The Private and the Public in French Fantastique Literature and the Arcades - Book Report/Review Example

December 12, The Private and the Public in French Fantastique Literature and the Arcades French architect, Jacques-Francois Blondel described the interior of the eighteenth century townhouse as regulated by a system of display and retreat. Walter Benjamin asserts that the Arcades, exhibition halls, and dioramas are all “residues of a dream-world” (88). Susan Buck-Morss agrees with Benjamin that the city of the past is a dream about the city of the future. This essay describes how French traditions of fantastique literature and Benjamin’s histories of the Arcade help to define the distinctions between the public and the private. French fantastique literature and the histories of the Arcade differentiate the public and private by showing how the private resists the public through the creation of private spaces and individualism and the how the public seeks to control the private through commodification and conformity. French fantastique literature shows the difference between the public and the private through ascertaining boundaries between them, so that a private space is established and protected. In the story of Cazotte’s Le Diable Amoureux, Alvaro lives for two months with a being that he thinks is an evil spirit, and yet, it appears and acts as a woman (Todorov 24). Alvaro asks where the being is from, and Biondetta answers: “I am a sylphide by birth, and one of the most powerful among them” (Todorov 24). Alvaro begins to wonder what is real and what is impossible. His reflection suggests the need of the private self to draw boundaries through logic. The fantastic questions this logic, which people fight off at first. Still, in theory, if Alvaro accepts Biondetta’s story as true, then he can also produce a new private world that includes the sylphide. The fantastic may be unreal to the public, but not to the private self. Furthermore, French fantastique literature defines the private in relation to autonomy and freedom. Alvaro seeks to be autonomous in rendering his reality. He can rewrite the boundaries based on his free will and sovereignty as a thinking man. The private develops power through the sense of the self that has free will and the opportunity to exert it. In addition, French fantastique defines privacy as the power to create a new imaginary. Tzvetan Todorov notes that the existence of beings more powerful than humans is constant elements in the fantastique (110). He argues, however, that the fantastic is an attempt for “imaginary causality” (110). Writers cause something that they wish they can cause themselves. The fantastic is the dream for the private self that is lacking (Todorov 110). The fantastic supports the process of self-transformation. The power of literature for empowerment cannot be undermined. Underneath it is the need for compensation for what is lost or missing, the power to rule oneself and/or others. French fantastique literature, in addition, asserts that the public is the collective consuming masses of individuals, different from the more autonomous self. Alvaro is not similar to characters that dwell in the public’s gaze. These are characters that have no will of their own. Alvaro wants to determine his place in the world of the fantastic in ways that empower him. Furthermore, fantastic literature shows magic as something that shapes the masses. Magic can control and rule the sheep. Only those who have control of their “self” can dispel the magic’s control. The private does not want to be the public, but to be more than that, to be more powerful, to be more in control. The public dissolves in its homogeneity. The histories of the Arcade differentiate the public and private by showing how the private resists the public through the creation of private spaces and individualism. The private is empowered through law, as Benjamin asserts, when Louis-Philippe supported the notion of the “private businessman” (83). Benjamin highlights the rising difference between the public and the private: “For the private citizen, for the first time the living-space became distinguished from the place of work” (83). He is trying to say that the living-space becomes legitimate on its own as a space for oneself, unlike the public that is subjected to social norms and rules. In addition, Benjamin notes the irony that, in order to establish privacy, the private individual tends to suppress both the public and the private (83). The result is the “phantasmagorias of the interior” that “represented the universe for the private citizen. In it he assembled the distant in space and in time. His drawing-room was a box in the world-theatre” (83). Benjamin is saying that the interior is not perfect or entirely limited, but in a state of performance. The inner theater is a drawing-room for a person’s own viewing purposes. An example is a person who thinks that his boss is one of the worst managers because he does not know how to manage highly self-motivated employees who do not need constant supervision. This is his private drawing-room. Outside, the public sees him getting along with his boss. Some even think they are friends. The private space protects the person from the anxiety of having a boss that he does not want and need. The private space controls his private emotions and preserves civility for the public space. Individualism is another differentiating factor for the private self. Benjamin considers the opposing effects of the art nouveau. On the one hand, the art nouveau shatters the interior (Benjamin 83). On the other hand, art nouveau inspires people to “perfect” the interior, for: “The transfiguration of the lone soul was its apparent aim. Individualism was its theory” (Benjamin 83). Benjamin is saying that individualism helps replenish the individual soul through constant dreams. An example is a person whose individualist goals drive him to excel. Every time he reaches one goal, he dreams and strives for another. Furthermore, Benjamin describes the modes of dwellings that represent individualism. The individual uses ornament to define his/her signature, where lines and flowers seemingly help portray the self in an outer persona (Benjamin 83). Benjamin, however, notes the futility of these exercises. Ibsen’s Masterbuilder gives a summary of the art nouveau: “the attempt of the individual, on the basis of his interiority, to vie with technical progress leads to his downfall” (Benjamin 84). Benjamin is saying that, with technology and materials, an individual seeks to enforce individualism. Later on, however, the social forces that drive technology and the markets will consume the individual. The private can reserve the self through individualism, but the struggle is long and difficult. The histories of the Arcade further show the public that affects the private through commodification. The idea is to blur the distinction between the public and the private. Benjamin underscores the role of world exhibitions in “fetish Commodity,” where these exhibitions were the products of the aspiration “to amuse the working-class, and is for the latter a festival of emancipation” (81). He criticizes these exhibits that create the “phantasmagoria into which people entered in order to be distracted” (82). Their experiences of interacting with these commercial activities lift them to become commodities too (82). The public becomes a large consuming market, shaped by the producers of the Arcade. Benjamin further underscores that, iron, as a new means of construction, developed the architecture of the Arcades. The Arcades mix the old with the new, old values with new technologies and construction materials, so that the public becomes a solid homogenous structure to be molded and controlled. Commodification is essential in hiding the weaknesses of past industrialized societies. For Benjamin, the public is the commodification that seeks to go beyond the past and its flaws: “These images are ideals, and in them the collective seeks not only to transfigure, but also to transcend, the immaturity of the social product and the deficiencies of the social order of production” (78). He alludes to Marx and these images, and he seems to be saying that the Arcades aim to resolve the ills of capitalism, its coldness, its detachment. The Arcades are bright, engaging, and socializing, after all. The machines of the Arcades have spiritual and social purposes, which underneath, is the politics and economics of the market. Fourier created relationships in the Utopia of the Arcades, where “[t]he phalanstery was to lead men back into relations in which morality would become superflouous” (Benjamin 79). Benjamin calls this the passion that comes from the “material of psychology,” “…the primal wish-symbol, that Fourier’s Utopia had filled with new life” (79). The machines are interpreted to be teachers of wishes. These material wishes drive people’s attitudes and behaviors, a great way for the Arcade to command the public, its sheep. The commodification comes from the people’s consumption of the commodities that define them. The public is different from the private too, in that conformity is its essence. The image of the Arcade is beautiful, full of lights and iron, but it is also misleading. It seeks to captivate the masses to make them forget their troubles. Benjamin analyzes Baudelaire’s poetry that shows the images of the Woman and Death with that of Paris (85). Baudelaire’s Paris is a “sunken city…This standstill is Utopia, and the dialectical image therefore a dream-image” (85). He is saying that the public now is the dream of the past. The public now is the remnants of the past, both the good and the bad. The dialectical relationship gives hope. The private can shape the public too. It can create new dreams for the public. Buck-Morss agrees with Benjamin that the present must wake up from the dreams of their parents (26). She asks the possibility that the parents are not dreaming in the first place. Buck-Morss argues that the “the out-of-date ruins of the recent past appear as residues of a dreamworld” (4).There must be real new dreams to escape the ruins of the recent past. These are dreams that will transform the public toward a more meaningful response to the private yearnings. French fantastique literature and the histories of the Arcade distinguish the public and private by showing how the private resists the public through the creation of private spaces and individualism and the how the public seeks to direct the private through commodification and conformity. The private wants individuality, the public- conformity. The private, as it participates in the economic forces, however, becomes embedded in the phantamasgoria of capitalism. It is the phantamasgoria of Utopia and its false promises. Stories and histories become one- they say something about the struggles between the public and the private and the forces that aim to control them all. Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. “Paris – Capital of the Nineteenth Century.” Illuminationen (1969): 77-88. Print. Buck-Morss, Susan. “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe.” October 73 (Summer, 1995): 3-26. Print. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. New York: Cornell U P, 1972. Print. Gothicism in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Empty House” Gothicism in architecture refers to “fantasized versions” of history (Smith 2). The paper further relates it to situationism that Guy Debord led in the middle of the twentieth century. He proposed that the Situations Project seeks to study the laws and effects of the geographical environment, consciously produced or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals (“Urban Psychogeography” 4). In religion, Gothicism reflects on the connection between form/structure of buildings and moral values. Gothicism also deals with family dynamics and mores that dwellings impact (Smith 24). This essay analyzes how two Gothic literary texts demonstrate how Gothicism writing affects the inner life and how it interacts with social institutions and their values. It explores Gothicism as a literary genre in Algernon Blackwood’s “The Empty House” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” These stories demonstrate that Gothicism, as a literary style, has developed a narrative of interior life, according to the prevailing norms of architecture, religion, and family mores. “The Empty House” supports that Gothicism is a literary genre that promotes real-life parallels between haunted tourism and situationist practice of derive and how these parallels support the existing norms of architecture. In Situationism, the established norm in architecture is that the situation can be constructed to create new perceptions of space (“Urban Psychogeography” 5). The haunted empty house is similar to other houses with the same basic features and numbers of facilities, but for its viewers, it remains “horribly different” (1). The “atmosphere” of the house is believed to create a chilling effect on its inhabitants, a horrifying perception of dwelling as ghostly space (1). In addition, the reasons behind the haunting in the house are known to the public, as if it is a form of tourism, which Aunt Julia and Shorthouse actively seek out. The history of murder in the house suggests that the haunting is consciously-made by ill conscience because of the “malignant Presence” (4) in it. Angry ghosts shape the space according to their bloody history and ruined lives. Aunt Julia activates the need for derive, which pertains to passage through an environment and to enjoy encounters there. The difference with the usual derive and Aunt Julia’s derive is that the latter seeks for other-worldly encounters. She knows that the empty house is haunted, but she is willing to go through its rooms to find the ghosts in it, as well as the truth behind its gruesome history. Their journey asserts the Gothic as a geographic experience across the house. Once inside, Aunt Julia and Shorthouse realize that they are watched too: “Everything, they felt, resented their intrusion, watching them, as it were, with veiled eyes…” (4). The house is full of empty rooms and every room seems to have an angry spirit in it. They are not wanted, but the more these people wanted to stay inside it. Their derive reaches its climax when the act of murder is repeated through the sounds of pursuit, and then, the sound of death, a person pushed and falling on the floor of the hall (8). The spectacle that the characters witnessed is rapid, violent, and spiteful. That the murder’s ghost even follows them as they run away indicate intense maliciousness. The ghost is not sorry for his crimes; his anger and jealousy have blinded his ability to feel remorse. The violence in the house has created significant negative energy that aims to shove Aunt Julia and Shorthouse out of it. The house shows how its history can create fantastic images of horror through memories of violence within its rooms, which, in turn, drive tension and fear in the story. Apart from architecture, Gothicism in “The Empty House” supports prevailing norms of religion and family mores. Aunt Julia and Shorthouse do not show any signs of religiousness before, during, and after their derive. They do not pray or mention any spiritual entity during the story. Nevertheless, the argument is that the Gothic spiritual is in finding the truth in the empty house. The Gothic in “The Empty House” reveals spiritual truths about evil and its dwelling, as well as the spiritual response to it. Shorthouse has psychologically prepared himself for their journey, “compelling an accumulative reserve of control by that nameless inward process of gradually putting all the emotions away and turning the key upon them” (2). Fear and anxiety are the emotions he set aside, which the paper asserts as a form of spiritual sense of control and self-awareness. Furthermore, it must be highlighted that however frightened they have been many times in the house, they have not left immediately. Only after hearing the murder transpiring as a spectacle of noise do they decide to rush out of the house. They have found the truth- evil is in the house and it will never leave because of rage and resentment that never die. Family mores are also supported in the story through the preservation of family ties by sharing unique experiences. Aunt Julia wires for Shorthouse because with him, the experience is expected to be enjoyable (2). Her earnestness seems to be unlikely for old women, but perhaps, it is because she is old and a woman that she wants a truly free adventure. By having her nephew with her, she believes that she “should be afraid of nothing in the world!” (8). Their family bonds must be a form of protection for her, an amulet against the evil in the house. Gothicism in the story demonstrates underlying religious and social mores. Like “The Empty House,” “The Cask of Amontillado” shows that Gothicism, as a literary style, has built a narrative of interior life, according to the prevailing norms of architecture, religion, and family mores. The first norms are with architecture. Gothic architecture has the power of the sublime in its ability to express powerful emotions in their verticality and light. Such verticality is reversed in “The Cask of Amontillado” because a horizontal dwelling is shown instead. Light is also absent because of the darkness in the cellar. The gothic in the setting is the powerful emotions that reverberate in its structures, both the old and the new. The speaker asserts his passion when he says: “I must not only punish, but punish with impunity” (1). He resorts to using light to hide his darkness, where he does not show any hint of anger against Fortunato. Unlike “The Empty House,” however, the narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado” uses his vaults to pursue his dark intentions. The cask of Amontillado is bait to what he thinks is an animal that deserves to die. The dampness and nitre in the vaults are symbolically in the narrator’s heart too. Situationism underscores the importance of the final setting to the story. The narrator kills Fortunato in the vaults, where the “catacombs of the Montresors” (5) are also located. The meaning behind this is that Fortunato has not only wronged the narrator as an individual, but the whole Montresors. As a result, it becomes important that their spirits bear witness of the death of someone who has wronged them. Moreover, the narrator adds something new to the vaults, a new vault for the soon-to-be-dead. That the bones cover the mound of stone and mortar suggests that Fortunato’s death is done for the family’s name (9). Hence, the catacombs represent the inner yearnings of the narrator’s heart for revenge and redemption. Furthermore, the derive is also present in “The Cask of Amontillado,” as the two characters go below the depths of the catacombs. The nitre is part of the situation that worsens Fortunato’s cough, but he does not seem to mind. The narrator, however, underscores the power of the nitre in affecting a powerful man like Fortunato: “The nitre…see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river’s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late” (7). The moss symbolizes the covering of something, this time, the murder of Fortunato, while the river signifies the life that moves on. The narrator can only move on after avenging his family’s name. The moisture trickles on the bones and affects Fortunato. The narrator seems to be saying that the Montresors will kill him with the nitre first for what he has done to them. In addition, the journey ends with the burying of the living. After the narrator puts the last stone and plasters it, he thinks: “For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!” (10). One might think that he is saying “Rest in Peace” to Fortunato, but most likely, the narrator refers to his dead people. Fortunato disturbed their peace by ruining their good name, but now, they can rest again. The narrator sincerely believes that the architecture of Fortunato’s resting place reinforces the true design for the preservation of his and his family’s interior life. As for the religiousness of the story, none of these characters actually portray any strong religious leaning, apart from portraying the perception of morality where family is involved. In the end, Fortunato calls out: “For the love of God, Montresor!” To which the narrator answers, “Yes…for the love of God!” (10). Fortunato reminds the narrator of his moral obligations. Instead, recalling morality only strengthens the narrator’s resolve. For him, he is doing what is right for God because he is defending the honor of his family. Though it is not clear what the exact sin of Fortunato is against the narrator, dealing with him in the vaults suggests that it has something do with his family. Fortunato is a wealthy and prominent man, so he might have slighted the Montresors. In fact, even in the vaults, he shows arrogance when he cannot remember the arms of the Montresors. The narrator answers: “A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel” (6). The arms present an image of crushing, of fighting back a transgressor. This is what the narrator is precisely doing- using his arms to crush the snake that bites him. His family is more important than what the Church says is right- thou shall not kill. The narrator believes otherwise: kill those who harm the family’s integrity. Gothicism unravels the truth behind architecture and family and spiritual mores. “The Empty House” and “The Cask of Amontillado” demonstrate that the Gothic is a literary narrative that intersects social mores and physical space. The Gothic dwelling is a presence of spite and horrors and the characters dealt with their dwellings in different ways, but mostly, as a form of journey, a form of unraveling. In addition, what is violent is wrong, as in “The Empty House,” but not for “The Cask of Amontillado.” The Gothic is fluid, but sublime, in the moral relativism of these stories. The characters have experienced evil first-hand and go out unscathed to some extent. They are alive, but they are changed. They are “in peace” with the truth, but never really “in peace” with themselves. Gothicism as a literary genre is dark, ambiguous, and relativistic, but for “The Empty House” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” the truth had set them free, sometimes screaming outside, but always, screaming inside too. Works Cited Blackwood, Algernon. “The Empty House.” 1-8. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” 1846. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. Smith, Andrew. Gothic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2013. Print. “Urban Psychogeography and Apartment Dwelling.” Class Discussion, 2013. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. Read More