Þýtt og endursagt af Nínu Rúnu Kvaran Afhjúpun lygarans:

Listin að koma upp um lygalaupa Í kvikmyndinni ,,True Romance”, rétt áður en Christopher Walken skýtur Dennis Hopper í höfuðið fyrir að skrökva, þá heldur hinn illi Walken fyrirlestur yfir fórnarlambi sínu um hinar 17 aðferðir Sikileyinga til þess að sjá hvort að maður er að ljúga. Hvort þetta er sikileysk staðreynd eða aðeins uppspuni handritshöfundarins Tarantino skiptir kannski ekki sköpum, en það er aftur á móti staðreynd að það er hægt að koma upp um lygalaupa. Fylgist með handahreyfingum ,,Lygarar reyna alltaf að leggja áherslu á orð sín með ýktum handahreyfingum. Það dregur athyglina frá andlitinu og gerir orðin áhrifameiri”, segir David Taylor sálfræðilegur ráðgjafi. ,,Þetta er ósjálfrátt varnarkerfi sem á að vinna gegn því að upp um fólk komist en er í raun mjög uppljóstrandi ef menn eru meðvitaðir um það.” Hlustið á takt orðræðunnar Þegar fólk lýgur þá afbakar það vanalega á einn eða annan hátt sína eigin vanalegu orðræðu. ,,Setningar sem leiða að lyginni eru oft sagðar í flýti þar sem fólk er oftast óþreyjufullt að koma sér að sjálfri lyginni”, segir Diane Kingsley talmeinafræðingur. ,,Að lyginni lokinni fellur taktur orðræðunnar aftur í eðlilegt horf.” Prófið minnið ,,Tilgangur lyganna er að koma fólki úr vandræðum og þegar lygin er sögð þá á hún það til að falla fljótt í gleymsku”, segir þjónustufulltrúinn Alice Mulcahy. ,,Ef mig grunar að fólk sé að ljúga í viðtölum hjá mér, þá legg ég atvikið á minnið og varpa því síðan fram seinna og bið fólk að segja mér nánar frá því. Ef viðkomandi var að ljúga þá man hann oftast ekkert eftir því sem ég er að tala um.” Hlustið á raddblæinn Diane Kingsley talmeinafræðingur segir enn fremur: ,,Þegar fólk lýgur þá er því hættara við að vera meðvitað um sína eigin rödd og þá er sterk tilhneiging fyrir því að raddblærinn breyti um tónhæð, þó ekki sé nema í sekúndubrot. Það að tala er okkur vanalega svo eðlislægt að við tökum ekkert eftir því, en augnabliksálag með þurrk í munni og örari hjartslátt getur haft djúpstæð áhrif á röddina og valdið því að hún titrar örlítið eða brotnar jafnvel alveg.” Leiddu lygarann í gildru ,,Við beitum okkar eigin blekkingum”, segir Simon Newman. ,,Þegar ég var í Devon & Cornwall lögreglunni þá þurftum við stundum að eiga við náunga sem komu frá London til þess að selja fíkniefni. Ef við tókum þá niður á stöð tiil yfirheyrslu þá áttu þeir það til að gefa okkur fölsk heimilisföng í nágrenninu til þess að sleppa. Þá sögðum við stundum: ,,Já, ég veit hvar þetta er, þarna rétt hjá keiluhöllinni?” Og þeir sögðu: ,,Já, einmitt” og vissu náttúrulega ekki að það var engin keiluhöll í bænum.” Fylgist með augnsambandi Það er óvenjulegt þegar fólk á í samræðum við einhvern og myndar ekki augnsamband, jafnvel þó ekki sé nema af og til og það staðfestir toll-og landamæravörður nokkur sem er orðinn gamall í hettunni: ,,Það er alltaf tilefni til tortryggni ef fólk myndar ekki augnsamband. Einu sinni lenti ég í því að maður sem ætlaði að keyra sendibíl í gegnum hliðin hjá okkur, bara myndaði alls ekkert augnsamband þegar ég talaði við hann. Hann virtist undrandi þegar við stoppuðum hann og báðum hann að fylgja okkur inn í tollskýlið en þegar málið var rannsakað frekar þá fundum við heilan farm af kössum fullum af tequila í bílnum”. Varist flóttalegt augnaráð ,,Mitt starf felst mikið í því að hlusta á lygarnar í fólki”, segir einkaspæjarinn Tony Barnes, ,,en ég er með nánast 100% öruggt próf til að koma upp um það. Um leið og menn fara að skjóta augunum til vinstri þá veit ég að þeir ljúga. Fólk reynir að þykjast vera upptekið við að horfa á eitthvað en í raun er það bara að koma upp um sig.” Hlustið eftir óhóflegum smáatriðum og staðreyndum Simon Jodrell lögreglusálfræðingur hefur þetta að segja um málið: ,,Undir venjulegum kringumstæðum þá flæða staðreyndir eins og nöfn og staðarheiti eðlilega og hóflega fram í samtali. En í samræðum sem byggjast á blekkingum þá ræður lygarinn ekki við þörfina til þess að skreyta frásögn sína með einhverjum áþreifanlegum staðreyndum. Þannig að það sem þú heyrir er oft algjörlega ofskreytt og fullt af ónauðsynlegum upplýsingum sem troðið er inn í lygina til þess að gefa henni raunveruleikablæ. Varist ofnotkun orðatiltækja Með þessu er átt við að menn ættu að taka eftir mikilli notkun orðatiltækja eins og : ,,Þú veist hvað ég meina”, ,,sko” og ,,eða þannig”. Þau eru notuð til þess að fylla upp í þá þögn sem getur myndast þegar lygarinn tapar þræðinum vegna truflana eða skorts á þekkingu á því sem hann lýgur um. Þegar fólk lýgur og bullar þá vantar það oft þann grunn sem liggur í því að segja sannleikann og þarfnast tíma til þess að hugsa upp lygina og þann tíma fyllir það upp með tilgangslausum orðatiltækjum.

Mikilvæg Markmið

Ef eitthvað vantar í sjálfstraustið er ekki úr vegi að nota svolítinn auka kraft í að uppörva sjálfan sig. Gott ráð er að segja við sig eina af eftirtöldum setningum, að minnsta kosti hundrað sinnum á dag: ég get auðveldlega gert allt sem mér finnst einhvers virði. Auk þess ætla ég að vinna taktfast að því að afreka miklu meiru en ég hef getað fram að þessu. Ég tek bara einn dag í einu og stefni að því að allir mínir draumar og þrár verði að veruleika. Ég ætla nefnilega að verða töluvert mikils virði í eigin augum og náttúrulega í augum annarra að lokum. Ég ætla að reyna að taka aðeins mið af því góða og þrautseiga sem innra með mér býr. Þessu sama vil ég líka gefa gaum að í fari annarra. Ég læt einungis fá aukið líf og vöxt það sem ég þekki og treysti að séu eftirsóknarverðir eiginleikar og líklegir til að gera líf mitt betra og ríkulegra af alls konar tækifærum og auka við hamingju mína og annarra. Þegar erfiðleikar angra mig ætla ég svo sannarlega að snúa vörn í sókn og einfaldlega að standa mig og draga hvergi úr möguleikum mínum til þess að það geti orðið að veruleika. Ég er nefnilega fullfær um að breyta erfiðu ástandi sjálfri mér til góðs. Ef ég stend frammi fyrir þeirri staðreynd að fólk sem ég hef treyst og virt virðist bregðast mér, þá hreinlega eyk ég margfalt trú mína á heiðarleika og göfgi mannsandans. Ég hugsa eftir slík vonbrigði meira en áður um þá þætti fólks sem styrkja góðar dygðir og sanna verðleika. Ég beiti innra afli mínu að því sem getur aukið frelsi og sannleiksást. Allt þetta er örugglega vísir að velferð minni og annarra. Í raun og veru vil ég læra að tjá mig um það sem getur hvatt mig og aukið innihald lífs míns og annarra. Ég mun vinna að því góða markmiði að deila til sem flestra öllu því sem gleður, styrkir og iljar hinum sálrænu þáttum mannsins. Þannig vinn ég á og sé smátt og smátt árangur erfiði míns og um leið aukna hamingju þeirra sem á vegi mínum verða. Tilgangur viðhorfa minna og vilja mun verða að lífga upp á umhverfi mitt með góðri og kærleiksríkri framkomu. Ég hreinlega nenni ekki að sökkva mér niður í það myrkur sem gróft vanmat á sjálfri mér og öðrum getur leitt yfir mig. Ég vil lifa til þess að njóta alls þess dásamlega sem lífið hefur upp á að bjóða því ég get alls ekki séð sólin skína í andlegu myrkri píslarvættisins. jrk

The Triple Subaltern as Seen in
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl


Nína Rúna Kvaran
Spring 2006
There are many sins the human race has committed against itself. They range from the petty small evils of the individual to grand scale operations performed by states and governments under the protection of law. Western societies today pride themselves of having a status of law which stands for no injustice to be tolerated against the individual who is protected and entitled to his human and civil rights. The harsh reality tells another story — a story of prejudice, discrimination, and violation of everything that is sacred to the human individual. What is here being referred to is human slavery — when an individual is robbed of the freedom of choice over his (or her) physical, economical, and social fate.
It is a well-known fact that slavery is not a thing belonging only to some obscure and embarrassing past. It is widely spread out in the world today and has many forms. Child slavery where children are used as a prolific work force and made to suffer under detestable circumstances, deprived of the right to be nourished, loved, and educated, is an accepted part of many societies. South-Arabia and some other countries in the Middle East keep women under such restriction by law that their social status is nothing short of having to spend a lifetime as a man’s property, totally dependent on him and submissive to his authority. Media coverage in Western societies on the sex slavery of young women as a growing and popular industry (although thankfully not permitted by law) is startling.
It seems slavery has been a part of human history since the beginning of time and although vast improvements have been made in the world it is far from being totally abolished and its sad heritage is not easily erased. This is especially true in countries such as the United States where slavery was so profoundly based on racial discrimination, a fact that made it easier in execution and gave ways to an ideology of justification for slavery. African Americans were not only conveniently recognizable as slaves for the color of their skin, they could also easily be branded as a different type of human being for it, a lower creature than the white man, made by God to serve him. With these facts on the slave history of North America in mind, it is not exceedingly difficult to imagine how life must have been for the African American woman. Living in times of legal slavery of her race and the subordinate position of the female gender in general to male domination, her life must have been laid out with heavy burdens.
It is the idea of the African American female slave as a triple subaltern in 19th century American society — being a woman, being black, and being a slave — which will be the subject of this essay as seen in the historical and auto-biographical book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Linda Brent.

It is of some relevance before beginning the analysis to summarize in a few words the background and plot of Linda Brent’s book. As is mentioned in the introduction to the book by Walter Teller, Linda Brent was not the author’s real name.[1] For her own safety and that of others, she changed the names of people and places throughout her narration, despite that more than a decade had passed since the actual events of the story took place. Due to the enacting of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, people such as Brent, who had run away from bondage, could be arrested and returned to slavery even if they were living in a free state. This fact is just one of many depictions of the injustice inflicted on African Americans as Brent portrays in her narration.
Having had a happy childhood, blissfully unaware of the fact that she was born a slave, Brent’s life came to a terrible turning point when she at the age of twelve found herself in the enforced service of Dr. Flint and his wife. To escape from the doctor’s sexual harassment and attempts to exploit her in such a way, Brent ran away and spent seven years confined in a tiny space of her grandmother’s house before eventually escaping to freedom at the age of twenty-seven. In her book, she not only describes her own emotional state and experience of being a slave but as well gives the reader a glimpse into the more terrible fates of so many other slaves that she knew personally or otherwise. Her narration holds a unique place among the few biographies and autobiographies of slaves that were published because, as Walter Teller says in his introduction to Brent’s narration: “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861, was one of the last and most remarkable of its genre and also one of the very few written by a woman” (Teller, ix).
The term “subaltern” arrives from post-colonial studies and is explained thoroughly in the book Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. In it, Italian Antonio Gramsci is said to have adopted the term subaltern to “refer to those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes” (Gramsci, 213). Although the term subaltern, meaning “of inferior rank” (Gramsci, 213) was originally used by a group of historians who had interest in South Asian studies, it can easily apply to any class or group of society that is oppressed by the ruling classes. Therefore to claim that the social situation of Brent as an African American slave woman is in fact a triple subaltern position is reasonable. In John Hope Franklin’s article “A Brief History of the Negro in the United States” published in The American Negro Reference Book,[2] he mentions that as the Spanish and Portuguese ventured further into Africa in the 14th century, taking Africans to Europe to serve their purposes, they saw it as only natural to also bring them later to the New World. As he says: “Thus, they took Africans to Europe and made servants of them, justifying this invasion of human rights by declaring that Africans would have the opportunity to cast off their heathenism and become Christians” (Franklin, 1). The African continent was therefore exploited and colonized, and became, at least partly, subaltern to European rule. The descendants of these Africans, born in America into slavery as Brent was, had therefore been in a subaltern position for generations.
There are two notions that are inseparable from the term subaltern that have to be mentioned in context of Brent’s book. These are the notions of the voice of the subaltern class or person and that of surveillance. When looking at the position that slaves in America held it is difficult to imagine that they had any voice at all. Their restrictions were such that politics, economics, and education were almost impossible goals for them to reach. As Brent herself mentions in her narration it was not even legal to teach a slave how to read and write so as a consequence the majority was kept in complete ignorance, making it impossible for them to ever have a voice of their own in society. Brent held a unique position as a slave because of her literacy and without knowing how to read and write, her story would most likely have been lost to the world, as are most of the stories of individual slaves. In post-colonial studies, the idea of the subaltern’s voice (or rather lack of) is explained by the fact that very often history is recorded by ways of the dominant class and in the voice of the dominant class as well. Therefore the erasure of the subaltern’s original identity and background begins and evolves until it is mostly forgotten, and the position of the oppressed is all the subaltern class knows as its own.
When looking at Brent’s narration this is very true. Of course she is fighting strongly against the dominance of the white race and her story could have been used as a tool by abolitionists to plead their cause. But at the same time it cannot be ignored that the only way Brent has to express herself is by the means of the very class she is opposing to. Her narration is firstly written, a means of expression rarely at the exposal of slaves and therefore hardly a form true to their own unique voice. Secondly, she writes in an educated style of English, which would doubtfully have been the way she or other slaves would speak amongst themselves. Quite often in the book she directly quotes other slaves’ speech and writes out their dialogue, creating a striking difference between her own writing style and the grammar use of the people she comes from. Even if she had the good fortune to be educated by her first mistress one would think that she had retained her own people’s way of speech, at least in communication with them. She does mention that she tried to keep the fact that she was literate to herself, so as not to cause envy among other slaves. The fact that she then writes her narration in the speech and manner of the very class that oppressed her people, taking on the voice of the dominant so she may be heard, fits perfectly within the idea that the subaltern that has no “official” history has no voice of its own either. Of course, it must not be ignored that obviously the situation within the literary world has changed dramatically in the time that has elapsed since Brent wrote her book. Had she chosen to write her story in a style more similar to the then African American way of English speech, as is popular in many cases today,[3] it is unlikely it would have been published.
When discussing the power of the dominant classes over the subaltern, the term “surveillance” or the “imperial gaze” is mentioned in Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies:
This gaze corresponds to the ‘gaze of the grand-autre’ within which the identification, objectification and subjection of the subject are simultaneously enacted: the imperial gaze defines the identity of the subject, objectifies it within the identifying system of power relations and confirms its subalterneity and powerlessness. (226)
One of the key elements of the imperial gaze is said to be in exploration and travel writing, both popular in the nineteenth century; sometimes describing landscape, sometimes its inhabitants, but almost invariably with an air of dominance or a will to master the situation. Although this may not seem to be directly connected to Brent’s experience at first glance, there is a strong connection with the very European mindset of the imperial gaze and the situation of the female slave. Firstly, the theory applies in a colonial and imperial sense since the slaves in America were taken by force from Africa to be sold and used as any other property. So although Brent herself was not the victim of these kidnappings, her forefathers were and it is therefore relevant. Africa was explored and “gazed” at with the intent to exploit it in any way possible. One of the most tragic results of this surveillance was slavery — the very worst type of human exploitation. Secondly, this is relevant in the discussion of male dominance over the female subaltern. In her article “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body”, from the book Feminism and Film, Mary Ann Doane notes that since women have historically served the submissive role of the one who is gazed upon, and not the opposite, the movies, by their essence being something that is watched by people, reflect that reality by serving the male gaze:
The impasse confronting feminist filmmakers today is linked to the force of a certain theoretical discourse, which denies the neutrality of the cinematic apparatus itself. A machine for the production of images and sounds, the cinema generates and guarantees pleasure by corroboration of the spectator’s identity. Because that identity is bound up with that of the voyeur and the fetishist, because it requires for its support the attributes of the ‘non-castrated’, the potential for illusory mastery of the signifier, it is not accessible to the female spectator, who, in buying her ticket, must deny her sex. (Doane, 86-87)
This idea of the male gaze on the female body[4] is an underlying theme in Brent’s book and, in fact, the root of all her problems. It is not only the obvious sexual harassment she must endure from Dr. Flint that is appalling but also her descriptions of just how common such situations were between masters and slave women. When people are given ultimate power over others, it often corrupts them. Therefore it is not exceedingly surprising to discover that slave owners frequently bedded their female slaves, creating so-called “mulatto” children. This sexual exploitation was not only condoned, it was almost accepted as a social norm, as the laws on the matter clearly demonstrated: the child begotten would follow the condition of the mother. Since the relations between a white woman and a black male slave leading to pregnancy were not nearly as common, most mulatto children would be born into slavery despite having a white father. Brent speaks of this clever but cruel system with utter contempt and no wonder since it ensured that most people of color (even if light-complexioned) were marked for slavery from birth and slave owners could easily get rid of their unwanted offspring by simply selling them away.
The situation for the slave woman as depicted in Brent’s book is that of utter submission to the white man. Even if white women were certainly also subject to male authority, they had some rights as human beings, which is more than slave women had. According to Brent, mulatto girls and women were especially at risk in regard to rape and sexual exploitation at the hands of slave owners. She tells the tale of her youngest uncle, Benjamin, who is thrown in prison as punishment for running away. His owner finally manages to sell him to a slave trader but it is not an easy task due to his rebellious nature that was not considered a good quality in a slave. But had he been a young girl, being as good-looking and light-complexioned as he was, the story would have been different no matter what character qualities or flaws he possessed: “He said he would give any price if the handsome lad was a girl. We thanked God that he was not” (Brent, 22). The deep-rooted fear of white men and the knowledge of their undisputable status of power are furthermore reflected in Brent’s reaction when she realizes that her newborn child is female:
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own. (Brent, 79)
When looking at Brent’s own personal experience with white, male dominance, it seems that despite being in a very subaltern position she was remarkably lucky when it came to the physical aspect of her relations with her owner. She was a house-slave and therefore escaped the physical hardships of working on the plantations. But when considering her seven-year confinement in a space so small that she could not stretch her limbs nor stand up, one can claim that she suffered her share of physical torment. The more interesting fact is the way in which Dr. Flint tries to subdue her to his will. She is only around fourteen or fifteen years old when he starts “poisoning” her mind as she refers to it. His sexual innuendos are both whispered in her ear or notes are pressed into her hand to read later. It is quite amazing, considering what kind of character Dr. Flint is and what kind of extreme status of power he has over his slaves, that he would confine his sexual harassment to the verbal and written word. He uses any technique that he can within that frame to get Brent to submit to his sexual desires without any results. Never does she mention that he fondled her or had any other physical contact with her of a sexual nature. He never allowed her to be punished by the whip like so many others were, although eventually he struck her on more than one occasion himself; minor physical punishments in comparison to a bare-back whipping. Dr. Flint does represent a male authoritarian figure in Brent’s life but he is not the typical physical brute of a man one might expect him to be. If he really wanted so badly to bed this slave girl that belonged to him, why did he not just rape her and have it done with? Legally she had no protection from this so he could have had his way without much difficulty. Years of drawn-out mental battles between the two would have been avoided and any uncomfortable aftermath, such as possible children, could have been sold to the highest bidder. But Dr. Flint seems to be intelligent and perceptive enough to realize that sheer physical domination over this woman’s body would never be quite as satisfying as the domination over her mind and spirit.
Domestic violence and abuse are still today an incredibly widespread social problems and quite acceptable in many countries. Women in particular are vulnerable to violence within the home. In fact, according to most research on the matter, strangers seem to pose less threat to women than their own husbands or boyfriends. Although Brent was not Dr. Flint’s wife or girlfriend, she was part of his family’s household so his treatment of her can be seen as a form of domestic abuse. After all, she has been living under the man’s roof since the age of twelve and he is the head of that home and the only male authoritarian figure in her life since her father’s death. The fact that he is also about forty years her senior, makes the whole situation even more detestable. It seems that the personal relationship between Dr. Flint and Brent reflects perfectly the relations between the superior force and the subaltern element. It is not enough for Dr. Flint to physically dominate Brent as would have perhaps been the easiest solution for him. He knows that he already legally owns her body[5] and therefore can do what he wants with it, but he wants her soul also. The ruling class of whites kept slaves in ignorance and misinformation in order to dominate them even more. Brent even mentions how slaves were sometimes appointed their own time in the church, where sermons on the appropriate behavior and acceptance of the slaves’ own situation were emphasized; a kind of brainwashing. Chains and whips are certainly sufficient tools in maintaining control over the oppressed, but breaking their spirit by convincing them that their lower status in life is acceptable and even ordained from God is far better.
This is what Dr. Flint is doing to Brent throughout her life in his house. He wants absolute control over her, body and soul, and becomes all the more obsessed with reaching his goal when he meets such a strong resistance in the slave girl. It seems as if his intentions are to seduce Brent to submit to him sexually with the promises of raising her to a concubine status where she would be able to lead a life of relative luxury and void of hardships. He even has the audacity to say that he will make a real “lady” of her, as ridiculously controversy as that may seem to the fact that he wants her to be his sexual plaything. Perhaps his insistence in this matter is also connected to the fact that Brent’s grandmother was a free woman (although born a slave) and she was somewhat of an irritation (and perhaps intimidation) to Dr. Flint. He knew the strong moral values the old woman had instilled in her children and to see her granddaughter fall into disgrace at Dr. Flint’s hands would have been a victory not only over the young slave that so often had “outrageously” rejected him and wounded his masculine pride, but also over her grandmother, whose state of freedom was a constant insult to his senses.
The sad part of the story is perhaps that although Brent never has to sexually submit to Dr. Flint, she does compromise the strong moral values her grandmother had instilled in her when she eventually starts having a sexual affair with another white man, Mr. Sands. Although enraged by this, Dr. Flint in a way managed to drive Brent into making a choice that was by her own standards and that of her grandmother’s, a shameful one. For any woman at the time to have a sexual liaison with a man not her husband, would have been scandalous but this was especially so for Brent who had been taught to maintain such self-respect by her grandmother. But true to her nature, the old woman puts Dr. Flint in his place when he tries to rub in her face the fact of her grandchild’s affair with Mr. Sands: “‘I tell you what, Dr. Flint,’ said she, ‘you ain’t got many more years to live, and you’d better be saying your prayers. It will take ‘em all, and more too, to wash the dirt off your soul’” (Brent, 84).
It is of some interest to examine Brent’s own justifications for her decision to be so adamant in rejecting the doctor’s advances but then to allow herself to be seduced by another white man. As she revises her past actions, her shame is obvious and reflects strongly on the patriarchal standards of the society she lived in; a society in which a woman would be judged harshly for sexual promiscuity[6] while a man would usually escape stigma:
I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and did it with deliberate calculation. (Brent, 54)
When looking at Brent’s lover, Mr. Sands, it is easy to fall into the same trap that she herself did in thinking that he might somehow change her situation to the better. But as it turns out, he was just another white man taking advantage of a slave girl’s misery; yet another example of Brent’s helpless situation as a female living in an extremely male oriented society. She was only fifteen years old and Mr. Sands knew somewhat of her situation with Dr. Flint. Pretending to care for her well being, he made himself her friend and eventually lover. He took advantage of her youth and childishness:
So much attention from a superior person was, of course, flattering; for human nature is the same in all. I also felt grateful for his sympathy, and encouraged by his kind words. It seemed to me a great thing to have such a friend. By degrees, a more tender feeling crept into my heart. He was an educated and eloquent gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted in him. (Brent, 55)
As it turned out, Mr. Sands was of little help to Brent and although he begot two children with her and was full of promises and seeming good will, he never treated them as his own nor gave them freedom when the opportunity finally came. But as Brent herself explains, she felt “something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment” (Brent, 55). With this in mind, Brent’s decision to take a lover, although it eventually leads to part of her ruin and despair, can be seen as an act of rebellion against the ruling, male element (which Dr. Flint is a representative of) which has forced her kind into a subaltern position.
One of the most influential and important African Americans from the nineteenth century was Frederick Douglass and there are a number of scholars that have examined his life and writing. In her essay “The Punishment of Esther: Frederick Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine” published in the book Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essay, Jenny Franchot discusses how “the sexual and physical abuse of the slave woman is especially apparent in the two antebellum versions of Douglass’s autobiography” (Franchot, 141). Franchot emphasizes how common was this kind of sexual exploitation and general abuse against black women according to Douglass. This matches perfectly to Brent’s experience who not only is sexually harassed by Dr. Flint and then later sexually taken advantage of by Mr. Sands,[7] she also has to live in constant fear of Dr. Flint selling her children away. As Franchot explains:
The atrocities of slavery find their most powerful synecdoche in the silenced figure of the slave mother forced to endure rape, concubinage, and the theft of her children. Douglass’s continued rhetorical exposure of the black woman’s suffering body is crucial to his lifelong mission of disclosing the sins of the white fathers by turning slavery’s hidden interiors into the publicized exterior of prose — an exposure that claims for itself a metaphysical power. (Franchot, 141)
When looking at the grand scheme of slavery in context of how slavery affected the southern society and family unit in general, Brent makes an excellent case as she demonstrates how it caused a moral and social deterioration among the ruling classes. What is most relevant here, since this is a feminist viewing of Brent’s narration, is how slavery not only led to the especially humiliating sexual exploitation of the black woman but subsequently to the social and emotional humiliation of the white wives of slaveholders. From this, Mrs. Flint was no exception and therefore her character deserves some attention.
Brent shows an exceptionally perceptive understanding of Mrs. Flint’s situation as the wife of a slave-owner despite the fact that the woman hated her for being the focus of her husband’s sexual attention. Brent seems to understand that although women such as Mrs. Flint were “free” in word, their situation often was little more than slavery in its own sense. Women at the time often did not even choose their own husbands and after the wedding, were to submit to their authority. Even if the husband turned out to be intolerable and fond of breaking the sacred marriage vows, divorce was almost impossible and the wife often could do little to change her fate. Brent uses as an example of how naïve daughters of northerners would sometimes be given into marriage to southern slaveholders, only to be bitterly disappointed:
The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness. (Brent, 35)
In Mrs. Flint case, this seems to be exactly what takes place. She knows about her husband’s interest in Brent and, being unable to really do anything about the situation except have the occasional outburst and argument with her husband, takes on a hateful disposition towards the young girl who is his victim. This is a clear case of two women being oppressed by one man, but instead of sympathizing with each other and work together to overthrow his chauvinist authority in the household, they are driven asunder by Mrs. Flint’s childish jealousy aimed at Brent. From a feminist point of view Mrs. Flint’s disposition towards Brent is disappointing to say the least, as by mistreating and abusing the young slave girl, she in fact contributes to the continual oppression of women, no matter what their color might be. Brent’s own description demonstrates this clearly:
As I went on with my account her color changed frequently, she wept, and sometimes groaned. She spoke in tones so sad, that I was touched by her grief. The tears came to my eyes; but I was soon convinced that her emotions arose from anger and wounded pride. She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed. (Brent, 32)
The question that then remains is why Mrs. Flint was unable to feel any sympathy for the young girl so unfairly treated by her husband? The answer to this leads back to the original idea of Brent as a subaltern person to the extreme. Even if they are both females, Mrs. Flint seems to have no compassion or even the slightest interest in understanding the young girl’s dilemma. In fact, she does not even seem to consider her as a human being. Had Brent been a white girl, Mrs. Flint’s attitude might have been different but in the case of a black, female slave, she is simply incapable of showing mercy. It is Brent’s subaltern position of being black and a slave, which makes it impossible for Mrs. Flint to identify with her as a woman. The sisterhood she might feel with other women is certainly not extended to black women whom she regards inferior to herself.
As Brent says, the northern free states were not always as wonderful as many a slave imagined them to be. Even if they did not tolerate slavery, prejudice and racism thrived there and Brent even dedicates a small chapter of her book exclusively to describe her own experience in these mattes. As a nurse for Mrs. Bruce’s baby, Brent travels with her to Albany by steamboat. There she is ordered to leave the table all the passengers are seated at and that by a servant who shares her color; an example of a person in a subaltern position aiding the ruling class and contributing to the continual of his own people’s oppression. Furthermore, as Brent accompanies Mrs. Bruce to a hotel she finds herself to be the only black nurse there and as a result her presence is seen somewhat as an insult to the establishment. As supper is served, Brent seats herself at the table with her small charge in her lap. She is immediately approached and asked to seat the child in the chair, stand behind it, and feed it. Then she is welcomed to enjoy a supper of her own in the kitchen. Brent reaction is yet again evidence of her courage and self-respect. Instead of accepting silently these humiliating requests, as so many might have done, she stands up with the child, retreats to her room and refuses to return to the table. Amazingly, after some time of taking her and the child’s meals in her room, Brent is subject to not only complaints from the white waiters of the hotel who find it insulting to serve “a negro”, but also from black servants of boarders who find it unfair that she receives special treatment. Brent’s admirable answer to this is:
My answer was that the colored servants ought to be dissatisfied with themselves, for not having too much self-respect to submit to such treatment; that there was no difference in the price of board for colored and white servants, and there was no justification for difference of treatment. I staid a month after this, and finding that I was resolved to stand up for my rights, they concluded to treat me well. Let every colored man and woman do this, and eventually we shall cease to be trampled under foot by our oppressors. (Brent, 181-183)

Brent’s narration is truly a remarkable reading and well deserving of the attention it has received since its publication. The mastery of the book is perhaps how it clearly reveals the flaws of human nature but at the same time demonstrates the enormous bravery and self-sacrifice of unique individuals such as Brent herself and those that aided her in her escape from slavery. The structures and restrictions of societies are usually rigid and slow to change so the choice of many is to let things take their own course. Even those that are downtrodden by a ruling force are sometimes slow to react to their own defense as Brent reveals numerous times in her story. The routine of life as it is, even if it offers conditions such as slavery that are completely unacceptable, is sometimes easier than the choice of taking a stand and fight against tyranny. Therefore people such as Brent are all the more admirable because the mere fact that a person is being deprived of her human rights does not automatically make that person a human rights fighter. It takes people of special character and iron-will to stand against a socially superior force and Brent certainly was one of those people. Even if little to nothing is known of her life after her narration ends, the life described in it and the fact that she had the book published considering that it was not without risk, makes her a hero. Brent was in a triple subaltern position as a black, female slave living in the 19th century. Despite this, she managed to lead her life in such a way that it challenged completely the accepted patriarchal society of the southern states of America. As a slave she continually disobeyed her master when refusing to accept his sexual offers. By doing so, no matter how submissive she had to be in his household in any other aspect; she challenged his authority in a most provocative manner and eventually prevailed over him by the most outrageous act of slave defiance: by running away. Her rebellion against Dr. Flint was not only an attack on the social structure of the time and place in regards to the supreme position of whites over blacks. It was also a feminist revolt against the rule of male, chauvinist dominance, making Brent not only a human rights fighter in her own way, but also a fighter for women’s rights.
Finally, Brent also discusses in detail the deep-rooted racism of her country and the psychological consequences of its obsession with color. She not only mentions the intricate social problems associated with the interracial melding which inevitably took place, such as the scrutinizing attention shown to slight differences in skin color and complexion, even amongst the slaves themselves. She also directly criticizes white people and black alike for allowing the situation to continue. She emphasizes the importance of the African American self-respect and blatantly encourages rebellion against their oppressors. She is therefore also an advocate for the social redemption of the black people of America. Brent might have been in a triple subaltern social position in body for the first twenty-seven years of her life, but she certainly was not in her mind and spirit.





Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Williams and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial
Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 1999. 213-219.
Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1983.
Doane, Mary Ann. “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body”. Feminism and
Film. Ed. Ann Kaplan. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 86-99.
Franchot, Jennny. “The Punishment of Esther: Frederick Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine”. Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. 141-165.
Franklin, John Hope. “A Brief History of the Negro in the United States”. The American Negro Reference Book. Ed. John P. Davis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. 1-3.
Teller, Walter. “Introduction”. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. ix.

[1] Her real name was Harriet Brent Jacobs.
[2] Not exactly a “politically correct” title for a book nowadays but this book was published in 1966.
[3] See for example Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting, which depictures the miserable lives of the somewhat subaltern lower classes of Scotland and is written almost entirely in the Scottish dialect unique to them.
[4] Although Doane is referring to the male gaze in context of movie viewing, her theory can apply to literature and real life as well.
[5] Actually, Brent was Dr. Flint’s daughter’s property.
[6] It must not be ignored that here a 19th century, American standard is being used to look at Brent’s behavior. To have two children out of wedlock with a man (even if he was single), not to mention in an inter-racial relationship, probably was a catastrophically stigmatizing situation for a woman to be in at the time.
[7] When considering how young Brent was when Mr. Sands starts having sexual relations with her and how he later came to treat their children, what else can it be called other than that he took sexual advantage of her?

Um bænina
Öll höfum við einhvern tíma heyrt þessa setningu:,,Lífið er skóli”. Það er vafalaust rétt. En gallinn er bara sá að okkur hættir til að gleyma því stundum hver í rauninni sé tilgangurinn með lífi okkar. Þá er gott að hafa það í huga, að þetta jarðneska líf okkar er einnig undirbúningur undir það sem óhjákvæmilega tekur við eftir dauðann. Með hegðun okkar og framkomu við aðra erum við ekki einungis að verða öðrum til góðs eða hið gagnstæða. Við erum að skapa okkur framtíð í næsta lífi. Allir höfundar helstu trúarbragða heimsins hafa í rauninni sagt það sama:,,Ræktið með ykkur kærleikann. Þá mun allt vel fara.” Þess vegna er okkur nauðsynlegt að temja okkur góðvildina gagnvart öllu fólki sem við umgöngumst.
Fegursti vottur kærleikans kemur fram í því að biðja fyrir þeim af einlægni sem eiga í erfiðleikum. Gleymum því aldrei að allt er mannkynið ein heild. Öllu trúuðu fólki er löngu orðið ljóst að bæn öðrum til heilla felur í sér mikinn og stundum að því er virðist guðdómlegan mátt. Bestu huglæknar heimsins hafa fyrst og fremst náð ótrúlegum árangri til heilla sjúkum með beitingu bænarinnar. Því fleiri sem beita sér að sömu bæn, því sterkari og áhrifameiri virðist hún geta orðið. Þetta hafa kristnir söfnuðir víða um heim fundið. Það er t.d. orðin algeng regla hjá sumum söfnuðum í Bandaríkjunum að stunda sameiginlegan bænalestur til heilla einhverjum innan eða utan viðkomandi sóknar, sem er alvarlega veikur eða þarf á hjálp að halda.
Það þarf ekki að segja foreldrum að hjúkra barni sínu ef það veikist eða verður fyrir slysi. Foreldrarnir gera það hiklaust og þegar í stað, því þeir unna barni sínu. Með sama hætti ættum við að reyna að venja okkur á að beita kærleikanum gagnvart öðrum sem eiga bágt, eins og þeir væru okkar eigin börn. Það er hverju foreldri meðfætt að unna börnum sínum enda sýna flestir það fljótlega í sínu lífi.
Beitum því mætti kærleikans í sterkum bænum fyrir þeim sem á hjálp þurfa að halda. Við verðum bænheyrð, eins og reynslan sýnir. Munum að öll börn heimsins eru okkar börn og að allt fullorðið fólk bræður okkar og systur. Við skulum ætíð hafa það hugfast.
jrk

Þýtt og endursagt af Nínu Rúnu Kvaran

Afhjúpun lygarans:
Listin að koma upp um lygalaupa

Í kvikmyndinni ,,True Romance”, rétt áður en Christopher Walken skýtur Dennis Hopper í höfuðið fyrir að skrökva, þá heldur hinn illi Walken fyrirlestur yfir fórnarlambi sínu um hinar 17 aðferðir Sikileyinga til þess að sjá hvort að maður er að ljúga. Hvort þetta er sikileysk staðreynd eða aðeins uppspuni handritshöfundarins Tarantino skiptir kannski ekki sköpum, en það er aftur á móti staðreynd að það er hægt að koma upp um lygalaupa.
Fylgist með handahreyfingum
,,Lygarar reyna alltaf að leggja áherslu á orð sín með ýktum handahreyfingum. Það dregur athyglina frá andlitinu og gerir orðin áhrifameiri”, segir David Taylor sálfræðilegur ráðgjafi. ,,Þetta er ósjálfrátt varnarkerfi sem á að vinna gegn því að upp um fólk komist en er í raun mjög uppljóstrandi ef menn eru meðvitaðir um það.”
Hlustið á takt orðræðunnar
Þegar fólk lýgur þá afbakar það vanalega á einn eða annan hátt sína eigin vanalegu orðræðu. ,,Setningar sem leiða að lyginni eru oft sagðar í flýti þar sem fólk er oftast óþreyjufullt að koma sér að sjálfri lyginni”, segir Diane Kingsley talmeinafræðingur. ,,Að lyginni lokinni fellur taktur orðræðunnar aftur í eðlilegt horf.”
Prófið minnið
,,Tilgangur lyganna er að koma fólki úr vandræðum og þegar lygin er sögð þá á hún það til að falla fljótt í gleymsku”, segir þjónustufulltrúinn Alice Mulcahy. ,,Ef mig grunar að fólk sé að ljúga í viðtölum hjá mér, þá legg ég atvikið á minnið og varpa því síðan fram seinna og bið fólk að segja mér nánar frá því. Ef viðkomandi var að ljúga þá man hann oftast ekkert eftir því sem ég er að tala um.”
Hlustið á raddblæinn
Diane Kingsley talmeinafræðingur segir enn fremur: ,,Þegar fólk lýgur þá er því hættara við að vera meðvitað um sína eigin rödd og þá er sterk tilhneiging fyrir því að raddblærinn breyti um tónhæð, þó ekki sé nema í sekúndubrot. Það að tala er okkur vanalega svo eðlislægt að við tökum ekkert eftir því, en augnabliksálag með þurrk í munni og örari hjartslátt getur haft djúpstæð áhrif á röddina og valdið því að hún titrar örlítið eða brotnar jafnvel alveg.”
Leiddu lygarann í gildru
,,Við beitum okkar eigin blekkingum”, segir Simon Newman. ,,Þegar ég var í Devon & Cornwall lögreglunni þá þurftum við stundum að eiga við náunga sem komu frá London til þess að selja fíkniefni. Ef við tókum þá niður á stöð tiil yfirheyrslu þá áttu þeir það til að gefa okkur fölsk heimilisföng í nágrenninu til þess að sleppa. Þá sögðum við stundum: ,,Já, ég veit hvar þetta er, þarna rétt hjá keiluhöllinni?” Og þeir sögðu: ,,Já, einmitt” og vissu náttúrulega ekki að það var engin keiluhöll í bænum.”
Fylgist með augnsambandi
Það er óvenjulegt þegar fólk á í samræðum við einhvern og myndar ekki augnsamband, jafnvel þó ekki sé nema af og til og það staðfestir toll-og landamæravörður nokkur sem er orðinn gamall í hettunni: ,,Það er alltaf tilefni til tortryggni ef fólk myndar ekki augnsamband. Einu sinni lenti ég í því að maður sem ætlaði að keyra sendibíl í gegnum hliðin hjá okkur, bara myndaði alls ekkert augnsamband þegar ég talaði við hann. Hann virtist undrandi þegar við stoppuðum hann og báðum hann að fylgja okkur inn í tollskýlið en þegar málið var rannsakað frekar þá fundum við heilan farm af kössum fullum af tequila í bílnum”.
Varist flóttalegt augnaráð
,,Mitt starf felst mikið í því að hlusta á lygarnar í fólki”, segir einkaspæjarinn Tony Barnes, ,,en ég er með nánast 100% öruggt próf til að koma upp um það. Um leið og menn fara að skjóta augunum til vinstri þá veit ég að þeir ljúga. Fólk reynir að þykjast vera upptekið við að horfa á eitthvað en í raun er það bara að koma upp um sig.”
Hlustið eftir óhóflegum smáatriðum og staðreyndum
Simon Jodrell lögreglusálfræðingur hefur þetta að segja um málið: ,,Undir venjulegum kringumstæðum þá flæða staðreyndir eins og nöfn og staðarheiti eðlilega og hóflega fram í samtali. En í samræðum sem byggjast á blekkingum þá ræður lygarinn ekki við þörfina til þess að skreyta frásögn sína með einhverjum áþreifanlegum staðreyndum. Þannig að það sem þú heyrir er oft algjörlega ofskreytt og fullt af ónauðsynlegum upplýsingum sem troðið er inn í lygina til þess að gefa henni raunveruleikablæ.
Varist ofnotkun orðatiltækja
Með þessu er átt við að menn ættu að taka eftir mikilli notkun orðatiltækja eins og : ,,Þú veist hvað ég meina”, ,,sko” og ,,eða þannig”. Þau eru notuð til þess að fylla upp í þá þögn sem getur myndast þegar lygarinn tapar þræðinum vegna truflana eða skorts á þekkingu á því sem hann lýgur um. Þegar fólk lýgur og bullar þá vantar það oft þann grunn sem liggur í því að segja sannleikann og þarfnast tíma til þess að hugsa upp lygina og þann tíma fyllir það upp með tilgangslausum orðatiltækjum.




Composition II: February 20th 2002
Eva Heisler


Bartleby
Nína Rúna Kvaran

Most of us have at one time or another experienced the sensation of hyper self-consciousness. The feeling of being watched by everyone or even being the victim of some kind of conspiracy has probably made itself familiar to all of us at some period in our lives. Many go through times of insecurity and paranoia, thinking the whole world is against them. It’s a miserable feeling of alienation and often afflicts those who have low self-esteem and a poor self-image.
The purpose of this essay is to look at the point of view of the narrator of Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” and show how it influences the development of the plot and theme as the story unravels. The intention is to demonstrate how the narrator’s lack of assertiveness contributes to a chain of bizarre events that create the most uncommonly and unacceptable circumstances and lead him to a state of paranoia.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” is one of the first American stories that take place in an office. It’s a 1st person narrative, the narrator being a lawyer of about sixty and the employer of four rather peculiar characters. Turkey is a red-faced elderly gentleman who works best in the mornings but gets gradually more irritable and useless as the day runs its course. Another copyist is Nippers, a young piratical-looking man that suffers from “indigestion” (most likely hangovers) in the mornings and isn’t really up to speed on anything until in the afternoon. There is also a twelve-year-old office boy that goes by the name of Ginger Nut, not to mention the eponymous character, Bartleby.
Bartleby is an excellent copyist at first, but then the narrators carefully describes how he starts “preferring” not to do things, eventually succumbing to an almost immobile state. The story deals with the narrator’s evasive reactions to Bartley’s behaviour and how his constant avoidance of conflict leads to him moving his whole office rather than being assertive enough to throw Bartleby out.
Melville wrote “Bartleby the Scrivener” in ca.1853 and the story is a good example of what professor Martin Regal calls “Melville’s compulsion to write about the un-interpretable”. When one reads the story for the first time, it’s easy to assume that Bartleby is the most important character. Of course there wouldn’t be a story to tell if it wasn’t for his peculiar existence but in fact we know almost nothing about him. He is the “un-interpretable” factor in the story because he lacks everything. Bartleby is a blank page. The only thing we know of him is the fact that he worked at a dead letter office. He is distant and cold and seems to have no emotional or social needs and even though he works very well in the beginning, these strange characteristics are already evident: “But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically”. We know nothing about his motives or what exactly lies behind his astonishing behaviour. One day he simply starts saying “I would prefer not to” and he gradually uses that sentence more and more, eventually not doing any work and “preferring” not to leave the office! We have the descriptions of the narrator and since his behaviour has considerable influence on the plot, I think it’s justifiable to think of him as the main character.
The narrator is an easy-going fellow with a meek temperament, which is not surprising since his life’s motto is “that the easiest way of life is the best”. He explains to the reader that despite being of the infamously energetic and neurotic law profession, he has rarely let anything disturb his peace of mind. He is an extremely tolerant boss and has accepted the eccentricities of both Turkey and Nippers in the most compliant way. Instead of becoming furiously annoyed by their abnormal work ethics he tries to make the best of the situation and convinces himself that they compliment each other because when one is being useless the other one isn’t. To use his own words: “This was a good natural arrangement under the circumstances”.
It’s easy to assume that the narrator is just being a diplomat because the ability to compromise is very important for a boss. But his leniency towards Turkey and Nippers has created a situation where he is getting the work of one man for the price of two and his constant avoidance of conflict gets him into serious trouble when he has to face the most eccentric and difficult employee of them all, Bartleby.
Concerning the robot-like character of Bartleby, it’s difficult to say what exactly Melville ment him to stand for. We only know the aforementioned; that he worked at a dead letter office and that he’s an excellent copyist. In that information we have two horrible notions for any writer. Firstly, the idea of writing something that will never be read as is the fate of all the letters in the dead letter office. Secondly, the idea of never having an opportunity to be creative in writing, but to constantly copy the works of others, as is the fate of the office workers in “Bartleby”.
But whether Bartleby is a symbol for frustrated writers or not, is not the main issue here because what he represents to the narrator is more important. Is he the ultimate test for a man that constantly avoids conflicts of any kind? There seems to be a considerable amount of self-denial going on in the mind of the narrator. He tries to claim that had it been anyone else other than Bartleby, he would not have been so lenient. The truth is that he has already demonstrated that he’s extremely tolerant towards his employees and I’m sure that he would under no circumstances fly “outright into a dreadful passion” as he puts it himself, no matter how badly provoked.
Another example of his insecurities is how he constantly asks his other employees for advice on how to handle Bartleby when he first starts to refuse to do certain assignments. He says: “Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.” These are the first symptoms of paranoia starting to sink in. The narrator is so flabbergasted by Bartleby’s impudent and continuous refusals that he starts to seriously doubt his own appreciation of the situation. Even when Nippers, Turkey and Ginger Nut all agree on that Bartleby’s behaviour is unacceptable and outrageous, their boss is still not courageous enough to simply let the man go or at least reprimand him. Instead he convinces himself that Bartleby’s eccentricities are involuntary and that surely he means no harm with his “preferring “ not to do things. He decides to try his best to befriend the “poor fellow” and even refers to his own, and in my opinion, very natural inclination to give Bartleby a peace of his mind, an “evil impulse”, as if standing up and using his lawful right as Bartleby’s boss to reprimand him, was something quite horrible and unthinkable.
As the situation evolves, Bartleby comes to a total stand still. His boss discovers that he is living in the office 24 hours a day but his pity for Bartleby is so great that he has immense trouble trying to fire him. It’s almost as if he believes that doing anything to upset the drone-like tranquillity of Bartleby might bring some disastrous misfortunes upon himself. As he contemplates Bartleby’s inevitable dismissal he says to himself: “…nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind”.
Another interesting example of the increasing paranoia of the narrator is when he realises that the word “prefer” so obstinately used by Bartleby, has started to manifest itself in his own dialogues with Turkey and Nippers, almost as if it had a mind of its own. As he puts it himself: “I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks”. The word “prefer” has come to symbolise all his problems with Bartleby and his own involuntary use of it is eerie, to say the least. As if Bartleby’s special kind of dementia is rubbing off on the others, spreading like an incurable infection of emptiness.
When Bartleby finally decides to give up copying all together, making himself completely useless as a scrivener in the process, but having no intention of leaving the office, the narrator finally takes the plunge and fires him, realising that Bartleby has become “…a millstone to him, not only useless as a necklace, but afflicting to bear”. He generously gives Bartleby six days to remove himself from the premises, which of course he does not. This casts another spell of hysteria over the narrator as he imagines what might happen if the situation is left to thrive like this. He sees himself being ridiculed by peers of the law profession and his reputation in ruins. He even contemplates the possibility of Bartleby “outliving him, and eventually claiming possession of his office by rights of perpetual occupancy.” The narrator has let his fears bring himself to a miserable state of paranoia but despite that, he does not face his fears but rather moves his whole office to another building so as to escape having to physically throw Bartleby out or set the police on him.
I think that there is a definite theme of how not facing one’s fears can diminish ones sense of self-worth, not to mention damage the view others have of one’s character. I’m not sure whether a different reaction from the narrator would have made any difference to Bartleby who eventually ends up in jail where he slowly starves himself to death. But as has been stated before, I don’t think Bartleby is the main issue in the story but rather how people around him handle his amazing behaviour. The narrator is so afraid to take definite action against his “office problem” that he rather goes through immense trouble avoiding conflicts and humiliates himself in the process. I doubt that anything could have been done to “save” Bartleby, his way was doomed to be a dead end almost from the start, but the narrator could have handled the situation in a manner that was more respectable for his own person. He eventually runs away from the “problem”, leaving it for others to solve, knowing full well that the police would eventually be called for. His behaviour is in fact no less perplexing than Bartleby’s. There are likely many things that can be interpreted from this story but I think that there is a moral to be found in it. It isn’t always good to be too kind and lenient to people because excessive leniency can backfire. To be able to stand up for one’s right is very important for the self-image and one is not necessarily doing people any good by constantly humouring them.

Viturlegt verðmætamat
Verðmætamat fólks er eins misjafnt og mannfólkið er margt. Ytri hlutir eins og föt, hýbýli, titlar og próf eru allir góðra gjalda verðir ef þeir blinda ekki mat okkar á viturlegum verðmætum. Innri hlutir eins og einlægni, hreinleikur, tillitssemi, umburðarlyndi, mannúð og kærleikur eru líka mikilvægir eiginleikar. Auðvitað er best ef allt þetta gæti farið saman og unnið hvað með öðru að sálarró og friði í lífi hvers og eins. Best er að vera trúr maka, börnum og samferðafólki. Auk þess er nauðsynlegt að vera heiðarlegur í öllum þeim störfum sem lífið réttir að manni. Góð viðleitni er að reyna að efla og styrkja það besta í sjálfum sér og öðrum. Hver og einn verður að lokum að horfast í augu við sjálfan sig og afleiðingar af breytni sinni og viðhorfum til lífsins. Alls staðar eru möguleikar og tækifæri sem leita þarf að, síðan hlúa að og efla trú á að séu happadrjúg, kærleikshvetjandi og mannbætandi fyrir okkar innri mann ekki síður en það sem í fljótu bragði glepur og tengist frekar ytri verðmætum, því þau sem slík breyta svo litlu í innri líðan okkar. Við kaupum ekki sálarró eða innri gleði, fyrir slíku þarf að vinna innan frá. Þeirri vinnu fylgja fórnir, af því að það sem hendir okkur í mannlegum samskiptum og aðstæðum, hentar okkur ekki alltaf, sérstaklega ef það er neikvætt eða ósanngjarnt að okkar mati. Þá finnst okku lítið réttlæti í tilverunni og fátt til að gleðjast yfir og við eiga agalega bágt. Sálarró fæst til dæmis með því að skoða eigin veikleika, vinna úr þeim og gera erfiðar aðstæður auðveldar sér og sigrast á þeim. Það fæst ekkert án fyrirhafnar og allra síst breytt og betri viðhorf eða aðstæður. Lykillinn að innri frið er jákvæð hugsun, viturlegt verðmætamat og vissan um að hver er sinnar gæfu smiður.
jrk


The Wife of Bath:
A Female Stereotype or Proto-Feminist?

Nína Rúna Kvaran
November 2005

Introduction
There is an abundance of literature that examines the relationship between men and women. That precious thing, which is the chord that connects the sexes, has been a matter of debate and discussion for a very long time. Literary evidence of that in Western history can be traced all the way back to the Bible and much further than that in more ancient civilisations. In the last century or so, the traditional gender roles have been systematically demolished by feminist activity and re-invention of the roles of the two sexes is in constant creation. Hopefully most might agree that this is a good thing because of the obvious and inevitable emancipation it has brought to womankind, that has traditionally been marked as the weaker link in the chain that connects the genders in all social context, whether it be economical, political, legal, or anything else. Others note that the battle between the sexes is far from settled and that women’s liberation has more than not complicated the situation enormously by demolishing the traditional order of the gender-roles and leaving a confusing gap that neither sex can understand. Whether this is true or not will not be debated further here, but a very important point of issue is the part women themselves have played in maintaining their subordinate position in society. Many, if not most, women did indeed accept the patriarchy of Western societies as a normal part of life and many women were outraged when the first women’s emancipation movements started allowing their voices to be heard. This idea of a subordinate element undermining its own possibility of getting to a higher position in society is a very interesting notion and is directly connected to the main topic of this essay. In the following, I will seek to examine Geoffrey Chaucer’s character “The Wife of Bath” from his Canterbury Tales, with the idea in mind to investigate whether or not she is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist and if seen as a stereotype, what part does she herself as a person play in manifesting women in a negative light.

The Wife’s Use of Language and Speech
There are numerous ways in which one can approach the Wife in context to how she possibly undermines her own authority in her Prologue. One of those is to look at not what she says, but rather how she says it. Her speech alone can give many clues that can be interpreted in various ways with this approach in mind. It is a known fact, which probably applies to most successful writers, that Chaucer was a ferocious reader and was naturally influenced by the material he read. Perhaps unfortunately for his female characters, many of the writings of that day and age were not exactly flattering for women and this is mentioned in Charles Muscatine’s essay “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve” from his book Medieval Literature, Style and Culture:
Chaucer, of course, was also a great reader, and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is as learned as it is dramatic. A good deal of its contents are clearly derived from identifiable works that Chaucer read. These have been well studied; we probably have as good an account as we shall ever have of the antifeminist documents that were in his library as he wrote. (Muscatine 172)
With this in mind it is amazing to read through the text of the Prologue and see how Chaucer has the Wife speak. It is difficult to deny that he does give her a very stereotypical female voice in regards to speech. She is very indiscreet, loses her track on various occasions, and the whole tone of her Prologue is very gossipy. Elaine Treharne who wrote the essay “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”, published in the book Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts, makes an excellent case as she examines the Wife from a linguistic point of view. She feels that although Chaucer can be celebrated for trying to “emulate aspects of a woman’s language” (Treharne 96), he does base his creation of the Wife’s speech on stereotypical ideas of how a woman speaks.
When looking at the Prologue itself, finding evidence of the Wife’s stereotypical female traits of speech is not a particular challenge. One very common and negative stereotypical view of women is that they are unable to hold their tongues. Chaucer most certainly applies this to the Wife who shamelessly exposes her husbands’ darkest secrets to other women, both her niece and her best friend. Even if this infuriates her husband she seems not to be able to restrain herself, and even seems to like going door to door, looking for gossip:
With my gossib, dwelling in oure town God have hir soule!—hir name was Alisoun; She knew myn herte and eek my privetee Bet than oure parish preest, as mote I thee. To hire biwrayed I my conseil al, For hadde myn housbonde pissed on a wal Or doon a thing that sholde han cost hi lif, To hire, and to another worthy wif, And to my nece which I loved weel, I wolde han told his conseil everydeel; (Chaucer 229)
She does not seem to be bothered in the least in gossiping about her husband even if he becomes furious and deeply embarrassed when he discovers her indiscretions. This portrayal of the Wife does confirm her as a stereotypical female that cannot hold her tongue or be trusted at all.
In her essay, Treharne continues to find examples of this and she dives into the discussion of the difference between male and female speech, which according to her is a recognized fact among linguistics. She mentions how modern day views of male and female speech having slight differences without one being superior to the other, are relatively recent in linguistic history. There are various authors that wrote on this difference before, with the emphasis of proofing the female speech as the more inferior of the two. As she discusses language and gender, Treharne makes an example of linguist Otto Jespersen, who in 1922 published a book on linguistics in which there is a chapter devoted to women’s speech. One of his claims is that women are more prone than men to losing their track and being distracted when speaking, mainly because of their inability to think properly through what they are going to say. Chauvinist (and hardly scientific) views of this sort must clearly have influenced Chaucer, since he in fact has the Wife lose her thread a number of times during the Prologue. One of those instances is when she is recalling how her mother taught her how to manipulate men into thinking they had charmed her and she goes off track: “But now sire—lat me see, wha shal I sayn? Aha, by God, I have my tale again” (Chaucer 229). Treharne makes a comparison of Chaucer’s creation to Jespersen’s folk linguistic views and comes to the conclusion that:
Chaucer is able to manipulate stereotypical facets of women’s language usage through his creation, and he, to a significant extent, pre-empts in a literary framework what Jespersen would go on to write within a linguistic structure some five hundred and more years later.” (Treharne 105-106)
What is furthermore of interest in discussion of the Wife’s speech is the notion of whether she is undermining the authoritative tone of her own speech by the way she presents it. When looking solely at the Wife’s Prologue it becomes clear that it is rich in intelligence, humour, and wit. Besides that, the Wife uses substantial numbers of Biblical and other quotes that suggest that she is far from being an ignorant woman. It is questionable how deeply the “feminine” traits of her speech affect her audience/readers, especially in regards to how many of them might even notice her linguistic differences in comparison the male pilgrims of Canterbury Tales. But Treharne seems determined in interpreting her speech style as a fault rather than anything else as she phrases it: “Chaucer’s mimicry of the stereotypical features of a woman’s speech, then, renders the content of that speech less authoritative, more subjective and less effective than it might otherwise have been” (Treharne 110). But if one looks away from how she speaks and examines what she is saying, there is no doubt that Chaucer on numerous occasions has her utter statements on women in general that are obvious and tired clichés. An example is when she discusses her fifth husband whom she thinks she might have loved the most even though he physically abused her. Her following descriptions on how women always want what they cannot have and vice versa do reinforce her (as other women) as a stereotype:
We wommen han, if that I shal nat lie, In this matter a quainte fantasye: Waite what thing we may nat lightly have, Thereafter wol we crye al day and crave; Forbede us thing, and that desiren we; Preesse on us faste, and thane wol we flee. (Chaucer 228)
Another example is when she talks about the way in which she manipulated her husbands using her “feminine” traits such as lying, faking tears, and fabricating false accusations, with great success: “Deceit, weeping, spinning God hath yive To wommen kindely whil they may live” (Chaucer 225).

The Husbands and Wife in View of Gender Roles
As was mentioned in the introduction, the battle between the sexes has a long and seemingly never-ending history. Obviously, this is more than true in context of the Wife who has been married five times and conducted herself in a way that is in many regards very unlike her female gender role would suggest she should. In the very beginning of her Prologue, she starts explaining her viewpoint on marriage and is obviously aware of the social stigma of having married so many times. Her apologia on the matter is long and filled with Biblical quotes to support her case. She sees it as entirely unfair that she should be judged for having had so many husbands since no lesser people than Abraham and Jacob had more than two wives. She also feels that the notion of celibacy is highly over-rated and only meant for the few who want to lead a “perfect” life, herself thankfully not belonging to that group. It soon becomes blatantly clear that she is by no means a wife that plays the typical gender role of a female. In fact, she breaks the traditional, patriarchal mould several times in regards to gender roles. There are of course many references to her “un-ladylike” qualities as being lusty and very sexually minded. She does not have any problems with openly discussing genitals and the pleasure derived from the use of those, even if her audience is filled with males. She is quite opinionated on matters of love, sex, and marriage, and sees it of the utmost importance that she takes advantage of the bonuses of marriage as long as she can. It is perhaps here that we come to the main thrust of her argument, as is also revealed in her Tale: that being that what women really want is to dominate men; a notion that in itself is a contradiction of the traditional gender roles. The Wife most certainly dominates her husbands and seems to be quite proud of it, as she gives her advice freely to those who listen. What is remarkable about her is her apparent awareness of the injustice that women had to suffer in marriage and how she uses this fact as a tool of correction on her poor husbands. Her main mission as a wife is to reverse the traditional gender roles and this she does by blaming her husbands individually for all the cruelties husbands all over have committed towards their wives. She recites an entire list of male chauvinist views on wives and puts it forward in such a way, that her husbands must succumb to her will, distraught with guilt, even if they are not guilty of but a fraction of her accusations: “Whoso that first to mille comth first grint. I plained first; so was oure were stint. They were ful glade to excusen hem ful blive Of things of which they nevere agilte her live” (Chaucer 225).
She furthermore states that she told one of her husbands that he was not going to get away with controlling both her body and property; a statement that in itself can be seen as an attack on patriarchal views of the time and age. Her insistence on women wanting to be free: “We love no man that taketh keep or charge Wher that we goon: we wol been at oure large” (Chaucer 224) is another very feminist viewpoint she expresses and not in accordance to the rules of gender roles which required male domination.
It is very clear that the Wife dominates her husbands easily. Even the fifth one, the Oxford scholar whose favourite pastime it seems to have been to lecture her on the evils of women, using a cherished book as evidence, has in the end to succumb to her domination, giving her full control over money and property they share. As has been mentioned, her Tale is but a reinforcement of the theme of the Prologue: that women’s only real wish is to dominate men and that if men only would submit, life would be better for all.
The Evil Woman
The notion of the evil and the beautiful as a lethal combination has influenced Western patriarchal society for centuries and is rooted in the fact that even in societies where women have been literally robbed of every human right, both by the law and moral ethics, men still have to face the fact that without women, they can not exist. For the human race to continue to survive the relationship between men and women has to continue and nature has provided women with desirability that attracts men. In that desirability lies the sexual power that women hold over men and has unfortunately sometimes been their doom.
In regards to the Wife of Bath, she certainly does not at first glance seem to be evil. Her Prologue likely presents no more evilness to the modern reader than any other piece of literature or art that displays sexually active and independent thinking women in leading roles. But considering the time and age Chaucer lived in, one can only assume that the Wife’s confessions would have been seen as scandalous to say the least to many people who considered themselves of high moral standards. The Wife quite shamelessly reveals her enthusiasm for sex and romantic affairs, although she does so within the framework of marriage. It is no wonder that many critics have seen her as a proto-feminist. Her liberal ideas of sexuality are directly against every image that traditional Christian ideology has created of the virtuous and ideal woman. The Wife is far from being obedient, submissive, or silent. As a matter of fact, she is eerily close to what was by many considered an evil woman.
Western history of female evil goes a long way back, as the Biblical story of the independent Lilith demonstrates. Her fate[1] shows the very basis of patriarchal society’s view of how the ideal woman must be: obedient and submissive; everything else is unacceptable. Women have always had to bend to the will of the masculine element and patriarchal societies have used certain methods to ensure that the female force is kept under control. For one, the rules of marriage were such that women were literally seen as a piece of property rather than people and for centuries it was seen as perfectly normal for women to be subjected to domestic violence and even marital rape.
Some have seen the witch-craze that is such a famously cruel part of our Western history as a rather genderized form of persecutions, since so many of its victims were female.[2] This hunting of witches lasted for three centuries, from around the 14th century and well into the 17th century, although there are variations to be found between countries. Interestingly, outside of a few peripheral countries such as Iceland, it is estimated that around three quarters of the accused and executed in Europe were women. Steven Katz,[3] in his book The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol.1, even calls it a case of “genderized mass murder” (Katz 503). There is no wonder that women easily became targets in the witch-hunts when even the theological view of them was extremely negative. They were the perfect scapegoats for all of society’s defects and problems. In 1485-1486, the Catholic inquisition authorities published the Malleus maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, in which the evil of woman is clearly specified and had to have evoked extreme hatred towards women by those who read it and took it seriously. The piece inarguably claims that there is no evil like “the wickedness of women”. Katz quotes this book where it goes into the details of the very physical aspect of women, whose bodies both tempt men and give magical life:
What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan – they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation. (Katz 438-439)
Obviously, the Malleus maleficarum is published almost a century after Chaucer’s death, but it does nevertheless demonstrate a horribly negative view of women that was perhaps not much better in Chaucer’s time. Therefore, the Wife is in the religious and moral context of the times, not simply a proto-feminist, but an abomination of every virtue the ideal woman should have and stand for. Her blatant descriptions of lust and desire, as well as her insistence on dominating every aspect of her husbands’ lives, must have been shocking and appalling for many a reader. An example of this is when she openly confesses to lying about dreaming of her husband the entire night and how she manipulates him into believing her: “And eek I saide I mette of him al night: He wolde han slain me as I lay upright, And al my bed was ful of verray blood…” (Chaucer 229).
Although she is likeable because of her humour and openness, it cannot be denied that the Wife is rather cruel as she shows no remorse in having blatantly, manipulated, dominated, and told lies to her husbands at her every convenience. So likable or not, she can hardly be seen as a particularly kind person and although modern views of her would unlikely be as harsh as those of old might have been, there is no denying that she is at least rather immoral if not slightly evil. The question is whether she would be judged in the same way had she been a man? The important issue here is that she is a woman, and is according to her own descriptions, not unattractive at all. The notion of feminine beauty and evil going together is directly related to views such as are displayed in the Malleus maleficarum on how the sexuality of women, the way they can naturally represent a temptation to men (even if they are not deliberately trying to do so), is proof of their inherent evilness. If seen from that point of view, the Wife, who is certainly not hiding the fact that she takes advantage of her sexual attractiveness to get her own way, can be seen as super-evil. But should modern readers look at this as evidence of her being a proto-feminist or simply another example of a stereotypical display of a woman? In this case there seems to be a rather thin line that separates the two.

Conclusion
If turning back to the original question as to whether the “Wife of Bath” is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist, there seem to be evidence of both. She is on various occasions presented as a very negatively stereotypical woman, being a nag, a gossiper, sexually manipulative and so on. As Treharne accurately points out, the Wife’s speech furthermore undermines her authoritative tones as a narrator and renders her as an active participant in her own representation of a female stereotype, rooting her even deeper in a traditional female gender role from at least a linguistic viewpoint. But even if there is truth in what Treharne says about the Wife somewhat undermining her own voice, I cannot agree that the “feminine” speech Chaucer renders her is so strong as to destroy completely the actual contents of her Prologue and Tale. No matter if she is a stereotypical female storyteller, the actions she takes in her life regarding men and marriage, and her general attitudes towards gender roles, are highly feminist and even so exaggerated that some might consider her not only a proto-feminist but also a female chauvinist. She does not seem to be very preoccupied with women having equal rights to men but more so that women simply should dominate men as a general rule and then all would be right with the world. Whether she is a stereotype or a proto-feminist therefore greatly depends on how one chooses to interpret her character. The attitude of the reader makes all the difference in the interpretative process. A feminist reader might see the Wife as a proto-feminist; a dominating Diva that does not take orders from any man but quite the opposite and therefore worthy of admiration. A chauvinist reader might see her as the ultimate evidence of how wicked and vile women are, and how dangerous they can become if not kept under strict masculine control. Ultimately, Chaucer alone knows what his real intentions were with this character but I think that most could agree that no matter how the Wife of Bath is interpreted from a genderized point of view, her humour and wit certainly render her Prologue and Tale with a very entertaining quality.


Bibliography

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “From The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition, The
Major Authors. M.H. Abrams, ed. New York and London, W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc, 2001. 173-276.
Jones, Adam. Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today. Available online 15 Apr. 2005. http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
Muscatine, Charles. “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve”. Medieval
Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays By Charles Muscatine. Ed. Charles
Muscatine. Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1999. 171-175. Treharne, Elaine. “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”. Writing
Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle
English Texts. Ed. Elaine Treharne. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2002. 93-
115.


[1] Lilith was Adam’s first wife, cast out of Paradise and replaced by a more submissive Eve.
[2] The following overview is mostly based upon Adam Jones’s article “Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today”. Available online April 15th 2005 at http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
[3] The information on Steven Katz is taken from the web page: http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html