The Idea of Phrase In The Novel We Can Know People Perfectly - Research Paper Example

?English Literature ic and Modern) “In the novel we can know people perfectly” – E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel. Discuss this idea in relation to the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and “Women and Fiction” by Susan Cahill (Introduction). When writers construct a novel, and readers engage with this fictional world, there are elements of real life and elements of fantasy involved in these processes. Both author and reader make sense of the people and the events in the novel by relating them in some way to their own lived experience. Both are aware that the novel is not “real” in any factual or historical sense, but that nonetheless there are elements of the narrative that can be recognized as valid, “true to life” and worthy of reflection. The literary critics E.M. Forster and Susan Cahill have examined such notions about the nature of fictional writing, and their very different views can contribute to a deeper understanding of modern novels. This paper considers both Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar and Susan Cahill’s approach to women’s literature, and examines them in the light of Forster’s key observation that “in the novel we can know people perfectly.” (Forster, 2005, 69) Forster discusses many so-called “aspects” of the novel including such matters as plot, fantasy, and structure, but he devotes two whole chapters in the centre of the book on the subject of “people.” He highlights ability of Dickens, in the character of Pickwick, for example, to sketch life-like characters: “Nearly everyone can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth” (Forster, 2005, 76) In Forster’s view, the novel has enduring features when it comes to characterization. In this genre the omniscient author presents us with all we need to know about a person. We can know them perfectly because they are not real in the sense that living human beings are: “ we can get a definition as to when a character in a book is real: it is real when the novelist knows everything about it… and we get from this a reality of a kind we can never get in daily life.” ( Forster, 2005, 69) The rules of the novelistic universe are, for Forster, different than those in the real world, and this is what makes people knowable in that fictional dimension. More recent critics question this approach, seeing it as too simplistic, and implying a continuity in creative techniques that may not be demonstrable into the modern age. Susan Cahill, for example, explains the importance of uncertainty and struggle in writers, and especially female writers. Cahill maintains that how this results in different themes and a different, more ambivalent and relative narrative voice that is unsure of itself. Loneliness is a common theme, (Cahill, 1975, p. 8), especially for women writers, and modern female authors do no not necessarily carry forward the omniscient narrative tones of the nineteenth century. They are far more likely to report conflict and contradiction and some of “the forces that crush the spirit rather than encourage it to grow.” (Cahill, 1975, p. 8) Sylvia Plath’s narrator Esther, is an example of a “round” character, which means that a wide range of thoughts and feelings are laid bare for the reader. Some facts about her appearance are given, but they are presented obliquely via a description of a make-up kit that she was given “fitted out for a person with brown eyes and brown hair.” (Plath, 2005, p. 3) Other characters are presented with much less detail, and appear from the perspective of Esther at all times. This gives the novel a strong emphasis on the central character. What the reader is to make of this interesting character is, however, not always very clear. Because of the eccentric, or perhaps even disturbed, tone of the narrative, the reader quickly comes to the conclusion that the first person narrator is not exactly reliable. From the beginning of the novel, one suspects that there more to Esther than meets the eye. The opening lines are flippant, and they switch from the everyday trivialities of the young narrator’s life, to the much more serious matter of the celebrity criminals, the Rosenbergs, being executed by electrocution. The narrator’s off-hand comment “I’m stupid about executions” (Plath, 2005, 1) can be read as an example of typical teenage self-dramatization, since there is no way that she can have had any real experience of criminal executions. On the other hand, the book gradually builds up a set of analogies that amount to a pathological obsession with death, destruction and violence. The flippant tone does not match the serious issues and dark imagery, and this is a warning to the reader. Esther describes the desolation that she feels as “very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel” (Plath, 2005, 2). The white telephone in her room is presented in an ambivalent fashion showing how it “could have connected me up with things”, but in fact it just sat there “dumb as a death’s head.” (Plath, 2005, 17) Even perfectly innocent seasonal features are described with sinister overtones: “A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death.” (Plath, 2005, 109) Later, when abandoned by the photographer and Jay Cee, she says “I felt limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal.” (Plath, 2005, 98) Such strange analogies create distance between the reader and the narrator, suggesting that she is not completely knowable at all, despite all of her intimate revelations about her daily life and deep thoughts. Esther draws a clear parallel between herself and the Rosenbergs who were sentenced to death by electrocution for espionage in 1953. Somewhat perversely Esther interprets her electrotherapy as a similar kind of punishment, since after the first treatment she notes: “I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.” (Plath, 2005,138). Even Esther’s self-harming is described in terms of an instrument of official punishment: “I lifted my right hand with the razor and let it drop of its own weight, like a guillotine…” (Plath, 2005, 142) This ominous sense of guilt, and close alignment with people who were killed suggests also that the future of Esther may well be a tragic one. Neither the reader, nor Esther herself are aware, however, what the cause of this nameless guilt actually is. Plath confounds reader expectations also in the passage where Esther skis very fast downhill: “I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts,…” (Plath, 2005, 93), Thus far it is a standard first person narrative of an actual event, showing the young Esther abandoning due care and setting herself apart from the conformists around her on the ski slope. Suddenly, however, the plane shifts in the next phrase into an entirely new set of abstract references: “through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.” (Plath 2005, 93). Esther’s reckless descent in the snow becomes a metaphor for her own past life, and she perceives herself rushing down a tunnel to “the still,bright point at the end of it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother’s belly.” (Plath 2005, 93) These are creepy images, where the tunnel suggests the point of death, and the white baby recalls the scene at the hospital with dead babies pickled in jars (Plath, 2005, 59) This seems to say that life is a backward journey to birth, which in turn is a metaphor for death. The reader must conclude that birth and death, or even life and death, are hopelessly confused in Esther’s mind, and this makes her a very sick and vulnerable person. Sylvia Plath’s novel follows in a tradition of women’s fiction which refuses to deliver a clear “coming of age” narrative with a well-defined central figure. For women the negotiation of a place in the world, or to use Virginia Woolf’s phrase “a room of one’s own” is often fraught with difficulty. Character formation takes place despite the external forces in society, and personality that is constructed under these trying circumstances can be fractured and contradictory. Esther is not able to relax her guard because she is constantly worried about her economic future, just as much as her health and sanity. Indeed it could be argued that the lack of economic security, and the prospect of having to make huge compromises in order to obtain some kind of settled place in life, is perhaps the biggest threat to her wellbeing. In conclusion, therefore, The Bell Jar does not offer, in the character of Esther, someone who is perfectly knowable, in the way that Forster would have us know her. The book makes significant demands on the reader to pick up the cryptic clues, and crucially also to interpret them, in order to make guesses about Esther’s nature and personality from a confusing jumble of rather extreme situations. Esther navigates her way through some desperate events, but in the end of the story is necessarily unsatisfying. Esther enters the room to find out whether or not she can be released from hospital care, and the reader is left to wonder what the outcome will be. The outcome cannot be predicted, because throughout the book, Plath has subverted traditional narrative certainties to create the enigmatic character of Esther. Readers may sympathize with her, but because they cannot understand her, there is always the feeling that she is still an unknown quantity. References Cahill, S. (ed.) (1975) Women and Fiction. New York: Signet Classics. Forster, E. M. (2005) [1949] Reprinted Aspects of the Novel. London: Penguin. Plath, S. (2005) [1963] The Bell Jar. 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