Comparative Analysis of Lucy in J M Coetzees Disgrace and Lucy in William Wordsworths the Lucy Poems - Research Paper Example

?A Comparative Analysis of Lucy in J M Coetzee’s “Disgrace” and Lucy in William Wordsworth’s “The Lucy Poems” “Disgrace,” a novel written by J M Coetzee and published in 1999, narrates the story of a South African professor, David Laurie, and his daughter, Lucy Laurie. The work, besides being honored with the Booker Prize, has also fetched the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 for its author. Set in the post apartheid period, the novel has several political connotations but is noted significantly for its depiction of the social ramifications on individuals, especially the whites. The work also dwells on themes of violence and exploitation and the indelible and tormenting lacerations they leave on the victims as well as the perpetrators. David, a professor, teaching communication in a technical university in South Africa, makes sexual advances on a vulnerable female student. He refuses to apologize and is sacked by the college authorities and he comes to his daughter Lucy’s farm to live with her. As he begins to adapt to the farming life, a gang of three black men launch an attack on the farm, beats him up and rapes his daughter. Ironically, the same callous treatment that he metes out on the women in his life rebounds on his daughter and he remains helpless, unable even to protect his daughter’s honor. The story, through the depiction of the lead character Lucy, thus portrays women as hapless subjects of male prowess and domination, which reduce them to the status of emotional wrecks. On the other hand, “Lucy,” a set of five poems written by Wordsworth, an acclaimed English poet, tells the story of an unrequited love of an anonymous narrator for Lucy, an anonymous and undefined character. Contrary to the Lucy in the novel, the poems view Lucy in an entirely different perspective by objectifying her as a symbol of beauty and innocence. She represents the deep yearning and longing of the young male narrator’s unquenched heart. Thus, Lucy in both works is rooted on entirely different premises of femininity, though they share some similarities. In “Lucy Poems,” the main character Lucy is not fully developed and the readers are left to speculate as to what she really represents though the author presents her with the abundance of captivating imageries and poetic aesthetics. On the other hand, in “Disgrace,” Coetzee clearly provides the idea as to who Lucy is, what her conflict is and how she perceives herself as a part of the South African society and the perspectives from which that society will view her problem. Similarly, in the novel, the audience gets to know Lucy and her feelings from her perspective, through her actions and dialogs, which renders it a certain form of emotional intensity to the character. On the other hand, in Lucy poems, the audience never sees or hears Lucy in person. Whatever information the author chooses to share with the readers derives from the narrator’s perspective and the perception that this anonymous person conceives and reveals about her. Thus, the author wraps his female character in a shroud of mystery and alludes to her traits by way of using distinct and vivid imageries but ambiguous attributes to her existence such as every day she looked “Fresh as a rose in June” and the narrator lamenting, “O mercy!” on the event that she is dead (Wordsworth Poem I Lines 6, 27). From these allusions, the audience is not able to make out whether Lucy is a person who actually has lived and died, or whether she just symbolizes some aspect of nature. In contrast, Coetzee’s Lucy comes alive on the pages through the straightforward narration of the stark realities of her existence and the depiction of her vivid emotions as can be evidenced from her denial of her father’s offer to send her to Holland saying that “There is nothing you can suggest that I haven’t been through a hundred times” (Coetzee 157). This dialog illustrates the emotional trauma of the character and the conflict she undergoes, through her own narration of it. Thus, while Lucy in the poem remains a subject of artistic curiosity to a narrator’s aesthetic sense of imagination, Lucy in the novel is a woman in flesh and blood, one who suffers the traumas of real life experience that males seeking carnal pleasure inflict on her. It is also relevant that the Lucy in “Disgrace” is specifically affected because of the post-apartheid political situation in South Africa, where she has to deal with the hangovers of the “moral issues of the post-apartheid” society and her refusal to move away is a kind of “introversion of retributive violence” (Malin 17). Lucy, thus, harbors a feeling that she is being “punished for the errors of the previous generations” (Malin 18). On the other hand, Lucy in Wordsworth’s poems does not have any such turmoil to deal with. Lucy in “Disgrace” is a woman subjected to male sexual gratification, an instrument to prove his power over the feminine gender. The men who attack Lucy do not view her as a human being with dignity and subject her to gang rape. To them, she is a vent to exhaust their sexual energies, a quarry to be hunted down and devoured. Thus, through Lucy’s personal experience, the novel portrays women as the subject of male domination and subjugation. In the same vein, David Laurie, self-centered and focused only on his physical pleasures, also considers women as merely in a physical context to satiate his carnal desires and fulfill his needs. This is in stark contrast to the feminine image Wordsworth depicts through his works. In “Lucy Poems,” the narrator watches Lucy from a distance, with a feeling that almost borders on being akin to reverence. The Lucy in “Disgrace,” disillusioned about male’s ability to understand a woman’s feelings, tells her father that while she appreciates his concern for her, she knows that he thinks that he does understands her but he does not “because (he) can’t” (Coetzee 157). In contrast, in Lucy’s poems, she does not have to lament on the lack of understanding because the narrator not merely understands but longs her from deep within his heart though he does not physically meet or interact with her. While the readers confront Lucy as a disgraced woman in “Disgrace,” Lucy in “Lucy” poems is a woman whom the narrator honors infinitely. Across all human civilizations women’s honor has a crucial role in their life and once it is compromised, the woman feels no value of herself. Unfortunately, Lucy in “Disgrace” loses her honor for no fault of hers, but because of the cruel nature of the males who inflict the curse of disgrace on her for attaining their motive of sexual satiation. Lucy does not see this as a single episode that happened to her and contends that their motive is not stealing but premeditated rape and “that they are rapists first and foremost” (Coetzee 158). Thus, the character of Lucy has a perspective, from which she raises a concern that these men can be repeated offenders, thereby suggesting the post-apartheid situation of the South African society, where the black are now unleashing terror on the whites as if seeking their vengeance. On the other hand, Lucy in Wordsworth’s poem is a woman who not merely receives her full honor but the narrator “exalts Lucy into a luminary” through the power of his vivid imagination (Wu 191). Thus, he thinks of her as “Fair as a star when only one/ Is shining in the sky” (Wordsworth Poem II, Lines 7-8). From the stark contrast of Lucy in both works, it can be construed that in the former Lucy illustrates the ugly side of male power where as in the latter, Lucy manifests the romantic nature of male’s personality. A major similarity in both Lucy in the poem and Lucy in the novel can be perceived in terms of their selfless nature and the fact that they exist to serve the purpose of others. It appears that Wordsworth has intended Lucy in “Lucy” poems to be an incarnation of nature by his various references to the natural elements in all these poems, to illustrate the female nature of selflessness. This supposition can be seen as valid from the perspective that Lucy just remains to enthrall the narrator and the author has used “beauty and beneficence” in these poems to foreshadow a looming threat, which is an essential ingredient of nature, as well as the “impending doom” (Wu 190). Thus, as the narrator approaches Lucy’s abode, his anxiousness about his lover overrides his eagerness to be with her and this renders the poem a “sense of tragedy that one cannot shake off as one reads the poem” (Wu 190). In “Disgrace” also, the same sense of tragedy veils Lucy throughout the story. It is as if she exists for the sole purpose of sheltering her father on the one hand and for being ravaged and devastated by a gang of hoodlums on the other. In the same manner as the narrator in the Lucy poem is not capable of rescuing his love, despite his adoration for her, in spite of David’s concerns for the safety of his daughter he is not able to salvage her from her plight. In “Lucy” poems, Wordsworth states that Lucy “dwelt among th’ untrodden ways,” (Wordsworth Poem II Line 15), which illustrates the aloofness of Lucy from the world she inhabits. The poet, through referring to her dwelling among paths that no one has treaded so far, perhaps alludes to a specific manner in which Lucy perceived the world around her and thus avoids it. Similarly, Lucy in the novel does not tread on worn paths, as she is apprehensive of certain aspects about the South African society. She vehemently holds onto the view that South Africa is a unique country and “what happened to (her) is purely a private matter” (Moran 224). She intends to keep it as her secret because of the apprehension of how society will react to it. Thus, she avoids the routine practices of complaining to police and her concept parallels to that of Lucy in Wordsworth’s poems. Similarly, Lucy in the poem is referred to as “A maid whom there were none to praise/ And very few to love” compares to the plight of Lucy in Disgrace as she does not have anyone, including David, to really understand or love her (Wordsworth Poem II Line 3-4). Therefore, despite his caring for his daughter, he is unable to “protect his daughter” and Lucy responds with “such passivity, such resignation, such inertness to her rape” (Wright 14, 16). She obviously wants to remain aloof from the society, like the Lucy in “Lucy” poems, because she feels alienated. Thus, it transpires that Lucy in the novel “Disgrace” written by J M Coetzee differs from Lucy in “Lucy” poems written by William Wordsworth in several ways. The main aspect of the difference between these characters is that while the former remains throughout the pages of the novel in flesh and blood, the latter exists merely as a projection in the imagination of the narrator of the poem, without any tangible identity. Similarly, while Lucy in “Disgrace” becomes an unwitting victim of male domination and subjugation, Lucy in “Lucy” poems exists and vanishes as a pure personification of feminine beauty and innocence. While the males in the novel abuse the female and ravage her, the male narrator in the poem adores her, assigning her an elevated status in his vision that is akin to reverence. The former Lucy, living in the post-apartheid society of South Africa, has to deal with the political and social ramifications of the evils committed by her previous generations. On the other hand, the latter Lucy does not have any such dilemmas or conflicts in her life, which appears to be surrounded by beauty and innocence. However, despite several significant dissimilarities in these characters both of them also share certain common grounds as can be evidenced from these works. The most striking similarity is that both these women exist to serve the purpose of others albeit in different forms and contexts. While Lucy in “Disgrace” serves as a vent for exhausting the colored men’s vengeance upon the whites, Lucy in “Lucy” poems acts the object of desire for the male narrator. Similarly, both these females remain aloof from the mainstream society for their own reasons. Thus, it transpires that while the characters of Lucy in the poem and novel are drastically different in many aspects, a reader can also recognize the semblance of some similarity in them. Works Cited Coetzee, J M. Disgrace. 1999. Print. United Kingdom: Secker & Warburg. Friberg, Malin. Disgrace in J M Coetzee’s Disgrace. 2007. Web. 15 November 2012. Moran, Shane. To Criticize the Critic: Disgrace. Review Article: Disgrace by J M Coetzee. 2000. Vintage: London. Web. 15 November 2012. Wordsworth, William. Lucy. Poetry Archives. Web. 16 November 2012. Wright, Lawrence. David Lurie’s Learning and the Meaning of J M Coetzee’s Disgrace. n.d. Web. 15 November 2012 Read More