Both Alana's and Kris's posts make very interesting points about the "commodification of women"--especially in light of our discussion last class about female authorship. I wonder what you think about the fact that it is Behn, a royalist and a Tory anda woman writer in a man's literary world, who creates the characters of Oroonoko as well as Imoinda?
A lot of research has been done on Behn's narrator's relationship to Oroonoko, and some has been done on her relationship to Imoinda. In general, she seems to use the conventions of amatory fiction and traditional romance to identify with Oroonoko's nobility, though this is not without its tensions. Critics are often interested in the "likeness" and the "difference" between the narrator and her chief subject, a black royal man who has become a slave and yet is "naturally above it." Yet, the narrator is also using Oroonoko to make narrative, specifically narrative from a "female pen" (40). Similarly, the narrator places herself in an ambiguous position vis-a-vis Imoinda--with much less "idenfitication" than in Oroonoko's case. Imoinda seems repeatedly, as Kris mentions, "killed off"--first by Oroonoko's grandfather, then by Oroonoko, and ultimately, by Behn. How can we read this in terms of the narrator's power, her agency? Thoughts?
Saturday, January 27, 2007
A Narrator-Oroonoko-Imoinda Power Triangle?
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Oroonoko: A Reminder of Cultural Differences
I agree with Alana's points that she brought up regarding 'honor killings' and the plight of Imoinda at the hands of her husband.
This action was just one of many cultural differences I noted in this story and although I struggled with many of them--it was a reminder of how cultural differences have always existed between our different sub-societies throughout history.
In addition to how Imoinda died, I also recall the beginning of the story when Oroonoko's grandfather was overcome by his desire to have the prize that was Imoinda.
Because it was custom, the grandfather claimed his right as acting king to send the veil to Imoinda--the equivalent of a subpoena, only it was most immediate and could not be denied except by death. I don't know about my colleagues, but this idea of being summoned was revolting to me. Still, I remembered that my horrific reaction stems from what I know as acceptable social customs--thank God our President can't do that!
Ultimately, this story was amazing to me, I even learned more history than I knew when I began it. Again, it was truly a reminder of the differences that did and still do exist in our various cultures on Earth.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Oroonoko, honor killings, and Shakespeare: If I can't have you, no one can.
I find the death scene of Imoinda very interesting, and I think it's worthy of close consideration within the theme of the entire work. In particular, I would like to focus on the sense of "ownership" by Oroonoko of Imoinda and how that plays out in her death scene. I find very similar themes in the death of Lavinia, Titus' daughter in Shakespeare's tragedy, Titus Andronicus.
I confess that here I am thinking particularly about the film adaptation of Titus, directed by Julie Taymore (Anthony Hopkins, Alan Cumming, Jessica Lange). Titus is hosting a banquet for the ceasar, Saturnine, and his Goth (barbarian, not funereal subculture) queen Tamora. Unknown to those assembled, Titus has killed Tamora's murderous sons, Chiron and Demetrius, and they have been cooked and served up as the main course. As Saturnine and Tamora eat, Titus asked Saturnine if a certain Roman was justified in killing his daughter after she had been raped. Saturnine says yes, because the daughter is a constant reminder of the father's grief and shame, and this can only be eased by killing her. In the film, Titus responds by embracing his daughter, who was raped by Tamora's sons, before snapping her neck and then revealing what those assembled have been eating. The ending is predictably gory.
Compare this to the scene of Imoinda's death:
"He considered, if he should do this deed...he left his lovely Imoinda a prey, or at best a slave...'Perhaps,' said he, 'she may be first ravaged by every brute, exposed first to their nasty lusts, and then a shameful death.'...he told her his design first of killing her...he found the heroic wife faster pleading for death than he was to propose it..." (Behn 71). Oroonoko's fear is that Imoinda will be subject to sexual violence, which at its core would be an insult to him as her possessor. Imoinda has worth as possessed by him and only him. This hearkens back to the struggle between the old chief and Oroonoko over who would possess Imoinda. When the chief conspires to sell her into slavery, she begs instead for death, and much emphasis is placed on her virginal state when Oroonoko succeeds in bedding her. After Oroonoko has claimed her in this manner, she becomes literally his property to dispose of: "when a man finds any occasion to quit his wife, if he loves her, she dies by his hand, if not, he sells her" (Behn 71).
After Lavinia is raped by Tamora's sons, she becomes literally worthless. In Taymor's Titus, her death is shown as a relief to both to herself and Titus. Is Lavinia's value is in her virtue, what is the purpose of continuing to live after what has happened to her? Similarly, any violation of Imoinda is a direct insult to Oroonoko, as it devalues her as a possession.
Lavinia and Imoinda's deaths, I think, could be viewed in the context of honor killings. But whose honor? Titus kills Lavinia because she has no prospects for marriage after what has happened to her, and she serves as a constant reminder of his pain. A formerly valuable property, she is valueless. Likewise, Oroonoko kills Imoinda ostensibly to save her from what might happen after he dies. But one wonders (at least I do) what would have happened if Imoinda had wanted to live and take her chances? What happens to property after the owner is gone?
Monday, January 22, 2007
Early Women Writers and Self-Representation
In recent decades, a host of feminists and canon-revisionists have taken up the questions posed by the many neglected and effaced women writers who saturated the early modern marketplace with their work. Ros Ballaster, Jane Spencer, Janet Todd, and Catherine Gallagher are among the most significant of these critics.
In a review of Gallagher's Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1750, Ros Ballaster summarizes her colleague's argument:Nobody's Story offers a fascinating and complex exploration of the textual strategies adopted by five 'representative' women writers of the Restoration and the eighteenth century in order to produce effective 'imaginary' identities for themselves as authors. Both male and female writers in this period, Gallagher asserts, represent their experience of authorship as one of dispossession, a form of disappearance under the commodification of the book as a product of their alienated labour; however, women sexualize and exaggerate this rhetoric from a gender-specific perspective. The negotiation with a sense of dis-possession, from Aphra Behn's cryptic self-inscription as 'prostitute-nothing' through Frances Burney's youthful construction of the addressee of her journal as female 'nobody' to Maria Edgeworth's expressed anxiety over 'absenteeism', was formative, Gallagher discovers, in the promotion of fiction as a place of self-production for reader and author alike, a century-long process which results in the dominance of the novel form and...pre-eminence of feminized 'virtues' within it.... Manufacturing selves from 'nothing', the anonymity of print culture, the gap between the representation and the real, these are productive mechanisms for these women writers, enabling them to figure power in the marketplace through their acts or re-enactments of vanishing.
In Oroonoko, one of the most notable narrative strategies is the way that Behn parses out the relationship between her narrator and her subject. Hers is but a "Female Pen" (40), telling the story of a "Royal Slave" that bears a striking conceptual resemblance to James II; in the end, she hopes that "the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to survive to all ages" (73). At points, we are confronted with the sneaking suspicion that Oroonoko is really less about this royal slave, however, than the woman writing his story. Given what Gallagher is arguing about the way that women writers play this game of vanishing, how might Behn's narrator be figuring herself as an author? How can we begin to understand the narrator's construction of authorial worth in print?
And finally, considering the ending of "Fantomina," we might very well ask the same thing--how does Haywood seem to use the images of feminine insubstance that haunt her fiction? After all, as Gracie noted in her post, we don't ever know her real name--all we have are her constructions, which themselves emphatically gesture toward an almost performative subjectivity. It is significant, too, that Fantomina's false name is the title of Haywood's text. But even at the end, when we think her body is about to ground her evermore in the real world she so desperately seeks to evade by self-construction, Fantomina disappears into a not-undesirable convent. How might we read the endiing of "Fantomina" in terms of the woman writer's construction of self in a marketplace of print?
Fantomina; female strength
While reading this story, I was entertained as well as intrigued, all the while wondering how the story would end and the portion that would be allotted to this mysterious female character, identified by the author in the title of the story as Fantomina. Initially, it seemed to me like the story was not going anywhere definite. By this I mean that it seemed that the writer's intent was to tell of a young woman who seems to be of some means and some class, who in her boredom decided to explore the life of a "street-woman" and where that led her. But as the story unfolded, it seemed to tell of a young woman who aware of her power over the opposite sex used it to the fullest.
The story seemed to tell of a woman who in her free time and maybe even loneliness (if I dare surmise so much from what the author provided) became attached to a particular gentleman and strove to keep him at all costs, not necessarily to have him as a respectable man that could stand by her side as a husband. Her distinct qualities including her apparent strength, cunning, art of manipulation, independence of thought and unique manner of accomplishing her goals almost completely evaporated into thin air towards the end and she came under the whims and direction of her mother as the story came to a close.
The story had me pondering why the name Fantomina stuck to the main character more strongly than Celia or Mrs. Bloomer, as the author used that name as the title to her story. It had me wondering much more, because we are not given any reason to believe that Fantomina was her real name. It could be possible that the author was showing the power of first impressions, the first words spoken from one to another, and the power they have to influence the light in which an individual will be viewed. The first name our main character gives us is Fantomina and that is what we learn to call her regardless of whether or not this is her name. Even the presence of her mother later in the story could not clarify that particular mystery.
Also, in my opinion, Fantomina is introduced as a whimsical person, who gave full vent to her curiosity without thinking too far into the future. If by chance her character did think into the future, I think she must have had a nonchalant attitude, thinking that regardless of what she did, the future would somehow shape itself separately from her actions. I think that in her pursuit of Beauplasir, her thoughts were only filled with the pleasure of the moment. I see her as a person that embraced instant gratification. While she chased after Beauplasir, she seems charmed by her ability to tactfully disguise herself, and sees herself as "More Pruden[t] than all her Sex beside" (Fantomina 234). She seems to bask in her, for the most part, self-acclaimed wisdom, and uses her brashness and ability to pursue what she wants till she possesses it, to define herself.
Again, I wondered what would befall this apparently decisive "go-getter," who knew what she wanted and uses whatever means to achieve her goals when the story came to a close. The entrance of her mother grabbed my attention because the tone as well as the path of the story changed pronouncedly. Fantomina lost her influence, seized from treading along the path she had been following and bowed to her mother's authority. It was almost as if the earlier strength that had been portrayed and that we had learned to respect (whether or not it was admirable) had been sapped from her. She resigns herself to do her mother's bidding without resistance, as is shown when her mother commands her to reveal the name of her lover, and forces her to look up and explain the truth to Beauplasir and herself (Fantomina 247). Fantomina at this point seems to be an ordinary 18th century child taught to obey and respect one's parents without challenging orders or negotiating parental decisions.
However, it could not be completely fairly said that Fantomina lost all her power and her influence when the story ended for she did not lose her power over Beauplasir. She did not reveal the truth about herself until she was compelled by a strength that was higher than her own - her mother. Even after her child is born, a little girl, Beauplasir is still not free from the power of Fantomina extended in her little female child.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Taming Don Juan, Being Don Juan: The Tragic Feminism of Haywood's "Fantomina"
I stated so in a response to Alana's post, but one of the more striking aspects of "Fantomina" was the curious ending. While I found the story quite comical, the ending brought a dose of seriousness that caught me by surprise. From the moment her mother comes back into town the mood shifts drastically and the final moment comes rushing to a close. This first astounded me, but it provided me a helpful context for interpreting the actions of the piece.
At first I was prepared to view Haywood's novella according to John Richetti's terms, that is, "where sexual freedom and mastery of her male lover are temporarily and subversively achieved by the heroine's clever machinations" (Richetti xvi). I failed to register the key word "temporarily" in first reading that statement. But, as I said in my comment, the ending's transformation of the story's sexual freedom and subversiveness seems to ring false. The Fantomina that we have come to know, more or less, is utterly weak and dejected when her mother returns. It's almost pathetic. In fact, the reader is forced from her viewpoint and Haywood writes the last pages largely from the mother's side. Where are the "clever machinations" now? Fantomina gives up.
Upon further reflection, though, I began to interpret the story according to the actual ending rather than according to how I thought it would have ended. The clever "machinations" of Fantomina are cast in quite a new light according to how she feels she must act when her mother returns. Beauplaisir's ultimate rejection of her is quite conceivable - given the choice of marrying any one of his old affairs would have been difficult enough, but all of them at once is I'm sure overwhelming. And it was this bit of comic realization on my part that unified the work for me. From the beginning of "Fantomina," Haywood criticizes men and their loose and insincere dealings in love. Her subsequent relation of a tale wherein a woman constantly reinvents herself to keep the man she loves interested in her reveals the darker themes of Haywood's work. For though Fantomina is willing to reinvent herself for his amusement, she finally decides that men, and Beauplaisir particularly, "still prefer the last Conquest, only because it is the last" (Haywood 240). She even feels she has "outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving Kind," that he is "the only beguiled Person" (Haywood 239). But she ultimatly deceives herself into believing she could maintain his interest by constantly playing a variety of parts for him. Her failure to obtain him in the moments before childbirth signifies her inevitable failure in this quest. In this sense, "Fantomina" is quite tragic. She tries to keep the man she loves by any means she can, and in cutting to the root of the problem she still finds it impossible. There is a kind of tragic irony in even the title of the work. For Fantomina is not her real name, but the first of her fake names. I will leave that thought here, but I think there is certainly something further to be discussed there.
In terms of her guises themselves, Fantomina moves first from a prostitute, to a country maiden, to a widow, to a mysterious socialite temptress. In each successive case, Fantomina improves the social status of her personalities, and withholds more from Beauplaisir's advances. Beauplaisir, for his part, changes the forwardness of his actions according to the social status of his paramours. When Fantomina incarnates her final guise, she seems to have inhabited her in a higher social sphere than Beauplaisir, for he becomes her possession finally. But even in this case, as the others, though she is masquerading she seems to forget Beauplaisir's own masquerades of fidelity - she merely laughs at them in disbelief, but falls for it each time. Certainly each of them is enjoying the pleasure of trying to outwit the other. And though we witness the elaborate nature of Fantomina's attempts, it is ultimately difficult to claim her as the victor. Fantomina, through her disguises, cannot escape her own passion for Beauplaisir. And though she is much more capable and unrestrained than her contemporaries have been portrayed, the social system has been set in such a way that even when a woman can move freely between any social status and constantly change identities, she remains socially repressed in a way a man will never be. Beauplaisir has the many affairs under his own name with no secrecy but that of his own infidelity. Everything else may be known to the world and he will not suffer for it. But though Fantomina is capable of such action, too, she is stunted by her society, and even if she finds masterful ways around it, she is doomed to her biology and social status.