Let's start from the very beginning

As I was rereading my posts, I realized that while I certainly found new ways into this novel (I am particularly interested in continuing to explore the idea that each of Maisie’s parents desires to ‘map’ her body, which I never would’ve considered had we not read Moretti), I also in the end circled back to an idea I was struck by in the very first blurb about the book I posted:

“If we do take Maisie’s social and legal situation seriously, we may see that her final choice to go off with Mrs. Wix is severely constrained and that if that choice is based primarily on moral considerations, it is tragic.” Smit, David. “The Wishful Fantasy of ‘What Maisie Knew.’” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 29.3 (Spring, 1997): 1-14.

In my last post Averyl and I discussed Greenblatt’s idea of subversion and I focused on the role of divorce in What Maisie Knew, and, without consciously realizing it, I came to a conclusion similar to David Smit’s in the above blurb (to quote myself): “James wraps up the narrative in the only more-or-less culturally acceptable way: he has Maisie leave with Mrs. Wix, the only woman who can somewhat adequately perform the role of motherhood. Without her, Maisie would be left to either fend for herself, which doesn’t gel with our conception of innocence and childhood, or she would be forced to choose between her real parents and her pseudo-parents…in an uncomfortably adult capacity that she’s not equipped to handle.” In a nutshell, I found myself agreeing with Smit that this is a somewhat tragic narrative. Smit argues that James becomes invested in Maisie’s psyche, but that as readers we cannot fully ignore the social and legal constraints within which the novel operates (which perhaps circles back to Colebrook and context). When viewed through the light of Maisie struggling to find a niche for herself in a society ill-equipped to handle divorce, the ending is anything but satisfactory. Instead, within the cultural possibilities for a constrained version of pseudo-happiness, James sticks the two agency-less females together to create a new life – but we are still left wondering, what does Maisie know and is she happy? It feels sticky because it seems unlikely that Mrs. Wix is the parent Maisie would choose for herself if given any other choice (in the recent adaptation, in fact, Mrs. Wix is entirely cut out of the script and we are appeased by a somewhat happier ending in which Maisie does choose the ending she wants by finding her voice). But of course, does it really matter if Maisie is happy? Does James want us to focus on that? I think so, but it could be argued either way.

So why this particular retrospective? I am surprised first that I in the end circled back to an idea I had at the beginning of the term and second that I am concerned with the novel’s ending. When I first wrote about this text at NYU and as I wrote this term, I found that I am generally more interested in how James ruthlessly ‘cuts’ (to go back to the Smyth) and rearranges the heteronormative, late 19^th-century family and how this might apply to his oeuvre in general. It was great to have to delve into Maisie specifically without considering his other novels, and to realize that James’s endings are as significant as the nitty-gritty, crazy details that make up his arguably subversive plots. Perhaps it seems obvious that the ending of a novel should be considered and can be a focal point for analysis. I, however, am a person who likes to shy away from trying to draw conclusions from how an author might wrap up his or her novel as I feel it becomes particularly easy to revert to analyzing the ending’s significance in terms of how it makes the reader ‘feel,’ which I am not sure is super useful. Here, though, I think it is interesting to not necessarily focus on whether it's a tragic ending/tragic novel, but rather how analyzing the social and legal constraints of the novel's context might cause us to rethink the novel, though I am still exploring in what way(s).

Finally, thank you to everyone for your comments this term! It was great to write about this novel and receive comments from scholars unfamiliar with the book and therefore with fresh perspectives, as I think I need to set this novel aside for a little while and even then might not ever be able to approach it as if reading it for the first time. Sally, I hope you enjoy reading it! 

(and, per usual, sorry for the odd white highlighting...blogger's formatting still eludes me)

Eating Away at the Foundation (Jess and Averyl)

Averyl and I are considering the ways in which documenting the subversive via acts that contravene the cultural standards of moral rightness set forth in our respective texts conversely gives these subversive acts power, as Greenblatt asks: “But why, we must ask ourselves, should power record other voices, permit subversive inquiries, register at its very center the transgressions that will ultimately violate it?” (50). Then, however, we want to posit that these narratives--Gallathea and What Maisie Knew in this specific instance--open up cans of subversive worms in their respective societies, worms (to continue the metaphor) that may destroy and undermine the stability of cultural systems of power (think worm-eaten supports that can no longer hold the weight of their structure), or, can be incorporated into these cultural systems in a manner that nurtures, enriches, and even strengthens such systems (think gardeners putting worms in their gardens to aerate and fertilize the soil).

In a nutshell, without the worms: Subversion happens --> it becomes a social possibility that undermines cultural norms--> we acknowledge it, usually through cultural strife --> it is then incorporated into our cultural lexicon until we don’t see the original problem, thereby once again restarting the cycle of subversion by investigating a new threat and thereby again giving it power it might not have otherwise obtained on its own. (We are happy to explain this in more depth, just ask).

Before tying this to our novels, we want to briefly point out that Greenblatt’s argument is rather Foucauldian. Greenblatt writes, “Thus the subversiveness which is genuine and radical—sufficiently disturbing so that to be suspected of such beliefs could lead to imprisonment and torture—is at the same time contained by the power it would appear to threaten” (48). Foucault similarly wrote of silence counterintuitively awarding power to the entire discourse of sexuality in The History of Sexuality, “Silence itself—the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers—is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies.” (The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 1508). I.e. because we condemned sex acts (among other things) to silence, we actually exploded the discourse by finding new ways to discuss it (which is admittedly a bit of a sweeping overview, but we wanted to throw it out there).

On to the textual cans of worms...

Gallathea is an extremely subversive text: the same women who disobey their state and the gods in escaping to the forest also undermine patriarchy, heteronormativity, and even the economic system of inheritance by desiring to marry each other. At the very moment in which it appears that Gallathea and Phillida’s actions have called into question nearly every single institution of early modern English culture, Neptune--a literal deus ex machina--agrees to transform one of the virgins into a man so that they can enter into a heterosexual union. By transforming one of the virgins into a man, Neptune also transforms all of their subversions into reaffirmations of the play’s constructed hierarchies. It is not simply coincidental that the gods reaffirm cultural hierarchies through subversive characters; incorporating subversion into systems of hierarchy is the only way to affirm such systems. The marriage promised at the end is, in Elizabethan comedy, a trope that signals the confirmation of kyriarchy and the submission to authority.  Perhaps the only truly subversive moment in the play is that the play ends before the sexual transformation and the marriage can happen.

In What Maisie Knew, James deconstructs the nuclear family by exploring a new and subversive construct: divorce. The “Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857” established marriage as a legal contract rather than a sacrament and moved divorce proceedings from the ecclesiastical (i.e. the church) to the civil courts (wikipedia source and more cool information about this). What Maisie Knew was published in 1897, at which point it could take years to get through the divorce courts and people could, via newspaper updates, follow the story like your best Kim Kardashian gossip. It is postulated that in fact James got his inspiration for this novel from one such ongoing divorce story published in the papers. In our subversion cycle we outlined, then, James takes a controversial/subversive issue (dissolving a marriage no longer “sacred”), applies it to a family so we can observe the effect it has on a child, but then wraps up the narrative in the only more-or-less culturally acceptable way: he has Maisie leave with Mrs. Wix, the only woman who can somewhat adequately perform the role of motherhood. Without her, Maisie would be left to either fend for herself, which doesn’t gel with our conception of innocence and childhood, or she would be forced to choose between her real parents and her pseudo-parents (her stepparents get together as their own couple) in an uncomfortably adult capacity that she’s not equipped to handle. Now, however, divorce is no longer subversive, so it’s almost odd to analyse it.   

So, if subversion is only something that can be seen once it is incorporated, what are we not seeing? We want you to consider this clip about framing cultural narratives relating to Ferguson:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/you-are-promoting-a-certain-narrative-ferguson-protestor-confronts-cnn-reporter/. Is this an example of a veteran reporter dealing with an angry, out-of-control protester, or is it a deconstructive moment in which American media is exposed simply as a person who speaks into the camera louder than anyone else?

We leave you with this Greenblatt quote: “The historical evidence, of course, is unreliable; even in the absence of substantial social pressure, men lie quite readily about the most intimate beliefs.”

The Train-Licking Boy

As I was reading the Chen article, I was continuously trying to figure out how to tie the Chen to Edelman’s queer theories and somehow then to Maisie and teaching. I was therefore not surprised when Chen did in fact mention Edelman; not surprised because really she had to at least acknowledge his theories in her argument. Chen writes of Edelman, “Signal to queer theory’s interest in queer relationality, Lee Edelman takes up a psychoanalytic analysis of queerness’s figural deathly assignment in relation to a relentless reproductive futurity” (278). It didn’t seem to me that she really elaborated on how “queerness’s figural deathly assignment” plays into her argument beyond being a point in queer history’s treatment of life and death and consequently its relationship to toxicity (please correct me if any of you would disagree with this assessment). This is the moment when she brings toxicity more explicitly into parsing the boundaries of the body:

Toxicity straddles boundaries of “life” and “nonlife,” as well as the literal bounds of bodies, in ways that introduce a certain complexity to the presumption of integrity of either lifely or deathly subjects. While never undergoing sustained theorization in queer theory, toxicity has nevertheless retained a certain resonance there and a certain citational pull. (279)

I personally felt it would’ve been more helpful for her argument to discuss Edelman’s treatment of children in relation to the train-licking boy “that must not be allowed to become toxic: he must not be mentally deficient, delayed, or lethargic. His intellectual capabilities must be assured to consolidate a futurity of heteronormative (white) masculinity, which is also to say that he must not be queer” (271). That, however, might’ve shifted the focus of the article. Nonetheless, if I were teaching this article, I would focus specifically on Chen’s discussion of toxicity related to (non)reproductive futures. I would have my students specifically explore the following aspect of Edelman’s theory, and come up with a question in their respective texts (for the purposes of this post, I suppose we would be reading What Maisie Knew, though I think there are other late Victorian texts that might better serve this purpose) that links the two:

Edelman investigates the ramifications of treating the child as a symbol for the future rather than an individual. Edelman writes, “Historically constructed…to serve the repository of variously sentimentalized cultural identifications, the Child has come to embody for us the telos of the social order and come to be seen as the one for whom that order is held in perpetual trust” (Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, 11). Using Lacan’s lectures, Edelman crafts a theory of sinthomosexuality with which he challenges the assumption that non-procreative sex is destructive because it threatens a heteronormative ‘love-based’ society by refusing to buy into the future as represented by children.

Perhaps a question a student or I might generate would be: How does Chen’s train-licking and consequently mentally deficient child queer the future represented by children that society holds, in Edelman’s opinion, “in perpetual trust” as a symbol of the reproductive and therefore non-queer future?

To better contextualize the importance of the child as the site of society’s future, and therefore the metaphorical death of the individual child that makes the real child become a specter, we would read all or part of Katherine Bond Stockton’s book The Queer Child or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century, who considers the ramifications of forgetting the individual child in favor of managing that child’s fictitious innocence on which society depends for the reproduction of the heteronormative future: “This kind of growth is made palpable, as I plan to show, by (the fiction of) the ghostly gay child – the publicly impossible child whose identity is a deferral (sometimes powerfully and happily so) and an act of growing sideways, by virtue of its future retroaction as a child” (Stockton 11, her italics). I would explain that rather than looking at the child as a site of the future or the fantasy possibility of retroactive adult discovery like Edelman does (which is very Freudian), Stockton proposes that instead of growing up, children today are subjected to managed delay, “the notion that children should approach all things adult with caution and in ways that guarantee their distance from adulthood” (Stockton 91), and so ‘grow sideways.’

To link the novel to Chen, Edelman, and Stockton, and the above aspects of their respective theories/ideas/opinions that I would hone in on, I would posit that Maisie’s body acts as an impenetrable tomb into which information, often toxic information, enters and from which it never again emerges after she initially decides to seal herself off from her parents. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post linking Maisie and Moretti, James writes that Maisie “was the little feathered shuttlecock that they fiercely kept flying between them. The evil [her parents] had the gift of thinking…of each other, they poured into her little gravely gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle” (James 12). Maisie, however, zips her lips and eventually refuses to recite this information; she breathes in the toxins, and in an attempt to control her situation, she lets them recirculate in her body rather than expelling them, and in this self-poisoning she takes great pleasure: 

"She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been the centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. She would...repeat nothing, and when, as an tribute to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure altogether new" (James 13).

The question throughout the novel therefore becomes, what does Maisie know? Even the reader cannot quite make her body of knowledge his or her own, cannot co-opt or appropriate the personal narrative tucked into her brain. We can only hope to understand by the end of the novel whether or not she has managed to maintain some semblance of a sense of self and agency (arguably, she has not, but that’s my attempt to interpret what it is that Maisie knows). Maisie therefore becomes illegible, an almost-specter in the text, the “ghostly gay child” whose “identity is a deferral” because it is only while she is a child that her parents can continue to use her for their purposes; they delay her adulthood and therefore delay the reproductive future, unwittingly creating a version of Edelman’s sinthomosexual, the figure that rejects the future-based social order; Maisie becomes the train-licking boy. But as Chen and the novel suggest, “We need not assign the train-licking boy so surely to the nihilistic underside of futurity or to his own termination, figurative or otherwise” (281). I'll leave you with that titillating thought.

A menage à trois with Foucault, Maisie, and Fanny

Today we sat down with Fanny Hill and Maisie Beale to talk about their texts in light of Michel Foucault’s “The Mesh of Power.” What follows is a real, unadulterated look at the behind-the-scene dynamics in What Maisie Knew and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

Bethany Q & Jess K: Foucault says that “Delinquency is useful.” Discuss how you see that in your text.

Maisie B: My parents, Ida and Beale, my step parents Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude, even Mrs. Wix who claims to be wholly committed to my happiness, are ultimately driven by an intense desire to transgress societal bounds to experience bodily pleasure, both the visceral feeling of satisfied emotion and also baser pleasures that as an adolescent I still know little about. You know, Foucault says, “In any case, the politics of sex will install itself within this whole politics of life that will become so important in the 19th century” (7). My mother embodies the delinquency of extramarital sex, a taboo in the 19th century and an intricate part of why my text is so deliciously naughty; she is often in a “violent splendour...like that of some gorgeous idol described in a story-book” (53). This causes her, however, to “break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house between that horrible woman and Sir Claude” (53) among other odd behaviors, and this delinquency, her inability to extricate her emotions from her drive for pleasure, causes her to become the villain of the text. I slowly but surely lose all desire to be with her, and you, my readers, follow suit.

Fanny H: Michel talks about prostitution in his presentation, though he focuses much more on pimps than what happened on the streets and brothels of London in the 1740s. The madame or bawd was a bigger menace for women like me. Acting out delinquency allowed me to become rich. And we don’t have room here to talk about the delinquency of people who kept my banned text in print or illustrated it with such graphic images.

But delinquency also let me get revenge. Mr. H— had his way with my maid Hannah about seven months into our relationship (68). As I say in my book, “my pride alone was hurt, my heart not.” Maybe I should have made him pay for his “stooping to such a coarse morsel” financially, but I decided to pay him back in “the same coin” (70). Mr. H— had just taken Will into his service, a young country boy with eyes that were “naturally wanton” and often carried messages between the two of us (70). Lucky me Will had a “not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a may-pole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant” (72). Unluckily Mr. H— discovered us in much a similar position as I’d seen him with Hannah; even though I explained to him that it was his own behavior I’d taken as a model, he still broke off our relationship (86). So breaking the rules was useful in the short term, but had longer repercussions than I intended at the time.

JK & BQ: How does the commodification of pleasure play out in your respective texts and how does pleasure tie into your exercise of power?

Fanny H: There was Mr. Barvile who liked to be whipped and whip others; he paid me well to wield the lash and be lashed in return (143). After our time together Mrs. Cole (who ran the best, most collective-feeling, brothel in London) knew I was a girl “after her own heart, afraid of nothing” (153). Then I had clients like the old man who wanted to brush my hair and sometimes put kid gloves on my hands, but nothing else.

Pleasure’s a dangerous thing. But after toying around with women in my innocence, I knew that having a man with a “large engine” was key to my sexual and economic happiness. It’s why I was so excited when Charles came back into my life. But that’s another story.

Maisie B: It is hard for me to be completely aware of my intent, or in other words try to decipher what kind of specific pleasure I derive from being with Sir Claude. I do know that my intense desire to have Sir Claude all to myself causes me to manipulate the situation whenever I see him. Because he loves me and is also conflicted about how he loves me (am I his child? his “old woman” as he likes to call me, wise beyond my years? A commodity to use in his ongoing battle with my mother and two governesses?), I use this to my advantage. I even once thought I had won – Sir Claude and I spent the day together when he asked me to give up Mrs. Wix to live with him and Mrs. Beale, but he for a moment was clearly desirous of giving me everything I wanted in the world; namely, to be only with him. We almost left forever together for Paris, and “it was the most extraordinary thing in the world.” In that moment I had the most excruciatingly pleasurable experience when I thought I had won, and when my hopes were promptly dashed, I knew I “had fallen back to earth [and] the odd thing was that in [my] fall [my] fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone” (252). In that moment I gave Sir Claude an ultimatum – I would give up Mrs. Wix if he would give up Mrs. Beale. But I played my hand wrong.

BQ & JK: Foucault posits that power is a restrictive and negative force in Western society. How is power a driving force in your text? Is it a “mesh” as described by Foucault?

Maisie B: When my parents initially were divorced, I became a pawn in their quest for power over each other. Not knowing any better, I acted as a shuttle for their negativity as I relayed nasty messages to one and then the other, back and forth again and again until I became exhausted by my inability to decipher their intent. This certainly had the unintended effect of causing in me “a feeling of danger.” Desirous of control, I realized I had an “inner self” capable of “concealment” (James 13). In retrospect, I can see that my parents were trying to exercise their power over me and each other by constantly surveilling this untenable situation. I suddenly refused to facilitate this power struggle: I determined that I “would forget everything...would repeat nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of [my] system [they] began to [call me] a little idiot, [I] tasted a pleasure altogether new…[I] spoiled their fun, but [I] practically added to [my] own” (13).

You also asked if it’s a mesh? Yes, absolutely, my parents were trapped in a society dictating that they love me and one another according to the ‘perfect family model,’ but my mother was never an angel. When that paradigm collapsed, I became a pawn in their army, but one who wasn’t trained and so learned to deploy my weapons with the utmost subtlety. And so, they gave up on me. Was it the right choice? I still can’t say.   

Fanny H: Power is everything. Even a hymen is powerful in my story. I pretended to be a virgin after going to Mrs. Cole’s brothel and got much more money from that night than I would if he thought I was already deflowered. That man thought that I was not touched, only pure, and got more satisfaction from the knowledge that he was ruining girls than I think he did from the actual act of penetration. How’s that for power and pleasure working together?

But those are just happy memories. The power I lacked when coming to London as a country innocent wasn’t as pleasant; it led me to accept a job with Mrs. Brown that wasn’t at all what she promised. A terrible old man paid 50 guineas to take my maidenhead but couldn’t get it up – then I ran off with Charles. So there’s obviously lots of power with sex and money in my story. At the end the fact that I’m rich allows me to marry Charles; he’d lost all his money but still had his status as a gentleman. Now we’re just a happy family with kids and I’m the picture of a virtuous wife. Even I can’t see all the strands that make up the mesh of our power.