Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Female Condition in Wharton

While reading Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, one of the major themes that sticks out to me is the struggle of leisure-class women to have a sense of purpose in their lives. Discussing an evening of bridge-playing, Lily urges Judy to think of “my career” (43). The fact that Lily’s lifestyle is a representative reflection of the tasks at hand for well-to-do women of the era, this offers a bleak and limited array of prospects for women. What might Lily be talking about when she discusses her “career?” One can only assume that it entails the process of marriage for a woman. As we have already learned about Lily, she is that she “is horribly poor-- and very expensive” (8). This creates a pretty negative picture for her as a character, because it becomes clear over the course of the novel that what she considers her career is the process of marrying into money.

But IS this actually a negative perspective? While outwardly there are some distinct similarities, projecting the 20th-and-21st-century perspective of “gold-digging” is not necessarily a fair assessment of the female condition in this time period. For one thing, there were limited (from my understanding, virtually no) vocations for upper-middle and higher economic class women to be active or successful in (Edith Wharton, as we discussed in class today, could be considered a notable anomaly, as she procured substantial wealth through writing in her lifetime. Still, she was not exactly born into poverty, and it is often said that one needs to have money to make money).

While a modern reader could be quick to criticize the lifestyle, materialism, and goals of Lily as a woman, it is key to acknowledge that women have a drastically different situation and more vocational options than they once had. Also, most of us as readers have different perspectives of the value of money than turn-of-the-century aristocrats, a period which Wharton depicts as a time dominated by men with money and women who spend money. While Lily and her ideals are not necessarily the most identifiable for this era (or for debt-ridden WSU students) I think that it is key to take a step back and acknowledge Wharton’s novel as a benchmark; it is indicative of a transitional period in women’s rights. Suffrage and vocations for women were not all that far off.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

A McBook Full of Despicable Characters. But...

After our discussion of naturalism on Tuesday and its continuation on Thursday, I am reaching a better understanding of the context from which McTeague arose. Looking at his character, he starts out as a bit of a simpleton, but someone who appeared more or less harmless but for his brute strength, not unlike Lennie from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I would go so far as to say that the McTeague we saw early in the novel was more like a Forrest Gump on steroids. We se a simple man who didn’t need much but “to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play upon his concertina” (5). As the story progresses, we see a shift in this character, as he descends to having more animalistic characteristics, eventually becoming utterly wretched and despicable.

The first step that McTeague takes along this decline is in Trina’s series of dental appointments. His lust-driven, animalistic urges give way to the little bit of sense that he may have floating around in his thick skull. As he finally gets his girl, the story takes more of the form of a conquest than of anything resembling “love.” Perhaps more disturbing than the fact that McTeague’s brute strength won over is the fact that Trina not only gives in, but actually somehow almost likes it. She describes this as “that strange desire of being conquered and subdued (103). The problematic thing about Trina is that her submissiveness is frustrating. Furthermore, both characters simultaneously become more and more corrupt. While McTeague becomes more of a massive, brutish animal, Trina becomes ever more like Zerkow, finally rolling in her bed of gold coins in the ultimate gratuitous display of greed and miserly materialism.

It is definitely discouraging to see so many character either start out bad (Zerkow with his over-the-top stereotypes as the greedy Jew, Maria as the kleptomaniac, etc), but the small bit of redemption is in the beautiful little courtship scene that plays out between Ms. Baker and Old Grannis. This courtship drastically contrasts with the direction that the other characters are going in their downward spiral to baseness (or deadness, which seems to be the trend of late in the middle 2/3rds of the novel). I am cautiously optimistic about one thing in this book, and that is the wishful thinking that nothing happens to tarnish the side-story of these two old people who have found each other. Sentimental? Yes!