But We Sing it Anyway: Understanding female agency on a textual and metatextual level through Sappho’s fragments, Jane Austen’s Emma, and Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown

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by Hayley Jones

Understanding a culture’s relationship with its food can be one of the best ways of examining how its society functions. Food can be viewed as a necessity to keep humans alive, but it can also be viewed as an integral form of cultural expression, an indicator of economic values, and as a gateway to cultural destruction. Every human on Earth requires food to survive, but cultures have evolved to view this simple necessity, and the land on which it grows, in incredibly distinctive ways. This acts as a force which both distances individuals from each other and which can foster communion. Yet, the very definition of food is a subject up for debate as one begins to critically examine what is consumed by a culture and the role that consumption plays within certain contexts. As Tommo, the protagonist of Herman Melville’s Typee, will come to understand, to comprehend a culture through its food is no clear feat. Alex Calder writes: “What I have called the standard reading of Typee (…) demonstrates that the models westerners have of Polynesia can never really fit local metaphors” (Calder 29). Calder emphasizes that the discrepancies and contradictions put forth within Melville’s text are the result of an outsider attempting to make sense of something they are inherently distanced from. Bearing this in mind assists the reader in recognizing and contemplating Melville’s attempts to reconcile his model of Polynesia with the reality he faces. By critically considering Herman Melville’s Typee and augmenting such analysis with insights from Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, one can begin to explore Indigenous Polynesian cultures through the devoted relationship they had with food and the land from which it grew.

“Typee or Happar?” (Melville 66). This is the question Tommo and Toby ask themselves as they descend into the heart of Nukuheva and hope that they are not turning themselves over to cannibals—potentially becoming food themselves. Toby is convinced the pair are venturing into Happar territory, for “it is impossible that the inhabitants of such a lovely place (…) can be anything else but good fellows” (Melville 56). The Typee have a reputation as being “inveterate gormandizers of human flesh” (Melville 26), and Toby suggests that they would not require “such forests of bread-fruit trees—such groves of cocoa-nut—such wilderness of guava-bushes” (Melville 57). There is a thread here that suggests a connection between being good and virtuous with living in a lovely, Edenic place. Tommo and Toby experience dissonance when they realize that the beautiful lands through which they are adventuring, filled with bountiful food, are the home of a people they view as vicious cannibals. These ideas represent the limited views of Toby and Tommo when it comes to supposedly cannibalistic elements of certain cultures: they perceive the Typee as being cannibals in an all-or-nothing way, assuming that the Typee must be in a state of continual lust for human flesh. However, Tommo eventually realizes that, just because something is eaten, that does not automatically make it equivalent to food:

But here, Truth, (…) for cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of the slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous. (Melville 205)

Emphasizing this critical distinction between consumption in a rare and particular cultural context and consumption for the sake of enjoying food and obtaining nutrients, ensures that the Typee are not misrepresented. Mita Banerjee presents another reading of the role of cannibalism within the text, where she posits that it is a form of resistance: “Yet, what is so disturbing about the narrator’s glimpse of unadulterated Typee culture is that the Other may have his own means of resistance [cannibalism] (…). This state of nature is far from Edenic” (Banerjee 214). Here, Banerjee explores the role of a greater political context and the importance of reminding the reader that unadulterated culture is itself a means of resistance—so long as it can be held onto. This relationship between consumption and context is also critical when examining Hawai‘i’s kapu system. Vowell writes: “The eating kapus were part of a larger religious, ethical, and legal system, the underlying order for the Hawaiian way of life” (Vowell 44). The missionary wives zeroed-in on the restrictiveness of the kapu system, and their ignorance of the larger context led them to reduce Hawaiian culture to the same harsh stereotypes faced by the Typee. Thus, this serves as a reminder that food and culture do not simply possess a clear-cut relationship that can be discussed without consideration of context.

The complicated contexts tie into ideas of virtue and sensuality that infiltrate Tommo’s experience with the Typee. Words such as “gormandizers” highlight Tommo’s view of the Typee as creatures of overindulgence. This is later reiterated when he says:

But the voluptuous Indian, with every desire supplied, whom Providence has bountifully provided with all the sources of pure and natural enjoyment, and from whom are removed so many of the ills and pains of life—what has he to desire at the hands of Civilization? (Melville 124)

Tommo evidently views the Typee as residents of an Edenic paradise who need not lift a finger to have the luxuries of food and pleasure fall into their laps. What Tommo ignores here is the symbiotic relationship that the Typee possess with their food and the life that that relationship allows them to live. Since they do not overconsume resources to a state of depletion, the Typee are able to enjoy what they do have with pleasure. Along with this, the Typee eat only what naturally grows and thus can lead lives filled with more leisure as they are not constantly needing to work the land in order to eat. It is less of a God-gifted paradise, and more so a society running sustainably and subsisting on what the land can provide. Henry Hughes expands on these ideas of virtue and pleasure by connecting food with sensuality.

Tommo is hand fed by both his male friend Kory-Kory and the women who share his hut. Among these women, Fayaway becomes his paramour. Melville devotes several pages to an adoring description of Fayaway—she appears as the “perfection of female grace and beauty.” Among the more eatable features, she has rich “olive” skin and a soft mouth like the “arta,’ a fruit of the valley,” luscious in its “red and juicy pulp” (Hughes 5).

The use of food-language demonstrates the fact that Tommo views the voluptuous and gormandizing tendencies of the Typee as traits expanding beyond their consumption of food and into their sensual consumption of each other. Though they may not be gormandizers of human flesh in the context of cannibalism, he does view them as such in a sexual context. It is also worthwhile to note Tommo’s context within this moment. He has come from a ship where he existed in a state starved of pleasure and nutrition. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that he would have food and sexuality on his mind as he transitions sharply from a state of deprivation to overstimulation. This interplay between context and food practices is critical to consider when contemplating the implications food has on a culture’s relationship to sensuality and virtue.

Having taken time to understand what food is not for the Typee, it is necessary to examine the food that sustains them and that forms the foundation for much of their culture. Tommo’s first encounter with Typee food happens when he is near starvation after time spent on a ship carrying dwindling provisions and a treacherous journey into Nukuheva. He is in such a state that his wettened bread mashed together with tobacco has “a flavor and a relish (…) that under other circumstances would have been impossible for the most delicate of viands to have imparted” (Melville 47). Having lived without quality food for an extended period, the food of the Typee, prepared with care and attention, provides an excellent reward. He and Toby first encounter the Typee underneath a bread-fruit tree (Melville 68), which feels symbolic of the universal need for food and its ability to bring people together. It is also an encounter that begs the reader to recall Adam and Eve’s encounter with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; once Toby and Tommo interact with the Indigenous populations, the knowledge that they impart can not be undone. Whatever Edenic purity Tommo falsely believes the Typee to have, will be irreversibly demolished. During his time with the Typee, Toby will eventually develop a great fondness for bread-fruit, a primary food for them, and he explains that the food is “by no means disagreeable to the palate of the European” (Melville 72). Here, he is attempting to work through his inherent negative assumptions about the eating practices of the Typee. It comes as a shock to him that such a “primitive” (Melville 11) people could possess food that would taste good to a European. Food becomes a source of communion, almost an inverse of the aggression of cannibalism, as it is a means of promoting peace and passivity. Thus, food is a way for Tommo to begin to view the Typee as more human, while also being a force that foreshadows the destruction that looms as he entwines himself further into the lives of the Typee.

There are many aspects of food culture amongst the Typee that feel familiar to Tommo, continuing to humanize the Typee. Tinor, the mistress of Marheyo’s household, does “not understand the art of making jellies, jams, custards, tea-cakes, and such like trashy affairs, [but] she [is] profoundly skilled in the mysteries of preparing ‘amar,’ ‘poee-poee,’ and ‘kokoo” (Melville 84). Tinor is not unlike the caring women Tommo remembers from back home who ensure that everyone is well-fed. The use of food as a form of care appears, therefore, to be a universal act that seems to exist in many cultures. Tommo and Toby are given such an abundant feast upon their arrival as a display of hospitality and not because they are being fattened up for delectable consumption, as Toby fears (Melville 94). Food as a form of care is also seen in the shape of “anxious mothers [who] provide them [sailors] with bottled milk” (Melville 21) before their sons go off to join the ships. Since they can do little to provide them with any comfort, this small and fleeting gesture of sustenance is a way for them to express their love and care before losing their sons for an indefinite amount of time. Tommo never stops eating well during his time with the Typee and he is privy to a variety of feasts as mealtimes are an important aspect of their day. Tommo explains: “While partaking of this simple repast, the inmates of Marheyo’s house, after the style of the indolent Romans, reclined in sociable groups upon the divan mats, and digestion was promoted by cheerful conversation” (Melville 150).  It is evident that the sharing and preparation of food is a means of demonstrating care and comradery to those who one cares most about.

Though food can be a great way of demonstrating concern for others and can reveal much about a culture, a society’s relationship to its food also has critical economic and political implications. “No danger of starving here, I tell you” (Melville 103), says Kory-Kory to Tommo. This is a stark contrast to life in Europe where citizens starve to death daily and there is never enough to go around. Aside from having a smaller population, their sustainable relationship with food consumption and production ensures that the Typee have enough to feed everyone. Bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, bananas, and other fresh fruits naturally grow in abundance and the Typee treat them with respect and consume them in reasonable quantities. Tommo also mentions their foresight to preserve a certain quantity of bread-fruit in case the trees fail to bear fruit (Melville 117). The fact that the Typee preserve their food in such a way demonstrates how dedicated their culture is to ensuring that starvation is not a cause of death for its people. It would seem quite foreign to many of Tommo’s contemporaries to see a society valuing feeding each citizen. This is also seen in how the Typee distribute fish after a fishing trip. Tommo explains that “[t]he fish were under a strict Taboo until the distribution was completed” (Melville 207). “Every man, woman, and child” (Melville 207) receives a piece. Fish are seen as something of a luxury and Tommo ponders why they do not fish more frequently if they love it so much (Melville 206). This sharply contrasts the idea of the Typee as voluptuaries: one can surmise that they consume their finite resources less frequently so as not to overconsume them. This is also seen in their relationship with salt: “I verily believe that with a bushel of common Liverpool salt all the real estate in Typee might have been purchased” (Melville 114), explains Tommo. Yet, despite the love the Typee have for salt, they do not exploit their resources or abuse labourers to enjoy it. The young girls are not expected to spend all day, day after day, collecting every bit of salt possible. Rather, the Typee appreciate what they can collect without demanding more. The advent of foreign intervention brings about the demise of this tradition and Tommo explains:

When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to hereditary opulence does manual labor come more unkindly than to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of Heaven (Melville 196).

Tommo suggests that the traditional food and agricultural practices of the Typee are Godly and Edenic and that it is the profligacy of Western interveners which drives them east of Eden. Yet, Tommo again ignores the ingenuity of the Typee and their ability to value what they have, instead choosing to view them as indolent people who should be grateful for their heavenly bounty. The Typee are not contemporary residents of a blessed garden, they are simply respectful of land and resources. Evidently, societal values are inextricable from the political and economic realities of food politics within the contexts of intervention and imperialism.

Tommo laments the impending inevitability of capitalist intervention by foreign forces which will ultimately lead to the development of a world that does not allow for Indigenous traditions. Commenting on this impending intervention, Mita Banerjee observes: “[T]he Indian will be ‘displaced’ by the new economy even before he is ‘removed’” (Banerjee 213). Her analysis highlights the seeming hopelessness of attempting to retain any aspects of Indigenous cultures once Western values take hold—even the aforementioned resistance no longer carries weight. The capitalist mindset, so highly valued by Melville’s America, criticizes the Typee for daring to consume only the “spontaneous fruits of the Earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the support of the indolent natives” (Melville 196), as opposed to exploiting every inch of the land. Banerjee argues: “Polynesians may be said to bring about their own destruction by that which is said to be ‘genuine’ to their ‘culture.’ As the Other [Typee] is urged to preserve cultural ‘traits’ that precipitate his downfall, resistance itself becomes a sign of degeneracy” (Banerjee 214). Here, Banerjee argues that the Typee have truly been cast east of Eden, and will never be able to revert to what they previously enjoyed. This cold fact is reiterated by Alex Calder who writes: “With regard to taboo, for example, their [the Typee] making allowances for his ignorance of its provisions would eventually weaken those provisions, not only so far as he [Tommo] was concerned, but also so far as everyone was concerned” (Calder 33).  Calder demonstrates how the accommodation of one man’s needs is the only shift necessary for traditions to begin their demise. Sarah Vowell also explores this theme in Unfamiliar Fishes, where she discusses how the advent of the missionaries led to the decimation of taboos that prevented Hawaiian women from eating bananas or dining with men: “Natives witnessed haole sailors breaking rules willy-nilly” (Calder 54), which led to Hawaiians breaking the rules secretly until, eventually, they were overturned.  Despite civilizations, like the Typee and Hawaiians, attempting to cling to their traditional agricultural and eating practices, once the Tree of Knowledge has been eaten from, there is no turning back.

Melville’s text provides a vivid snapshot of a society’s relationship with food before foreign intervention, and Vowell shows what happens after foreign influence takes hold. Though the Typee and Hawaiians are distinct cultures with their own traditions and languages, they do have enough similarities to be appropriate comparisons and it is safe to assume, as Tommo does, that what happened in Hawaii would likely happen to the Typee. Taro is the Hawaiian equivalent of bread-fruit: “A Hawaiian could not exist without his calabash of poi [mashed taro]. The root is an object of the tenderest solicitude, from the day it is planted until the hour it is eaten” (Vowell 48). This care, not unlike the care Tinor puts into preparing bread-fruit, demonstrates the inherent respect that Hawaiians have for the food that sustains their life. Taro is so critical that it is even a part of their creation myth, which simply reiterates the relevance of food to their culture. However, during Americanization, “cane fields soon replaced taro patches” (Vowell 332), substituting the cultivation of a Hawaiian necessity with cash crops serving a Western appetite for luxury. With more and more foreigners coming to the Islands, the Hawaiian economy began to develop a dependence on the outside world and their ability to grow sugar became one of their greatest economic assets. However, this was far more than just a commodity: these fields became a part of cultural erasure as they disintegrated the symbiotic relationship Hawaiians had with the land and the food it produced. One aspect of this disintegration involved shifting towards an American concept of private property. During the mid-nineteenth century David Malo, an American-educated Native Hawaiian who was a critical contemporary voice for Hawaiians, suggested a ten-year moratorium on land purchasing so as to educate Hawaiians on private property and ensure that they were able to adequately participate in the new financial system (Vowell 157). However, this suggestion was readily ignored, leading to Hawaiians being displaced by the new economy, just as Banerjee describes regarding the Marquesan. By not viewing the land that produces food as private property to be exploited for economic gain, the Hawaiians, and Typee (Melville 201), view food as a right that everyone should have access to and not as a commodity to be used to garner wealth.

After losing the culture that relied so heavily on taro, Hawai‘i has since used food to create a new, post-Americanization identity reflecting contemporary Hawaiian culture. “[N]one of us belong here—not me, not the macaroni, not the chicken soaked in soy sauce” (Vowell 1), writes Vowell of the plate lunch she eats. These plate lunches have become a staple meal in contemporary Hawai‘i and represent the change in culture that has occurred since the days when Hawaiians ate solely from the land and sea around them. With the growth of sugar plantations, the need for cheap and multitudinous labour expanded and an intake of immigrants, primarily from China, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and the Philippines, shifted the demographic of Hawai‘i (Vowell 7). Vowell explains that the plantation workers would often share food during lunchtime which led to the development of a culture that is now derived from all around the world (Vowell 8). She quotes Gaylord Kubota, retired director of the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, as he describes a set of interviews he conducted. In one interview he says, “a third-or-fourth generation Portuguese-American was talking about how her family had a standing order from the Japanese neighbor lady for tofu” (Vowell 180), by which, he demonstrates the new relationships people living in Hawai‘i have built because of food. As Hawai‘i changed, food remained a critical part of its culture and is a show of the productive engagement of individuals living within Hawai‘i who chose to adapt and evolve in order to assemble a culture that reflects the new realities of Hawaiian life.

“The end of the old system was a natural side effect of the (…) foreigners” (Vowell 54), writes Vowell. This unfortunate truth was a distinct reality for the Hawaiians and Tommo predicts a similar fate for the Typee. By living amongst the Typee, Tommo comes to understand that the ways in which they treat their food and the land it grows on is a direct reflection of how the people treat each other. Much can be learnt about a culture by taking the time to understand the extent to which they respect their food sources, for, as Hawai‘i shows, once respect for the land is gone, respect for a society’s inhabitants leaves as well. This poignant reminder is all too relevant in a rapidly changing world where individuals die daily of starvation and land is damaged until it can grow nothing new. It is unnerving to consider what will come next for societies once there is no food or land left to rely on.

Works Cited

Banerjee, M. (2003). Civilizational Critique in Herman Melville’s “Typee, Omoo, and Mardi”. Amerikastudien, 48(2), 207–225.

Calder, A. (1999). “The Thrice Mysterious Taboo”: Melville’s Typee and the Perception of Culture. University of California Press, 27–43.

Hughes, H. (2004, October). Fish, Sex and Cannibalism: Appetites for Conversion in Melville’s Typee. Leviathan, 6(2), 3–16.

Melville, H. (1996). Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Penguin Group.

Vowell, S. (2011). Unfamiliar Fishes. Riverhead Books.

Photo via Flickr

by Talia Neelis

As bright lights illuminate the stage of the Jericho Arts Center, an elderly woman wearing a pink dress and a pregnant belly emerges from the darkness. No laughter sounds from the audience. Rather, they listen intently as her canticum on voluptas fills the theater. Among other expressions of voluptas (pleasure), this canticum allows Alcumena to take possession of herself. She casts off her male counterparts’ overbearing fragile masculinity using her confidence. Audiences as early as those of Euripides have found Alcumena’s story relevant, and today her character continues to be reinterpreted for contemporary observers. New analyses are made possible by her lack of archetypal clarity, which allows her to become a figure of dissent to traditional authority. While the male characters of Amphitruo, Jupiter, Sosia, and Mercurius submerge themselves in utter delirium over her body, Alcumena prevails through the internal turmoil of the story by liberating herself from gender constraints. Her sensual passion invigorates her femininity, and her conception of Hercules with Jupiter is a source of regeneration rather than satirical parody. She maintains her dignity, identity, and virtue while the men of Amphitruo grapple with confusion and uncertainty. Their farce emerges from crude taunts masked as clever jabs, in turn setting up Alcumena’s superiority. Just as male strife bombards her sensuality and pregnancy in the play, varying male perspectives on her character prevail in academic discourse. Some scholars like David Christenson claim that these self-possessive elements denote her as a “vehicle for absurd humour” (244). Various masculine interpretations have shown Alcumena in this light, but her overt intimacy, pregnancy, and sophistication amplify her as a powerful heroine rather than a mere victim of satire. In her confidence, poise, and conviction, Alcumena defies gender mores of theatrical representation and turns perceptions of pious women on their heads.

Alcumena shatters normative representations of sensual women as her sexual agency reinforces her authority and morality. Her voluptas flourishes in her canticum:

Pleasure is the tiniest thing, isn’t it? …

Sadness is the friend who comes along

Following behind, right after Pleasure. …

I was given pleasure only briefly.

I had him once, and still I need him more. …

And the sickness, now he’s

gone is so much greater than the pleasure he gave me yesterday (Amph. 631-42).

Alcumena’s own expression of satisfaction disproves the notion that she acts as a wife bound to her marital duties. Her enthusiasm to lie with her husband is an empowering ideal in itself when she discloses that she is, “not averse, by Castor, to receive [Amphitruo] back again” (Amph. 663). Her eagerness and yearning when she discusses her sensuality enable her to wholly embody her femininity. To see parody in Alcumena’s canticum would be to denounce the breadth of female eroticism altogether.

Both Alcumena’s husband and modern scholarship extol Alcumena’s integrity. After her canticum on voluptas, Amphitruo hails her as the paradigm of Theban probitas (virtue):

Of the Theban women, all,

her husband judges her to be the best.

Citizens of Thebes all rumour

her to be so virtuous (Amph. 677-678).

Plautine scholars like Hanson, Segal, and Sedgwick claim that Alcumena is the greatest incarnation of pietas (piety) on the Roman stage as a virtuous Theban woman (Christenson 247). She is argued as either matronly or vulgar in a debate backed on both sides by men; she is rather a figure of female liberation. Christenson argues that these proponents of a tragic Alcumena have “tended to overlook a distinctive feature of Plautus’ representation of her: she is made to be sexually insatiable” (246). This is an ironic claim as he insinuates that because Alcumena is desirable, she is more satirical than Jupiter–a clowning god-turned-senex who follows her around like a dog. In the context of his buffoonery, Alcumena is anything but comedic. While her eagerness for intimacy may boost Jupiter’s ego, it also bolsters her moxie. The motif of satietas, to this point only relative to Jupiter, now shifts to Alcumena as the matrona (Christenson 250). While all-mighty Jupiter makes a fool of himself, Alcumena proves herself a threat to traditional authority by behaving in a dignified manner. While Alcumena remains respectable and sincere, Jupiter relentlessly pursues his urges to ensure that he is “safe and free to fondle her” (Amph. 465) in what Christenson calls “erotic business of the most ridiculous sort.” Alcumena liberates herself from gender and power constraints through expression of her sensuality to her listeners.

On the other hand, Jupiter’s urges and physicality strip him of his esteem and he becomes an object of comedy. Christenson’s claim that Alcumena’s cupido (lust) is “anything but restrained” (130) is certainly true. However, the god’s cupido is deplorable when Mercurius describes that Jupiter,

starts a secret lust, Alcumena

he took her body for himself to use…

and for their sake the night is lengthened out,

while he with her takes what delight he wants.

And he’s disguised, like he’s Amphitruo (Amph. 107/108, 113-115).

Jupiter’s desperation and amorality is clear. His audience perceives him as a clown who runs around the circus of the stage performing sexual tricks. Observers watch as he juggles the logistics of his “long night” disguised in his Amphitruonic get-up. Christenson argues that Alcumena’s cupido has “appointed comic purpose” (115), but Jupiter’s lust is much more farcical. Once again, the traditional hierarchy of prestige is contradicted as Jupiter, who usually commands respect, becomes a “caricatured figure of divine authority” (Christenson 259). The physicality of Jupiter and Mercurius pushes them down in the play’s hierarchy of dignity. The exaggerated caricature of Jupiter as “glib and lecherous” in the costume of a senex (an aged jealous man) cuts a “ridiculous figure on stage in indulging his all too human lusts” (Christenson 244-45). Similarly, Mercurius assumes the “grotesque acroutements” of a Plautine clever slave, outfitted in padded tights, elongated feet, a pot-belly, red wig, and a mask with distorted facial features (Gratwick 116-119). Depicted as such, he becomes the “literal embodiment of a carnival clown” (Gratwick 119). Alcumena’s pregnancy is not only reasonable and non-farcical, but empowering when contrasted with these clearly satirical costumes and characters.

The materialization of Alcumena’s undeniable pregnancy is a source of strife both in the events of the play and in academic discourse. As per tradition and Sosia’s comment that he “See[s] [Alcumena] by the door–she’s stuffed!” (Amph. 667), there is no doubt that padding would have been used to depict her pregnancy. While carrying both the demigod Hercules and her human son, Christenson argues that in Alcumena’s “bloated and caricatured form… [she]  literally embodies… a vehicle for grotesque humour” (Christenson 244). He repeatedly refers to Alcumena as physically and sexually “caricatured,” (131, 244) thus pointing out that “On stage, the pregnant woman is an irresistibly comic figure, as nature has caught her out” (246). He supports his argument with the employment of Bakhtin’s concept of grotesque realism, whose essential principle is degradation. The term concerns itself with the lower stratum of the body and the reproductive organs, and therefore lowers all that is ideal and abstract to the material level (244). Even with the application of grotesque realism, Christenson fails to isolate what exactly is so comical about pregnant women. Does Alcumena’s pregnancy cause comedic effect because she does not know whether Amphitruo or Jupiter impregnated her, or is she farcical because she is ‘bloated’ and therefore ‘degraded’? Christenson’s argument is grounded on the assumption that audiences would “erupt with belly laughs” (246) at the sight of a natural female body, as he asserts that “Pregnancy is a vehicle for absurd and highly visual humor” (ibid). This claim is the academic product of a nearly wholly male-dominated discourse, and is not the case in Amphitruo. Apart from a portion of female-authored perspectives (Phillips), the prevailing Amphitruonic arguments are produced by male attitudes. Christenson’s argument that Alcumena’s body is a primary source of farce falls short due to lacking evidence and is in danger of imparting chauvinistic undertones.

Christenson closes evidentiary gaps by instituting his own disproportionate and prejudiced assumptions. He acknowledges that contemporary audiences

greatly rue the lack of visual evidence for early Roman theater, and so a precise picture of Alcumena’s costume, but it is at least easy to imagine the audience’s collective laughter [at the expense of] her distended stomach. (245)

Modern observers lack the evidence for a so very ‘bloated’ and ‘caricatured’ Alcumena, yet Christenson implements biased presumptions to imagine that her stomach must have been a comically and unrealistically emphasized “grotesquely padded figure” (245). He does not take into account that Alcumena is giving birth to twins, as Mercurius narrates at the beginning of the play: “she’s giving birth to twins today!/ One son’s Amphitruo’s, the other’s Jove’s” (Amph. 480-483). She carries two fetuses in her womb (one of whom exhibits superhuman strength and size), so even if she was “an exaggeratedly stuffed matrona” (245), a large belly would have accurately represented the twin-bearing woman’s physical state. Christenson also fails to acknowledge the full significance of grotesque realism in Amphitruo, where regeneration is a central theme. Involving itself with the reproductive organs, regeneration is an aspect of grotesque realism inexplicably tied to birth. Ultimately, Amphitruo celebrates human sexuality and procreation which culminates in the birth of one of the most honored demigods in Greco-Roman mythology. This pregnancy by divine intervention is received so highly by Amphitruo that he resolves to “sacrifice for peace/ to highest Jove for many gifts” (Amph. 1125) and asks his spectators to “give a hand/ for the sake of highest Jove” (Amph. 1145). If Alcumena’s pregnancy truly is a vehicle for absurd humor, her conception by divine intervention of Hercules would not resolve the play in such an honorable way. The “grotesque caricature” of pregnancy and sexuality that Christenson argues has a purely comedic effect actually sets Alcumena at the top of the play’s pecking order.

Now debased and at the bottom of the power hierarchy, the masculine figures of Amphitruo try to appease their insecurities by undermining Alcumena’s dignity. They ridicule her body because they fear what they do not know. Alcumena’s pregnancy throws her fellow Thebans into a confused frenzy which constructs one of the central conflicts of the play. They subject Alcumena to an excess of mockery because of the state of her body when Sosia draws a parallel between sexual satietas and the satiety of food:

Pregnant women should be given

palm-I-granted – pomegranate –

so that she can chew on it

if she starts with morning sickness (Amph. 722-723).

Additionally, her husband greets her by announcing, “Wonderful to see you so pregnant, and so full of… beauty,” (Amph. 681). He intensifies his mockery when he comments that Alcumena, “lent her body” (Amph. fr.10) and calls her a “treasure trove of shocking, shameful sex” (Amph. fr.16). Alcumena’s enjoyment of her ‘affair’ threatens Amphitruo’s masculinity, so he derides his wife’s sexuality in order to restore his confidence. The barrage of jokes centered around Alcumena’s pregnancy exemplifies Amphitruo and Sosia’s ill attempts to mask their discomfort.

Amphitruo and Sosia clumsily try to disguise their insecurities by claiming Alcumena is insane. Sosia begs, “Please, why don’t you demand that she be purified; she’s muy loca” (Amph. 775), and Amphitruo asks, “Woman, when did you first feel that/ these things were infecting you?” (Amph. 728). Sosia also tries to diminish Alcumena’s leverage by comparing her to a member of the Bacchic cult:

If you desire to go against a crazy cultist,

not just nuts, but nutzier she’ll go, and hit you all the more.

If you listen, she will settle for one punch (Amph. 702-704).

Sosia refers to the Bacchanalia Affair of 186 BC, which saw women abandon their chastity to join the Bacchic cult (Valerius Maximus 6.3.7-8). The cult performed nocturnal rituals that incited such fear in the Roman Senate that it was difficult to repress (Gruen 35). Alcumena is additionally linked to sorcery through the name of her attendant, Thessala, whose name evokes a region in Greece which is traditionally associated with magic and witchcraft (Christenson 259). The Bacchanalia Affair and the association with sorcery mirror Alcumena’s advantage over her male companions. They are afraid of her sexuality, her pregnancy, and her complexity to such an extreme that they use ridicule as an outlet for their unease. Their mockery and debasement of her humanity is a product of their fragility. However, these attempts at humiliation rather magnify Alcumena’s authority over them. Her wit epitomizes her liberation when she recalls the insult that she is “muy loca,” (Amph. 775) and throws his word back at Amphitruo and remarks that he is, “possessed or muy loco” (Amph. fr.8). Alcumena’s determination to uphold her integrity liberates her from the constraints which Amphitruo, Jupiter, and Sosia try to impose.

Amphitruo is diminished not only by Alcumena’s wit, but also by his own self-aggrandizement in the face of his crumbling pride. He completely assumes the miles gloriosus (braggart soldier) stock character when he recounts his victories in battle and stresses how excited his wife will be upon his arrival:

I believe when I come home

I’ll be quite welcome with my wife…

I was leading and in charge;

We vanquished them when first we met

She, awaiting my arrival,

Yearns for me; of this I’m sure (Amph. 654, 657-658)

After this grand prediction, he is left embarrassed by his bruised masculinity when Alcumena greets him “barely/ more than when she greets the dog” (Amph. 680). He tries to establish himself to the audience as a courageous, rigorous, and logical leader, but this description was already stolen by Jupiter when he assumed Amphitruo’s persona on the previous night. As he comes to doubt his own identity, the doubling of Amphitruo exploits more humorous confusion (Christenson 13). He is confounded, enraged, and humiliated when Alcumena narrates the intimate details of her evening with Jupiter, describing that he “dined with [her]/ and slept with [her] well” (Amph. 734), that she “gave [him] a kiss” (Amph. 800), and that she “reclined with [him]/… on the same recliner” (Amph. 803). Her account of the evening culminates when she reveals she slept “In [their] room./ In the same bed next to [him]” (Amph. 807). As she continues with content and placidity, Amphitruo grows in anger and shame. Alcumena’s sexual expression does not degrade her own integrity, but rather Amphitruo’s.

Amphitruo continually makes grievances which demonstrate his helplessness to Alcumena’s sensuality, Jupiter’s divinity, and his own lost sense of self. He acknowledges that “Every human mocks [him] freely” (Amph. 1047). His exasperation is especially ironic when the audience realizes that humans do not mock him freely, but gods do. Divine mocking is overtly apparent when he charges his own home with a “comic boast of impiety” (Christenson 182), but is prevented from entering by Jupiter’s thunderbolt (Amph. 1052). Eventually left a collapsed senex by Alcumena, Amphitruo is convinced that he is a cuckold and is less secure in his own identity than ever before. In Alcumena’s line, immo mecum, cenavisti et mecum cubuisti (Amph. 734), Hough argues that the threefold cu-sound symbolizes cuckoldry (Marshall 57). As the audience watches Amphitruo undergo humiliation after humiliation, they realize what he does not: Alcumena is not the play’s vehicle for absurd humor, but rather Amphitruo is.

Alcumena’s sexual appetite does not render her a farce or a tragic figure, but constructs a unique definition that is unsuitable for any single Roman stock character. Her lack of archetypal clarity strengthens her dissent to traditional representation. While scholars like Hunter argue that Plautus has emphasized Alcumena’s “tragic innocence” by turning her into the “epitome of the respected Roman matrona” (Hunter 211), she does not entirely fit the definition of this stock character. Her strong libido directly conflicts with the public persona of a matrona–who is traditionally idealized as chaste–but it does not denote her as a parody of female vulgarity either. When Alcumena contends that she brought “modesty, shame, [and] well-controlled desires” (Amph. 840) into her marriage, Christenson argues that there are unmistakable comic ironies as she appears a spokesperson for the values traditionally associated with the idealized matrona (109). However, he fails to acknowledge that during childbirth, Alcumena’s servant Bromia says that Alcumena’s “Hands were clean, her head was covered” (Amph. 1093). Alcumena embodies the true form of a matrona in her respect for tradition, but simultaneously represents other Roman stock characters not traditionally associated with older women. The meretrix–an archetype often conceived as a prostitute–is exotic, extravagent, and amoral rather than immoral (Gratwick 110). Alcumena invokes ideals of both matrona and meretrix:

She who’s done no wrong should be

Bold. she should speak for herself

forcefully and daringly. (Amph. 837)

She is amoral in that she does not know she has committed adultery, and she is moral in that she is loyal in her marriage (as far as she knows, since Jupiter is disguised as her husband). She is exotic and extravagant in her blatant expression of her sexuality. She is upright in her convictions of fidelity against her husband. Alcumena’s characterization is fluid between the matrona and meretrix, and even extends to the virgo. The virgo usually represents the ‘young maiden’ archetype. She is self-consistent, modesta, and given to docta dicta; “learned sayings” (Gratwick 110). While her male counterparts submerge into various unstable identities, confusion, and embarrassment, Alcumena consistently maintains her original identity–even if it is a complex one.

Amphitruo is not an isolated work in its presentation of fluid and sophisticated female characterization. Plautus infused stock character contradictions into other works, including Poenulus. In Poenulus, Adelphasium is dressed as a meretrix but in fact embodies a virgo. This variance allows her to behave as a meretrix, even though this archetype is incompatible with her role and involves stock variance (Gratwick 110). Plautus made conscious, nuanced decisions to construct dynamic and complex female characters. They are not stagnant or flat, and therefore can not be labeled as either tragic or comic figures. Their complexity and depth represent innovation in female characterization in order to preserve integrity, empowerment, and humanity.

Plautus saturated Amphitruo with a variety of different rhythms, speech patterns, and songs to communicate tones of female empowerment. One of his heroines (Matrona in Menaechmi) chooses iambic senarius– one of Plautus’ three main meters– to cue the audience that they should not feel sorry for her (Gratwick 111). Similarly, Alcumena speaks in senarii when she addresses the audience:

I can’t remain inside. Accused by him

of cheating, shameful sex, adultery.

He cries aloud that what’s not done was done,

says what’s not happened I am guilt of,

and trusts I’ll think this all beside the point.

I’ve done no wrong, by Pollux. I won’t bear

the shame of false indictment. Either he’ll

apologize or else I will leave him.

For I am blameless of what he’s alleged (Amph. 881-890).

While Amphitruo grapples with his wife’s apparent indifference to their marriage and attempts to improve his position by slandering her sexual appetite, Alcumena maintains her poise and does not cave to her husband’s insolence. Her confident lines spoken in senarii support Gratwick’s assertion that Alcumena is “presented powerfully as… a heroine” (109). The movement and weight of the verses in senarii are carefully engineered elements of meaning. It was no accident that Plautus chose to have Alcumena deliver her lines in this meter, as his whole body of work becomes a tapestry of metrical variety. This tapestry was “renowned in antiquity for the nature of its rhythms” (Marshall 7). Just as strategic metric use is present among Plautus’ other works, the playwright utilized rhythm to reinforce Alcumena’s confidence and power.

The language that is carried by these different meters is no less significant than the rhythms themselves. In contrast to common opinion, Gratwick illuminates that Plautus’ language is not at all vulgar. The playwright employs fantastic hyperbole throughout his work that does not always signify humor. He cites the example of lumbi, “bottom” occurring, but not culus, “arse” (112). Plautus draws a clear line between the audience’s reality and the reality of his play through his use of characterization, content, and language. When he wishes to express emotion, he does not do so in a way that would convey the reality of the audience’s daily experience, but rather uses “a bludgeoning prolixity, exuberance of imagery, verbal inventiveness, bizarre identifications, and elevation of the tone to that of tragic discourse” (Gratwick 112) to communicate the tone of the play. Christenson recognizes that Plautus’ hyperbole is saturated with clever puns, but is rarely obscene (131). Alcumena’s discussion on voluptas (Amph. 631-42) and witty puns on cuckoldery (Amph. 734) communicate more sophistication than vulgarity. Her meter and her sophisticated rhetoric refutes the argument that she is a humorous voluptuary. She assumes a role that is in no way farcical as she maintains her dignity while speaking in empowered rhythms and refined language. Plautus carefully constructs her language and meter to showcase her intellect and empowerment rather than her sexual humiliation.

The number and variety of Amphitruo adaptations throughout history attest to the richness, complexity, and strength that permit Alcumena’s character to transcend the original work. Sedgwick contends that “probably no play has had such a long and chequered history as the Amphitruo of Plautus” (6). The sophistication and multivalency which Plautus imbued Alcumena with is translated by the vast array of the play’s adaptations throughout ancient and modern history. Sedgwick calls it a “fair inference” that Plautus’ Amphitruo contains a parody of Euripides’ Alcmene (9). Alcumena’s story travels from the Ancient Greek environment of Euripides to the seventeenth-century Christian setting of Burmeister, where Alcumena becomes the Virgin Mary (Sedgwick 3). This history reflects that while the play has comedic effect, Alcumena is neither a comic or tragic figure. Molière’s seventeenth century rendering of Amphitruo features Jupiter as utterly smitten by Alcumène and resentful of the fact that he wins her affection only by impersonating her husband. In this piece, Alcmène loses all of her gentleness and pathos (Sedgwick 6). In George Kaiser’s 1944 Zweimal Amphitryon, Alcumena once again exerts control over Jupiter as her love dissuades him from obliterating the human world. Molière and Kaiser pick up on Plautus’ hints that the audience should not pity or laugh at Alcumena, but rather marvel in her dominance.

Giradoux’s Amphitryon 38 renders Jupiter as even more deferential to Alcumena than Molière does. His piece has an earthly and wise Alcmene completely in control of Jupiter. The god is “enamored of human love, seeming always to be at a nervous disadvantage in her presence” (Christenson 74). Jupiter’s insecurity is especially evident when he asks her to rate their love-making, to which she responds that only “conjugale” does the night justice. Ultimately, she persuades Jupiter that their relationship should be purely Platonic (ibid). The power hierarchy of Amphitruo is overt in Giradoux’s work. Alcumena is unattainable for Jupiter due to her dignity, power, and soundness in her femininity and sexuality. When Jupiter’s masculinity becomes too fragile, he fabricates that the affair was a figment of the past.

The United Players of Vancouver Theatre Company’s production of Amphitruo emphasized Alcumena’s multivalency to contemporary audiences. In Director Toph Marshall’s adaptation of Amphitruo, an elderly woman assumed the role of Alcumena (Vancouver 2021). The casting decision reinforced the dignity and elegance of a matrona and the divine nature of the female vessel. In his script, Marshall explains that Alcumena  “enjoys sex [and] makes jokes, but also offers a paradigmatic articulation of the presumptive morality of a Republican Roman wife” (Marshall 4). This truly mature Alcumena displays the same sexual excitement as a young Alcumena would. Her magnetism transcends generations and renders her tenacious rather than objectified or farcical. Not only does Alcumena’s discourse on eroticism generally normalize female lust, but when an elder delivers sexually pointed lines, maturity as it relates to sexual ideals is de-stigmatized. Her evident pregnancy on stage further disrupts traditional conventions, as a young maiden has now materialized as aged and impregnated. Alcumena’s pregnancy reiterates her matrona-like aspects, resulting in a true amalgamation of many stock characters. This adaptation emboldens audiences to grapple with the character’s dynamism and confront their own biases around strong women.

Plautus’ original Alcumena embodies a conglomeration of stock character attributes, but Burmeister, Molière, Kaiser, Giradoux, and Marshall’s versions of Alcumena isolate and exaggerate each of these specific characteristics. Infinite variations illustrate that Alcumena’s multifariousness grants her strength, depth, and power amidst the turmoil and confusion of Amphitruo.

Alcumena remains a character who stands in stark contrast to all other figures of her Theban setting. Thrown against a background that brims with male embarrassment, anger, and disorientation, Alcumena emerges as the only poised and dignified character from a mass of turbulence. Her ability to navigate the frustration of her male associates with composure and wit attests to her rightful position as a woman of high societal and independent stature. Alcumena’s character does not serve as an infinite abyss from which others merely extract farcical comments about her body and sexuality. The mockers reveal their true inferiority when they express their insecurity through farcical jabs, and illuminate that the aspects for which Alcumena is mocked are the primary counterpoints of her strong sense of self, femininity, and respectability. Centuries ago, Alcumena called women to be bold and should speak for themselves “forcefully and daringly” (Amph. 837). As the curtain closes on adaptations of Amphitruo around the world, Alcumena leaves her audiences with the incentive to find liberation in self-expression, even when they are the objects of relentless derision.

Works Cited

Christenson, David M. 2000. Plautus: Amphitruo. Cambridge: CUP.

—–.  2000-01. “Grotesque realism in Plautus’ Amphitruo,” CJ 96:3: 243-60.

Gratwick, A.S. 1982. “Drama” in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. II

(Cambridge) 109-12.

Gruen, E. S. 1990. Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy. New York: Brill.

Hunter, Richard L. 1985. The New Comedy of Greece and Rome. Cambridge: CUP.

Phillips, Jane. 1985. “Alcumena in the Amphitruo of Plautus: a Pregnant Lady Joke,” Classical Journal 80: 121-26.

Plautus, Titus Maccius. tr. C.W. Marshall. 2021. Amphitruo. Vancouver: University of British

Columbia. Produced September 2021, Amphitruo, dir. C. W. Marshall. Vancouver: J Jericho Arts Center.

—–. tr. Paul Nixon. 1950. Plautus: In Five Volumes. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press.

Sedgwick, W.B. 1960. Plautus: Amphitruo. Manchester University Press.

Photo via Flickr

by Maxine Kirsten Magtoto

Herman Melville’s 19th-century novel, “Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life”, is a self-reflection on Western culture, as well as the Western moralities that dominated social culture during Melville’s time. Tommo, the protagonist, is shown throughout the text to both admire and fear islanders’ physical forms and open sexuality. Sexual rebellion foregrounds the novel with emphasis on the idea of a decadent, ‘savage’ paradise as a contendor of American imperialism. In exploring homoeroticism and cultural deviance, the writings of Typee operate on the intersection of queer and colonial history: Melville critiques Western religious and political superiority and reprimands Western imperialist movements in the South Pacific. This essay argues that the themes of queerness in Typee are intentional and systematic, portrayed in the characters Toby, Fayaway, and Marnoo, whose relationships with Tommo embody both the realization of his dissatisfaction with Western colonial ambitions, as well as the crises of moral character that come along with it. Ultimately, Tommo’s interpersonal relationships and surrender to his own self-imposed restraint are symbolic of queer struggles against ‘moral’ society, reflect how collective prejudices distort social identities, and comment on how desire meets fear in contemplations of abject morality.

The concepts of exoticism and eroticism are conflated in “Typee”, and serve to paint the Polynesian people as fantastical, desirable, and distant.  In “Beloved Savages and Other Outsiders”, Kelvin Ray Beliele explores the travel writings of Melville alongside similar authors of his time–Bayard Taylor and Charles Warren Stoddard– and delineates their common goal to rebel against American ideas of religious and moral superiority. Beliele notes: “Beyond what seems to be cultural unrest, these writers are also experimenting with the definitions and boundaries of literary genres […] When they shift [these boundaries], they most clearly express their objection to the Western paradigm.” (Beliele) Nineteenth-century travel writers often wrote of experiencing “exotic” pleasures that were atypical and taboo– illegal or immoral– to the general American reader. As a result, writers like Melville often acted as translators, decrypting taboo issues to the general audience, but are expected to write circumspectly to avoid social reprimand. (Beliele) However, Beliele also notes that despite American censorship during the nineteenth-century, these male writers “knew that the sexuality of non-American non-white males could find safe and socially condoned expression in the travel narrative as a descriptive of the other.” (Beliele)  In other words, the distance of fiction allows Melville to write on experiences that would otherwise be unacceptable in reality.

The French Marquesas, the focal location of the book, is immediately established as an erotic, heterosexual paradise, a hiden haven separate from the civilized world of the Western sailors. Melville paints images of naked, unsuspecting Marquesan women swimming up to the ship, the Dolly (a name which, in itself, indicates both youthfulness and femininity) and welcoming the sailors to satisfy “the unholy passions of the crew and their unlimited gratification.” (Melville 20) The sailors perceive these women as “mermaids” and “nymphs”: that is, exotic, mythic beings assimilable to their own Western culture. Simultaneously, their erotic welcome and open sexuality overwhelms the Marquesas and threatens to unlock previously repressed moralities within the sailors. The exoticism of the Marquesas paint it as inherently subversive and directly opposing the conventions of Western gender roles and sexual conscience that built American society.

Alternatively, Tommo’s descriptions of ship life paint it as a homosocial environment that taps into a different realm of sexuality– one that eroticizes masculinity and the male form. Prior to jumping ship, Tommo makes a pact with Toby, a shipmate who also wishes to explore the Marquesas, with the two men marking their connection with a “affectionate wedding of palms” (Melville 26) before jumping ship.  In sealing their commitment to one another in terms of a nuptial agreement, Toby is the first male painted in a homosexual light– Tommo’s impression of him is one of admiration and affection: he describes Toby’s “naturally dark complexion” and “jetty locks of hair” (Melville 32) as well as his “remarkably prepossessing exterior” (Melville 40) and a certain “congeniality of sentiment”. (Melville 41) Toby sparks Tommo’s realization of his queer desire, and enables Tommo to delve deeper into this desire amongst the sexually liberal Typees.

Apart from these descriptions, however, their relationship is not explained in any depth: little is known about Toby, and he is largely portrayed as a mysterious stranger from home.  While Toby’s companionship reassures Tommo of the culture he belongs to once they reach the Marquesas and are greeted by the islanders, the two share very limited emotional and physical intimacy. However, Toby’s secrecy gives him allure– he has no past, and does not reveal details of his life. His name is an alias, “for his real name he would never tell us.” (Melville 31) A wanderer, he has committed his life to vagabond pursuits of destiny, “rambling over the world as if pursued by some mysterious fate they cannot possibly elude” (Melville 32). According to Beliele, Toby’s limitless moving and rambling is linked to an “uncontrolled sexuality”, noting the likelihood that Melville’s referring to Toby as a ‘rover’ “includes at least an association with a free sensuality.” As a wanderer, Toby is no longer concerned with values of “home” and domestic values, and he is free from limited visions of masculinity and sexuality.

Toby plays a critical role in establishing Tommo’s subversive conceptions of sexuality and morality as the narrative progresses, and his presence serves as an explicit reminder that they do not fully belong anywhere they run to– not with the Typees, not aboard the ship with their crewmates, and not the Western society they ultimately rejoin. Toby is a liminal figure: a midway point between a close minded American society, the homosocial but isolated world of the ship, and the freely erotic islands, if also a midway point between conventional conceptions of gender and queerness. In “Elasticity of Mind in Herman Melville’s Typee: A Quest for Individuation and Voice”, Linda Sheeley notes that “the rigid, masculine world,” symbolized as images of “tough reeds” and “steely canes” (Melville 35) attempts to thwart Tommo’s attempt to escape from convention– to trade his learned masculinity for the freedom of the erotic, feminine landscape. (Sheeley) Toby acts as a guide to the weighted, intersectional ponderings of Typee– into the idea of queerness, and how queerness comes to be recognized in institutions that either refuse to acknowledge it, or simply lack a name for it.

A marked shift in the narrative can be seen once Tommo meets Fayaway, a young Polynesian woman who represents a temptation for Tommo to join this culture. Fayaway’s social role within the community is defined and stable, and as a woman, remains a conventional choice for Tommo’s desires. He marks this desire by taking the risk to ask for special permission to take her out on a canoe, a transgression of cultural norms. However, she remains largely idealized, mysterious, and without any inner life. Tommo notes that “gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid and unfathomable.” (Melville 105) Tommo’s infatuation with Fayaway is not genuine– she is more a vague characterization of femininity than someone specific: she has no dialogue, and she never speaks; he looks into her eyes but doesn’t truly see her. She is virtually silent, barely human, and somewhat unreal, and is sexually available but not fully present. As a woman, Fayaway’s silence and overwhelming lack of presence reinforce the idea of queerness as a moral, logical, and social battle. Fayaway’s femininity makes her outspokenness almost expected, and marks her as a symbol of innocence, purity, and spirituality. In contrast, queerness, embodied in Tommo’s lacklustre relationship with Fayaway, stands for guilt, temptation, lust, sin– akin to vice. This frame affirms Fayaway’s position as a symbol of traditional custom and repression, whereas Tommo’s queerness is a symbol of instinct and the subsconsious, of unfulfilled desires and fundamental struggles between civilized society and primal human instinct.

In contrast to Tommo’s shallow relationship with Fayaway, Melville describes Tommo as sharing a much more specific intimacy with Kory-Kory, his designated attendant on the island. Unlike Fayaway, who is praised for her beauty, Tommo perceives Kory-Kory as a physically abject, almost offensively grotesque individual. However, while Fayaway is more explicitly sexualized, Tommo’s interactions with Kory-Kory are a more genuine realization of the sexual desires he is feeling on this island. After Toby has disappeared, Kory-Kory becomes the most frequent male figure in Tommo’s life. They share a moment of sexual intimacy, wherein Kory-Kory “produces light à la Typee”. (Melville 118) Kory-Kory can be seen as a foil to Fayaway in this way, as despite Tommo’s more explicit attraction to her, she is not written with the same nuanced conviction. Female characters largely remain in the background, and appear in three ways: as disarming sirens whose main task is to lead men into disgrace, as compromised and lacking wholeness of character, or both. In the case of Kory-Kory and Fayaway, however, the latter appears almost to indirectly echo and reinforce the maleness of the former, while she herself is subdued. Fayaway constitutes an emasculating suggestion for Tommo to reinterpret his own maleness. Tommo’s struggle against masculinity is thus twofold: coming from the male-dominated culture of maritime imperial conquest, masculinity represents a culture Tommo wishes to reject, but also a concept that he wishes to redefine for himself. Tommo’s experiences with Kory-Kory represent the moral ponderings that can occur without the threat of his past looming over him, as well as the impulses of conventional sexual values.

Marquesan society is not without its own restrictions and moral abstractions. Throughout the text, Tommo struggles to understand the concept of ‘taboo’. Tabooness is a social divider, separating the elite from the commoner, male from female, the sacred from profane, but also acts as a means of binding culture and creating shared identity. It is deeply woven into the religious, political, and social structures of the Polynesians. While Tommo does not fully understand the taboo, the existence of strict social rules in a seemingly pre-contact culture reveals the limitations behind Western conceptions of civilization. Tommo thus realizes that Western civilization “does not engross all the virtues of humanity; she has not even her full share of them.” (Melville 159) The taboo reflects how collective thinking distorts individual identity, both in Western society, as well as in the Marquesas.

Tommo begins to understand his own identity as taboo following Toby’s departure. Soon after, the Typees’ intention to prevent Tommo’s return to civilization grows increasingly more apparent. Tommo’s “dismal forebodings” begin to overwhelm his thinking: “Gradually I lost all knowledge of the regular recurrence of the days of the week, and sank insensibly into that kind of apathy which ensues after some violent outbreak of despair” (Melville 123).” As he gives up hope, Tommo no longer experiences time according to its willful Western march. A distinctly Polynesian mindset emerges in Tommo as he breaks free of his crisis and taps into a more flexible and forthcoming consciousness: “I began to experience an elasticity of mind which placed me beyond the reach of those dismal forebodings. .. . I gave myself up to the passing hour” (Melville 123-124). While the Typees have not formed any consistent conceptions of time, their lives are attuned to the changes of the present moment, and they are more in tune with their consciousness as a result. To Sheeley, this “elasticity of mind” offers Tommo a “model for resolving personal and narrative struggles that lead to his later, mature voice.” (Sheeley) Tommo’s evolving relationship with himself– both as a white man navigating through Typee society, and a queer man struggling with his own consciousness, making his quest for individuation all the more complex.

No character in the text embodies Tommo’s struggle and fascination with the taboo as amply as Marnoo. Marnoo, a Polynesian vagabond with the unique permission to travel freely between the different tribes, immediately situates himself as an ‘other’. He is a liminal and flexible political actor, and unlike other Polynesians, he has been immersed in Western culture, and was able to return to his homeland. Tommo’s fascination with him is intellectually erotic: he describes Marnoo’s physical features as combining Polynesian charms with classical Western beauty, going so far as to describe him as a “Polynesian Apollo” (Melville 135). Marnoo’s disposition is sexually ambiguous and androgynous: “His cheek was of a feminine softness” and “Had the belle of the season, in the pride of her beauty and power, been cut in a place of public resort by some supercilious exquisite, she could not have felt greater indignation than I did at this unexpected slight” (Melville 136) signalling Marnoo’s cultural androgyny: both Polynesian, or primitive, and Western, or civilized, all at once. These references to classic Greek thought ennoble Marnoo, and empower a narrative of queer love. Tommo’s strong reaction to his androgyny marks the peak of his confusion with his own queerness. In Western moral standards, non-conformity was unacceptable, anarchic, and almost destructive. Yet Marnoo is shown as someone who Tommo desires, wishes to copy, and is utterly confounded by– he is an unreachable ideal. This fascination is only made stronger as Marnoo ignores Tommo: “But without deigning to notice the civility, or even the mere incontrovertible fact of my existence, the stranger passed on, utterly regardless of me.” (Melville 136). Confronted with the handsome Marnoo’s indifference, Tommo’s queerness becomes more complex, intertwining with ideas of cross-cultural desire, visions of the cosmopolitan cohabitation between differing identities and cultural groups, and a destruction of classifications previously thought to be natural and invulnerable.

However, despite achieving balance between differing cultures, no Typee is as detached from Typee society as Marnoo. Tommo’s attraction to Marnoo comes in part due to his body being “free from the least blemish of tattooing.” (Melville 220) Much of Marnoo’s beauty comes from his light, unmarked skin, or in more concise terms, his whiteness. According to Beliele, Marnoo is close to being European– unlike the other Typees, Marnoo has lived amongst white people and knows English. Marnoo’s flexibility is both repulsive and beautiful to Tommo: “Yet there are instances where a person having ratified friendly relations with some individual […] whose inmates are at war with his own, […] venture with impunity […] where, under other circumstances he would have been treated as an enemy.” (Melville 222) Tommo and Marnoo are both ambassadors: clandestine actors that escape collective oppression, but run the risk of losing a sense of identity or belonging. To be an ambassador is to only temporarily accept the values of a foreign culture, and in Tommo’s case, temporarily accept his captive state. Beliele notes, “the traditional captivity narrative consistently positions the captor as an alien, with no empathy or attempt at understanding extended […]” (Beliele) In contrast to this narrative, Tommo is temporarily capable of looking past cultural barriers to recognize the individuality of the Typee people. However, Marnoo’s appearance is a reminder of Tommo’s tabooness, and a reminder of his inability to revert to a state prior to his transition to taboo. Sheeley further notes that Marnoo is the culminating symbol of Tommo’s learnings on the island: while Fayaway and Kory-Kory “represent extreme representations of the cultural and gender spectrum—she the ultra-feminine and he the perversely feminine,” both are unable to fully get through to Tommo by being “either non-literate, or unintelligible and untrustworthy.” (Sheeley) Marnoo, alternatively, both in speech and in liminal quality of character, mirrors Tommo’s idealization for his own quest– to understand his queerness, and to discover his inner individuation and truth.

Marnoo’s appearance marks the climax of Tommo’s story, where he is on the verge of being in the middle of two extremes: being partially assimilated but mostly invisible. Later on during his stay, the natives grow increasingly adamant that he get a tattoo– a mark of deeper involvement within the community. Tommo exclaims, “Not a day passed but I was persecuted by the solicitations of some of the natives to subject myself to the odious operation of tattooing” (Melville 231). Polynesian tattoos betray Western sensibilities and moralities, and are not so much a marker of individual choice as they are commitment to the Typee collective. Yet Tommo fears the need to conform anywhere: he is portrayed as desiring escape from both the Sailors and the Typees, at the beginning and end of the text, respectfully, but never fully settling in either place. Toby and Marnoo are almost counterparts for one another– as wanderers that fail to be fully safe where they are, they mark the beginning and the end of Tommo’s journey of self-discovery. Whether aboard a ship and constrained by his duty to aid imperial efforts, or on an island constrained by cultural barriers and physical ailments, his interactions have left Tommo in a position of physical and spiritual compromise, with Tommo’s anxieties ultimately winning. So long as he is unable to commit to a culture, Tommo has barred himself from any kind of personal autonomy, a kind of self-imposed un-freedom.

As a captive on both land and ship, Tommo’s explorations with sexuality ultimately lead him to ponder his spiritual beliefs and feelings. Tommo’s constant instability throughout the text can ultimately be linked to his “anxious desire to speak the unvarnished truth” (Melville 26): be it truth about himself, of the culture he was raised in, or the culture he was now immersed in. Unfortunately, he never finds these truths. While he denigrates the motives of Europeans in the South Pacific, and contemplates whether civilization does more harm than good to the “Polynesian savage,” he realizes that the natives’ decadence comes with a cost. In his praise and fascination with the virtuous Typees, Tommo remarks that they are “not free from the guilt of cannibalism” (Melville 205), the ultimate taboo. The truth of what makes up a truly ‘moral’ and upright culture is centrally located between the two extremes of these cultures: a ‘civilized’ culture, guided by law, with strict, often repressive, expectations of moral character; and a ‘pre-civilization’ culture, guided by human instinct, that Tommo will never fully understand, be it due to communication restrictions or his inability to surmise his identity struggles.

Tommo’s quest ultimately comments on how desire meets fear in the face of abject morality, and the nature of exploring the self amidst a background of intolerance, uncertainty, and prejudice. In her doctoral thesis, “Resisting the Vortex: Abjection in the Early Works of Herman Melville,” Jennifer Wing discusses how Tommo’s fear of abjection– the state of being cast off from moral and social society– comes from his own fear to confront his own mortality and consciousness, particularly, “his own physical, sexualized body.” (Wing) Queerness did not exist during Melville’s time, and “the sense of anachronism seems […] too strong” to readily describe his story as intentionally queer. (Beliele) However, this only strengthens the case of Tommo’s queerness being perceived as something abject, mysterious, and dangerous: Melville himself lacked a name for it. (Wing) Homosexuality is often coupled with cannibalism, the ultimate taboo, as something forbidden but implicitly occurring in the foreground. Cannibalism is a universal, uniting fear, symbolic of the consumption and losing of self as morality and truth become tangled into one another. Allusions to both queerness and cannibalism “almost always implied a loss of control over the body” (Sheeley) and these losses of control, subsequently, imply “a compromise of the self and a disintegration of identity.” (Sheeley) What Tommo fears in his own queerness is similar to his fear in cannibalism– a loss of control, and the prospect of establishing a self in alignment with forbidden sexualities and cultural acts. This is aptly represented in Tommo’s companions: Toby, representing Tommo’s initial impressions of the Marquesas, mentions cannibalism frequently. Fayaway, safety in the tribe, represents Tommo’s comforts, and cannibalism is largely forgotten. Marnoo reminds Tommo of the reality of the situation, with Tommo remembering his own otherness and the threat that he faces. This all manifests in Tommo’s escape– from cannibalism, self-realization, and the queerness of it all.

Melville’s skillful characterizations and narrative techniques underpin the development of a political statement, explored through sexuality, religion, and cultural attitudes. “Typee: A Peep Into Polynesian Life” is a greater narrative of the queer person not just as a sexual outsider, but as emotionally and intellectually stratified. Queerness is a nuanced condition– it is both an embodiment of cultural struggle, as well as an outlet for desire, individuation, and a voice. Tommo’s final escape from the Marquesan islands marks his surrender not only of his queerness, but of himself, to the spirit of convention. This conclusion underlines Melville’s pessimistic view of being queer in the nineteenth-century: that queerness, unable to thrive under oppressive conditions, can only be explored by detaching from reality. In following Tommo’s journey from cruise ship member to islander, from barely recognizing to fully fearing his own queerness, the text analyses imperial ambitions, forecasts the social damage that imperialists can bring, and offers discourse on the religious and moral beliefs that dominate the West.

Works Cited

Beliele, Kelvin Ray. “Beloved Savages and Other Outsiders: Genre and Gender Transgressions in the Travel Writings of Herman Melville, Bayard Taylor, and Charles Warren Stoddard.” University of New Mexico Theses and Dissertations, 27 Aug. 2009, pp. 1–200.

Sheeley, Linda T. “Elasticity of Mind in Herman Melville’s Typee: A Quest for Individuation and Voice.” University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Theses, Clinical Papers, and Field Projects , Dec. 2011, pp. 1–128.

Wing, Jennifer Mary. “Resisting the Vortex: Abjection in the Early Works of Herman Melville .” ScholarWorks at Georgia State University, 21 Apr. 2008, pp. 1–216.

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by Calla Campbell

There is no denying the significance of the women who occupy the world of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It is a work distinguished by its complex, colourful, and memorable female characters. Written in the mid-19th century against a backdrop of rapid and radical social change, contrasting views on women’s liberation are presented by characters within the novel. The presence of such different viewpoints within the narrative reflects a greater discourse taking place throughout Russia during the period. In reality, the conversation surrounding women’s liberation was very much of two minds as some advocated for change while others strongly resisted feminist movements. The implications of gender ideology also stretch beyond dialogue: Tension caused by subversion of traditional gender expectations informs much of the conflict. Female characters often occupy the role of saviours, exhibiting generosity, forgiveness, and support towards male characters. This allows them to be empowered and independent as they hold economic, social, or moral power over men. Raskolnikov’s arc of rebirth shapes the story, and the regenerative role of women influences this arc as well as the paths of other male characters. This essay will examine the narrative role of women as saviours in relation to the gender dynamics and tension present due to social change in 19th-century Russia. This will be done by discussing the intersections between the reality of Russian women, the tension caused by the subversion of gender dynamics, and the symbolic purposes of female characters in the novel.

Debate over the “woman question” proliferated throughout the restless 19th century and multiple viewpoints on women’s rights are recorded in both fiction and non-fiction writing. This is apparent in conversations between characters in Crime and Punishment, and analysis of historical records can contextualize the gender tension that defines the setting of the novel. Conservative notions of gender decree that gender roles are essential to the sexes, a natural phenomenon akin to magnetism. Stereotypical ideas of men as providers and leaders, holding power over women who occupy themselves with ornamental and domestic duties, are far from outdated in the mid to late 19th century. The historian Francis Parkman, for example, in his late 19th-century essay entitled “The Woman Question”, dictates that “the supreme law of sex has decreed that the boys shall be boys and that the girls shall be girls”, attributing gender roles and performances to natural law and “universal nature” (Parkman, 1879). As a more localized example, the influential Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky wrote that, for a woman, “it is a thousandfold more praiseworthy to inspire Jerusalem Liberated than to write it herself” (1835), resigning women to the passive role of the muse, while men remain in the active role of the author. While prominent, this ideology was challenged in Crime and Punishment’s time. “The woman question was one of the burning issues of the day” (Lindenmeyr, 1985), and women began to seek greater economical independence and educational opportunities, even outside of radical and revolutionary spheres (Lindenmeyr, 1985). Interest in women’s work increased, and women began to receive recognition, respect, and praise for independent achievement (Forrester, 2012). These progressive ideas were of course met in return with criticism. Comments can be found in judicial archives critiquing women who chose to seek independence and liberation (Forrester, 2012). The political reality of the era was shaped by rapid change as well as by resistance to this change. It is also important to culturally contextualize gender: Russian gender politics function on a distinct timeline as Orthodox religious values and the isolated and agrarian nature of the Russian state during the 19th century impact its social movements when compared to the dominant ideas of Western European progressivism. It has been suggested that Russian women faced a higher degree of subordination than Western European women during this period due to this cultural divide (Engel, 1983). Russian feminism is distinct due to its unique context and often functioned in close tandem with other social movements, particularly those that addressed economic disparity.

Crime and Punishment is set right in the midst of the rapid ideological shifts of the 19th century, and its female characters are active. Their actions repeatedly align with religious ideals of forgiveness and redemption. Sonya, the only woman in the novel whose personal sins are emphasized heavily, is portrayed as wholly justified in her sinning because she is sacrificing herself for the sake of her family. Of Sonya, Marmeladov says that “He shall come on that day and He shall ask: “Where is the daughter who did take pity on her mortal father […] Come! I forgave thee once […] Now, too, thy many sins are forgiven, for thou loved much” (p. 29). Her sinning is also self-sacrificial, as she does so to make up for the economic shortcomings of her father. Male characters are also touched by the redemptive influence of women. The first example of this can be found in Raskolnikov’s discussion with the drunken retired civil servant, Marmeladov. After abandoning his post and his family and drinking through the last of their funds, he exclaims that he “should be crucified” (p. 29). He “cannot live without” Katerina Ivanovna’s beatings. Although violent and disheartening, Katerina Ivanovna personifies punishment and redemption through suffering in her relationship with her husband, beating him and then letting him back into the house. Raskolnikov’s relationships with his mother and sister also demonstrate their role in his arc of depravity leading to rebirth. Raskolnikov feels resentful and even hateful towards his female family members on several occasions. Despite this, they continue to demonstrate care for him. The last time Raskolnikov sees his mother, she says that she knows “that a great woe lies in store” for him (p. 617) and begs her son to let her “bless [him] with the sign of the cross” (p. 618). Pulkheria Alexandrovna can sense that something has changed and that suffering is on the horizon for her son. Despite this, she blesses him and tries to assure him that she, Dunya, and Sonya will follow him and support him through any suffering because suffering is necessary for his rebirth. During Dunya’s last meeting with her brother before he confesses, she thanks God that he “still believes in life” (p. 620). She believes that confession is the only option that will pull him out of his frenzied state. By going off to suffer, Dunya proclaims that he is “washing away half [his] crime” (p. 621). Sonya especially stands out as a pivotal character in steering Raskolnikov towards a confession. She is who Raskolnikov first confesses to, and she reacts by exclaiming that “nobody in the whole world is unhappier” than he is at the moment (p. 494-495), feeling “passionate, excruciating sympathy” (p. 495). Sonya’s speech of repentance is perhaps one of the most powerful in the novel: “Stand at the crossroads and bow down, kiss the earth you’ve polluted, then bow down to the whole world, to all four corners, and tell everyone out loud: ‘I have killed!’ Then God will send you life once more.” (p. 504) It is exactly this that Raskolnikov does on his way to confess, under the distant watch of Sonya, who faithfully follows him.

The influence of female characters as saviours is retained even when rebirth is not achieved. Svidrigailov, for example, is a clear foil to Raskolnikov. They are both criminals and both exhibit aggression towards women that hold power over them. He is not redeemed, however, because of his distanced and insincere relationships with female characters in the novel. For example, Marfa Petrovna pays Svidrigailov’s debts and rescues him from imprisonment on the condition that he marry her. However, he never respects their marriage and is suggested to be responsible for her death. Dunya is also a powerful symbol of salvation for Svidrigailov. He is enamoured with her, but he doesn’t value her. He sarcastically says that “when a girl’s heart is moved to pity, […] she’ll want to ‘save’ [him] and knock some sense into him, and resurrect him and exhort him towards more noble goals, and restore him to new life” (p. 570), writing off such intentions as a girlish fantasy. This indicates that he doesn’t believe in any kind of actual resurrection or forgiveness. Svidrigailov refuses to own up to his crimes and pursues Dunya out of pure lust. As he isolates himself from female characters in the novel, he grows closer to committing the ultimate, unforgivable sin of suicide. The opposite happens to Raskolnikov, who is surrounded and loved by women. He begins by admitting that he “physically hates” (p. 330) his mother and sister at the peak of his turmoil. However, right before confessing, he tells his mother that she “ought to know that [her] son loves [her] now more than he loves himself” (p. 617), demonstrating the parallels between genuine relationships with women and redemption. Sonya and Dunya contrast as well in terms of their relationships with Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov respectively. They are both positioned as saviours, yet their outcomes vary due to the way they are treated. Sonya holds strong faith in Raskolnikov and his rebirth, perhaps because Raskolnikov has not ever tried to harm her. Svidrigailov consistently damages Dunya, harming her reputation and threatening her physically, and she resents him for it. “Sonya is hope, the most realizable,” wrote Dostoevsky at the end of the Notebooks, but “Svidrigailov is despair, the most cynical.” (Dostoevsky, 1967). As Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov mirror each other, their respective outcomes signal that the influence of women in the novel is synonymous with rebirth.

The power dynamics between female and male characters within the novel are especially interesting when considering the context of ideas about gender roles and feminine power and independence. Crime and Punishment is rife with different pairings exemplifying very similar gendered dynamics (Kiremidjian, 1976):

1. Raskolnikov, his mother and sister; 2. Raskolnikov, the pawnbrokeress, and her younger, meek, and pregnant sister; 3. Raskolnikov, his landlady and her daughter (now deceased, who had been betrothed to Raskolnikov while ill a year before); 4. Marmeladov, his shrewish wife, and meek Sonya; 5. Svidrigailov, his wife, and Dunya.

Within all of these pairings, women hold some sort of power over men, whether moral or economic. The power held by women is “self-sacrificial” and “burdensome”, as women forgo their own desires to provide for male characters (Kiremidjian, 1976). The role of women as religious saviours parallels their economic or moral power held over male counterparts. These relationships represent a constant subversion of the traditional gender expectation of men as providers. All men in these pairings struggle against their saviours, and both Svidrigailov and Marmaledov pass away before they can be subjected to any kind of spiritual purification. As the central male character, Raskolnikov exhibits a “subtly complex pattern of aggressiveness towards women, where the aggressiveness combines with the thematic financial or moral indebtedness” (Kiremidjian, 1976). His struggle against the self-sacrificial power of the women who surround him is reflective of a greater struggle to negotiate a new role for women throughout the 19th century, and his arch of spiritual purification mirrors a rapid shift in ideas about women’s independence. Struggles against gendered power dynamics drive Raskolnikov throughout his frenzied episodes. His discomfort with women acting as self-sacrificial saviours in his favour is apparent when examining his romantic preference for women who present as weak and submissive, such as his landlady’s diseased daughter and Sonya. He also shows kindness or at least respect towards Nastasya, his landlady’s maid who, while not necessarily submissive, occupies a traditionally feminine role of domestic labour in his service. He feels constrained, on the other hand, by women who express responsibility and power over him, such as his mother and sister. He “feels guilty at not having managed as yet to become successful enough to rescue mother and sister from penury” (Kiremidjian, 1976). His mother sends him money, and his sister is lovelessly engaged to a wealthy man in an act of “generosity” toward her family. Dostoevsky himself, in The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment, emphasizes “how burdensome both mother and sister have become”: how their “caresses are a burden”, and how “their love is like hate” (Dostoevsky, 1967). In fact, the rage sparked by Raskolnikov’s mother’s letter announcing Dunya’s engagement is a catalyst in the novel’s essential event: the murder of the pawnbrokeress. Raskolnikov’s resistance against the regenerative and self-sacrificial influence of female power is part of what drives him to murder as he feels inferior and incompetent as the man of the family. The victim of the murder is also a woman, and she holds much economic power over Raskolnikov. He wishes to commit the murder to empower himself: economically by robbing the pawnbrokeress and physically by overpowering her and taking away her life.

Although the moneylender Alyona Ivanovna may seem like an exception to the divine influence of Crime and Punishment’s female characters, as she is the victim of Raskolnikov’s crime, she is actually the first character to set Raskolnikov on a course towards rebirth. “For some time” before the murder, Raskolnikov had been “in an irritable, tense state of mind not unlike hypochondria” (p. 5). If he had not gone through with the murder, he would have remained in his hateful, isolated state. The motivations for this murder are representative of the gendered tension and powerlessness present as Raskolnikov’s mental state erodes. The murder is the turning point for “the man who, obsessed with his own deification, engaged in a daring experiment—which he deemed emblematic of freedom and power, but above all power—finds himself unable to make good his claim and pass his test” (Rudicina, 1972). Following the archetypal scheme of a transgression, The murder is a step “over the fixed boundary line” followed by a plunge into “utterly self-willed demonic isolation” (Kiremidjian, 1976). This is then “followed by suffering, or expiation, which informs the central myth of Christianity, the Fall of Man and his Redemption” (Rudicina, 1972). It catalyzed the spiral of mental and physical illness that would lead to him repairing his relationship with his mother and sister and forming an unbreakable bond with Sonya. It was she who firmly advised him to confess and seek redemption in Siberia. It was the sight of her that “raised [him] to life”, and turned him into a “whole renewed being” (p. 657). The tension caused by women subverting the traditional gender dynamic by acting as saviours both contributes to the cause of Raskolnikov’s crime and his subsequent rebirth. Alyona Ivanovna and Sonya are also both in possession of the same three spiritual items. After the murder, Raskolnikov notices that Alyona Ivanovna carries “two crosses on [a] string, one of cypress and one of copper” alongside “a little enamel icon” (p. 96), which he drops on the chest of the corpse. After Raskolnikov confesses to Sonya, she offers him a cross made of cypress. “I’ve got another, a copper one, Lizaveta’s. Lizaveta and I swapped crosses: she gave me hers, I gave her my little icon” (p. 507). Furthermore, Sonya hangs the cypress cross around Raskolnikov’s neck days later, right before he goes to confess (p. 626). Sonya is an obvious manifestation of rebirth and renewal. The mirroring of Alyona Ivanova and Sonya can allude to the two women being figures that respectively represent the start and end of Raskolnikov’s journey towards rebirth.

Looking at the relationship of Sonya and Raskolnikov through the lens of gender expectations reinforces ideas about the roles of gender in the narrative tension. Sonya undergoes a shift in her nature after Luzhin attempts to attack her reputation. For much of the novel, Sonya is the embodiment of a passive feminine archetype. She sacrifices her own body for her family, but the nature of her work and the pretext for her decision to do so are not empowering. Sonya is a symbol of regeneration without holding power over male characters due to the permanent and shameful nature of her work. The moment of confrontation with Luzhin is a moment of pure disillusionment on Sonya’s part (Blake, 2006):

Sonya, meek by nature, already knew that it was easier to insult her than anyone else, and that everyone could insult her almost with impunity. Nevertheless, until this very minute, it had seemed to her that it was possible somehow to avoid misfortune by caution, meekness, and submissiveness before each and everyone. Her confrontation with Luzhin thus teaches Sonya that she will not bring about the triumph of higher justice on earth by meekly submitting to everyone and waiting for a miraculous intervention in her life. Instead, as her subsequent conversation with Raskolnikov demonstrates, she finds that she must more vigorously apply her faith to real-life situations

Sonya becomes renewed in her own way following this confrontation, emerging as an active, independent, and powerful figure. The shift is apparent when comparing Sonya’s discussions with Raskolnikov before and after the event. When they meet a second time, “Raskolnikov encounters a very different Sonya than the childlike woman he dominated in the same room on the previous day.” He, “sensing a change in their relative positions of power, resents her for knowing about his crime” (Blake, 2006). The change in Sonya’s nature, alongside her unwavering faith, empowers her to be the female character who finally convinces Raskolnikov to confess. He resists other active female figures but has grown close to her in her submissive feminine form. At the very moment she morphs into an active figure, he has already confessed his murder to her, “the required catalyst for his self-confrontation” (Kiremidjian, 1976).

Because the redeeming influence of women in the novel is only ever to the benefit of men, the symbolism of women as holy influences intersects with the role of a woman in 19th-century Russian society. The role of women was evolving, as evidenced by Razumikhin’s proclamation that it has been “solemnly proven” that a woman is a human being (p. 136). Lebezyatnikov also speaks about women’s liberation and equality, defending Sonya and proclaiming that he views her actions as “a vigorous and embodied protest against the social order” (p. 443). However, women are often disrespected in private conversations between men in the novel. Svidrigailov says that “women find it very, very pleasurable to be insulted” (p. 339). Ilya Petrovich refers to women seeking an education in medicine as “short-haired wenches”, disparaging their “immoderate thirst for enlightenment” (p. 634). All of the female characters exist functionally to serve the betterment of men, and those who hold positions of power over men or seek independence are constantly insulted. This can be seen in the way men talk about Alyona Ivanovna, calling her a “louse” by Raskolnikov and a “stupid, pointless, worthless, nasty, sick old hag” (p. 80) by a student in a tavern. Even her own murder serves to better her male murderer by setting him on a path toward spiritual rebirth. Men in the novel make sacrifices only for themselves. Women make sacrifices for men. Their role as saviours and their influence towards rebirth is at the expense of their own labour. Finally, women do not get to experience their own redemption or rebirth: many female characters reach bitter ends. The deaths of Katerina Ivanovna and Pulkheria Alexandrovna are characterized by delusion and distress. Marfa Petrovna dies in relation to a fight with her husband. Raskolnikov receives a lenient sentence for the murder of Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta. In this way, the role of women in the novel as divine influences on men is both appealing and confining. It is refreshing to read about women as complex, respectable, active characters and yet frustrating to see the ways in which their lives continue to revolve around their usefulness to men.

The role of women as independent and empowered to the benefit and service of men has a real-life localized precedent that influenced Dostoevsky’s view on women. The Decembrist movement was by no means a feminist one and called for an upholding of traditional feminine gender roles and rights (Stites, 1976). The notion of a “Decembrist’s wife”, however, has become a cultural archetype as the real wives of Decembrist revolutionaries followed them into Siberian exile after an unsuccessful uprising. These women abandoned their children and their traditional feminine and motherly duties in this decision. They are a Russian symbol of a wife’s unwavering devotion to her husband. Beyond this, though, there are also progressive aspects to the symbolism of Decembrist’s wives. They were praised as they “chose [their] own fate and fearlessly gazed into the future” (Mazour, 1975). The decision to abandon their lives to follow their husbands into exile was seen as empowered, even though the revolt preceded the “first heroic age of Russian female radicals” (Stites, 1976) and general Russian feminist action by three decades. Dostoevsky was a fan, writing in Diary of a Writer ​​that “these real-life Russian martyresses embody the superior qualities of Russian womanhood” (Blake, 2006). Dostoevsky’s female characters are inspired by real-life examples of women who exhibit such virtues, establishing “a model for action to be emulated, not an idealized woman meant only to inspire faith” (Blake 2006). Sonya is an obvious example of this, following Raskolnikov, as the Decembrist wives followed their husbands, to Siberia. A “middle ground” gender role is negotiated through the treatment of women in the novel: That of a woman who is liberated to a point of independence but only respectable when she practices her autonomy in her faith towards men. While not a complete protest against the social order of gender dynamics, this archetype does not conform to traditional conservative ideals either. In an intense push and pull between conservative and progressive ideas about women’s liberation, this is the compromise.

Crime and Punishment the novel is itself of two minds. Rife with mirrors and opposites, it is fitting that the religious significance and influence of female characters would mirror the role of women in 19th century Russia. Two ideologies dominate conversations about feminism within the narrative, and the presence of this same duality within the historical record proves just how current this issue was to the writing of the novel. The plot is driven by women who symbolize forgiveness, redemption, and rebirth. This symbolic device is heavily tied to gender dynamics as their role as saviours allow them to hold power over male characters. The tension caused by this subversion of traditional gender dynamics comes at a point in history where conservative ideals are fighting hard to remain relevant, visible in the novel as male characters struggle and rebel against the burdensome care of self-sacrificing women. Through this struggle, a uniquely Russian ideal of femininity appears: the empowered but devoted Decembrist’s wife. The gender tension in the novel evokes a Russia that can be seen as a country that is itself in two minds. Struggling between national identity and western European influence, shaken by changing ideas about religion and science, and growing tension between the rich and the poor. Focusing on just one of these struggles, that of female emancipation, shows how each moment in history is a battle between holding on to the past and moving forwards into the future.

Works Cited

Blake, E. (2006). Sonya, Silent No More: A Response to the Woman Question in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” The Slavic and East European Journal, 50(2), 252–271. https://doi.org/10.2307/20459250

Kiremidjian, D. (1976). “Crime and Punishment”: Matricide and the Woman Question. American Imago, 33(4), 403–433. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26303149

Lindenmeyr, A. (1985). [Review of Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia, by B. A. Engel]. Journal of Social History, 18(3), 510–512. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3788069

Parkman, F. (1879). The Woman Question. The North American Review, 129(275), 303–321. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25100797

Rudicina, A. F. (1972). Crime and Myth: The Archetypal Pattern of Rebirth in Three Novels of Dostoevsky. PMLA, 87(5), 1065–1074. https://doi.org/10.2307/461183

Stites, R. (1976). Wives, Sisters, Daughters and Workers: A Review Article [Review of Women in Exile: Wives of the Decembrists; Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar; Fathers and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution; Rabotnitsy i Velikii Oktiabr’, by A. G. Mazour, B. A. Engel, C. N. Rosenthal, A. K. Shulman, C. Porter, & N. D. Karpetskaia]. Russian History, 3(2), 237–244. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24649713

Tucker, J. (2009). Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: Stopping History’s Clock. Russian History, 36(3), 443–453. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24664577

West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing Gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125–151. http://www.jstor.org/stable/189945

Forrester, S. (2012). Introduction: Framing the View: Russian Women in the Long Nineteenth Century. In W. Rosslyn & A. Tosi (Eds.), Women in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Lives and Culture (1st ed., pp. 1–18). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjszk.5

by Kyla Lien Flynn

In Zbigniew Herbert’s Still Life with a Bridle, art encapsulates life. In Herbert’s essays and apocryphas, life and history are preserved through art, his writing on seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and society showcasing the capability of art in immortalizing places, objects, people and memories. This essay will argue, using Herbert’s understanding of painting and life in the Dutch golden age, that in both the past and present, life and art simultaneously enrich one another. Art will be supported as incredibly versatile: a means through which lifestyles of the past can be understood, and a way for an individual’s fantasies to be brought into reality. Art reveals the priorities of those behind it, and this paper will explore art’s ability to reflect the physical, moral, and intellectual values of its commissioners, creators and consumers. Through discussing the interpretation of life through art, and the importance of art to life, the preservative properties of art will be argued, as art can be considered a means of both prolonging and universalizing individual experience. Art will be depicted as a practical aspect of life and as a way to render fleeting moments permanent, actualize desires, sculpt legacies and navigate the world over time.

Art can make specific moments accessible across generations. As Herbert peers into the past, he attempts to understand Holland as it was centuries ago, despite his inability to currently “see the views painted by the Dutch masters of the ‘Golden Age,’” (Herbert, 11) as “the sea pitilessly encroached upon the land,” (Herbert, 10) changing its physical geography. The way Holland once appeared is accessible only through “the largest collection of landscapes that were contained in frames” (Herbert, 12). Herbert uses pieces of art to view historical landscapes, and each work he views contributes to his knowledge of Holland during the Dutch golden age—from Jan van Goyen’s “Village Lanes” and its hinting at “alleys of poverty in the country” (Herbert, 14) to Adriaen van Ostade’s “Painter in his Workshop” and the simple, tasteless workspace with “no trace of mystery, magic, or rapture” (Herbert, 19) depicted, which alludes to a similarly basic lifestyle, each of these pieces reveals to Herbert the physical setting in which the Dutch lived and created their art. He writes, “painting in Holland was omnipresent…the artists tried to augment the visible world of their small country…tens of thousands of canvases on which they recorded seashores, floodwaters, dunes…” (Herbert, 21) this demonstrating the vast quantity of pieces available to serve Herbert’s exploration. Art, in its ability to authentically capture moments in time, can be supported through Herbert’s description of van Goyen’s “Landscape of Objects.” He calls it a “shred of the world” (Herbert, 16).

The definition of art can be extended to encompass Herbert’s writing on art and his experiences. How Herbert describes and presents the paintings and stories within his essays and apocryphas is artistic in itself, a form of creative writing. Herbert’s employment of rich description and ekphrasis is how he keeps alive his own experiences of viewing paintings. In writing, Herbert preserves his explorations of art and the conclusions he draws regarding what life was like in seventeenth-century Holland. Herbert’s descriptions of paintings immortalize them on his page, reinforcing their permanence and preserving them within his writing. He speaks of “Lady Reading a Letter” by Gerard Terborch, detailing her “beautiful young alabaster face without a shade of sadness, without a wrinkle of worry” (Herbert, 72). He describes the “Fatherly Admonition” in great detail, relating its “deep browns…saturated with light…the heroine of the painting…haughty, slender, precious…a concert of coloristic mastery in difficult chromatic compositions” (Herbert, 73). Herbert meticulously describes artwork in the text, creating vivid images with his words. Just as the Dutch artists he describes immortalize the world around them in paint, he captures the experience of viewing these paintings in words, allowing others to access to his unique perspective and place in time.

Herbert artistically describes his surroundings. The setting sun in “Delta,” is described as “the last acrid, Egyptian yellows go out, cinnabar becomes gray and fragile, the last fireworks of the day go out” (Herbert, 8), and the individuals he meets in “Portrait in a Black Frame,” are detailed, saying “these elderly men…betrayed by predatory faces, also by clothes that had an old-fashioned, frayed elegance” (Herbert, 129). In these descriptions, Herbert transfers memories and the sights he sees onto the page, preserving pieces of his life through his art, just as painters preserve life on canvas. Herbert creates art about the art of others, and his writing does not exist without his experiences, for without them he would have nothing to write on. Herbert’s art reflects both his own life and the lives of the artists whose pieces he explores in his work.

Art is a means of preservation, and both the Dutch masters of the Golden Age, and Herbert employ this in their art, preserving physical landscapes or the experience of beholding paintings. However, art can also be used to craft fictions, in hopes to satisfy the individual and special wants of its possessor(s). Herbert explains various motives for commissioning pieces of art. In one example, he writes, “a lady requested an artist to paint a bouquet of rare flowers for her because she could not afford to buy them” (Herbert, 39)—in this instance, the subject of the painting is the true object of desire, not the painting itself. Here, Herbert understands “the artist’s work [as] a mere substitute, a shadow of existing things. Similarly, lovers doomed to separation must be content with the likeness of a beloved face” (Herbert, 39). This demonstrates art can be used as a tool to improve life, a way of pacifying the yearnings of an individual which cannot be obtained in their actual form—because they are unable to display a real bouquet of flowers in their home, or embrace a loved person, they attempt to gain what is missing in their lives through art. Herbert details another instance, where “in exchange for lower rent, a painter promised the landlord to paint the portrait of his beloved daughter, deceased years ago,” (Herbert, 30) which emphasizes the extent to which emotional needs influence decisions—satisfying innermost desires can take priority over practicalities like monetary payments.

Art can give individuals what they do not have, by embodying desires and filling voids left by otherwise unattainable possessions or unavailable people, but it can also provide senses of fulfillment. Art can appeal to the ego, and depict individuals in desirable states. Herbert writes, “painters would succumb to the amusing mythomania of their clients…obligated the artists to present him as Scipio Africanus and his wife as Pallas Athena” (Herbert, 31). Here, art mimics desired states of being, portraying subjects as famous or prosperous in ways inauthentic to reality. In other instances, people may wish to be portrayed “without proofs of affluence” (Herbert, 69), for example the clients of Gerard Terborch: “regents and patricians who despised such ostentatiousness” (Herbert, 69). Both of these portrayals of people in art reflect individuals wishing to depict themselves in what they consider to be the best states. Art allows life to be manipulated within the confines of a canvas or page—it can uphold reality, but it can just as easily modify truths, making real the wants of an individual within the selected medium. Art feeds desires in ways other possessions cannot, as the face of a deceased daughter seen again through art can be held more valuable than money. Herbert’s text depicts a society in which art can be used to preserve life as it is or conceal unappealing parts of reality: immortalizing individuals as more important than they are, lessening the sting of not being able to afford a coveted possession, or alleviating the pain of being separated from or losing someone dear. Art can be used to “[create] new worlds” (Herbert, 15) if reality is unsatisfactory, illusions of fulfillment which may help an individual curb their own internal dissatisfaction with the state of their household, social standing, or reputation. Art renders wants and aspirations more attainable to those unsatisfied with their current realities. In art, individuals can reshape images of their lives, warp how they are perceived and actively sculpt their legacies, as art, often outliving the individual, influences how they will be remembered.

In Still Life with a Bridle, Herbert may also pay attention to the influence of his writing on how he is perceived and will be remembered, as the art which he creates contributes to his image. As detailed, art can preserve worldly values and wants, however, art can also reveal what is valued intangibly, such as the moral values of an individual, group or society. The contents and craftsmanship of works of art can aid in understanding the social and moral values present within a culture. Dutch art could be considered reflective of the values of “a country built by burghers and peasants who valued moderation and common sense” (Franaszek, 2019, p. 19)—Andrzej Franaszek presents the idea that Herbert’s fascination with artists of the Dutch Golden Age could be motivated by the similarity of his values to those of the artists of that time; he “priz[es] conscientiousness, fine craftsmanship, and hard work,” (Franaszek, 2019, p. 19) a product of an upbringing steeped in bourgeoisie values (Franaszek, 2019). This admiration for moderation, common sense, and “their healthy, concrete, down-to-earth attitude towards life” (Herbert, 19) is reflected in Herbert’s writing—he describes losing interest in artist Ruysdael because “spirit began to enter his canvases, and everything became ‘soulful’” (Herbert, 13) and praises van Goyen for his monochromatic works, a style “endowed…with grace and naturalness…an accurate epitome of visible reality” (Herbert, 15).  Herbert may see “his attachment to the touchable” (Franaszek, 2019, p. 19) mirrored in the works of Dutch artists, motivating him to write on them.

Herbert compliments the “enormous productivity” (Herbert, 21) of the masters of seventeenth-century Holland, portraying them as admirable. Herbert’s ability to see his values in these works of art could motivate him to preserve the pieces, artists and culture in a positive manner, Herbert spending much of the text praising and emphasizing the beauty of Dutch artwork, culture and life. Herbert describes Holland in the seventeenth century almost as if it were a utopia (Franaszek, 2019). The masters of the Dutch Golden Age are preserved as admirable and superior in their craft in Herbert’s art, and Herbert even criticizes other painters, examining why they pale in comparison to his protagonist. Earlier, it was argued people preserve themselves in art, in desirable states: of covetable social status, of great beauty, of unparalleled grandiosity. By preserving Dutch painters in a positive light, Herbert preserves himself in a similar fashion, because he sees himself in their lifestyles and the associated ideals. He appreciates that “they worked by the sweat of their brows and experienced many slumps” (Herbert, 28). Though Herbert has not commissioned himself to be painted in the image of a god like some aforementioned mythomaniacs, his work continuously commends people who he relates to and identifies with. Herbert’s praise of Dutch values in Still Life with a Bridle could be understood as, in part, a means of preserving Herbert’s values in a favourable light—his text supports the notion that the way he was raised is the ideal way to think, behave and be. He sees his beliefs on how people should live in Dutch art, and preserves it as something to be admired. His values, as revealed by what he values in art, are upheld as morally favourable, within his own art.

Art is a means of preserving what already exists or creating new realities, and is reflective of what is physically and conceptually valuable to an individual or group. Though art can be valued for its insights on these aspects of life, art is, in itself, valuable. Within the text, art is currency, traded in exchange for services, such as “Emmanuel de Witte…giving his entire yearly production in exchange for 800 guldens and room and board” (Herbert, 35), or artistic skill important enough to grant freedom, allowing “Torrentius [to] be released and sent to England…he will devote himself entirely to painting” (Herbert, 91). Herbert explains, “with paintings it was possible to pay off a house, buy a horse, and give a dowry to a daughter if the master did not possess any other wealth” (Herbert, 30). Art is a means of supporting life, a “profession universally recognized and as evident as the profession of butcher, tailor, or baker” (Herbert, 36). Art does not always have to reflect the painter’s innermost thoughts or personal values. Sometimes, artists paint because “the Dutch painter could pay for almost anything with his paintings. He often saved himself from bankruptcy or prison by getting rid of his works” (Herbert, 29). Art relates to life in that it is a livelihood—art pieces are critiqued, compared to others, and then assigned monetary value.

The value of art—personal or economical—can be subjective, as individuals find significance and worth in different aspects of art. In “Gergard Terborch: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” Herbert says “according to general opinion, [the ‘Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Muenster’] is a masterpiece” (Herbert, 64) yet he finds it “monotonous” (Herbert, 64) and “not Terboch’s best painting” (Herbert, 64). The value of art can fluctuate from person-to-person, as the value of art, and ideas on what it should depict, or what meaning an individual gleans from each work, reflects what is important to an individual in their lives. Art can be the “cold impartiality of a botanist or anatomist” (Herbert, 41) or “an expression of violent, internal states of the artist (like Van Gogh’s sunflowers)” (Herbert, 41). Art can vary in content and style, and the resulting conflicting opinions and beliefs on how art should appear, are a product of the diverse personal preferences of a world of distinct individuals.

Messages extracted from pieces of art can also vary, often speculative unless explicitly outlined by the artist. An art piece’s value can surpass personal preferences of an art style, or interest in the physical subject depicted—the deeper meanings people find in art can define how valuable a work is to them. Examining art pieces, Herbert attempts to understand the artist, and the abstract concepts and metaphysical questions with which they engage. Though still-life, by genre, realistically depicts landscapes, objects, or people, Herbert finds it can reflect life in more ambiguous ways. In addition to depicting physical aspects of life, still-life art pieces can also hold allegorical meanings, which Herbert attempts to uncover (Grol-Prokopczyk, 1994). Searching for messages concealed within art, Herbert attempts to penetrate the mind of the artist, hoping to gain insight on the questions they asked and the concepts which interested them. In exploring the symbolic or masked meanings a work of art may hold, the beholder attempts to understand how the art piece reflects the life of its maker. In turn, these explorations can fulfill the goal of obtaining a more cohesive understanding of the artist, but can also characterize the onlooker, in revealing what they personally find important and noteworthy when viewing art.

Terborch’s works are described in detail by Herbert. He mentions the “heavy, dark background” (Herbert, 67) in “The Lesson,” and comments on Terborch’s typical portrait arrangement: subjects “against a dark wall” (Herbert, 69). Regina Grol-Prokopczyk draws attention to Terborch’s self-portrait, highlighting Herbert’s interest in black backgrounds, “symboli[zing] [to Herbert]…the meaning of the unknown…the mystery of existence, and the chaos from which we emerge and into which we submerge” (Grol-Prokopczyk, 1994, p. 114). To Herbert, the use of black paint holds value and deeper meaning. In the essay’s closing, Herbert imagines Terborch noting “how fiercely [the Dutch] fought for a life slightly longer than the one for which they were destined” (Herbert, 77), as if, preserved in paintings, they were fortified or rendered more permanent, unlikely to be “engulfed by the black background” (Herbert, 77). Subjective meanings found in art can reveal the thoughts of the artist and the art interpreter—though the metaphysical questioning of what comes before birth, and after death, are assigned to Terborch in the text, Herbert is the one who extracts these meanings from his paintings, and Herbert’s fixation with black backgrounds exposes his inner thought-processes, which demonstrate art can reflect the internal states of the individual. Analyzing Terborch, Herbert reveals his own preoccupation with fighting to be remembered, as he supposes the Dutch once did.

Despite the meaning found in Terborch’s painting by Herbert, to some, black backgrounds remain overlooked and ignored. The value of art is subjective, because the individual’s interpretation of art is a product of what a person cares about and finds intriguing, based on their own experiences and lives. Terborch may have intended to reference the inevitability of the unknown in his art, or he may have simply been painting to support himself. The black backgrounds of his work may only be fascinating to Herbert because of the specific way Herbert has learned to view, appreciate, and find meaning in art. The same can be thought of Grol-Prokopczyk, who emphasizes Herbert’s writing on Terborch’s backgrounds—to others, Herbert’s attention to this subject may lack significance—what stands out in art, and what an individual believes is worth mentioning about a work of art, is subjective. Art works are continually used to make claims about their creators—to understand how they lived, and what stimulated their minds. Works of art surpass the confines of time and place, as they can simultaneously reflect both the intellectual values of the art’s creator and consumer. In art, individuals can find allusions to unanswered questions of life, and a piece can hold more or less value to an individual depending on the message gleaned from the work. Art can reveal the intellectual preoccupations of the artist, and those of the beholder. Art relates to life, because art is what artists choose to create, which varies immensely. Art is personal, and Herbert’s attempts to immortalize his exploration of Holland’s past on paper, using vivid description and interpretations of the decisions of artists long ago, is only one kind of art—art can take many forms, and from the text, it could be concluded this is because art is as unique as the lives and intentions of the painters, authors and creatives who make it.

  Still Life with a Bridle details the link between life and art according to the work of the Dutch, in which “there is no division in their art between what is great and what is small…They painted apples and the portraits of fabric shopkeepers, pewter plates and tulips, with such patience and such love that the image of other worlds and noisy tales about earthly triumphs fade in comparison” (Herbert, 118). To the Dutch during the seventeenth century, it appears art existed in harmony with life, and though Herbert himself showcases the continuity between the everyday parts of living and Dutch paintings, this concept is also explained in the apocrypha, “Letter.” In it, the author writes artists are “aware of [the enigmas of nature]…[and]…prepare the eyes for never-ending delight and wonder” (Herbert, 150), and the goal of art is described: “to reconcile man with surrounding reality. This is why I and my guild brothers repeat an infinite number of times the sky and clouds, the portraits of men and cities, all these odds and ends of the cosmos, because only there do we feel safe and happy” (Herbert, 150). This perspective on art can be considered commentary on how art exists to embody life, people, and the world, and how life gives artists experiences worth painting or writing about. Herbert writes “if art indeed nourishes artists, it is a mannered, absentminded and often completely unpredictable nourisher” (Herbert, 34) and this could be considered true, inspiration for the works of the Dutch coming from every aspect of life—“they painted everything” (Herbert, 34).

Within this essay, Still Life with a Bridle is used to examine how art and life relate to one another. Art can prolong experiences, or render moments in time relivable, over and over again. Whether it is looking back at Dutch landscapes and seeing the physical world as it once was, or dissecting the intent behind a Terborch—art, across all mediums, is used to express pieces of life otherwise lost to time. Art can be used to fulfill desires or fantasies, to craft an image or legacy, or as a job, to make money and support life. Though art can vary—from emotive impressionism, to near-anatomical still-life, to ekphrasis within an essay—and preferred art style and content can fluctuate across people and cultures, what remains constant is art continually reflects experience, influenced by the individuality of those who create art and seek it out. Art relates to life, and life to art, in that the living may choose to use art in whichever ways it serves their purposes.

Works Cited

Franaszek, A.(2019).‘To look until your head starts spinning’. Werkwinkel, 14(1-2), 9-36. https://doi.org/10.2478/werk-2019-0001

Grol-Prokopczyk, R. (1994). [Review of Still Life With a Bridle: Essays and Apocrypha, by Z. Herbert, J. Carpenter, & B. Carpenter]. The Polish Review, 39(1), 112–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25778779

Herbert, Z., Carpenter, J., & Carpenter, B. (1993). Still life with a bridle: Essays and apocryphas. Ecco Press.