The Female and the Feminine in Dracula and The Woman in White.

The female and the feminine in Dracula and The Woman in White.

‘Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female like-ness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience’

  One must assess the distinction between the biology and psychology of gender; an individual’s gender is distinguished by their dress and outward appearances. It is not until the reader and other characters get a closer look to discover that often their psychology and personality have characteristics of both genders- it is in this way that many characters in Dracula and The Woman in White transgress traditional gender roles.

What separates the masculine and the male, the feminine and the female in these two novels and how characters, male and female often move about between them.

  Jonathan Harker declares the gender of the three vampiric women in Dracula’s castle; they are clearly ‘ladies by their dress and manner’ this assumption is soon proven wrong, he hears ‘the churning sound of [one of the women’s]  tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and [he] could feel the hot breath on [his] neck.’  Like a fire-breathing dragon she asserts her masculine power over him. This strong presence causes Harker to faint, the horror ‘overcame [him] and [he] sank down into unconsciousness’; this can be contrasted to Mina who is ‘not of a fainting disposition’. By fainting Harker’s response corresponds with a typically feminine role to pass out, the shock of his experience proving too much for him. He expresses that ‘there was something about them that made me feel uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips’ This is an example of fear versus desire that is common throughout the two novels to define masculinity and femininity, it would normally be the powerful male asserting his power and the weaker, passive female desiring him. Harker here takes on a passive role; and the masculine female takes control of the feminine male. This mechanical likeness of the ‘churning tongue’ removes any emotional connections to a woman the reader may have these women are no longer feminine, or even female, they transgress so completely out of femininity that they cannot even be classed as males, perhaps only as ‘monsters’.

   Tori Moi in Sexual/ Textual Politics coins the term ‘monster woman’ not as a reference to the literal supernatural monster of Gothic fiction but to describe the ‘new woman’ that Mina Harker and Marian Halcombe can be likened to. This ‘monster woman’ ‘is the woman who refuses to be selfless, acts on her own initiative, who has a story to tell – in short, a woman who rejects the submissive role patriarchy has reserved for her’ by remaining a single woman and taking an active role in the discovery of the identity of the mysterious woman in white, Marian does exactly this. Moi goes on to explain that ‘the duplicitous woman is opaque to man, whose mind will not let itself be penetrated by the phallic probings of masculine thought’.

Dracula, by using feminine terms to describe him – is not the masculine, phallic power Moi describes, that is more like Sir Percival, of even Count Fosco. Although Dracula invades Mina’s mind he does not control it, Dracula’s femininity allows Mina and the men to use it to their advantage. As easily as Dracula changes from old to young, he shifts from masculine to feminine. Like ‘a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk’ he maternally feeds his blood to Mina, although it has darker undertones, this image comes across as feminine; as if he is feeding Mina for her own good. Conversely Dracula has the potential to be a powerful and dangerous man, his eyes ‘blazed with a sort of demonic fury’ at the sight of Harker’s blood on his chin, he uncontrollably ‘[makes] a grab at’ Harker’s throat. Dracula is the only character who is able to change so quickly from feminine to masculine without any noticeable changing process; possibly because he lacks humanity he therefore lacks any gender stability.

 The male desire to assist a damsel in distress throughout Dracula and The Woman in White.

Hartright, upon his first meeting with Anne notes that ‘the loneliness and helplessness’ of her affected him, ‘the natural impulse to assist her and to spare her, got the better of the judgment, the caution, the worldly tact, which an older, wiser and colder man might have summoned to help him in this strange emergency’. Reason and rationality are overridden by the desire to help the weak, and the helpless; here are conflicting masculine impulses. Hartight acts upon his urge to be ‘the knight in shining armour’ that many of the male characters in the novels aspire to be. Even Mina, one of the stronger female characters, is subjected to this impulse, the men around her feel the need to protect her and do not consider that she may, in fact be able to protect herself. Dr Seward notes that ‘I must be careful not to frighten her’ immediately making the assumption that Mina conforms to the typical feminine role as Lucy does and requires, for her health, censorship. He later states ‘Mrs Harker is better out of it. Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman’ despite her efforts to act like a man and to be part of the group as an equal, Mina’s womanly physical appearance blind the men into treating her and protecting her as a woman should be.

     In her diary, Mina does not separate the masculine and feminine but instead distinguishes between good and evil, light and dark. As she looks towards Whitby Abbey Mina sees Lucy, a ‘half reclining figure, snowy white’ and a ‘man or beast’ ‘something dark’ leaning over her in a domineering fashion. This is reminiscent of Harker’s experience in Dracula’s castle – a powerful, overbearing masculine force, bent over a powerless body - and has highly charged sexual connotations; Count Dracula is forcing himself upon her as the three women forced themselves upon Harker.  The snowy white figure of Lucy agrees with the general view that white signifies innocence. In The Woman in White the reader is in someway led to reassess such connotations – once we learn that the strange figure of the woman in white has escaped from and asylum we make links with the whiteness of an asylum, of medicinal sterility of straight jackets and padded walls. At this moment in time, for the reader and for Hartright these connotations overpower that of innocence, so as to make him become suspicious or even frightened. The reassessment of the traditional symbolic meaning of white happens in Dracula too where whiteness/ paleness instead takes on the negative meaning of bloodlessness.

     The uses of light and dark in The Woman in White draw contrasts between the women, rather than between good and evil. Anne is too white; her skin is deathly pale, and her strange habit, commented and teased by Mrs Clements of wearing all white makes other characters wary of her.  Hartright describes her as having ‘a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous uncertain lips; and a light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue’. She comes across as too weak, and too fragile; this is an extreme of the Victorian female gender role. Collins could be commenting on the position of women in society and if one should take their position as a weak passive female too far they must prepare for negative consequences. This can be compared to Hartright’s description of Laura Fairlie; she is light, beautiful, ‘her hair is of so faint and pale a brown- not glossy- that it nearly melts, here and there into the shadow of the hat’ and her eyes ‘of that soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by the poets, so seldom seen in real life’ the features damned in Anne are praised in Laura; this description could be foreshadowing her downfall when mistaken as Anne. When Laura loses her identity and becomes Anne catherick she too becomes ghostly white – brought upon by the asylum. The dark, ugly Marian has more character, she is unusual and intriguing to the reader, Hartright’s first impression of Marian is ‘the lady is dark’, he describes ‘the lady’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, resolute, piercing eyes’ This is a very masculine description and unlike Mina, who has to fight against her feminine appearance to prove her worth as her own person, Marian is immediately confided in by Hartright, it could be argued with help from her not-so fragile appearance, about his strange journey to Limmeridge house.

       Harvey Peter Sucksmith, in the introduction to the Oxford University Press publication of The Woman in White explains the reason for, in his view, one hero and two heroines; he draws a parallel between Hartright and the author’s own personal experiences - ‘we can see now why there are two heroines inn the novel but only one hero, for Collins achieves psychological validity with this trio by representing in Victorian terms what have been called the anima and the shadow, that is, here, the Victorian male’s idealised image of women together with much of a contradictory nature that is excluded from that ideal. Collins, the man who later lived with two women, depicts a hero who experiences the dual nature of women’. Sucksmith suggests that Collins simplifies woman into two forms for the sake of clarity for the reader. This can be taken that in this case one woman with both attributes would not be effective; that men may be able to freely display both sides of their nature, but women, in order to make sense in a Victorian novel and in society, must be separated into two characters. Stoker on the other hand, creates Mina of whom Helsing exclaims has a ‘man’s brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted- and a woman’s heart’ This perhaps is a better image of the ideal ‘new’ woman who happily displays feminine and masculine attributes.

    The mouth is often described as both cruel and voluptuous in Dracula; ‘all three [vampire women] had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips.’ These images of pearls and rubies connote richness and abundance, as if Harker is attempting to dress up the bad, masculine imagery in feminine jewellery. The word voluptuous is often repeated by Stoker, and becomes a word loaded with dark, sexual connotations. Lucy, at the beginning of the novel ‘so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do’ becomes evil and voluptuous - Stoker uses this word to describe Lucy as many as four times within two pages, ‘the sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty and the purity to voluptuous wantonness’. The site of the burial place is a place of transgression from the feminine to the masculine for Lucy; it is at her tomb that Lucy re-awakens as a vampire. Her whole appearance changes, without any maternal instinct she preys on small children and is an aggressive hunter, as if she has been re-born; Lucy’s eyes, the windows to her soul, ‘the beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely, blood stained mouth grew to an open square….as if ever a face meant death- if looks could kill- we saw it at that moment’. The transformation is quick and is a movement from extreme good to extreme evil. There is a link between the transition between life and death, between masculine and feminine at a place of burial, this verifies Victorian stereotypes of the weak women in neither novel do any male characters die so never get chance to move across from femininity to masculinity or vice versa as harshly as Lucy.

     The tomb and the grave, is a key setting in both novels, it is a place where the lines between life and death are blurred. It is where the body of Anne Catherick is buried, but as Laura. At the climax of the novel; the supposed dead Lady Glyde appears next to her very own grave – the dead and the living (the very same person) standing side by side. This is where the physical and the psychological play a part; Laura is identified as Anne by her clothes, by her appearances only. Marian and Hartright therefore become ‘accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place and the living personality of the dead Lady Glyde’  Laura has completely lost her identity; she claims ‘they tried to make me forget everything’ although her insistence of her true identity is pushed aside and ignored over her appearance- she is in Anne’s clothing therefore must be Anne. Collins draws light upon the thin line between the sane and insanity. Insanity has a strong historical link with females, female stepping out of place in society were reported as having hysteria and that the label of insanity more often than not were restrictions put on by men to keep unruly women in line which can be seen in Sir Percival’s treatment of Anne. Harker once again becomes the feminine male, he reported as hysteric and  labelled mentally ill and thus questions himself, ‘I feel my head spin round, and I do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. You know I have had a brain fever, and that is to be mad’. Harker’s so called brain fever places doubt in the reader’s mind; fact and fiction becomes intermingled, at this point in the novel even the reader is led to question the authenticity of Harker’s diary. It is the only source of information that Mina and the reader have to rely upon. It is at this point in the novel that the reader instead of using Harker as the assertive, trustworthy voice – turns to Mina.

 The main female characters often become frustrated with their gender throughout the course of the novels.

Both Mina and Marian become angry at their sex for restricting them, they are well aware of the social implications of being female in Victorian society. Nobody is more aware of the divide between the sexes than Marian, she orders Hartright not to ‘shrink under’ his feelings for Laura ‘like a woman’ but to ‘tear it out, trample it under like a man’, angry at Hartright for not using his male advantages. After all she would be expected to shrink under her feelings, though when she does, when she cries ‘miserable, weak, women’s tears of vexation and rage’ she is angry at herself for showing signs of weakness out of sheer frustration that her sex allows her to do nothing else. Gentle Laura, noticing her sister’s lapse of strength ‘put her handkerchief over my face, to hide for me the betrayal of my own weakness- the weakness of all others which she knew that I most despised’ Marian is an alternative of womankind; she defines a different type of femininity to that of the Victorian stereotype. Susan Balée suggests an alternative opening line to The Woman in White: that Hartright is instead a man with a woman’s patience and Marian is a woman with a man’s resolution.

   Dracula and The Woman in White are interested in examining what lies beneath appearances of gender, Collins adopts a more obvious approach by splitting two versions of the female in Laura and Marian – both in appearances of fair and dark and in characteristics, mentally weak and strong. Stoker combines these in the character of Mina – he does have a stereotypically feminine female that is Lucy who transgresses from being extremely feminine to extremely masculine. Both authors question the Victorian masculine and feminine roles and how males and females fit into them, and if there is any room for manoeuvring.

A little help from...

Stoker, Bram – Dracula (Penguin Popular Classics: 1994) London.

Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White ed. Harvey Peter Sucksmith (Oxford University Press: 1975) New York and Toronto.

Woolf, Virginia – Orlando (Oxford World Classics: 1998) Oxford.

Moi, Tori -  Sexual/ Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (Routledge: 1999) London and New York

Jacobus, Mary – Reading Women: Essays in Feminist Criticism (Columbia University Press: 1986)

Balée, Susan – ‘Wilkie Collins and Surplus Women: The Case of Marian Halcombe’ Victorian Literature and Culture. (Cambridge University Press:1992) Vol. 20 pp.197-215

Miller, D.A – ‘Cage Aux Folles: Sensation and Gender in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White’ Representation, No.14, The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century pp. 106-136 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928437.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie – ‘Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”’ Frontiers: Journal of Women Studies (1977) Vol. 2, No. 3 pp.104-113

Craft, Christopher – “Kiss me with those red lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ Representations No8. (1984) pp107-33 http:/www.jstor.org/stable/2928560

A Passage to India and Midnight’s Children: Representations of India.

 

‘The orient was almost a European invention and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. Now it was disappearing: in a sense it had happened, its time was over’ Said, Introduction to Orientalism.  Said speaks of the Orient as ‘European invention’ with nostalgia, not the true India, as a place, a country. The ‘exotic’ ideal, nostalgic from a western point of view, from an eastern, excitement perhaps over the end of the ‘orient’ and the birth of an India. Said is assertive as the Orient as a construct; the colonisers relaying back to the homeland  exotic tales and artefacts.

 I want to look at representations of India before and after the Empire, changing, uncertain conditions through Forster’s A Passage to India and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

There is a running theme throughout both of the difficulty of grasping India’s true identity; a hybrid identity because of imperialism – should it accept its imperial past and embrace? Or revert to India’s history before colonialism? Rushdie calls for the re-discovering of a totally new India, taking into account of its rich and varied, often turbulent history. Cronin, in Imagining India states that ‘to write about India in any of its vernaculars, even in Hindi its national language, is inevitably to divide it’.

In A Passage to India there is the idea that the subaltern is being spoken for. Forster assumes the position of an unbiased narrator but I shall show that many factors come in to show otherwise. It is a novel about the coming together of cultures, examining the relations between east and west, and interracial relationships. Inevitably when one has power over the other it causes suffocation, suppression.

Forster shows India to have an unknown identity, a mystery for the Western colonisers who find it difficult to comprehend, therefore must create their own construct ie The Orient, a construct with which they have more control.

The western reaction to the ‘Indian experience’

 India is conveyed in spiritual terms, the British women experience India within the Marabar caves, these women represent the space inbetween, they are not as such the coloniser, the british other more sympathetic towards the east. They are the ‘other’ belonging totally to neither, though often on the verge of the coloniser. Forster, perhaps shows through India’s massive spiritual influence on the West, critiques the west’s lack of spirituality? Each of the three sections of the novel have a spiritual significance: Mosque, Caves and Temple. The caves are a particularly significant section, though, as they involve a full on confrontation to the coloniser, confronting their own sense of self and spirituality. The caves come the closest to represent Forster’s vision of India; they are a mysterious entity, of which the whole of which cannot be grasped at once, something that Rushdie hints at in Midnight’s Children. They embody darkness and danger, shelter and safety, mystery and ancientness, with a history before time.

The Mosque, Caves and Temple are all sacred; each section occupied mostly by British thought, the true Indian narrative is oppressed.

Sharpe, in The Unspeakable Limits of Rape exposes the ‘real crime of imperialism to be an abuse of power that can only lead to its demise’ predicts the end of the empire by showing the tensions between the two nations and a time of unrest. The myths surrounding the ‘mutiny’ are then linked with the alleged rape of Adela; the gap in the narrative is permeated with tales from the rebellion. All at once she becomes the victim of the rebellion, she becomes the publicity surrounding it and becomes the myths that that became of it represent it. It is not Adela as a woman abusing her position of power but her nation, the colonisers who surround her; she, like Aziz, becomes a victim of this power struggle, caught inbetween. Thus, in the process of securing international power, the British put in danger their own kind. The minor sacrificed for the greater good. Adela’s perceived experience in the caves is pounced upon, like a group of vultures, waiting for an excuse to cast the native in a negative, dangerous light. This works to further the distance between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of the novel, the nations pushed apart where characters are forced to take sides. Fielding’s decision to stand by his Indian friend is seen as a betrayal of his race, of his ‘women and children’.

Adela, for the British, is a symbol of innocence and womanhood, a moral compass for the English; the supposed objectification of her body thus causes disruption in society, ‘each felt that all he loved best in the world was at stake, demanded revenge, and was filled with a not unpleasing glow, in which the chilly and half known features of Miss Quested vanished, and were replaced by all that is sweetest and warmest in the private life’ As an individual, she fades into the background whilst revenge, anger and the symbol of a ruined British woman shine in the foreground. The narrative here begins to move away towards sensationalism, rational thought is abandoned much like the ‘tales of terror’ brought to England concerning the events of 1857 had little or no historical basis, Fielding is told to look towards them for an impression of the Indian character. The horrific mutinies work as a myth to steer negative attention away from an image of a weak England, of weak Englishmen. Adela’s allegations are a symbol for the counter-insurgency of the nineteenth century; a fear that Britain was losing its grasp upon the empire and actively fought, through education of British children, to remain powerful and influential.

Quentin Bailey touches upon this, stressing the importance of education in rebuilding a British ego, damaging the image of the east in the process. The power of the empire taught to children so as to keep the British ego in place. This instance is in fact a reaffirming of power hidden as a cry for revenge, to restore the lost honour of the British.

British identity prevails over and above Indian identity in A Passage to India, with a British author, inevitable. The India of the title is the western view, it has no claim of its name on its own, an ironic title, a passage of England to the country of India. Ronny’s education is described that ‘wherever he entered mosque, cave or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned as a weakening any attempt to understand them’ He remains the coloniser, one of those seeking to make a Britain within India without allowing for any change to themselves or their ideals. Both Ronny’s stubbornness as an Englishman, his politics and his lack of spirituality that becomes an obstacle to friendships. This reluctance is a barrier for all interracial relationships in the novel.

    The caves are described as such: ‘there is little to see, and no eye to see it, until the visitor arrives for his five minutes, and strikes a match. Immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves towards the surface like an imprisoned spirit; the walls of the circular chamber have been most marvellously polished. The two flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of them breathes air, the other stone. A mirror inlaid with lovely colours divides the lovers’.

Adela struggles to cope with a confrontation of her spirituality in the caves. Upon entering she is struggling with her role as a wife, thinking about her forthcoming loveless marriage, so troubled by this role she rejects it and chooses not to fulfil the role of coloniser. Once in the cave, her fears, her conscious and unconscious confront her in the expanse of nothingness. Adela responds to her experience in the caves physically while Mrs. Moore, spiritually. What Adela sees as a muddle which disorientates her, Mrs. Moore sees as a mystery, not to be solved, but to be accepted. Mrs. Moore’s experience in the cave confronts her idealistic belief in goodwill and the friendliness of the world, in the vast nothingness of the cave she sees and accepts that with the good there is evil, with something there is nothing and vice versa. In doing so Mrs. Moore, in a sense, becomes a spiritual being, more in tune with India than any other British person; both women are confronted by the sense of oneness but it is Mrs. Moore who, though troubled by it, comes to understand that ‘everything is anything and nothing something’ her spiritual presence lurks in the corners of the narrative after her death. Her name remains an echo until the end.

Midnight’s Children makes use of magic realism to give the reader an alternative experience of reality, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Rushdie breaks away from western traditions, so prominent and tied down in A Passage to India. The novel favours the fantastic as a way to show reality more truly; it deals with oppressive colonial forces by rejecting the western way of constructing reality, it is a reaction to the limiting realism of western thought. Rushdie tells us that ‘an oral narrative does not go from the beginning to the middle to the end of a story. It goes in great swoops, it goes in spirals or in loops, it every so often reiterates something that happened earlier to remind you, and then takes you off again, sometimes summarized itself, it frequently digresses off into something that the storyteller appears just to have thought of, then it comes back to the main thrust of the narrative’

Because of this, the fantastic is distinctively Indian. Rushdie’s conscious concern is with depicting an India both in past, present and a possible future. The magic realism, the powers of the Midnight’s Children, are used to separate the birth of a new nation from reality and history of British India. Through miraculous events, Rushdie emphasises the possibilities of India in its independence.

Several cultures exist at once in India, including those moulded by western images that conflict with and merge with the Indian ‘there were Radna and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnu; also (because we are not affected by the west) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn’ by using a multitude of cultural references he highlights the fact that India’s independence does not erase the colonial influences upon the nation. Rushdie also stresses that with independence, with the birth of a new nation, India must almost ‘invent itself’, create a new identity separate from the previous shared one weighed down by colonialism. The whole novel is a reconstruction and reinvention of the self, in a time of fluctuation the emphasis is on the present therefore history becomes subjective, it becomes myth, memory. Truth is not privileged so cannot be limiting. Saleem explains how the past exists only in one’s memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred. Here once again western rationalism is being subverted.

Within this plurality of cultures, Rushdie explores the boundaries of a national, cultural and religious identity. The birth of a child coinciding with the birth of the nation means that the child is not fixed firmly in either period of time, he simultaneously belongs to both, or rather he belongs in the undecided space in-between, where a nation has ended, but a new one is yet to begin. Saleem speaks of the rest of the midnight children as ‘a sort of many-headed monster, speaking in the myriad tongues of Babel; they were the very essence of multiplicity’, that he saw no point in dividing them. The children were seen as one, one monster who is a coming together of parts; viewing all the children as one is was the closest he could get to a full  identity.  The children, including Saleem encapsulate everything and nothing at the same time. For all the midnight children, it is impossible to be one thing; an attempt to do so results in a many headed monster. Saleem describes how, ‘I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all that I have seen done, of everything done to me…To understand just one life, you’ll have to swallow the world’ he embodies multiplicity with a ‘Hindu mother, English father, brought up Muslim by a catholic ayah’ a product of culture, of nature and nurture every child is saturated with familial and cultural history before he even exists. Saleem, as a man is a metaphor for India, struggling for an identity of his own through a complex history. In creating a character so ‘handcuffed to history’, Rushdie explores the responsibilities of the first generation of a post colonial nation, seeing it as both a privilege and a curse.

With A Passage to India it is an attempt to represent something that he could not something that he could not understand.  Rushdie is a part of India, intrinsically linked. As well as Saleem, his history is continued down the family, familial and cultural history walk hand in hand. He embraces the past, embraces western influences all of which coagulate to produce him as a person.

Orientalism works to highlight the differences between the east and west.  For the western Forster, India is a muddle, and mystery. At the time of writing, Forster has a clear authority over the Orient, can we experience Forster’s India without prejudice?

Saleem explores his origins, cultural and familial, whilst Adela explores an unfamiliar India. Midnight’s Children is a coming of age for India, we witness the process of re-invention, Rushdie analyses the history of his country in segments.

Until next time, JT.

Bailey, Quentin – ‘Heroes and Homosexuals: Education and Empire in E. M. Forster’ Twentieth Centuy Literature 48, 3 pp.324-343

Cronin, Richard - Imagining India. (London: Macmillan Press, 1989)

de la Rochère, Martine Hennard Dutheil - Origin and Originality in Rushdie’s Fiction (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999)

Forster, E. M. – A Passage to India (London: Penguin Books, 1985, c1924)

Parry, Benita - Materiality and Mystification in ‘A Passage to India’ Novel: A Forum on Fiction 31, 2 1998 pp.174-194 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346197  [accessed 1/10/09]

Rushdie, Salman – Midnight’s Children (London: Picador, 1981)

Rushdie, Salman – Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (London: Granta Books, 1992)

Rushdie, Salman – East, West (London: Vintage Books, 1995)

The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie ed. Abdulrazak Gurnah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2007)

Rushdie ,Salman India Today (Interview, 1997) http://www.india-today.com/itoday/18081997/rushdie.html [accessed 02/11/10]

Said, Edward – Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 1978, 2003

Shape, Jenny – ‘The Unspeakable Limits of Rape: Colonial Violence and Counter-Insurgency’ Gemders 10 1991 pp.25-46

Strobl, Gerwin - The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Interpretations in the Anglo-Indian Novel: The Raj Revisited.

(New York, Austria: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995)

Bhabha, Homi K. – ‘Race’ Time and the Revision Modernity postcolonial criticism (Longman, 1997) moore- gilbert, Stanton and maley eds.

Gorra, Michael – After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1997)

Othello, the tragic hero.

       The idea of a tragic hero varies throughout literature; Aristotle’sPoetics states that a hero within a piece of literature must incorporate the following; a peripiteia, anagorisis, hamartia and catharsis in order to be considered tragic. Each of these components collates to create a tragedy which in turn leads to the downfall of a great man, often resulting in his or her death. 

      Aristotle stresses that a tragic hero must be that of a great man and the question to whether Othello can be seen as a great man is questionable.

     The debate to whether the hero Othello has both the characteristics and fortune of a tragic hero has been discussed by a variety of critics including A.C Bradley and F.R Leavis. These two critics have portrayed their views of the play Othello and questioned the extent of Othello’s representation of a tragic hero; Bradley, for example believes that the villain Iago is the main cause of Othello’s downfall whereas Leavis claims that it is due to Othello’s character and Iago is merely a catalyst who speeds the process up.

     In the essay, “Shakespearean Tragedy” A.C. Bradley states that Othello is “the most romantic figure amongst Shakespeare’s heroes” through the way in which he presents himself throughout I, iii as both noble and dignified. Bradley sees this nobility and makes the conclusion that Othello, therefore cannot be wrong in the sense that his hamartia is within his character, rather than his judgement. Bradley continuously supports his opinion that Othello retains his grandeur throughout the play in that even his short speeches, along with his soliloquies, convey this nobility – Othello’s language does not deteriorate, but becomes simplified. However, it can be seen that Shakespeare wants to make Othello’s degeneration apparent;

Lie with her? Lie on her? We say lie on her

When they be-lie her. Lie with her: ‘Zounds, that’s

Fulsome; Handkerchief: Confessions: Handkerchief.          (IV, i   43-45)

  Shakespeare himself is denying Othello’s dignity; his language is clear in that no noble man can be manipulated to the extent where he is unable to construct a sentence in the way Bradley depicts; later on, Othello’s language regresses further to single words. The repetition of “lie” conveys Othello’s sense of confusion; he refuses to accept the concept of his wife with anybody else yet still, eventually, believes Iago. The rhetorical device ‘ploce’ is used to show that Othello is stuck on this train of thought. The deterioration of Othello’s nobility is emphasized when he refuses his wife one last prayer before he kills her,

But while I say one prayer

It is too late                                                                            (V, ii   105-106)

Desdemona’s innocence and purity shines through at this particular part of the play, creating a huge contrast to Othello’s state of mind; in Bradley’s case, this is proof to show the impact Iago has had upon Othello’s reasoning. 

    Bradley argues that the hamartia of which contributes to the tragedy of Othello is Othello’s judgement of the other characters, “his trust, where he trusts, is absolute” which is true when compared to his relationship with Iago, yet not so with Desdemona or Cassio – the two characters closest to him at the beginning of the play. Bradley suggests that Othello has been manipulated by Iago resulting in the loss of trust in those he loves. This is through no fault of his own, but through his openness to Iago’s suggestion; Bradley, however he may romanticise the character of Othello, refers to him as ‘simple minded’ and his nature open and trusting.   

   Othello seems to have a romantic view of himself, which Bradley shares; his speech is full of powerful and poetic imagery which itself romanticises Othello and to the audience creates the illusion of a natural hero.

Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances:

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth ‘scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach;                      (I, iii   159-161)

  Othello clearly romanticises his past in order to persuade Brabantio to accept him as a son-in-law and also to convince to audience to consider him a tragic hero; what tragic hero has not had ‘most disastrous chances’? Othello is aware that he is being judged and, as A.C. Bradley points out, when he becomes “emotional, his imagination becomes excited”.

  Desdemona’s murder, according to Bradley, was a sacrifice made by Othello to save her from herself; Othello here is under the same illusion fogged by his emotions yet at this time with a negative effect. Bradley argues that Othello’s actions are not made out of jealousy or anger but out of love; if this, however, is the case then his hamartia would be that Othello’s love for Desdemona is too great and, therefore renders the anagorisis of his realisation of Iago’s betrayal, irrelevant. 

   Leavis, opposed to Bradley, argues, in the “Diabolic Intellect and Noble Hero” that it is not due to Iago but the nature of Othello that contributes his name to the list of tragic heroes. Iago is “merely ancillary” and is not successful due to his effective manipulation, as Bradley suggests, but because Othello is so susceptible to Iago’s actions. Leavis clearly argues that Othello is the “main personage” and that Bradley places too much of the focus on the Iago-devil and his role in the downfall of Othello.

  Othello’s character is, fundamentally, egotistical and lacks the self knowledge in which Aristotle refers to for a classic tragic hero. Throughout the play, the audience is led to believe Othello’s love and trust for Desdemona is complete; yet, as Leavis clearly points out, Othello’s openness for suggestion proves this to be incorrect – Iago successfully alters Othello’s perception of his wife and, although Othello asks for proof, Iago having obtained the handkerchief presents the fact he had seen Cassio use it and this, itself completely changes Othello’s direction of trust.

Now do I see ‘tis true. Look here Iago,

All my fond love thus do I blow to Heaven. ’Tis gone.                  (III, iii   464-465)

Othello’s new found trust for Iago exceeds that for his wife; it is now, ironically, Othello who is being disloyal to Desdemona. It is this reason; therefore, that Leavis believes that Othello and Desdemona’s love is based on lust rather than love and full of ignorance thus supporting Bradley’s statement that since Othello was newly married he must have had very little knowledge of her.

    The Aristotelian idea of tragedy states that the protagonist’s learning through suffering is essential but Leavis argues against Othello’s learning, he suggests it is not the fact that Othello has a moment of anagorisis but the theatrical aspect to Othello in that he dramatises his journey so poetically that makes him a hero in the eyes of the audience. The “faultless hero” of whom Bradley identifies Othello to be, Leavis sees him as egotistical and “self-approving” and his love for Desdemona simply self love. Othello’s final soliloquy conveys Othello’s simple nature to begin with, but the description soon alters once again into the self-dramatisation of which he portrays at the beginning of the play. Leavis’s interpretation of Othello’s anagorisis is that he may have discovered his mistake but there is no tragic self-discovery of which is vital for a tragic hero.

Of one, not easily jealous, but being wrought,

Perplex’d in the extreme: Of one, whose hand
Like the base Indian threw a pearl away                                  ( V, ii   529-531)

   The audience is able to see clearly Othello’s regret; he realises he has thrown away something precious and only now sees Desdemona’s innocence. The feelings of regret overcome Othello’s feelings of anger or betrayal, it there are in fact any, towards Iago; he only reflects on his mistake of distrusting Desdemona, not for trusting Iago. Here, his language improves showing some signs of recuperation, the audience is again reminded of his feelings for Desdemona and also supporting Bradley’s argument that at the end of the tragedy the audience are presented with a nobler Othello; perhaps he does not become nobler, just simply attempts to regain his dignity. How the audience perceive Othello depends upon the text they see. In the quarto Othello compares himself to a “base Indian” whereas Othello in the folio is a “Judean”. The change of this single word is significant in the audience’s view of Othello; the word ‘Indian’ in the Quarto gives the impression that Othello is attempting to justify his actions. This being that the Indian is not aware of the true value of the pearl (Desdemona) whereas Othello comparing himself to a ‘Judean’ signifies his immense remorse; that Judas himself felt at the betrayal of Jesus.

  Other characters throughout Othello are significant to the play as a tragedy other than Othello; firstly, it can be seen that Emilia is the character with the role of providing the catharsis for Othello. Throughout Act Five it is Emilia who strives for Othello to see the truth; she is the first character to see Iago’s evil and for that she loses her life. Scene two shows Othello’s anagorisis in which he reaches his moment of realisation through Emilia’s catharsis; it can be seen that she is the character responsible for Othello’s realisation.  

Are there no stones in heaven,

But what serves for the thunder?
Precious villain.                                                        (V, ii     278)

This is the first time throughout Othello where Othello sees Iago as the villain and clearly sees his mistake in trusting him. The tragic hero, in effect, could be seen as Emilia in that she incorporates some of the factors necessary to be considered as one; she has her catharsis when confronting her husband’s use for Desdemona’s handkerchief and figures Iago’s ploy out. Although Emilia does die she does not seem to have a great downfall, which is necessary for a tragic hero.

   The peripiteia of Othello may be in the setting of the play; the reversal of fortune occurs after the characters leave their homes in Venice to travel to Cyprus. The symbolism of Venice being the island of love relates to the fact that Iago’s plan only becomes apparent to the other characters after they have left as is their feelings of love in Venice have clouded their senses – Iago uses this to his advantage. Shakespeare conveys the fact that Cyprus is so far away from Venetian society by showing that their arrival initiates the decline of the relationships between the characters.

  The theme of jealousy mainly relates to Iago; the only reasoning to Iago’s actions of which the audience is aware of is the fact that he wants to take revenge on Othello for the promotion of Cassio. Shakespeare retains all other information about Iago and the introduction of his wife only occurs later in the play. The audience are therefore unable to relate to Iago; his enigmatic character is sophisticated and he cleverly uses language to manipulate Othello. However Leavis believes that the reason for Iago's success in the sense that he gains control over Othello is his great knowledge of him, Iago is aware of Othello’s weaknesses and uses them to his advantage; he also argues that any character with this particular knowledge is able to manipulate Othello in the same way.

    The numerous arguments for and against Othello’s status as a tragic hero express valid   points; Othello, in one way does not represent the idea of a tragic hero in that he never seems to have a catharsis and only a moment of anagorisis endorsed by the character of Emilia. Yet on the other hand Othello shows signs of a hamartia, either being his natural trust in people or his over-dramatisation and openness to suggestion. The play is   successful as a tragedy as it does involve the fall of a great man and evokes pity within the audience but Othello himself perhaps cannot be classed as a tragic hero as, although he does represent some of the traits required, he does not fit fully into Aristotle’s idea of a classic tragic hero. Also, the audience at the end of Othello is left feeling pity for Desdemona, not Othello therefore the role of the tragic hero within the play does not fall entirely upon the protagonist but shared amongst the various characters.