From Melting Pot and Multiculturalism to the New Mestiza

Home , Isabel Allende

FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS

DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO

Social Diversity in the United States: from Melting Pot and Multiculturalism to the New Mestiza

Noelia García Bueno

Tutor: Jesús Benito Sánchez

2016-2017

ABSTRACT

This work focuses on the cultural diversity of the United States, in particular on the three main theories that have been developed on this issue: the Melting Pot, Multiculturalism, and the New Mestiza. The objective of this study is to explore in detail the evolution of these social theories or conceptions and the differences among them. In order to achieve this objective, the methodology used consists on the compilation and organization of data from different sources, especially from two detailed studies: The Opening of the American Mind, by Lawrence W. Levine, and Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, by Gloria Anzaldúa. The results show that these theories originated in the social diversity present in the United States, and that the evolution from one theory to another resulted from the need to complement or replace the previous ideals, and that they present many differences.

Key words: United States, society, Melting Pot, Multiculturalism, New Mestiza

Este trabajo se ha centrado en la diversidad cultural de los Estados Unidos, particularmente en las tres teorías más importantes que se han desarrollado en torno a este asunto: el Melting Por, el Multiculturalismo, y la New Mestiza. El objetivo del estudio ha sido profundizar en la evolución de estas teorías o concepciones sociales y las diferencias que presentan entre ellas. Para ello se ha usado una metodología de compilación de datos de diferentes fuentes, principalmente de dos libros: The Opening of the American Mind, de Lawrence W. Levine, y Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, de Gloria Anzaldúa. Los resultados han mostrado que el origen de estas teorías fue la diversidad social estadounidense, que la evolución de unas a otras se ha dado por la necesidad de complementar o sustituir los ideales anteriores, y que estas presentan muchas diferencias.

Palabras clave: Estados Unidos, sociedad, Melting Pot, Multiculturalismo, New Mestiza

Index

Introduction ...... 1 1. A history of migration ...... 3 1.1. Migration before the colonial period ...... 3 1.2. Immigration during the colonial period ...... 4 1.3. Immigration after the colonial period ...... 6 1.4. Implications ...... 6 2. The Melting Pot...... 7 2.1. What is the Melting Pot? ...... 7 2.2. From the origins to the decline of the Melting Pot...... 7 2.3. The Melting Pot in society ...... 10 3. American Multiculturalism ...... 13 3.1. What is multiculturalism? ...... 13 3.2. From the origins of American multiculturalism to the present ...... 13 3.3. Multiculturalism in American society ...... 15 4. The New Mestiza ...... 19 4.1. The birth of a new consciousness ...... 19 4.2. The “New Mestiza” ...... 20 4.3. Social implications ...... 22 Conclusion ...... 25 Bibliography ...... 27 Annexes ...... 31

Introduction

The United States of America represent one of the most culturally diverse societies in the world. This cultural diversity is one of the main characteristics of this country. In fact, one of the last censuses of American population has shown that nowadays American society comprises six main ethnic groups: white Americans, African-Americans, American-Indians and Alaska Natives, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (See Annex 1). Everyone is well aware of this issue, but have you ever wondered about the origins of this cultural diversity? Have you ever thought about how American society accounts for that significant variety of ethnic groups? Or, taking into account that Multiculturalism is one of the most famous theories on American society, have you ever considered the existence of other social models? All these reflections will be explored in detail throughout this work.

There are several works dealing with the study of the different theories or models applied to American society. Some of these works talk about the Melting Pot, such as The Academic Melting Pot: Catholics and Jews in American Higher Education, by Stephen Steinberg (1977); other books focus on American Multiculturalism, like Multiculturalism and the Canon of American Culture, by Hans Bak (1993); and some others deal with the evolution from American Melting Pot to American Multiculturalism, as is the case of one of the books used in this project: The Opening of the American Mind, by Lawrence W. Levine (1996). There is another relevant work for this topic, which includes a new philosophy for the American social system. This work is Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza, by Gloria Anzaldúa (1999), and it will also be explored in this project. However, there are no works that analyze the evolution between the three theories previously mentioned and that study them in depth. For this reason, the present study will provide a different, though necessarily brief, perspective to the study of American social diversity and will modestly complement previous studies.

Considering all this, the objective of this work is to explore the evolution of the social theories or conceptions that have been developed as a way of managing the cultural differences present in American society, as well as the differences among them.

The theories investigated here, as said before, have been the most popular and with the most relevant consequences in the United States of America. The first theory to be considered is the Melting Pot, which evolves towards the second one, known as Multiculturalism. Finally, the philosophy known as the New Mestiza, which tries to replace the previous ones, is explored as well. In the three cases, the information that is offered includes a definition of the theory, its origins and evolution, and the real or possible implications for American society.

The methodology followed for the elaboration of this work is based on the compilation and organization of information related to the three social theories mentioned before. For the compilation of data on Melting Pot and Multiculturalism, the key work is The Opening of the American Mind, by Lawrence W. Levine (1996). The information dealing with the New Mestiza philosophy comes from a book by Gloria Anzaldúa titles Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1999). All this material is collected, organized and complemented with analysis and comments to allow the reader to understand the different theories of American society.

The development of this work is divided into four main sections, together with a brief conclusion. The first section is titled “A history of migration” and it includes a historical context which explains the different migratory processes that formed the American country and its diverse society. At the same time, this section is subdivided into four parts chronologically organized: migration before the colonial period, immigration during the colonial period, immigration after the colonial period, and implications of these migratory processes. The second, the third and the fourth sections of the work, as their titles indicate, deal with “The Melting Pot”, “American Multiculturalism”, and “The New Mestiza”, respectively. These three sections are subdivided in a similar way, so that they include an explanation of the theories, a study from their origins to their decline, and the social implications of each theory. Lastly, a final section provides a conclusion in which the main ideas and results of the work are recovered and summarized.

1. A history of migration

A great part of the history of the United States has been characterized by the issue of immigration. This fact has been very relevant for this country, since the different immigrants who moved to that new land, regardless of their origin or of their objectives, have been the ones who created the United States; a country which could be defined as a mixture of cultures, nationalities and races that live under the same roof.

This history of immigration began much before America was discovered and therefore before the European conquest started. There are three main periods in which America received a great amount of people looking for a new life. The first stage takes place before the discovery of America, as the historian Mario Hernández Sánchez Barba highlights in his work Historia de Estados Unidos de América: De la República Al poder presidencial; the second one happens during the colonial period; and the last one could be placed from the end of the colonization to nowadays.

1.1. Migration before the colonial period

The earliest known inhabitants of America were those who, after the colonization, would be known as Native Americans or American n Idians. However, those would not be the only people receiving that denomination. As Mario Hernández claims in the work previously mentioned, among all the heoriest on the populating of North America, the one that prevails claims that during he t last Ice Age there was a great wave of immigrants who arrived to America from Siberia and the Chinese coast. Geological studies have revealed that during that Ice Age the sea level suffered a drastic reduction and, as a consequence, a land bridge was created through the Bering Strait that allowed Asiatic people to migrate to the neighboring continent, America (39). The causes of that migration are unknown, but one possible easonr could be the need to find a new land to start a new life, since this is the basic cause of most migrations.

This Asiatic immigration could be considered as the origin of he t history of immigration previously mentioned. As can be seen, from the very beginning America

3 presented a mixed population composed by American and Asiatic people that were developing several societies coexisting in the same continent. In his book Historia de América, Professor Carlos Malamud provides some information about American society before the European conquest. According to him, the majority of academics have stated that the number of inhabitants in America before the conquest oscillates between 60 and 80 million (16). Malamud also claims that, while European people shared a series of cultural, religious, ideological, historic and economic values, the degree of compartmentalisation in the American continent was very significant at the end of the 15th century. America had developed multiple and diverse societies which were distinguished by their different physical appearance, language, culture, traditions, beliefs and history. The different American cultures and empires used to live insulated from each other. For this reason, it was difficult to consider the New World as a united and structured entity before the European conquest. It was after that moment when America started to construct a common history (15-16).

1.2. Immigration during the colonial period

The origin of the colonial period takes place in 1492 with a very significant event in history: the discovery of America. This discovery was achieved by Spain, in particular by an Italian navigator known as Christopher Columbus, who provided his services to the Spanish monarchy. From that moment to the end of the 16th century, the American continent was colonized by Spanish settlers, and other European countries started to be interested in the New World (Hernández 48).

In the 17th century, there were three important colonizing countries which decided to extend their territories to the New World and to unconsciously contribute to the history of immigration of America: Holland, France and England. The colonization processes of these three countries are explored by Mario Hernández in his work Historia de Estados Unidos de América: De la República Al poder presidencial. According to this historian, at the beginning of theth century 17 Holland settled in America, fundamentally in the territories of Brazil and Northmerica. A It was in North America where Dutch settlers created the city of Newsterdam, Am which flourished

4 successfully. However, in 1664 England invaded and dominated New Amsterdam, turning the city into New York (50).

Regarding France, the colonizing efforts were directed to North America. Therefore French colonists settled in North America, resulting in armed conflict between the two colonial powers: France and England (Hernández 51). The French colonial system in America was motivated by the Jesuit and the Franciscan participation. France conquered several territories of North America, including Canada, Acadia and Terranova (Newfoundland). However, due to the colonial wars and the Seven Years War, France lost its power in America and Spain and England benefited (Hernández 53-54).

The presence of English colonies in America was very significant. English colonizers, Hernández claims, settled in America in two main phases. In the first one (1606-1637), the Thirteen Colonies were organized in three English colonies: Virginia and Maryland, taken by English settlers; New England, occupied by English Puritans and separatists; and the British West Indies.

One of the most significant migrations in that first period took place aboard the Mayflower in 1620. The Mayflower was a ship driven by a small group of English separatists who established themselves in New England coast, specifically in Plymouth. However, New England would be dominated by the puritan society of Massachusetts, which was the first organized society in that area (Hernández 67).

The second phase in the English colonization, as Hernández illustrates in his work, takes place at the end of the 17th century. In this period, England founded Carolina (1663), New York (1664), and Pennsylvania (1681), where a diversity of immigration also took place. An example could be the territory of Carolina, particularly the city of Charleston, which received a great amount of French, Scottish, German and Swiss population (68-74).

Finally, there was another great wave of immigrants "who arrived against their will" during the colonization period, as is claimed in an article from History.com titled U.S. Immigration before 1965. Those immigrants "were black slaves from West Africa" (“History.com” par. 5). According to the article, “congress outlawed the importation of

5 slaves to the United States as of 1808, but the practice continued until the U.S. Civil War” (par 5).

1.3. Immigration after the colonial period

After the colonial period, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, immigration has also played an important role in the development of the United States. There are three significant waves of immigration.

Firstly, an important wave of immigration happened from 1815 to1865 and was carried out by Irish people. "These Irish immigrants settled near their point of arrival in cities along the East Coast, [and] between 1820 and 1930, some 4.5 million Irish migrated to the United States" (“History.com” par. 6).

Then, "in the 19th century, the United States received some 5 million German immigrants" and "a significant number of Asian immigrants" (“History.com” par. 7). In this way, American society was receiving a mixture of cultures, languages, beliefs, and races.

Finally, "between 1880 and 1920, America received more than 20 million immigrants from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe." This great migration included a significant number of Italian people and Jews from Eastern Europe (“History.com” par. 12)

1.4. Implications

The different waves of immigration that the United States experimented throughout its history resulted in a mixture of races, nationalities and cultures that live under the same roof, as it mentioned at the beginning of this section. At the same time, there are some theories or conceptions that have developed as a way to account for the ethnic and cultural differences present in American society: Melting Pot, Multiculturalism, and the New Mestiza. These theories are studied and explained in detail in the following sections.

2. The Melting Pot.

2.1. What is the Melting Pot?

"Melting Pot" is an expression which defines one of the most traditional conceptions of American society. The Melting Pot notion defends the process of cultural homogenization, in which a heterogeneous society is consolidated as a single culture which fuses the different cultures forming it. At the same time, this notion is a symbolic description of the cultural mosaic resulting from the immigration and it justifies the cultural and ethnic diversity within the US (Aronowicz, par. 1-2).

During the 18th and 19th centuries many theories related with this notion were developed by thinkers, politicians, and writers. However, it was the British writer Israel Zangwill who first coined the term Melting Pot in his work The Melting Pot: Drama in Four Acts in 1909 (Levine, 107). The United States, Zangwill defends, are "the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming." The real American "will be the fusion of all races" (107). This theory will be put into practice and it will last until the mid-20th century, when American Multiculturalism flourishes. However, as this notion was made essential to the American conception of itself as a country, it continues to be present in some aspects of American currency. An example of these aspects is the inscription “E pluribus, unum” (out of many, one) which features still today on American dollar coins.

2.2. From the origins to the decline of the Melting Pot.

The first theories about the Melting Pot appear when American society starts to be conceived as a heterogeneous civilization which includes different races, cultures, languages, and beliefs. This heterogeneous society present in the United States is accurately described by the historian Alexis Tocqueville in a letter he writes to a friend during his travel to America in 1831. America, he claims, is "a society formed of all the nations of the world: English, French, German ... people having different languages, beliefs, opinions: in a word, a society without roots, without memories, without

7 prejudices, without routines, without common ideas, without a national character" (105). However, the notion of America as a melting pot does not defend heterogeneity, but homogeneity. Therefore, the description provided by Tocqueville is substituted by other ideas related to the concept of uniformity.

One of the main bases of the Melting Pot is the attempt to create a New America; a new nation characterized by a mixture of immigrants and natives which results in the New American. The new American is a person who "leaving behind all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds," as Crevecoeur describes in Letters from an American Farmer (1782). In America, "individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men" (Crevecoeur, par. 2). In this way, America "will construct a new race, a new religion, a new State, a newLiterature" common to all those different nationalities (Emerson, 174).

The construction of this new American identity is based on a process known as Americanization, which could be defined as "the action ofmakin g a person or thing American in character or nationality" (Oxford Dictionary). Inhis t case, the process of Americanization is applied to non-native people in order to create a new homogeneous civilization which substitutes the heterogeneous one. To achieve this objective, "the immigrants are Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixedrace" (Turner, par. 7).

Although the Melting Pot and the principles behind it seem to eb feasible, there are some factors which stop their development. These factors take relevance mainly during the 19th and 20th centuries and they are related to racist attitudes, feelings f o superiority among powerful nationalities, the imposition of Americanization for immigrants, and the impossibility of putting into practicea new range of ideas known as Anglo-conformity.

The issue of racism in this period is very significant. In fact, the Americanization process itself could be considered a racist attitude towards eth immigrants, considering that in this process the native population, the "superior" race, undervalues immigrant people by forcing them to become American. Nevertheless, racism goes beyond the Americanization process, since there are some people who arguethat many immigrants

8 should not even have the possibility of being Americanized. A good example of this argument is Benjamin Franklin, who defended "the exclusion of Blacks and Asians from the US because only white people,” referring to Europeans, “must be part of America" (Levine, 108).

Regarding the feelings of superiority among powerful nationalities in America, they are clearly represented by a set of ideas called Anglo-conformity. These ideas are introduced by English settlers which defend that "England was the Mother Country whose culture and institutions would prevail" (Levine, 108). Following this, English culture would prevail in America, creating a feeling of superiority. In the process of Anglo-conformity, "the different languages and dialects, introduced by the settlers from different countries, are gradually giving place to the English" (Ramsay, 23). In this way, as a result of the English will, the traditional notion of Melting Pot is substituted by the modern idea of Anglo-conformity, in which immigrants are processed in order to be turned not into American, but into Anglo American citizens:

Anglo-Saxon Americans […] do not want to be fused with other races, traditions and cultures. If they talk of the melting-pot they mean by it a process in which the differences of the immigrant races will be carried away like scum; leaving only pure ore of their own traits (Levine, 110).

Another influential factor for the decline of the Melting Pot, as was previously mentioned, is the imposition of the Americanization process to immigrants. It is possible to use the word "imposition" because not only common inhabitants were involved in the process, but also powerful people such as politicians or executive officers. For instance, the Secretary of State John Quincy Adams claimed that immigrants to the US must adjust to "the character, moral, political and physical, of this country [and] cast off the European skin never to resume it" (Levine, 112). Another example could be the Superintendent of schools in New York City, who also defended that extreme acceptance of the new culture, to the point of rejecting the real roots. According to him, Americanization is the "appreciation of the institutions of this country" and the "absolute forgetfulness of all obligations or connections with other countries because of descent or birth" (Levine, 112). This imposition of the Americanization is hard and almost impossible to accomplish, since non-native people

9 could easily accept and embrace the new culture but quite frequently refused to forget their previous life.

Finally, there is an impediment for the development of Anglo-conformity, which also contributes to the decline of the Melting Pot. This problem has to do with racial minorities whose physical characteristics and cultural beliefs will impede their complete integration in Anglo-American society. This issue is perfectly described by Lawrence W. Levine in his work The Opening of the American Mind:

Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans could never conform to the physical-dimensions of Anglo-conformity, [and] Catholic, Jews, and Muslims could conform only by divesting themselves of a set of beliefs at the centre of their culture (112).

2.3. The Melting Pot in society

As explained previously, the Melting Pot model was based on the creation of a new American identity by carrying out the Americanization process. This idea was consolidated after the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), when many "demands for the creation of a national culture emerged" (Immigration to the United States.org, par. 3). As a result, there were different sub-processes or programs which were applied to American society at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. These Americanization programs took place in the working and educational contexts especially.

A good example of those programs is the case of Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford, the founder of this company, created the Five Dollar Day program, which was aimed to those workers who "passed an inspection by the Ford Sociological investigators" (Firsht, par. 1). Many immigrant workers did not pass the examination, so that the entrepreneur also created "the Ford English School [in which immigrants were instructed] in the English language and American values" (Firsht, par. 1). In this way, "Henry Ford … turned out Americans in the same way he mass-produced cars" (Firsht, par. 1).

As may be seen in the example above, in many cases Americanization programs were aimed to help non-native people integrate into American society. However, at the

10 same time they were used as a way of imposing American culture, and therefore, as a way of rejecting the foreign cultures. For this reason, among others which are less relevant, it could be said that the Melting Pot model was not possible in America society because of its effort at Americanizing everyone who arrived to that country. In other words, the society of the United States did not want to create a new American through the fusion of all the races living together; on the contrary, it wanted to impose its cultural values and to transform immigrant people into American citizens.

3. American Multiculturalism

3.1. What is multiculturalism?

"Multiculturalism" is generally defined as "the presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society" (Oxford Dictionary). Taking this concept into account, it could be argued that American society is multicultural in the sense that, throughout history, a great number of non-native people from different origins has coexisted in North America, giving place to a mixture of cultures, races, beliefs, and languages. In fact, Multiculturalism is also defined as an American doctrine which questions the cultural hegemony present in the dominant white groups with respect to the racial minorities (Oxford Dictionary).

As opposed to the Melting Pot, which supports the homogenization of American society as a method for the construction of the American identity, American multiculturalism defends the heterogeneity as a fundamental characteristic of that identity: "American identity and culture were the result not of the imposition of the English culture on all other groups but of the interaction of the various ethnic and racial groups with one another" (Levine, 112-113). Therefore, while the Melting Pot model defends that "members of minority groups [must] assimilate into the dominant culture, the multicultural ideal defends that members of minority groups can maintain their distinctive collective identities and practices" and integrate into society (Song, par. 1).

Some of the first theories about the multicultural conception of America were developed at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Melting Pot model started to decline. However, this new conception flourished and was applied in society around the 1960s and still persists nowadays.

3.2. From the origins of American multiculturalism to the present

The first reflections on multicultural ideas appeared as a reaction against the Melting Pot model, which was much criticized at the beginning of the 20th century by some American writers, philosophers, historians and sociologists. Many of those

13 professionals started to question the viability of the Melting Pot ideals and the social practices involved in them, proposing a multicultural model for American society.

The first serious approach to the possibility of creating a multicultural society dates back to 1915, when a Jewish-American philosopher, Horace Kallen, introduced the concept of "cultural pluralism", which broke with previous ideals. According to him, facing the impossibility for immigrants to forget their roots and their connections with their countries, the Melting Pot ideals cannot be accepted anymore (Levine, 113). As a result of this consideration, Kallen introduces the concept of social “harmony”, referring to Multiculturalism, against the one of “unison”, which is connected with the Melting Pot. A unison society would imply the imposition of the English tradition in the US, which violates "American’s own traditions and fundamental principles", while a harmonious one would signify a "democratic commonwealth of peoples", a "democracy of nationalities", a "multiplicity in a unity, an orchestration of mankind" (Levine, 114).

The failure of the Melting Pot was also defended by the writer Randolph Bourne, whose main argument was the impossibility for non-native people to forget their roots. He supported this observation by focusing on two facts: on the one hand, European immigrants showed deep feelings about their home-lands during the war in Europe; and, on the other, many American immigrants maintained the cultural traditions of their home-lands even when they had been Americanized (Levine, 114). As a consequence of that criticism, the writer gave some arguments defending American multiculturalism against the Anglo-conformity process, which was part of the Melting Pot ideals as well. According to him, Americans "needed the new peoples… to save us from our own stagnation"; on the contrary, English immigrants, seen as assimilated Americans, have "blinded Americans to the fact that their own traditions and their culture were the product of the variegated groups of that composed America" (Levine, 115). He also considered that the future of America would be the creation of a multicultural society where the different ethnic groups could live together peacefully:

The future of America is the creation of a "trans-national state of many races and peoples, […] a novel international nation, the first the world has seen". The truest integration would emanate not from the melting pot, but from fostering the feeling that "all who are here may have hand in the destiny of America" (Levine, 115-116).

Another good example of the people who defended the American multiculturalism as a medium for integration and social harmony was W.E.B. Du Bois. He was an African-American sociologist who denied both the Africanization of America and the Americanization of Africa, since both cultures, which were very different among them, had too much to teach each other (Levine, 116). He believed in the idea of being a Negro and an American at the same time. He spoke not of "melting" but of being "a co- worker in the kingdom of culture" where the African-American people could use "his best powers and his latent genius, which the US desperately needed it if was to fulfil its destiny" (Levine, 117). Therefore, considering his words, the multicultural conception of American society would be based on the equality among cultural groups, since all of them have something to offer to the New America.

All those samples of the first reflections on American multiculturalism are previous to the flourishment of the multicultural model, which takes place in America around the 1960s, as previously mentioned. Nevertheless, they clearly illustrate what this new conception is about and how it originated. From this origin until nowadays, American multiculturalism has been developed and defended, as Lawrence W. Levine claimed in 1996:

Diversity, pluralism, multiculturalism have been present throughout our history and have acted not merely as the germs of friction and division but as the lines of continuity, the sources for the creation of an indigenous culture, and the roots of a distinctive American identity (119).

3.3. Multiculturalism in American society

Multiculturalism looks for total equality in the sense that "people of all races, religions and cultures should be equal in the eyes of the law" (Williams, par. 3). For this reason, the American Constitution includes some manifestations of this multicultural principle, such as federalism, religious freedom, or free speech and economic liberty.

Federalism is a political doctrine present in "a group of states with a central government but independence in internal affairs" (Oxford Dictionary). This doctrine allows the different states of America to maintain their cultures and "their own legal

15 regimes, which reflect differing cultural values" (Volokh, par. 5). Considering this, it could be said that this political doctrine is a multicultural manifestation in America, since it enables the possibility of constructing a harmonious and egalitarian society based on respect; and this is what Multiculturalism defends.

Regarding religious freedom, it is true that it may not be a clear characteristic of a multicultural system, but in the case of the United States it helps the development of that system. The importance of religious freedom in America is due to the presence of a multiplicity of religious beliefs, views and traditions, which could not peacefully coexist without the existence of this law that "has always included religious tolerance – the willingness to let religious groups live free of deliberate persecution" (Volokh, par 7).

Finally, free speech and economic liberty is also an important characteristic that a multicultural system should present. For this reason, American constitution includes "the Free Speech Clause, coupled with the protection for private property and freedom of movement and action" (Volokh, par. 9). Thanks to this clause, immigrants can retain their cultures, languages, traditions, and beliefs without suffering repercussions, promoting, in this way, the rise of American multiculturalism.

Multicultural principles and manifestations seem to be ideal, in the sense that all of them are based on tolerance, equality, respect, and harmony. However, it is important to consider that nowadays there are several issues complicating the growth of those values. One of those aspects is the attempt to introduce English as the official language (LMG, par 6), which is a problem because other cultural groups refuse the idea of speaking a language different from their own. Another important issue is the tension resulting from the fact that "the White Anglo- Saxon Protestants don't want to give up its cultural dominance" (LMG, par. 6), so that the equality principle, which is one of the most significant features of Multiculturalism, is affected.

These examples reveal the probable decline of the multicultural system in the near future; so that it should be considered the possibility that American society was conceived from a different point of view. This new point of view or theory on American society was already proposed by the writer Gloria Anzaldúa and is known as the New

Mestiza. This new perception will be explained in detail throughout the following section.

4. The New Mestiza

4.1. The birth of a new consciousness

The idea of miscegenation as a new social consciousness was originally proposed by the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos in his work La Raza Cósmica, published in 1995. This new notion, in the same way as the Melting Pot n ad the multicultural model, emerged as a reflection on American cultural diversity. It could be briefly defined as “the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types” (Oxford Dictionary). Considering this definition, what the Mexican philosopher envisages in his work is “a cosmic race, a fifth race embracing the four major races of the world” (Anzaldúa, 99). In other words, he defends the possibility of a mixture of related races which gives rise to a synthesis of all the races in the world.

Opposite to … the policy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more generic streams, this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool (Anzaldúa, 99).

On the surface, Vasconcelos’ theory may seem to share some aspects with the Melting Pot model, in the sense that their purpose is creating a new race by mixing different ethnic groups. Nevertheless, while the Melting Pot defends the fusion of all races through a process of assimilation or Americanization, which implies the rejection of the cultural features of each race, miscegenation theory stands for the possibility of maintaining the cultural aspects of each ethnic group even when they are mixed into a specific race.

Moreover, miscegenation theory may also present some similarities with American multiculturalism in terms of peaceful coexistence among cultures. However, while multiculturalism defends a kind of coexistence in which each ethnic group preserves its own cultural features; miscegenation implies that these features could coexist in a unique race, eliminating their defining and exclusive mission.

The miscegenation theory proposed by Vasconcelos is followed by Gloria Anzaldúa in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). In this work, Anzaldúa focuses on what she calls the “New Mestiza”. Considering that the New

Mestiza is the third theory on American society being explored in this work, the following lines will include a detailed exploration of Anzaldúa’s work.

4.2. The “New Mestiza”

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is a text in which Anzaldúa, a feminist and Chicano writer, uses poems, essays and autobiographical passages to justify the necessity and the existence of the New Mestiza.oughout Thr the work, she mixes different languages, especially English and Spanish,o rderin to illustrate and to express that she is proud of the multiple identities and languages that coexist in her own person. This multiplicity is present in those individuals whoelong b to the frontier between two or more countries or cultures, to the Borderlands.The celebration of this cultural multiplicity is one of the main bases of the New za’sMesti consciousness: from the “racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the marking – a newmestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands” (Anzaldúa, 99).

The concept of the New Mestiza that she proposes is applied to the general world, but it is based on her own experience. For this reason, considering that she was a feminist activist, she applies the term “mestiza” instead of using “mestizo”. Moreover, she illustrates the cultural diversity that characterizes the New Mestiza through autobiographical poems, like the following one:

Una lucha de fronteras / A Struggle of Borders Because I, a mestiza, Continually walk out of one culture And into another, Because I am in all cultures at the same time, Alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro, Me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio. Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan Simultáneamente.

Anzaldúa also provides some ideas which define the concept “New Mestiza”. "[L]a mestiza", as the writer claims, "is a product of the transfer of theultural c and spiritual values of one group to another" (100). This definition is also supplemented with the following statement: "Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, themestiza faces the dilemma of the mixed breed" (Anzaldúa, 100). Another significantfeature of the mestiza is the internal struggle she faces: "Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures, and their values systems, la mestiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, and an inner war" (Anzaldúa, 100).

For the creation of the New Mestiza consciousness, it is fundamental to accomplish an issue to which Anzaldúa gives high importance: the destruction of frontiers, both physical and ideological. Geographical or physical frontiers are the ones that delimit and exclude, creating, at the same time, an ideological delimitation and exclusion among cultures and their population. "The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out", Anzaldúa states, "are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within" (101). As a consequence of these frontiers, there are many different cultures, ideologies, beliefs, and thoughts in the world which many times cause sexual and racial problems. This is another important argument supported by the writer: "The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts" (102).

In the light of this situation, the mission of the mestiza consists on "moving away from set patterns and goals toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes" (Anzaldúa, 101). Considering this, it could be said that the New Mestiza makes use of a political, social and feminist consciousness to fight against those frontiers which define society and which the different cultures have embraced to delimit their differences. This is a new consciousness that fights against sexism and racism by destroying sexual binary systems, racial differences and discriminatory definitions. The application of these ideas could result in the emergence of a new culture in the future: a mestiza culture. "The future will belong to the mestiza. Because

21 the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures" (Anzaldúa, 102).

Finally, Anzaldúa introduces a very significant poem in her work. It is a poem by Gina Valdés which perfectly illustrates the idea she proposes. This poem provides a conception of the frontier as something discriminatory, at the same time that it defends the existence of a "bridge" as the solution for the frontier problems; a "bridge" that could be equated to the role of the New Mestiza.

Somos una gente Hay tantísimas fronteras Que dividen a la gente, Pero por cada frontera Existe también un puente.

4.3. Social implications

The New Mestiza hermeneutics would be the perfect philosophy for a country which presented a significant variety of ethnic groups, as is the reality of the United States. Nevertheless, in the case of this new ideal model, it is not possible to talk about actual implications in American society because of two main reasons. On the one hand, as mentioned before, the New Mestiza consciousness is only an ideal model which is followed by very few people, since the majority of the population belongs to a single culture, except for those who live on the “borderlands”. On the other hand, the application of Anzaldúa’s philosophy in American society is very complicated because, although there are no physical frontiers between cultures, the ideological ones are pervasive.

Despite the difficulty that the implementation of the New Mestiza consciousness implies, it would be interesting to contemplate the possible consequences it could have in American society. Most of these consequences would be very constructive and they might help in the construction of a more pacific world characterized by one single

22 culture, the mestiza culture. This new culture, containing a mixture of different cultural values, would be based on the respect for other ethnic groups, since, as previously mentioned, the New Mestiza celebrates cultural multiplicity. Considering the fact that the mestiza consciousness celebrates cultural diversity instead of rejecting it, one of the most significant consequences might be the end of the racial discriminations that usually take place in the United States.

Taking all this into account, it would be really interesting to consider the New Mestiza hermeneutics as a way to maintain and celebrate the cultural differences present in the social diversity of America in order to create a society characterized by freedom and respect.

Conclusion

As may be seen throughout this study, American social diversity has generated the development of some theories which defended different social models or systems. The main theories developed throughout American history have been the Melting Pot, American Multiculturalism, and the New Mestiza. The Melting Pot ideals appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries and lasted until the mid-20th century. After the decline of the Melting Pot model, multicultural principles were introduced in the United States and they flourished during the last years of the 20th century and are still visible nowadays. Despite the fact that the multicultural consciousness is still present, it has shown some limitations, and this is the reason why another theory, the New Mestiza, was proposed in the last years of the 20th century and is considered the most modern.

The change from one social theory to another has arisen as a reaction to improve or substitute the previous social model. In the case of the philosophy defending the Melting Pot model, it emerged as an attempt to transform the heterogeneous American society into a homogeneous social system. The failure of this model was marked by the imposition of Americanization for immigrants, which included racist attitudes and feelings of superiority among nationalities, and by the impossibility of putting into practice the range of ideas known as Anglo-conformity. After this decline, the social theory defending the multicultural model was applied in the United States in order to substitute the previous ideals. However, although Multiculturalism was considered and it is still considered a feasible model, some examples of its social manifestations in America have shown a possible failure in the near future. This failure would take place due to the attempt to introduce English as the official language, which implies a cultural imposition; and due to the tension caused by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants’ rejection of giving up their cultural dominance, which affects the equality principle defended by Multiculturalism. As multicultural ideals do not seem to be perfectly viable, the New Mestiza consciousness was proposed. This new philosophy, which is very different from the previous one, somehow complements it, since both of them share some principles, such as respect and equality among cultures. Unlike the Melting Pot and the Multicultural models, the New Mestiza consciousness has not been applied

25 in society, so that it has not had the opportunity to fail or succeed and, therefore, no other theory has been developed for the moment.

This work also illustrates the ways in which the three theories differ. Firstly, the differences between Melting Pot and Multiculturalism might be summarized in the fact that, while the Melting Pot defends the creation of a homogeneous society, Multiculturalism aims for the development of a heterogeneous country. Secondly, the Melting Pot differs from the New Mestiza theory in the sense that the Melting Pot stands for the fusion of all races through a process which implies the rejection of the cultural features of each race, while the New Mestiza consciousness defends the possibility of maintaining the cultural aspects of each ethnic group even when they are mixed into a specific race. Finally, although they share some principles, Multiculturalism and the New Mestiza are also different. On the one hand, Multiculturalism implies a kind of coexistence in which each ethnic group preserves its own cultural features. On the other hand, the New Mestiza suggests that these features could coexist in a unique race, eliminating their defining and exclusive mission. Nevertheless, despite these dissimilarities, the three theories have a common characteristic, which is their origin. All of them originated as an attempt to understand and account for the social diversity present in the United States, a society that at the beginning of the 21st century continues to pose a significant challenge for its unparalleled mixture of races, ethnicities and cultures.

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Annexes

https://www.infoplease.com/us/race-population/population-united-states-race-and- hispaniclatino-origin-census-2000-and-2010

Vol.2 No. 3 April 2018 E-ISSN: 2456-5571

SATIRICAL UNDERTONES IN KAVERY NAMBISAN’S ‘THE SCENT OF PEPPER’

L.Jenniffer M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research scholar, Department of English St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science for Women, Hosur, India

Dr. K.Lavanya M.A., M.Phil., Assistant Professor & Head, Department of English St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science for Women, Hosur, India

Abstract Kavery Nambisan is the prominent South Indian writer as well as a surgeon from the Kodagu district of Karnataka. The Scent of Pepper (1996) is the rich cultural portrait of author’s native Kodagu and the clan of Kodavas. Though the novel revolves around the strong women characters and their affinity towards their culture, Nambisan has also intertwined noticeable satirical touches. Satire is a delicate art to evoke readers to look into the vices of the society. Satire in her novels helps to interpret the collective psyche and the culture of the community. The ambience of this work of fiction spreads greenish imageries unfolding the aromatic coffee, pepper plantations, education system, post colonial effects of British rule and also the touch of materialism, where the trees are felled for money. The generation gaps and differences of morals of four women – Chambavva, Nanji, Mallige and Neelu portray the plot with lucid, free flowing narration. Subbu, the favourite son of Nanji, the protagonist was tossed between the rural beauty of his village and military duty for dignity. Later, he realises his happiness lies in his village and comes back. This story is truly a picture of a strong cultural community gradually affected by the pangs of materialism, modernism and erosion of conventionality. Keywords: Nambisan, Satire, Colonial Rule, Culture

Out of the significant contemporary women novelists of them that they look their ancestors and animals as Gods. Indian writing in English, Kavery Nambisan had contributed They were never to be trusted as they could never be novels of social magnitude, cultural integrity and judged. Clara, being a nurse asked Baliyanna the reason psychological insights. The Scent of Pepper, written in of Yerava children not sent to school. The Vet satirized the 1996 sprawls about the culture of Kodava community with dominating spirit of white men, explaining that the local the impacts of colonial background. Nambisan’s keen natives imitated the British in this regard. They kept observation has woven a skilled artefact with the distinctive Yeravas ignorant of the education so that they laboured for satirical vein. The aim of this paper is to analyse the the Kodavas. “We exploit their innocence, just like the satirical nuances camouflaged with the culture of the British”. (Scent of Pepper 80) Kodava clan and the British demeanour. Baliyanna was straightforward on his views about the The colonisation had a serious effect on the lifestyle of technological advancement of the British. Though they Kodavas. Few Kodavas were trying to imitate their foreign invented postal system, telegraph and railways, he spit out culture while others won the hearts of British with their his hatred, “We can’t help it that we don’t like you” (Scent deep loyalty and innocence. As few people easily adopted of Pepper 80). Nambisan also points out that the influence their names, food habits, clothing style, the traditional of chemicals, pesticides wiped out the harmless bugs culture was slightly affected. The only thing which which were substituted by the dark, noisy swarms. prevented them to follow is the religion of British. In the second part of the novel, Baliyanna was Nambisan had employed the plot in the background of addicted to drinking habit, hanging around the country club post-independent India. Clara, the white lady was attracted till the last penny was spent. Being the head of the family, to Baliyanna, the veterinarian and husband of Nanji. he possessed the spirit of negligence and evasion. Rupert, the husband of Clara warned her to be careful of Haunted with the deepening despair, he reflected the the natives of Coorg. He quoted the fierce spirit of the mood of his father’s last days. It was ironical to find the Mutiny, the first war of Indian Independence as he could husband engaged with hunting and drinking in the clubs, never understand how the cartridges greased with the fat whereas the wife bore the heavy burden of leading a of pig and cow instigated a big revolt. family. Nanji emphasised that men were mostly big He personally believed that the Coorg people were dreamers but had no potential to fulfil it. The unavoidable uncultured and uncivilized till they came under the control symptoms of his decay never made Nanji weaker. of British. Disliking Clara’s desire for the Vet, he degraded

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‘A woman can be strong as a man but a man can never In spite of Appachu’s efforts of winning the case, no acquire a woman’s strength”. (Scent of Pepper 106) one welcomed him in to his Kodava community. He soon Dreams of happy married life induced Appachu, became paralysed and was taken care by Nanji. Appachu brother of Baliyanna to convert himself to be a catholic. In explained that his deep guilt yielding negative emotions, spite of change in name as Basil Pinto, he could only be a travelled throughout his body causing his limbs immovable. catholic outward as the innate mindset still wanted to be a When Nanji gave his share of property – a casket with one Kodava. When his wife left him, he only sensed a taste of hundred and eight silver rupee coins and eighteen gold freedom while others pitied his broken relationship. sovereigns, it troubled his heart of holding luxurious The author vividly sketches the scenario of boarding possession but no stamina to use it. school when education was not everyone’s privilege. Baliyanna criticised the symbol of charka and the Subbu was an ordinary boarder in Madikeri Convent Indian flag as he wished the symbol of the country to be School by Irish nuns. He had his food in a barrack style ferocious like the paw of a lion, eye of the tiger or a cobra dining room charged eight rupees a month. Above this or an eagle. He felt those symbols were weak and could level are the parlour borders eating chicken on Sundays not accept the sweeping changes of her Indian history. for twelve rupees a month. The lowest group below these When Subbu was imprisoned for printing rebellious two levels were mostly orphans and illegitimate children, pamphlets against the rule of British, he craved for Nanji’s who cleaned the chapel, washed and cooked for the nuns. variety of food. “He recalled many delicate flavours until he “They had big hungry eyes… They had sad names like could make the watery coffee taste like Nanji’s filtered Ada, Maude, Ursula. They wore faded, forgotten dresses ambrosia, the kanji like mutton pulav, and the floating bits that arrived at the convent in huge twisted bundled from of insect like roasted meat”. (Scent of Pepper 162) God-only-knew-where”. (Scent of Pepper 124) Mallige, the wife of Subbu and Nanji had differences of This novel also satirises the flattering spirit of the opinion, where the former was a feeble, delicate woman Coorg people as they mimicked the British culture. Kodira spending hours of sewing and the latter branded her as an Chengappa alias Chengu Master was one of the teachers incompetent housewife. Nanji strung hibiscus with ease of Subbu. His excessive passion for English language and she knew plumped Jasmine buds, fully bloomed influenced him to dress like a European. After marriage, Kanakambara, Rose-Tulsi make the better garlands. She his wife Muthamma became Pearlie. He also took a believed flowers were either for hair or for Gods but never snapshot of his children Shirley, Sally and Prince were for decorating vases. She detested the insulting act of also photographed with his wife in long frock and high Mallige’s child’s play with flowers. Nanji’s vigour and heels. Though Nanji had been to school only for two years, robustness mismatched Mallige’s decorative ideas and nature taught her the wisdom of life. The link between whimsical notions of life. When Mallige called her son as education and practical life was still a mystery to her. ‘Timmy’, Subbu disliked the anglicised name and thus The incident of poor Mallapa brought the cruel picture referred him as ‘that boy’. of Jane Peacock, an insomniac and the wife of British The visit of Mahatma raised questions in the mind of Chief Commissioner. Mallapa’s creaking cart carrying coal villagers and the British. The meat-eating Kodava in the dawn disturbed the sleep of royal Jane Peacock. community even wondered the vegetarian diet of lean Hence her orders compelled Mallapa to take the Bapu. The British officials felt their fear and efforts of alternative time consuming stone strewn path. The disconnecting the power supply was unnecessary. Patrick, students of Madikeri Convent School sent a letter to the cousin of Subbu was cynical and endeavours to Kodagu, the local British newspaper. It just flared up the become successful in life. His firm belief in education and anger of harassing an honest man for the selfish pleasures ambitious nature convinced the innocence of Subbu to of an English lady in power. The ironical stance of the steal the money of Nanji. Patrick’s ideals were quite letter was the solution they added that Mallapa’s life would contrary to Subbu, where he even advised Subbu to give not have been in trouble if the commissioner’s wife had up the rustic politics and join military instead. Patrick’s just plugged her ears with cotton. The British fumes of goals were definite to study at reputed university and to anger led to the arrest of four boys. The barrister Appachu take ICS, after learning the Machiavellianism of the British dealt the case and this revolt made Jane peacock a controlling a lot of colonies. Lacking money as his father complete insomniac. refused to part with him, he cunningly persuaded Subbu to take four hundred silver coins without the knowledge of

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Nanji. Patrick was the symbol of deceit and selfishness as Towering trees of bygone ages were felled by Thimmu for he was rational and never emotional. He believed that money. Subbu’s serenity of his waning life accepted the morality can never bring the glory of power or success. belligerent Thimmu, deprived of love for nature. “Life’s Hence morality was absurdity and money became the decline was terrible, unyielding and devoid of joy” (Scent of constant factor of his rational life. Pepper 262). Subbu was hurt sensing the sharp sound of After independence, the state Coorg was adjoined to the axe felling the giant trees and the strong lingering the Mysore State. The new state was under the grip of odour of raw wood. With the conventional framework of industrialisation. Govinda, the MLA promised Subbu that culture and Kodava community, Nambisan analyses the India will be above the poverty line within ten years. flavour of independence, the clash between past and Sunny, a victim of leg ulcer submitted a petition to him to present, imitation of occidental ideologies, generation gap, save the dogs being shot behind the Madikeri Fort. piquant growth of politics with mild satire and light-hearted Govinda’s inconsideration shocked Sunny with an innocent irony. Her satirical tinges bring forth social responsibility question. “What’s more important than dogs being killed for echoing ethical wisdom and moral enlightenment. The no fault of theirs?”(Scent of Pepper 236). He could not man-woman relationship becomes the perfect circle only bear the mass elimination of animals, when he with his when the broken arc is fixed with the values of patience, slow dying flesh was not ignored. contentment and purposeful life. Rao Bahadur, Baliyanna, The attitude of purposeless existence permeated Subbu represent vacuous insanity, whereas Chambavva, throughout the generations of Kaleyananda clan and the Nanji, Mallige are independent in their own way. possession of a revolver was seen as the pride emblem of the family. Rao Bahadur killed himself with a priceless Reference diamond and Baliyanna, his son shot himself with the 1. Nambisan, Kavery. The Scent of Pepper. New Delhi: same revolver, which Subbu was found with the same at Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 2010. Print. the end of the novel. Thimmu’s materialism had voracious ambitions devouring the undying love for Subbu for his village.

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Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 19 Issue 1 Special Issue on The Post-Boom in Spanish Article 4 American Fiction

1-1-1995 Eva Luna: Writing as History Lynne Diamond-Nigh Elmira College

Follow this and additional works at: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation Diamond-Nigh, Lynne (1995) "Eva Luna: Writing as History," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1360

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Eva Luna: Writing as History

Abstract The Bildungsroman of Eva Luna's development as a writer reflects—in a somewhat fragmented manner—important developments in Latin American literary history. Her personal quest was paralleled by an aesthetic quest, manifested in the trying on and taking off of various genres, literary movements and myths characteristic of Latin America; she even goes so far as to allude explicitly to specific authors and their individual works. Although some of these are simply lightheartedly parodied, others are reworked and reinterpreted in the light of the feminist enterprise of the past twenty-five years. Eva Luna transgresses fundamentally by having an intellectually strong, sexual, nurturing, very feminine protagonist, setting up an initial rupture with the dichotomy so clearly demarcated by Octavio Paz between "the mother and the whore." Four primary categories suggest themselves: myth and the mythic consciousness; magical realism; Boom writers; and then a miscellaneous grouping that subsumes a host of other significant literatures and literary themes: the picaresque, the neo-romantic, novels of the dictators, the ever-present conflict between civilization and barbarism, and testimonial literature.

This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History

Eva Luna: Writing as History

Lynne Diamond-Nigh Elmira College

In the beginning was the Word. And in the end. The opening lines of Isabel Allende's Eva Luna (1989) place us squarely in a world created and structured by the written word: "My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted" (1). Indeed, the entire first chapter of that novel functions to displace our center of reference from the real world to the world of the Book where the life of the imagination is privileged. The epigraph to Allende's work comes from the paradigmatic Arabian Nights, in which Scheherezade's story-telling keeps her from a certain and undeserved death, setting up a primary theme of salvation through fabulation. Fabulation is here redemption of the collective, for Scheherezade's fables save not only herself but all women, thus putting an end, by non- violent means, to the death sentence enacted upon the harem/population. The importance of this becomes more evident when we reflect upon the novel and the cultural context from which Isabel Allende writes. The lack of connection between writing and political activism has been one of the major charges levelled at the self-reflexive literature characteristic of the Boom that immediately preceded Allende's work. Although her literature is not innovative in the formal way that high modern Boom literature was, she very clearly believes in the revolutionary possibilities of literature to create and remake life and the impossibility of an authentic literature that is not intimately connected with reality. In Eva Luna and in The House of the Spirits (1985) as well, she shows that writing has a sacred, transcendental quality, which is explored in the creation and resurrection myths and stories that appear in those novels. Eva describes her mother and the legacy she passes on:

Published by New Prairie Press 1 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 30 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

Words are free, she used to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers. She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying. (22)

Allende' s language here reflects the commodification/impoverish- ment of reality in a world ruled by economic and political repression as a counterpoint to one lightened by the liberating potential of words. But if instead fiction is not integrated into reality, the opposite occurs, as with Zulema, Riad Halabi's wife: "My stories did not make her happy; they merely filled her head with romantic ideas, and led her to dream of impossible escapades and borrowed heroes, distancing her totally from reality" (155). Eva tells the Minister of Defense that her ideas come from "things that are happening and things that happened

before I was born . . . " (301). What she doesn't say is that Bolero, her telenovela, which he is questioning, is the story of her (made) life. Clearly, then, because fiction is so intimately entwined with life, it is a priori political. Rolf Carle, the documentary cineaste, and his mentor and boss, Senor Aravena, debate this concept numerous times in the book, even though they genuinely agree that art can change history; it is for that reason that they run the risk of arrest, torture, and even death. At the very end of the book Rolf and Eva merge the personal and the political when they agree to tell the story of the guerrillas' escape from Santa Maria through an episode in her telenovela, a story in which they both had participated and which Rolf had filmed. This device, quite common in Chile and other similar political regimes, ensures the diffusion of the truth that censors will not allow on the regular news channels.

Writing as Literary History

This Bildungsroman of Eva's professional development as a writer reflects-in a somewhat fragmented manner-important developments in Latin American literary history. While reading this novel I felt that her personal quest was paralleled by an aesthetic quest, manifested in the trying on and taking off of various genres, literary movements and myths characteristic of Latin America; she even goes so far as to explicitly allude to specific authors and their individual works. Although some of these are simply lightheartedly parodied, http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 2 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Diamond-Nigh 31

others are reworked and reinterpreted in the light of the feminist enterprise of the past twenty-five years. Eva Luna transgresses fundamentally because it has an intellectually strong, sexual, nurturing, very feminine protagonist, setting up an initial rupture with the dichotomy so clearly demarcated by Octavio Paz between "the mother and the whore." Four primary categories suggest themselves: myth and the mythic consciousness; magical realism; Boom writers; and then a miscellaneous grouping that subsumes a host of other significant literatures and literary themes: the picaresque, the neo-romantic, novels of the dictators, the ever-present conflict between civilization and barbarism, and testimonial literature. As the novel's contact with soap operas and radio serials is so evident, this article will not address that connection.

Myth and the Mythic Consciousness The critic Wolfgang Karrer has suggested the importance of the creation myth in chapter one of this novel (7). I would like to suggest that two other chapters, six and ten, also participate in a creation myth, and that all three of these are linked by the idea of creation through words. Chapter one gives us the physical creation of the first woman, Eva/Eve, chapter six her re-creation as an erotic being, and chapter ten a further incarnation as a politically committed writer. In "Transformation and Transvestism in Eva Luna," Karrer suggests that the "opening story of Consuelo and the Indian gardener, dying and resurrecting under Consuelo's love making, carries overtones of a creation myth. Man and woman, Indian and Spanish races (in a neat gender inversion of the Pocahontas/Malinche myth), death and

life, moon and ' Sandolo S o l ' . . . snake and life essence, all fuse to create Eva Luna" (156). From the beginning, then, traditionally masculine frameworks of separation and hierarchy are deconstructed and con- verted to traditionally feminine ones of wholeness and fusion, a changeover that the critic Z. Nelly Martinez has read as a political act in Allende's The House of the Spirits (1991, 66 -76 passim). Karrer also suggests that Eva fulfills the archetypal code described by Della Grisa (1985) which:

begins both with the title and her name. It determines her miracu- lous creation, the heroic liberation from mother to father figures, it provides friendly helpers and magical gifts, and leads to her magical transformation from domestic prisoner to liberator of Published by New Prairie Press 3 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4

32 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

prisoners. . . . But instead of reflecting Latin American history in

this circular myth . . . Allende chooses to thoroughly feminize it. It is Eva Luna who rescues Rolf Carle from the dragon of his past, who brings the treasure to Mimi, helps to free the prisoners and take the good news to the people. Her individuation owes more to mother, "grandmother" Elvira, and "sister" Mimi than to male help from Huberto Naranjo or even Riad Halabi. (157)

It is Halabi, however, who gives birth to the second Eva in chapter six. He rescues her and brings her to Agua Santa where she says that "for the first time in my life, I was free to come and go; until then I had always been confined behind walls or forced to wander lost in a hostile city" (151). He teaches her to read and write; he gives her the emotional and financial security and leisure to do so; just as important, he provides her with a birth certificate, the only proof of her existence in the world. Like Scheherezade with the sultan in the Arabian Nights, he brings her to life as an erotic being, as an embodiment of the life-force Eros. Most interestingly, however, he does not become her lover until the night before she leaves, as a result of her metamorphosis and not as its cause. Thus, it is as nurturer and guide (a "helper" in Della Grisa's terminology) that he functions. And the agency of this instruction is through none other than that book which reigns over all of Eva Luna, the Arabian Nights, "in which I immersed myself so deeply I completely lost sight of reality. Eroticism and fantasy blew into my life with the force of a typhoon, erasing all limitations and turning the known order of things upside down" (153). Z. Nelly Martinez, in the afore- mentioned article, describes Allende's concept of Eros and its connection to writing and the feminine artist:

Also useful here is Michel Foucault's opposition between ars erotica and scientia sexualis, an opposition that brings attention to the repressive power of Western sexuality and to the liberating power of Eros. Thus Foucault equates (Western) knowledge with (patriarchal) might and sees art as expressive of Eros and hence as a liberating force. Free and creative. Eros is evidently subversive and hence demonic in the Western imagination. (291)

And thus it functions, for Eva is wrongly accused of Halabi's wife's death, arrested, tortured and driven out of town by people who cannot http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 4 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History

Diamond-Nigh 33

understand the nature of her relationship with Halabi, but instead interpret it as a clandestine sexual liaison that causes Zulema's death. Eva's last birth, as committed writer, is one that fuses both her erotic and intellectual being and brings together her personal relationship with Rolf and her source of inspiration in the collective unconscious:

I awakened early. It was a soft and slightly rainy Wednesday, not very different from others in my life, but I treasure that Wednesday as a special day, one that belonged only to me. I took a clean white sheet of paper-like a sheet freshly ironed for making love-and

rolled it into the carriage. . . . I believed that that page has been waiting for me for more than twenty years, that I had lived only for that instant.... I wrote my name, and immediately the words began

to flow, one thing linked to another and another. . . .1 could see an order to the stories stored in my genetic memory since before my birth, and the many others I had been writing for years in my notebooks. (251)

When we examine the language used here and the language used later to describe Eva and Rolf, we see that both evoke the same suggestion of eternity and destiny:

He strode forward and kissed me exactly as it happens in romantic novels, exactly as I had been wanting him to do for a century, and exactly as I had been describing moments before in a scene between the protagonists of my Bolero. Once we were close, I was able unobtrusively to drink in the smell of the man, recognizing, at long last, the scent of the other half of my being. I understood then why from the first I thought I had known him before. (306)

What is just as interesting here, it seems to me, is the plenitude of existence that Eva experiences when she writes, the complete fulfill- ment of herself as a unique being: the day that belongs only to her and the fact that the mere inscription of her name calls forth her creations. Naming: in the mythic consciousness the use of a name is a sacred ritual, calling what had previously been unnamed into existence, creating a destiny if given to a person. It is intimate, private and personal and speaks to the very core of a person's being. When Eva returns to the Indians at the end of the novel, she asks the name of one Published by New Prairie Press 5 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 34 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

of them whom she was sure she had previously known, "but El Negro had explained that it would be discourteous to ask. For these Indians, he said, to name is to touch the heart; they consider it offensive to call

a stranger by name or to be named by him . . ." (276). With this sense of the sacred replacing the patriarchal appropriation signaled by a child's taking of the name of the father, Eva's name creates her destiny and marks her as a part of a larger community:

Her name will be Eva, so she will love life. "And her last name?" "None. Her father's name isn't important." "Everybody needs a last name. Only a dog can run around with one name." "Her father belonged to the Luna tribe, the Children of the

Moon. Let it be Luna, then. Eva Luna. . . . (21)

Consuelo, too, is marked by her name: time and time again after her death Eva calls on her for strength, courage and guidance, and she even becomes a visible presence in much the same way as Eva's characters who will invade her house and make a hurricane of chaos for Elvira to clean. Eva herself notes her mother's destiny when she says that "she realized that the moment had come for her to justify the name Consuelo and console this man in his misfortune" (18). But Consuelo is not only defined by her name; she also embodies Jung's collective unconscious, always present, never forgetting: "She placed at my feet the treasures

of the Orient, the moon, and beyond. .. . she retained all the anecdotes she had heard and those she had learned in her readings. She manufac- tured the substance of her own dreams, and from those materials constructed a world for me" (22). We saw that this collective memory was part of the wellspring pouring from Eva's writing of her name, and we later see that she in turn passes it on to Rolf: "she understood that in her desire to please him she had given him her own memory: she no longer knew what was hers or how much now belonged to him; their pasts had been woven into a single strand" (281). The sense of time as being eternal and undifferentiated, flowing in a circular movement that subverts the Western idea of progress, evolution, sequence and non-connection, is explicitly elaborated in the first chapter of Genesis. Mircea Eliade, in his Cosmos and History (1959) characterizes it as sacred time, "in illo tempore." In the Mission where Consuelo was raised, "time is bent and distances deceive the http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 6 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Diamond-Nigh 35

human eye, persuading the traveler to wander in circles"; it is a Garden of Eden where "she roamed outdoors, sniffing the flora and the fauna, her mind filled with images, smells, colors, and myths borne on the river current" (2-3). This cyclical, repetitive, mythic time sense dominates the narrative, fusing the beginning and end of the novel, when Eva returns to the Indians (her origins) in the jungle close to Agua Santa and takes part in an act of political commitment that makes her part of a collective. Riad Halabi's gift of the belly dance, only to be performed for the man Eva loves, is a mirror ofthe tooth-shaped gold nugget given by El Portugues to Consuelo, who would wear it "until she met someone she would give it to as a gift of love" (4). The beliefin the unity of all things, this fusion and change, the non- discrimination between seeming opposites, also characterize the mythic world-view. Gender differences disappear and the animate/inanimate dichotomy as nature is invested with mystery, potential and life. Masculine and feminine principles metamorphose and meld, produc- ing "mythological beings" (Mimi 253) more complete than either of the two genders: this may be the only way we can understand Mimi's puzzling decision not to take the step of having a vagina constructed, one that would finally complete her sex change. I would like to suggest that Riad Halabi embodies a feminine principle: he gives birth to Eva's second incarnation, thus fusing the father and mother into one. High- lighting the beginning of chapter six are words which seem somewhat disorienting when applied to a man: "Riad Halabi was one of those persons who are undone by their own compassion" (137). Although he has a successful businessman, most of what we know of him focuses on his sensitivity, gentleness, and emotional life, a focus most usually reserved for feminine characters. And in a foreshadowing of the end of the book, he incarnates a woman:

Sometimes he covered the lower half of his face with a dishcloth, in the manner of an odalisque's veil, and danced for me, clumsily, arms uplifted, belly gyrating wildly. So it was, amid shouts of laughter, that I learned the belly dance. "It is a sacred dance-you will dance it only for the man you love most in your life," Riad Halabi told me. (154)

We can view Eva's time with Riad as an apprenticeship for her relationship with Rolf, who also embodies mythic and feminine principles of wholeness and fusion. This we have already seen in his Published by New Prairie Press 7 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 36 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

enactment of the myth that lovers are one soul split and thrown to separate parts of the earth, from which they must make their way back to each other to fbrm a complete being. Throughout the novel, Eva's and Rolf s geographical, social, professional and personal orbits come ever closer. Emotions, not the intellect, rule Rolf s life: "He denied his emotions but at any unguarded time was demolished by them" (92). On the other hand we have Huberto Naranjo who, despite his apparently revolutionary ideas, will never allow revolution in gender roles and relations, which makes a permanent relationship with Eva impossible: "For Naranjo and others like him, 'the people' seemed to be composed exclusively of men; we women should contribute to the struggle but were excluded from decision-making and power. His

revolution would not change my fate in any fundamental way . . ." (233). Allende here deconstructs the Western idea of transvestism/trav- esty with its emphasis on unnaturalness and evil, separation and otherness, and uses the mythic consciousness of Latin American history to change its polarity to plenitude and wholeness. On a smaller scale, this idea obtains throughout the novel, as prostitutes and trans- vestites become major commercial and social successes, delinquents and street roughs guerrilla heroes, and the picaresque adventure a romantic melodrama. Rupert's faith in cross-breeding to create the strongest and best breeds, the madrina's Siamese twins of different races and the use of the word "she" to refer back to the usually masculine "person," are examples in miniature (5). Eva's experience of the mythic world unfolds in the first part ofthe novel, most specifically in the Genesis portion of the first chapter. Her stories form part of literary oral tradition. She learns the art of storytelling from her mother, learns to use her stories as tools of barter, survival, escape and emotional comfort, but it is not until chapter six, the exact mid-point of the novel, which takes place in Agua Santa, that she gains the skills of reading and writing.

Magical Realism Allende's acknowledgment of magical realism occurs both as specific references and in the creation of the microcosm of magical realism, La Colonia, where Eva's masculine counterpart, Rolf Carle, grows up. There are clear allusions to the two foundational figures of magical realism in Latin America, Jorge Luis Borges and Alejo Carpentier. Carpentier's idea of "lo real maravilloso" is echoed by Eva http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 8 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Diamond-Nigh 37

the first time she goes to La Colonia and says, "I had the feeling that I was in a world so new that sound had not yet been created" (294). Borges' idea of the simultaneity of times and spaces, most explicit in his short story, "El Aleph," (1948) is reflected in Eva's description of the garden in the Mission:

The world was bounded by the iron railings of the garden. Within them, time was ruled by caprice; in half an hour I could make six trips around the globe, and a moonbeam in the patio would fill my thoughts for a week.... Space expanded and contracted according to my will: the cubby beneath the stairs contained an entire planetary system, but the sky seen through the attic skylight was nothing more than a pale circle of glass. (25)

There seems to be no irony or parody in these descriptions, which is not the case in the extended meditation on La Colonia, which represents magical realism imposed from the outside. It is a fairytale village, a transplanted Austrian homeland marked by self-isolation and imposition, a place where no one speaks Spanish, and where many of the children have defects because of inbreeding, another reference, perhaps, to the Nazi policy of the "pure race" suggested by the concentration camp episode; a colony in Allende's damning terms (87). It is basically sterile, unreal, "preserved in a bubble where time

had stopped and geography was illusory. . . . For Rolf it was like walking into a movie" (87). Aravena urges him to leave:

You can't stay in La Colonia forever, he said. It's fine for a neurotic like myself to come here and fortify my body and get the poisons out of my system, but no normal young man should live in this stage set. Rolf Carle was familiar with the works of Shakespeare, Moliere and Calderon de la Barca, but he had never been in a theater and could not see its relationship with the village. (101)

It seems significant that the three authors cited are not Latin American, but represent the three most important colonial powers, England, France and Spain. Rolf s knowledge of literature, then, has no connection with the world that surrounds him. Elzbieta Sklodowska suggests

in an article on Miguel Barnet that "this perception . . . resembles the construction of the so-called magic realist narrative in that it frames the Published by New Prairie Press 9 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 38 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

`other' as fantastically exotic. What we get instead of difference is awkwardness" (39). Magical realism, then, in the .context of La Colonia, is not indigenous but an overlay that represents the desire by outsiders to marginalize Latin America. The authentically "magic" is Agua Santa. The road/threshold to and from it passes by the Palace of the Poor, which materializes and etherizes as a hallucinatory apparition. It is a microcosm ofthe Arabian Nights, dominated by the guiding force of the Arabian Riad Halabi. The differences between Agua Santa and La Colonia focus on the dichotomy between integration and domination: although not Hispanic, Riad integrates himself into the life of the community and becomes its guiding force in commerce, village improvements and education. He brings Eva there; the Indians come from the jungle every week and join them. The only person who does not become part of the community is his wife, Zulema, who ends up committing suicide. It is there that Eva discovers three magic forces in her life, reading, writing, and the erotic, while it is significant that no creation takes place in La Colonia. In Agua Santa, it is only when the forces of repression take over that everything changes, including the townspeople, and Eva is forced to leave.

The Boom No discussion of magical realism or the Boom can possibly take place without discussing Gabriel Garcia Marquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970); it seemed at one point that no scholarship on Isabel Allende could take place either, particularly none on The House of the Spirits, without that same discussion (Agosin 1984, Coddou 1985, Marcos 1985, Rojas 1985, Urbina 1990). In Eva Luna, Allende parodies this obsession (and cites herselfintratextually) through Mimi: "Ever since she had seen a line of people outside a bookstore waiting to have their books signed by a thickly mustached Colombian writer on a triumphal tour, she had showered me with notebooks, pencils and dictionaries. That's a good career, Eva. You don't have to get up too

early and there's no one to order you around . . . " (225). Nonetheless, the marks of Garcia Marquez remain evident: prolepses, levitations, fairies that appear in the surreal clarity of dusk, notebooks that encapsulate life, the military that tries to annihilate history, "wiping out entire tribes and erasing every trace of their passage on earth," a clear reference to the end of One Hundred Years (283). It is, then, not the influence of Garcia Marquez to which Allende objects, but his patriar- http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 10 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Diamond-Nigh 39

chal appropriation of all following writing and literature, whether explicitly fostered by him, by scholars, or by readers. Other writers of the Latin American Boom, Isabel Allende's direct literary predecessors, can be read in Eva Luna. Several of the borrow- ings/allusions come from protagonists in major new novels: Alejandra of Ernesto Sabato ' s On Heroes and Tombs (1981) finds her way into Eva's soap opera Bolero; the transvestite La Manuela in Jose Donoso's Hell has no Limits (1972) is completely reinterpreted as Melesio/Mimi; Jorge Amado's Gabriela: Clove and Cinnamon (1962) resonates in Rolf s two cousins with their "natural aroma of cinnamon, clove, vanilla and lemon" (93,173). The narrative structure of an interlocking soap opera narrative with an autofiction has a precedent in Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982), and Alejo Carpentier's Lost Steps (1956) is mirrored in Eva's return to her Indian origins in the jungle: while there, she "re-gains" her life by resuming the menstrual periods that had ceased after Zulema's suicide but, like the protagonist in Carpentier's novel, she cannot stay and returns to her life in the city. It could be argued that these are mere coincidences and show more ofthis writer's flights of fancy than any authorial intention. I would like to counter with the idea that the specular quality of the Arabian Nights profoundly informs this work, that Eva Luna explicitly is a coming to terms with the literary currents and movements of Latin American history, the closest of which, in chronological terms, is the Boom, and that the allusive interplay and resonating structure I have just mentioned is a way of forming an intertextual web that unites all of Latin American literature, a device which is totally compatible with the feminist ideology of fusion and integration I have been mentioning throughout this piece.

Miscellany Chapters three and five clearly embrace that paradigmatic Spanish form of literature, the picaresque, which Pilar V. Rotella defines in "Allende's Eva Luna and the Picaresque Tradition" as "that of an unheroic protagonist caught up in a chaotic world, enduring a series of adventures and encounters that make him both a victim ofthe world and its exploiter." Along with first-person point of view and episodic structure, "picaresque narratives often remain open-ended and often laced with interpolated tales ... " (127). Allende reinterprets this genre in significant ways, most particularly the use of a feminine picara (not Published by New Prairie Press 11 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 40 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

without literary precedent but unusual), and the changeover of Eva from a picaresque character to a genuine heroine, one who who risks her life and uses her narrative gifts for the service of others. With the changeover in the protagonist, the novel itself changes modalities, a transformation that Rotella aptly describes: "Eva Luna' s and her friends' efforts to create a better world by destroying at least one bastion of political oppression and, especially, her own surrender to- supposedly-extra-ordinary love and lasting happiness, lead toward the idealized vision of romance" (133). The romance modality, too, undergoes important changes in the hands of Eva and Allende, as it remains firmly planted in reality. One of the characteristics of Eva's stories is the elimination of characters polarized into villains and heroes/heroines. The traditional romance/soap opera ending of "hap- pily ever after" is replaced by a more realistic ending, one which she suggests is more suited to her morbid temperament. It is also one which is often more feminist in its overtones and, as such, is not at all pleasing to Hubert() Naranjo. The ending of Eva Luna itself is ambiguous, with the traditional happy ending suggested as only one of several equal possibilities. The romance polarized characterization is mirrored in the polarized thematics of the regional novel, which has often been implicitly subtitled "civilization and barbarism." The first story Eva tells Rolf and Aravena begins thus: "Times were hard in the south. Not in the south of this country, but the south of the world, where seasons are reversed and winter does not occur at Christmastime as it does in civilized

nations, but in the middle of the year, as in barbaric lands. . . ." (255). This allusion is not only to the internal geography of Latin American literary history but to the same spirits that see Latin America as a barbaric/exotic land, framing it in the same way as do the magical realist narratives we have already discussed. Literature ofthe dictators, with a long history in Latin America and a more recent flowering in the 1980s, at which time many of the major Boom writers penned such works, is also cited in Eva Luna: the figure of El Benefactor who could not be buried because the people would not believe that "the tyrant's immortality was only a myth," shows in a humorous way the logical consequences of the mythification of a person, a mythification which is too often used for repressive ends (16). But Allende here, as she does in the ending of The House of the Spirits, suggests that there is a way out: in The House ofthe Spirits, Alba breaks the evolutionary pattern of crime, oppression and revenge by deciding http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 12 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Diamond-Nigh 41

not to hate her torturers; in Eva Luna, the Minister of Defense, who knows all about her, her contacts with the guerrillas, and her use of Bolero to disseminate the truth, does not arrest her but requests her mediation to reach an agreement with them. The reverse side of this literature, what we have come to call testimonial, embodies one of the primary themes ofEva Luna, memory, and the resurrection of lost and never-heard voices. From the beginning of this novel, memory takes its place as a life-sustaining force: Consuelo tells Eva that she never will die if Eva continues to remember her; Eva writes from the "genetic memory" which has been passed on to her by her mother; she re-creates her own and others' memories so that they become positive rather than negative remembrances; she passes on to and fuses her memories with Rolf until they are one. Allende's long, allusive meditations on Latin American literary history ensure that this history, too, will remain alive. In the novel, Eva tries to avoid telling about Zulema and her lover, Kamal, but comes to the following conclusion: "My first thought was that if we kept silent, it would be as if nothing had happened-what is not voiced scarcely exists; silence would gradually erase everything, and the memory would fade" (165-66). Without memory, without voice, without stories, life ceases.

Works Cited

Note: Dates in brackets refer to first Spanish edition.

Agosin, Marjorie. "Entrevista a Isabel Allende/Interview with Isabel Allende. "Imagine 1.2 (1984): 42-56.

Allende, Isabel. Eva Luna. New York: Bantam, 1989 [1987].

. The House of the Spirits. New York: Knopf, 1985 [1982].

Amado, Jorge. Gabriela: Clove and Cinnamon. New York: Knopf, 1962 [1958].

Borges, Jorge Luis. "El Aleph" in El Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969. New York: Dutton, 1970 [1948].

Carpentier, Alejo. The Lost Steps. New York: Knopf, 1956 [1953].

Coddou, Marcelo. "La casa de los espiritus: de la historia a la Historia." Textos Criticos 11.33 (1985): 165-72. Published by New Prairie Press 13 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 42 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995)

Della Grisa, Gracie la N. Ricci. Realismo magic° y conciencia mitica en America Latina. Buenos Aires: F.G. Cambeiro, 1985. 66-76. Donoso, Jose. Hell has no Limits. Eliade, Mircea, Cosmos and History, New York: Harper and Row, 1959. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Avon, 1970 [1967]. Karrer, Wolfgang. "Transformation and Transvestism in Eva Luna." Ed. Sonia Riquelme-Rojas and Edna Aguirre-Rehbein. Critical Approaches to Isabel Allende's Novels. New York: Peter Lang, 1991: 151-63. Marcos, Juan Manuel. "Isabel viendo Hover en Barataria."Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 19.2 (1985): 129-37.

Martinez, Z. Nelly. "The Politics of the Woman Artist in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits." Writing the Woman Artist: Essays on Poetics, Politics and Portraiture. Ed. Suzanne W. Jones. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. 1991. 287-306.

Rojas, Mario A. "La casa de los espiritus de Isabel Allende: un caleidoscopio de espejos desordenados." Revista Iberoamericana 51. 132-33 (1985): 917-25.

Rotella, Pilar V. "Allende's Eva Luna and the Picaresque Tradition," in Critical Approaches to Isabel Allende's Novels. 125-35.

Sabato, Ernesto. On Heroes and Tombs. New York: Ballantine, 1981 [1961]. Sklodowska, Elzbieta. "Spanish American Testimonial Novel: Some After- thoughts." New Novel Review 1.2. (1994): 32-47.

Urbina, Nicasio. "La casa de los espiritus de Isabel Allende y Cien aiios de soledadde Gabriel Garcia Marquez: un modelo reterico comun."Escritura 15.29. (1990): 215-28. Vargas Llosa, Mario. AuntJulia and the Scriptwriter. New York: Farrar, 1982 [1978].

http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 14 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360

New Historicism Theory

New Historicism is a theory that seeks to find meaning in a text by considering it within the context of the prevailing ideas and social assumptions of the historical era in which the text is produced. New Historicists such as Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, and Jonathan Goldberg, concern themselves with the political functions of literature and the concept of power, the intricate means by which cultures produce and reproduce themselves. The – New Historicists – seek to understand literature from a historical perspective, which they feel that the New Criticism did not provide (Bressler, 2003: 182).

As a theory emerging as a reaction to old Historicism which viewed the text ‘as an autonomous entity’ (Ryan, 1999: 128), New Historicism ‘reposition the text in the original discursive reality of the age in which it was produced’ (Mukesh, 2003: 118). Led by Greenblatt, the New Historicists view history as not just an account of events that took place in the past, but rather an intricate description of human reality which is regarded as a tenet by the society in question. While a literary work may or may not tell us about the factual aspects of the world from which they emerge, they will tell us about the prevailing ways of thinking at that particular time. It is in this line that a literary work ‘should be considered a product of its time, place and circumstances of its composition rather than an isolated creation of a genius’ (Sharma: 2014). The political and cultural angle that the theory provides in the interpretation of any literary work encourages literary studies to re-establish a link with the political and social world that gave rise to it (Howard, 1986).

The rise of New Historicism is predicated upon the Poststructuralist tenet that appealed to New Historicism was the assumption that history was always ‘narrated’ and therefore the first sense of the events of the past are unreasonable and cannot be defended successfully, and that a unified history of harmonious culture, like the Elizabethan times, was a myth spread by the ruling classes in their own interests (Selden, 1989: 104-105). Tillyard (1959) presents history a s ‘picture’, a ‘background order’ (8) that is ontologically separated from literature and that the social reality is a ‘collective mind’ (17) that is expressed in canonical literary works. Tillyard position with regard to the far as history and literature was concerned was that there is a reflection or expression of essential aspects of a historical period in the literary canon, particularly in Shakespeare (Makaryk, 1993: 125). Tillyard (1959) presentation of the Elizabethan culture as monological and

1 homogenous made the era to be thought as a ‘seamlessly unified systems of meaning, which could not be disturbed by unorthodox or dissenting voices’ (Selden, 1989: 104).

However, it is through this presentation that defended the Elizabethan culture that became the sustained object of attack by New Historicists and was used as a centre of establishing the dimensions for their own methodologies. They assert that ‘forms of discourse, artistic or documentary, popular or elitist, interact with and are determined by other discourses and institutional practices in a specific historical moment’ (Makaryk, 1993: 125). What becomes apparent is that the New Historicists departs from Tillyard approach in every aspect. Selden (1989: 105) outlines the new set assumptions which were as a result of the poststructuralist intellectual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s which include the fact that history is not unified and is unstable. For the New Historicists, history is not reducible to the activists of few prominent individuals implying that it cannot be linearly progressive but rather constructed out of the immense amount of possible acts and interpretations of these acts. Therefore, as Selden (1985) further points out, the past is viewed as impure and can only be availed to us in the form of ‘representations’ of which each of the acts, or the ‘representations’, are viewed as a network of material practices.

New Historicists further postulates that a people can hardly be extrapolated from the activities of the political or cultural system of which they are part of but rather it is the mundane activities and conditions of daily life that can tell us much about the belief system of a time period. The focus in this case is that ‘each separate discourse of a culture must be uncovered and analysed in the hopes of showing how all discourses interact with each other and with institutions, people, and other elements of culture’ (Bressler, 2003: 187). This approach to history by New Historicism shifted the focus ‘from closed systems perpetuating fixed meanings to open systems creating significance’ (Mukesh, 2003: 117) thus destabilising dominant discourses and defining the way meaning and values are produced. With the unstable and competing discourses in place, an interaction between the different discourses is established and it is this interaction among the dissimilar discourses that ‘shapes a culture and interconnects all the human activities, including the writing, reading, and interpretation of a text’ (Bressler, 2003: 187) that New Historicism accentuates.

New Historicists further assert the interconnectedness of literary text with the non-literary ones signifying that a literary work is not a product of a single author, but of its relationship to other

2 texts which are extra-literal. Since literature cannot be ‘timeless’, that is, it is located within a historical period, the systems of power present during the period in which the text emerges are reflected and reinforced in both literary and cultural texts. The structure of analysis of a literary text as far as New Historicism is concerned lays equal importance to both literary and non-literary text of the same period of which both are ‘allowed to work as sources of information and interrogation with each other’ (Ukkan, 2004: 22-33). It is through this practice of parallel reading that the notion of intertexuality is brought into practice. Julia Kristeva uses this term to ‘denote the interdependence of literary texts with all those that have gone before it’ with her contention being that a literary text is not an isolated phenomenon and that any text is the absorption and transformation of another’ (Ukkan, 2004: 22-33). The implication here is that any ‘literary text is akin to any other texts pertaining to other disciplines of knowledge in that particular socio-cultural scenario’ (Sharma, 2014: 3).

Other than intertextuality and the historical reading of the text, New Historicism contends that no reading of a literary or cultural text is definite. With the assumptions1 on New Historicism in place, it will be impossible to imagine a single response to the complexity presented in a text. New Historicists provides multiple reading and possibilities to a text rather than suggesting a conclusive idea to the text and it is through this provision of multiplicity of meaning that the New Historicists contends that ‘a work is not an autonomous body of fixed meanings, but represents a diversity of dissonant voices and unresolved conflicts in a specific culture’ (Ukkan 2004, 22-33). To unlock meaning in a text, New Historicists appropriates the post-structuralist assumption that a text can only be understood by laying claim to the ideology of the age and the doctrine of textuality2 (Mukesh, 2003: 118). New Historicists locate a text’s meaning within the cultural system composed of interlocking discourses of its author, the text, and its reader and that the ‘three areas of concern: the life of the author, the social rules and dictates found within a text, and the reflection

1 Mukesh (2003: 118) lays out the ‘enabling presumptions’ of New Historicism as put forward by Greenblatt which includes: literature has a historical base and literary works are not the products of a single consciousness but many social and cultural forces; literature is not a distinctive human activity as previously believed, but another vision of history; it is not possible to talk of an intrinsic human nature that transcends history since literature and human beings are both shaped by the social and political forces; and that a historian cannot escape the social or ideological constraints of his own formation since he is caught in his own historicity. 2 That a literary work is another historical document or a text rooted in the context (Mukesh, 2003: 118).

3 of a work’s historical situation as evidenced in the text’ (Bressler, 2003: 189) must always be investigated to arrive at a textual meaning.

Like any other school literary of thought, New Historicism has suffered criticism by undergoing attacks all the time. Its approach of history from a neutral position and its pervasive notion of power, being deterministic and monolithic, leave no room for freedom and even resistance to oppressive practices of the state and this has fallen into disfavor with the postmodernists. New Historicism refuses the claim that the society has entered has entered a postmodern phase, and apparently denial to make a systematic theoretical assumption and has avoided an explicit political position. By this, we find that New Historicism has weakened the struggle and resistance which Foucault states that they are naturally part of every structured system of power. Other than the postmodernists, the New Historicists also found themselves in problems with the cultural conservatives for undermining traditional conception of history and literature. The cultural conservatives viewed literature as serving the purpose of disseminating the cultural heritage and values that are the foundation of political and social institutions but we find that the New Historicist regarded this as a failure since the historical account of the literary works of the Elizabethan age, for instance, did not serve this purpose adequately. Finally, New Historicism was criticized by the literary critic, Harold Bloom, for reducing literature to a footnote of history and for not paying attention to the details involved in analyzing literature.

All said and done, we cannot overlook the fact that New Historicism has played a substantial role not only in contemporary literary studies but also in other disciplines such as history, anthropology, arts and in other interdisciplinary fields as well. Though it grew out of a limited area in the European academy, the renaissance literary studies, its extension to other historical periods has made it to be acceptable due to its accommodation to the conventions of the academy and it is yet to give rise to other literary thoughts.

References Bressler, C. E. (2003). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Howard, J. (1986). ‘The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies’ English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 13-43 Makaryk, I. R. (1993). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mukesh W. (2003). ‘New historicism and Literary Studies.’ Journal of General Studies, No. 1, Vol. 27, February, 2003. Ryan, M. (1999). Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc. Sharma, R. (2014). ‘New Historicism: An Intensive Analysis and Appraisal,” In Indian Review of World Literature in English, 10(2)., 1-11. Selden, R. (1985). A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory: Second Edition. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Tillyard, E. M. W. (1959). The Elizabethan World Picture. New Jersey: Rutger – The State University of New Jersey. Ukkan, R. P. (2004). “Approaching New Historicism.” In Avadhesh Kumar Singh (Ed.), Critical Practice: Journal of Critical and Literary Studies,11(1), 27-36.

New Historicism Theory

1 homogenous made the era to be thought as a ‘seamlessly unified systems of meaning, which could not be disturbed by unorthodox or dissenting voices’ (Selden, 1989: 104).

3 of a work’s historical situation as evidenced in the text’ (Bressler, 2003: 189) must always be investigated to arrive at a textual meaning.

"saul bellow's henderson, the rain king — a coming to terms with his self and with the world around" Myriam Vieira Bello de Oliveira

"Saul Bellow's Henderson, The Rain King - a Coming to Terms With His Self And With The World Around."

Myriam Vieira Bello de Oliveira*

As the plot focuses on Henderson, our starting point wil be a presentation of his most important characteristics, so we can better understand the developing of the action.

Henderson, at the age of fifty-five, is not a happy man. Although he has a nice wife and kids, plenty of money and time to enjoy life and its pleasures, he thinks he has made a mess of his life.

Physically, he describes himself as "six feet four inches tall. Two hundred and thirty pounds - An enormous head, rugged, with hair like Persian lamb's fur. Suspicious eyes, usually narrowed. Blustering ways. A great nose" (p.8). His appearance is, to say the least, remarkable. And he made it still more remarkable by the kind of clothes he liked to wear. He is a person who requires " large and real emotions" (p. 25) and that is why he was happy when he was in the war; / the civilian life bored him. Although he is always quarreling and many times "behaved like a bum", he wants to belong, to be accepted. On p. 256, when he's telling about one of his experiences with king Dahfu, what kind of words came instinctively from his mouth? "and certain words crept into my roars, like "God", "Help", "Lord Have Mercy"... plus snatches from the Messiah (he was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, etcetera". He feels there is a similarity between the Messiah and himself.

Another aspect of his contradictory personality is the combination of sensitivity and a taste for hard manual work. The same hands that have"thrown down boars and pinned them and gelded them" (p. 32) also played the violin.

Professors de Lingua Inglesa e Literature Norte-Americana da Universidade Catölica de Minas Gerais. 65 The same person that on a resort "sat on the beach shooting stones at bottles and put bourbon in the morning coffee, could also respond to the beauty of an autumn day: "Let's say it's one of those velvety days of early autumn, when the sun is shining on the pines and the air has a spice of cold and stings your lungs with pleasure. I see a large pine tree on my property and in the green darkness underneath, which somehow the pigs never got into, red tuberous begonias grow and a broken stone inscription put in by my mother says "goe happy rose..." (pp. 30-31).

Henderson is an educated man, but all the knowledge he's acquired hasn't helped him come to terms with the world or with himself. "...while I got an M.A. to please my father I always behaved like an ignorant man and a bum" (p. 25).

He feels "very little affection for the iron age of technology" (p. 111) and has a sense that although man has developed in so many ways, he still has to discover how to cope with the essentials.

As he says on p. 258, "All the major tasks and the big conquests were done before my time. That left the biggest problem of all, which was to encounter death".

If Henderson had lived some hundred years ago, he should have found many grandiose causes to engage himself in, but he is only aware of the feeling that his spirit is sleeping and of a voice within that repeats "I want, I want!" "Now I have already mentioned that there was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said I want, I want, I want'." (p. 26).

It is because of this feeling that something is missing, that something should be done, that Henderson decides to buy a ticket to Africa. This trip can be considered as the turning point in his life.

66 His first impressions of the African landscape are a clue to what he is searching.

As he describes it "it was all simplified and splendid and I felt I was entering the past - the real past, no history or junk like that" (p. 46) The landscape is reduced to the essentials the mountains were naked without trees and you could see "the clouds being born on the slopes". What Henderson pursues, is also to be reduced to the essentials - he wants a fresh start, without the "baggage" of the past.

By baggage he means all his prejudices, all the conditionings imposed on him throughout his life.

His stay in Africa can be considered as a process of learning and several steps can be distinguished during the process.

Even before landing, Africa looked to him like "the ancient bed of mankind".

• He had an impression it could be a new start for him - "I felt I might have a chance here" (p. 43) He feels he's entering "The prehuman past" (p. 46). This "prehuman past" can in a way be understood as his unconscious - so we can infer that what he is really seeking is self-knowledge. To attain this self-knowledge, Henderson feels that he has to deprive himself of many things, so he compares himself to a hermit that goes to the desert. "Let me throw away my gun and my helmet and the lighter and all this stuff and maybe I can get rid of my fierceness too and live out there on worms. On locusts until all the bad is burned out of me" (p. 49).

When he has his first meeting with the Arnewi, Henderson is deeply aware of the physical discrepancies in him: "My face is like some sort of terminal, it's like Grand Central

67 I mean - the big horse nose and the wide mouth that opens into the nostrils and eyes like tunnels" (p. 51).

His wrestling with Itelo was an important step in his process of learning.

He perceived that for the Arnewi, emotional experiences are inseparably associated with physical experiences: the wrestling itself was a communication - before cannunicating orally, the Arnewi communicated with their bodies - and this was real, primitive communication, that he was unable to get in the civilized world.

"But I have to tell you that it wasn't the defeat alone that made him (Melo) cry like this. He was in the midst of a great and mingled emotional experience. I tried to get my foot off the top of his head, but he held it there persistently, saying, Oh, Mistah Henderson! Henderson, I know you now. Oh, sir I know you now! (p. 67).

Itelo's gesture, wrapping his arms around Henderson and laying his head on Henderson's shoulder, to indicate friendliness, would be unacceptable by civilized standards, but it had a tremendous effect on Henderson: "This hit me where I lived, right in the vital centres both with suffering and with gratification" (p. 68). The Arnewi gave Henderson an impression of physical and mental harmony: they were dignified, happy, good natured and showed real warmth. When he gets to hnow queen Willa- tale, Henderson felt "the calm pulsation of her heart participating in the introduction" (p. 69).

This was a contrast with the civilized world he had left, where no real, intimate communication existed. Among the Arnewi Henderson feels that he isn't rejected and this is a new experience to him. As Itelo tells him, both Itelo's aunts admire the way Henderson looks and consider hil "Very good. Primo. Class A" (p. 72). Henderson doesn't 68 feel uneasy about his appearance:

"Boy, am I glad my physical strength is good for something instead of being a burden as it mostly has been throughout life" (p. 72).

We get to know that Henderson is searching for identity - he's unable to answer the question "who are you?" posed to him by the queen. He tries to define himself, to describe how he is and what he wants, but doesn't know" where to begin".

Nevertheless, he is aware that the way of bursting the spirit's sleep is suffering or by love. "It's too bad, but suffering is about the only reliable burster of the spirit's sleep. There is a rumour of long standing that love also does it" (p. 75).

Little by little Henderson gets closer to an answer for the question that bothers him: "who are you?". The description he gives of himself on p. 81 is very significant: "I have never been at home in life. All my decay has taken place upon a child". What he has to learn is how to come to terms with himself and with life.

He has an intuition that the queen may give him some of the answers he's looking for, because women's love and the great principles of life are connected. "I have observed a connection between women's love and the great principles of life" (p. 91). Obscurely he feels that the queen is a representation of the ancient wisdom - he identifies her with the great mother earth.

One of the steps in his process to self-awareness is to feel a new aprehension of reality. One morning when he wakes up, he sees the colours of sunrise on the wall of his but and becomes aware that the loveliness of it affected him in a new way. "At once I recognized the

69 importance of this, as throughout my life I had known these moments when the dumb begins to speak, when I hear the voices of objects and colours; then the physical universe starts to wrinkle and change and heave and rise and smooth, so it seems that even the dogs have to lean against a tree, shivering" (p. 95).

This experinece of a new perception of reality is the same Aldous Huxley tells about, in his book "The Doors of Perception". It is the same experience we have with drugs, when our perceptions are not blocked. It is the way a child sees the world, with the eyes of innocence. Henderson was aware that his spirit was not sleeping then. "My spirit was not sleeping then. I can tell you, but was saying. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!" (p. 97). He has gone through a vital experience and this was just the opposite of the one he had in the aquarium, looking at the octopus. The octopus had been death for him, but that experience had been life - he had felt "at the fringe of the Nirvana" (p. 97). The next experience Henderson had was disastrous - trying to help the Arnewi get rid of the frogs, he destroyed their water - supply. In a way, he becomes aware that what he did was to use violence to solve problems, as he had done so many times in his life and violence was useless.

After that, he leaves the Arnewi's land goes to another tribe, the wariri, which represents one more step in his search for self-knowledge.

Henderson is aware that each one has his own kind of reality - not the physical one, but mental reality: "The world of facts is real, all right, and not to be altered. The physical is all there, and it belongs to science. But then there is the noumenal department, and there we create, and create, and create". (p. 157). As for his body, Henderson recognizes that he never accepted himself like 70 he was. He and his body never got together like friends and the same can be said for his mind. The impression of dignity and beauty and happ iness - harmony - that struck him as he saw the Arnewi was due to their being friendly to, accepting their own bodies. They were on good terms with themselves.

"Oh, my body, my body: Why have have we never really got together as friends? I have loaded it with my vices, like a raft, like a barge. Oh, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (p. 171). So, for Henderson, finding himself would mean learning to accept himself, to come to terms with himself, and as a consequence of this, to come to terms with the world.

He knows that it is "the memory of last defeats" that prevents him from doing so.

His meeting with king Dahfu is important - he is going to learn more about himself. Queen Willatale had recognized as Henderson's most important trait his "Grun-tu-molani" - desire of living. Now Dahfu tells him that this desire of living "is much, but it is not alone sufficient. Mr. Henderson, more is required" (p. 209). According to Dahfu, wat characterizes Henderson is a "desire of salvation". Henderson is seeking answers to the question "What will become of me"? (p. 204).

The king has a theory that the mind can shape the form of the body - the process of change can begin from the core (the mind) to the rind (the body) or vice-versa. It is a dynamic process: "And what he was engrossed by was a belief in the transformation of human material, that you could work either way, either from the rind to the core or from the core to the rind; the flesh influencing the mind, the mind influencing the flesh, back again to the mind, back

71 once more to the flesh. The process as he saw it was utterly dynamic" (p. 220).

This theory makes Henderson realize that the discomfort he felt about his appearance was due to his having absorbed characteristics of the pigs he used to breed in his farm (p. 251).

During his stay among the Wariri, Henderson recognizes that what is most important in his life is the love he feels for Lily and his children: he wants to come back to them. He also recognizes that he has often evaded reality and this was one of the main causes of his suffering - so he prays "Heavenly Father, open up my dumb heart and for Christ's sake, preserve me from unreal things" (p. 236).

King Dahfu wants to prove his theory so he takes Henderson to his lioness, Atti, which was kept in a den under the royal palace. He expected that Henderson would absorb the qualities of the lion, which he considered possessed remarkable strength, harmony and nobility.

Although the king's theory cannot be taken seriously, some of the techniques he uses with Henderson are sound and are used in modern therapy. What he was really trying to do was to make Henderson achieve a new awareness of his own body - he wanted Henderson to move his limbs freely, without the rigidity which is commonly found in persons who are repressed: "Your structure is far from ordinary... But I offer you sincerest congratulations on laying aside the former attitude of fixity. Now, Sir, will you assume a little more limberness? You appear cast in one piece. The midriff dominates. Can you move the different portions? Minus yourself of some of your heavy reluctance of attitude. Why so sad and earthen?" (p. 248). By requiring Henderson to roar and snarl like a lion, the king

72 encourages him to give physical expression to all his repressed feelings getting rid of them; that's why what the king describes as 'pathos' on that performance, for Henderson meant "a cry which summarized my entire course, on this earth, from birth to Africa; and certain words crept into my roars, like 'god', 'Help', 'Lord have mercy'. Only they came out 'H000lp:"M0000rcyl l . It's funny what words sprang forth" (256). Although Henderson is not really sure of what king Dahfu is trying to do, he's aware he must be changed somehow.

One thing is certain: he's got in the habit of reflection.

Henderson realizes that the mess be had made of his life was due to the fact that he's always been a man of action without thought: "...this is the payoff of a lifetime of action without thought. If I had to shoot at that cat, if I had to blow frogs, if I had to pick up Mummah without realizing what I was getting myself into, it was not out of line to crouch on all fours and roar and act like a lion" (p. 269). He became aware that he could overcome his old self - though not through Dahfu's experiments. He is also conscious that only in infancy you are a part of the natural ;wild.

At the end of the book, after Dahfu dies, Henderson decides to escape from the Wariri and go back to America, to his family.

Dahfu's death made him understand that he had been trying to escape reality all his life. "The snarling of this animal was indeed the voice of death. And I thought how I had boasted to my dear Lily how I loved reality. I love it more than you do, I had said. But oh, unreality:. Unreality, unreality: That has been my scheme for a

73 troubled but eternal life. But now I was blasted away from this fact by the throat of the lion. His voice was like a blow at the back of my head" (p. 287).

After his escaping from the Wariri in the company of Romilayu, Henderson has time for reflection and he evaluates his feelings for Lily and comes to the conclusion he had always loved her: "I therefore might as well be at home where my wife loves me. And even if she only seemed to love me that too was better than nothing. Either way I had tender feelings toward her" (p. 307).

His own problems had been caused by his inadaptability to reality and not by his relationship with his wife.

Henderson also evaluates his feelings toward the universe and feels that he has to try to live in harmony with it - as a result he will be in harmony with himself too: "Oh, you can't get away from rhythm, Romilayu. You just can't get away from it. The left hand shakes with the right hand, the inhale follows the exhale, the systole talks back to the diastole,the hands play pattycake and the feet dance with each other. And the seasons. And the stars and all of that. And the tides, and all that junk. You've got to live at peace with it because if it's going to worry you, you'll lose. You can't win against it. It keeps on, and on, and on" (p. 307). Thinking about his past, Henderson tries to understand his father. It's important for him to do so, because the main source of his feeling of rejection and his consequent hostility to the world lies in the fact that he sensed that his father was angered at him when his brother Dick died and he didn't forgive Henderson for not having died in place of his brother.

After all that's happened to him, Henderson is now able to realize that the anger his father expressed was not directed at him, but at life in general: "An old man,

74 disappointed, of failing strength may try to reinvigorate himself by means of anger. Now I understand it. But I couldn't see it at sixteen, when I had a falling out" ( p . 314).

The book ends with a note of hope and with symbols of life, implying that Henderson may have a fresh start.

The orphan he meets at the plane is a symbol of life to him. He perceives that the child's eyes "had that new lustre. With it they had ancient power, too. You could never convince me that this was for the first time" (p. 317). He sees in the child a manifestation of the eternal cycle of life - he (the child) is a living part of the natural world.

When Henderson gets off the plane in Newfoundland the "frozen ground of almost eternal, winter" and the pure fresh air are also a symbol of life. Henderson feels that the boy and the air act on him as a remedy, giving him new hope and confidence (last page).

He seems to be more at home with himself and with his surroundings.

We come to the conclusion that Henderson's process of learning consisted of finding a new relationship with his body and his mind and a new relationship with the world.

75 It can be summarized in a diagram:

This relationship consisted of a new awareness of his self and of the natural world around him.