march,
Gather your notes, while ye may, petal’d, by Arch.
Here time, is Lord, Arch its viceroy,
Govern’d by-laws, showing leniency.
Grades, like true grapes, multi-sweet are giv’n,
Marks, a coat-of-arms, their role like Riven ,
Some gathered, pressed, and squeezed into mold;
If one, in imitation, exploits their world,
Condem’d the plagiarized offender.
Quit! Liken’d voices, cry- “Surrender”.
Finis
One Lady’s Fanny: A Discourse of Intercourse
Foucault’s declaration that, “power is not held, it is exercised” can be utilized as a link into the regulation of sex as an act and the discussion of the incitement of sex as seen in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Moreover, this “incitement to discourse” by Foucault and his analysis present parallel streams in Memoirs that may suggest illumination of a codified language, censorship, regulation of sex as taboo, the power dynamic and more. Cleland’s novel can be analyzed through the philosophical lens of Foucault and further establish an interpretation of the role of sex, power, dialogue and a discourse of the meaning of sexuality. Furthermore, the public sphere that exists in Cleland’s Memoirs presents a dichotomy on the view of morality through the acceptance and condemnation of sexuality.
John Cleland presents a young woman and pits her in a world of sex where the body is recognized not as the carrier of future progeny, but the free cell of exploration and harbinger of pleasure. In a scene with Phoebe, Fanny Hill is chastised for attempting to cover up her body in what seemingly is an act of modesty on her part. Phoebe, in Foucaultian terms, cries “No! you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me, my sight must be feasted as well as my touch” (Memoirs 12). The act of cover up is closely linked to Foucault’s idea of repression of sex and the body. In The History of Sexuality, “Discourse, therefore, had to trace the meeting line of the body and the soul…” (20). What Phoebe observes with her eyes is repressed by Fanny and recorded by Cleland. Cleland, in writing Memoirs deprecates his work as “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried and forgot”. The author is clearly doing something here by mentioning it pains him to defend a work, even to his Soul. However, he is also driven to express his work. Under such compulsion, Cleland presents a work with Foucauldian implications on repression and the novel as sexual discourse. Through creative venues Cleland describes much of the body, the acts of the body, the differences of sexual orientation, and it is suggested that he does this using codified expressions. His rhetoric is censored even though he blatantly describes sexual encounter.
In order to contain and corral the subject of sex Cleland applies creative rhetoric that is codified “in order to gain mastery over it in reality” (History 17). Cleland does not exhibit the vulgar without the ambiguities of rhetorical “cover up”; his descriptions are poetic justifications to a rather taboo topic during the 18th c. Although Cleland was writing during the 18th c. Foucault recalls that “the seventeenth century, then, was the beginning of an age of repression” (17). Examples of Cleland’s poetic justifications and need for expression is carried out throughout the descriptions of sex and the body under the motive of discovery. Fanny recalls Phoebe’s sexual touch as “her fingers play’d, and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament” (11). Why did Cleland not simply mention something along the lines of “Phoebe put her fingers inside of my cunt and made me hot”? There is something occurring here with language. Sex is subjected to language as Foucault mentions, but moreover creative language is pulling double-duty in the arena of cover-up and repression. Cleland will not express the sex act or its discourse outside of a creative rhetoric. He describes male genitalia as having “that store bag of nature’s prime sweets”; “that conduit-pipe”; “tender globular reservoirs” (83). Again, he utilizes Fanny as his agent of creative expression. She notices Mrs. Brown’s vagina and describes it as “the whole greasy lanskip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouthed gap, overshadowed with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision” (24). This description is poetic in its use of the female body’s genitalia and the metaphor of the wallet. Cleland is clearly utilizing a technique, which recognizes sex as taboo and covers it up, or represses it with a codification of language to describe it. By mentioning sex in this vein, he incites his readership, members of the public sphere. It is important to note that Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” and the variant discourses of sex move beyond Cleland’s poetic discourse of sex. Though Foucault notices, “there was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex,” Cleland’s Memoirs included, he progresses from this increase in “illicit” discourses and examines the climb “concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself” (18). The subject of power then is subject to examination in conjunction with the subjugation of sex. This subjugation is what links Cleland’s Memoirs to a further analysis of the power dynamic.
Foucault affirms that “power is not held, it is exercised.” According to this affirmation power is not merely contained, but by noticing its exchanges one can then analyze its implications. Foucault describes power through sex, “An institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail” (18). What followed from this proliferation was the repressive mechanism of discretion. Discretion working alongside taboo became censorship. Foucault continues with, “rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties of the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse” (34). Cleland’s protagonist exists within this “incitement to discourse” and her account speaks volumes to the reader beginning with the subject of power. Fanny Hill is without power at the beginning of the novel. When Fanny runs away with her Adonis, Charles, power transfers from Mrs. Brown. This reiterates the power dynamic that power cannot be contained, but exercised. The placement of sex throughout the novel continues to be exercised even though ownership has been transferred. Moreover, in exercising sex you transfer power, and as such both sex and power can be described as being more than “held” regardless of its morbid attempts at sexual agitation. In fact, because of this exercise of sex and power many, according to Foucault, “since the eighteenth century […] has not ceased to provoke a kind of generalized discursive erethism” (32). Cleland knows and uses his discourse to play into the morose descriptions of such sexual agitations described by the various partners of sex his protagonist encounters. For instance, when Mr. Barville applies the whip to Fanny’s body in order to produce sensation a number of allusions to Foucault are possible. These exist as power being transferred, discursive erethism utilized, and sex is not only produced, but exercised and experienced. Fanny Hill experiences her body, her sex, and even her minimal shifts from the power exchange; i.e. Mrs. Brown thru Charles thru Mrs. Cole and back to Charles. It can be analyzed then that Fanny’s experiences, according to Foucault, do “not multiply apart from or against power, but in the very space and as the means of its exercise” (32). Power is indeed a dynamic displayed time and time again throughout Cleland’s Memoirs.
The meaning of morality and sex exists in the agency of the public sphere. Foucault mentions the need for “A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses” (25). Sex existing as secret only exists to break free and proliferate to the outskirts of containment. Sex must therefore be addressed in a discursive method that does not bring about its incitement. Foucault suggests confession. Taking Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” beside Cleland’s Memoirs suggests a need for regulation in order to justify its placement to morality. Moral thinking during the 18th c. was still disposed to keeping sex as a subject of secrecy and as Foucault mentions “confession”. However, because authors like Cleland took to describing the sex act this too required a “policing” effort. No more so than its author disclaiming his disdain for the work. Again, he expresses his disposition by mentioning his soul. He claims that he had written, “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried, and forgot”. Well, the problem is that it was not buried and forgot! In fact, it became arguably “the most famous erotic novel in English”. Why? The author wrote about sex, thereby inciting its discourse; the public that shunned the book incited its discourse; the public that condemned the discourse of sex betrayed their affinity to talk about it, describe it, condemn it, and ultimately shun it; the moral sphere repressed it, but needed to confess it. This dialectic is what I believed Cleland utilized in writing his Memoirs. Cleland, by expressing in writing, a secret topic, exposed it for what it was, an agency for public discourse (sex, that is, not his novel).
The novel is simply a medium or for lack of a better term, a tool, to incite. The subject of sex in being repressed allowed for escape via a readership that Cleland was sure to know existed. The society of Mrs. Brown, Fanny Hill, Charles, Phoebe, and others, though fictional, exist as a possible by product of a repressed society. What society? A society existing in the novel that possibly mirrored its audience (readership). Does that mean that someone had to write about it? Not necessarily, but then another genre would have arisen accounting for sex much like the modern executive does at the water-cooler. Perhaps then sex must be discoursed, though it is being discussed. Foucault, I believe states it best:
What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret. (35)
This need of the public sphere to exploit and incessantly chat about sex proves their willingness to produce a typology for the “sex talk,” or better-stated “incitement of [sexual] discourse”.
Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure utilizes his sexual puppet Fanny Hill to express his incitement to an 18th c. public sphere, and by so doing justifies his codified rhetoric as analyzed alongside Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. The result suggests that morality is both existent and condemned in the agency of the public realm.
John Cleland presents a young woman and pits her in a world of sex where the body is recognized not as the carrier of future progeny, but the free cell of exploration and harbinger of pleasure. In a scene with Phoebe, Fanny Hill is chastised for attempting to cover up her body in what seemingly is an act of modesty on her part. Phoebe, in Foucaultian terms, cries “No! you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me, my sight must be feasted as well as my touch” (Memoirs 12). The act of cover up is closely linked to Foucault’s idea of repression of sex and the body. In The History of Sexuality, “Discourse, therefore, had to trace the meeting line of the body and the soul…” (20). What Phoebe observes with her eyes is repressed by Fanny and recorded by Cleland. Cleland, in writing Memoirs deprecates his work as “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried and forgot”. The author is clearly doing something here by mentioning it pains him to defend a work, even to his Soul. However, he is also driven to express his work. Under such compulsion, Cleland presents a work with Foucauldian implications on repression and the novel as sexual discourse. Through creative venues Cleland describes much of the body, the acts of the body, the differences of sexual orientation, and it is suggested that he does this using codified expressions. His rhetoric is censored even though he blatantly describes sexual encounter.
In order to contain and corral the subject of sex Cleland applies creative rhetoric that is codified “in order to gain mastery over it in reality” (History 17). Cleland does not exhibit the vulgar without the ambiguities of rhetorical “cover up”; his descriptions are poetic justifications to a rather taboo topic during the 18th c. Although Cleland was writing during the 18th c. Foucault recalls that “the seventeenth century, then, was the beginning of an age of repression” (17). Examples of Cleland’s poetic justifications and need for expression is carried out throughout the descriptions of sex and the body under the motive of discovery. Fanny recalls Phoebe’s sexual touch as “her fingers play’d, and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament” (11). Why did Cleland not simply mention something along the lines of “Phoebe put her fingers inside of my cunt and made me hot”? There is something occurring here with language. Sex is subjected to language as Foucault mentions, but moreover creative language is pulling double-duty in the arena of cover-up and repression. Cleland will not express the sex act or its discourse outside of a creative rhetoric. He describes male genitalia as having “that store bag of nature’s prime sweets”; “that conduit-pipe”; “tender globular reservoirs” (83). Again, he utilizes Fanny as his agent of creative expression. She notices Mrs. Brown’s vagina and describes it as “the whole greasy lanskip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouthed gap, overshadowed with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision” (24). This description is poetic in its use of the female body’s genitalia and the metaphor of the wallet. Cleland is clearly utilizing a technique, which recognizes sex as taboo and covers it up, or represses it with a codification of language to describe it. By mentioning sex in this vein, he incites his readership, members of the public sphere. It is important to note that Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” and the variant discourses of sex move beyond Cleland’s poetic discourse of sex. Though Foucault notices, “there was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex,” Cleland’s Memoirs included, he progresses from this increase in “illicit” discourses and examines the climb “concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself” (18). The subject of power then is subject to examination in conjunction with the subjugation of sex. This subjugation is what links Cleland’s Memoirs to a further analysis of the power dynamic.
Foucault affirms that “power is not held, it is exercised.” According to this affirmation power is not merely contained, but by noticing its exchanges one can then analyze its implications. Foucault describes power through sex, “An institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail” (18). What followed from this proliferation was the repressive mechanism of discretion. Discretion working alongside taboo became censorship. Foucault continues with, “rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties of the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse” (34). Cleland’s protagonist exists within this “incitement to discourse” and her account speaks volumes to the reader beginning with the subject of power. Fanny Hill is without power at the beginning of the novel. When Fanny runs away with her Adonis, Charles, power transfers from Mrs. Brown. This reiterates the power dynamic that power cannot be contained, but exercised. The placement of sex throughout the novel continues to be exercised even though ownership has been transferred. Moreover, in exercising sex you transfer power, and as such both sex and power can be described as being more than “held” regardless of its morbid attempts at sexual agitation. In fact, because of this exercise of sex and power many, according to Foucault, “since the eighteenth century […] has not ceased to provoke a kind of generalized discursive erethism” (32). Cleland knows and uses his discourse to play into the morose descriptions of such sexual agitations described by the various partners of sex his protagonist encounters. For instance, when Mr. Barville applies the whip to Fanny’s body in order to produce sensation a number of allusions to Foucault are possible. These exist as power being transferred, discursive erethism utilized, and sex is not only produced, but exercised and experienced. Fanny Hill experiences her body, her sex, and even her minimal shifts from the power exchange; i.e. Mrs. Brown thru Charles thru Mrs. Cole and back to Charles. It can be analyzed then that Fanny’s experiences, according to Foucault, do “not multiply apart from or against power, but in the very space and as the means of its exercise” (32). Power is indeed a dynamic displayed time and time again throughout Cleland’s Memoirs.
The meaning of morality and sex exists in the agency of the public sphere. Foucault mentions the need for “A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses” (25). Sex existing as secret only exists to break free and proliferate to the outskirts of containment. Sex must therefore be addressed in a discursive method that does not bring about its incitement. Foucault suggests confession. Taking Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” beside Cleland’s Memoirs suggests a need for regulation in order to justify its placement to morality. Moral thinking during the 18th c. was still disposed to keeping sex as a subject of secrecy and as Foucault mentions “confession”. However, because authors like Cleland took to describing the sex act this too required a “policing” effort. No more so than its author disclaiming his disdain for the work. Again, he expresses his disposition by mentioning his soul. He claims that he had written, “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried, and forgot”. Well, the problem is that it was not buried and forgot! In fact, it became arguably “the most famous erotic novel in English”. Why? The author wrote about sex, thereby inciting its discourse; the public that shunned the book incited its discourse; the public that condemned the discourse of sex betrayed their affinity to talk about it, describe it, condemn it, and ultimately shun it; the moral sphere repressed it, but needed to confess it. This dialectic is what I believed Cleland utilized in writing his Memoirs. Cleland, by expressing in writing, a secret topic, exposed it for what it was, an agency for public discourse (sex, that is, not his novel).
The novel is simply a medium or for lack of a better term, a tool, to incite. The subject of sex in being repressed allowed for escape via a readership that Cleland was sure to know existed. The society of Mrs. Brown, Fanny Hill, Charles, Phoebe, and others, though fictional, exist as a possible by product of a repressed society. What society? A society existing in the novel that possibly mirrored its audience (readership). Does that mean that someone had to write about it? Not necessarily, but then another genre would have arisen accounting for sex much like the modern executive does at the water-cooler. Perhaps then sex must be discoursed, though it is being discussed. Foucault, I believe states it best:
What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret. (35)
This need of the public sphere to exploit and incessantly chat about sex proves their willingness to produce a typology for the “sex talk,” or better-stated “incitement of [sexual] discourse”.
Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure utilizes his sexual puppet Fanny Hill to express his incitement to an 18th c. public sphere, and by so doing justifies his codified rhetoric as analyzed alongside Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. The result suggests that morality is both existent and condemned in the agency of the public realm.
Frank Reflections on Specific Secondary Readings @ Michigan State University
In reflecting upon the secondary readings assigned to fulfill the honors option requirement at Michigan State University (MSU), I have chosen to comment upon the latter half of Foucault’s, The History of Sexuality, An Introduction: Volume I, Wendy Jones’s article, "Stories of Desire in the Monk," and Tilottama Rajan’s, Autonarration and Genotext in Mary Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney. The reflection commentary will begin in like order.
Michel Foucault’s second half of the History focuses on both the "Deployment of Sexuality" and the "Right of Death and Power over Life". The former chapter addresses Foucault’s attempt at further unmasking the historical significance of sex and what this type of discourse can explain and expose about a given society. He claims that sex, the entity is not hidden at all, but “shines forth; it is incandescent” (77). As we fast-forward toward sex existing in a binary system of licit and illicit forms Foucault draws attention to the fact that sex is then still “permitted and forbidden” (83). He continues to discuss the repressive spirit concerning sex and the movements that held a strong affinity toward its suppression. This suppression Foucault mentions to exist in the variant forms of institutions such as the Church and state powers that be. Through methods of fear for example, the Middle Ages were witnesses to “a multiplicity of prior powers, and to a certain extent in opposition to them” (86). Furthermore, these powers were, what Foucault notes, as “entangled, […] powers tied to the direct or indirect dominion over the land, to the possession of arms, to serfdom, to bonds of…vassalage” (86). Here, power is held in the arena of its superiors and fleshed out upon the backs of the inferior class. Something Foucault mentions time and time again. One imaginative quote that I inquired after was Foucault’s assertion that “We must at the same time conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king” (91) to which I responded, “Why not conceive of sex without power and law without the king?” However, as I pondered my question I realize how limited an audience this would ensnare leaving me still with much to be desired regarding the power dynamic and sex. Ultimately, every bit of sex is laced with power of some kind, and the level of sovereignty, existing more than just mere mercenary motivation(s), delivered more than a Robin Hood (In Tights no doubt) sensibility. One last point about Foucault is his point on the deployment of sexuality coinciding with the “archaeology of psychoanalysis” (130). This form or gathering of systems used to study the past of human life is firmly embedded into the rhetoric of the future, or what Foucault calls, the “general technology of sex” (130). This great technology seems to exist as a farce however because it still utilizes an ancient methodology to launch it, the discourse of confession. One final point that I must raise concerning Foucault’s History is his allusion or hinting at a “Lord” within the context of religious sentiment. It is unclear which “Lord” or God Foucault refers to, and though in past chapters he does mention the Middle Ages and the term Christian alongside Catholic rhetoric we can only assume he is referring to the Judeo-Christian Christ, or Lord, or God. This can be seen in his concluding, and in my opinion, highly-stimulating chapter regarding the right of death and power over life. He states, “Now it is over life…that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit…the most secret aspect of existence” (138). Foucault moreover, contemplates the subject of suicide in light of this power/control level. Though he refers to suicide as existing in the past as “once a crime” (138) as if it is no longer so. I find this a bit presumptuous on his end. He further acknowledges my earlier premise by stating suicide as a precursor to the 19th c. benchmark regarding sociological analysis. In short, suicide was “a way to usurp the power of death which the sovereign alone, whether the one here below or the Lord above, had the right to exercise” (138). These were the more interesting insights or reflections on Foucault toward the latter end of the History.
In Wendy Jones’s Stories she parallels the imbrication of desire and the subject of narrative in M.G. Lewis’s The Monk. Her thesis exists in three parts. First, she notes the frequent parallels of narrative and desire. Second, she notes how this narrative motif “forms the basis of its own narrative structure” (129). Last, theme and structure lead toward a social/political argument, namely “a defense of the concept of individual desire and of the right to articulate that desire in both speech and action” (129). Jones further applies her thesis outline to the interconnected love stories The Monk produces. These networked narratives exist in Raymond/Agnes, Lorenzo/Antonia, and of course in the complicated Ambrosio. The latter is involved in a triangular love affair with Matilda/Romario. Jones notes the binding motive force to be that “all aim at erotic fulfillment” (129). Jones furthermore makes her case regarding the point that narrative incites desire, well-placed or not. I did note a bit of a typo on her end as I was reading unless I misunderstood the context. It can be found as Jones is making her case for monastic vows of silence and chastity. She notes however, “they [monks, I presume] also insist on isolation from the outside word” (132). If on one level Jones means word, then her follow up comment that “telling is so important a part” would make some sense. I suggest that she creatively used the term word in place of world, though both would make sense. In my opinion "world" would have made more sense, but in order to tie in her point about narrative and incitement to discourse in light of monastic vows of silence it could very well be a metaphor for both; i.e., the world of the narrative exists within the world itself, and is both part and apart from it. Jones presents another interesting point about Ambrosio’s lack of a retrospective narrative. She states, “It is significant that Ambrosio is one of the few characters who does not tell a retrospective narrative; his view is always forward to the promise of a satisfaction that can never be his” (134). Arguably, one can note that this is clearly in line with Ambrosio’s upbringing, or lack thereof. This man of God is still a man after all as both Lewis and Jones note. In another passage Jones is quoted, to further cement her point on “forwarding,” as stating that it is “frustration” which “propels his [Ambrosio’s] narrative forward, although it appears ironically in the guise of fulfillment” (136). All this presents a rather frail casing of a man looking for purpose, and once a hunger for the needs of the flesh is unmasked, there is no satiety for the flesh. Jones’s views of honor and virginity and established maidenhead were all equivalent to a woman’s value and worth. Her remark that “Both elopement and sex before marriage, even between engaged couples, were transgressive according to sexual codes” (141) is reminiscent on one level as Foucault and to an equally opposite regard, Blake. My final thoughts surround Jones’s forewarning as I believe she addresses this age and not just remarks upon Lewis’s period narrative. She states, The Monk was thus inadvertently caught in a conflict that involved its own themes of individual desire and oppressive authority, ironically demonstrating just how timely and important these issues were for Lewis’s contemporary readers” (146). I agree though I dare add, “…and beyond”.
My final reflection involves Rajan’s Autonarration in which my discovery of the main point involved the defining of autonarration as “a (post)romantic intergenre…that locates ideology within a fictional rewriting of personal experience” (149). Rajan spends a considerable amount of time telling her readers the difference between autobiography and autonarration as well as self-narration. Her thesis is quite clear. She “argues for the importance of Hays’ novel to both the feminist and the romantic traditions, and in the process it tries to work out a phenomenology of autonarration” (150). It would then seem that Hays, in writing Memoirs, truly did utilize her letters of personal experience to weigh her character’s decisions and their perceptions of each other independent of outside human consciousness. In other words Augustus was created to shun the love of Emma regardless of Hays’s interference. This is where the term autonarration seems to fit in. It is picked up again with Emma’s desire to join the masculine society, and is described by Rajan, as “doubly negative, in the sense that it resists the symbolic order but is also at odds with itself” (155). Rajan makes further points on Hays’s use of Emma’s passion as “deeply rational” and that these passions “are not necessarily opposed” (157). I must admit I was lost in this article on several accounts. It proved to be the densest text read thus far, although I did enjoy one last point that Rajan makes. Rajan states that “Romantic writers are both subjects of desire and figures in their own texts” (159). Furthermore the desires that are unleashed are “desires” that “are textualized rather than literalized” (159). The difference? According to Rajan, is the level of involvement that creates categories of both “the transcendental ego” and “the historical subject” (159). It would seem then that autonarration would take up the latter view. Hays in writing her novel recorded her own history and colored the narrative portrait with colors of fiction. Once finished, her creation was less of herself, yet very much her person and in a sense proved less fiction and more real. This I believe is what Rajan means by her use of the term autonarration.
Combined, these three texts gave me a glimpse into the world of sex as power, sensuality as a form of sex, and the combination of the two existing in variant degrees through both my primary and secondary readings. Although, it was through Foucault that I learned the most about the sexual power dynamic and the institutions that still attempt its suppression.
Michel Foucault’s second half of the History focuses on both the "Deployment of Sexuality" and the "Right of Death and Power over Life". The former chapter addresses Foucault’s attempt at further unmasking the historical significance of sex and what this type of discourse can explain and expose about a given society. He claims that sex, the entity is not hidden at all, but “shines forth; it is incandescent” (77). As we fast-forward toward sex existing in a binary system of licit and illicit forms Foucault draws attention to the fact that sex is then still “permitted and forbidden” (83). He continues to discuss the repressive spirit concerning sex and the movements that held a strong affinity toward its suppression. This suppression Foucault mentions to exist in the variant forms of institutions such as the Church and state powers that be. Through methods of fear for example, the Middle Ages were witnesses to “a multiplicity of prior powers, and to a certain extent in opposition to them” (86). Furthermore, these powers were, what Foucault notes, as “entangled, […] powers tied to the direct or indirect dominion over the land, to the possession of arms, to serfdom, to bonds of…vassalage” (86). Here, power is held in the arena of its superiors and fleshed out upon the backs of the inferior class. Something Foucault mentions time and time again. One imaginative quote that I inquired after was Foucault’s assertion that “We must at the same time conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king” (91) to which I responded, “Why not conceive of sex without power and law without the king?” However, as I pondered my question I realize how limited an audience this would ensnare leaving me still with much to be desired regarding the power dynamic and sex. Ultimately, every bit of sex is laced with power of some kind, and the level of sovereignty, existing more than just mere mercenary motivation(s), delivered more than a Robin Hood (In Tights no doubt) sensibility. One last point about Foucault is his point on the deployment of sexuality coinciding with the “archaeology of psychoanalysis” (130). This form or gathering of systems used to study the past of human life is firmly embedded into the rhetoric of the future, or what Foucault calls, the “general technology of sex” (130). This great technology seems to exist as a farce however because it still utilizes an ancient methodology to launch it, the discourse of confession. One final point that I must raise concerning Foucault’s History is his allusion or hinting at a “Lord” within the context of religious sentiment. It is unclear which “Lord” or God Foucault refers to, and though in past chapters he does mention the Middle Ages and the term Christian alongside Catholic rhetoric we can only assume he is referring to the Judeo-Christian Christ, or Lord, or God. This can be seen in his concluding, and in my opinion, highly-stimulating chapter regarding the right of death and power over life. He states, “Now it is over life…that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit…the most secret aspect of existence” (138). Foucault moreover, contemplates the subject of suicide in light of this power/control level. Though he refers to suicide as existing in the past as “once a crime” (138) as if it is no longer so. I find this a bit presumptuous on his end. He further acknowledges my earlier premise by stating suicide as a precursor to the 19th c. benchmark regarding sociological analysis. In short, suicide was “a way to usurp the power of death which the sovereign alone, whether the one here below or the Lord above, had the right to exercise” (138). These were the more interesting insights or reflections on Foucault toward the latter end of the History.
In Wendy Jones’s Stories she parallels the imbrication of desire and the subject of narrative in M.G. Lewis’s The Monk. Her thesis exists in three parts. First, she notes the frequent parallels of narrative and desire. Second, she notes how this narrative motif “forms the basis of its own narrative structure” (129). Last, theme and structure lead toward a social/political argument, namely “a defense of the concept of individual desire and of the right to articulate that desire in both speech and action” (129). Jones further applies her thesis outline to the interconnected love stories The Monk produces. These networked narratives exist in Raymond/Agnes, Lorenzo/Antonia, and of course in the complicated Ambrosio. The latter is involved in a triangular love affair with Matilda/Romario. Jones notes the binding motive force to be that “all aim at erotic fulfillment” (129). Jones furthermore makes her case regarding the point that narrative incites desire, well-placed or not. I did note a bit of a typo on her end as I was reading unless I misunderstood the context. It can be found as Jones is making her case for monastic vows of silence and chastity. She notes however, “they [monks, I presume] also insist on isolation from the outside word” (132). If on one level Jones means word, then her follow up comment that “telling is so important a part” would make some sense. I suggest that she creatively used the term word in place of world, though both would make sense. In my opinion "world" would have made more sense, but in order to tie in her point about narrative and incitement to discourse in light of monastic vows of silence it could very well be a metaphor for both; i.e., the world of the narrative exists within the world itself, and is both part and apart from it. Jones presents another interesting point about Ambrosio’s lack of a retrospective narrative. She states, “It is significant that Ambrosio is one of the few characters who does not tell a retrospective narrative; his view is always forward to the promise of a satisfaction that can never be his” (134). Arguably, one can note that this is clearly in line with Ambrosio’s upbringing, or lack thereof. This man of God is still a man after all as both Lewis and Jones note. In another passage Jones is quoted, to further cement her point on “forwarding,” as stating that it is “frustration” which “propels his [Ambrosio’s] narrative forward, although it appears ironically in the guise of fulfillment” (136). All this presents a rather frail casing of a man looking for purpose, and once a hunger for the needs of the flesh is unmasked, there is no satiety for the flesh. Jones’s views of honor and virginity and established maidenhead were all equivalent to a woman’s value and worth. Her remark that “Both elopement and sex before marriage, even between engaged couples, were transgressive according to sexual codes” (141) is reminiscent on one level as Foucault and to an equally opposite regard, Blake. My final thoughts surround Jones’s forewarning as I believe she addresses this age and not just remarks upon Lewis’s period narrative. She states, The Monk was thus inadvertently caught in a conflict that involved its own themes of individual desire and oppressive authority, ironically demonstrating just how timely and important these issues were for Lewis’s contemporary readers” (146). I agree though I dare add, “…and beyond”.
My final reflection involves Rajan’s Autonarration in which my discovery of the main point involved the defining of autonarration as “a (post)romantic intergenre…that locates ideology within a fictional rewriting of personal experience” (149). Rajan spends a considerable amount of time telling her readers the difference between autobiography and autonarration as well as self-narration. Her thesis is quite clear. She “argues for the importance of Hays’ novel to both the feminist and the romantic traditions, and in the process it tries to work out a phenomenology of autonarration” (150). It would then seem that Hays, in writing Memoirs, truly did utilize her letters of personal experience to weigh her character’s decisions and their perceptions of each other independent of outside human consciousness. In other words Augustus was created to shun the love of Emma regardless of Hays’s interference. This is where the term autonarration seems to fit in. It is picked up again with Emma’s desire to join the masculine society, and is described by Rajan, as “doubly negative, in the sense that it resists the symbolic order but is also at odds with itself” (155). Rajan makes further points on Hays’s use of Emma’s passion as “deeply rational” and that these passions “are not necessarily opposed” (157). I must admit I was lost in this article on several accounts. It proved to be the densest text read thus far, although I did enjoy one last point that Rajan makes. Rajan states that “Romantic writers are both subjects of desire and figures in their own texts” (159). Furthermore the desires that are unleashed are “desires” that “are textualized rather than literalized” (159). The difference? According to Rajan, is the level of involvement that creates categories of both “the transcendental ego” and “the historical subject” (159). It would seem then that autonarration would take up the latter view. Hays in writing her novel recorded her own history and colored the narrative portrait with colors of fiction. Once finished, her creation was less of herself, yet very much her person and in a sense proved less fiction and more real. This I believe is what Rajan means by her use of the term autonarration.
Combined, these three texts gave me a glimpse into the world of sex as power, sensuality as a form of sex, and the combination of the two existing in variant degrees through both my primary and secondary readings. Although, it was through Foucault that I learned the most about the sexual power dynamic and the institutions that still attempt its suppression.
OED essay on culpable
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) proved to be a valuable resource with regards to the etymological study of the word culpable. There exist multiple word forms as well as a historical tracking of the word’s evolution. In this essay I will attempt to show the word’s derivation, it’s peculiar 18th c. meaning(s), its “lost”, rare or obsolete meaning(s), and finally how the word culpable is used by Frances Burney in the work, Evelina. I have attached a Xerox copy from the OED page tracking the word’s etymology to this essay.
The word culpable stems from both the Middle English (ME.) and Old French (OF.) word coupable and is given a Latinate (L.) meaning of guilty, or culpābil-is. The latter further developed to include such forms of definition such as blameworthy, or the feminine (f.) form of culpa, or fault, blame. The derivation of culpable itself spans from (by that of course meaning time of usage in a common setting) the 13th c. thru the 14th and even 16th c. The OED tracked its etymological beginnings from the OF. form which was “regularly reduced to coupable in [the] 13th c., but was frequently written culpable after L. in 14th c., [and] coulpable in 16th c. (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).” According to the OED it is the Latinized form that has had the most “staying” power, “established both in spelling and pronunciation (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).”
The OED cites two major definitions of the word culpable; i.e., in one case it is defined as “guilty, criminal; deserving of punishment or condemnation (OED, pg.118; Vol. IV).” This latter part of the definition is, according to the OED, obsolete (Obs.). In a second notable definition the OED states that the word culpable is taken to mean deserving blame or censure, blameworthy. This second definition was also found to contain a rare citing. The term culpable was stated to include the “artistically faulty or censurable (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).” It seems to me that the idea of culpable is to be found within the realm of this rare definition, and as such may shed some light on Burney’s 18th c. usage in Evelina.
Frances Burney uses the word culpable on page 475 in her novel Evelina to mean the “artistically faulty or censurable (OED).” Though the definition is a rare one I believe the choice or word play fits into the character and context found on pages 474-475. The text from Evelina reads,
Yet so strong is the desire you have implanted in me to act
With uprightness and propriety, …the weakness of my heart
May distress and afflict me, it will never, I humbly trust,
Render me willfully culpable.
Evelina is looking for approval as to her latest conduct with L. Orville from her pseudo-father Mr. Villers. Burney knowingly plays on the word play culpable to exert both the f. culpa and the rare definition in culpable. Combined in meaning as well as form they convey the meaning of the text twice as strong! The desired effect is a readership rendering a first glance of Evelina shunning fault, or blame, then of course a deeper search reveals an Evelina who is deceptive and artful, or in the rare definition “artistically faulty (OED).” It is a deception that seems to cost her much as she states-“…in the midst of my regret,-for never, never can I cease to regret that I have lost the friendship of Lord Orville! (Evelina, pg. 474).” In this case she blames or faults herself. However, the remainder of the novel pits her willful character against others in a world of the artful (Sir Willoughby, M. Duval) and the artless (L. Orville, M. Villers). This dichotomy allows Burney to truly emphasize her word choice-culpable to mean more than mere guilt. Evelina blames not herself but the weakness of her heart in her. Evelina says that “however the weakness of her heart may distress and afflict me, it will never, I humbly trust, render me willfully culpable. It is the adjective willfully that modifies her character to be faulty. In other words Burney perhaps chose the word culpable to emphasize Evelina’s “feelings”, as well as to highlight the notion of her artful ways. Evelina is behaving artful in her role of the culpable (as taken from the rare aforementioned definition). Taking the word culpable from the OED, after much research, justifies Burney’s attempts at complicating Evelina, and as such leaves no room for either error or coincidence (even opinion is cornered to yield a verdict).
The OED allowed me to track the word culpable and all its forms and derivatives. This etymological study increased my awareness as both critic and reader and afforded me a closer, careful examination of the novel Evelina, and as such proved a significant exercise in the art of word research and better reading.
The word culpable stems from both the Middle English (ME.) and Old French (OF.) word coupable and is given a Latinate (L.) meaning of guilty, or culpābil-is. The latter further developed to include such forms of definition such as blameworthy, or the feminine (f.) form of culpa, or fault, blame. The derivation of culpable itself spans from (by that of course meaning time of usage in a common setting) the 13th c. thru the 14th and even 16th c. The OED tracked its etymological beginnings from the OF. form which was “regularly reduced to coupable in [the] 13th c., but was frequently written culpable after L. in 14th c., [and] coulpable in 16th c. (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).” According to the OED it is the Latinized form that has had the most “staying” power, “established both in spelling and pronunciation (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).”
The OED cites two major definitions of the word culpable; i.e., in one case it is defined as “guilty, criminal; deserving of punishment or condemnation (OED, pg.118; Vol. IV).” This latter part of the definition is, according to the OED, obsolete (Obs.). In a second notable definition the OED states that the word culpable is taken to mean deserving blame or censure, blameworthy. This second definition was also found to contain a rare citing. The term culpable was stated to include the “artistically faulty or censurable (OED, pg. 118; Vol. IV).” It seems to me that the idea of culpable is to be found within the realm of this rare definition, and as such may shed some light on Burney’s 18th c. usage in Evelina.
Frances Burney uses the word culpable on page 475 in her novel Evelina to mean the “artistically faulty or censurable (OED).” Though the definition is a rare one I believe the choice or word play fits into the character and context found on pages 474-475. The text from Evelina reads,
Yet so strong is the desire you have implanted in me to act
With uprightness and propriety, …the weakness of my heart
May distress and afflict me, it will never, I humbly trust,
Render me willfully culpable.
Evelina is looking for approval as to her latest conduct with L. Orville from her pseudo-father Mr. Villers. Burney knowingly plays on the word play culpable to exert both the f. culpa and the rare definition in culpable. Combined in meaning as well as form they convey the meaning of the text twice as strong! The desired effect is a readership rendering a first glance of Evelina shunning fault, or blame, then of course a deeper search reveals an Evelina who is deceptive and artful, or in the rare definition “artistically faulty (OED).” It is a deception that seems to cost her much as she states-“…in the midst of my regret,-for never, never can I cease to regret that I have lost the friendship of Lord Orville! (Evelina, pg. 474).” In this case she blames or faults herself. However, the remainder of the novel pits her willful character against others in a world of the artful (Sir Willoughby, M. Duval) and the artless (L. Orville, M. Villers). This dichotomy allows Burney to truly emphasize her word choice-culpable to mean more than mere guilt. Evelina blames not herself but the weakness of her heart in her. Evelina says that “however the weakness of her heart may distress and afflict me, it will never, I humbly trust, render me willfully culpable. It is the adjective willfully that modifies her character to be faulty. In other words Burney perhaps chose the word culpable to emphasize Evelina’s “feelings”, as well as to highlight the notion of her artful ways. Evelina is behaving artful in her role of the culpable (as taken from the rare aforementioned definition). Taking the word culpable from the OED, after much research, justifies Burney’s attempts at complicating Evelina, and as such leaves no room for either error or coincidence (even opinion is cornered to yield a verdict).
The OED allowed me to track the word culpable and all its forms and derivatives. This etymological study increased my awareness as both critic and reader and afforded me a closer, careful examination of the novel Evelina, and as such proved a significant exercise in the art of word research and better reading.
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