Nonconformists in Literature - Assignment Example

Nonconformists In his book, Self-Reliance, Emerson s that “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion” (Emerson-Self Reliance). In this statement, Emerson seems to be saying that the function of society is to encourage each individual member to give up his or her own view of the world in order to adopt a homogenized view that enables everyone to live together in harmony. In other words, the proper function of society is to encourage its members to conform to a set of ideas that are broadly considered ‘acceptable’ behavior. However, the attempt to get two people to agree completely on what might be considered ‘acceptable’ is always going to be a problem and this problem only becomes more complicated with the addition of more people. Finally, there will always be some in the group who are not able to see things according to the ‘accepted’ view and thus become labeled ‘nonconformist’. In examining the protagonists in three colonial stories such as “New English Canaan” by Thomas Morton, “The Speech of Polly Baker” by Benjamin Franklin and “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving, this concept of the nonconformist is revealed. In the short piece “New English Canaan”, Thomas Morton describes a Mayday celebration that was held in a place being renamed Merry-Mount during the early colonization of Plymouth Plantation. Because they didn’t have women to help them celebrate, the men erected their maypole and placed a declaration upon it indicating its purpose – not only to help them celebrate the spring and their successes thus far, but also to help provide a sea-mark so that ships bringing them the women and other colonists they hoped would help make their lives even more pleasant in this new land would have little difficulty in finding them. The celebration included singing, dancing and drinking beer, which seems relatively mild by today’s standards, but ended up drawing a crowd of individuals who could not understand the purpose. The first group that did not understand what exactly was going on was the ‘Salvages’ of the land who “came thether of purpose to see the manner of our Revels” (Morton, 1637). Although the ‘Salvages’ assisted with the erection of the May pole, they had little idea of what the men were doing or why. While this wouldn’t seem to represent a case of nonconformism as described above by Emerson, the party itself was to commemorate the changing of the name of the place. Instead of being known by its ancient ‘Salvage’ name of Pasonagessit, the men were Anglicizing the name of the place to Merry-Mount because it was something they understood better. This represents the high degree to which the white men were unwilling to try conforming in the slightest degree to the customs and traditions of the place they came to and instead insisted upon changing it to meet the standards that they brought over from England. However, there was also a second group that disapproved of the actions taken around the Maypole that day. These were the Separatists, who had come to the new land to found a new society that was based upon their own restrictions against the sins of the world, such as dancing, drinking and making merry. Despite his seeming indifference to how they felt, Morton nevertheless noticed “the setting up of this Maypole was a lamentable spectacle to the precise separatists; that lives at new Plymouth. They termed it an Idoll; yea they called it the Calf of Horeb: and stood at defiance with the place, naming it Mount Dagon” (Morton, 1637). This group of people harshly disapproved of the actions being taken because they understood more about the background of the celebration. While Morton seems to have been a part of the crowd, it can be determined that this ‘crowd’ was perhaps only about a third of the people in attendance, the other two-thirds, thus the majority of individuals present, either overtly disapproved or didn’t quite understand the actions being taken. Benjamin Franklin’s fictionalized account of a woman on trial for having given birth to an illegitimate child is related in “The Speech of Polly Baker” (1747). In this speech, the woman pleads with the court that she should not be charged any fines for her crime for a number of reasons. The first reason is that she has already been brought before the court four times previously on the same charges and, while she was able to pay the fines for two of these offenses, the other two times she was forced to endure public punishment because she didn’t have the available funds to be able to pay the fines. Given her particular situation in life, Polly argues that it is unfair for the law to punish her so that she is unable to support the children she’s being punished for having. She also indicates that having these children out of wedlock is her only crime, which she insists is not a crime in and of itself. “I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risqué of my life: I have maintained them by my own industry, without burthening the township, and could have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid” (Franklin, 1747). In making this argument, she points to the Bible’s injunction to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as well as indicates the importance of increasing the king’s population in a land still sparsely populated. In making this argument, she is attempting to demonstrate that she is not the nonconformist she is accused of, but rather the quintessential conformist in that she is insisting upon doing her duty by King and God regardless of whether she has a willing husband to assist her in the fulfillment of her duties as woman. Polly also argues that she has been kind and good to all of her neighbors, most of whom have known her all her life, and she would readily have married had she ever been given the opportunity, but has not been offered the chance. “I always was, and still am, willing to enter into it [marriage]; I doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the industry, frugality, fertility and skill in economy, appertaining to a good wife’s character. I defy any person to say I ever refused an offer of that sort” (Franklin, 1747). However, as she explains to the court, the only offer she ever received was betrayed after she became pregnant during the engagement period and the betraying man was never punished for his crime although she was fined on that occasion as well. “I must complain of it as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanced to honour and power, in the same government that punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy” (Franklin, 1747). Polly attempts to present herself as a conformist in that she would do anything to work her way into the main stream of society and become the good wife she has been expected to be, but life has forced her life to take a different direction. However, she is not willing to give up having relations with men out of wedlock and she is proud of her children, who are marked by God’s “divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crown’d it by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls” (Franklin, 1747). She is also not willing to meekly accept the punishments heaped on her by the law without speaking about the injustice of it and the difficulty it places on her to try to work her way out of the dark place she’s been thrown into as a result of natural events. Finally, in Washington Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle, he presents the protagonist as the epitome of conformance as he has completely suited his personality to meet with the extravagant demands of his hen-pecking wife. He is presented as being a favorite among the children, with whom he would always stop to play a little and a favorite among the neighbors – the wives would defend him and the men could always count on him to lend a helping hand to whatever project they were working on. However, he refused to undertake any work that might possibly earn a profit for himself. “In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him” (Irving, 1897). His refusal to seek gainful employment, or to put his full effort into the care and maintenance of his farm is in direct violation of the Protestant work ethic that ran so strongly through the Dutch community. Rip’s nonconformism was in his assertion that thoughts and ideas were worth sharing and exploring while the farming of a useless piece of property just to make a good impression on the neighbors was a waste of good effort. Of course, following his adventure in the mountains, Rip was more of a nonconformist than ever, now being recognized as the man who slept for 20 years. His beard is longer than anyone had ever seen, his clothing is out of fashion and the world he was dedicated to, the world of the Dutch settlement and King George, has been replaced by a new republic and a new president. However, his strangeness in this new land was not the result of willful nonconformism, but instead the result of bewilderment and ignorance caused by his absence from society for such a long period of time in which tremendous changes had taken place. Through all three of these stories, it can be seen how certain individuals were incapable, for one reason or another, to conform to the standards of society. The protagonist in Thomas Morton’s story seems to be conforming to a certain element in his society, but this element is presented as a minority group of the gathering, with another group not completely understanding the changes being made and the other completely disapproving of what is being done. Benjamin Franklin’s Polly Baker is perhaps the most nonconformist of all the characters presented because she openly, willfully and purposely questions the standards that have been set by her society, illustrating how they are both against humanity and against the laws of God. Rip Van Winkle is passively nonconformist in that he refuses to undertake those actions most expected of him presumably because they are expected of him rather than from any valid reason. He does provide the worthlessness of his farmland as an excuse not to engage in any attempt to farm it, but this is considered a relatively thin excuse as he engages himself in no activities that might help him better his family in the estimation of the community. What these cases prove is that nonconformity can take a variety of paths, but what constitutes conformity can also be a matter of opinion. Read More