International Journal of Research ISSN NO:2236-6124

Epistemology of ―The Beast in the Jungle‖

By KANIGANTI SRINIVAS, VEMUGANTI NIRMALADEVI.

The versatile reading of Henry James‘s novella ―The Beast in the Jungle‖ has surfaced over the decades, few have concentrated on the function of memory and consciousness in unraveling the secrets of this complex narrative. The research of this topic further, it is significant to shed light on the major portions of the story that James tells us. The novella opens in London, as the protagonist, John Marcher, reunites with May Bartram, a women he had known a decade earlier and to whom he had confided an unusual secret. At that time, Marcher revealed to Bartram his unshakeable conviction that his life would be defined by an extraordinary event, one that could be either positive or negative. For this reason, He has avoided marriage. Nevertheless, in the wake of their reunion, Marcher agrees to accept friendship and generosity from May Bartram, who invites him to watch together with her for his cryptic fate. This odd relationship unfolds over the book‘s first three sections, and it is not until the climactic fourth section that we grasp the long term aftermath of the arrangement. Despite their proximity and their involvement in the common activity of watching and waiting, there is nothing about the relationship that reflects a genuine feeling of communion. Throughout the novella, James deftly renders the gaps and slips that characterize their conversations, calling to mind Lacan‘s play of the signifiers as well as his concept of love as deceit as an act of dissimulation. Indeed, William James‘s formula regarding ―habits,‖ ―memory,‖ and ―consciousness‖ casts a long shadow over the narrative, a shadow that puts one in mind of the Lacanian thing, the embodied language. As the reader gradually comes to understand, Marcher‘s failure to apprehend May Bartram‘s love is related not only to his misconception of memory as the accurate reflection of the past but, as a corollary to this, the stilted body language and verbal slips that inform their interactions.

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I will explore different concepts of memory, consciousness, and love as endless talking, drawing upon criticism by Eve Sedgwick and Leo Bersani. The goal of this essay is to show that Marcher‘s epiphany does not simply involve his recognition of the fact that he has wasted time that could have been spent in a meaningful relation- ship with May, as the author himself elucidated in his Notebooks (CN 199). It also encompasses his understanding that consciousness is not ―a stuff‖ or an entity but rather a process, as William James defined it. Ironically, this awareness is found out only as John Marcher abandons his search for knowledge. Lacan, along with those of William James, can enhance our perception of the nature of fantasy and the role of the unconscious. While their view of human psychology diverged in many ways, William James and Freud shared similar sensibilities as neuroscientists. Both men were deeply influenced by Darwin, and they were inclined to view the study of the human mind, or psyche, as a discipline that belonged within the realm of the natural sciences, as opposed to the humanities alone. In the same way, James‘s differentiation of ―primary memory‖ from ―secondary memory‖ finds a close parallel in Freud‘s categories of ―screen memory‖ and ―recollection.‖ For Freud, screen memory is the memory of childhood (which corresponds to James‘s term ―habits‖), while recollection is a type of remembering that is the sole province of human beings in possession of consciousness. Given that past events are recalled in the context of the present, they are bound to be remembered differently as time goes on. Interestingly, these concepts differ in terms of their strength, since James deals primarily with the nature of consciousness, cognition, and learning effects (which are the roots of Pragmatism and Phenomenology), while Freud focuses on remembering the past as the foundation of the unconscious and advocates the use of psychoanalysis to facilitate a patient‘s cure. In The Principles of Psychology, William observes that remembrance is similar to direct feeling, given that ―its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains‖ (158). He goes on to argue that for a state of mind to survive within the memory it must have endured ―for a certain length of time,‖ and this memory is lodged, not in one‘s consciousness, but in one‘s body and neurons; in the human brain, this phenomenon is described as the memory traces. In this work, William refers repeatedly to ―the primary memory,‖ arguing that without it consciousness would be impossible. He explains that ―an object of primary memory is not thus brought back; it never was lost‖. Hence, the secondary memory is not an automatically repeated act but rather a recollection of one‘s experiences past.

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William suggests that remembering is not an epistemology but a feeling and is produced in the present force. He goes on to argue that the past feeling must be acknowledged in order to be embraced by the present mental state and to be owned by it (159). In the community of self, the past is not to be divided from either memory or present thought. While we are not ignorant of the time gap, human consciousness flows continuously, absorbing certain portions of the past. In this regard, James‘s view precisely coincides with that of the recent neuroscientist, Gerald M. Edelman, who regards consciousness as the remembered present. In a similar vein, Freud‘s influential essay, ―Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,‖ argues, ―We must treat his [the patient‘s] illness, not as an event of the past, but as a present day force‖ (Standard 12: 151). What James and Freud essentially agreed upon was that human recollection does not involve a precise reflection of the past, in the same way that human consciousness does not reflect a precise reality. Consciousness ceaselessly follows the present moment, while, at the same time, the memory-traces adapt the new experience. Even primary memory is rather subjective, since it depends essentially on an individual‘s level of intimacy with a particular experience and her emotional state. Indeed, the cause of Marcher‘s obtuse failure to perceive May Bartram‘s passion was his mistaken belief that she had knowledge of his secret that was grounded in her detailed memory. Marcher is incapable of personalizing his experiences because he lacks the attentiveness to store the present moment. Divorced from the present, he struggles to share his secret with May. And yet, he realizes, even as he takes her ―so far into his confidence,‖ that he recalls very little about her. His apparent dearth of intimate feeling toward others is connected to the fact that he has few impressions of life. Over the years, it would seem that his experiences have left few traces upon his mind. Henry James develops the opening of the story with such precision that his approach calls to mind the phenomenon of cause and effect as though he were a historian or even a natural scientist. The reader comes to appreciate that these early developments are indispensable to the construction of a net (a lure) that will shroud the characters‘ friendship, complicate their interaction, and contribute to a tragic outcome. At this point in the narrative, James cautiously sheds light on the psyche of Marcher, who is immediately struck by May‘s pleasant and ―distinctly handsome‖. In addition, the protagonist is engaged by her initial words to him: ―I met you years and years ago in Rome. I remember all about it.‖ These words resonate, evoking in his mind the image of a goddess of wisdom: ―Her face and her voice, all at his service now, worked the miracle the impression operating like the torch of a lamplighter who torches into flame, one by one, a long row of gas jets‖.

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James devotes so much space to a description of Marcher‘s state of mind at this point. The author‘s emphasis on the degree to which Marcher is impressed by Bartram‘s memory, along with the differing degrees of memory between the two characters, conveys two important things. Not only has May Bartram retained a passion for him since their first meeting, but Marcher also appears to be enamored with her: ―They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed‖ (552). Therefore, despite the critical consensus regarding Marcher‘s supposedly cold and selfish mindset, it is clear that James wanted his readers to appreciate that Marcher‘s passion (far from being absent) is deeply repressed and to such a degree that he, himself, does not become fully aware of it until May Bartram‘s death. However, struggle to avoid behaving selfishly toward May when they start to meet on a regular basis. Given this set of circumstances, we should make some effort to place his behavior in the context of his predicament. Indeed, it is Marcher‘s repressed passion that helps the reader to understand May Bartram‘s constant protection and devotion to a haunted, and stunted, figure like the protagonist. James takes the reader deep inside the mind of the protagonist, shedding light on Marcher‘s loneliness as he struggles with misgivings over his failure to establish a meaningful relationship. It is tempting to ponder the author‘s motives when he avoids a further exploration of May Bartram‘s psyche and to consider the impact upon the reader. James evidently wanted the reader to understand Marcher‘s situation even as the protagonist, himself, remains blind to his dilemma and he was apparently content to present May Bartram as something of a mystery. Marcher‘s ignorance of his own repressed self is rooted in his stubborn belief that he will experience ―something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible‖ (556). He does not anticipate a great achievement, but instead, he fears a future event that could destroy his consciousness and lead to his annihilation. Is he struggling with fears over the prospect of falling in love? He flatly denies this and insists that his fears have nothing to do with his desires. As far as Marcher is concerned, his fears are bound up with ―a question of the apprehension‖ (557). This begs a question: What is the thing, which does not appear to be a violent entity, but one that is unmistakably natural? In the course of the novella, it inviting the reader to join the characters in their extended effort to uncover its identity. The most important analysis of ―The Beast‖ was Sedgwick‘s ―The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic.‖ Asserting that critics pointedly ignored the issue of sexuality, perhaps out of fear that they would marginalize James‘s work in the context of the American literary tradition.

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She presents as one perspective of different readings, ―Marcher‘s secret has content, [and] that content is homosexual‖ (201). Sedgwick argues that Marcher, panicked that he could be homosexual, develops a phobia toward homosexuality. At the same time, he cannot relinquish his hidden desire to luxuriate in a homosexuality is unfettered by fear. Sedgwick‘s association of Marcher‘s propensity toward homosexuality with that of the author serves as a direct challenge to traditional readings of James a development that would profoundly influence the conventions of criticism, as reflected in the numerous responses to her own work as well as Bersani‘s announcement in ―The It in the I‖ of a new analytic discourse that functioned as an alternative to the previous one. As a leading psychoanalytic critic, Bersani contends that ―The Beast in the Jungle‖ is ―a story about a confidence in time,‖ and he characterizes May‘s false account of herself as ―a virtual statement‖. These words remind us of Bersani‘s previous analysis, ―The Jamesian Lie,‖ in which he defined James‘s later works as ―a richly superficial art,‖ devoid of depth in their depiction of a character‘s mind. At the same time, Bersani reads James and his characters in the context of love and social conformity. He observes, for instance, that Marcher requires ―a long act of dissimulation‖ to conceal his fear of the Beast, dissimulation achieved by means of a mask painted with the social simper. Bersani contends that, in spite of Bartram‘s help that enables Marcher to pass for a man like any other, he cannot escape from a fate in which nothing happens in a time that consists of a remote past and an indefinite future. At this point, Bersani focuses upon James‘s various uses of the enigmatic and indeterminate term ―it.‖ Significantly, he interprets the free floating signifier, ―it,‖ as the signified of the Freudian Id, the hiding place of the repressed, and then segues into a discussion of Lacan. In the wake of Sedgwick‘s and Bersani‘s influential readings, subsequent essays have called attention to significations of the Beast within the range of a content and without content. Omri Moses, for instance, reacts against Bersani‘s infinities and seeks to discern some content as he draws a comparison between Marcher‘s passivity and denial of life‘s pleasures and ―the parody of an aesthete‖ (271). On the other hand, Matthew Helmers calls attention to elements that Sedgwick evidently missed, including the concept of time and Marcher‘s paranoid interpretation of the past secrets. Can we interpret the Beast within the context of the dimensions of two different emblems associated with two different characters? To put it differently, for May Bartram, the Beast signifies the multiple and ever changing meanings that are contained within the stream of consciousness, while for Marcher it symbolizes the concrete knowledge that is supposedly buried within May‘s consciousness. Overall, John VolumeMarcher VIII, is Issue a compelling XI, November/2019 Page No:290 International Journal of Research ISSN NO:2236-6124

Character, given that he vainly attempts to shield himself from the experience of the present moment because of his abject fear of the Beast a symbol of absolute knowledge that stands in opposition to May Bartram‘s stream of consciousness. Therefore, it seems possible to interpret the dialogue between the two characters as something more than a futile waste of time. In this regard, the thing may represent Passion or Death, and it could be that the protagonist is engaged in an impossible quest for pure, absolute knowledge. Significantly, Marcher fails to respond properly three times when May asks, ―Are you afraid?‖ Moreover, he entreats her to watch and wait with him in order to know the content of the thing (SS 558). For Marcher, Bartram serves as a sanctuary, one that enables him to embark upon his search for knowledge of the thing. For Henry James, remembering is a feeling, and accordingly, knowledge, too, is a feeling, as his brother William contends in The Principles of Psychology: ―We never could have any knowledge except that of the present instant‖ (403). Indeed, the moment the present sensation ceases, it is gone forever, and the next sensation is added to the former, because our consciousness is always in the successive states. Notably, the words of William James resonate when we analyze the significance of dialogue between Isabel and Ralph in The Portrait of a Lady. Shortly after Isabel‘s refusal to marry Lord Warburton, she insists that she will not marry until she sees Europe for herself. In response, Ralph comments, ―You want to see, but not to feel‖ (9). Through this vague statement, James effectively foreshadows Isabel‘s failure to achieve her ambitions due to her misjudgment. In a similar vein, Marcher‘s misconception of knowledge as seeing rather than feeling leads him to behave as if he were the most disinterested person in his social circle. He does not wish to burden others with the overwhelming secret that haunts him. Therefore, despite the fact that he has never been relaxed and settled for an hour in his existence, he struggles to hold his tongue and behave in a civil and cordial manner. Consequently, those who come into social contact with him regard Marcher as a man of cultivated manners, or to put it ―a little sublimely—unselfish‖. This mode of existence becomes second nature for Marcher, a habit, or the primal memory inscribed in body. Under these social circumstances, the pair‘s extended act of dissimulation begins. Over the years, Marcher indulges his ―selfishness‖ in the form of intermittent visits with May Bartram. And for her part, Bartram carefully conceals her passion for Marcher, though she hopes to sense that it is reciprocated.

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The ―very basis‖ in question is little more than their contradictory positions. From May‘s perspective, the Beast crouching in the Jungle is Marcher‘s dread fear of the thing, which effectively prevents him from living in the present moment. Meanwhile, Marcher mistakes May‘s passion for her purportedly invaluable knowledge concerning the thing. Paradoxically, however, this virtual friendship enables them to enjoy an easy and comfortable life together. The protagonist, after all, has been freed of the tension and solemnity that mark his dealings with others, given that May Bartram is the one person who knows about his secret. As long as she is watching and waiting with him, the rest of the world really doesn‘t matter. At the same time, she keeps her supposed knowledge a secret, thereby enabling Marcher to relax and spend time with her: ―He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that, she knew how he looked as well‖. As Marcher patiently awaits knowledge of the secret, May finds that their arrangement adds ―shape and colour to her own existence‖. Together, their attitudes function as a virtual statement, a slanted language, and the maintenance of appearances effectively conceals the tracks of their day-to- day existence. In his narrative, James introduces a new form of dialogue that highlights the difficulty (even the impossibility) of communication between these characters. For instance, when May urges Marcher to show courage by permitting himself to experience the present moment, he routinely responds by questioning her about the nature of the Beast evidently unaware that he is asking her about something of which she has no knowledge. In his effort to reconstruct Bersani‘s idea of Marcher as ―an emblem of art,‖ or an aesthetic potentiality, Goodheart closely scrutinizes James‘s use of language, especially the oblique nature of its references, ―as if the action of the story takes place in the language itself‖, and relates it to James‘s artistic achievement. He concludes that like Marcher James sacrificed a full life, but he was rewarded with success in his vocation as a writer. Indeed, the dialogue between the two central characters of ―Beast‖ is remarkable in its complexity and circularity. More than anything else, this ―language of slant‖ calls the reader‘s attention to the surplus of their language, which is largely caused by the two characters‘ divergent expectations. Grasping the theme of language as deception is crucial not only to our understanding of the story‘s tragic ending, but it also enables us to appreciate James‘s unique style of art. The characters grow accustomed to this slippery form of dialogue, and in time it becomes a habit. On a few occasions, this indirect language becomes a source of apparent humor between the characters themselves. When Marcher recalls the word ―fear‖ and states, ―I only know I‘m exposed,‖ May Bartram responds, ―You‗ll never find out‖.

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In this way, James appears to suggest that life is preserved not by authentic communication and a firm grasp of reality but, instead, by slanted communication and the maintenance of appearances. Knowledge is not to be searched for but to be felt. At one point in the narrative, Marcher, as a civil gesture, presents a birthday gift to May, prompting her to comment that ―our habit saves you at least, don‘t you see? Because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other men‖. Deception, combined with a focus on appearances, informs their dialogue and shapes their habits to a degree that seems remarkable the very type of situation that Lacan would term as the play of the signifier. Lacan explains that, when language is performed (in the medium of either speaking or writing), it ceases to convey meaning in a transparent manner. Given the differing experiences of the sender and the receiver (not to mention the fact that each possesses a distinctive unconscious), the signifier is only capable of producing another signifier. Let us, at this point, examine the process by which Lacan initiates this concept, based on Freud‘s mnemic systems and Jamesian consciousness. What Lacan elucidates is the fact that the system of human memory is constructed in the same way that consciousness, or a system of signifiers, takes hold of materiality. This may be the primary reason that Lacan posits Freud‘s mnemic apparatuses as a paramount influence upon his work, starting with Book II (62–63). Freud‘s mystic writing-pad (Standard 19: 227–32) serves as the springboard for Lacan‘s conception of the subject as desire. In Book III, Lacan redefines the memory- trace as the phenomenon of memory and relates it to the neurons of an animal in this case, an octopus. From there, he transcribes the deferred acts as recurring things ―by the plurality of mnemic inscriptions‖ (181). If we remove neuronal elements from a living octopus, its movements will become sluggish, given that those neurons have a profound effect on its sensations. This phenomenon is common to octopi and human beings, although with one exception: a human‘s memory is made up of messages, and it is a succession of little signs of plus or minus, contrary to that of the octopus (152–53). Lacan embraces Freud‘s concept of the memory trace as material, or animal instinct, although he does not go so far as to place animals and humans on the same level. Therefore, when Lacan emphatically notes in Book XI that the English word ―instinct‖ is an inappropriate translation for the German word ―trieb‖ and substitutes ―drive,‖ he has recourse to a clear distinction between human and animal on the basis of the mirror stage in the symbolic. Adapting from it the idea that consciousness and materiality, or language and body, can be at once linked and mutually exclusive. In his letters to Wilhelm Fliess in 1896 Freud describes ―neurons in which perceptions originate, to which consciousness attaches, but which in themselves retain no trace of what has happened‖ and adds, ―for consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive‖ (Complete 207–08).

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The mutual exclusion of the phenomenon of consciousness and the memory traces, along with the psychic apparatus involved in the interpretation of dreams, are all equally important for Lacan as ―an initial signifying a priori‖ within Freud‘s thought. Yet, why does this continuously moving circle hold such meaning for him? For Lacan, the memory traces are like things, or the materials of the consciousness, upon which the concept of surplus is established. In the same way that James believed consciousness flows, Lacan places the signifier within the flow of time and space, due to the surplus. The signified, or the meaning, is only possible when time- bounded consciousness calls upon timeless things, thereby anchoring the signified in the retrospective. In short, knowledge is a temporal and constantly changing thing for Lacan, just as it is for William James. Grounding himself in the mutually exclusive mnemic apparatuses, Lacan establishes a unique position that is situated beyond Jakobson‘s structuralism and in the direction of the signifying chain, while exploring such concepts as lure or objet a, which is a cause of both remembering and desire, not to mention the stream of consciousness. If Freud situated the death drive beyond the dynamics of the pleasure and reality principles, which are a source of compulsive repetition, Lacan goes on to propose that this drive is the locus between the mutual exclusiveness of the symbolic and the imaginary. Hence, the death drive should not emerge as a destructive power, but instead as a source of life instinct, as Freud implies. Indeed, Lacan reformulates the death drive as a lure, which is required to sustain our talk and dialogue. It seems clear that we should be attentive to the excess involved in talk in order to avoid our essentially paranoiac understanding of knowledge, as readily apparent in James‘s protagonists. Examples include Isabel‘s naïve faith in knowledge prior to her encounter with evil in The Portrait of a Lady and the governess‘s stubborn willpower, which leads to Miles‘s death, in ―The Turn of the Screw.‖ Lacan asserts that language, in the experiential realm, inevitably confronts the surplus that exists between the signifier and the signified, so as to maintain dialogue and defer consummation. Perhaps this is the reason he claims that there is no sex in love. In analytic discourse two persons communicate through transference as a result of that surplus, and, therefore, the dialogue continues unabated. Lacan describes this endless dialogue as ethical, given that it does not seek to possess, apprehend, or appropriate the other. Indeed, for Lacan, love is possible only when the surplus is involved, a situation that calls to mind the dialogue that draws the other‘s mediation. While Freud had earlier defined love as a harmonious balance of affectionate and sensual currents, Lacan sought to shed light on the surplus between those currents, which he identified as the source of the play of the signifiers. Volume VIII, Issue XI, November/2019 Page No:294

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He indicates that the purpose of language is not to communicate but to enjoy each other, thereby sustaining love and, ultimately, deferring death. Thus, when Lacan formulates the subject of desire, he simultaneously indicates the subject of love. His theory also encompasses the aesthetic subject, given that the aim of art is to lay down your gaze between the creator and the reader through the performance of two subjects who are supposed to know (253). In short, art is an act of deception or dissimulation. At this point, let us consider an example of deception in the dialogue that un- folds between May Bartram and John Marcher. Here we discern an excess, a guess, a lure, within the veiled statements of the couple. Confronted with Marcher‘s formality, Bartram responds that ―you‘ve had your woman I‘ve had my man‖ and refrains from revealing her emotions (SS 570). In spite of this, she does not abandon her effort to convey her message: ―I don‘t pretend it exactly shows that I‘m not living for you. It‘s my intimacy with you that‘s in question‖ (571). Yet, one is tempted to ask whether her intimacy is little more than Jamesian surplus that is related to memory and the signifier. The protagonist, however, continues to respond with deep formality: ―How shall I ever repay you?‖ Nevertheless, Marcher‘s repressed passion for May Bartram, which does not surface, and her bodily passion for him, which is not signified to him, facilitates the continuation of their conversation a development clearly reflected in May‘s response: ―By going on as you are.‖ It is obvious that this slip in their dialogue provides Marcher with a routine, an ordinary life He has only one desire left: that he should not have been ―sold.‖ One wonders if it is indeed possible to bridge the gap between Marcher‘s formality and May‘s pretension. In the novella‘s fifth section, it appears as though the secret Bartram intended to share with Marcher involves not only her passion but also her death. Her final attempt to communicate with him ends in failure, and Marcher, as always, adheres to the most literal meaning of her words. Predictably, he shows no capacity to grasp the nuances of bodily language, the language of metaphor (of love and passion), because his mind tenaciously clings to the Beast a gnawing premonition that misfortune will befall him. In this way, the slanted language that develops between the two characters achieves a climax when Marcher comments that ―there were others I couldn‘t name,‖ and May, anxious and full of desire, asks, ―They were too, too dreadful?‖ (SS 577). That said, some words have been unspoken, and unheard, as Lacan notes in Book XX: ―The signified is not what you hear. What you hear is the signifier‖.

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As she approaches death, she decides to tell Marcher the truth: ―I‘ve shown you, my dear, nothing‖. Significantly, the word nothing, has a double meaning in this case. In a literal sense, it suggests that she possesses no knowledge regarding the secret, but, on a metaphoric level, it yields the remains: i.e., the secret is her death as well as his imminent loneliness and suffering. Beyond this, however, there is another possible meaning: that she has shown him the void, which they have both sublimated and should continue to sublimate by means of language to the fantasy object: a move that enabled them to sustain their dialogue. It is quite possible to see May Bartram as the Lacanian lover who is aware of the remains of language, especially when she observes that ―what I mean isn‘t what I‗ve always meant. It‘s different‖. Interestingly, Marcher gives voice to the truth without realizing it when he refers to ―all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable‖. It is tempting to ask why so many biographical readings of ―The Beast in the Jungle‖ present Marcher as an embodiment of the author. Perhaps the answer lies in James‘s narrative technique. The novella, James focuses primarily on Marcher‘s psyche and behavior. The cumulative effect of this technique is to give the reader easy access to Marcher‘s thoughts and feelings, which encourages the reader to sympathize with the protagonist, while also making judgments about his character. Despite the disproportionate amount of space James devotes to Marcher, it is important to consider the ways in which May reflects the author‘s ethics and values, which are repeatedly outlined in her conversations with the protagonist, who promptly disregards them. In the course of the novella‘s fifth section, it becomes apparent that May Bartram consistently expresses James‘s point of view, while John Marcher repeatedly rejects this perspective: a development that is at odds with the arguments of critics who view Marcher as a self-portrait of the author, as Maxwell Geismar and Barbara Young have done.3 What, then, can we deduce of the author‘s ethics and values, as outlined by his character, May Bartram? It was William James who argued that consciousness was not mere ―stuff‖ but, instead, a process that could be altered. In The Principles, he describes consciousness as reflecting three major characteristics: flow, personal intimacy, and intentionality. For William James, there was no such thing as an isolated sensation, given that knowledge is involved in a seamless relationship with the individual‘s past experiences and present impressions: ―Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it‖. This view appears consistent with the ideas communicated by May, who indicates that our knowledge is not a thing to be apprehended, or buried somewhere, but rather, a process that is subject to continual change in the course of interaction between the subject and the other.

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In his essay ―Does ‗Consciousness‘ Exist?‖ (1904), William James boldly declares that the time is ripe for the transcendental ego to be openly discarded. He redefines consciousness in terms of experience, relations, self- interest, and addition. It has the quality not of an entity so much as a function, enabling one to select and arrange the order of experiences in accordance with one‘s pure self interest. In order to highlight the ways in which Marcher has behaved both foolishly and selfishly while also calling attention to his abject fear of abandonment James leaves the protagonist to puzzle over his recollection of May‘s final words: ―You‘ve nothing to wait for more. It has come‖. At this point, the reader is encouraged to conclude that the thing that Marcher and May spent so much of their youth anticipating was little more than May‘s passion, which reaches its conclusion upon her death (nothingness). In time, Marcher‘s stubborn solitude will be replaced by suffering. The other talk, it, of which they never dreamed, however, was the surplus that functioned as a lure for talk, enabling them to sustain their repressed love that is, until Marcher successfully achieves a new cognition.

Humans are bundles of habits that are composed of stored experiences. They are ceaselessly endowed with new experiences as well. William James refers to this phenomenon as the ―plasticity‖ of habits. Among the habits Marcher developed during his years with May Bartram was that of remembering the past, an activity in which he did not engage beforehand. She had forbidden him to guess, to know. Eventually, she denied him even the power to learn. He laments the unfairness of his predicament, complaining that his lack of attentiveness prevented him from securing the lost stuff of consciousness. In short, Marcher stubbornly rejects William James‘s concept of the stream of consciousness, which informed much of May Bartram‘s dialogue. As though searching for a lost child in the shrouded corners of the past, he embarks on a year-long pilgrimage to explore the historical sites of Asia, but this experience leaves him unsatisfied. Ultimately, he returns to his habit of visiting May‘s grave, which serves as a touchstone to his past. The reader is tempted to ask why James devotes so much space to this particular habit, even going so far as to describe it as ―a positive resource‖. Does this garden of death function as a schoolyard for Marcher, who continues his quest for pure consciousness? Does the tomb of ―his other, his younger self‖ function as an open page, a spot on which to settle?

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Most critics agree that John Marcher‘s final epiphany occurs near May Bartram‘s gravesite, where he spies a middle aged man at the nearby grave of his beloved. Moved by the stranger‘s ravaged demeanor, Marcher is compelled to ask himself whether he could survive such a loss. Interestingly, critics usually stop at this point in the narrative, concluding that Marcher has belatedly grasped the potential value of his relationship with May. There is no doubt, of course, that Marcher has come to recognize that loving May Bartram for her own sake (as opposed to treating her as an instrument of his egoistic obsession) would have enabled him to live a full life. Yet, this can be understood as the content of the Beast only in a temporary, not absolute, sense. Sedgwick divides the final scene into two stages of recognition. Sedgwick suggests that the process of opening the closet is so difficult that its successful completion demonstrates ―how central to that process is man‘s desire for man and the denial of that desire‖. In slight contrast to her reading, I view these two stages of recognitions as the flow of consciousness: if belated regret over his failure to live a full life was the true content of the Beast, Marcher‘s final comprehension of it would scarcely have occurred after an initial moment of recognition. One must ask the following: If ―it had sprung as he didn‘t guess‖ and if ―it had sprung as she hopelessly turned from him‖ then why did it suddenly leap into the open in the wake of this fatal moment of epiphany? This was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none the less, he tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had something of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast: then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. What is ultimately signified by the Beast? And why does Marcher fling himself, face down, upon May‘s tomb in an effort to avoid it? Is it possible that May Bartram continues to share a dialogue with the protagonist, even in this gray garden of death? Whatever the case, it would appear that the Beast Marcher ultimately confronts is little more than the remains, the surplus, of the knowledge that he had attempted to fix as his final signified. In this sense, the protagonist has been forced to acknowledge that human consciousness is not mere stuff but, rather, a slippery and constantly changing force that flows like water in time and space. This quality, of course, pre-vents him from grasping it and fixing it as the knowledge.

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In this case, perhaps the Beast leaping out of the Jungle is little more than Marcher‘s stubborn insistence on securing the knowledge. (Or perhaps it is repressed animality embodying the materiality of consciousness.) In the end, he can neither seek it out nor place it under close observation. It is simply felt. Lacan makes this point, in Book XI, with a memorable analogy involving a stone in the desert that is covered with obscure hieroglyphics that we cannot comprehend. This is the essence of the message that James conveys in ―The Beast in the Jungle.‖ If love is indeed deception, and art is the remains, perhaps it is only possible to overcome death (the tomb) by deferring its meaning.

REFERENCES

CN—The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. Ed. Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. CS—Complete Stories of Henry James 1892–1898. Vol. 4. New York: Literary Classics, 1996. Print. The Portrait of a Lady. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. SS—The Short Stories of Henry James. New York: Modern Library, 1945. Print.

OTHERS Bersani, Leo. A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature. London: Marion Boyars, 1978. Print. ———. ―The It in the I.‖ Intimacies. Ed. Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips. U of Chicago P, 2008. 1–30. Print. Berthold, Michael C. ―The Idea of ‗Too Late‘ in James‘s ‗The Beast in the Jungle.‘‖ Henry James Review 4.2 (1983): 128–39. Print. Edel, Leon. ―The Late James.‖ Henry James Review 10.2 (1989): 104. Print. Edelman, Gerald M. Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print. Freud, Sigmund. Autobiography. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1935. Print. ———.The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904. Ed. and Trans. Jeffrey M. Masson. Cambridge: Belknap, 1985. Print. ———. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1956–1974. Print. Helmers, Matthew. ―Possibly Queer Time: Paranoia, Subjectivity, and ‗The Beast in the Jungle.‘‖ Henry James Review 32 (2011): 101–17. Print. James, William. ―Does Consciousness Exist?‖ Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods1 (1904): 477–91. Print. ———. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Digireads, 2010. Print. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955. Ed. J. A. Miller. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book III: The Psychoses 1955–1956. Ed. J. A. Miller. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York: Norton, 1993. Print. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. J. A. Miller. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XX: Encore 1972–1973. Ed. J. A. Miller. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 1998. Print. Lucke, Jessie Ryon. ―The Inception of ‗The Beast in the Jungle.‘‖ New England Quarterly 26.4 (1953): 529–32. Print.

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Authors:

KANIGANTI SRINIVAS. He received M. A ENGLISH degree from ,ANDHRA UNIVERSITY, VISAKHAPATNAM, India, in 2004 and currently working as an Assistant Professor at ―MALLAREDDY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FOR WOMEN‖, Maisammaguda, gundlapocham pally, Medchal Malkajgiri district,India. Email id:[email protected].

VEMUGANTI NIRMALADEVI. She Received M.A ENGLISH degree from OSMANIA UNIVERSITY, TELANGANA, India, in 2017 and currently working as an Assistant Professor at ―MALLAREDDY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FOR WOMEN‖, Maisammaguda,gundlapocham pally, Medchal Malkajgiridistrict, India. Email id: [email protected].

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