The Awesomeness of Individuality, and Non-conventions turned Convention in America

“In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.  Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric,” (page 520).  In the excerpt entitled,“Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being,” John Stuart Mill discusses the importance of individuality to both the individual and to society as a whole.

‎"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties,” (page 518).  Here, Mill states that blind conformity is sub-human.  The human capacity for logic and reason is too great to never be used.  “But it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way,” (page 518).  Everyone interprets  life differently because of gender, socio-economic status, race, and religion.  Perspectives are further diversified by factors like personality, upbringing, friends, enemies, mentors, and so on and so on.  Every perspective is valid, but limited.  John Godfrey Saxe (this wasn’t in the reading, but I was reminded of it) wrote a poem called, “The Blind Men and the Elephant”.  In the poem, each of the blind men makes a valid observation about the elephant, but each one only experiences one part.  Separately, their observations are incomplete.  Together, they can put together the whole picture.  Mill echoes this sentiment when he writes that, “It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either,” (page 520). 

“Persons of genius, it is true, are, and always are likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.  Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom,” (page 519).  Living in the Land of the Free, I had to ask myself a question.  Does this atmosphere exist in modern America?  Arguably, it does.  With the internet, anyone can start a blog, post a video.  Everyone is their own publisher.  Any opinion or idea can be expressed at anytime.  Freedom of expression is something Americans are extremely proud of, and this is reflected all over the culture.  Burger King advertises food made YOUR way.  TV ads tell viewers to express themselves through how they dress.  But all the clothes look the same.  How much selection does Burger King really have?  With a special place in the heart for the Greenwich Village artist, being unconventional has become a convention.  And what good is a blog if nobody reads it?  This atmosphere of freedom doesn’t just entail allowing people to express themselves.  It also involves people with open minds who are willing to listen to each other, learn from each other.  So it seems to me that America has come half way.  When politicians can come out from behind their political parties and discuss policy instead of politics, when discrimination against the, “weird kid” on the playground stops, when people learn to dialogue instead of debate, then the atmosphere of freedom is achieved.  

Of Gentlemen and Ladies, Stereotypes, and Cages

“There are many humble-minded women, not remarkable for any particular intellectual endowment, who yet possess so clear a sense of right and wrong of individual actions, as to be of essential service in aiding the judgements of their husbands, brothers, or sons in whose intricate affairs in which it is sometimes difficult to dissever worldly wisdom from religious duty,” (page 557, Sarah Stickney Ellis)  It is pleasant to hear lovely things about my gender.  It’s flattering to think that, as a woman, I am naturally of higher moral character than men.  With this kind of intuition, I don’t need a formal education.  It’s superfluous.  My time is much better spent letting my natural sweetness shine out on the poor, virtueless males that cross my path.   These poor souls are rather unfortunately disposed towards, “inborn selfishness, or his worldly pride,” (Sarah Stickney Ellis, page 557). 

This kind of philosophy strikes a bad chord with me (in case you hadn’t noticed), for a variety of reasons.  First, it is an insult to men.  I’ve personally met several male persons who were more morally inclined than myself.  A sense of right and wrong doesn’t come from being a man or a woman.  It can come from religion, or perhaps philosophy, or a simple, conscience, or maybe a natural inclination towards virtue.  I would also argue that it comes from experience, from trial and error in the issues of everyday life.  In this light, it is awfully difficult for a woman to be moral when she is locked up in an ivory tower, simply sitting, “in her drawing room like a doll-Madonna in her shrine,” (page 571, “George Elliot”).  

Descriptions of women as saintly beings is also unbearable flattery.  Implied in it is a pressure to be always good, always sweet, and never questioning, and to be anything else is to fail as a woman.  In fact, that’s probably why the opinion was passed down from generation to generation.  What better way to keep someone in an inferior position than to build a cage with invisible bars.  Young girls, raised with this kind of flattery, strive to meet those expectations without seeing the prison it creates.  Mary Wollstonecraft, in previous readings, wrote that those in power, “would rather justify oppression that correct abuses,” (page 62).  (I know that I’ve used this quote in other blogs, but gosh darn it, it’s a good quote!)  So it is that society justified the treatment of women with shameless flattery.  

Readings like these make me feel lucky that I live when I do, that I can attend college and pursue a career in the field that I choose.  Times have truly changed.  Well, at least I think they have.  I still encounter the old female stereotype every now and then.  “Women are supposed to possess more sensibility, and even humanity, than men, and their strong attachments and instantaneous emotions of compassion are given as proofs,” (page 571, “George Elliot” quoting Mary Wollstonecraft).  Are women really more emotional, more compassionate than men?  Or is it just how they have been raised?  Boys and girls are still brought up with different expectations.  Girls get dolls, boys get action figures.  It is socially acceptable, expected even, for a woman to cry at the movies, but it is thing of comedy for a man to do so.  Women are raised to be more comfortable with public displays or expressions of emotion.  Men, not so much.  Therefore, this kind of thinking and stereotyping, I would argue is just as limiting to men as it is to women.  

Of God, Religion, and Aurora Leigh (and a Little Bit of Me)

Through the first book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”, the title character and speaker critiques organized religion and promotes her own unique interpretation of it.  Aurora writes that the poets are, “the only truth-tellers now left to God,/ the only speakers of essential truth,/ Opposed to relative, comparative,/ And temporal truths,” (lines 559-662).  Society’s interpretation of religion has become too dependent on what it wants to hear.  It’s merely a way to maintain social order.  Faith and morality are not priorities.  Aurora’s aunt becomes a symbol of organized relgion, and all that Aurora finds wrong with it.  Her aunt teaches her to make, “Christian gifts/ Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,/ Because we are all of one flesh, after all,/ And need one flannel (with proper sense/ of difference in the quality),” (lines 297-300).  Here, Aurora scorns her aunt’s view of charity.  The goal with these gifts is more to appear pious than to actually aid anyone.  Organized religion has reduced charity to mere social convention.  Additionally, the parenthetical phrase highlights a certain hypocritical approval for the class system.  Though God made all men equal, they don’t all deserve equal shares in life.  Aurora critiques hypocrisy again later when describing her religious education.  In addition to official prayers and doctrines, Aurora’s aunt also taught her, “various popular synopses of/ Inhuman doctrines never taught by John,/ Because she liked instructed piety,” (396-398).  It is easy to justify injustices such as those created by the class system if one claims that it is all God’s will, that they are living as God wants them too, etc.  Yet, Aurora calls their bluff, writing that they are putting words into the Bible’s mouth so to speak.  

Aurora does not respond to her aunt’s instruction.  Yet, she has a very strong faith in God.  This comes from her personal spiritual ventures.  “I had relations in the Unseen, and drew/ The elemental nutriment and heat/ From nature, as earth feels as the sun at nights,/ Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark,” (lines 473-477).  Aurora finds real, fulfilling life in nature.  “God,” she writes, “I thank thee for that grace of thine!” (lines 480-481).  So it is implied that she has a sort of spiritual connection with God through her experiences in nature.  It is a pure, undefiled manifestation of His creation, and it is there that she feels closest to him.  This joyful, passionate exclamation contrasts heavily with her aunt’s gratitude.  Aurora writes, “Some people always sigh in thanking God,” (line 445).  This is yet another critique of organized religion.  Faith is not treasured.  There is no joy in it.  And how grateful does a sigh really sound?  Yet Aurora’s personal faith does have joy, it is treasured.  And she actually sounds legitimately and genuinely grateful for God in her life.  I have nothing against organized religion.  I was born and raised Catholic.  For a long time I didn’t question it.  Then I realized that I was just going through the motions.  Church wasn’t a place where you were suddenly struck with overwhelming faith.  It was a place to bring faith to worship.  And that faith was something I had to discover for myself.  It wasn’t something that confirmation classes or a good homily could teach me, any more than Aurora’s aunt could teach her.  So I relate to Aurora’s personal journey of faith.  We find both find God in the beauty and wonder of nature, and there are times I feel closer to God when alone than in the middle of a congregation. 

Of Men and Women: Together They Stand, Divided They Fall

“The Woman’s Cause is Man’s” is the final monologue of Prince Florian in Tennyson’s poem, “The Princess”.  According to the footnote, in masquerading as a woman, Prince Florian attended Princess Ida's school for women and won her love.  She turned her school into a hospital and married him.  This kind of ending seems to make feminism seem like a youthful fancy, which maturity disposes of.  Princess Ida has had her fun, but now it is time to grow up, to rejoin the real world.  That, however, is just the surface.  In this speech, Prince Florian demonstrates that his experience with feminism has been enlightening, and he expresses hope for a better future.  “Blame not thyself too much,” I said.  “nor blame/ Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws;/ These were the rough ways of the world till now,” (lines 1-3).  Princess Ida is too far ahead of her time.  Her ideology cannot function in the real world, not because it is wrong, but because society hasn’t caught up yet.  With Princess Ida, Prince Florian hopes to set an example and pave the way for future generations.  “We two will serve them both in aiding her -/ Will clear away the parasitic forms/ That seem to keep her up but drag her down-/ Will leave her space to burgeon out of all/ Within her - let her make herself her own/ To give or keep, to live and learn and be/ all that not harms distinctive womanhood,” (lines 252-258).  

The idea of partnership between the sexes is an important theme.  Florian’s view of feminism does not pitt women against men, but rather, it encourages them to learn from each other. “Not like to like, but like in difference./ Yet in the long years liker must they grow;/ The man be more of woman, she of man,” (lines 262-264).  Men are better for knowing women, and women are better for knowing men.  Both sexes have unique perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses due to both biological and sociological factors.  However, their strengths and weaknesses complement each other, so together, men and women balance, learn from, and improve each other.  Though both the female and male perspectives are equally valid, they are, individually, only half the story.  Together, they see a more complete picture.  They are stronger together than they are apart.  “Seeing either sex alone/ Is half itself, and in true marriage lies/ Nor equal, or unequal: each fulfills/ Defect in each, and always thought in thought,/ Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,/ The single pure and perfect animal,” (lines 283- 288).  Working in harmony, men and women pursue a common goal: a more perfect life on earth.  Thus, “The woman’s cause is man’s,” (line 243).  In doing so, “a statelier Eden”, (line 277) is created on Earth.  Princess Ida and Prince Florian embody this idea.  She has come back from seclusion to rejoin society because of him.  He has been enlightened because of her influence.  In the last few lines, Princess Ida teases him for his speech. “A dream/ That was once mine!  What woman taught you this?” (lines 291-292). 

Work Work Work

“For there is perennial nobleness, and even sacredness in Work,” (page 481), wrote Thomas Carlyle in, “Labor,”.  Yet, Carlyle is not referring to a mere job, a simple means of making money.  Rather, this is activity done for the sake of more valuable things.  This kind of work brings about self-knowledge, and gives life direction.  “Properly thou has no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic-vortices, till we try and fix it,” (page 482)  It is through work that one comes to to truly understand the self and the world.  “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand,” goes the Chinese proverb.  Through action, things go from abstract to concrete, from theory to reality, from uncertain to certain.  It’s why science classes have lab components.  It’s also how, through work, human beings can better know themselves.  “Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan,” (page 481).  The human self is too complex to simply “know”.  People that go off and try to “find themselves” are really just dissatisfied with what they are doing, and want to do something else more fulfilling.  It is a quest that revolves around activity and work because humans judge and are judged by their actions.  So identity has a direct connection with work.  Additionally, through work, one learns his or her individual strengths and talents.  One can perfect and enhance them.  Furthermore, work also reveals one’s weaknesses.  So the individual must confront and learn to overcome them.  “A man perfects himself by working.  Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seedfields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert nearby,” (page 481).  So it is through work that human beings improve themselves.  

          

“The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!” (page 481).  Work gives peace.  It takes the focus off of things that one cannot do anything about, and turns it to things that one can do something about.  In other words, it refocuses negative energy into positive energy.  It increases security in oneself.  Furthermore, it gives life direction, meaning, and purpose.  “Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us.  A formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder: ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World,” (page 482).  This idea is further promoted by the metaphor of Destiny as a potter.  If the clay will not spin, there is only so much that the potter can do for it.  It is base and crude.  But if it does spin, then the potter can make it into something beautiful, give it greater purpose.  It can be a vase for flowers instead of a small pinch pot that isn’t really good for anything at all.  If human beings spin, if they work, than they are moving forward towards being something significant.      

Industrialism, Perspectives on the Past and Present

The from Benjamin Disraeli’s “Sybil” describes a conversation between two strangers.  The younger one states that the new queen reigns over two nations, the lower and upper classes.  The two classes are,“are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.” (page 499).  Yet, they are from different worlds.  The poor and the rich live in very different neighborhoods and circumstances.  They do not intermarry, or even associate really, with members of the other class.  It is no surprise that prejudice arises between the two classes and that between them, “there is no intercourse, and no sympathy,” (page 499).

  

Charles Dickens presents the issue on a smaller scale in his description of Coketown in the excerpt from, “Hard Times”.  In Coketown, there are eighteen different churches, all for the upper class.  “It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets,” (page 498).  Thus, there is a cultural divide between the upper and lower class.  One is pious, one is not.  It is easy to judge one as moral and religious, and the other as base and sinful.  Yet, the testimonies of the Eggley sisters give another reason.  Ann stated that, “I thought it too bad to be confined on both Sundays and week-days.  I walk about and get fresh air on Sundays,” (page 466).  Elizabeth said, “I have often been obliged to stop in bed all Sunday to rest myself,” (page 466).  Should these two girls, their peers, their parents, or their neighbors, be begrudged one day of real rest?  

In this kind of society, religion becomes reduced to a luxury, just another symbol of status.  Piety becomes an excuse to feel, “holier than thou”.  Dickens describes how there was a move to force the lower class to attend church.  How the Teetotal Society, “complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement human or Divine (except a medal), would induce their custom of getting drunk,” (page 498).  Similarly, the lower class came to embody other vices like opium, singing, and dancing.  Because, of course, the upper class was far too pure and holy to ever touch alcohol or opium, and they would never ever stoop to (shudder) singing and dancing.  The prejudice of the upper class grew to such an extent, that one gentleman could blame his crimes on engaging in such activities.  

These issues and perspectives are hardly unique to this time period.  Ann and Elizabeth Eggley could very well be William Blake’s chimney sweepers.  Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that the upper classes, “would rather justify oppression that correct abuses,” (page 62).  The sharp class division is not something that has gone away over time.  The state of a neighborhood here in Macon, for instance, changes from one street to the next.  Take Mercer, a lovely patch of brick buildings and trees.  Then cross the bridge over the highway.  And I’m sure I’m not the only one to have been approached by a starving homeless man or woman after buying a week’s supply of groceries.  And there are still prejudices.  They’re probably just on drugs, or alcoholics.  It’s their own fault they couldn’t hold down a job.  They got themselves into this mess.  And those people living in the run down houses, yeah, they should really start taking care of their property somewhere between those two minimum-wage jobs.  So when does it end?  Is poverty and a class system inevitable?  Do they all deserve help?  All questions that our generation has to answer if we don’t want our children to have to.    

The Wife of Asdrubal, Martyr or Murderer?

Asdrubal, a military commander of Carthage, surrendered to the Romans to save his own life.  “The wife of Asdrubal” by Felicia Hemans describes the scene of Carthage in flames and his wife’s own desperate acts.  It is interesting to note that Carthage is described as female. “Her walls have sunk, and pyramids of fire/ In lurid splendor from her domes aspire,” (lines 4-5).  Asdrubal betrayed not one, but two women that he had sworn to love and protect.  While Carthage burns, Asdrubal’s wife appears.  Amid the chaos and the flames, the speaker gives this woman a glorious description.  “All regal in magnificent attire,/ And sternly beauteous in terrific ire,” (lines 17-18). She is even likened to a priestess.  Though her husband fled the battle, she remains loyal to her city.  She carries herself with honor and dignity, and glares at her husband, who is, “ignobaly safe” (line 40).  While her husband surrendered in fear, this woman stands firm.  “A daring spirit, in its woes elate,/ Mightier than death, untamable by fate./ The dark profusion of her locks unbound,/ waves like a warrior’s floating plumage round,” (lines 27-30).  Asdrubal’s wife refuses to follow her husband’s example and surrender.   The wife is the “good captain” who goes down with her “ship”.  

It is difficult to defend a woman who kills her own children.  It is possible that she did this to keep them from suffering either life in Roman chains or death in flames.  However, the public manner in which she did this suggests that she is trying to convey a much larger idea.  “She seems th’ avenging goddess of the scene,” (line 32).  His wife is ensuring that he looses everything that ever mattered to him, that in putting aside his duties and loyalties, he also sacrificed his children.  Additionally, children are their parents’ legacy.  In killing her children, Asdrubal’s wife ensures that  doing so Asdrubel’s legacy will end and never be redeemed by his sons.  His name will always be shamed.  In killing her children, she also allows them to die as loyal citizens of Carthage and keeps them free from the taint of her husband’s betrayal.  Instead, they become martyrs, remembered for their innocence, and symbols of their fathers terrible betrayal.