Historians Can't Speculate - Essay Example

Historians Can't Speculate 'Historians can't speculate'. (Toni Morrison cited in Kaster, 54). Is this true? What are the implications of this claim for Morrison the novelist? Since her source text is the real story of the fugitive slave Margaret Garner, discuss the ways in which 'Beloved' acts as a counter history, or a 'rememory' of the historical record of slavery. The idea that historians “can’t speculate” implies a further argument that they also do not speculate. This is a naïve interpretation of the process of historical research and writing given by a novelist rather than a historian. Morrison’s comment also suggests that greater license can and should be given to the novelist as she explores historical events through a prism that includes imagination. Yet when the historical records of an event such as American slavery tend to be biased towards the view of it as just another type of economic enterprise, there is clear value in what might be termed rememory or the an attempt to explore what actually occurred using the human imagination as a spur rather than ‘actual’ historical records. Beloved is a prime example of such an attempt. Hayden White (1973) presents an adequate paradigm for the normal division between what he terms as historical events and fictional events in the following manner: Historians are concerned with events which can be assigned to specific time-space locations, events which are (or were) in principle observable or perceivable, whereas imaginary writers . . . are concernedwith both these kinds of events and imagined, hypothetical, or invented ones. (White, 1973. p.121) It is interesting to note that White’s definition provides for an area of coincidence between the work of the historian and the work of the imaginary writer (such as Morrison, who is a novelist) by suggesting that novelists deal with historical events as well as historians, although they may also include the fictional elements that the historian supposedly does not. As White suggests, it was after the Enlightenment and the French Revolution that history and literature started to part company. By the early 1800’s “it became conventional, at least among historians, to identify truth with fact and to regard fiction as the opposite of truth” (White, p.123) (emphasis added). This might seem almost childishly simplistic to many scholars today, but it can be related to the supposed triumph of the ‘rational’, often in the form of Science, over the irrational. The word science means “to know” (from the Latin scio, to know) and the only thing that can be “known” is a fact. Fiction was thus “a hindrance to the understanding of reality rather than as a way of apprehending it”(White, p.123). History was thus placed within a hierarchy that placed it indelibly above, and thus superior, to that of mere fiction. Many historians of this era did not seem to consider the fact that the histories which they were writing depended a lot upon which facts were being considered, and that thus just as much choice and imagination went into writing them as in fiction. History dealt with facts, and thus the truth, while fiction dealt with non-facts, and thus lies. It was only during the Twentieth Century that history and fiction started their long journey back towards one another. In the Nineteenth Century historians did not realize that which seems self-evident today: “facts do not speak for themselves, but that the historian speaks for them, speaks on their behalf, and fashions the fragments of the past into a whole whose whole integrity is – in its representation – a purely discursive one” (White, p.125). It is this “fashioning” which makes history resemble the process a fictional writer goes through when she is creating a world of characters. The historian takes a historical event, for example the Fall of the Bastille, and gives meaning to it through creating a kaleidoscope through which the event can be seen. The fact that the Bastille fell cannot be disputed; what that falling means can be. Both history and fiction deal with meaning, and thus can be regarded as different techniques with the same end in mind. In terms of Beloved, Morrison is dealing with a historical event in the broadest sense:- the existence of slavery within early America – and brings the novelist’s license to her work through creating fictional characters. “Slavery” can be assigned a specific “time-space” location, and further, Morrison is basing her story upon the actual story of a real fugitive slave, Margaret Garner. Garner was real, and yet some of the characters that Morrison has her come into contact with are from the novelist’s imagination. In this sense Morrison is ‘speculating’ upon the kind of characters that Fuller may have come into contact with, as well as the nature of both the protagonist’s thoughts and those of those around her. Yet many of the greatest histories do precisely this, at least regarding the motivations (and thus the thought processes) of people whose thoughts, as for the rest of human beings, are completely their own. As White suggests, “readers of histories and novels can hardly fail to be struck by their similarities . . . there are many histories that could pass for novels, and many novels that could pass for histories . . . viewed simply as verbal artifacts histories and novels are indistinguishable from one another” (White, pp.121-122). Yet as Morrison correctly asserts, novelist’s are not only given an allowance for “speculation”, and thus the invention of new characters/events, but are almost expected to. If a novelist publishes a work based solely upon historical events that has no evidence of imaginative creation upon his/her part then the novel is often regarded as a failure. Such works should be left to traditional historians; it is the work of speculation that a novelist is supposedly expert at, and which can bring a particular time and period to life in a way that a historian cannot. One rather hyperbolic but revealing review of Beloved suggests that it is somehow more than both a history and a novel: When slavery has torn apart one's heritage, when the past is more real than the present, when the rage of a dead baby can literally rock a house, then the traditional novel is no longer an adequate instrument. And so Pulitzer Prize-winner Beloved is written in bits and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to put together . . . . (Bauermeister, 1994) (emphasis added) Beloved is not a traditional novel in many senses, but particularly because it offers two possible endings for the characters at the heart of the story. Morrison herself has suggested that, unlike history which must by necessity deal with what was rather than what could have been, the novelist may indulge the uncertainty of actual events through offering what are essentially either alternative or even multiple endings. Morrison explains this view in the following manner: There is always something more interesting at stake than a clear resolution in a novel. I’m interested in survival – who survives and who does not, and why – and I would like to chart a course that suggestswhere the dangers are and where the safety might be. I do not wantto bow out with easy answers to complex questions. (McKay, 1993) (emphasis added) The novelist thus has the ability to explore the possibilities within a given situation to a greater extent that the historian. In many ways this is perhaps a better reflection of the reality of life as it is lived moment to moment than a mere recounting of what did happen. The numerous possibilities for what could have happened perhaps reflect actual history as people really live it. Within Beloved Morrison offers two possible endings. First there is the “projection of a happily-ever-after romance scenario for Sethe and Paul D., . . . “ (Carden, 1999), and then provides quite the opposite type of ending as an alternative. The reader is left to decide which ending is more likely, or more attractive. Beyond this, Morrison is also attempting to “think about the meanings of romance in fractured, endangered and illusory spaces of domesticity” (Carden, 1999). Morrison produces a complex world that would be essentially impossible within traditional history. She attempts to show that “within the parameters of slavery, romantic and generative outcomes of love and desire are thwarted, redirected, stolen; and therefore, for many former slaves, to experience freedom means to recouple domestic places and events” (Carden, 1999). Thus Morrison produces a fictional account that seeks to reflect the Truth of slavery and its consequences/aftermath rather than the smaller truths of individual lives. In this context “Truth” can be seen as the general principles and trends that can be extrapolated from the dehumanization which occurred within slavery. There is, as Hutcheon (1988) suggests of all postmodernism, a “self-consciousness” to Beloved in the fairly explicit manner in which Morrison is obviously attempting to analyze ideas far removed from the individual lives that she is providing a fictional account of. The characters “symbolize” not only ideas in the traditional sense of a work of fiction, but whole historical processes. One example of this is found within the character of Paul D, whose very name echoes the protest of Malcolm X a century after this novel is set. Paul D represents all black men in the post-Civil War period, wandering around the American landscape much as they are attempting to find a new meaning for themselves now that they are ‘free’ form chains in a literal sense, but have not really found nay sense of contentment or security: odd clusters and strays of Negroes wandered the black roads and cowpaths from Schenectady to Jackson.... Some of them were running from family that could not support them, some to family; some were running from dead crops, dead kin, life threats, and took-over land... configurations and blends of families of women and children, while elsewhere, solitary, hunted and hunting for, were men, men, men. Forbidden public transportation, chased by debt and filthy "talking sheets," they followed secondary routes, scanned the horizon for signs and counted heavily on each other. Silent, except for social courtesies, when they met one another they neither described nor asked about the sorrow that drove them from one place to another. (Morrison, p.92-93). One of the most intriguing (and disturbing for those who want easy answers) aspects of this passage is that the “Negroes” seem to be reflecting the ‘lost children’ image that had been painted by slave-owners to provide some kind of moral ‘justification’ for slavery. They are “running” in a far more ambiguous manner to that which they ran from slave-owners before the war. In many ways, Morrison illustrates the fact that they are running from an emptiness within themselves. They are described by Morrison in almost animalistic terms, “solitary, hunted and hunting for”, rarely communicate with one another. When the men are gathered together in one place, such as their time in prison, they are subject to both a dehumanization and a feminization (or de-masulinization), such as the terrible ritual that is performed every morning in order to try to get some breakfast: Kneeling in the mist they waited for the whim of a guard, or two, or three. Or maybe all of them wanted it. Wanted it from one prisoner in particular or none--or all. "Breakfast? Want some breakfast, nigger?" "Yes, sir." "Hungry, nigger?" “Yes, sir." "Here you go. (p.108) In order to eat, or to at least stand the chance of eating, black men must demean themselves every morning. As they are legally “free” (although imprisoned by laws) they are put in a situation that is in many ways worse than slavery. For when they were slaves, they at least had the knowledge that they were being enslaved and mal-treated by a whole system designed to dehumanize them. Here they are nominally ‘human’, but are constantly forced to give up that humanity in order to stand at least a slim chance of eating. This sense of uncertainty and virtual anomie regarding the new life as a freed slave is also reflected by the fact that Paul D. cannot stand the thought of remaining with a woman for more than a few months, because that would give him a sense of domestic permanence that his inner psyche, still that of a ‘slave’ because that was all he knew when he was growing up and thus his psychology was being made, still exists within the uncertainty of salve-life in which one could be sold at moment’s notice. Slavery, so Morrison suggests, also provided a hierarchy in which male slaves and female slaves were essentially ‘equal’; or perhaps more accurately were regarded as equally dehumanized and lacking in rights. The men who are wandering around the countryside or who, like Paul D., cannot consider a permanent relationship with a woman, seem afraid of now occupying the ‘natural’ male place at the top of the domestic hierarchy (Carden, 1999). It is because Beloved does not want men to become part of that hierarchy (as she relies on her mother so much) that makes her so alluring to them: You have to touch me. On the inside part. And you have to call me my name."... If he trembled like Lot's wife and felt some womanish need to see the nature of the sin behind him; feel a sympathy, perhaps, for the cursing cursed, or want to hold it in his arms out of respect for the connection between them, he too would be lost. "Call me my name." "No." "Please call it. I'll go if you call it." "Beloved." He said it, but she did not go. She moved closer with a footfall he didn't hear and he didn't hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn't know it. What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying, "Red heart. Red heart," over and over again. (Morrison, p. 117)(emphasis added) A vital “speculative” aspect of the whole of Beloved is the manner in which Morrison uses her soaring poetic technique within prose form within such passages. It is unlikely that the characters (as they are completely uneducated) would really think in this manner. So there thoughts and indeed, some of their actions, might be regarded as “unrealistic” by some. However, their role as symbols of much larger occurrences and trends make their thoughts more applicable. John D. is all black men, Beloved is all black women – at least of their types. To conclude, the argument between history and fiction is in many ways a somewhat futile one. There are certain large scale “events”, such as slavery, the existence of which cannot be denied. It is within the interpretation of those events that the controversy lies, and within which both scholars and novelists can disagree with one another and present contrasting interpretations. The multiple perspectives, often based upon contrast and paradox, which a novelist uses, are precisely the same type of writing form that a good historian uses. Each event can be seen in a multiple number of ways, indeed, its meaning may well be found within that multiplicity. As the two endings of Beloved shows, it is the possible futures of characters that are perhaps of most interest, rather than a nearly concluded ending. In real life the ends of slavery were not neatly tied up with the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent victory of the Union in the Civil War. The consequences were left to grow and change, both within those who directly experienced slavery, but also within their descendants. They are still alive today, Morrison suggests, inherent within every individual brought up within a society which once had slavery. ______________________________________ Works Cited Bauermeister, Erica. Five Hundred Great Books by Women. Penguin, London: 1994. Carden, Mary. “Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. Twentieth Century Literature. Col. 45, Issue 4. 1999. p.401. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory and Fiction. Routledge, New York: 1988. Marshall, Brenda. Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory. Routledge, New York: 1992. McKay, Nellie. “An Interview With Toni Morrison”. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Gates, Henry Louis. Amistad, New York: 1993. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Pan Books, London: 1988. White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Johns Hopkins, Baltimore/London: 1973. Read More