Transformation of Rage. Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone
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Название: Transformation of Rage

Автор: Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 9780814743201

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СКАЧАТЬ it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get rid of it, and go home again. … I longed so to go back again." Hetty’s already weak sense of self deteriorates further when she leaves Hayslope, the only source of her identity and values. Her primary thought, when she thinks of murdering her child, is to "go home again" (498). In her confusion, however, "by burying the child, but not completely, Hetty tries both to kill it and to let it live" (Harris 187). Hetty is ambivalent, and rather than actively killing the baby, she abandons it in the woods. Thus the murder takes the form of passive aggression.

      The characterization of Arthur, whom Harris calls Eliot’s "first extensive study of unconscious motivation" ("Misuse" 45), reveals that his inadequate self-development, although less severe than Hetty's, sets him up for his destructive interaction with her. While Arthur feels his future position in Hayslope is secure, his background has some parallels with Hetty's. For one thing, he has no parents. His mother has died only three months after his christening, and his father is missing. All we know about his father is that Arthur’s godmother, Mrs. Irwine, has a low opinion of him (108), just as Hetty’s relatives have a low opinion of her father. Like Hetty, Arthur’s lack of adequate parent figures creates his ongoing need for the firm support that would enable him to complete the process of his self-structuralization.

      Just as Hetty is treated with indifference by her grandfather, so Arthur feels at times "positively hate[d]" by his (302). He also feels controlled by him. As he says to Mr. Irwine, "My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives" (215). In the same conversation Irwine tells him that his mother (Mrs. Irwine) has prophesied that Arthur’s "lady-love will rule [him] as the moon rules the tides" (216). Arthur replies after a narrative interlude, "A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman" (216). Arthur’s sense of being controlled is easily transferable to other relationships; he is susceptible to "woman’s witchery." Furthermore, like Hetty, his lack of family support has resulted in his failure to internalize firm values. Eliot comments that Arthur "lived a great deal in other people’s opinions and feelings concerning himself" (216). As Harris says, Arthur "depends on the approbation of others rather than an inner sense of self [and has] a moral sense based mainly on shame" ("Misuse" 53, 54). He shares to a lesser degree Hetty’s need for self-completion, yet also like Hetty, chooses a self-defeating relationship.

      Arthur is described as having a "loving nature," but Eliot’s irony becomes clear in the subsequent description of his treatment of the "old gardener." When Arthur was seven, he impulsively kicked over the old man’s pitcher of broth. Finally realizing that it was the man’s dinner, he "took his favorite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits" (356).

      Although Arthur is too concerned about other people’s opinions to be openly aggressive, he evidences a pattern of behaving aggressively and then seeking atonement by giving up something he possesses. In the incident with the old gardener Arthur takes out his aggression on someone whose social status is beneath his own. His relationship with Hetty follows the same pattern: it is an assertion of his power over the lower classes. The sequence of events that occurs at the time just before Arthur becomes involved with Hetty suggests that although his actions with Hetty appear to be impulsive, they are actually a reaction to his sense of being controlled by his grandfather. Arthur is disgruntled because "there was no having his own way in the stables; everything was managed in the stingiest fashion" (172). Then he learns that his horse is lame and feels "thoroughly disappointed and annoyed" (173). He goes out for a ride on the other horse that is available to him, and by the time he returns is unable to resist breaking his resolution not to see Hetty. In his dressing room after lunch, he feels that "the desire to see [her] had rushed back like an ill-stemmed current." He rationalizes that he will "amuse himself" by seeing Hetty that day "and get rid of the whole thing from his mind." Then he goes to see Hetty in the wood (174-75).

      The affair is not simply a matter of Arthur’s failure to recognize his own frustrated sex drive, which Harris asserts has been "sublimated" into "sentimental musing over Hetty" ("Misuse" 45). Sexual fantasy and behavior can also serve as a defense, for example, against "hostile aggression" (Coen 895). Arthur, feeling controlled and therefore angry at his grandfather, expresses his frustration and need for power in the involvement with Hetty. Yet he also feels he is under her power, or "witchery." As often as he determines to do so, he is not able to end the affair and separate himself from Hetty, who is as much an extension of his fantasies as he is of hers. Just as Hetty’s fantasies are about the luxuries of the social position that would be hers as Arthur’s wife (144, 181, 199, 296), so Arthur’s are about his life as squire after his grandfather’s death (170, 483). Arthur’s inadequate sense of his own identity, which depends to such an extent on his future inheritance from his grandfather, makes him susceptible to the need for completing himself in the relationship with Hetty, in which he can act out his fantasy of being loved by the lower classes for his philanthropic works after he takes over his grandfather’s position in the community.

      Arthur does finally suffer from the pain he has caused Hetty. His atonement, however, follows the pattern of his atonement with the old gardener: an attempt to rectify aggressive action by giving up possessions. He gives up his position as squire and goes away. Yet his exile is only temporary. He is eventually able to return and find a place in Hayslope. Hetty, by virtue of her position in the community, is the one who must bear the full weight of the consequences of their behavior.

      Eliot attempts to show her title character Adam undergoing a transformation from an inner "hardness" to a capacity for sympathy for others (Creeger 234-35). The description of Adam’s family life points to the source of his hardness as his lost "sense of distinction" as "Thias Bede’s lad" since the onset of his father’s alcoholism during his late teenage years. Adam’s "shame and anguish" (92) had caused him to run away from home, but he had returned because he did not want to leave his mother and brother Seth with the burden of enduring the situation without him. Kohut explains that shame results in rage, and in the shamed individual’s ongoing readiness to seek revenge ("Thoughts" 380-81)–a reaction that Eliot similarly depicts. By the time Adam’s story opens, his shame has turned to rage, which shows itself in his propensity for fighting (211) and in his severity toward his father (86). Adam focuses all his anger about his family situation on his father, although it is clear that his mother Lisbeth has her own problem of "idolatrous love" (87) for Adam and her obvious preference for him over Seth.

      Adam’s anger toward his father culminates in his actions on the night of his father’s death. He is furious because his father is out drinking when he should have been working on the job of making a coffin for a man in a neighboring village. While Adam stays up to finish the job himself, he thinks of his father’s continuously "worsening" behavior (92), but feels determined not to run away from the situation again, although he feels his father will be a "sore cross" to him for years to come. At that moment he hears a rap "as if with a willow wand" on the house door, goes to the door to look out, sees that no one seems to be there, and thinks of the superstition that the sound of a willow wand rapping on the door means that someone is dying (93). After he hears the sound again and still sees no sign of his father, he reasons that Thias is probably "sleeping off his drunkenness at the [tavern]." Not wanting to succumb to superstitious thinking, he determines not to open the door again, and for the rest of the night hears no more knocking. The next morning, however, Seth discovers that Thias has drowned during the night, "not far from his own door," as Mr. Irwine says later (137).

      Carol Christ notes that Thias’s death "occurs as a magical fulfillment of Adam’s anger" (131); Krieger suggests that "the resentfulness Adam feels . . . brings him close to wishing his father dead" (211). It is possible to interpret Adam’s hearing the sound of the willow wand not only as a manifestation of his sense of foreboding, but as his wish for his father’s death. It is also possible to interpret Adam’s decision not to open the door again despite his father’s expected arrival as a form of passive aggression, and as an indirect contribution to his father’s death. In any case, Thias’s death causes Adam to repent his "severity" toward him (97). And this repentance, СКАЧАТЬ