A comparison between I Used to Live Here Once and Nothing Gold can Stay - Essay Example

A comparison between I Used to Live Here Once and Nothing Gold can Stay A comparison of the two works, I Used to Live Here Once by Jean Rhys and Nothing Gold can Stay by Robert Frost present to the critic rich possibilities. The two works are very different in many ways and, hence, enable a contrast between the authorial intents and the contexts that are inhabited by the authors of the works. There is also a great difference between the forms of the works, one being a poem and the other being a short story. The difference in the forms of these two works brings several difficulties in their analysis and the comparison may run the risk of remaining an analysis of the differences of the thematic concerns of the authors of the works. The racial belonging of the two authors and the politics of imperialism that surrounds this belonging certainly offers rich possibilities of analysis; it should however, be restricted to a thematic analysis but extend to a formal analysis that explores how the themes and the structures feed into each other and informs the politics of the other. The themes of a work serve to provide it with a social appeal that would then be able to connect the author with an audience that would read it and understand the social roles that they play, as well as how it fits in with the roles of others in the society. It may also form a part of the reading of other groups who may then be able to place themselves in a position separate from their social position and analyze the working of it. The themes of literary works are, thus, closely related to the social and economic states of societies and they are mostly the themes of works that serve to place them in a certain genre. The form of a work refers to the structure of that work and the organization of the literary elements of that work. The form of a work greatly shapes the themes that it deals with, as well as the audience that reads and analyses a certain work of fiction. The works that were written by Robert Frost and Jean Rhys also had themes that correspond to the aspirations and social realities of certain communities that came together on the basis of racial marginalization or because they were part of a mainstream community that was fast losing its hold over the power structures that existed during the twentieth century. The works that these writers produced indicate a sense of the passing of a world order that privileged certain sections of the society over the others. Jean Rhys was born to Creole mother and much of her work centers on the issue of race. Her most famous work is Wide Sargasso Sea, where the point of view of Bertha Mason, the mad Creole woman in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre was explored. In I Used to Live Here Once, the protagonist is racially different from the white children that she describes in the story. Her attempts to reach out to the children are frustrated by the fact that she is a ghost. The fact reaffirms the erasure that racially different people have faced at the hands of the white imperial races in historical narratives that seek to present the Creole in a bad light. Elgin W. Mellown remarks upon how the protagonist in the short stories that were written by Rhys was almost always a victim of a social force (Mellown, 1972). The social force, in most cases, as in the case of the short story that is being discussed in this paper, is that of the racial subjugation that is sought to be effected by the white races. The ghostly presence of the protagonist affirms this marginalization that is faced by members of non-white races around the world. The ability to rewrite the histories of non-white races is an ability that twentieth century writers of fiction and non-fiction attained through the various changes that the world went through during the time. The destabilization of the power structures that shaped the world can be seen in the two World Wars and the plethora of works that came out during this age that talked of the insidious ways in which power manifests itself in society. Rhys’s work indicates the manner in which power structures that are entrenched in the society seek to establish themselves, while seemingly giving way to a more liberal and open framework for the organization of human society. The story also talks of the victimization of the woman who belongs to a race that is neither black nor white and, thus, offers a challenge to the binaries of the imperialist projects that were carried out by the white western male. The protagonist belongs to what Neville Braybrooke refers to as an “in-between world” (Braybrooke, 1970, p. 45). The ostracization that the woman feels is a characteristic of the stories that were written by Rhys, says Thorunn Lonsdale (Lonsdale, 1997). The woman protagonist in the story occupies a peripheral position as a result of the fact that she is racially different from the white children that she sees. She is doubly marginalized on the accounts of being racially different and also a woman. The troubles that women of races that are conventionally not considered to be the standard ones and are marginalized as a result are often not chronicled in the society. This creates the necessity for these stories to come out in terse representations of reality that at the same time, incorporate a sense of the fantastic that would enable a conception of a world where the discriminating elements and mentalities would not exist. Frost’s poem, on the other hand, expresses nostalgia for a past that is slipping away from the hands of the speaker of the poem. He or she longs for the earlier modes of life that provided the white European race with what was considered then to be an inherent superiority over the other races. Nature here can be seen as a metaphor for the supremacy of the white races that was seen as ‘natural’ by many people. Frost’s poem does not debunk this theory in the way that much of the work that has been done by Jean Rhys does. The colors that are used in both the works makes it clear to the reader that the themes of the works are connected to the politics that colors assume in the world. The connotations attached to these colors can change from time to time and the meaning, socially, of each color that is being described in the poems is different in different cultures. By describing different cultures in her work, Rhys also seeks to make the people who have such stereotypes in their mind understand the presence of others in our lives, and this would help in dispelling many rumors and stereotypes that circulate in popular culture. The dispelling of such myths is essential because they almost always, inevitably end up in caricatures of people belonging to a single community and this creates friction in the kind of societies that exist at present, in the world. Rhys seeks to dispel the myths that are associated with racial stereotypes by drawing attention to the universal quality of mortality that characterizes mankind and places every person in a similar position in life. The aspect of a person’s life where he or she cannot have pride in anything beyond his or her death means that the pride that they feel is worthless and likely to provide them with no relief or happiness. The presence of the ghost does not necessarily refer to anything spiritual since it can just be a metaphor for the mortality that characterizes man and the other creatures on the earth. Unlike this, in the poem that is under discussion, the one by Frost, there is an understanding of mortality, yet it is not connected to the mortality of an individual or a community but to the fading away of everything, and a rather philosophical way that refuses to look at the social aspect of things. This is seen in the quasi-religious aspect that characterizes nature in the poem. This is seen in many of the poems that was written by Robert Frost and was a feature also of the poetry that was written by poets like William Wordsworth. The divinity that is ascribed to nature by these poets causes in them a failure to see the social reality that shapes the lives of the people who live in these surroundings. The beauty of a rose may be short-lived but the person who cultivates it cannot afford to relax and watch the blooming and fading of it. The poetry of Frost, and especially the poem under discussion, ignores social reality in its discussion of supposedly higher truths in life that enable the poet to realize the beauty and meaning of life. In a century where the meaning of life itself was being heavily questioned, Frost’s reluctance to accept reality is surprising. In the story, it seems as though the different aspects of nature take up roles that are sinister and attempt to present obstacles to the protagonist who overcomes these to finally reach her destination, which even the reader waits for. What greets him is, however, an anticlimax that sees the protagonist unable to overcome the obstacles that were set up for her by man. This reading assumes that the ghostliness of the protagonist is a metaphor for the marginalization that she has to face (Rhys, 1976). The poem Nothing Gold can Stay, on the other hand, laments the ephemeral nature of the beautiful things that we see around us, especially the beauty that we find in nature. This beauty, as we see, talks of the manner of life that is seen in rural life that Frost spoke of so often and so beautifully. Critics have remarked upon how Frost took great pains to preserve the rustic quality of the countryside and nature in his works that, however, did not take in the elements of modernism that were characteristic of his times (A.C.H., 1916). The poem that is being discussed in this paper talks of the philosophical aspects of nature as beautiful and representative of the general character of man. This is removed from the world of politics and society, unlike the shirt story of Jean Rhys that focuses on the place that is occupied by man in the society as a result of the divisions that are created by man himself. In the universe that is constructed in the poem by Frost, the beauty of nature occupies a great role. The metaphysical nature of life and the role that nature plays in it is what Frost seeks to explore in this poem of his where the fading away of the beauty of the golden hue of nature is lamented by the speaker of the poem. The difficulty, or rather, the impossibility to preserve the golden hue of nature that is “Nature’s first green” (Frost, 2003) occupies the speaker of the poem, and like William Wordsworth, another nature poet, he fails to uncover the politics of the pastoral that serves to cover the misery experienced by the impoverished peasant of the rural countryside. Nature is described in I Used to Live Here Once too. The inability of the protagonist to rehabilitate herself to her erstwhile home is compared to the passage of time in the story. The irreversibility of the passage of time and the flowing of the river are reminiscent of what was for the protagonist who then is made aware of her situation whereby she is unable to return to her earlier position. The descriptions of nature that are present in Rhys’s short story lack the passion that Frost brings to his poem. This is also emblematic of the sense of dislocation that is felt by the protagonist of the story. The protagonist of Rhys’s story is unable to relate to the natural surroundings that she is faced with unlike the speaker of Frost’s poem, who does not experience the marginalization that prevents Rhys’s protagonist from being able to enjoy the beauty of nature. The fact that Frost’s work is a poem contributes to the fact that he can compress his ideas into a few lines to make his worldview clear. It is significant that in these few lines, what he chooses to look at is the beauty that he sees in nature. Unlike this, the short story is a genre that allows reflection on the part of the marginalized; this may explain why the short story remains a medium that is employed by the bourgeoisie, unlike poetry that, to a certain extent, remains the bastion of the upper classes. These sections of the society, because of their economically privileged positions in the society, can afford to think of aspects of human life that are not connected to everyday life. This is not the case with the issues that are addressed in short stories and by the bourgeoisie as is seen in the story by Rhys. The differences that are found in the two works that have been discussed in this paper, as said earlier, owe a lot to the fact that they were written by authors of different racial belongings and different cultural backgrounds. This also reflects itself in the choice of artistic medium that is taken up by either writer. The themes that they choose to tackle too depend to a large extent upon this. References A.C.H. (1916). Robert Frost’s Quality. The Poetry Foundation, 8 (6), 327. Retrieved January 10, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20570934 Braybrooke, N. (1970). The Return of Jean Rhys. Caribbean Quarterly, 16 (4), 45. Retrieved January 10, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653181 Mellown, E. W. (1972). Character and Themes in the Novels of Jean Rhys. Contemporary Literature, 13 (4), 460. Retrieved January 10, 2012 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207442 Frost, R. (2003). Nothing Gold can Stay. Retrieved January, 2012 from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay/ Lonsdale, T. (1997). Displacing the heroine: location in Jean Rhys's short stories "Let them call it jazz", "Mannequin" and "I used to live here once". Journal of the Short Story in English, 29. Retrieved January 10, 2012 from http://jsse.revues.org/index130.html Rhys, J. (n.d.). I Used to Live Here Once. Retrieved January, 2012 from http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=i%20used%20to%20live%20here%20once%20text& source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fencglish.wikispaces.com%2Ffile%2Fvi ew%2F3%2B%2BText%2B%2BI%2BUsed%2Bto%2BLive%2BHere%2BOnce.doc&ei=X1ALT7PKG8r d0QGTytjAAg&usg=AFQjCNHGnO6cA-92d612HjTDFf5MGD9H8g Read More