Narratives and Capitalism: Theories of the gift by Hoeller, Hyde, and Melville

Narratives are enabled by gifts, or to put it differently, gift-giving creates narratives by establishing an open-ended obligation between the giver and the receiver. Furthermore, it is through these patterns of gift-giving that genre, unknowingly or not, arrives. The importance of the gift in the study of narrative has increased over the decades and has spilled over into other disciplines, mainly anthropology and sociology to explain and understand the human condition. But theories of the gift remain abundant in literature and literary studies, and no matter in what discipline a theory of gift originates it can always be transferred, and I would argue is best understood, into the study of narrative. In conjunction with Hildegard Hoeller’s study of the gift in capitalism, this paper will give a brief overview of the gift’s relation to capitalism as put forward in Lewis Hyde’s eloquent book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (1983) an be furthered complimented by a brief analysis of Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Hoeller

Hildegard Hoeller in her essay "Capitalism, Fiction, and the Inevitable, (Im)Possible, Maddening Importance of the Gift" provides a literary critique and analysis of the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells. Her literary critique and analysis is supported by Derrida’s writings on the nature of the gift in his book Given Time (1992). Hoeller relates how gift giving bonds characters together in a very specific way that disrupts or untangles the nature of capitalism. She ends the essay by arguing for further study of the gift in conjunction with studies of capitalism, especially in Marxist studies.

Hoeller states that Howells’ novel has always been categorized as a business novel, even by the author himself, but she states that it is the “confusing, maddening, and binding obligation” (132) of the gifts that causes the novel to “spin itself out” (132) of that business novel category. Hoeller sees the first chapter of the novel as evidence that the gifts and capitalism (business) cannot create a successful narrative together, or more likely, that narratives about capitalism cannot ignore the importance of the gift. In the first chapter a gift arrives, but is rejected mainly because of the pure business-mindedness of Mr. Hubbard, one of the main characters (Hoeller 132). With a gift rejected Hoeller states that the novel has to provide another first chapter (chapter 2) where the intricacies of the gift are not bogged down by the ruthlessness of pure business (i.e. capitalism).

Hoeller sees the novel as a prime example of the need to recognize the importance of the gift, in any narratives whether they are about capitalism or not. He cites literary scholars’ “Marxist training” (132), which interprets capitalism in narratives from a different angle, as a possible reason why gift theory has been ignored. If narratives “cannot exist without gift giving” (132), then it only makes sense to interpret narratives through gift theory in order to understand the “maddening role gifts play in these narratives” (132). The gift serves as a vehicle allowing writers to tell stories about capitalism, while at the same time revealing “their aporias” (132). By this Hoeller means that the gift, through its role in narratives, illustrates those moments where “capitalism has a hard time telling stories about itself” (132), or where the logic of a novel about capitalism or business is not congruent with the logic of narratives except through the gift.

Hoeller also sees the gift as not only a vehicle of narrative but also as a tool that brings coherence to the narrative while at the same time disrupting certain aspects of that coherence. Hoeller points out that the obligation and rules that bind characters together through the gift bring about “stylistic unity” (133) of the narrative, or as I understand it, genre. If we understand the gift as un-willfully tied to genre then we can better understand and analyze those moments where the gift is not reciprocated, where the narrative pushes back and refuses or questions the “stylistic unity” or genre of the narrative, in other words we must not ignore “the mystery, unpredictability, even (im)possibility of the gift, which keeps us reading and wondering and point to the unaccountability, the aporia, of narratives” (Hoeller 133).

Hoeller describes how two of the best theorist on the gift, Derrida and Hyde, respond to Marcel Mauss who initiated his gift study decades before them. While Hyde sees a clear distinction between gift economy and market economy (his theory will be analyzed in detail later), Derrida takes a much more philosophical view of the gift, what he terms the “(im)possible”. (While Derrida’s concept may be hard to grapple with, for the sake of this paper, an understanding of it must be attempted.) Derrida sees the arrival of the gift, in time and in narrative, as a cataclysmic event (event, not act) that causes the gift itself to dissolve. The gift ceases to be a gift the minute it arrives because it has turned into an obligation “and therefore has ceased to be a gift” (Hoeller 134), this is the (im)possibility of the gift, the fact that it cannot arrive and exist simultaneously.

Part of the (im)possibility of the gift, Hoeller writes, is that it disrupts logos (i.e. divine reason or logical reasoning) as a “form of madness that is part of facing the other, God” (134). Just as the gift can disrupt the logos of reason, so too in narratives can the gift disrupts the logos of capitalism: “[the gift] brings us to the brink of reason and language, and therefore opens an aporic space that gestures toward something outside capitalism’s logos” (Hoeller 134). Hoeller cites as evidence of this (im)possibility the ending of The Rise of Silas Lapham where the marriage between the two families, as a result of the gift, leaves the narrator and the characters at a loss for words where silences abound, and characters stop mid-sentence, even the narrator of the novel seems dumbfounded and breaks the fourth wall by moving from third person to first person narration (Hoeller 134-5). Furthermore, Hoeller uses this evidence to pronounce the gift as a discursive site that allows us to “reflect on our economic realities, our relations to others in history, our values and hopes, and our ability to tell stories about ourselves” (Hoeller 135), in other words it helps us untangle, reflect, and question our world through narratives.   

Hyde

Lewis Hyde in The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property starts chapter one by offering a distinction between the “Indian giver” (Hyde 4) and the “white man keeper” (Hyde 4) or capitalist. He states that the nature of the gift is intrinsically anti-capitalist because “the gift must always move” (Hyde 4), meaning it must be re- gifted and not kept, whereas in capitalism the gift is kept and invested or to put it simply, one man’s gift becomes “another man’s capital” (Hyde 4).  

Hyde’s study, indeed his whole book, relies primarily and heavily on native culture and folklore. He makes it implicit that the gift must keep moving. A goat or cattle gifted must keep moving from one clan to another or else used for the whole clan (as in a celebration or festival), but must not be used for investment or profit and folk tales make it clear that “the person who tries to hold on to a gift usually dies” (Hyde 5). A violation of the movement of the gift has dire consequences that extend far from the individual betraying the tradition of the gift. Hyde asserts that when “someone manages to commercialize a tribe’s gift [. . .] the social fabric of the group is invariably destroyed” (5).    

In chapter 2 Hyde elaborates fully on this concept by stating, “a circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of us that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, the group, the race, or the gods” (38), he collectively refers to these parts as “wider spirits” (38) that are bestowed upon us and not ours (these wider spirits are gifts that must move on). The danger lies when we turn these wider spirits or gift property into commodities, “at that point commerce becomes correctly associated with the fragmentation of community and the suppression of liveliness, fertility, and social feeling” (Hyde 38), at this point, Hyde asserts, we are “unable to receive, contribute toward, and pass along the collective treasures we refer to as culture and tradition” (Hyde 39).     

Every chapter in Hyde’s book attempts to make a clear contrast between a gift and a commodity, and makes the case that these two are polar opposites, or at least that something is lost when a gift turns into a commodity. In chapter 4 titled “The Bond” Hyde proposes, “the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange [is] that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, while the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection” (56). This certainly places a dehumanizing aspect into commodity-exchange economies. We feel no bond with the clerk buying our coffee or groceries from, unless of course we know that person personally. The reason for this is that our coffee is not a gift, but rather an exchange. Both the clerk and me are programmed to know the rules/rituals surrounding commodity-exchange economies: my two dollars, which have pre-set value, are exchanged (not gifted) for a cup of coffee. There is no gift-giving involved and hence there is no human connection or bond initiated. I walk away from the clerk never thinking or probably seeing him/her ever again, until the next transaction. These practices, entrenched in capitalism, are intrinsically anti-social and anti-human. Gift-exchange economies are different and provide the social harmony and solidarity that we as a society/culture need and strive for.

“But a gift makes a connection” (56), Hyde asserts, something that capitalism does not. Hyde states that when a gift is given in an “economic sense nothing has happened" (56), but a “society has appeared where there was none before” (56). A society appears because once a gift is given a bond is created; this bond leads to conversation, friendships/acquaintances, and shared resources, which are fundamental building blocks of a society. This is the bond that is inserted the minute the gift arrives. A community is created by and through the gift, which establishes “the simplest bonds of social life” (Hyde 57), the act of giving.

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Melville

While Hyde’s and Hoeller’s theories on the gift and their relation to capitalism are intriguing and eye-opening they can be best understood through if analyzed in a narrative or novel, a mirror of our own world. While many texts can be interpreted through the gift, Moby-Dick, I believe provides the best framework for analyzing the gift in a social setting, even though it is an imagined setting. While this paper’s aim is not a full interpretation of Moby-Dick, it will however use Moby-Dick in a strict theoretical context. In the next section this paper will not only utilize Moby-Dick as a narrative, but more importantly as a theoretical text on the gift.  

In chapter 10 of Moby-Dick entitled “A Bosom Friend” Ishmael and Queequeg share a social smoke and become something more than roommates, they become close friends. Their trajectory from strangers to close friends is rapid and somewhat strange. Only pages before Ishmael had defined him as a “abominable savage” (Melville 34), a “comely looking cannibal” (Melville 34) and a “Newfoundland dog” (Melville 38), but after sharing a bed with him Ishmael’s feelings towards Queequeg start to change, but at this moment it is mere incredulous curiosity. The event that shatters the miscommunication between these two individuals is their first social smoke.

This event, Queequeg sharing of his pipe, and the relationship that is created because of it can be best understood as a gift and through gift theory. In chapter 10 Ishmael narrates that he “proposed a social smoke” (Melville 56), but what holds the real meaning of this event is what happens afterward:

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him [. . .] and said that henceforth we were married; meaning [. . .] we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me; if need should be. (Melville 56)

How their relationship took such a drastic, and friendly turn in less than a day seems surprising and unexpected. But if looked at through gift theory this event had to happen in order to solve the conflict between Ishmael and the savage Queequeg; a gift had to initiated in order for the narrative to unfold or continue, and the friendly smoke achieves this. Lewis Hyde, interestingly enough, begins the first page of his book The Gift with a short narrative about this native smoking ritual in order to explain the concept of the “Indian giver”:

Imagine a scene. An Englishman comes into an Indian lodge, and his hosts, wishing to make their guests feel welcome, ask him to share a pipe of tobacco. Carved from a soft red stone, the pipe itself is a peace offering that has traditionally circulated among the local tribes [. . .] And so the Indians, as is polite among their people, give their pipe to their guest [. . .] if he wishes to show them their goodwill he should offer them a smoke” (Hyde 3-4).

And so this gift offering can also be interpreted as a peace offering or a sign of social solidarity. Ironically, it is not Queequeg who initiates the social smoke but Ishmael himself who “proposed a social smoke” (Melville 56), perhaps this was Ishmael’s way of bridging their cultural differences or as an unconscious act of cultural/social understanding. Ishmael might not have known the symbolism behind the offering of the pipe, but by initiating this gift event, he invites Queequeg into an act that holds valuable meaning for him (Queequeg).  

Surprisingly, the pipe tomahawk has been the source of abundant scholarly historical research. Historically, the pipe tomahawk was “crated to serve two functions” (Shannon 590), both as a weapon of war and a symbol of peace. Furthermore it provided the “dual symbolism Melville invested in it. Raised by its owner over the head of another, it conveyed a message of impending violence; passed between them it meant peace and friendship” (Shannon 590-1). Ishmael at first encounter associates the tomahawk, and Queequeg, with the first meaning, with savagery and violence. But after initiating a gift event, he associates it, and Queequeg, with the second meaning, with friendship and solidarity. Ishmael might not have fully understood the meaning behind the pipe offering but for Queequeg it was an all too common and welcomed practice. He fully understands and accepts the symbolism behind it by pressing his forehead against Ishmael and “marrying” him and becoming his bosom friend (Melville 56). Ishmael returns the gift, or favor, by kneeling down with Queequeg and worshipping his pagan idols with him in the next chapter.

It’s important to note that Queequeg does not sell pipe to Ishmael but offers it to him as a gift, as a sign or solidarity and friendship. The gift of the tomahawk pipe fulfills Hyde’s assertion that “a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people” (56) and also that a “society has appeared where there was none before” (56), in so far as this gift event builds a friendship which then leads to them forming and joining a society in the Pequod. By this act these two inhabitants of Melville’s novel are practicing and accepting the nature of a gift economics, as opposed to commodity economics. Interestedly enough, after this first social smoke Queequeg “threw out thirty silver dollars in silver” (56) and slip his fortune with Ishmael. By this act he symbolically accepts Ishmael as his equal, rejecting the competiveness and value-ridden aspects of a commodity economy and accepting instead the solidarity of a gift economy.  

           

           

Works Cited

Hoeller, Hildegard. "Capitalism, Fiction, and the Inevitable, (Im)Possible, Maddening Importance of the Gift." PMLA 127.1 (2012): 131-36.

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Random House, 1983.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Ed. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford. Second ed. New York: Norton, 2002.

Shannon, T. J. "Queequeg's Tomahawk: A Cultural Biography, 1750-1900." Ethnohistory 52.3 (2005): 589-633.

Colonial Ideology, (White) Guilt, and the lack of it in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother

Colonialist ideology has many shapes and forms. These forms embrace linguistic, racial, and economic constructions that give rise to the oppressive work of colonialist ideology. The best way to point out these constructions at work is through literary artifacts, narratives, and novels. These literary artifacts showcase how colonialist social constructions work to oppress populations and empower hierarchies of control. This essay will illustrate how these oppressive factors work in J.M. Coetzee’s 1999 novel Disgrace and Jamaica Kincaid’s 1996 novel The Autobiography of My Mother and how these factors influence the behavior of the major characters in these novels; it is also possible to demonstrate how they ultimately hurt and influence those around them because of these colonialist ideological factors. This analysis of these novels will be complemented by a rigorous application of particular postcolonial theories by authors and critics Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Ngugi wa Thiongo.  

Disgrace  

In the novel Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee the daughter (Lucy) of the disgraced professor David Lurie is raped by three black men, one of them who might be Lucy’s neighbors. Both David and Lucy are white South Africans living in the new South Africa, and yet the intricacies of colonialist ideology influence almost every action they take. Lucy internalizes colonialist ideology by believing that she has no power over herself, over her body (child), and over her land. Internalized colonialism prevents her from realizing the power she has over her land and her body. Legitimizing her rape by keeping her child (rape child) is a product of her internal colonization, or more specifically, white guilt.

            White guilt (specifically in the new South Africa) is a byproduct of the internalization of colonialist ideology. Both David and Lucy (as white South Africans) were part of the powerful, privileged, land-owning class, but in the new South Africa they are part of a guilt-ridden  class forever atoning for the sins of their past. Albert Memmi in “Mythical portrait of the colonized” suggests how internalized colonialist ideology works and creates a “dependency complex”:

In order for that legitimacy to be complete, it is not enough for the colonized to be a slave, he must also accept this role. The bond between colonizer and colonized is thus destructive and creative. It destroys and re-creates the two partners of colonization into colonizer and colonized. One is disfigured into an oppressor, a partial, unpatriotic and treacherous being, worrying only about his privileges and their defense; the other, into an oppressed creature, whose development is broken and who compromises by his defeat.

            Just as the colonizer is tempted to accept his part, the colonizer is forced to accept being colonized. (Memmi 155)

In the new South Africa of Disgrace these roles are somewhat reversed. While the white South Africans (the original colonizers) in the novel still own much of the land, it is their (the whites) “development [that] is broken” (Memmi 155) and who “compromise” by their defeat (Memmi 155). This paper will argue that because of white guilt the roles of internalized colonization are reversed in the novel, and that this reversal dictates actions and reactions of David and Lucy to the world around them, in the process both becoming the “oppressed creature” instead of the oppressor (Memmi 155). This paper will analyze David’s actions and reactions to his sex scandal, and Lucy’s actions and reactions after her rape as evidence that internalized colonialist ideology still permeates in the new South African society, but the roles of colonization have been reversed (at least, in the South Africa of the novel)

            Lucy’s rape by black South Africans, in some sense, is the complete metaphor for the complexities of the new South Africa. The rapists by their act of rape were taken on the role of the “oppressor” (Memmi 155) who worries about his “privileges and their defense” (Memmi 155). The act of rape legitimized their role and status in the new South Africa. They were the colonizers, if only for an instant, taking over her land and body. The dilemma arises after the rape is done. It is Lucy and David who are forced to carry on the burden of the crime. Lucy’s response to the rape signals her internalization of colonialist ideology and her understanding of the reversal of roles in the new South Africa. David, on the other hand, has a harder time coming to grips with the realities of the new South Africa.

            “Lucy, Lucy, I plead with you! You want to make up for the wrongs of the past, but this is not the way to do it” (Coetzee 133), so David pleads with his daughter to recognize the danger she is in and to call the police on Petrus and the young boy who raped her. But Lucy refuses, she “compromises by [her] defeat” (Memmi 155) thereby becoming the “oppressed creature” (Memmi 155) and justifies her silence and inaction to her father by uttering the following words: “Wait until you have heard Petrus’s side of the story” (Coetzee 133). Her white guilt and internalized colonial ideology will not allow her to punish her black attackers, even when it seems that their punishment is justified: “it is not enough for the colonized to be a slave he must also accept this role” (Memmi 155). Lucy is accepting her role, but her inherited stubbornness to change her way of thinking influences her as well.

            It might be argued that Lucy mimics David’s behavior and independent way of thinking, but a better answer might lie in inheritance. This genetic trait towards stubbornness has dire consequences for both father and daughter. Of course David seems thrilled when talking about his daughter’s demeanor: “he recognizes a statement of independence, considered, purposeful [. . .] Making her own life. Coming out of his shadow. Good! He approves! (Coetzee 89). He feels happily satisfied that his daughter has taken on his penchant for independent thinking. Like her father, Lucy, is reluctant to find any faults in her way of thinking or acting.  

            After the home invasion and consequent rape of Lucy, David finds that he cannot influence his daughter to take the actions he feels necessary. Because of her internal colonization, as mentioned by Memmi above, Lucy takes on the role which was thrust into her: the role of mother, housewife, and more importantly as a scapegoat for the sins of her ancestors. She legitimizes her rape by atoning for the sins of her ancestors.   More importantly, David finds that her independent thinking, and reluctance to listen to others, is a nuisance and hindrance, especially when it comes to her own personal safety. She refuses to move out of the farm, even when it seems that her own neighbor might have had a hand in the attack. His stubbornness becomes her stubbornness. Furthermore, she is unapologetic about the pain she is causing to herself and those around her.

Lucie’s decision to atone for the sins of her ancestors can be further analyzed through a postcolonial frame. Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1967) delineates how the imposition of the “Negro”, or black, identity robs him his own consciousness and ultimately his history. Fanon describes how a black man among other black men does not understand nor grasp the “moment his inferiority came into being” (110), but once he meets the white man’s eyes a whole new identity is imposed upon him, based on misunderstandings, that he neither asked for nor understands. Most importantly, in this moment he is no longer simply a man, but an Other responsible not only for his own body, but for his own race, and his ancestors’ history (Fanon 112). It is this act historicity behind racism that makes it vile and violent. By imposing the identity of “Negro” upon an individual, the whole history of that one individual’s race is imposed upon him as well. In the new South Africa where roles are reversed Lucy is burdened with the historicity of her race as well. She too becomes responsible for her own race and her ancestors history, in the process sacrificing her own body and freedom.  Overall, an unsafe understanding of guilt influences both major characters.  

The Autobiography of My Mother

If guilt is the major theme in Disgrace then a lack of guilt in The Autobiography of My Mother especially as it relates to racial prejudice, discrimination, and self-hatred might be the over-arching theme of the novel.

 “And when finally I was a true orphan, my father had at last died and he died not knowing me, not ever speaking to me in a language in which I could have faith, a language in which I could believe the things he said” (Kincaid 223), these are the last thoughts that Xuela, the narrator of  Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother (1997) has of her father, a half Scot half African father that that throughout the novel she came to despise or at least view in a negative light. In order to understand the metaphoric, racial, and emotional distance between Xuela and her father we must first understand the father’s identity as seen through the eyes of Xuela. In order to extrapolate the full meaning behind the above quote (the last mention of Xuela’s father in the novel), this section will interpret Xuela’s father through a post-colonialist lens utilizing Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and wa Thiongo’s Decolonising the Mind in order to showcase the colonial ideology inherent in his character and identity and argue that this colonial ideology was the real distance between them (Xuela’s rejection of it, and her father’s unapologetic embracing of it).

Jamaica Kincaid’s short, but painful novel The Autobiography of My Mother (1997) focuses on Xuela and her search for an identity in a postcolonial world. In my view, she is the ideal victim of postcoloniality, daughter of a Carib mother and a father who is half Scot and half African, whose search for identity is constantly hindered and haunted by her father’s racism and embracing of colonial ideology. Although the novel is structured around Xuela’s search for a real image of her mother, it is Xuela’s father, and his piercing racism, that haunts Xuela in her search for identity. More importantly, it is her father’s acceptance colonial ideology’s close cousin, imperialistic capitalism and money, that hinders their relationship in a negative fashion.

Xuela’s word choice and description of her father speak volumes about the racial complications inherent in a postcolonial space. The narrator describes how her father’s racial identity was one of complexity: “his father was a Scots-man, his mother of the African people” (Kincaid 181). Notice how one racial category of Xuela’s father is descried as “man” and the other category as “people”. “Man” has an individualistic, patriarchal connotation behind it, whereas “people” has a collective sameness behind it. In other words, it’s much easier to discriminate against a “people” than against a “man”. That’s how prejudice works, it is an image and opinion of a whole “people”. The narrator (Xuela) makes this distinction clear: “one of them came off the boat as part of a horde, already demonized . . .; the other came off the boat of his own volition, seeking to fulfill a destiny” (Kincaid 181).

Furthermore, Xuela’s father connects, through colonialist ideology, the African people with the conquered and the Scot-man with the victor. Xuela narrates how her father “rejected the complication of the vanquished; he chose the ease of the victor” (Kincaid 186). This is how colonialist ideology works, it makes you reject a part of you that society says is not worthwhile. Colonialist ideology makes a “people” out of a “man” and connotes those people with the “defeated, doomed, conquered, poor, diseased” (Kincaid 187). Xuela’s father “came to despise all who behaved like the African people” (Kincaid 187) thereby rejecting a part of him (the female/African side of him from his mother) that he found unsatisfactory and succumbing to a patriarchal and imperialist society that worships white skin.

But what separates Xuela and her father is that Xuela rejects this patriarchal imperialist ideology (i.e. colonialism) or at least recognize its workings. “My father’s skin was the color of corruption” (Kincaid 181) is how Xuela describes her father and this detachment between her father’s colonialist ideology and Xuela’s rejection/recognition of it is what causes the lack of grift between them, that ultimately causes her pain and misunderstanding over her identity. Furthermore, language is crucial to this colonialist ideology that Xuela’s father embraces. In one of the most painful scenes of the novel Xuela’s father pushes her into a barrel full of nails speaking patois, the language of the island, the whole time: “and I associated him speaking patois with expressions of his real self and so I knew that this pain he was causing me, this suffocating me in a barrel of nails, was a true feeling of his” (Kincaid 190, emphasis mine). The real father is a patois speaking individual who hates his multi-racial daughter as much as hates his multi-racial self.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo states in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) that the choice of language and its use “is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment” (4). But the role of language does not stop there as wa Thiongo makes it clear that language is behind both imperialism and Africa’s struggle towards “communal self-definition” (4). In other words, Euro-based languages are at the heart of imperialism, but the road towards liberation and self-definition lies in native languages.

            But this road is not easily travelled and, as wa Thiongo points out, is full of ironic coincidences. The irony lies in the fact that African writers came to see European languages (the languages of imperialism) as “having a capacity to unite African peoples” and as a “common language with which to present a nationalist front against white oppressors” (wa Thiongo 7). The irony lies in the fact that African writers were going back to the language of the center of imperialism in order to achieve self-definition and liberation, while at the same time moving away from their native languages. Herein lays the most crucial paradox, as wa Thiongo describes it: “using mother-tongues provokes a tone of levity” (7) while foreign languages “produces a categorical positive embrace” (7). So, the question to ask is: where does the African literature lie? Or, what has to be accomplished in order for African literature to be truly African again? The answers lie in decolonization.

            wa Thiongo makes it clear that colonization was achieved through language; that is to say, language carries culture, and culture carries “the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves” (wa Thiong’o 16). In order to achieve true colonization the English had to control the language of Africa, thereby controlling the culture, and thereby placing their English language and culture above the rest. This is how domination was achieved, through language. But the domination of domination of culture and language had a bigger aim, and that was the domination of “the entire realm of the language of real life” (wa Thiongo 16), or in other words, the domination and total control of Africa’s wealth.

            For African’s to take control of their wealth first they must take control of their culture, and in order to this this they must take control of their language. The road towards decolonization starts with the re-introduction of native languages. Thiong’o asks if by “continuing to write in foreign languages [. . .] are we [meaning African writers] not on the cultural level that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit?” (26). His obvious answer is a definite “yes”. But the solution is not that simple or easy. In other words, simply eradicating all European languages will not solve Africa’s problems. The problems go much deeper than that and have their root in ideology. In other words, the problem is in the mind and Africans must first learn to decolonize their minds in order to further their cause. wa Thiongo writes: imperialism “has turned reality upside down: the abnormal is viewed as normal and the normal is viewed as abnormal [. . .] Africa is made to believe it needs Europe to rescue it from poverty” (28). Europe is the problem, but only part of the solution. Africans must first realize the “negative qualities of backwardness” (wa Thiongo 28) associated with their culture are a product of racist ideologies meant to distort reality for maximum profit. Until they come to this reality, the process of decolonization cannot begin.

As wa Thiongo makes it clear the road towards decolonization lies in native languages, in the case of this novel (Caribbean) patois, and not in the embracing of Euro languages. The embracing of Euro languages leads to the acceptance of imperialistic capitalism and its thirst for profit at all costs. But in the novel Xuela’s father does not grasp the complexity behind this ideology. He turned his back on his race for the pursuit of money, power, and achievement. In the process he lost those most close to him, his wife and ultimately his daughter.

  The narrator’s father does not understand life or love, except when it relates to money. The narrator mentions that her father did not understand love as it relates to people, but only love as it relates to money. Most importantly the narrator mentions the following idea about her father, “[he] understood that it was in the small parts of something that its true whole is expressed, it is in the small parts of something that its real beauty lies” (Kincaid 184), of course the narrator is relating the idea of how her father understood money, but this same idea could relate and transfer to his racial identity.

The father’s identity consists of a confluence of racial categories. The “man” is the Scots-man in him, and the “people” is his African part: “inside my father, the Scots-man and the African people met; I do not know how he felt about that” (Kincaid 185). The successful meshing of racial identities in an individual consists of embracing both identities concurrently; or in other words, realizing that “it is in the small parts of something that its true whole is expressed” (Kincaid 184). The beauty of a multi-racial individual lies in the distinct racial “parts” of his/her identity. Combining and embracing all racial parts in order to complete a beautiful and distinct whole is the only way for a multi-racial individual to create a true identify. The only way that the narrator’s father understands money is by coming to the conclusion that its true whole lies in its small parts, and the only way that he can come to grips with his identity is by realizing that his true self and beauty lies in its parts as well. But he does not come to this conclusion and instead fails to see and realize his true identity (in other words, he fails to transfer his metaphor of money into his racial identity).

 The narrator’s father fails to see that his understanding of money could very well help him realize his true identity. Instead, he takes sides and choses the “man” over the “people”. The narrator describes how her father “rejected the complications of the vanquished; [and] he chose the ease of the victor” (Kincaid 186). The problem is that he himself is part of the vanquished, or the African people. By rejecting one half of himself he is re-creating the ideology and history of colonialism in his own personality. The narrator makes this clear: “inside my father [. . .] an event that occurred hundreds of years before, [. . .] continued on a course so subtle that it became  a true expression of his personality” (Kincaid 187). Here Kincaid is relating her father’s battle with his identity to the ideological maneuverings of colonialism.

            In Black Skin, White Masks (1967) Fanon writes of his desire to become “a man, nothing but a man” (113), but unlike Xuela’s father in the novel, Fanon accepts his relation to his African people: “Some identified me with ancestors of mine who had been enslaved or lynched: I decided to accept this” (Fanon 113). Fanon comes to grips with his African ancestry in his pursuit to become a “man” in the world’s eyes. Xuela’s father, on the other hand, rejects his African ancestry in his pursuit to become a “man” and in the process duplicates or continues the ideological work of colonialism.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother. New York: Plume, 1996. Print.

Memmi, Albert. The colonizer and the Colonized. Trans. Howard Greenfield. London: Earthscan, 1965 (1990). Print.

Wa Thiongo, Ngugi. Decolonising the Mind: The Poloitics of Language in African Literature. Harare: Zimbababwe House, 1981. Print.

Examining the Limitations of Theory: Counterbalancing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Economic Treatment of the Woman Question

“Some of the worst evils under which we suffer, evils long supposed to be inherent and ineradicable in our natures, are but the result of certain arbitrary conditions of our own adoption”

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Women and Economics (1898)

In her feminist treatise, Women and Economics (1898), Charlotte Perkins Gilman, presents a solution to the Woman Question based partially (if not completely) on economics. Gilman’s main argument claims that the human species as a whole has suffered from the patriarchal system that keeps women in the home. The only mutually beneficial way for both sexes to move forward is for women to move away from the domestic sphere to find emotional and intellectual fulfillment and independence in the work place (while still balancing a home life). Since the resurgence in Gilman studies in the 1960’s, modern critical scholars (Chang, Davis, Gill, et al.) have recapitulated Gilman’s economic notions. These recent studies shed new light on Gilman’s economic vision as to whether her solution to the Woman Question can be applied realistically, which previous studies had not addressed. This essay will interpret Gilman’s economic vision together with Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859) and E.D.E.N. Southworths’s The Hidden Hand (1859) and analyze how these two novels are in conversation with Gilman’s vision and ultimate solution to the Woman Question. Do these two novels anticipate Gilman’s rhetoric? Or are these two novels in completely different theoretical frameworks?

Women and Economics and Modern Critical Response

            Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman (1860-1935), the great-niece of Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, suffered a nervous breakdown after the birth of her daughter Katherine and was administered the “rest cure” which “put her to bed, where she was fed, bathed, massaged and advised to have her child with her at all times”[1] by the famous physician Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Not long after, she divorced her first husband and granted him custody of her daughter. She then moved to California where her creativity flourished. Although “this early nervous collapse marked the rest of her life,”[2] it also provided her with much-needed inspiration to write her most famous work, The Yellow Wall-paper (1892).

            After moving to California she married her second husband, George Houghton Gilman, and wrote prodigiously including the feminist treatise Women and Economics (1898). Influenced by Edward Bellamy and Frank Ward, Gilman “emphasizes [in Women and Economics] that women must have ‘world work’ beyond their traditional roles as wife and mother” [3] with the ultimate goal of gaining and maintaining their emotional and intellectual independence away from the domestic sphere. Gilbert and Gubar, in their introduction to Gilman, go much further in praising Women and Economics. They herald it as the ultimate feminist “Bible”:

Hailed as the Bible of the women’s movement and translated into seven languages, the latter work established the argument Gilman would extend in many other publications, namely, the claim that women’s economic dependency on men had arrested not only their intellectual and emotional growth but also the healthy development of the human species.[4]

During her lifetime Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote nearly two-hundred short stories, fifteen books, and numerous lectures. Sadly, she was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer late in life, and passed away by consuming chloroform “not because of the pain she suffered, she explained, but because her career of service was over”[5]. Resurgence in Gilman studies during the 1960’s established her reputation as the foremost mother of first wave feminism.   

Cynthia J. Davis in her critical essay "Love and Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman On ‘The Woman Question’" (2005)[6] argues that while Gilman idealized her solution to the Woman Question (as put forward in Women and Economics), her own personal life (and papers) reveal that combining life and work was no easy task. Davis concludes that Gilman’s personal life (her disastrous first marriage, and comfortable second) and her papers reveal that “combining living and loving–without equating them–could prove the most troublesome task of all”[7], an issue that her treatise does not address or even take into account. If Gilman boldly proclaims that the Woman Question is not one of sex, but of economics, then how should we (as 21st century scholars) treat the incongruence between her private life (which seems to problematize her ideas) and her idealization (and public commitment) of her economic theories? While Davis addresses this paradox she ultimately concludes that by Gilman promoting her ideas and aspirations public, she revealed her “fundamental idealism” in the belief of her theories, and brought them that much closer to “done deeds”[8].

While it is true that Gilman never satisfied the paradox between her ideas and her actions, it does not necessarily follow that her theories/ideas on the relation between women and a patriarchal 19^th century American economy are faulty or do not deserve examination. Mary Ann Dimand in her study titled “The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman”[9] pronounces that while Gilman has been discussed as an economic theorists before (specifically by Michael Barratt Brown in 1984), these readings “are so fragmentary as to amount to misrepresentation”[10], hence they provide partial interpretations of her economic theories. Dimand, on the other hand, sets out to faithfully interpret Gilman’s economic themes in Women and Economics in conjunction with other of her works (Our Androcentric Culture, and her writings for The Forerunner). Gilman’s main theme in Women and Economics, according to Dimand, was to “attempt to define the conventionally housebound and unpaid woman’s role in the economy”[11] in order to situate the problems areas and possible solutions that would improve her role. Gilman’s ultimate concern was to define women’s share in the wealth of the world: “although it must be admitted that men make and distribute the wealth of the world, yet women earn their share of it as wives. This assumes [an employer/employee relationship] . . ., or that marriage is a ‘partnership’, and the wife an equal factor with the husband in producing wealth”[12], yet Dilmand exclaims, “women are not employees of their husbands or fathers”[13] nor do they equally share the wealth of the husband in this ‘partnership”, hence it follows that women are not economically independent members of society and completely dependent upon their fathers or husbands.

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Anticipating Gilman: Ideology in Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig (1859) and Eden Southworth’s The Hidden Hand (1859)

The theme of race has been fairly absent in modern Gilman scholarship[14], but its relation to the domestic sphere in 19^th century America cannot be ignored. Both in the South and North the presence of African-American women/girls in the home both enslaved and indentured revealed the social constructions of race and the hierarchal position of whiteness over blackness. If the Woman Question is not one of sex but of economics, then the racial factor behind that economic system must be addressed.  Since the subjugation of women in 19^th century America ignored racial boundaries, African-American women (who were subjugated only because of sex, but also because of color) who were traditionally at the bottom of the economic scale were particularly sensitive to this gender disparity.

            Frado, the main character of Our Nig who gets abandoned by her white mother and black father at the footsteps of the Bellmonts experiences the double jeopardy of both race and gender. While all the women in the Bellmont home seem subject to the patriarchy of 19^th century America, Frado experiences cruelty from other women who are themselves victims of patriarchy.  African-Americans in 19^th century America experienced oppression from those already heavily oppressed. It seems patriarchy surpassed racism in its ideological maneuverings of 19^th American society.

Although the patriarchal economic system of 19^th century America permeated society completely, the home in the novel becomes a space that supports patriarchy and its sister oppression, racism. In her critical essay “Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig”[15] Lois Leveen delineates how the “racial dynamics of slavery are replicated in interracial encounters outside of slavery”[16] in this case the home, and how the home creates or supports “hierarchies of power”[17]. More importantly, Frado’s status as a legally bonded indentured servant to the Bellmont’s places her at the bottom of the home’s hierarchal maneuverings. Central to this hierarchy is Frado’s relation to whites: “she thought she should, by remaining [in the house], be in some relation to white people she was never favored with before”[18]  Together with Gilman, Wilson presents a bleak picture of women’s economic status, namely that no matter the race a woman’s labor in the home (or domestic sphere) was not economically recognized. Gilman’s theory “that the economic status of women generally depends upon that of men generally, and that the economic status of women individually depends upon that of men individually”[19] holds even more ground in Wilson’s Our Nig where a racial dynamic extends the severity of the dependence of women on men and which seems to anticipate Gilman’s Women and Economics. Because her labor, as an African-American woman, was not economically acknowledged, “[t]he story of her physical subjugation is what she can sell in lieu of her physical labor”,[20] we find this same story all throughout the 19^th century (the image of the “scribbling woman” who writes in order to support herself because her labor, or the kind of work available to her, cannot support her).

            Serialized first in 1859 and published in book form in 1888, E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand anticipates the central argument of Women and Economics by presenting an anti-sentimentalist protagonist, Capitola Black, who cross-dresses as a boy in order to survive as an orphan in 19^th century New York City. Not only is Capitola a young woman with no work available, but she is also “black” by way of her last name “Le Noir” or Capitola Black. This blackness, we find, is socially constructed, and cleverly inserted into the novel by Southworth in order to add another dimension to her multi-dimensional protagonist. 

Katherine Nicholson Ings in her essay “Blackness and the Literary Imagination: Uncovering The Hidden Hand” reflects that this “integration of blackness into the narrative”[21] metaphorically points to the racial complications of our historical and literary past, complications that the literary royalty of our day still have not come to grips with:

This miscegenated foundation of American Literature, however, has been largely unacknowledged by white scholars who may misinterpret cultural signs or disregard those elements that appear trivial . . . to them. Such a reading practice contributes to the idea of textual “passing”: by not recognizing or by misreading the racial influence of canonical texts, scholars can actually help a text pass as “white” literature. Textual passing thus encourages cultural blinders, allowing literary historians to perpetuate the myth of a homogenous literary tradition.[22]

In my view, Ings theory clearly connects to Waimbaum’s claim mentioned earlier that explicates how in the recovery of Gilman scholars “centrality of racialized reproductive thinking to her feminism, or her express concern with women’s role in creating a ‘pure’ national genealogy”^[23]. In other words, in canonizing texts such as The Hidden Hand and Women and Economics we must not only situate them in their proper historical/racial and ideological space, but also recognize the ideological moves we are making in placing these texts on the pedestal in or modern time.

            Writing in 2001, Wainbaum recognizes a resurgence in Gilman scholarship (specifically the 1998 edition of Women and Economics edited by Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson), but seems disturbed that this recent scholarship “either continue[s] to omit discussion of Gilman’s racism and nativism, or merely pay[s] lip service to endemic problems”^[24]. She recognizes a dangerous problem with recovery projects, specifically with Kimmel and Aronson’s edition, that exhibit a “strong resistance to the conceptual transformations that might ideally result from a reassessment of the underpinnings of Gilman’s writings”^[25]. In other words, in the process of recovering texts and formulating literary traditions scholars run the risk of continuing the conceptual trajectory under which the original text was written.

In chapter VI of The Hidden Hand entitled “A Short, Sad Story” Capitola relates the ordeals of homelessness that she experienced and how she ultimately found sustaining work. Capitola describes the usual answers given to her when asking for work: “[s]ome of the good-natured landlords said, if I was a boy now, they could keep me opening oysters, but as I was a girl, they had no work for me”[26], the landlords reluctance to offer her work is based solely on her sex and nothing else. Here Capitola found herself in a peculiar situation. One of the consequences of being a woman in a deeply patriarchal society (in 19^th century America) is subjugation and/or discrimination by those in the superior role, i.e. men. She was looked down because of her sex and the work she could do was limited, in man’s eyes, because she was a woman.

            Capitola faces a dilemma: “I was a girl, they had no work for me”[27]. This is discrimination and subjugation in its simplest form. According to patriarchal ideology, which the landlords in the novel represent, Capitola as a woman cannot ask for work in the first place because her place is in the domestic sphere (even as a young child) who was not adequate for the kind of work she was asking to do (delivering papers). What is more interesting is how Capitola herself starts to internalize the ideologies of her patriarchal society: “And then I felt bitter against fate for not making me a boy!”[28].  Instead of resisting the oppressions of patriarchal ideology she decides to play within the ideology in order to simply survive. What this means, is that Southworth is recognizing women’s economic dependence on men even before Gilman’s economic treatise on women. 

Conclusion???

How do I turn this into a list?

Bildungsroman? Capitola’s and Frado’s stories as bildungs??

           

           

             

Bibliography

Davis, Cynthia J. ""Love and Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman On 'The Woman Question'" ATQ 19, no. 4 (2005): 243-58.

Dimand, Mary Ann. "The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman." In Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics, edited by Mary Ann Dimand, Robert W. Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget, by Mary Ann Diamnd, 124-49. Aldershot, Hants, UK: E. Elgar, 1995.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman." In The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 1130-131. Second ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998, 12.  http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft896nb5rd/

 Ings, Katherine Nicholson. “Blackness and the Literary Imagination: Uncovering The Hidden Hand”. In Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durnham: Duke University Press, 1996, 132.

Leveen, Lois. "Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig." African American Review 35, no. 4 (2001): 561-80.

Southworth, E.D.E.N. The Hidden Hand, Or, Capitola the Madcap. New Brunswick [N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Wagner-Martin, Linda and Cathy N. Davidson. "Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman." In The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States, edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson, 41. Oxford [New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. (New York: Penguin, 2009).

Weinbaum, Alys E. "Writing Feminist Genealogy: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Racial Nationalism, and the Reproduction of Materialist Feminism." Feminist Studies 27, no. 2 (2001): 271-302.

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[1] Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman." In The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 1130-131. Second ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996.

[2] Gilbert and Gubar, "Charlotte Perkins Gilman", 1130.

[3]Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson. "Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman." In The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States, edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson, 41.New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

[4] Gilbert and Gubar,"Charlotte Perkins Gilman", 1131.

[5] Gilbert and Gubar,"Charlotte Perkins Gilman”, 1131.

[6] Cynthia J. Davis, "Love and Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman On 'The Woman Question'" ATQ 19, no. 4 (2005): 243-58.

[7] Davis, “Love and Economics”, 256.

[8] Davis, “Love and Economics”, 257.

[9] Mary Ann Dimand, "The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman." In Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics, edited by Mary Ann Dimand, Robert W. Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget, by Mary Ann Diamnd, 124-49. Aldershot, Hants, UK: E. Elgar, 1995.

[10] Dimand. “The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman", 125.

[11] Dimand,"The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.", 128.

[12]  Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998, 12.  http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft896nb5rd/

[13] Dimand,"The Economics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.", 129.

[14] In her recent work, the scholar Alys Eve Wainbaum in "Writing Feminist Genealogy: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Racial Nationalism, and the Reproduction of Materialist Feminism." has offered a harsh critique of modern Gilman scholars for continuing to ignore the “centrality of racialized reproductive thinking to her [Gilman’s] feminism, or her express concern with women’s role in creating a ‘pure’ national genealogy”. Now, while an assessment of Gilman’s work in light of Wainbaum’s study might offer some intriguing ideas, it is not the concern of this paper to revolutionize the field of Gilman studies, but rather to recapitulate Gilman’s economic treatise as a response to Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig.

[15] Lois Leeven. "Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig." African American Review 35, no. 4 (2001): 561-80.

[16] Leeven, Lois. . "Dwelling in the House of Oppression”, 561.

[17] Leeven, Lois. . "Dwelling in the House of Oppression”, 561.

[18] Harriet E. Wilson. Our Nig or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. (New York: Penguin, 2009), 17.

[19] Gilman, Women and Economics, 10.

[20] Leeven, “Dwelling in the House of Opression”, 578.

[21] Katherine Nicholson Ings. “Blackness and the Literary Imagination: Uncovering The Hidden Hand”. In Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durnham: Duke University Press, 1996, 132.

[22] Ings, “Blackness and Literary Imagination”, 132.

[23] Weinbaum, Alys E. "Writing Feminist Genealogy”, 271.

[24] Weinbaum, Alys E. "Writing Feminist Genealogy”, 292.

[25] Weinbaum, Alys E. "Writing Feminist Genealogy”, 292-293.

[26] Southworth, E.D.E.N. The Hidden Hand, Or, Capitola the Madcap. New Brunswick [N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988, 43.

[27] E.D.E.N Southworth. The Hidden Hand, Or, Capitola the Madcap. New Brunswick [N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988, 43.

[28] Southworth, E.D.E.N. The Hidden Hand, Or, Capitola the Madcap. New Brunswick [N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988, 46.