First, to get the big thing out of the way, the Rape scene appeared on page 45. So many of my questions have now been answered. The rape was (technically) consensual. That is to say Helga was willing, rather than being raped by force or extortion. She smiles, she experiences pleasure, she pulls her own body closer to his. But, she is also "a girl becoming a woman." Helga is young (how young?), and a married man with another mistress has taken advantage of her childishness. Also, the opening page seems to suggest that X is some kind of legal superior to her. So, this is a rape. X is a villain. But he is, perhaps, a softer villain than he could have been. Or I'm giving him credit because if my own American desire to find the central character of a work of literature sympathetic
Microcosm of the Novel
Today's reading was interesting in that it seemed to encompass all the important themes of the novel in one sitting. The first page featured Dagmar walking through the city streets (a common event on the novel), this time on her way to "this first meeting." She is, as usual, effortlessly beautiful despite herself and this seems to be her first romantic meeting (date) with X. This is the beginning of their romance. The second page contains a car wreck (another?) in which "death is so gentle it makes indifference easier." Who's death is unclear. Of course, most vague personal references in the novel seem to point to X, but that seems hard to accept in this case. This may be the "end" of Marianne. At any rate, it is an end. And this end just happens to occur the page after a beginning.
These two pages, then, create a sort of merism--the entire novel could take place between this beginning and this ending. The rest of today's reading seems to fall naturally between these two events, and the events on these pages represent the most important themes of the novel. Page 43 addresses the macro-cosmic events of the war, as anti-Nazi leaflets are dropped from a high window at Sorbonne (the University of Paris). Page 44 contains a description of Dagmar's apartment/studio where hangs her unfinished work Composition No. 1. Finally, page 45 (the last page of this session) contains the Rape scene--THE unifier of this novel.
If this had been a narrative strategy, it would have been a very interesting one. Narrate the beginning, then the end, then all the stuff in between. Of course, here, it's accidental, and is perhaps even an accident of my own interpretation.
Showing posts with label Rape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rape. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
X's Three Women
I read ten pages today instead of five, which is probably okay since I have catching up to do anyway. Today, we are back to the serendipity of theme. A lot of today's pages dealt with Marianne.
Francine is dying of intestinal cancer and Marianne, as before, refuses to leave her side. Marianne insists that she has cancer as well, but I suspect that her cancer is metaphorical. Dr. Brun doubts her self-diagnosis as well and suggests that Marianne has a nervous condition. In these pages, Marianne also threatens, apparently, to leave X and she goes so far as to leave the apartment building and get into the car, which she cannot drive. She also threatens suicide, locking herself in a bathroom. Interestingly, X does not take her seriously and continues his argument with her, implying that she is lazy (this is narrated and not quoted. X is still technically absent from this narrative). He finally must try to beat the door down and, when she comes out on her own, she has cut her wrists. The injury is not serious. On the last page of today's reading, she sits on the floor and sobs, refusing X's help in standing. The reason she gives for her anger is that he never calls her from work. This is clearly trivial, so she seems to be hiding the fact that she knows what is going on in X's other relationships, though she will not confront him.
Contrasting Marianne's character on these pages, we see Dagmar walking through the winter air in a well fitting dress. Dagmar seems constantly and effortlessly beautiful. So, considering Marianne's characterization as a fading, perhaps even dying woman, it is understandable that X would fall in love with her. Even if it is not honorable, it is forgivable. How can he be expected to resist falling in love with the vivacious Dagmar.
But then there's Helga. Whatever will happen with her is, even before it happens, unforgivable. On page 38, X appears in the garden below Helga's window. It is summer now and her window, depending on the angle from which one is looking at it, appear either black or bright white (a significant dichotomy). Helga finally sticks her head out the window and, seeing X, grins before thrusting her head back into the window and shutting it. Though her grinning seems coquettish and inviting, she is also taking detours to get into her apartment without X seeing her. So here, X seems a bit like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. He takes Helga's nervous politeness as being purposefully alluring, as if she is playing a playful game with him. She may, in fact, be trying to escape him.
Synthesis:
By looking at the three women to whom X is connected, we get a complex look at X. X seems capable of romantic love with Dagmar, reluctant loyalty (though not faithfulness) to Marianne, and imperialistic brutality toward Helga.
Much of the way in which the reader will interpret X's character then may come from the order that these characters appear and the order that pieces of the narrative is revealed. The very first page of the novel, for me, contained the statute for rape. So from the very beginning, I knew X as a rapist. This characterization clouds all other views of X. Sure, he may wish to salvage his marriage, but he is salvaging it from his own horrific crimes. He may have a compelling romance with the easy to love Dagmar, but he is also a rapist.
Would this characterization change if the order of events had been different? If I knew of his failing marriage first, would I see his clearly exploitative (but not necessarily forced) affair with Helga as a desperate search for something he dies not get at home? If I knew of his love for Dagmar first, would I see his inappropriate dealings with Helga as the flaw of a man who is too easily enamored with pretty things? Or would the rape take over, even if it had come at the end? To what extent, then, is the softening or hardening of my feeling for X determined by the line of the story?
Francine is dying of intestinal cancer and Marianne, as before, refuses to leave her side. Marianne insists that she has cancer as well, but I suspect that her cancer is metaphorical. Dr. Brun doubts her self-diagnosis as well and suggests that Marianne has a nervous condition. In these pages, Marianne also threatens, apparently, to leave X and she goes so far as to leave the apartment building and get into the car, which she cannot drive. She also threatens suicide, locking herself in a bathroom. Interestingly, X does not take her seriously and continues his argument with her, implying that she is lazy (this is narrated and not quoted. X is still technically absent from this narrative). He finally must try to beat the door down and, when she comes out on her own, she has cut her wrists. The injury is not serious. On the last page of today's reading, she sits on the floor and sobs, refusing X's help in standing. The reason she gives for her anger is that he never calls her from work. This is clearly trivial, so she seems to be hiding the fact that she knows what is going on in X's other relationships, though she will not confront him.
Contrasting Marianne's character on these pages, we see Dagmar walking through the winter air in a well fitting dress. Dagmar seems constantly and effortlessly beautiful. So, considering Marianne's characterization as a fading, perhaps even dying woman, it is understandable that X would fall in love with her. Even if it is not honorable, it is forgivable. How can he be expected to resist falling in love with the vivacious Dagmar.
But then there's Helga. Whatever will happen with her is, even before it happens, unforgivable. On page 38, X appears in the garden below Helga's window. It is summer now and her window, depending on the angle from which one is looking at it, appear either black or bright white (a significant dichotomy). Helga finally sticks her head out the window and, seeing X, grins before thrusting her head back into the window and shutting it. Though her grinning seems coquettish and inviting, she is also taking detours to get into her apartment without X seeing her. So here, X seems a bit like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. He takes Helga's nervous politeness as being purposefully alluring, as if she is playing a playful game with him. She may, in fact, be trying to escape him.
Synthesis:
By looking at the three women to whom X is connected, we get a complex look at X. X seems capable of romantic love with Dagmar, reluctant loyalty (though not faithfulness) to Marianne, and imperialistic brutality toward Helga.
Much of the way in which the reader will interpret X's character then may come from the order that these characters appear and the order that pieces of the narrative is revealed. The very first page of the novel, for me, contained the statute for rape. So from the very beginning, I knew X as a rapist. This characterization clouds all other views of X. Sure, he may wish to salvage his marriage, but he is salvaging it from his own horrific crimes. He may have a compelling romance with the easy to love Dagmar, but he is also a rapist.
Would this characterization change if the order of events had been different? If I knew of his failing marriage first, would I see his clearly exploitative (but not necessarily forced) affair with Helga as a desperate search for something he dies not get at home? If I knew of his love for Dagmar first, would I see his inappropriate dealings with Helga as the flaw of a man who is too easily enamored with pretty things? Or would the rape take over, even if it had come at the end? To what extent, then, is the softening or hardening of my feeling for X determined by the line of the story?
Friday, October 7, 2011
Laying Blame/Thematic Serendipity
Today, we learn that X is a person who passes blame, sometimes without even having to do it himself. On page 25, we learn that X is the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the car crash alluded to earlier. He accuses the other driver of being at fault saying that he himself had the right-of-way and that the other driver was driving way too fast. This might be believable (and may even be true) except that this page falls among others that seem to characterize X as a person who is always shifting blame.
On page 24, Helga is being kissed (by X, no doubt) and is "unsure" of whether or not she will allow it or to fight it. But we don't get the impression that this is a decision about whether or not she likes it, but about whether or not she can "defend herself." This suggests that her passivity will allow X to convince himself, or at least argue to others, that whatever happens between he and Helga was consensual--that she was a willing participant, even if she is only a willing "girl." To him, this will not be a rape but an affair.
Even when X is not purposefully trying to shift blame, others seem to take his blame upon themselves. On page 22, X has confessed to Dagmar, who pretends not to suffer. She takes a share of his crime on herself, feeling as though she is somehow an accomplice, perhaps only because she loves him. She tells X that just as she must forgive him for his faults, he also must forgive her for his faults. It seems that X will not ever have to take full blame for what he himself does.
Serendipitous Thematic Continuity
I have been surprised day to day how well pages I read in succession fit together thematically. The pages on day 1 seemed to center around the theme of small dramas occurring within larger historical dramas. Day 3 foreshadowed the consequences that are inevitably to come for X. The pages on day 4 seemed to all suggest a quality of flashback. And on day 5, we get three examples of X shifting blame to others.
The serendipitous thematic arrangement of these pages has made me wonder more than once if I have shuffled the pages well enough. Perhaps, I have failed to mix the pages up as much as I should and I am seeing some of the author's hand in organizing ideas.
But the fact that these themes seem to be divided perfectly according to day (one day, one theme) makes me think that something else is going on. Here is more evidence that my own brain, in its act of reading and interpreting, is providing its own continuity. The act of reading, then, involves taking possibly disparate pieces of information, and finding among them ways to connect them. Of course, if one follows my descriptions, one will probably see why I reasonably interpreted these pages the way I did--why I saw the themes that I say I saw. But how much of this is my own careful editing, my own picking and choosing information that seems to fit together into a coherent story while leaving the dross on the floor to be swept away.
This suggests that the reader has a great deal of agency, even if unknowingly, in interpreting any narrative. If the events of this story don't make any sense to one reader, it has as much to do with the reader's ability or inability to find and invent narrative threads as it does with the author's own virtuosity or clumsiness. Perhaps this is why we tend to see in any narrative what we are looking for. A Marxist will always see power relationships and class structure. A rhetorician will always see devices the author is using to convince the reader to believe or feel a particular way. So (and this is not news to anyone) we bring as much to the table as the author does.
On page 24, Helga is being kissed (by X, no doubt) and is "unsure" of whether or not she will allow it or to fight it. But we don't get the impression that this is a decision about whether or not she likes it, but about whether or not she can "defend herself." This suggests that her passivity will allow X to convince himself, or at least argue to others, that whatever happens between he and Helga was consensual--that she was a willing participant, even if she is only a willing "girl." To him, this will not be a rape but an affair.
Even when X is not purposefully trying to shift blame, others seem to take his blame upon themselves. On page 22, X has confessed to Dagmar, who pretends not to suffer. She takes a share of his crime on herself, feeling as though she is somehow an accomplice, perhaps only because she loves him. She tells X that just as she must forgive him for his faults, he also must forgive her for his faults. It seems that X will not ever have to take full blame for what he himself does.
Serendipitous Thematic Continuity
I have been surprised day to day how well pages I read in succession fit together thematically. The pages on day 1 seemed to center around the theme of small dramas occurring within larger historical dramas. Day 3 foreshadowed the consequences that are inevitably to come for X. The pages on day 4 seemed to all suggest a quality of flashback. And on day 5, we get three examples of X shifting blame to others.
The serendipitous thematic arrangement of these pages has made me wonder more than once if I have shuffled the pages well enough. Perhaps, I have failed to mix the pages up as much as I should and I am seeing some of the author's hand in organizing ideas.
But the fact that these themes seem to be divided perfectly according to day (one day, one theme) makes me think that something else is going on. Here is more evidence that my own brain, in its act of reading and interpreting, is providing its own continuity. The act of reading, then, involves taking possibly disparate pieces of information, and finding among them ways to connect them. Of course, if one follows my descriptions, one will probably see why I reasonably interpreted these pages the way I did--why I saw the themes that I say I saw. But how much of this is my own careful editing, my own picking and choosing information that seems to fit together into a coherent story while leaving the dross on the floor to be swept away.
This suggests that the reader has a great deal of agency, even if unknowingly, in interpreting any narrative. If the events of this story don't make any sense to one reader, it has as much to do with the reader's ability or inability to find and invent narrative threads as it does with the author's own virtuosity or clumsiness. Perhaps this is why we tend to see in any narrative what we are looking for. A Marxist will always see power relationships and class structure. A rhetorician will always see devices the author is using to convince the reader to believe or feel a particular way. So (and this is not news to anyone) we bring as much to the table as the author does.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wicked Foreshadowing, and Histories
So the introductions have been written, the pages have been shuffled, and now the reading begins. Thus begins the book for me:
This was an ominous way to begin the novel. By reading statute without any connection to any act, the reader is left with a sense of foreboding. This must be foreshadowing, obviously. It also suggests an event so large and destructive that it must cloud the whole novel.
On "page 2" Helga sits in her room, which is "full of bric-a-brac" yet " meticulously clean." She is stooped over a letter. We are not told what the letter is about, or even who Helga is, but of course I could not help but connect the scene with the statutes on page one. What is Helga's role? Was she a victim? Does she know of a rape we don't yet know about?
The theme of sexual perversion (not quite the right word) continues on this page, which goes on to describe an odd painting in which a female "saint" waits on a huge bed, apparently for a knight in another part of the painting.
"Page 3" features Marianne laying in her bed where she has spent the last three hours crying. She answers (who or what we do not know) "you know perfectly well what you've done," and later "why did you do it?"
The narrative is unclear as to what she is talking about, or who she is talking to. But here again, I cannot help but to connect this scene with the suggestion of rape given on the first page. For the potential or past rape clouds all. It seems that it will oppressively rule over the narrative. Thus is the importance of the first page!
On "page 4," a German patrol looks for members of the [French?] resistance. Prisoners are led to a truck or, if they fall, shot on sight. Jeanette, who has been silenced previously screams. A roof collapses. A building burns. We know very little of what actually happened in this scene. It is very visceral and fragmented, as if we are seeing only parts of something happening under a swinging light. But we do now know that something bigger is happening. The war is apparently on.
"Page 5" contains a jumbled conversation containing accusations that someone is mistreating his wife. Lucas talks of "confessions"of resistance fighters stored in a nearby drawer. Finally, an anesthetist, a nurse, and a driver speak, suggesting that there has been an accident in which someone has been badly injured.
Synthesis of Day 1:
A scene in which resistance fighters are being defeated and exterminated by German soldiers is intermingled with passages about car accidents and a rape, both personal tragedies to be sure, but no where near the scope of a World War (if that's what's happening here). This intermingling of macro- and micro-histories illuminates how intimate human events are caught up in and often drowned out by larger historical events. We humans live our lives, we grow up, we love, and we suffer under the sweeping blindness of history. And though it is we, as a people, who make history, as individuals our lives and all of their events are small and unnoticeable. We are both a part of history, and an uninvited guest in it.
Article 332: The crime of rape shall be punishable by ten to twenty years. . .This "first" page goes on to include Article 333, which deals with suspects in close and unequal relationships with the victims (people in authority, master/servant relationships, ministers, older relatives). The page concludes with a caveat that "the professor of criminal law" acknowledges difficulty in distinguishing what constitutes a use of force in committing the act.
This was an ominous way to begin the novel. By reading statute without any connection to any act, the reader is left with a sense of foreboding. This must be foreshadowing, obviously. It also suggests an event so large and destructive that it must cloud the whole novel.
On "page 2" Helga sits in her room, which is "full of bric-a-brac" yet " meticulously clean." She is stooped over a letter. We are not told what the letter is about, or even who Helga is, but of course I could not help but connect the scene with the statutes on page one. What is Helga's role? Was she a victim? Does she know of a rape we don't yet know about?
The theme of sexual perversion (not quite the right word) continues on this page, which goes on to describe an odd painting in which a female "saint" waits on a huge bed, apparently for a knight in another part of the painting.
"Page 3" features Marianne laying in her bed where she has spent the last three hours crying. She answers (who or what we do not know) "you know perfectly well what you've done," and later "why did you do it?"
The narrative is unclear as to what she is talking about, or who she is talking to. But here again, I cannot help but to connect this scene with the suggestion of rape given on the first page. For the potential or past rape clouds all. It seems that it will oppressively rule over the narrative. Thus is the importance of the first page!
On "page 4," a German patrol looks for members of the [French?] resistance. Prisoners are led to a truck or, if they fall, shot on sight. Jeanette, who has been silenced previously screams. A roof collapses. A building burns. We know very little of what actually happened in this scene. It is very visceral and fragmented, as if we are seeing only parts of something happening under a swinging light. But we do now know that something bigger is happening. The war is apparently on.
"Page 5" contains a jumbled conversation containing accusations that someone is mistreating his wife. Lucas talks of "confessions"of resistance fighters stored in a nearby drawer. Finally, an anesthetist, a nurse, and a driver speak, suggesting that there has been an accident in which someone has been badly injured.
Synthesis of Day 1:
A scene in which resistance fighters are being defeated and exterminated by German soldiers is intermingled with passages about car accidents and a rape, both personal tragedies to be sure, but no where near the scope of a World War (if that's what's happening here). This intermingling of macro- and micro-histories illuminates how intimate human events are caught up in and often drowned out by larger historical events. We humans live our lives, we grow up, we love, and we suffer under the sweeping blindness of history. And though it is we, as a people, who make history, as individuals our lives and all of their events are small and unnoticeable. We are both a part of history, and an uninvited guest in it.
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