The Interpretation of Literature

The determination of literature is always started with a question about its factuality, about how it is functioned and applied to the human relation, or to the very basic, about its purest definition as knowledge, as one of the fields of human study. However, many thinkers, from the classic theorist to the modernist have been very often giving their voices speaking over these regulations about literature’s formal authenticity, there is not even one has successfully made his argumentations up as a foundation underlying the every thinker’s critical perspectives about literature itself. The simplest analytical mind is certainly reasonable to be addressed to the old theorist Plato and Aristotele, as like what Mitchell says in his Representation that both of those literary theory founding fathers just “regarded literature as simply one form of representation.” Catherine Belsey makes it clearer by speaking in Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text, if literature is a form of representation, then what is particular thing which is represented? She notes “literature represents the myths and imaginary versions of real social relationships...”, that in literature is just about the idea, the imagination of human’s reality, as to Althusser literature is “a system of representation concerning the real relations in which people live. But what is represented in ideology is not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live”, that literature is considered to be more ideological with only an image as a thing which is represented in it.

Mitchell goes further talking about representation and literature, that he says literature is not just that simple formation of representation of a general thing, or as a “representation of life” because of,  there will always be an ideology which is consisted, that it is indeed literature ”can never be completely divorced from political and ideological questions.” That to make a generalization, as how to make a consideration for “life” to be possibly represented through literature, is almost very unlikely to occur. Paul de Man has argued why literature will never work the generalization out, that he says in his Resistance to Theory, because literature is not a theory, it owns the normative principles which are “...cultural and ideological rather than theoretical.” If literature is a theory, the generalization may certainty be suitable, but, once it is related to what have theorists been said before, that literature is basically more ideological because it constitutes one-self’s ideology, which makes the understanding of literature as a theory, is not true.   

Monicha Nelis

An Argumentation of The Idea: The Relation between Woman-Writing In Literature

Literature, for it is either, as the never-stopped argumentative speculation in defining its meaning as a theory, of argumentations before issues of what is truth or just merely considered as either a myth or a fiction, or, about life of human being which is somehow regarded to be represented as an image ( catherine belsey ) in it as if literature is as a significant formation as what Mitchell notes “...then representation is exactly the place where “life”,...gets into the literary work.”, is truthfully considered to have its own relation as a medium or significantly a place to one’s ideology as a personal consistency as what Paul de Man argues that literature “towards the integrity of a social and historical self rather than towards the impersonal consistency...”, which, that ”a social and historical self”, a “personality”, is viewed as a reasonable matter of literature in creating the identity, as to what Foucault says identity is a self-made creation depends on a person’s own “bio power”.

Oscar Wilde, a young and remarkable playwright over the era of Victorian-late has fascinatingly created a medium of expressions of what is called identity, through many of Wilde’s remarkable English playwrights. To be more significant, Oscar Wilde’s Woman of No Importance (1893) shows his particular tendency in building the identity through his work of drama, that, it is hereby viewed by the side of feminist criticism that Wilde truly makes that men domination in western be visible enough to make a disgraceful view for woman, as represented in one of its line by the character of Lady Stutfield, “Ah! The world was made for men not for woman.” (p.9) In western’s patriarchal culture, woman does not allowed to do such similar thing as what man can do, because of, the world is  represented not to made for woman. Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic constructs the idea of women’s incapability to present their selves to society through literature. Women lost their power of defining their selves as a subject of authority, in this case when she turned to be a writer or a poet.  “Thus the "anxiety of influence" that a male poet experiences is. felt by a female poet as an  even  more primary "anxiety of authorship"-a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a "precursor" the act of writing will isolate or destroy. “Literature in a history of western was never authorized to a ‘second sex’ – by what Mitchell calls "the inferiorized and 'alternative' (second sex) psychology of women under patriarchy.", and the literature itself was a very male-dominated. The power of men in the western literature had erased woman’s equality in writing as what Cixous’s “writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great-that is, for "great men" , that woman loses her right to be equally viewed as great as men in writing. 

However Wilde’s Woman of No Importance has also  been so differ about this kind of view that if writing has been so absolutely regarded as man’s signature manners, then why in such one of this 19th century’s western remarkable play, there is still a given-part to an idea of woman who writes down the letters in a piece of paper like what the character of Mrs. Arbuthnot does very gracefully under her consciousness, “She...Writes a beautiful hand, too, so large, so firm.” The play insists that this Idea of woman who does a handwritten-text shall be viewed as a very clear representation that writing is particularly done as not only an absolute matter of man’s masculinity but that “...beautiful hand...so large, so firm” is somehow responsible to be viewed as a woman’s textual form of femininity also. In Wilde’s Woman of No Importance, the argumentation grows up more arguable related to what old critics have pointed out about the relation between man’s superior power in western’s literature and their claim of writting as an absolute masculinity, that there is lied an irony represented through, “What a curious handwriting! It reminds me of the handwriting of a woman I used to know years ago” (p.20), that if writing is inappropriate to woman then how is that possible to define an inappropriate thing is fascinatingly able to reform the identity of oneself only by her handwriting?   

The difference class of sexuality, woman as what is quoted as ‘second sex’, loses the acclaim value of being the authentic writer for her authentic work referred to the dominant authority of male. However it gives a different perception here to Oscar Wilde, who have been popularly known as one of the most remarkable London’s playwrights that most of his works are done by holding that a value of femininity, represents the idea of a woman in that era of 19th century.

The literary authority has never been addressed to the female sex, as critics Gibert and Gubart give the idea of how impossible it is, “the woman writer substitutes what we have called an "anxiety of authorship," an anxiety built from complex and often only barely conscious fears of that authority which seems to the female Ilrtist .to . be by definition· inappropriate., to her sex.” It indicates that to act as a writer or to write something, woman seemed to have been mistaken herself as a woman, referring to what is inappropriate to her. However, a representation against this view is appeared again by Oscar Wilde in one of his nowadays-regarded masterpiece play, The Importance of being Ernest (1895), the character of Cecily is built as an young, admirable, fully educated girl who at her 18th ages she is so powerfully appeared to be a character of a girl who writes a diary about her everyday life. The diary is necessary used as a symbol by Wilde to represent the idea that woman has a condition of doing a right thing to have an act of writing;

ALGERNON

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it.

May I?

CECILY

Oh no.

(Puts her hand over it)

You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own

thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for

publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.   

 An inappropriate manner to woman is in the 19th century, when she is likely be bounded with a creativity that to write one must have a creativity, that woman having a creativity is regarded to make her way out from woman’s nature, she is asked to be as pure as an “angel”, or if not she will be tragically regarded as “active monster” by what Gibert & Gubar notes, “It is debilitating to be any woman in a society where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters.” However this inequality is contrastingly represented in a very different view that in Wilde’s The Importance of being Ernest, the character of Cecily is ideally treated very well by her society, that to commit in writing a diary does not bring her into the “illness”, that the idea of her as an upper class woman who writes is even more extended to be more admirable, that to the character of Algernon, a young and wealthy man, Cecily is;

 “... the sweetest, dearest, prettiest girl in the whole world.”

 It is perhaps that Cecily ‘s characterization has constructed another point of view of men-woman’s masculine-feminine, that writing is not that whole performance only addressed to a man, not also be permanently considered as a total form of masculinity, but there is also the idea that woman has been fundamentally built to be likely committing herself for a dishonor manner while she writes, as feminist Helene Cixous on her most influential work The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), had been sexually analogized writing is equally as shameful as masturbating to woman, “...Because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret...” and this idea is also bounded to the character of Cecily that she does write, indeed, but her power is symbolized in a form of diary which at society, diary is generally known as “secret”, a very personal account, a secret not to get known by another person;

 CECILY

I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life.

that she makes her power to be hidden, and this is responsible to be related to the idea which is noted before, the idea that writing is “it's "silly."  However if writing is as similar as “silly”, why do woman still need to do thing which has been called “silly”? In her arguments, Cixous had been pointed out so clearly that, “By writing herself, woman will return to the body.”  She needs, as a living creature, to own her power, that, for instance, not to write means not to own a power and be selfless. Not writing is defined that woman does not belong to her body, which to Judith Butler the body is, “a set of boundaries, individual, and social, politically signified and maintained”(Gender Trouble – 1990), because her body has been taken by the “great” and if not writing, woman would not experiencing to live in her “real” existence as a woman.

However, if woman needs to write to speak up her voices for taking back her existence again over the man, it is bounded with a question of how is it possible to be as simple as that while the action of writing itself has never been addressed to woman? It reminds our memory back to what Gibert & Gubar argued about the 18th-19th century woman’s “anxiety of authorship” in defining the idea of woman as a writer, that there is none of a person who deserves the title of author/writer but only to the man, as if there is woman who writes, her action will be defined as an imitation, to imitates a man, to be as what is shown by Homi Bhabha on his Of Mimicry and Man, that woman is, “almost the same, but not quite” with the man whose power is  a dominant power of the society, since the very past time of western’s literature history.      

References

1.       Manis, Jim.  A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, The Electronic Classics Series. Pennsylvania State University, 2006.

2.       Wilde, Oscar, and Alyssa Harad. The importance of being earnest and other plays. SimonandSchuster. com, 2005.

3.       Sandra, Gilbert, and Susan Gubar. "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination." (1979): 493.

4.       Cixous, Hélène, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen. "The laugh of the Medusa."Signs 1.4 (1976): 875-893.

5.       De Man, Paul. "The resistance to theory." Yale French Studies 63 (1982): 3-20.

6.       Mitchell

7.       Butler, Judith. Gender trouble. routledge, 1999.

8.       Bhabha, Homi. "Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse."October 28 (1984): 125-133.

Monicha Nelis

Representation

Comparing and Responding to the Frequent Relation of an Unitary Term of Representation and Literature

Representation and literature have never been separated into parts and this tradition might have caused the most frequent topic of problem which still remains unbreakable.  If we talk about the role, representation itself owns a very important role to literature. As it is clear enough till this day that the question about their relationship has never systematically been ended. Representation, as an aspect of language, as the most essential role of understanding literature; may seem too far to be defined to its latest meaning. Indeed, it might because of representation hold a very great value of life, like as we formally know that literature had been simply bonded with life since a very classic era of Plato and Aristotle.

As the person who lives under the laws we have commonly known about our country’s governmental system, we found that we have been represented  by people who we formally believe they have the ability of representing our self. Then, why we have to be represented? Why we cannot just present our self? Let me  give an invitation for an example in literature. Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic constructs the idea of women’s incapability to present their selves to society. Women lost their power of defining their selves as a subject of authority, in this case when she turned to be a writer or a poet.  “Thus the "anxiety of influence" that a male poet experiences is. felt by a female poet as an  even  more primary "anxiety of authorship"-a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a "precursor" the act of writing will isolate or destroy. “ Literature in a history of western was never authorized to a ‘second sex’ –  by what Mitchell calls "the inferiorized and 'alternative' (second sex) psychology of women under patriarchy.", and the literature itself was a very male-dominated. It means, to gain the authority, women have to find a way to establish their ‘own power’ over the men. The condition of woman seeking an excessive ability in a particular form to gain a power which exist beyond herself is, I think, a condition of seeking a representative for her presentation. The same like what we do now, letting someone to be the representative of our self in the government’s seats, because that someone has a greater value and a greater strength than ours in controlling the governmental system. The tendency of letting another person represent ourselves, in fact, we admit that person owns more ability to be presence than the amount of ability we have.               

A representation that we have known only as a word implicitly occurs to the surface as not only just as a word. Refers to its lexical meaning as the ‘process’, representation itself is supposed to have its own regulations. An understanding of what Mitchell said in his “Representation” that there is a part of society which constitutes representation using the ‘invisible rules’, “The formula “let this stand for that to them” is regularly subjected to restrictions on subject matter (“let this stand for anything but that”) or on the audience/spectator (“let this stand for that, but not to them”).” (pg. 15). In a very general way, we might say that representation occurs because of the social agreement which do exist.  An ‘agreement’ which exist without any kind of action for questioning about its origin, an aesthetic representation which have lived among the society that somehow we have accepted and agreed to this way. However, no matter how strong the representation hold an aesthetic value in its own, there will never be such thing occurs with the way it is only by itself. There must be always a reason that cause representation to be established. In Plato’s “Ion” we see that the knowledge for a rhapsode comes from the inspiration about something which is inspired him. Similarly, a written text was made because of the author has been given the power of God so he could write words; but that is how we can sum up to one valid statement that even for a particular thing which sounds very spiritual and arbiter, there will always be something that cause something to be true. An agreement of representation also, has been designed by a particular power and authority which consist of particular persons; If we relate it now with what had been said in Mitchell’s Representation “It should be clear that representation, even purely “aesthetic” representation of fictional persons and events, can never be completely divorced from political and ideological questions;” (pg. 15).       

            And, after all, we may back to the start with a question, if Plato and Aristotle regarded literature as the representation of life, how can the whole ‘life’ is simply represented to thing called literature? Let me go further for a moment to Edward Said’s “Jane Austen and Empire”, here Said described how the signs and symbols in Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) constitutes the presentation of an empire. Through Mansfield Park, the signs and the symbols show the ‘concept’ of empire for Austen in her era, known by what Said says “Austen reveals herself to be assuming the importance of an empire to the situation at home.”  ‘The situation at home’ which represents ‘the importance of an empire’; must be consisted of many representational signs. ‘The situation’ itself is likely ‘a body’ of the signs, just the same like Mitchell’s ‘codes’- “a body of rules for combining and deciphering representational signs”. The ‘codes’ is, based on Mitchell, the same with Aristotle’s three ways to differ the elements of representation: object, manner, and means. As for Mitchell “what I am calling ‘codes’ here are basically the same thing as Aristotle’s ‘means’”. Aristotle defined “Means” as the material which is used in representation. Then let me back again with the problem of how representing life through literature, regarding to the theory above (Mitchell and Aristotle), then we should consider ‘life’ as an ‘object’ of representation which contributes ‘codes’ to show its ‘concept’ that will be represented through literature. Then to sum up from the examples above, representation always took something or someone’s unrealistic form. Furthermore, the understanding of what is quoted from John Locke may bring us to one step closer to the definition of representational object , especially in literature; “word is not a thing, it is the idea of a man.”  In other words, it is not a real thing which is represented in literature but only its ‘concept’. That is why, even still questionable, Plato and Aristotle could put literature as the representative of life, similar with Jane Austen ‘s Mansfield Park and its concept of the empire.                

Monicha Nelis

This entry was published due to the academical purposes 

Popular Philosophies around the 19th Century in American Literature

Transcendent, "that, which goes beyond" (transcends) any possible knowledge of a human being. Emerson defines in his essay “The Transcendentalist”, ” The extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man’s thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and American to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental.” Emerson gives a credit in his essay to a philosophy Immanuel Kant for defining the transcendentalism as the power of our mind which constitutes objects for us to experience the objects in a first place. This philosophy says that there is nothing which just merely happened.  All things were actually happened because our mind constitutes things to be happened. Refers to what Kant says, that is the power of “intuitions of mind”  that human knows something intuitively so that everything which have not been happened yet does not mean they are just totally unknown at all. Those are what Emerson takes as the most American transcendentalist champion in the 19th century, both in his essays “The Transcendentalist” and “Nature”, he speaks his way of thinking about the transcendentalism.  Transcendentalist for Emerson is the optimistic  and independence one, because the transcendentalist need to build and independent though to constitute things to be happened. They are also the optimistic because they believe that they will find everything they are seeking for. Their mind of intuition hold a very great power of controlling their self and their surroundings which send a suggestion to those things to make reality of something they think is needed to be true.  As Emerson says in his “Nature” (his though as a transcendentalist), “Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. “ The transcendentalist is able to see symbols in nature as their power of intuition and translate it through the mind to get a picture of a fact they can read.

These power of intuition for Emerson has influenced the part of history of America,  “yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the history of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history of this tendency.” It may reflect that Emerson states the intuition of mind which comes from the past is the mind that constitutes the present condition of America. 

Another transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, with his Resistance to Civil Governments or also known as Civil disobedience, spread the anarchism through the essay. Anarchism itself means there is no rule, no structure of a government, and particularly there is no law behind it. Thoreau states that law is just a barrier for a man, that man will never be free because they can do what they think right or wrong. If a man supposed to obey the rule of his government in all the way they live there will be no higher price for every human.  He adds, “Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” Thoreau opposes the governmental part which is the law, because he thinks that government is better to not govern at all to erase the injustice. He says that the government is not only a little corrupt but instead of the agent of the corruption. Because of this, it is "not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize." The transcendentalism of Thoreau and other transcendentalists (Emerson, Whitman) have influenced the current literature works of America. There is no specific explanation about the transcendentalism. It is unlimited to the literature or any other things. Transcendentalists often rebel and think with a very different way which makes new ways of writing. In “The United States of Poetry” we can see the strong figure and character of every poets. They do poetry just like an expression about what they think they want to say. Many of them are the protest about the injustice in America; here is where transcendentalism reflected, as the strong, rebel, independence, the profile of an American.

Whitman and Dickinson’s poems are pretty different with each other. Whitman’s a long, and rambling while Dickinson’s short and solid give a very deep different meaning to the readers though both of theirs just speak about the same things like death, life, nature, and God.  The way it was told differently reflects their own philosophy. Whitman as the transcendentalist, shows his mind power over his poet “Song of Myself”. It feels stronger, lighter, and bolder. The transcendentalism clearly stated through lines of Whitman’s:

 “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.“

The first line strongly shows the way he thinks as the transcendentalist. His mind control his self and the nature around him. It is powerful and independence. Whitman’s poet is far away optimistically seen than what Dickinson has. Dickinson’s lines feel darker and more abstract. The contrast between them show the world of Whitman and Dickinson was pretty different. Dickinson’s seems to welcome death, and shows particularly the figure of woman based on her.  Her “Because I could not stop for death” reveals a strong emotion which obviously dark and her interest of the issue of immortality:

“Because I could not stop for Death-

He kindly stopped for me-

The Carriage held but just Ourselves-

And Immortality.”

The metaphors and personifications are both used in both of their poems. What makes them so different is, Whitman use his works as the celebration of American life while Dickinson use hers as the place for dealing with death and dying expression.

The past conditions of an author give a very great impact to his works, example is The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The life background of Williams, his dark experience in the past reflected in his work of drama. In The Glass Menagerie, there is a father who abandoned his family for such a long time that cause the family feels so much dissatisfaction about life. The absence figure of the father in this story is the reflection of a reality of author’s past time. William’s father was the abusive one who spent most of his time away from home.  In his child time William suffered from the illness of diphtheria that cause her father hate his physical condition. That is why William’s The Glass Menagerie often called as his “Memory Play” because it identifies many signs of dysfunctional family as there is a lost figure of father, the unfair and unhappy life of a dysfunctional family. The past of Williams effects his works most of the time. It is a place for him to express an emotional feeling about his tortured life.

The absence figure of father in The Glass Menagerie cause the conflicts over family’s life. The absence of a father is used as a symbol of an “escaping”. It makes the son in a family (Tom Wingfield) want to escape from home in night time spending his hours in movie because his desperation of hating his lost fathers. He said that he is a “bastard son of a bastard”. Mr. Wingfield play a very important role in the story because he is used as a symbol that haunts the family every time. The pictures of him which are hung on every place in the house show that point. Amanda (the wife) often and always remember his husband that never comes back and it gives negative effect to the family, because the reminding memory of  a figure of father will build the desperation more and more. It shows how crucial the father figure is in the family even when he is gone and not physically presented in story.

Extra Credit:

We find these words similarly in every title of autobiographical writings from Equiano, Rowlandson, Douglass, Apess, and Jacobs,  the three words are “Written by himself”. Those words are used to declare that Americans who are not European has the power to write something and speak up through their own voices.

“ I have said that the soul is not more than the body, | And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, | And nothing, not God, is greater to one than ones self is”, comes from William Whitman’s poem, Song of Myself. It is similar with Emerson’s philosophy of self through his essay Self-Resistance, the point is mind is the greatest thing, even Emerson says that a men who believes his own thought is a genius one, "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius."

Notes:

I was asked to fulfill the requirements to write an essay and answer some questions due to final exam of my intersession study. Feel free to give me your responses, thank you! :)