(Final Paper) Literary Trauma: The Unifying Force for the Armenian Diaspora

Andzhela Keshishyan

Dr. Steven Wexler

English 638

May 8, 2010

Literary Trauma: The Unifying Force for the Armenian Diaspora

The representation of trauma in literature has prompted a great deal of attention and an increasingly wide range of study and scholarship. “To be traumatized,” scholar Cathy Caruth asserts, “is precisely to be possessed by an image or event” (4). Trauma can range from witnessing a violent act or being a victim of one. In terms of mass trauma, the Holocaust continues to be a pervasive area of research. The Armenian Genocide of 1915, however, is much less studied. It has “been dubbed the first modern genocide,” yet the research surrounding this horrific moment in history only expanded when interest began to grow in Near Eastern Studies in the past few decades (Bloxham 94). Taking the historical context into consideration, the literary representation of this catastrophic event is significant to the theory of trauma. It is crucial to note that explicit references to the Genocide have become more frequent in Armenian-American literature in the past two decades. Most of the survivors presented in Armenian-American texts, such as the main character in Nancy Kricorian’s Zabelle, are numb to their past. They have repressed their tragic memories somewhere in the unconscious; however, since the effects of the genocide harbor great psychological consequences, their repression is only temporary and eventually returns to haunt their dreams. Freud has termed this delayed effect of a trauma, “latency.”

In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Cathy Caruth explains, “in the term ‘latency,’ the period during which the effects of the experience are not apparent, Freud seems to describe the trauma as the successive movement from an event to its repression to its return” (7). Many Genocide survivors illustrate the theory of “latency” in their reaction and response to their past. In her novel, Nancy Kricorian depicts such a character. Zabelle is very young when the Genocide takes place. Though she is one of the few lucky ones who survived due to personal strength and strings of good luck, she was nonetheless exposed to a great deal of physical and emotional trauma. She witnessed the deaths of many family members, including her mother, who slowly died of starvation in front of the young girl’s eyes. Years later, Zabelle’s marriage is arranged to an older Armenian man in America, where she begins a new and very different life. Living under the same roof in an unfamiliar country with her jealous mother-in-law and new husband, Zabelle faces many obstacles as an Armenian woman in a patriarchal culture. Nonetheless, she bravely assumes the role and raises 3 children. Her past does not interfere with her everyday life, and “the effects of the experience are not apparent” (Caruth 8). It is only in her old age that Zabelle’s repressed tragedy unfolds as she hears voices from her past and imagines the Turks coming to harm her. Thus, Zabelle embodies Freud’s analysis of the belated effects of a trauma.

Zabelle is one of many Armenian-American works centered around the themes of loss, memory, and identity. In writing this novel, Kricorian shares more than just the story of one person. The narrative of Zabelle’s experiences transcends the individual realm and acts as a unifying force for the Armenian diaspora spread throughout the world. In many ways, Zabelle is a “trauma novel,” which “refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or intense fear on individual or collective levels (Balaev). In this paper, I will argue that the representation of trauma in Armenian-American literature, such as Kricorian’s portrayal of the Genocide’s enduring psychological impact on Zabelle, serves to coalesce the Armenian Diaspora’s sense of national identity. Therefore, literary depictions of this particular trauma, which has yet to be acknowledged as a Genocide by its perpetrators, serves a greater purpose for a dispersed population. Since the producers, artists, and authors who reference the Genocide are decades removed from the survivors of the tribulation, they have the necessary detachment to explore their ancestors’ past. Because the later generations began to voice their hitherto silent history, I argue that they also exemplify, by extension, Freud’s theory of latency. Almost a century later, the memories of the past are only becoming more frequent. Thus, as Caruth explains, “the traumatized […] carry an impossible history within them, or they become themselves the symptoms of a history that they cannot entirely possess” (Caruth 5). To adequately impress upon readers the importance of this history to the current Armenian diaspora, it is necessary to give a brief background of the events that splintered the Armenian nation and its people almost a century ago.

Like the Jewish population was targeted in the Holocaust, the Armenians faced mass slaughters, deportations, and exterminations by the Turkish government in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Under the cover of World War One, the Ottomans systematically expunged thousands and thousands of Armenians from their ancestral lands “as the world watched almost in silence” (Kurkchiyan and Herzig 7). Approximately 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered within a few months. This horrific moment left an indelible mark on Armenian history and consciousness and laid the foundations for the radical shift that the Armenian national identity was to undergo during the twentieth century. Many survivors immigrated to foreign lands where they began new lives and, eventually, assimilated into these host cultures. In their struggles to fit into their new surroundings, to raise healthy children, and to maintain somewhat of their Armenianness, many of these survivors did not speak of their tragic past and often repressed it completely in their unconscious. However, witnessing and experiencing such unthinkable horrors left a dark shadow in their hearts, and haunted them for the rest of their lives, even in their dreams. In one of the first personal accounts of the Genocide, Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian, a young girl who miraculously survived through countless brutal acts, says, “When I see [the Turks and Kurds who raped and tortured young girls] in my dreams now I scream, so even though I am safe in America, my nights are not peaceful” (Slide 125).

Kricorian’s novel begins with a description of the massacre’s belated effects on the now elderly, Zabelle, who has repressed the horrors she witnessed as a child throughout her entire adult life. These memories have not disappeared, but, in her old age, begin to resurface in the form of nightmares. At night, “long shadows and disembodied voices, speaking Armenian and Turkish, circled Zabelle’s bed. She heard fragments of long-forgotten songs. The faces of her mother, father, brother, grandparents, aunts and uncles come swimming up at her like fish surfacing from the bottom of a pond” (Kricorian 6). For most of her life, Zabelle has kept these memories to herself, hiding them in order to live a normal life, but “despite the human capacity to survive and adapt, traumatic experiences can alter people’s psychological, biological, and social equilibrium…” (van der Kolk and McFarlane 488). Zabelle seems to be suffering from posttraumatic syndrome, which “is the result of a failure of time to heal all wounds” (491). Since time cannot mitigate such deeply embedded torment, repression is replaced by latency, and a response to the event eventually materializes.

Zabelle, along with many other genocide survivors, does not speak about her past even with her close family members. She says, “That was how it was with us. We never spoke about those times, but they were like rotting animals behind the walls of our home” (Kricorian 223-4). This theme of “silent survivor” runs through various other works by Armenian-American authors. In David Kherdian’s novel, The Road from Home, for instance, the main character, another genocide survivor, claims, “we never talked about the massacres. It was as if we had forgotten about our past troubles, but often they would resurface in different ways” (130). The narrator admits that although they did not explicitly discuss their tragic experiences, they were nonetheless a part of their lives.

These repressed memories often manifest in the form of traumatic dreams. Such dreams, however, differ from most of Freud’s dream analyses, which usually focus on repressed desires. While studying his patients, “Freud realized that the unconscious often expresses itself in the form of dreams, since at night, during sleep, the vigilance of the repressive ego in regard to unconscious desire is stilled” (Rivkin and Ryan 390). Cathy Caruth explains that “the returning traumatic dream startles Freud because it cannot be understood in terms of any wish or unconscious meaning, but is, purely and inexplicably, the literal return of the event against the will of the one it inhabits” (5). In their article, “The Black Hole of Trauma,” Bessel A. van der Kolk and Alexander C. McFarlane state that “many survivors seem to be able to transcend their trauma temporarily and harness their pain in acts of sublimated creation; for example, the writers and Holocaust survivors Jerzy Kosinski and Primo Levi seem to have done this, only to succumb to the despair of their memories in the end” (487). Hence, repression is temporary since, as the aforementioned statement illustrates, survivors ultimately submit to their grief, despite any efforts to do otherwise.

In his memoir, Black Dog of Fate, Peter Balakian comes to see his “grandmother’s numbed response to the Armenian Genocide as a necessary way of survival” (Balakian 299). Theorist Michelle Balaev reminds us, however, that “the ‘unspeakability’ of trauma claimed by so many literary critics today can be understood less as an epistemological conundrum or neurobiological fact, but more as an outcome of cultural values and ideologies.” This observation applies to the Armenian culture since the “silent survivor” is such a common phenomenon in post-genocide communities, and so frequently depicted in contemporary Armenian-American “trauma novels.” In another novel by Nancy Kricorian, Dreams of Bread and Fire, the main character, Ani, explains that the genocide was a “forbidden topic” in her house, and goes on to say that she always “had the idea that [talking about it] would kill [her] grandmother” (146-7). Even though the massacres had never been explained to Ani, she “knew from bits of conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard between her mother and grandfather and occasional vague references from her grandmother that in the old country the Turks had murdered lots of Armenians and forced even more to leave their homes. But no one was supposed to talk about the Deportations, especially not in front of [Ani’s] Grandma” (148).

Since survivors suppressed their pain rather than vocalize the memories they were tormented by, contemporary trauma novels serve as a medium in which their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can finally foreground their nation’s traumatic past. Such novels also provide survivors’ descendents, especially those whose families fled from Ottoman Armenia, a chance to explore their ethnic origins and current “hyphenated” identities. Most third and fourth generation Diasporan Armenians learned about their past through the references to the Genocide in various cultural productions, such as literature. Third-generation Armenian-American author and poet, Peter Balakian, suggests that such references help those who are far removed from the events of 1915 orient Armenia's tragic history within their own lives today. He writes, “The journey into history, into the Armenian Genocide, was for me inseparable from poetry. Poetry was part of the journey and the excavation” (146). In “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory,” Michelle Balaev writes, “A central claim of contemporary literary trauma theory asserts that trauma creates a speechless fright that divides or destroys identity. This serves as the basis for a larger argument that suggests identity is formed by the intergenerational transmission of trauma.” Balaev argues that when stories of one generation are transmitted to another through various texts, private trauma may become “transhistorical trauma” and thus “define contemporary individual identity, as well as racial or cultural identity.” Transhistorical trauma makes the relationship between an individual and the group parallel, and “indicates that a massive trauma experienced by a group in the historical past can be experienced by an individual living centuries later who shares a similar attribute of the historical group, such as sharing the same race, religion, nationality, or gender due to the timeless, repetitious, and infectious characteristics of traumatic experience and memory” (Balaev). As such, genocide survivors’ painful experiences that are presented in works by Kricorian and other Armenian-American authors transcend the personal realm of these individuals and become a shared experience. Today, many Armenian-Americans use artistic mediums to learn about the trauma experienced by the genocide victims and, as a result, experience the history themselves.

There are many factors that contribute to the continued references and subsequent themes of loss, grief, sorrow, and trauma in Armenian-American literature. One of the most significant of these is the Turkish Government’s continued denial that a Genocide ever took place. Gerard Libaridian writes, “The Genocide, its exploitation, and its denial by Turkey paralyzed the collective psyche of the Armenian people” (2). The paralyzing horrors that most victims faced rendered them incapable of speaking about their experiences. Instead, they stored their memories deep within themselves, making it invisible to the external world. Consequently, their repression silenced the collective community for years. Still, the effects of the trauma did not disappear. Inevitably, the victims’ descendents, after learning more about their history, felt the unique responsibility to revive a lost segment of their national past. In Children of Armenia, Michael Bobelian writes, “having inherited a sound economic and communal foundation from the survivors who spent their lives rebuilding, [the younger generation] had the luxury to mount a political campaign. The experience of the Genocide manifested differently in these younger generations” (139). Repression was one of the most frequent psychological defenses used to unconsciously conceal the indelible pain that such death and devastation inflicted on victims; however, their offspring, who did not witness the horrors firsthand, “had the necessary detachment to re-awaken this forgotten episode of history (139). Thus, “the psychological scars of the genocide endured” in subsequent generations (139). Since the effects of the trauma are manifested and exhibited after a long period of silence, this, too, is a form of latency.

Most grandchildren of survivors, upon learning about their history in various forms of discourse, somehow felt as if they themselves experienced the horrors. In “The Response of Women to Crisis: From Mourning to Personal Identity,” Shaké Topalian writes that the “children and grandchildren of survivors have carried [their] parents’ unprocessed projection of trauma” (48). Consequently, most of them express their reactions to the event in multiple ways and different forms. For some, like Nancy Kricorian, this occurs in the act of writing a novel based on her cultural and historical past, using the Armenian Genocide as a symbol for a diasporic community. Kricorian, like many of her fellow Armenian-American novelists, plays a role in the unconscious unification of a fragmented identity. As Balaev states, “The author who situates traumatic experience in relation to a particular place indicates that trauma is understood as a culturally specific event, in which its meaning remains contingent on factors such as a historically specific moment.” The Armenian Genocide has indeed “become a collective symbol and reorganizes the discourse pertinent to Armenian collective identity” (Shirinian 20).

Since “the story of the Genocide has now become deeply entrenched in Armenian collective memory,” it is undeniably a cohesive force in the lives of many diasporans (Miller 161). Because they are “divided by geography and assimilation, Armenians [rely] upon their common tragic past” to bring them together (Bobelian 232). This remembrance of the genocide stands as a unifying theme of continued identification with the Armenian nation among the diaspora. In his essay titled “Denial and Free Speech: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,” Henry C. Theriault maintains, “Certainly, Armenian identity depends on much more than the genocide and its continuing aftermath, but the genocide is […] a central part of modern Armenian history and as such an essential part of contemporary Armenian identity” (247). References to the Genocide in literature and other mediums of expression stand "as a monument to the Armenian aspiration of revived nationhood” as they link history to various forms of public discourse (Peroomian 177). This places “the Armenian Genocide within the ongoing saga of a living people” to try to reconcile the tragedy and “ensure national survival and evolution” (177-8).

Novels like Nancy Kricorian’s Zabelle, function to unify a scattered people by referencing their common past, even if this may not be the authors’ primary intent. In telling Zabelle’s story of repression and eventual confrontation with tragedy, Kricorian highlights the belated effects of a trauma. Furthermore, the fact that she has written Zabelle decades after the actual event, while giving voice to the victims after years of silence, also validates the notion of latency in the Armenian-American diasporic community. Cathy Caruth insists that “the historical power of the trauma is […] that it is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all. And it is this inherent latency of the event that paradoxically explains the peculiar, temporal structure, the belatedness of historical experience. [If] the traumatic event is not experienced as it occurs, [then] it is fully evident only in connection with another place, and in another time” (8). Thus, repression, in trauma, is replaced by latency. For the current Armenian Diaspora, the contemporary responses to a historical tragedy stand a monument for the figurative unification of a fragmented people.




Works Cited

Balaev, Michelle. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic 41.2 (June 2008): 149-66. ProQuest. Web. 12 February 2010.

Balakian, Peter. Black Dog of Fate. New York: Basic Books, 2009. Print.

Bloxham, Donald. “Determinants of the Armenian Genocide.” Looking Backward, Moving Forward. Ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2003. 23-50.Print.

Bobelian, Michael. Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Print.

Kherdian, David. The Road from Home. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1979. Print.

Kricorian, Nancy. Dreams of Bread and Fire. New York: Grove Press, 2003. Print.

---. Zabelle. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Print.

Kurkchiyan, Marina and Edmund Herzig, eds. “Introduction: Armenia and the Armenians.” The Armenians A Handbook (Caucasus World. Peoples of the Caucasus). New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005: 1-22. Print.

Libaridian, Gerard J. Armenia at the Crossroads: Democracy and Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era. Massachusetts: Blue Crane Books, 1991. Print.

Miller, Donald E., and Lorna Touryan Miller. Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide. Berkely: University of California Press, 1993. Print.

Peroomian, Rubina. “New Directions in Literary Responses to the Armenian Genocide.”
Looking Backward, Moving Forward. Ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2003. 157-180. Print.

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. Introduction. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 389-97. Print.

Shirinian, Lorne. Armenian-North American Literature: A Critical Introduction Genocide, Diaspora, and Symbols. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Print.

Slide, Anthony, ed. Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian. Maryland:Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1997. Print.

Theriault, Henry C. “Denial and Free Speech: The Case of the Armenian Genocide.” Looking Backward, Moving Forward. Ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2003. 231-62. Print.

Topalian, Shaké. “The Response of Women to Crisis: From Collective Mourning to Personal Identity.” Voices of Armenian Women. Ed. Barbara Mergeuria and Joy Renjilian-Burgy.Belmont, Massachusetts: AIWA Press, 2000. 37-48. Print.

van der Kolk, Bessel A. and Alexander C. McFarlane. “The Black Hole of Trauma.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 487-505. Print.

The Elephant Man/The Elegant Man

"I am not an animal! I am a human being!" -- John Merrick



On Wednesday night I watched The Elephant Man for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to expect – the title indicated it somewhat, and I wasn’t looking forward to watching a film about a man suffering from elephantiasis. Nonetheless, being the studious and nerdy student that I am, I found the film online, and pressed “play,” kind of annoyed at the whole thing. But, within the first 10 minutes, I found myself completely taken by the story…I think I may have used about 2 boxes of tissue paper. In retrospect, I think my initial reaction of not wanting to see a film about a man with elephantiasis is ironically fitting with its theme of people making judgments and assumptions. In other words, this was a good reminder not to judge a book by its cover.

Now that a day has passed and I have stopped weeping like a 5-year-old, I think I can begin to associate some theories to this amazing film. There is much to discuss: identity, the interpretation of dreams, Bakhtin’s “carnival,” the mirror stage, capitalism…where does one begin?!

Since there is an incredibly large pool of potential ideas to explore, I will mainly focus on Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Carnival” in relation to the film. “Carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter,” but what about when this laughter is at the expense of another human being? (Bakhtin 686). John Merrick, born Joseph Carey Merrick, tells the story of a young man suffering from a medical condition which completely deformed his physical appearance. He is covered with disfiguring tumors all over his body, including his head. Because of this “abnormal” appearance, Merrick spent his life being mocked, ridiculed, and laughed at. As if this isn’t enough humiliation, he was also displayed as a “freak” in the circus, where people paid money just to point and laugh at Merrick’s pain. Bakhtin writes, “laugher degrades and materializes…To degrade is to bury, to sow, and to kill simultaneously”(688).

But laugher isn’t the only response Merrick receives. Upon seeing him for the first time, many people scream in horror. This adds to the innumerable degradation Merrick faces because of his incurable fate. Each look of disgust and every sound of inhumane laugher kills Merrick’s soul. This type of humiliation “digs a bodily grave,” (688).




Works Cited:
Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Rabelais and His World." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 686-92. Print.

Final Paper -- The Start (DRAFT!)

In her novel Zabelle, Nancy Kricorian depicts a character who represses her tragic past. Zabelle is very young when the Armenian Genocide takes place; she witnesses the deaths of members of her family, even seeing her mother slowly die of starvation in front of her eyes. Zabelle represents the few lucky ones who were able to survive because of personal strength and strings of good luck. Years later, Zabelle’s marriage is arranged to an older Armenian man in America, where she begins a new and very different life. Living under the same roof in a new country with her jealous mother-in-law and new husband, Zabelle faces many obstacles as an Armenian woman in a patriarchal culture. Nonetheless, she bravely assumes the role and raises 3 children. At times, her tragic past comes back to haunt her in her sleep, but it is not talked about. It does not interfere with everyday life, and “the effects of the experience are not apparent” (Caruth 8). It is only in her old age that Zabelle’s repressed tragedy unfolds as she hears voices from her past and imagines the Turks coming to harm her. Thus, Zabelle embodies Freud’s analysis of belated effects of a trauma, which he terms “latency.”

Zabelle is one of many Armenian-American works centered around the theme of loss, memory, and identity. In writing this novel, Nancy Kricorian shares more than just the story of Zabelle, for her story transcends the individual experience and acts as a unifying force for the Armenian diaspora spread throughout the world. In many ways, Zabelle is a “trauma novel,” which “refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or intense fear on individual or collective levels (Balaev). In this paper, I will argue that the representation of trauma in Armenian-American literature, such as the Genocide in Nancy Kricorian’s Zabelle, serves to coalesce the Armenian diaspora’s sense of national identity. Therefore, this particular trauma, which has yet to be acknowledged as such by its perpetrators, serves a greater purpose for a dispersed population. Literary trauma, then, becomes a medium in which the Armenian community’s collective tragedy stands as a beacon to their national identity.

The First thing you have to learn is how to be quiet

“Even now China wraps double binds around my feet” (Kingston 48).

It is no coincidence that the first line of The Woman Warrior reads, “You must not tell anyone” (3). With this, the theme of female silencing arises. The narrator’s mother tells her that she must not tell anyone the story of her aunt, who had an illegitimate baby and was disowned by the family as a result. “…it is as if she had never been born,” her mother tells her (3). Her mother continues, “Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us.” You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (5). The story of the aunt, then, is used as a warning. It is a warning for many things: not to have sex, not to humiliate the family, and perhaps most importantly, to obey the unwritten rules written for women in Chinese culture.

One of these rules is to obey (men) and stay quiet. Silence is a major theme in the book, and the narrator is taught that it is an important part of being a Chinese girl. She realizes that the demand to keep her aunt’s story quiet is not just for the sake of her family’s reputation, but, she says, there is more to this silence” they want me to participate in their punishment. And I have” (16).
The punishment has been growing up haunted by this story – this story has trapped her, keeping her boxed in the restrictions placed upon her by her culture. She admits, “My aunt haunts me – her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her” (16). Even as an adult, she cannot escape the binding of her culture. It is a part of her, keeping her enclosed in specific expectations.

Works Cited:
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Vintage International, 1976. Print.

The Deconstruction of Femininity in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"

In his famous essay, “The Subjection of Women,” John Stuart Mill argues that the “nature of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others” (128). Femininity is a result of social constructions and fixed roles; this is especially clear in most 19th century Victorian poetry and prose. While reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," for another course, thoughts about the construction and deconstruction of femininity came to mind. While the poem is often read as a response to and support of the anti-slavery movement of the time, it is also a response to female subjection. What differentiates this poem from other feminist works is the fact that it presents oppression in threefold: the speaker is not just repressed because she is female, but she is also a black slave. Hence, Barrett Browning offers a space for the discussion of femininity in terms of class, race, and sex. The most significant issue in terms of femininity, however, is the speaker’s role as a mother.

As mothers, women are seen as “bearers of value” (Irigaray 802). A mother’s role is to instill values into future generations; to do so, they must reinforce customary traditions, and in this case, white supremacy and patriarchal dominance, by raising their children to maintain social order. In fact, her responsibility “is to maintain the social order without intervening” (807). In other words, she is to raise her children to carry on the traditional customs of the culture. By ingraining these suppressing notions into their children, the mother is involved in continuing the cyclical process of unfair class order and treatment. The subjection of women is common during the time the poem was written, so the departure from this universal custom “quite naturally appears unnatural” (Mill 125). Nevertheless, the speaker in the poem is able to depart from this traditional concept of motherhood in the most radical way possible: infanticide. In this case, however, killing her child is not necessarily seen as “unnatural;” rather, it is an empowering act since it represents the destruction of fixed roles and female repression. The speaker’s violent act in killing the baby she had by her white master illustrates Barrett Browning’s attempt at deconstructing femininity. By strangling her baby, the speaker is expressing her frustration with her role as a female slave, and in this violent act, she is able to free herself from the constraints placed upon her by a world dominated by white males.

In many ways, the speaker’s story relates to the story of Lilith in Hebrew mythology. “Created not from Adam’s rib but, like him, from the dust, Lilith was Adam’s first wife,” according to “apocryphal Jewish lore. Because she considered herself his equal, she objected to lying beneath him, so that when he tried to force her submission, she became enraged” (Gilbert and Gubar 823). In a similar vain, the speaker in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” becomes enraged at the thought of submissively continuing to live as a subordinate member of society. The similarities between Lilith and the speaker do not end at their refusal to carry on as lesser beings among society. Lilith “flew away to the edge of the Red Sea to reside with demons,” and “Threatened by God’s angelic emissaries, told that she must return or daily lose a hundred of her demon children to death, Lilith preferred punishment to patriarchal marriage” (823). She then “took revenge against both God and Adam by injuring babies” (823). Aside from the obvious connection of injuring and killing their babies, Lilith and the speaker in the poem both represent “the price women have been told they must pay for attempting to define themselves” (823). In both of these instances, the price involves killing their own children.

In “The Madwoman in the Attic,” critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar classify Lilith as the “monster-woman” since she is far removed from the “angel in the house” phenomenon. Although the speaker in the poem could certainly be classified as the “monster-woman” because she kills her child, she differs from Lilith in the sense that the killing of her own child does not bring her more suffering. I maintain that the speaker’s situation differs from that of women who do not experience oppression in several different contexts. Unlike the speaker, Lilith was not included in racial minority, nor was she a slave. Hence, when Gilbert and Gubar claim that the killing of their own children brings “more suffering” to women, it does not necessarily ring true for the speaker in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” For the speaker, the killing of her child, to some degree, actually offers freedom.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is able to deconstruct the concept of femininity in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” by presenting a character who escapes perhaps the most oppressing notion of the female role: motherhood. In fact, she does so by killing her own baby, an act far removed from the traditional concept of the female. This deconstruction is made possible because the infanticide is performed by a woman who experiences the restraints of femininity in three ways: race, class, and of course, sex. Since her oppression is multiplied, this violent act is not deemed as demonic; instead, it is an empowering move aimed to escape the suppressing role of her life as a black female slave.



Works Cited
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” The Norton
Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age. 8th ed. Ed. Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 1085-92. Print.


Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” Rivkin and Ryan 812-26.

Irigaray, Luce. “Women on the Market.” Rivkin and Ryan 799-812.

Mill, John Stuart. “The Subjection of Women.” Victorian Prose: An Anthology. Ed. Rosemary J. Mundhenk and LuAnn McCracken Fletcher. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 121-31. Print.

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.

The Angel in the Attic; The Madwoman in the House

“…the monster-woman, threatening to replace her angelic sister, embodies intransigent female autonomy” (Gilbert and Gubar 819)

How does one begin a discussion about something as complex as feminism? How about a controversial video by Madonna?



While there are many issues to explore in this video, I will focus on the relationship between the old lady and Madonna and the ambiguous crash in the final scene.

First, I’d like to point out that there are only 3 women portrayed in this video: the old lady, Madonna, and the waitress. Next to the old lady and the chubby waitress, Madonna becomes the most beautiful character in the video. This is significant because in this context, she represents the ideals of beauty in popular culture. Throughout each scene, she violently deconstructs all the notions that have repressed her as a female. She is in effect becoming the antithesis of the “angel in the house.”

To understand the significance of the old lady in the video, it is important to consider what she represents. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that the old lady is solely dependent on Madonna. She is only there for the ride; thus, she represents the traditional notion of the female as the “angel in the house.” In 1865 John Ruskin affirmed that the “woman’s power is not for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet orderings of domesticity” (816). Clearly, then, Madonna takes on the opposite role, destroying these oppressing ideas one at a time. To escape or protest suppression, “Women must kill the aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been ‘killed’” (812). So why does Madonna bring this poor old lady for this violent ride?

I argue that the old lady’s participation (albeit not actively) is crucial since she is the representation of female oppression. Madonna wants, perhaps even needs her to witness this destruction. After she crashes into the car with the 3 men, Madonna even takes a moment to make sure the old lady’s glasses are securely placed over her eyes, clearly illustrating the importance for the old lady to see what is happening. She does not want her to be blinded by a patriarchal society anymore.

Madonna’s aggressive and brutal behavior places her in the “monster-woman” category. If the traditional representation of the ideal woman has been the “angel in the house,” then “the mysterious power of the character who refuses to stay in her textually ordained ‘place’ [generates] a story that ‘gets away’” from the creators (819). In this video, Madonna is this mysterious power. The most vital part of this is that she places herself in that position; she is able to escape the “angel in the house” phenomenon by stepping out of the predictable, expected, and traditional role of the passive female.

Now, let’s consider the ambiguous ending of the video. I will argue that there are at least two different ways to analyze the ending. One is to argue that the deadly crash at the end implies the death of the “monster-woman.” Some people may say that this rebellious new role for woman is unattainable, and that the crash represents the impossibility for women to escape their traditional roles.

Another analysis, and one that I will argue is more powerful, is that the deadly crash is the final act of empowerment for Madonna. It is not clear whether Madonna or the old lady die, but I wonder whether that’s important, anyway. The key point here is that Madonna was able to give this traditionally repressed old lady (who represents the everywoman) her last hurrah. In fact, she assists in her death by euthanasia.

The old woman represents someone who is considered useless in our society and Madonna helps her end her life. Because Madonna is in the car herself, however, this act is subversive. Does this suggest that Madonna, the “monster-woman,” and the old lady, “the angel in the house,” are in fact the same person? Are they simply different versions of the same self?

Finally, I want to discuss the actual crash itself. It is especially important to note how the car crashes. The car crashes into a pole – why is this important? The pole could be viewed as a phallic symbol; in this case, then, Madonna actively destroys the symbol of patriarchy. Hence, the crash is not the death of female empowerment, but the beginning of it.

Works Cited:
Gilbert, Sanda and Susan Gubar. "The Madwoman in the Attic." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
812-25. Print.

The American (Dystopian) Dream

“No matter how poor a man was, or how much he suffered, he could never be really unhappy while he knew of that future; even if he did not live to see it himself, his children would..." (Sinclair 357)

Of all the themes, symbols, and ideologies presented in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the one that stuck out most to me was “The American Dream.” Maybe it’s because I, too, come from a family of immigrants who came to the United States with a few dollars and big dreams; or maybe it's because of all the success stories I’ve heard, and all the failures too. Perhaps still it is because this dream never seems to die in America. For people living in developing countries around the world, America is a symbol of freedom and opportunity, but we’ve all heard this before. Jurgis’ family came to America in the hopes of attaining this dream only to realize that it is merely an illusion – a utopia created in the minds of the optimists, hoping for something better in the world. For the less affluent population, the American dream is more often than not, merely a distant and unattainable fantasy.

It’s funny (not “haha” funny, but funny in the ironic sense) that the problems with capitalism presented in this book are still very much relevant and problematic today as they were in 1906, when the book was published. America remains a capitalistic nation, divided by class, where the rich remain rich and the poor remain poor. Of course, there are some “rags to riches” success stories, but for most, the American Dream will always remain a dream. Why is this? I think it is safe to assume that economic statuses in this country are cyclical, meaning they replicate generation after generation. If grandpa was rich, then Johnny III will probably be wealthy too. “One major assumption of Marxists is that culture…functions to reproduce the class structure of society,” and “culture,” I maintain, includes the work force (Rivkin, Ryan 644). This is clear in the labor conditions presented in The Jungle, where Jurgis and his family (who represent the “working class”) are faced with greedy bosses and corrupt politicians. How interestingly relevant that seems to politics in 2010.

The most disturbing part in all of this is the fact that the politicians, businessmen, or the otherwise “wealthy” population, use the working class only to get wealthier themselves. They do this by simple manipulation. A good example of this in the book is the advertisements to buy property: “Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for less than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied by happy families” (Sinclair 51). Manipulating the working class by reinforcing the notion of the American Dream is a strategy that’s still being used today and it is not always that people realize “It [is] all robbery, for a poor man” (55).

Works Cited:

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. "Introduction: Starting with Zero." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. 643-46. Print.

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003. Print.