Allusion to Illusion

He wears a tool belt and is handy around the house. He does all the heavy lifting. He is required to be the breadwinner and supporter of the family. He must be strong and able to protect. He must be a spiritual leader, an example of righteousness and tact. He is a dope, a moron willing to cope with the emotional complications of his significant other, with the anticipation that it will be chased by a few well-earned minutes of sex, or at least some televised sports. In Chad Kultgen’s The Average American Male (2007), an unnamed male narrator puts this construction of masculinity to the test, either to refute this feminist-centric stereotype of the masculine position, or simply to mock the feminine Performative.

“Casey has a fat ass. She’s a pretty cute brunette…just with a big fat ass attached. She knows it’s fat and got a membership to my gym so she could go with me…She even toyed with the idea of getting a personal trainer and she bought an exercise book called The Daily Butt Regimen…I tried to get her to do squats with me, leg presses…any fucking thing having even the most remote influence on the movement of muscles in her lower body, and she always says, ‘I think I’ll just do some curls.’..That night, after suffering through a TiVoed three-episode Real World marathon, I’m rewarded by her letting me fuck her doggie style. As I look down as her fat ass, I wonder if fucking her hard enough will have any kind of slimming or toning effect. Couldn’t hurt.” Within these words is the summation of just what Kultgen claims in his title to have mastered, The Average American Male, not simply by his standards, but by the standards of the feminist agenda. In direct response to feminism claiming to be founded on the basis that women (by gender, not by biological sex) are treated generally unequally in comparison to men, masculism is defined in some spheres (especially in the opinions of modern feminism) to be synonymous with male chauvinism or misogyny, as evidenced by the above excerpt from Kultgen’s novel. The unnamed narrator is extreme, brutal, selfish, emotionally abusive, sex-centered, and most predominantly, shallow--not exactly befitting the stereotypical predisposition of masculine ideals, but the epitome of masculism through the eyes of the extreme modern feminist.

Most evinced in this passage is the undeniable implication of the feminist view of masculinity, centered on the ceaseless desire for sex, which Kultgen seems to perpetuate, but refutes in actuality. The unnamed male despises all that is superficial in any of his relationships at any point in the novel; for example: dating, engagement, dinner with parents, talk of children, shopping, etc. He lives in a narrow world that consists only of video games, food, his male friends, and sex, and placing him in such a world is the author’s way of personally redefining the terms of masculine gender in artificially realistic (not idealistic) terms. The male protagonist is pornographic in his thought and speech, vulgar, internally violent, and eternally sexually aroused, a character description which borders on the sociopathic. Rather than portray the knight-in-shining-armor image of masculinity as a means to his ends, Kultgen allows the feminist definition of masculinity to become a sort of comic relief for the hard-to-swallow underlying truth in his words—that perhaps there are some men who unfortunately do adhere to the misogynist masculine guidelines, but in truth, the feminist definition of masculinity, in Kultgen’s opinion, is preposterous; no average man could truly be that shallow.

Weakness, however, a characteristic atypical of masculinity, is also part of Kultgen’s redefinition. The narrator’s personal weakness is not absolutely overt until the very end of the plot, when he proposes not to his overweight, unpleasant girlfriend, but to a thin, beautiful, idealized woman who loves sex and video games as much as he does. What is striking about his surrender in proposition is that he states a realization: “There is nothing better. There is no fucking escape.” Rather than live his single life of polygamy, the narrator chooses to allow himself to be consumed by the umbrella of all that which is female, to be defined not by his own life, personality, success, goals, or desires, but by the singular desire of his mate to be married to him. In this, Kultgen makes one last implication: not only does it seem as if the entire masculine position is contrived on the basis of feminist beliefs, but it also appears that the concepts of romantic love and marriage are contrived by the feminine Performative in order to assist in the definition of masculinity.

Whether the reader interprets The Average American Male as a simple firsthand account of a masculine confederate in the battle of the sexes, or as the caricature that is is, certainly the satire within it is undeniable. By exaggerating the masculine stereotype through his unnamed narrator, Kultgen implies that the complete masculine picture is a farce. Kultgen has constructed a parody, not as an example of masculinity, but as a glimpse at what women, specifically feminists, think they know about masculinity. This allusion to illusion serves as a microcosm for the entire debate between feminism and masculism, in which Kultgen implies bluntly: feminism was established on imaginary grounds, and masculism was established on the foundation of feminism.

Love, Stripped

He loves her; he loves her not. She loves her; she loves her not. Love can survive; love cannot survive. Such are the issues defined and explored in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, a novel in which the heteronormative presumptions regarding love are dissolved by the author’s use of a narrator of indeterminate gender. Defining love primarily by its loss, Winterson focuses not on the effects of feminine, masculine, or queer gender on love, but rather, the gaps in gender construction therein, challenging the notion of fixed gender structures on the fixed category of love, while also (almost woefully) examining the literary issue of addressing love without cliché.

Interestingly, this examination of the superfluity of the expression of love is manifest early in Winterson’s novel with an allusive quote by the character Caliban from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “You taught me language and my profit on’t is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language.” In this quote, Winterson refers not to the actual work of Shakespeare, but to the implicit notion that the erudite expression of love has been exhausted; there is only the replication of that which has been said already, only repetition. Also implied therein is a certain meaninglessness in the expression of love, and therefore, a shallowness. Ironically, by Winterson’s suggestion, then, the literary demonstration of love draws most of its imagery from the author’s definition of love and that upon which her work ruminates most frequently—that is, loss.

In order to emphasize the rule-breaking nature of her novel, Winterson balances the excitement and positivity of the affair which occurs between the nondescript narrator and the paramour Louise, a married woman who leaves her husband, with Louise’s cancer diagnosis. This contrast of events provides a merism of necessary human boundaries and the total breakdown of the horizon of expectations inevitably developed by the heterosexually-minded reader: health and disease, love and loss. Louise’s cancer serves as a metaphor for the unconventional nature of the narrator and the limits placed on love by the heteronormative assumption that only a male can love a female, and only a female can love a male, but also for the requirement of boundary testing in the realm of gender construction. Thusly, the novel becomes a representation of love, simply, love without presupposition of gender, anticipation of role, literary precursors, or social pressure.

It is the expression of gender (or lack thereof, perhaps) which ties Winterson’s theory of the inconsequential love-declaration to her own love related ideals. While Winterson’s narrator has no specific gender identity, bodily description, job, place of residence, or any other tangible definition of worldly character, by prose and philosophical musing, this nondescript protagonist takes on the air of a bisexual female (the narrator has erotic relations with both men and women), shaped not by her own revelations, but by the relationships she encounters. Couched upon this development of personality is the idea that human beings are changed, not as a result of necessity or self-improvement, but rather, for the approval of those with whom relationships are experienced or maintained. However, this feminine air is not always evident; in many cases where the narrator describes his lover, he says she “smells like a gun” or has “iron in her soul,” descriptions which evoke masculine connotations of violence and hardness. Regardless, Winterson writes, "Don't you think it's strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That's all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else's face. What else is embossed on your hands but her?" In this quote, the narrator is defined, without gender, by love itself. The narrator loves and is loved without gender, the epitome of Winterson’s representation of love, stripped.

“Putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love.” Perhaps his name wasn’t love after all. Perhaps he was just a set of predetermined expectations, something someone else had already said. The love expression, however, is irrelevant. What is relevant is Winterson’s development of love itself, exclusive of the realms of gender identity and the gaps therein. Erotic. Passionate. Philosophical. All-inclusive.

Gender Study: Dominique Francon

She enters a room, her body, a network of fragile, angular lines. Her clothes glitter like fresh, crisp snow; they shine like glass, and are the color of water. Her piercing eyes scan the crowd surrounding her, and her cool skin shimmers in the low evening light. Ayn Rand’s heroine from the novel The Fountainhead (1943) is portrayed as a cold, calculating woman, with strict ideals and a fighting spirit; only when she realizes she cannot adhere to these ideals as the men around her are able to hold onto theirs, when she is “tamed” by protagonist Howard Roarke, does her “icy” façade melt. Thusly, one is led to wonder: Is it at all possible for a woman to preserve ideals and traits considered “masculine?”

In the tantalizing pages of Rand’s novel, the reader comes to know the great Howard Roark, Rand’s literary portrayal of the “ideal man.” An aspiring architect, Roark subscribes not to the traditional ancient methods of aesthetics in architecture, but rather to the functional, the minimalist, the modern. As such, Roark is seen throughout the course of the chronicle in voluntary struggle. He is subtly suggestive of a Christ-like figure, as he refuses to compromise his individuality or his principles. Arising from this “ideal man” portrayal is a lack of development of the unembellished character of Roark himself; he does not progress in his beliefs, he does not seek converts to his way of thinking, he does not entreat upon others. In short, according to Rand’s portrayal of gender, the ideal man need not be changed nor change himself.

Conversely, Dominique Francon, Rand’s heroine, is portrayed as a vicious, obstinate, headstrong, unusual young woman, the perfect foil to Howard Roark, completing him, perhaps, the way every woman “should” complete a man. Tangent to Roark’s character, however, she does not refuse change; rather, she changes because of Roark. Her ideals are centralized to the inherent putrid state of the world and the belief that no true greatness, no true individuality, can survive in such a world. As such, she immerses herself in that which she despises in order to shade herself from the vision of the world destroying the things she loves. The same is true as she encounters Roark for the first time: She recognizes his potential and pays great homage to it internally, but externally attempts to destroy him, socially and emotionally, before the rest of the world is able to strip him of his singularity. As her character progresses, however, Dominique realizes that she wishes to find failure in this attempt in order to satiate her curiosity; she desperately longs to determine whether absolute good and genius can survive in her cynical world. She is married several times for the sake of Roark’s grand destiny, and even weds him, after he illegally bombs a building project he deems unacceptable by his standards.

Understanding the nature of each of these intertwined characters is essential, but more tantamount to the comprehension of Dominique Francon’s gender disposition is the nature of her love for Howard Roark. Dominique surrenders her heart and soul to Roark, but before Roark and Francon achieve their grand “happy ending,” Dominique is wed to a man who describes her as living her life without a soul, as if she is merely a mind, devoid of human emotion, simply for the grand purpose of further Howard Roark’s success. She despises him, but contrarily fights tooth and nail for his success in the architectural community, her own way of punishing him for betraying the set of ideals by which she and Roark live. This parallels Dominique, where Roark is suggestive of Christ, with the Virgin Mother of the New Testament, bringing forth the Christ figure, though she does so by granting her first husband all the successes of the world, while also removing from him from what he desires most in life-her love. This love, instead, she grants to Howard Roark without reserve, however, Rand portrays the love shared by Dominique and Roark not as emotional, understanding, or compassionate (all traits considered to be feminine), but as a harsh, strictly logical machine, a depiction which seems to mold even the fuzziness of love into Howard Roark’s sociopathic modus operandi.

Finally, this love coalesces at a peak in which Dominique finally surrenders herself to Roark completely. Rand writes, “Late at night, often, she came to Roark’s room. She came unannounced, certain of finding him there and alone. In this room, there was no necessity to spare, lie, agree, and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity, untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the meaningless pulp of the impersonal…it was-as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded-an act of violence. It was surrender, made more complete by the force of their resistance…it was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony,” (Rand, 282) And afterwards, Dominique sits on the floor at Roark’s feet, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it for him. At the conclusion of this encounter, which is not rape, but rather, systematic, emotionless lovemaking, a new Dominique Francon emerges. Where previously stood the cold, calculating, unusually masculine quintessence of a woman equal to her male peers, the reader now observes a soft, dull version of Dominique, one Rand later describes as having “the body of a sacrificial object publicly offered, beyond the need of concealment or desire,” (Rand, 438). As the result of some implicit desire to be governed over, she is shown, stripped not only of her masculine qualities, which have been replaced by submission to Howard Roark, but also stripped of her individuality, her poise, her purpose; she is immersed only in that which is of Howard Roark’s best interest, interests correlated to those of the masculine (even chauvinist in this case) male.

As evinced by Dominique Francon’s character progression into what a woman “should” be, according to Rand’s theories of Objectivism, the issue of feminist culture is exactly what “The Performative” curtails feminism to be: a state of being as acted out in repetition; a gender identity based on habit, in Dominique’s case, by the habit of denying herself for the grand destiny of another, which amounts to personal sacrifice, a feminine attribute. By this definition, certainly one can ascertain that feminism as a whole is a consequence of personal action, that is, allowing one’s female (by biological sex) self to be arranged in terms of socioeconomic, political, marital, or religious status; allowing control of one’s impulses and body to be relinquished to male (by biological sex, but therefore associated with the masculine) control; and allowing one’s thoughts to be organized into the paradox that is feminism therein. Ironically, in her Objectivist stance, Ayn Rand herself, though married, still succeeded in the propagation of her ideals of the ethic of egotism and emphasis on the individual; both her success and the actual principles which led to her success can be considered masculine in nature. Hence, the position held by feminists is an ironic one; by aligning with group principles similar to those held by the majority of the feminist community, these women, who otherwise would be considered People, adopt the typecast of the feminine victim-the very image which feminism would abolish. Undoubtedly, the true plight of feminism should happen only on the individual basis, from the inside out of the singular woman who wishes to take charge of her feminine or masculine Person however she sees fit to do so.

On the Trope of Sight

For human beings, the sensorial world can be a delightful but incredibly challenging one to live in. In modern days, one feels the earth tremble with industry, one smells asphalt and smog, one tastes iron and steel and glass, one hears the whir of technology. Perhaps, however, one’s sense of sight is the most perplexing, having astonishing versatility and even the ability to deceive. In a less current sense, from the moment Adam and Eve saw they were naked, their lives were changed profoundly; the story of Lot involves much seeing and being seen, resulting not only in the near rape of Lot’s daughters, but also in the death of his wife. Lot’s type of sight, though, is a metaphorical one, a trope used throughout literature to refer to the abstract idea of knowing a person deeply, having physical contact with a person, or to the fact that the character doing the seeing is privy to some otherwise unmentioned piece of information. Chaucer uses these links of sight most effectively in his magnum opus, “The Canterbury Tales,” specifically in the case of the tale told by his most (debatably) worthy Knight. The present essay will examine several of these biblical examples of the trope of sight, linking them in an inevitable sense to Chaucer’s Knight and also to the other religious pilgrims partaking in Chaucer’s grand journey.

Understanding the use of the trope itself is the foundation of literary analysis where these links are made. Sociologist Alex Thio, in his book “The Sociological Spirit: Critical Essays in a Critical Science,” cites an examination of the construction of meaning in words conducted by W.I. Thomas. Thomas postulates, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” (Thio, pg. 44). This definition alludes to the idea that language itself constructs particular meaning for particular people in particular cultures. Thio later supports this culture-specific idea by citing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which “holds that language predisposes us to see the world in a certain way,” (Thio, pg. 56-57). “The Canterbury Tales” is very nearly a case study in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in that Chaucer uses the language of the culture and time in which he lives himself-the mid to late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century-to reflect the motivation of his writings. During this period, England suffered not only from the Black Death (bubonic plague), which resulted in the mortality of half of the population in some areas, but also from a Malthusian crisis, “an imbalance…between population and food production,” (Patterson, pg. 4). Before the plague, little land was vacant for farming, but labor was plentiful, which put the ever-increasingly archaic three-part social system under intense stress. The relationships between Those Who Fight, Those Who Pray, and Those Who Work the Land became threatened further as the plague lifted, leaving wide tracks of land open for farming and a smaller population, which resulted in less demand for production. From this transfer of circumstances emerged a new social class: a middle class never seen before in England. Chaucer himself was arguably part of this new middle class, according to Professor Lee Patterson of Yale, who states in his essay “Chaucer,” that the author was born to a merchant, dealt with merchants and trade throughout his life, served his king, and worked as a layman. His participation in all of the three previously regarded status positions leaves Chaucer with a certain sense of class ambiguity, though, which is perhaps why he declines to describe himself in his General Prologue. This “lack of social definition,” (Patterson, pg. 9) as constructed by Chaucer allows him to fill in his own blanks, per se, enacting his own definition of the literary situation, and therefore perhaps the social situation also. Chaucer made the creation of “The Canterbury Tales” as much a social commentary as possible, from the dictation of the manuscript to his scribe to his use of Middle English, the language of the middle and lower classes.

While Chaucer as the narrator remains socially ambiguous throughout “The Canterbury Tales,” his Knight, orator of the first tale, is framed as being almost socially overqualified in his extreme worthiness (whether Chaucer believes this to be true, or he is simply mocking the Knight is irrelevant to the Knight’s use of the trope of sight); the Knight echoes this by telling a tale of epic romance. Unlike the Miller and the Reeve who are to follow him, the Knight is noble in his language, sparing himself the use of the fabliaux. This greatness, however, is not the result of ordination; the Knight is not greater by rite of God, but by the esteem of the people around him. The Knight’s tale has much in common with the tale of Samson from Judges, chapters 13-16. The Nazirite Samson is also held at great esteem due to his immense physical presence, and like the Knight’s character Palamon, Samson takes ocular notice of a woman and as a result suffers the punishment of losing not only his eyesight, but also his strength: “Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, ‘I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife,” (Bible, Judges 14:1-2). Palamon’s consequences are slightly more varied, in that he loses not his sight, but his relationship (referred to in a scholarly sense as “amicitcia,” the bond of friendship) with his cousin Arcite, with whom Palamon will clash. Chaucer states, in modern English, “…through a window, thickly set with many a bar of iron, great and square as any beam, He [Palamon] cast his eye upon Emelye, and with that he turned pale and cried, ‘A!’ As though he were stabbed upon the heart,” (Benson, lines 1075-1079). Unlike Samson, however, Palamon has competition for the apple of his eye, for Arcite, too, spies Emily: “…Arcite did see where this lady roamed to and fro, and with that sight her beauty hurt him so, that, if Palamon were sorely wounded, Arcite is hurt as much as he, or more. And with a sigh he said piteously, ‘The fresh beauty slays me suddenly of her who roams in the yonder place; and unless I have her mercy and her grace, so that I can at least see her, I am as good as dead; there is no more to say,” (Benson, lines 1112-1122). In the cases of Samson and Arcite, the trope of sight, this “seeing” is a reflection of desire in a sexual sense, which is unbridled and eventually punished in arguably befitting ways: Arcite is killed and must relinquish Emily to Palamon’s true love; Samson dies by the hand of God for his sins.

If Chaucer’s Knight avoids the fabliaux for the sake of class structure, his Miller adores it for the sake of class upset. The Miller’s tale, however, where the trope of sight is concerned, is much less complex than the Knight’s. The wife of John the carpenter, whose name is Alison is described by the Miller as having a “wanton eye,” (Benson, line 3244); she has made a cuckold of her much older husband, but she is not alone in her shameless behavior. Just as Rebekah is seen by the eyes of Isaac in Genesis chapter 24, Alison is seen not only by Nicholas, with whom she is described vulgarly as having a blatantly sexual relationship, but also by Absolon: “This Absolon, who was elegant and gay, goes with a censer on the holiday, censing the wives of the parish eagerly; and many a lovely look he cast on them, and especially on this carpenter’s wife,” Benson, lines 3339-3343). Like the case of Rebekah and Isaac, who love each other in the most passionate way seen in the bible before their time, Alison is in love with Nicholas, and she ignores the doting of Absolon: “For though Absolon be crazed or angry, because he was far from her sight, this neaby Nicholas cast him in the shadow,” (Benson, lines 3394-3396). Absolon is described as being “far from her sight” because he cannot have the physical relationship he desires with her, for Nicholas distracts Alison from Absolon (who arguably cares for her in a greater sense). Later, Nicholas instructs Alison to trick her husband so that they might be together, saying of Nicholas to John, “Of all that day she saw him not with eye,” (Benson, line 3415), meaning they had not had relations that day. Nicholas tells John that a great flood is coming, and that he must construct a hanging apparatus for his wife and himself to protect them, commanding John by God, “The wife and thou must hang far apart, so that between you shall be no sin, no more in looking than there shall be in deed,” (Benson, lines 3589-3591), another use of the trope of sight in reference to sexual behavior. For his immoral sights, Nicholas receives his poetic justice from Absolon in the form of a hot poker.

In succession, the tale told by the Reeve follows Chaucer’s Miller. Ironic in accordance with the purpose of the present essay, Chaucer writes that the Reeve’s tale is to describe the “blearing of a proud miller’s eye (tricking him),” (Benson, 3865). Symkyn the Miller is portrayed by the Reeve as a thieving man without scruples, much akin to the people found by Lot in the city of Sodom. When foreigners requesting lodging within the walls of Sodom appear to him, Lot accepts them honestly, graciously, and with a great sense of guardianship into his own home; they protest, saying “No, for we will lodge in the wide place,” (Bible, Genesis 19:2). Lot insists on providing his hospitality, including in the face of the men of Sodom, who convene upon his house, demanding to know Lot’s guests in an immoral sense. Lot says to them, “Please!—my brothers, do not cause bad. Look! Please—to me are two daughters who have not known a man; let me, please, make them go out toward you, and do to them according to the good in your eyes, only to these men, do not do a thing, inasmuch as they came into the shadow of my rafter,” (Bible, Genesis 19:7-8); Lot is a good man, and is willing to sacrifice his daughters to the men of Sodom before surrendering the dignity of his guests. This is in sharp contrast to the situation of Symkyn the miller, with whom the characters John and Aleyn find lodging in an almost accidental sense. Symkyn tricks and steals from his guests, releasing their horse and removing a portion of their ground grain for himself without permission. Where Lot received a righteous reputation for his goodness to the strangers and his willingness to share, Symkyn becomes a sort of cuckold for his theft and selfishness, just as does John, husband of Alison. John and Aleyn, under the concealment of night (and befittingly, in blindness), trick Symkyn’s wife and daughter as Symkyn tricked them, under which circumstances they come to see the two women in the same manner that Nicholas has seen Alison and Palamon and Arcite have seen Emily. In the confusion of their cramped lodging, and amidst Symkyn’s attempted beating of John and Aleyn, the latter of whom he “seized…angrily in turn, and…smote him with his fist,” (Benson, lines 4274-4275), Symkyn meets his retribution at the hands of his own wife: “To find a staff, she leaped up also…But surely she did not know who was who...She thought the clerk had worn a night cap, and with the staff she drew ever nearer and nearer, and intended to have his this Aleyn squarely, and smote the miller on his bald skull,” (Benson, lines 4294-4305).

From these literary examples, one can logically come to the conclusion that the use of the trope of sight can have many implications: that of the sexual or immoral, that of deep understanding of a person, that of deep love, and that of poetic justice or consequence as a direct function of the actions taken therein. As the bible states in Deuteronomy 19:21, “…thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, [and] eye for eye.”

Citations

Benson, L.D. "Chaucer: The Knight's Tale--An Interlinear Translation, Pt. 1." Harvard Chaucer Pages. Harvard, 22 Apr. 2008. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .

Benson, L.D. “Chaucer: The Miller’s Prologue and Tale—An Interlinear Translation.” Harvard Chaucer Pages. Harvard, 22 Apr. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2011.

Benson, L.D. “Chaucer: The Reeve’s Tale—An Interlinear Translation.” Harvard Chaucer Pages. Harvard, Apr. 8, 2008. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

The Bible: New International Version. Colorado Springs, CO: International Bible Society, 1984. Print.

Patterson, Lee. "Chaucer." Patterson on Chaucer. Yale University. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .

Thio, Alex. Society: Myths and Realities : an Introduction to Sociology. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2007. Print.