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Assignment 1:
Comparative Study

How does Ionesco and Beckett’s dramaturgy in ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Bald Soprano’ express the absurdist and existentialist view that life is essentially meaningless.

‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Bald Soprano’ are two of the most classic examples of why life is called the theatre of the absurd. The Theatre of the Absurd came about as a reaction to World War II. It took the basis of existential philosophy and combined it with dramatic elements to create a style of theatre which presented a universe which cannot be logically explained or defined; life is therefore meaningless and lacks purpose.

The conventional qualities of traditional theatre: realistic characters and situations, comprehensible dialogues and a clear plot, were abandoned to convey this vision of absurdity. Instead, the characteristics which coincide with many of the plays in this modern absurdist theatre: broad comedy, tragic images, characters in hopeless situations, nonsensical dialogues full of cliches and wordplay; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive were adopted and replaced the concept of the “well-made play”.

Of these characteristics, this essay focuses on the dramaturgy, more specifically the ‘cyclical’ dramaturgy that Beckett and Ionesco adopted in their plays, and how this is effective in expressing the absurdist and existentialist vision that life is inherently without meaning or purpose.

As many Absurdist playwrights, Beckett and Ionesco did away with most of the logical structures of traditional theatre. Thus, ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Bald Soprano’ are often described as ‘anti plays’; they reject a coherent story-line, deviate from the traditional episodic structure, and seem to move in a circle, ending the same way they began. The plays have a beginning, but the beginning seems in a way arbitrary because what happened before the beginning does not seem important.

The plays have an end, but the end somewhat recalls the beginning and thus a sense of circularity is created replacing the sense of closure that conventional stories generally provide. John W. Fiero makes an interesting observation that the ‘Ouroboros’, a snake devouring its own tail, can serve as the new structural paradigm. It suggests an endless, tedious, and futile cycle.

Beckett’s and Ionesco’s plays both rely on repetition and ‘looping’: in ‘Waiting for Godot’ the protagonists decide to move and then do not move, over and over again; the two sets of families in ‘The Bald Soprano’ become interchangeable at the end of the play. This reinforces the absurdist and existentialist idea of life as having no clear purpose and of life being an interminable waiting for a sense of purpose or closure that is unlikely ever to arrive.

The seemingly endless waiting that Estragon and Vladimir undertake for the mysterious Godot reflects this idea and to effectively express it, Beckett abandons traditional plot development and creates a circular symmetrical movement throughout ‘Waiting for Godot.’ The second act parallels the first. Nothing new happens: Godot fails to appear in both acts, Vladimir and Estragon find themselves caught in these pointless routines and repetitive pantomimes, further emphasizing the ridiculous purposelessness of their lives.

In Act 2 the characters engage in ways that closely parallel the first act; the key difference seems to be an increased struggle in the second act to pass the time, which passed quickly in the first act because of Pozzo and Lucky, whose appearance is briefer in the second act. This pointless waiting and boredom makes Estragon more desperate to leave and Vladimir continually reminds him why they mustn’t leave because they’re waiting for Godot:

VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON: (despairingly) Ah! (Pause.)
You’re sure it was here?

Here we are given information that these two men are waiting for someone called Godot and Estragon’s tone suggests the possibility that it is not the first time and that they have done it before and been disappointed. This adds to the effect that there is no real beginning and their present situation is somewhat static. The characters want to go but feel stuck waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves?
ESTRAGON: Don’t let’s do anything.
VLADIMIR: Let’s wait and see what he says.
ESTRAGON: Who?

VLADIMIR: Godot.
They want to commit suicide, but have grown either too lethargic or too helpless to act on their desires, they are too caught up in their routines and habits. In their presence, even Pozzo catches on to this feeling, at the moment of his departure, they have an absurdly repetitive dialogue and Pozzo finds himself unable to leave:
VLADIMIR: Adieu.
POZZO: Adieu.
ESTRAGON: Adieu
[silence]
POZZO: And thank you.
VLADIMIR: Thank you
POZZO: Not at all
ESTRAGON: Yes yes
POZZO: No no.
[silence]
POZZO: I seem to be unable…[Long hesitation]…to depart.
ESTRAGON: Such is life.

Paralysed, immobilised, forced to remain stationary, they must remain passive as well. Unable to act, they are capable only of waiting, waiting for the end they know will never come. But they remain still, in constant hope of being acted upon and remain in the same situation throughout the play, just as nothing really begun, nothing ever finishes.

This structure of the play serves to reinforce the timelessness of their situation, thus emphasising on the pointlessness of their lives, that time passes by and nothing changes, but they remain in this static situation helplessly waiting for something, a reason or purpose to live, that they subconsciously know will never come to them.

This similar cyclical, repetitive and absurd structure, ending where it first began, is adopted in Ionesco’s ‘Bald Soprano’. In fact the “Bald Soprano” itself was inspired by the inane sentences Ionesco read again and again in the textbook he used to learn English. Already, Ionesco had acquired this sense of repetition and practical cyclical movement through his learning of a language.

‘The Bald Soprano’s’ cyclical structure suggests that an infinite and tedious replay is possible but is aborted, not because there has to be an ending, but simply for practical necessity. Ionesco had to find a way to bring his play to closure; His first working solution was to end the action abruptly, using a sort of ‘deus ex machina’ device in which the performance was closed down by the Superintendent of Police and his men, who open fire at the rebellious audience and simply order the theatre vacated.

Other possibilities were considered but they were rejected as too problematic. Eventually, it was decided that the play should simply begin again, giving the work its cyclical structure. The final structural refinement was to substitute the Martins for the Smiths in the repeated opening. So the story begins again at the ‘end’, but the characters now play new roles. The actor that first played Mrs. Smith now plays Mrs. Martin; the former maid becomes the fire chief; and so on.

[The play begins again with the Martins, who say exactly the same lines as the Smiths in the first scene, while the curtain softly falls]

In ‘The Bald Soprano’, the repetitive structure also parallels the language, one of the main themes in the play. Repetition is the perfect example of the freezing of language; the discussion between Mr. and Mrs. Smith for example. Following a long series of coincidences, told in exhaustive detail and in an irritating repetitive pattern (the same sentence structure, even the same sentences are repeated: “How curious! How bizarre! What a coincidence!”) The two come to the conclusion that they are married.

Similarly to the characters in ‘Waiting for Godot’, the characters in ‘The Bald Soprano’ find themselves caught up in a ridiculous, vicious cycle of repetition, nonsensical yet logically thought through. This also expresses an absurdist and existentialist view on society and its meaningless conversation between people, words are used to express the most banal facts, but essentially they mean nothing, they express nothing but emptiness. This therefore reflects the meaninglessness of life in general.

Also, there is a parallel symbolism between the circular structure of the play and the eminent presence of the clock. Both are a representation of time; Time is not linear, on the contrary it is circular, much like a clock, whose hands constantly turn in a circular motion. In ‘Waiting for Godot’, the moon plays a similar role as a symbol which intensifies the passing of time and as an image of circularity.

This repetitive cyclical structure also serves as a representation of memory (or lack thereof), a theme expressed in both ‘The Bald Soprano’ and ‘Waiting for Godot’; life is happening to Vladimir and Estragon but they recall little of what is past and Mr and Mrs Smith only find out through a long conversational process that they are in fact married.

In ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘The Bald Soprano’ we see that the [absurdist and existentialist] ideas that inform the plays also dictate their dramaturgy. In both plays there is little dramatic action (in the conventional sense); however the repetitive actions and dialogues serve to highlight that no matter how they try to fill time, nothing happens to change their existence.

In Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, plot is eliminated, and a timeless, circular quality emerges as Estragon and Vladimir spend their days waiting (but without any certainty of whom they are waiting for and whether he, or it, will ever come) In ‘The Bald Soprano’ this quality parallels language; The characters in ‘The Bald Soprano’ sit and talk, repeating the obvious until it sounds like nonsense, thus revealing the inadequacies and futility of verbal communication and conversation. The ridiculous, repetitive and purposeless behaviour and talk give the plays a sometimes comic surface, but there is an underlying philosophical message, the absurdist and existentialist view that life is essentially without meaning or purpose.

Bibliography:

Beckett, Samuel, 2006, Waiting for Godot, London, Faber and Faber Limited

Ionesco, Eugene, 1958, The Bald Soprano & Other Plays, New York, Grove Press Inc.

Esslin, M., The Theater of the Absurd. 3^rd ed. 2004, Vintage, USA.

Graver, L., Beckett: Waiting for Godot: A Student Guide. 2^nd ed. 2004 CUP, UK.

Schechner, Richard, The Bald Soprano and The Lesson: An Inquiry into Play Structure http://www.drama21c.net/writers/ionesco/schechner1.htm: accessed on 31/08/08

Scope- Archive: Articles, Portals Special Issue, Anti-Theatre on Film http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=3&id=85&section=article&q=jean: accessed on 31/08/08

Niehuis, Terry, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale, 1997 Waiting for Godot (Criticism).
http://www.answers.com/topic/waiting-for-godot-play-8: accessed on 28/08/08

WCU- Spring 2006 Analyzing WAITING FOR GODOT.

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2005/godot-notes-05.html: accessed on 20/08/08

Godot

http://samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/Godot.html: accessed on 20/08/08

Answers.com, “The Bald Soprano (Style)”

http://www.answers.com/topic/the-bald-soprano-play-4: accessed on 31/08/08

Answers.com, “Waiting for Godot (Style)”

www.answers.com/topic/waiting-for-godot-play-5: accessed on 31/08/08

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Theatre of the Absurd

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd: accessed on 20/08/08

Theatre of the Absurd — Britannica Online Encyclopedia

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/2002/Theatre-of-the-Absurd: accessed on 28/08/08

Resume de la piece En attendant Godot de Samuel Beckett 2006

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Theatre academic and cultural commentator Christopher Bigsby makes the point that theatre, as opposed to, say, the novel, is essentially a public experience (2000, p. 9). Where a novel may make comment on political issues, it does do in private, in a one-to-one relationship between author and reader. A play, on the other hand, is written for the public: it is experienced live and with a live audience of others who are experiencing the same production as you are in the same moment. This, for Bigsby, is what makes theatre uniquely poised to draw parallels between the specifics of the drama on stage, and the generalities of the social and political contexts of the play’s writing, its original and its revival productions. This essay will examine this in relationship to twentieth century American politics and society. It will do this by drawing on two preeminent examples of US theatre from different generations of writing: The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet. The political contexts of both plays will be considered, and thematic and textual aspects will be considered, alongside critical and wider reactions and responses to the plays, both at the time of their first presentations, and over time. Two different approaches to using drama as commentary will be introduced and explored: allegory and specific example.

The Crucible was Arthur Miller’s third major play, coming after 1947’s All My Sons and 1952’s Death of a Salesman. Miller was by then established as a major playwright, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Salesman (Pfister 2005). Miller later commented that:

the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up a new relationship between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us know more, and not merely to spend our feelings (Miller, in Pfister 2005).

It was in The Crucible that Miller would explore these connections, by writing a play that would make allegorical comment on contemporary American politics and society.

The use of the Massachusetts witch trials as a device for theatrical comment on contemporary America was not one unique to Miller. Welland (1979, pp. 74-5) notes that three other plays had done so in the previous decade. Marion Starkey, author of 1949’s The Devil in Massachusetts, comments thusly in her introduction to her play: “[o]ne would like to hope that leaders of the modern world can in the end deal with delusion as sanely and courageously as the men of old Massachusetts dealt with theirs” (in Welland, 1979, pp. 74-5). The issue by 1952, the year prior to The Crucible’s first performance, was that of the congressional investigation into un-American activities headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy (Bigsby, 2000, p. 87-8).

The McCarthy hearings, seeking to unmask Communist sympathisers in the contexts of a United States that was wary of the world order post-1945, the fresh superpower dynamic between the States and the USSR, and the emerging superpower antipathy between those two nations, were seen by Miller – and many other liberals – as a threat to the nation (Bigsby 2000, 88). Miller said (quoted in Bigsby, 2000, p. 88) that “there was a new religiosity in the air … conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration. I saw men handing conscience to other men and thanking other men for the opportunity of doing so”.

The Crucible tells the story of the witch trials, focusing on the character of John Proctor.Proctor first seeks to query the burgeoning fear gripping the Salem community when the witchcraft allegations are first made, and then is drawn in as the charges widen to include his household; he is forced to defend himself and his conscience. The inquisitorial manner of the legalistic Puritans who pursue the truth behind the allegations soon becomes overtaken by a zeal to find all who are accused guilty by whatever means possible. Welland (1979, p. 84-5) states the experience of watching the play “is to be overwhelmed by the simple impotence of honest common sense against fanaticism that is getting out of control”, and provides a reminder that “sheer goodness … is just not enough to counter such deviousness”. The language of the powerful overwhelms: it “establish[es] the grammar of human relationships, who determine the vocabulary in which the social debate is conducted” (Bigsby, 2000, p. 90). Proctor in the play – and by extension those in the 1950s theatre audience who are subject to McCarthyite inquisition, or who have sympathies with them – finds himself caught in their rhetoric and in their discourse, and is entrapped in their language.

Though to some extent The Crucible is indelibly linked to the contexts of its writing and first performance, it has proved to “not be limited to its time” (Bigsby, 2000, p. 93). The play is frequently revived and is given fresh vitality and currency by its allegoric nature: a play of the 1950s set in that time and which approached the McCarthy-led hearings head-on might well have less of the universality of Miller’s piece, which has since been staged and restaged widely, from the 2014 London Old Vic revival to “a successful production in the 1980s in the Peoples Republic of China” (Bigsby, 2000, p. 93).

Whereas Arthur Miller tackled a specific political reality in the context of the Cold War, in his 1983 play Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet examined something more nebulous, though still a political reality of its time: that of capitalism and of corporate greed in the Reagan era. Ronald Reagan was US president from 1980 to 1988 and in many ways the American counterpart of the UK’s Margaret Thatcher (prime minister from 1979 to 1991) in pursuing a free market-oriented and commercial-focused agenda within a wider brief of opposing what turned out to be the latter day of the Cold War (Kopkind, 2004). Both administrations promised to “to implement parallel monetarist, free market, and incentive-based economic policies” (Cooper, 2013).

For Bigsby (2000, p. 213) Glengarry Glen Ross is, like earlier Mamet stage productions, is “a play ‘set deeply in the milieu of capitalism’, an idea which [Mamet] suggests has exhausted itself”. The play concerns a group of real-estate salesmen led by Richard “Ricky” Roma, and their office manager Williamson; they are locked together in conflict for sales and for the security of their jobs. The play takes place over an evening and the following morning, in a Chinese restaurant near their offices, and the following day in the office. Central to the plot of the play are sales leads: the current leads are weak and sales are suffering, but the new leads will only be given out to proven sellers. The rest of the sales force will be dismissed.

Bigsby (2000, p. 219) sees this set-up as “a neat paradigm of a competitive capitalist society”. As only the successful are prioritised by the keeping of their jobs and the access to the new leads, then success is seen to lead to success: the rest must fall by the wayside. So pressure is applied to succeed; this leads to sharp practice and to criminality in order to secure that competitive edge. In the play this is illustrated by the theft of the leads, and the conversations the salesmen have where the leads’ potential is discussed. Failing salesman Shelley Levene pleads, with mounting hysteria, about his need to sell; he is desperate for access to the new leads, which Williamson is unwilling to give. Salesmen Aaronow and Moss discuss the potential theft of the leads; Moss works to sell the concept of stealing them to Aaronow. Third is a conversation between two men who, we come to learn, are Roma and a client, James Lingk. Roma works to seduce Lingk into making a buy by appealing to both their manufactured friendship and to Lingk’ss masculinity. Each of these conversations is marked by power relationships; these are all unequal exchanges.

The second act focuses on the aftermath of the theft. Levene is ecstatic because of a much-needed commission sale overnight; Roma likewise has sold to Lingk, but becomes distressed when Williamson undoes his work; Aaronow and Moss react with confusion and frustration respectively when accused of the crime and when called in for police questioning. It is revealed that we have been misdirected: Levene is the one who’s been manipulated by Moss into taking and selling the leads to a competitor. Furthermore, Levene has been outwitted and outmanoeuvred again, this time by the people he made the sale to overnight, as they are revealed to be cranks with no money.

The second act relationships mirror those of the first act; the same characters are involved in the exchanges, but their positions are altered by shifts in power. Levene glories at fist in his power over Williamson, Moss has his crime unpicked, Roma finds the limits of his seductive sales technique.

Mamet’s salesmen are desperate men, forever living on their wits – on their ability to use and to manipulate language to own ends. Bigsby (2000, p. 221) notes that each relationship they have or enter in is a negotiation: human interaction becomes capitalist in this context. A competitive edge is always sought. Furthermore, the possibility of duplicity or betrayal is always possible, not least because these characters are all trying to do that to others. Their whole society is predicated on social engineering and on corruption of language towards venal ends; to that extent, they and their society are corrupt also. Bigsby (2000, p. 222) sees that if Mamet’s characters “pervert language, distort values and divert profound psychological needs into temporary social objectives, this is no more than do those who direct national policy or construct the fantasies of commercial and political life”. The link between the specifics of the drama on stage and its correlation to the national and cultural dynamic of Reagan’s America are clearly drawn here.

Nightingale (in Bigsby, 2004, p. 102) sees Glengarry Glen Ross as “a play virtually unequalled in the quantitative and qualitative evidence it provides for moral dismay and grim social re¬‚ection”. For Nightingale (in Bigsby, 2004, p. 96), the play is not solely an expose and a rebuttal of business ethics but also of “an America that, as Mamet has said, is ‘a very violent society full of a lot of hate: you can’t put a band-aid on a suppurating wound’”. This is drama as a political critique: an examination of the ethics of a worldview (that of Reaganism) through the filter of a contemporary case study intended to be seen as emblematic of a greater, and similarly problematic, whole.

This essay has sought to outline and examine the ways in which American theatre in the twentieth century has been applied to wider political conversations. Miller’s The Crucible takes a seventeenth century cause celebre and a foundational story of pre-Constitution America and draws parallels between Puritan religious hysteria and anti-Communist searches as spearheaded by the Senate Committee on Un-American Activities under Joseph McCarthy. This is drama as allegory, and as such, not only were contemporary audiences able to make that link for themselves – the play has demonstrated over time that its messages have resonance for other times and geographies, even though that link to the 1950s remains dominant. David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross takes another approach: that of didactic example. Reagan’s 1980s are held to account through a case study of capitalism in action. Mamet’s salesmen are in turns aggressive, hectoring, pleading, desperate, seductive, criminal , manipulative, and self-serving. The society in which they operate, and the political system that not merely sustains but which actively supports this; is thus critiqued. Murphy (2006, pp 411-29) sketches the ways in which American theatre developed through the twentieth century. From being almost wholly mass entertainment and spectacle-based with little original writing to a theatre that was able to, as Murphy (2006, p. 429) puts it, “confront audiences with the issues of the day”, the century has seen the American stage become a mechanism by which US playwrights might hold the country’s politics to account.

Bibliography

Bigsby, C. W. E. (2000)Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. 2nd edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Cooper, J. (2013)History & Policy. Available at: http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/reagan-vs.-thatcher-unpicking-the-special-relationship (Accessed: 7 October 2015).

Kopkind, A. (2004)The Age of Reaganism. Available at: http://www.thenation.com/article/age-reaganism/ (Accessed: 7 October 2015).

Mamet, D. (2004)Glengarry Glen Ross. London: Methuen Drama.

Miller, A. (2000)The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts (Penguin Modern Classics). London: Penguin Classics.

Murphy, B. (2006)The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture (Cambridge Companions to Culture). Edited by Christopher Bigsby. 1st edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Nightingale, J. (2004)Cambridge Companion to David Mamet (Cambridge Companions to Literature Series). Edited by Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pfister, J. (2005)The Crucible. Available at: http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/crucibleteachnotes.html (Accessed: 6 October 2015).

Saddik, A. J. (2007)Contemporary American Drama (Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature). Edited by Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley. 1st edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

The Crucible – The Old Vic(no date) Available at: http://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2014/the-crucible/ (Accessed: 7 October 2015).

Welland, D. S. R. and Well, D. (1979)Miller: A Study Of His Plays. London: Eyre Methuen.

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From the novel Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) edition Chris Baldick argues that “the ‘monster’s’ most convincingly human characteristic is of course his power of speech.”

Explore the significance of the ‘monster’s’ voice in Mary Shelley’s novel.

Few texts have pervaded the cultural consciousness to take on the afterlife of a haunting myth, as with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). To a twenty-first century reader, the image of ‘Frankenstein,’ often wrongly identified as the creature rather than creator, has become conflated with that of Boris Karloff, an actor in a 1931 filmic representation, which, in a true expression of creative license, was a non-speaking role. However, readers of the text will remember the creature as both intellectual and articulate in voicing his account of life through to the projection of his death. This paper seeks to explore the significance of the creature’s voice, arguing that it adds a philosophical and moral dimension to the novel that would have otherwise been absent.

The narrative structure of Frankenstein involves imbedded stories, where tales appear nested within other tales. Even the very epistolary nature of the text itself is fraught with tension, as the final pages reveal the letter-writing to align itself more closely with journal entries, with the poetic ending to the text neglecting either a form of signing off to the reader or a self-reflexive ending common to diary entries. This makes us question whether Walton’s sister, Margaret, was indeed the intended reader of the entire narrative, which notably and often conceals the letter-writing format to allow the action of the narrative to take precedence.

The narrative structure thus problematises any interpretation of language as straightforward and individually assigned and distinct. A study of Frankenstein as a gothic novel would introduce readings of cultural binaries, where the juxtaposition of normal and human with monstrous and inhuman would suggest that the creature’s voice was intended to sharpen these distinctions. However, as Joyce Carol Oates argues, ‘everyone in Frankenstein sounds alike’ (1983: 549). All events are relayed retrospectively; conversations have often been mediated by knowledge of more recent events, and have been filtered, in the creature’s case, through an expanding consciousness. Voices echo one another, in a blurred and indistinct fashion. This is largely because the epistolary format means that the only voice we hear is actually Walton’s own, and even this has been mediated for a selected female readership. The monster’s voice is largely heard through his petition to the one who seeks his ruin, and even the reliability of Walton’s tale is mediated and arguably jeopardised by his earnest desire for friendship and his wish that Victor would fulfil that role.

Noticeably, the voice of the creature appears identical in both Walton’s account of Victor’s story and of Walton’s narration of his own encounter with the creature. This is largely attributable to the fact that all events are filtered through multiple layers, including Walton’s own memory. Interestingly, Oates further argues that it is naive to read Frankenstein as one would a novel, for ‘it contains no characters, only points of views; its concerns are pointedly moral and didactic…’ (1983: 549). Baldick interprets this as ‘dialogical openness,’ (1997: 44) whereby the moral framework of the novel is an open debate between the perspectives of Victor, the creature and Walton. The employment of multiple narrations is an effective tool for undermining verisimilitude, as it compromises the certainty of identity and narration, proving these to be unknowable and always mediated. These ‘contrasting’ points of view do not hold fast; the monster is both sympathetic and vengeful, and his reflections are unreliably mediated by his transformation into a heightened state of consciousness.

In terms of the creature’s identity as a gendered being, many feminist critics have argued that the creature is constructed as a woman through his acquisition of language. The creature’s passive surveillance of domestic life mirrors the female sphere, and his education is largely informed by Felix’s tuition to his intended bride, Safie. As one criticism that is oft levied against Mary Shelley is that her female characters do not take an active stance but conform to traditional ideas of femininity, we have no reason to believe that Safie’s education is atypical or controversially aligned with the masculine sphere. Although it is outside of the remit of this essay to speculate on a gendered construction through language, it is important to note that the creature’s voice is a product of an education largely intended and deemed suitable for the domestic sphere.

As a foreigner, Safie is allowed access to the shared collective that is language; however, her right of access is granted on the grounds that she has a musical voice and a ‘countenance of angelic beauty and expression.’ (Shelley, 1993: 93) She does not posit a challenge to conventional definitions of normality. Indeed, the blind De Lacey permits a conversation with the creature before his impressions become mediated through the eyes of the dominant group. Participating in a shared system of language is thus only effective in generating empathy or connection up until the moment that sight is introduced. Shelley reveals here that language may be knowledge, but it is not wisdom. Indeed, De Lacey mimics the reader, for the oral nature of storytelling restricts visibility and privileges the command of language.

The creature becomes highly articulate, and is also considered persuasive by both Walton and Frankenstein. Walton responds to the monster’s declaration by stating,

His voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying his enemy were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. (Shelley, 1993: 187)

However, Walton can only register the persuasiveness of the monster’s words whilst he is neglecting the sensation of sight. To sustain communication with the creature, he must avert his eyes, for as soon as his eyes encounter the deformed being, his indignation returns and his sympathy dissolves. Likewise, Frankenstein destroys the female being that he is creating, after gazing upon the monster’s distorted features and being consumed by a fit of passion. The monster’s articulate powers of persuasion are thus rendered subservient to sight, which takes precedence over a convincingly human-sounding tongue. Echoing the villagers, who pass condemnation before allowing the monster to speak, Victor states upon first encountering the monster in his bedchamber; ‘he might have spoken, but I did not hear’ (Shelley, 1993: 40). The creature correctly articulates that ‘the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union’ (Shelley, 1993: 119).

Indeed, the word monster, which Shelley frequently repeats, is derived from the Latin word mon-strare, which means ‘to show… bodily anomaly signified’ (Ingebretsen, 2001: 211). It thus implies an element of display, of visual difference. Interestingly, the way that the monster interacts with humans throughout the course of the novel alters from being visually sighted to, as in the last few encounters, his presence being heard or detected through sound. This calls into question the very notion of his monstrosity, as he has been transformed from an object on display to a being, endowed with the powers of communication. Baldick argues that the ‘monster’s’ most convincing human characteristic is of course his power of speech’ (1997: 45). Harold Bloom echoes this premise: the creature is both more ‘intellectual and more emotional’ and ‘more human than his creator’ (1965: 613). The ability to experience and convey pain is transmitted entirely through the creature’s use of language: voice enlightens where the narratives of others fail.

The creature is portrayed as thoroughly a product of the grand narratives that were central to the Romantic period, born a blank slate with works of cultural standing subsequently informing his mind. His moral and intellectual compass is largely shaped by the reading of three texts, which form what Peter Brooks refers to as a ‘Romantic cyclopedia universalis’ (1993: 205). Mastering the Romantic worldview enables him to speculate and self-identify as a sympathetic figure. One such influential text that forms his education is Milton’s Paradise Lost, which seeks to recast the tragedy of creation on a scale of mythological and biblical magnitude. The creature views his struggle through the lens of Milton’s epic, as a victim of the violation of the natural order. Indeed the epigraph of the novel, also from Paradise Lost, laments his very existence:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me? (Milton, 1873: 743-745)

Borrowing a line from such an epic work underpins the central argument of a disgruntled creation wrestling with his creator. By allowing the monster’s viewpoint to dominate the epigraph and frame the novel, Shelley provides an authorial and sympathetic sanctioning to the monster’s plight of unsolicited existence.

The techniques that Shelley uses to construct the monster’s voice are both informed by and a comment on the philosophical views held by leading figures at the time of writing. The creature is not merely presented as a sympathetic character, but as a portrayal of emerging consciousness. In the act of relating his narrative, the creature does not repeat the incident that had originally formed such an unfavourable impression upon Frankenstein. That is to say, the creature does not begin his tale from the scene where he invades his creator’s bedchambers and is rejected in his quest to seek community. Shelley thus sacrifices an opportunity of soliciting sympathy from the reader through allowing the monster to offer an explanation of innocence that would have added colour and dimension to Victor’s account. The creature’s story leaves Frankenstein’s account unmodified, neglecting the tale of rejection for a higher purpose.

Shelley instead commences the monster’s narrative from his dawning of consciousness, and compares it to that of a newborn. Arguably, Shelley plays with philosopher John Locke’s idea that we are born as a blank canvas, with the mind a ‘white paper void of all character’ (1952: 11, 1, 2). The monster actively sets out to acquire language out of his need for human intimacy, mirroring the acquisition of language of a child. Infancy has its stem in the Latin word infans, which translates to one ‘who cannot speak’ (Brookes, 2004: 606). He thenceforth learns language through imitation, as a child would; learning is thus how one forms human consciousness. The creature learns through causation and effect, often experiencing pain and learning how to address the sensation by taking action.

Upon mastering language, the creature retrospectively constructs a narrative out of a flood of competing sensory signals that characterised his early days of education. By relaying his past impressions through an enlightened state of consciousness, the monster shows that he has the emotional sensitivity of a baby who weeps upon first entering the world. This evocation is not just using heavily emotive language to elicit sympathy from Victor, but through the narration of his initial sensations, the reader is positioned to view him as one would a vulnerable, abandoned child.

As Jones argues, Shelley ‘emphasise[s] the importance of learning to the emergence of human consciousness and understanding’ (2003: 158). The monster hypothesises that a mastery of language will bring him into communion with humans, and compensate for deficiencies of countenance. In this aim, he acquires articulacy and understanding of the cultural codes that construct human civilisation. The acquisition of education results in producing a voice that ultimately proves ineffectual, as it only heightens his disconnection to the social group that he desires communion with. Importantly, the relationship between Felix and Safie demonstrates that romantic attachments can transcend language barriers. However, as Jones argues, the cultural discourses that the creature seeks to emulate ‘are borrowed from the very ideology that excludes him’ (2003: 211). Shelley shows that language is artificial, a cultural construction that benefits only the ruling class.

In Frankenstein, the creature’s voice has been intricately crafted by Mary Shelley to aid her portrayal of a sympathetic character, who refuses to conform to our expectations of the ‘other’. Shelley problematises conventional ideas of what is monstrous, revealing a character whose speech at the very least simulates human consciousness, but also is inseparably connected with and filtered through another’s way of seeing. The creature’s narrative is a profound philosophical and moral comment on the Romantic consciousness, ultimately revealing that no perspective reigns supreme, and labels and perceptions of difference collapse at their very borders.

Bibliography:

Baldick, C., (1997) In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bloom, H., (1965) Frankenstein, or the New Prometheus, Partisan Review, xxxii, 618.

Brookes, I., (ed) (2004) Chambers Concise Dictionary. New Delhi: Allied Chambers.

Brooks, P., (1993) What is a Monster?aˆ?(According to Frankenstein) In Body Work. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, pp. 199-220; reprinted in Frankenstein/Mary Shelley (1995) ed. Fred Botting. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 81-106

Ingebretsen, Edward J., (2001) At stake: monsters and the rhetoric of fear in public culture. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Jones, Jonathan D., (2003) Orphans: childhood alienation and the idea of the self in Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Locke, J., (1952) “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in Great Books of the Western World 35 ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Milton, J., (1873) Paradise Lost. London: Basil Montagu.

Oates, Joyce C., (1983) Frankenstein’s Fallen Angel. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 3 Mar., pp. 543-554.

Shelley, M., (1993) Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler, London: William Pickering.

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Compare and contrast the ways in which the writers present the theme of isolation to construct the characters of Rochester, Jane and Antoinette in “Jane Eyre” and “Wide Sargasso Sea”.

The theme of isolation is utilised in English literature to shape the principal characters and provide a particular vision on some crucial aspects of their identities. The aim of this essay is to compare and contrast the ways, in which Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys interpret the theme of isolation to construct such characters as Rochester and Jane from the novel Jane Eyre and Antoinette from Wide Sargasso Sea. In these literary works the ideas of isolation are presented as a direct result of characters’ loneliness that they have experienced since early childhood, thus the writers apply both to social and inner isolation. The reality, in which these people live, is so harsh that they isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Such alienation is a complex psychological disorder that influences the formation of characters’ identities. Isolation results in the expulsion of a person from all social affairs and interactions, preventing him/her to become a full member of society. Although Jean Rhys utilises the similar idea of isolation as Bronte’s narration, she provides her own interpretation of this issue. Contrary to Bronte, the writer considers that madness of a woman is not innate, but rather is a consequence of the injured self that is formed in a person because of isolation and oppression. In this regard, isolation is perceived by characters as a certain rescue that seems to save them for a time being, but, in fact, it gradually destroys these protagonists. The fact is that the identity of a person is created through certain social and cultural interactions with people, but isolation deprives him/her of acquiring the completeness of identity.

Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway, the principal female characters of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, are portrayed as entirely isolated personalities who, despite the different background and different living conditions, experience similar loneliness and despair. Jane is a little orphan who is treated cruelly by her aunt and who is isolated from the rest of the household. When Jane is sent into Lowood Institution, her isolation is aggravated; she is transformed into a reserved and serious woman with low self-esteem and lack of hopes. Similar to Jane, Antoinette’s isolation starts at home and continues in the nunnery, influencing her identity. She spends almost all time in the room and close people regard her as mad, although she acts in a rather normal way. But, contrary to Jane, such prolonged isolation results in more complex psychological destruction and further madness of Antoinette . As she claims at the beginning of the narration, no one came near us. I got used to a solitary life (Rhys 18). No one notices her and her family; instead people betray her trust and hopes. Antoinette’s isolation in childhood shapes her personality, negatively influencing her adult life and relations with people. This vulnerable and emotionally destroyed woman lives in her own created world, and when Rochester, a person whom she loves, alienates from her, she can no longer endure this isolation. Antoinette seeks love and attention, but her own husband fails to understand her.

Rhys reveals that Rochester’s isolation can’t be explained by his severity; instead he is portrayed as a destroyed personality who is forced to marry a person chosen by his family and who has to live in a place alien to him. Antoinette regards Rochester’s alienation as his inability to accept something that is different from his well-ordered life and habits. As a result of Rochester’s alienation, his attitude to Antoinette is sometimes negative, and gradually, she is transformed into a mad female, like her own mother, but Rhys opposes to the view that Antoinette inherits this madness from her mother. Instead, throughout the narration she stresses on the fact that isolation inevitably brings a woman to this psychological disorder. Antoinette’s mind is split and she flees into the past, isolating herself not only from the outside world, but also from her present life. Such isolation appears to be really dangerous for such a sensitive woman, and, as Coral Howells puts it, Antoinette’s moment of authenticity is also the moment of her destruction (121). In pursuit of escaping this isolation, Antoinette commits a suicide.

Thus, Antoinette fails to eliminate the negative emotions and feelings that are evoked by her loneliness and isolation. Although Jane Eyre also experiences anger and scorn towards her relatives, she manages to destroy these emotions. Unlike Antoinette, this young woman who feels isolation since childhood meets a person who experiences the same loneliness, and falls in love with him. This powerful feeling saves her from despair and finally destroys her isolation, she no longer wants to alienate from people, and especially from Rochester. The relations between Jane and Rochester differ from the relations between Rochester and Antoinette; in the case of Bronte’s narration both characters destroy their isolation and find necessary strength in each other, they are identical in many ways and are unable to live apart. As Jane claims, I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities or even of mortal flesh; – it is my spirit that addresses your spirit equal, – as we are! (Bronte 238). Rochester’s wives have really traumatic past that is aggravated by their isolation, but they respond differently to it. Although Jane loses her parents and is constantly ignored by society, her isolation helps her to develop some skills that provide her with necessary strength and allow her to overcome negative feelings. She becomes a mature young woman who possesses own viewpoints and who is able to evoke powerful feelings in another person. Jane expresses her dreams and loneliness in her beautiful drawings that allow her to successfully cope with her isolation. When Jane learns about Rochester’s wife, she decides to isolate herself from him, but finally she feels that he needs her and returns to him. Being an orphan, Jane understands that she has nobody to rely on, and she learns to rely only on herself. Contrary to Jane, Antoinette lives with her mother at the beginning, but she is alienated from her, because her mother is attached only to her brother, and when she loses him, she is destroyed.

As a naive and lonely girl, Antoinette finds comfort in her isolation, but deep inside she strives for attention and love. When she marries Rochester, she believes and trusts him, considering that he is her closest person. But when his attitude towards her changes, she isolates herself from him, destroying their relations. According to Schapiro, Both characters are furious at being unrealised by the other (99). Unlike Jane who becomes mature in Lowood School, Antoinette remains a little child who is greatly depended on other people and who is unable to act independently. In this regard, Antoinette’s madness aggravates alienation of Rochester who isolates himself even more after his unsuccessful marriage. Rochester finds it impossible to love a woman who is imposed on him, and when he starts to name her Bertha, he reveals his isolation from her. When Rochester meets Jane, he is attracted to her from the very start, but he finds it difficult to trust a woman again. He makes constant attempts to alienate from her, but he is unable to escape his feelings. Therefore, Antoinette’s isolation from reality and from close people slightly differs from isolation of Jane and Rochester. Their isolation is of different nature, they are socially isolated human beings. This especially concerns Jane who is distinctly alienated from society throughout the narration. When she marries Rochester, a member of the upper class, she still distances herself from others. Contrary to Antoinette who sometimes applies to provoking behaviour to attract attention of people towards her, Jane limits her relations to some close people. But unlike Antoinette, she doesn’t isolate herself from reality, trying to overcome the difficulties with her powerful spirit and moral principles.

Perhaps, Jane’s social isolation is explained by the fact that this young woman is unable to accept society that has constantly pushed her away. In childhood, instead of playing with children, Jane sits in the room in Gateshead listening to the sound of the piano or harp played below the jingling of glass the broken hum of conversation (Bronte 21).She is prohibited to enter the drawing room; only these sounds unite Jane with the world. Such isolation deprives Jane of any social interactions with other children or adults, resulting in her loneliness. As Jane claims, long did the hours seem while I awaited the departure of the company, and listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs (Bronte 22). Bessie is the only person in this house who helps Jane to endure her complex position. Further in the school Jane meets Helen Burns and Miss Temple, the persons who have greatly influenced the character’s identity. Due to their close relations, Jane starts to feel warmth, love and sympathy, gradually destroying her negative feelings. Unlike Jane, Antoinette doesn’t have such people in her life, thus her isolation and loneliness result in the tragic end. While Jane finally finds her identity, Antoinette’s alienation complicates her relations with people. As Schapiro puts it, Rhys’s novel explores a psychological condition of profound isolation and self-division (84).

Antoinette’s lack of identity makes her rather helpless. Jane is simply isolated from society, but Antoinette is destroyed by society, because she is depended on people that reject her. As a result of her isolation, Antoinette is unable to understand her true self or form definite principles. Such inner tension deprives the female character of normal life and reveals a complex position of a woman in a patriarchal world. Although Jane is portrayed in the similar social context, she manages to overcome these biases and make other people respect her. She possesses more strength and restraint than Antoinette, that’s why Jane’s isolation doesn’t destroy her, as she finds her identity. But Antoinette’s inability to acquire identity deprives her of normal life and happiness. She is constantly utilised as an object, but is never accepted as a woman with willpower and strength. Thus, Antoinette’s madness is a tragic sequel of her isolation. When she marries Rochester, she makes an attempt to overcome this isolation, but as Rhys claims, You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone (130).

Analysing the ways in which the writers present the theme of isolation to construct the characters of Rochester, Jane and Antoinette from Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, the essay suggests that Bronte and Rhys provide both similar and different interpretations of this issue. Jane and Antoinette are brought up in the similar environment and are constantly isolated from society. It is in this isolation that these young women find necessary solace from the cruel reality, but, though this isolation seems rescued for a while, it finally negatively influences the characters’ identity. Due to the fact that isolation of these characters is of different nature, their destinies are also different. Jane is socially isolated throughout the narration, but she manages to find her identity and overcome negative feelings, and, although she is still alienated from the rest of society, she is very close with some people who love her. Antoinette is not only socially isolated, but she is also mentally isolated from reality. Contrary to Jane, she fails to acquire her identity; as a result, isolation and loneliness finally destroy her mind and make her commit a suicide. The lack of social relations and solitude of Antoinette deprive her of the possibility to recognise her true self. Her sensitive nature wants attention and love, but when she fails to receive them, she creates an unreal world, isolating herself even from her husband. Rochester is also isolated from society and from Antoinette, but his isolation is connected with his inability to accept an imposed marriage and everything that is different from his well-ordered existence. Rochester’s attempts to isolate himself from Jane reveal that he is afraid of powerful feelings; as his marriage with one woman fails, he alienates from other females as well. Besides, Rochester is fully ignored by his own family, thus all three principal characters are isolated in one way or another, either from society or from reality.

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To Explore the Ways in Which Toni Morrison Portrays Negative Representations of her Female Characters and How She Goes Further to Challenge These Representations in Relation to Black Feminist Thought

Introduction

Toni Morrison is considered to be one of the most popular and most important authors of the 20th Century, especially considering that much of her literary work has actively challenged the stereotypes that have been imposed on African American women throughout history. The characters in her novels are beautifully crafted in order to allow the reader to explore their journeys and the way in which they are presented, thus questioning the perspective of history that has been created. However, many of the stereotypes have undoubtedly stuck in the African American conscious and so it is necessary to initially perpetuate women in those images prior to examining exactly how to expel those stereotypes for good. According to Ghaly, “Rethinking the traditional perspectives on identity and its relation to culture, [Morrison] eschew binary logic to explore multiple forms and root causes of social marginality.” As such, with this in mind, this essay will examine the African American female self in its stereotypical form within Morrison’s work and how it is constructed in relation to black feminist thought. This will be done with a view to concluding that Morrison undoubtedly goes some way to dispelling such negative representations and furthers the achievements of black feminism thought in the process. The book used for examination will be Sula (1973).

Black Feminist Thought and Negative Stereotypes

Patricia Hill Collins is one of the foremost scholars concerning the way in which African American women have been portrayed since the 19th Century, offering analysis as to how and why many black authors, intellectuals and prominent figures have been able to challenge stereotypes over the years. She stated that: “Black women intellectuals have laid a vital analytical foundation for a distinctive standpoint on self, community, and society and, in doing so, created a multifaceted, African-American women’s intellectual tradition.” Collins’s argument is indeed correct in that numerous authors have provided a firm analysis of the race’s female self through the eyes of the individual rather than the dominant white perspective. In highlighting this, Collins has also identified numerous themes, or “…six distinguishing features that characterize Black feminist thought may provide the common ground that it so sorely needed both among African-American women, and between African American women and all others whose collective knowledge or thought has a single purpose.” Those six areas that provide common ground and thus a common feminine experience are work and family, controlling matriarchs, self-definition, sexual politics, love relationships, motherhood and activism. Although these six areas provide common ground and thus can also form a collective identity of African American womanhood, they also provide the foundation of negative representations.

Dubey states that “…the black writer must replace negative stereotypes with positive images.” However, the use of the term “replace” gives the impression that negative stereotypes should be ignored rather than examined and developed in order to expel them, ensuring that female characters are allowed to evolve into positive images. Conversely, Collins advocates empowerment via experience and consciousness and that implies exorcising negative representations by exploring them thoroughly in order to humanise the black female experience. Morrison subscribes to this particular perspective, as her characters prove. However, it is necessary to explore the characters in Sula in order to assess whether or not she goes further to challenging representations in relation to black feminist thought or not.

The Whore and the Good Wife

Morrison offers two specific characterisations of the negative stereotypes that had traditionally been foisted on African American women – the whore and the good wife. The former is of course a means of describing Sula and the latter her “good” counterpart, Nel. The relationship between the two serves as one of the “black women’s friendships” that Collins states are vital to expelling negative representations. However, before examining the relationship between the two, it is important to examine the stereotypes they present individually. Sula is the promiscuous black woman that steps neatly into the role of whore at first glance as a result of her attitude towards sex and thus womanhood: “To Sula, sex is disconnected from emotion, a disembodied act of the body that allows her to feel a sorrow unattainable through any other means.” Although this highlights the aspect of the negative stereotype that suggests that black women are promiscuous by nature, it also hints at a far deeper significance that the act itself adopts for Sula, thus challenging the traditional representation. This is reinforced in the description of her upbringing that is offered by Morrison. Her mother “…taught Sula that sex was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable.” As such, the stereotype presented by the character is effectively created by a maternal liberal attitude towards sex rather than it being an innate destructive quality that she was born with, as the traditional stereotype suggests. This directly challenges the stereotype by humanising the figure of the whore and thus also dispels the negativity associated with it, regardless of how taboo the subject of promiscuity may be.

However, the stereotype of the whore, which Sula is designed to both embody and challenge within the book, is not only challenged via the use of the her back story but also via her attitude towards sex: “For Sula, sex becomes a means to assert herself and to defy social convention. She seduces her best friend’s husband and is accused of the worst degradation of all: sleeping with white men.” As Collins highlights, African American women were traditionally used by white men and objectified as a result. However, in the case of Sula the roles are reversed. She actively uses men to feel alive, to explore who she is and to form her own self-identity that does not depend on conforming to the social expectations that were imposed on African American women at that point in time. Sula is therefore not a whore but instead a woman simply searching for her place in the world, thus rendering her race incidental. Finding that sex put her “…in a position of surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and limitless power”, Sula explores her true self by rejecting the accepted boundaries of sex and forming her own expectations of life: “Single-handedly, she rejects the values of the margin to which she belongs, a margin that mirrors the centre in that it represses any stirrings of discontent.”Sula’s discontent is tangible and thus renders the stereotype of the whore a societal construction that is designed to oppress rather than a viable label with which it is possible to brand her. Morrison therefore uses the themes established by Collins in order to examine the negative representation of the whore and pushes back the boundaries that had previously been imposed with little understanding of what drove the women perceived as promiscuous. Even though the entire community condemned Sula, including her best friend Nel, the judgement is subtly passed by Morrison on them for not embracing the collective conscious rather than Sula herself.

The whore is not the only negative representation of the African American woman that black feminist thought has acknowledged and tried to dispel. The timid good wife who absolves her husband of all fault is another. The role is filled by Nel in Sula: “Nel, Sula’s complementary “other,” is presented as the prim and proper child who grows up to be a selfless wife and mother who unquestioningly conforms to the stereotypes of womanhood. She is everything that Sula was supposed to become but did not and would not.” She is subordinate to Jude, her husband, keeps house, remains faithful and never goes against her man in any way. In essence, she releases her own identity in order to assume that of her husband, thus meaning that she has no identity and so cannot be said to be living her life on her own terms as Sula is. The two girls contrast greatly but Morrison ensures that they share one element of their lives – that their characters and thus representations are not inevitable but instilled. Just as Sula’s promiscuity is encouraged, so is Nel’s role of the good wife: “Under Helene’s hand the girl became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground.” She was forced to relinquish her identity and only ever retained it when around Sula, with whom she shares a sisterhood that Collins advocates as being essential in dispelling stereotypes. However, that sisterhood is negated by the conscience of the good wife: “And Nel creates a scapegoat in Sula to absolve Jude of deliberate acts of moral evil, marital infidelity and familial desertion, which destroy their marriage. Nel abnegates Jude’s potential for evil.”. The wife overtakes the sisterhood, thus subverting the notion of community once again. However, although the good wife stereotype is adhered to initially, Morrison later challenges it via a process of self realisation, self determination and the discovery of an autonomous identity. The realisation comes as Nel rejects the stereotype.

Marriage is consistently perceived as damaging by Morrison. She states the following in relation to the institution and its effect on women like Nel, the good wife: “Those with husbands had folded themselves into starched coffins, their sides bursting with other people’s skinned dreams and bony regrets” In doing so, she highlights the importance of other elements of life through the eyes of Nel and Sula with particular emphasis on friendship. However, it is Sula who initially realises the value of friendship in black womanhood: “She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be – for a woman.” This is somewhat ironic given the fact that she threw that friendship away by sleeping with Nel’s husband. However, Sula dies without having been given Nel’s forgiveness. It is not until after her death that Nel realises the true nature of friendship between African American women, as per Collins’s examination of black feminist thought and Morrison’s will to push the women further in order to dispel stereotypes: “It is only after Sula’s death and burial that Nel realizes that it has been Sula – not Jude – whom Nel has missed through the years.” In short, according to Morrison, it is the love of the sisterhood that is necessary to survive and nurture an identity instead of the institution of marriage. This undoubtedly rejects the stereotypes of the whore and the good wife because it negates the role of men in general, thus empowering women to forge their own destinies. This is undoubtedly an evolution of black feminist thought rather than in keeping with it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Morrison uses her characterisations of Sula and Nel in order to thoroughly examine the viability of African American female stereotypes and effectively offers enough proof as to why they must be challenged and dispelled. They not only mask the true nature of what it means to be a woman but also set her alone when in fact the collective conscious defies the imposition of any such stereotype. Collins’s theory as to the nature of African American womanhood via black feminist thought provides an excellent foundation for understanding Morrison’s work, but she goes above and beyond the values and factors offered by Collins in order to ensure that the novel undoubtedly goes some way to dispelling such negative representations and furthers the achievements of black feminism thought in the process. In Sula and Nel, the whore and the good wife are undoubtedly negated in favour of friendship, identity and true black womanhood.

Bibliography

Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann, 2006. Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and About Women of Color. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Collins, Patricia Hill, 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.
Davis, Anita Price, 1998. Toni Morrison’s Sula. Piscataway, NJ: Research & Education Association.
Dubey, Madhu, 1994. Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Eckard, Paula G., 2002. Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Ghaly, Salwa, 2004. Evil Encounters with “Other” in Tayeb Salih and Toni Morrison: The Case of Mustafa Saeed and Sula Peace. In Richard Paul Hamilton & Margaret Sonser Breen eds. The Thing of Darkness: Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 21-36.
Jennings, La Vinia Delois, 2008. Toni Morrison and the Idea of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrison, Toni, 1987. Sula. New York: Penguin Books.

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Explore the relationship between fiction and metaphysics and/or ethics in D. H. Lawrence’s short story “The White Stocking”

D.H. Lawrence was well known, arguably notorious, for advocating the doctrine of romantic vitalism both in his life and in his writings. Originally a scientific term, the Oxford English Dictionary defines romantic vitalism as “The doctrine or theory that the origin and phenomena of life are due to or produced by a vital principle, as distinct from a purely chemical or physical force” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 1999, p1603). Lawrence’s championing of the philosophy persisted right up until his death in 1930: indeed, as Daniel Fuchs comments, “The voice of romantic vitalism speaks with intransigent integrity in Lawrence to the last” (Fuchs, 2011, p156). In the early twentieth century, romantic vitalism, as Lawrence conceived of it, championed the view that people’s intellectual development had taken precedence over their spiritual and emotional development.

This brief essay will examine how the metaphysical concept of romantic vitalism is explored through the treatment of human love and human weakness within the institution or marriage, and how individuals should behave towards one another within D.H.Lawrence’s early short story “The White Stocking”. “The White Stocking” is a narrative about desire and more specifically about repressed desire: as the very title of the story implies, it is about the idea of repression of sex and sexuality as being injurious to the spiritual and mental well being of the subject. It explores in tangential form a conflict between the physical nature of the body on the one hand, and the external pressures of social convention and an unexpressed, yet omniscient Christian morality which is supposed to govern people’s external conduct.

At surface level, the story is about the relationship between a married couple, in this instance the Whistons- Ted and Elsie- and about a husband and wife at the beginning of another working day, yet the narrative voice foregrounds a potent dichotomy or duality which associates warmth and sensuality with femininity, and more particularly the female body, and conversely coldness and reason with masculinity. Yet, one must acknowledge that ‘The White Stocking’ is a story in which the physical atmosphere and physical objects are invested with a powerful symbolism for characters that convey meanings and resonances that they themselves are not yet aware of, but the process of the story is to show how they gain deeper awareness of these resonances, and their implications for their identities and their relationships with each other.

Right from the very outset, it is heavily implied that Mrs Whiston as a character is (in the eyes of her husband, at least) imbued with a powerful sensuousness and an openness to nature and the natural world:

They had been married two years. But still, when she had gone out of the room, he felt as if all his light and warmth were taken away, he became aware of the raw, cold morning. So he rose himself, wondering casually what had roused her so early. Usually she lay in bed as late as she could. (Lawrence, 2006, p49)

Mrs Whiston has an innate warmth in spite of the coldness of their physical surroundings and of the cold English climate, and it is inferred, in spite of the repression of Christian civilisation that expresses itself through the conventional institution of marriage, as the authorial voice seems to imply. This sensuality and easiness with her body is portrayed as almost descending into a form of sluttish behaviour: in the eyes of her husband, the reader is told that “She looked like an untidy minx, but she was quick and handy enough.” (Lawrence, 2006, p50) The impression that is conveyed is not that of a respectable marriage and a respectable Christian household, but rather of a couple who have perhaps just engaged in frenetic sexual intercourse with each other.

Mrs Whiston/Elsie is presented as a character who is much more open to the possibilities of living within the moment and awareness of the sensuous and sexual possibilities that existence can offer one. The story speaks of how she is ‘interested only in her envelopes this morning’ (Lawrence, 2006, p50). Throughout the story she is repeatedly connected with physicality and with physical objects, as exemplified by the lengthy attention paid to her receipt of the Valentine’s gifts and more specifically, her lengthy interaction with the story’s title object: the eponymous white stocking itself.

Lace as a fabric is associated with physical feeling, with the body and with the skin. Indeed, the story mentions how Elsie/ Mrs Whiston was employed as ‘a warehouse girl in Adam’s lace factory before she was married’ (Lawrence, 2006, p56). Her role within a lace/hosiery factory defines her position and her identity in life prior to marriage: within the context of the story, the idea of fabrics, of lace and in particular, the idea of the white stocking seems to invoke the idea of freedom, independence and an elevated social status, as implied by Elsie’s strange yet eager embrace of the physical clothing and the pearl ear-rings that she presumes she has received as a Valentine’s present from her former suitor.

Examining the incident in closer detail, Elsie’s emotional reaction to each of the gifts that she receives is individually noteworthy: she basically rejects the cartoon Valentine that she receives, more or less, because it offends her romantic and possibly aspirational nature. She is then described as smiling ‘pleasantly’(Lawrence, 2006, p51) at the white silk handkerchief that she receives in the white cardboard box, which contains ‘her initial, worked in heliotrope, fully displayed’(Lawrence, 2006, p51). The third gift, the eponymous white stocking contains a very pleasant surprise in its toe. The authorial voice talks of how she lifts ‘a pair of pearl ear-rings from the small box’ (Lawrence, 2006, p51) and goes ‘to the mirror…looking at herself sideways in the glass. Curiously concentrated and intent she seemed as she fingered the lobes of her ears, her head bent on her side.’(Lawrence, 2006, p51) The message that accompanies the gift that ‘Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer. Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer’ (Lawrence, 2006, p51) and the fact that Elsie has not received these items from her husband, suggests that either she has been and remains an object of romantic infatuation.

As we subsequently learn, Elsie suspects that the pearl ear-rings are a gift from the rich lace manufacturer, Sam Adams, who was previously her employer and, it seems, a suitor who vainly tried to woo her. Suddenly a whole back story opens up, in which a vivid physical portrait of Adams as a lonely bachelor with a ‘fondness for the girls’ (Lawrence, 2006, p56) emerges, and for whom Elsie is the main target of his amorous affections. He is described as wearing ‘a red carnation’ (Lawrence, 2006, p56) in his buttonhole in order ‘to impress her’. (Lawrence, 2006, p56)

Why the intense focus on the details of the Valentine’s gifts? For a start, they appear to symbolise Elsie’s apparent ascent in the world and the sense that the reader gets of a desire on her part to ensure an improvement in her social status and the sense of social identity as being somehow fluid, and no longer fixed. As we learn towards the end of the first story, Whiston has risen in the world, having left Sam Adams’ employ and struck out on his own as a commercial traveller. The irony is that Elsie has apparently rejected the higher social status and greater financial and material security that would have come through marriage to Sam Adams, her former employer, and has followed her heart and her romantic nature and married Ted Whiston instead. Whiston is described in the story as being more physically attractive and more restrained in manner than Adams: the latter is ‘too loud for [Elsie’s] good taste (Lawrence, 2006, p56) whereas the former is described as being ‘a shapely young fellow of twenty-eight, sleepy now and easy with well-being (Lawrence, 2006, p50) The story’s narrative structure shifts towards engagement with the romantic triangle between Elsie, Whiston and Adams. Within the triangle Elsie believes that her beauty and her attractiveness to Adams give her a power over her husband through his rage and jealousy at Adams’ unabated courtship.

The triangular relationship is expressed through the story of the Christmas party: Elsie dances with Adams and seems to revel in the physicality of dancing with him. Indeed, the experience is described as being ‘an intoxication to her’, (Lawrence, 2006, p60) and we see how much she shapes her own identity through her own enjoyment of physical and erotic contact with others. At the same time, her husband’s ontology and identity are defined in terms opposite to her own which ostensibly reject the erotic and which enforce boundaries of contact and affection. Ted Whiston instructs his wife to shun close contact with Adams, telling her that: “You don’t want to be too free with Sam Adams…You know what he is”,(Lawrence, 2006, p63) and yet a mixture of pride, anger and reticence prevent him from explaining to Elsie why she should reject Adams’ attentions.

At the heart of the story, the titular white stocking comes to represent the rift in the marriage between Ted and Elsie, and yet to symbolise how Elsie draws out the passion and an unexpected redemptive quality in Ted’s character. When they are walking back from the Christmas party after the incident in which Elsie mistakenly dropped the white stocking, it is Elsie’s apparent remorse and regret which leaves her tearful and vulnerable, and which evokes in Ted a need to forgive, and in a moment of sudden epiphany to realise that he cares for and loves her very deeply indeed:

And he held her very safe, and his heart was white-hot with love for her. His mind was amazed. He could only hold her against his chest that was white-hot with love and belief in her. So she was restored at last. (Lawrence, 2006, p66)

In essence, the Christmas party establishes a pattern of behaviour within the marital relationship whereby Elsie’s continued attraction to Adams both provokes her husband’s violent jealousy to the point where he almost lashes out at her in piques of violence. Yet, if one looks at the relationship and the subsequent marriage between Ted and Elsie, it becomes the way in which her social identity is subsequently defined, and in which she finds a peculiar sense of security:

Inside of marriage she found her liberty. She was rid of the responsibility of herself. Her husband must look after that. She was free to get what she could out of her time. (Lawrence, 2006, p66-7)

This leads us towards consideration of the treatment of marriage within the narrative. At its heart it explores issues of trust, forgiveness and fidelity within marriage, and how well the social institution of marriage can withstand possible betrayal and compromise. The third great epiphany of the story centres on Elsie’s admission to her husband that the pearl ear-rings are not the first present that she has received from Sam Adams. This time, Ted Whiston is unable to restrain himself and hits his wife with a savage force:

Then, quick as lightning, the back of his hand struck her with a crash across the mouth, and she was flung back blinded against the wall (Lawrence, 2006, p71)

One might assume that the modern twenty-first century reader would be shocked and horrified by this expression of violence, and by Whiston’s apparent brutality towards his wife, yet this moment of aggression and physical injury seems to have the paradoxical effect of bringing Ted and Elsie closer together in a sudden and surprising moment of tenderness and compassion. It is almost as if Lawrence is implying that tenderness, cruelty and violence cannot exist apart from one another in marriage, being almost in a form of mutual symbiosis.

In conclusion, this might be a very useful way of describing ‘The White Stocking’ because it is very much a story about relationships and human connections are mutually, helplessly dependent upon each other, and this is how the relationship progresses between Ted and Elsie.

Reference List

Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1999): Oxford UP, Oxford

Fuchs, D. The Limits of Ferocity: Sexual Aggression & Modern Literary Rebellion. (2011): Duke University Press, Durham NC

Lawrence, D.H. Selected Stories. (2007): Penguin, London

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The theme of masculinity suggests itself as an obvious area of focus with Hemingway’s collection In Our Time, as these short stories and vignettes are explicitly concerned with men, male activities, male professions and traditionally masculine areas of human experience such as war, hunting and fighting. The collection is notable for its focus on male characters, most notably figures such as Nick Adams, and for the relative absence of women (indeed, Hemingway titled another of his short story collections Men Without Women). Where women do feature, it is often in a secondary or passive role, with the male characters in the story wielding power in the text and also providing the perspective of Hemingway’s narration. This essay will argue that masculinity is a central theme in In Our Time, and moreover that much of the tension within the texts comes from the conflict between characters’ self-perceptions of their own masculinity and the reality of their masculine behaviour. Defining what masculinity means, both for themselves and in the context of other characters’ perceptions of them, is a central concern of Hemingway’s male protagonists in this collection, as in his oeuvre more generally (Fore, 2007).

In the early story ‘The Indian Camp’ and the vignette Chapter II, Hemingway presents women from the perspective of men: they are associated with children in general and with childbirth in particular. Notably, women are not given a voice in either of these stories; instead, they are seen from the perspective of men. As passive individuals whose primary role is to give birth, women in In Our Time are figured as secondary. Their lack of masculinity means a lack of driving force in the text, which instead comes from male characters, male actions, and male interactions. Hemingway championed, in his fiction as well as in his life, the notion of the competent, masculine male; his motto on this subject was the masculine notion of ‘grace under pressure’ (Durham, 1976). The ability to perform a task or job well is one that Hemingway values in his life and fiction, and in In Our Time we see this confident, competent male type embodied by Nick Adams’ father the doctor. In the story ‘The Indian Camp,’ his visit to the camp is predicated on the notion that he is an extremely competent doctor, able as he notes to perform a caesarian with a jack knife and stitch it up afterwards. In this same story, the doctor can be contrasted with the Indian father who kills himself, thereby dichotomising the able male and the unable male and introducing another of Hemingway’s key themes: namely, suicide. That suicide in the text is no less gendered than professional competence is made evident in the exchange between Nick and his father which follows their leaving the Indian Camp:

“Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”
“Not very many, Nick.”
“Do many women?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Don’t they ever?”
“Oh, yes. They do sometimes.” (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.)

The differences in the behaviour of men and women take on an almost anthropological quality in the gendered presentation of character in In Our Time. Men are explicitly figured as active, aggressive and macho in contrast to women’s passivity. Whilst Hemingway of course nuances his presentation to include different types of men, and to suggest that there is more than one way of being masculine, there are recurrent themes which can be said to centre around the idea of violence. Men in the stories measure themselves and each other in terms of acts of violence. In the story ‘The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,’ masculinity is presented as a form of awareness of one’s own capacity to commit acts of violence. Dick Boulton’s very felicity as a male seems to depend on the accuracy of his awareness of his own masculinity: ‘Dick Boulton looked at the doctor. Dick was a big man. He knew how big a man he was. He liked to get into fights. He was happy’ (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.). Violence, recognition of one’s capacity to commit violence, and comfort in one’s own power as a male, are here presented as key features of felicitous masculinity. By contrast, those male characters who are unhappy and who commit acts of violence against themselves (alcoholism, more literally suicide) are ones whose self-perceptions of their own masculinity do not accord with the reality, leading to what some critics have identified as the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in Hemingway’s fiction (Hatten, 1993). The very title of the story ‘The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife’ contrasts the male and the female characters as Hemingway sees them: the Doctor is impulsive, angered, and takes the more cynical interpretation of his adversary’s actions; by contrast, his wife is presented as pious, forgiving, and somewhat naive in her reading of human motives. However, she is able to calm the doctor down and he goes outside to see Nick. Tellingly, however, Nick decides to go off with his father at the end of the story rather than go inside to see his mother. He tells his father he knows where there are black squirrels, and they set off to take part in that most male of activities: hunting. Ultimately, female piety and compassion only temper the masculine urges and drives in the story; it is masculinity which pervades as a theme, and violence – or the potential for violence – which is restored by the story’s close.

Hemingway’s presentation of masculinity must therefore be contrasted with his notions of femininity, and it can be noted that both are presented in terms of types. In In Our Time, the greatest type division is between men and women; within these divisions, there are sub-categories. Thus the short story ‘Mr and Mrs Eliot’ presents the dichotomy of the male and female in its title, and then proceeds in the story itself to break down this division further into different types. At no point, however, is it questioned that there are certain characteristics which can be considered exclusively or predominantly feminine, and those that can be considered masculine. Femininity and masculinity are not abstract notions but rather the locus of concrete differences in the text. Thus Mrs Eliot is presented in terms of stereotypes concerning her gender and geographical origins: ‘Like all Southern women Mrs. Elliot disintegrated very quickly under sea sickness, travelling at night, and getting up too early in the morning’ (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.). This sentence is not a qualified presentation of an individual, but a stereotyping of all females from the South of the United States. This is typical of the way in which gender, masculinity and femininity, are presented in the texts: there are clear archetypes for human characteristics, and characters are presented as conforming to them or deviating from them. Implicit in the short story ‘Mr and Mrs Eliot’ is a critique of the ways in which Mr Eliot departs from the ideal of masculinity presented in the collection more generally: he is a poet, he drinks white wine, he has not been with many women and he tries, unsuccessfully, to have a baby with his wife. Ultimately, he is emasculated and usurped from the marital bed and his role as a masculine impregnator of women: ‘Mrs. Elliot and the girl friend now slept together in the big mediaeval bed. They had many a good cry together’ (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.). Instead, the bed becomes the site not of any female (lesbian) eroticism but instead of female communication and empathy: the women cry there together. This is presented as an antithesis to the idea of idealised masculinity, in which actions speak louder than words. In such a context, Mr Eliot’s being a poet, and dedicating his nights to writing verse and drinking white wine instead of more becoming masculine pursuits, can here be read in a critical light as a satire on the ‘modern’ man who departs from the traditional notion of masculinity as embodied in the collection by figures such as Nick Adams and his father.

The story which perhaps most clearly presents the idealised model of masculinity, and the key notion of the potential difference between men’s perceptions of themselves and the reality of their masculinity, is ‘Big Two-Hearted River.’ Here, Nick Adams is presented as happily in an elemental, masculine state. Men are happy in Hemingway when they are doing an activity well, and here Nick Adams is presented as engaged in fishing the river, a feeling which he enjoys and an experience which he knows well. Hemingway explicitly presents this activity in physical terms; masculine behaviour is notable in the collection for being physically impressive and physically demanding, and the impression is of behaviour which is rewarding for men to the extent that it is physically draining. Thus Nick is happy in proportion to the degree to which he exerts himself: ‘The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy’ (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.). The pleasure of physical exertion is a defining theme of masculinity in this collection as well as in Hemingway’s writing more generally (Fore, 2007); it is seen in the context of a number of typically male activities, from fishing as in this story through to war, bullfighting and shooting (Vernon, 2002). The story also presents a key Hemingway theme in the context of masculinity: namely, male bonding and the ways in which men negotiate their own masculinity together. Much has been made of homoeroticism and suppressed homosexualities in Hemingway’s work as well as in his life (Blackmore, 1998; Cohen, 1995; Elliott, 1993; Fantina, 2004), but what is more obviously present here is the notion that masculinity is something which is negotiated between men, indirectly rather than directly. Thus Nick Adams measures his own masculinity alongside his old friend Hopkins, who is now presumably dead, drinking a tribute coffee to the man whom he bonded with and against whom he measured some elements of his own masculinity:

Not the first cup. It should be straight Hopkins all the way. Hop deserved that. He was a very serious coffee drinker. He was the most serious man Nick had ever known. Not heavy, serious. That was a long time ago. (Hemingway, 1925, n.p.)

Significantly, this male bonding is something which is negotiated indirectly, with intervening time and space coming between Nick and Hopkins. Even more significantly, Hemingway presents this masculine bonding indirectly, through the free indirect discourse of Nick’s thoughts and reminiscences. This device allows Hemingway to present masculinity indirectly, and to emphasise in the nostalgia and pathos of this longer story the loss and pain that the masculine world of war creates (Clifford, 1994). Nick is not presented as having any direct contact with Hopkins, there is no quoting or speech, but instead Nick and the reader are obliged to experience this process of masculine connection from a distance, at a remove.

To conclude, it is evident that masculinity is an extremely important theme in In Our Time. In particular, it allows for a dichotomy to be present in the texts between males as active, violent and powerful on the one hand, and women as passive, responsive and objectified on the other. Women are the subject of the male gaze, which is always seeking to define itself in terms of idealised masculinity. However, men also turn their gazes on themselves and each other, and it can be noted in conclusion that a central source of narrative tension in the text is the conflict between characters’ perceptions of their masculinity and the reality. This comes to the fore in relationship problems with women, but also in acts of violence and conflict between males, where the need to assert one’s masculinity comes at the expense of denying another man the opportunity to fully exert his. The pathos of this disconnect between idealised masculinity and the harsh reality of many of his male characters’ existences is what gives to Hemingway’s collection In Our Time its unmistakably elegiac tone.

References

Blackmore, D. (1998). ” In New York it’d mean I was a…”: Masculinity anxiety and period discourses of sexuality in The Sun Also Rises. The Hemingway Review, 18(1), 49.

Clifford, S. P. (1994). Hemingway’s Fragmentary Novel: Readers Writing the Hero in In Our Time. The Hemingway Review, 13, 12-23.

Cohen, P. F. (1995). ” I won’t kiss you… I’ll send your English girl”: homoerotic desire in’A Farewell to Arms.’. The Hemingway Review, 15(1), 42-54.

Durham, P. (1976). Ernest Hemingway’s Grace under Pressure: The Western Code. The Pacific Historical Review, 425-432.

Elliott, I. (1993). A farewell to arms and Hemingway’s crisis of masculine values. Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 4(4), 291-304.

Fantina, R. (2004). Hemingway’s Masochism, Sodomy, and the Dominant Woman. The Hemingway Review, 23(1), 84-105.

Fore, D. (2007). Life Unworthy of Life?: Masculinity, Disability, and Guilt in The Sun Also Rises. The Hemingway Review, 26(2), 74-88.

Hatten, C. (1993). The Crisis of Masculinity, Reified Desire, and Catherine Barkley in” A Farewell to Arms”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4(1), 76-98.

Hemingway, E. (1925) In Our Time. New York: Simon and Schuster. Available online at scribd.com [accessed 3rd March 2016] at: https://www.scribd.com/read/236832081/In-Our-Time.

Vernon, A. (2002). War, Gender, and Ernest Hemingway. The Hemingway Review, 22(1), 34-55.

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THE REPRESENTATION OF BLACK CULTURE IN BELOVED BY TONI MORRISON

African-American author Toni Morrison’s book, Beloved, describes a black culture born out of a dehumanising period of slavery just after the Civil War. Culture is a means of how a group collectively believe, act, and interact on a daily basis. Those who have studied her work refer to Morrison’s narrative tales as “literature…that addresses the sacred and as an allegorical representation of black experience” (Baker-Fletcher 1993: 2). Although African Americans had a difficult time establishing their own culture during the period of slavery when they were considered less than human, Morrison believes that black culture has been built on the horrors of the past and it is this history that has shaped contemporary black culture in a positive way. Through the use of linguistic devices, her representation of black women, imagery and symbolic features, and the theme of interracial relations, Morrison illustrates that black culture that is resilient, vibrant, independent, and determined.

Published in 1987, Beloved is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that recounts how those who survived slavery healed themselves and reflects on the period of slavery in “a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive” (Morey 1988: 2). It is this rememory as Morrison calls it that helps those considered “others” become individuals. Set in Ohio, the book focuses on Sethe; Sethe’s surviving daughter, Denver; Sethe’s mother-in-law, Baby Suggs; and the ghost of Sethe’s dead daughter, Beloved. Throughout the book, “Morrison communicates an unforgettable sense of the strength, terror and devastation that is part of the black community, whilst skilfully portraying the unalterable connections between spiritual and physical life” (Morey 1988: 1093).

One linguistic device used throughout the novel is the use of songs. Slaves use songs as a way to pass down stories but also to help them maintain a sense of inner strength. Morrison “shows how song defines and affirms slave “personhood” in a world where slave humanity is constantly challenged and denied” (Capuano 2003: 1). Rather than thinking of song in a negative fashion, “it chronicles her characters’ endurance and ability to survive during and after these periods of physical brutality and psychological abuse” that they experienced during slavery (Capuano 2003: 2). This illustrates how black culture has resilience and an ability to overcome hardship. Singing is an essential aspect of the characters’ lives alongside food, sleep, and shelter. As the novel related, if Paul D could “walk, eat, sleep, [and] sing,” he could survive and “asked for no more” (Morrison 1987: 41). While others may not understand the jargon used in the songs, those singing it and other slaves hearing those songs know what it means, and this is a way to strike some independence and distinct culture for themselves during a period where it is uncommon to think of blacks as even human (Capuano 2003: 4). This community of song enables those within black culture to become stronger. It is “the collective sharing of that information heals the individual — and the collective” (Morey 1988: 1039). In revisiting Morrison’s overall theme of turning traumatic memories into a positive force, the songs are a cathartic process used to take this memory, which is “vital for revisioning communal and social transformation that is healing” (Baker-Fletch 1993: 4). It is the singing of the women that help exorcise the ghost of Beloved and enable Sethe to break free as if she has been baptized (Morrison 1987: 308). The novel describes Sethe as “running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind” (Morrison 1987: 309).

In addition to songs as a linguistic device, Morrison constantly returns to the word, “rememory” and “disremember” rather than using words, such as “remember” or “forget.” Morrison uses rememory to show how Sethe constantly keeps the past in her present existence because she cannot forget what happened and lives with the ghost of her guilty conscience and moral dilemma for murdering her daughter and living through slavery. For example, Sethe explains how she struggles with the past:

It’s so hard for me to believe in [time]. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. . . . But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world” (Morrison 1987: 36).

Morrison’s creation of her own terms related to how the black culture has to continually deal with its past as though it is a metal neck chain that they cannot unlock. Throughout the book, it seems as though this struggle with rememory is constant for Sethe rather than looking forward to a more opportunistic future: “But [Sethe’s] brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day” (Morrison 1987: 70). The other characters in the novel attempt to help Sethe loosen the binds of the past. One of the women in town wants to help Sethe exorcise the ghost of Beloved because she “didn’t like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present” because “the past was something to leave behind” (Morrison 1987: 302).

As part of the black culture, black women represent the pillars of strength within that community as protectors and healers. They are the glue that holds everything together when the world is falling apart around them. Many of the characters have been torn from their families because of the slave traders splitting up families and selling them as slaves to various white masters. Together, they share a history of suffering and an urge to heal and become whole people again. In isolation, black women formed bonds to survive and empower each other to withstand the atrocities of slavery. There is also a sense of the sisterhood still found in African American culture today as the women in the community band together to exercise the ghost of Beloved from Sethe’s house. It is this camaraderie that helps Sethe heal as an individual and strengthens the black community. In contrast, Paul D and Beloved clash because Beloved sees this male presence as a threat as does her sister, Denver. Both Beloved and Denver want their mother to themselves, furthering the idea that black women stick together while black men are seen as untrustworthy. Paul D does not like Beloved either because he feels isolated from the bond that the women share. However, he lets Beloved seduce him, thereby proving to Sethe and Denver that men cannot be trusted.

In terms of imagery, the ghost of Beloved represents the idea that both Sethe and black culture are haunted by a horrible past but being able to live with that spectre in a positive way instead of dreading and fearing their slavery past. As one character states: “Anything dead coming back to life hurts” (Morrison 1987: 35). Beloved also is what is known in African American literatures as the “trickster.” According to one writer, “the trickster, whose fluidity and rule breaking define and maintain culture, embodies a central paradox in Morrison’s work: that of balancing the urge to maintain and foster cultural tradition and the equally powerful urge to rebel” (Smith 1997: 112). Beloved, as a trickster, is playing with Sethe by stirring up the past rather than continuing to repress it. In some ways, Sethe is still enslaved because she cannot remove the shackles of what happened in the past, including her decision to murder her daughter. Beloved works her magic by getting Sethe to re-examine how the past should be dealt with in the present.

Beloved’s presence is like a re-birth for Sethe to acknowledge the past while moving forward a stronger, wiser woman for what happened to her and the rest of the black community. The ghost of Beloved really becomes an outward representation of the inward retrospective Sethe is taking of her life so far. While other characters in the novel experience a situation of an alternative self that helps them recover from the past, it is only Sethe that goes through the process under the most extreme conditions.

In positioning the black culture as part of society as a whole, Morrison also explores interracial relations in the novel. During and after slavery, relations between black and white cultures are “harsh” (Angelo 1989: 1). The relationship between the two cultures is based on the idea of exclusion and lack of tolerance for others. All the black characters have suffered horrific experiences at the hands of white people. Sethe had been raped while Paul D was imprisoned and Stamp Paid lost his wife. Sethe kills her own daughter, Beloved, because she does not want her to have to be treated to the harshness of life that whites have brought on black people. Between the whites and blacks, it is a relationship of take until there was nothing left of the black person:

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up. . . . The best thing [Sethe] was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing (Morrison 1987: 251)

For Sethe, it is easier to lose her daughter to death than it is for her to see Beloved suffer in this world. It did not seem right to live in a world where they were nameless and faceless to white society. Morrison describes this state as being “dismembered and unaccounted for”(Morrison 1987: 323).

In writing about the black culture rising from the ashes of a horrific period in history, Morrison makes the point that individuality and community are what bind African Americans together. In an interview about her novel, she said: “The book was not about the institution — Slavery with a capital S. It was about these anonymous people called slaves. What they do to keep on, how they make a life, what they’re willing to risk, however long it lasts, in order to relate to one another” (Angelo 1989: 3). While Morrison shows that black people are the same as white people because they are all human beings, the black culture has struggled with an identity and a purpose after white people had taken that away during slavery. Beloved is about an awakening to the ability to be individuals again and feel empowered after shaking the ghost of a dehumanizing history. Each character – man and woman – within the black community of Beloved go through a process of denial and then self-awareness. A sense of community and sisterhood along with the tight bonds of family that cannot be broken even by physical distance are what help Sethe and the black culture overcome the trauma and sorrow of the past.

REFERENCES

Angelo, B. (22 May 1989). “The Pain of Being Black.” Time. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/community/pulitzerinterview.html.

Baker-Fletcher, K. (April 1993). “Tar Baby and Womanist Theology.” Theology Today. Available at: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1993/v50-1-article3.htm.

Capuano, P.J. (2003). “Truth in Timbre: Morrison’s Extension of Slave Narrative Songs in Beloved.” African American Review.

Morey, A.J. (16 November 1988). “Toni Morrison and the Color of Life.” Christian Century, 1039.

Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. New York: Vintage Books.

Smith, Jeanne Rosier. (1997). “Chapter Four—Tar and Feathers: Community and the Outcast in Toni Morrison’s Trickster Novels.” Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Discuss whether the use of English in non-ENL countries can be seen as a neutral, a harmful or a beneficial activity.

English, which is often referred to as ‘the language of the planet’ is spoken by more than 750 million people worldwide. This global phenomenon, if not spoken by millions as a mother tongue is spoken by many as a second language or taught in educational institutions as a foreign language.

The diversity of its speakers has sparked considerable amount of interest, along with the types of English used in many countries. Alongside an immense number of speakers of a single language come the various types of speaker: those who’s English is a mother tongue, those of whom whose English is a second language, and those for whom it is a foreign language. This analysis attempts to establish whether the use of English in non – native speaking countries have adverse or positive effects.

Only a few centuries ago did English exist as a form of dialects spoken by the lower middle classes in the province of Britain. Dominated by the prestige languages of Latin and French, the language of the pre-English period (-c AD 450) was Celtic, a language spoken by those living in Britain and surrounding areas. When the Romans first invaded Britain, a number of Celtic – speaking peoples inhabited Britain, even though Latin was the official language of the province.

According to the source Women in Roman Britain, ‘By the end of the first century AD the increasingly cosmopolitan flavour of the urban population will have resulted in many languages being heard in Britain with the consequence that a knowledge of Latin would have been essential for efficient communication between people who could have originated as far afield as Scotland, Africa or Turkey’ (Allason-Jones, 1989, p174). Residents who would have migrated from such countries inevitably needed a mutual form of communication in order to keep activities such as trade going.

During the pre-English period, the vast number of occurring mixed and interracial marriages would have resulted in the inevitable introduction of foreign languages into Britain. This thus establishes Britain as a multilingual community, having contact with other parts of the world. Since Latin, a language which had been a lingua franca in Britain had by this time, been challenged by the increasing number of inhabitants speaking English, it had to leave in order to find a new position, since people were still using it but were also using Celtic.

At this time, Latin, which wasn’t an official language of Britain had now been established as a language of communication by those residing in England and those migrating to England, and was now seen as a useful source of promoting and providing the existence of beneficial activities such as administration and trade. The use of Latin had by then been the dominant language of government and administration. How the use of such a universal and phenomenal language such as English had been established can only be discovered if its origins are traced.

The earliest piece of writing in English is said to be a carving found in Norwich dating from AD 400. This runic script is said to resemble the Latin or Greek alphabet, and was used in various Germanic languages, bought to England by those residing in mainland Europe. *The influence of Latin on the English Language is very high, even though Latin is a somewhat ‘archaic’ language, only now taught in prestige schools such as Eton College.

1066 was a year of deterioration not just in terms of radical political changes but in major linguistics. Often viewed as ‘a milestone on the road to civilization’, it also played a major part in the development of Modern English. During this precarious time when the entire Normandy dynasty had been gained by the King of France, regular contacts with the French court bought with it colossal changes in the main method of communication.

This conflict ‘brought about a period of close contact and often bitter rivalry’ between the English and the French which in some respects has lasted into the present century. Ideas about ‘Englishness’ often reflect whatever is considered to be ‘not French’ (p121). The consequence of this invasion has caused the English Language to contain many derivations of French, referred to as the language of ‘honour’, ‘chivalry’ and ‘justice’. During the period of the French invasion many English residents knew very little, if not, any of the English language.

Other linguistic changes which inevitably rose as a result of the Norman Conquest concerned the language of Law. This would have been written in Britain’s prestigious language, Latin, which was at the time highly associated with the aristocracy. This resulted in English being a minority written language. Put in simpler terms, the Norman Conquest occurred at the detriment of the English Language used in Britain, which was almost reduced to a minor language or even a mere dialect spoken within England.

Other effects of the Norman Conquest on the English Language included the vocabulary. Many French words were adopted into the English Language which explains the vast majority French lexicon in the English vocabulary we are used to today. Baldwin, who in his speech thinly veils his distaste for the French language adopted into English quoted (that the) ‘salvation’ for Britain (and indeed for the whole world) lay not in French-derived polysyllables such as proletariat but in monosyllables such as ‘faith’. ‘Hope’ ‘love’ and ‘work’ (Crowley, 1989 p255).

Here, he not only (possibly subconsciously) describes English as being a somewhat simple and basic language, but he compares it to French, a language which exhibits power and prestige. In line with the effects of French lexicon within the English language, century’s later English provinces, namely Canada now have both English and French as an official language. The French language, in Quebec especially remains under threat, even though it is used to teach in schools its significance is deteriorating and the constant debate whether to use it in schools or whether English taught in schools can have detrimental effects; if students who are taught both languages becomes proficient in only one of the official languages, the quality of their written or spoken English or French is likely to decline.

In France however, since English has no official status, it is exempt from the pressures Canada faces to exert the significance of learning both languages in schools. As French is taught as a foreign language in England, English is likewise taught as a foreign language in French schools, in order that no-one lacks the knowledge of a language vital for international communication, and therefore increase the number of people proficient in either official language.

An example of the use of English in countries where English is not a native language being a beneficial, almost crucial activity lies within the necessities of air traffic control. Granted, there are many standard English’s, each one being exclusive to its respective country, however if one peculiar, even creolized version remains misunderstood in such a situation, the results could be dire. In such circumstances, even though the existence of many standardized English’s could create confusion, a vast knowledge of a universal Standard English is crucial.

The development of English pidgins and creoles in effect also gives way to confusion as it clouds out the need for a ‘politically correct’ language. The slave trade had an inevitably immense effect on the development of English, as it paved the way for the use of vernaculars such as Black English and black pidgins and creoles. These dialects, in effect are not understood by many and if such a language is seeped into schools it could become deeply ingrained within a students’ vocabulary, thus hindering a students’ ability to speak, and even understand politically correct English.

It is thus necessary to question the term ‘politically correct’ language? Double negatives to the native speaker of English, is seen almost as a taboo in English writing. Its use not only portrays the writer or speaker as uneducated, but the use of such insolent English by a native speaker would regard such a person as illiterate. Other definitions of political correctness refer to the use of non – sexist or racist language, language used in such a way which is not seen to favour a certain age group, class distinction or creed.

According to the English born sociolinguist Anthea Fraser Gupta, political correctness as exemplified by ‘the deliberate use of non-sexist language’ is quite unusual. In fact, it is so rare that I and other colleagues have had the experience of having our non – sexist original changed into a sexist printed version by editors.’ (Gupta, 1994, p2). For example, if an adult male calls another adult male ‘boy’ because he is in a position of authority, this could be seen as highly demeaning, as this perfectly reflects the days of the slave trade when taskmasters referred to their slaves as ‘boy’, alongside other demeaning terms such as ‘dog’ and ‘nigger’.

When I asked a university student if being called ‘boy’ by one who came from a country where such terms were unheard of, his reaction was one of dismay, not to mention being highly insulted. Such deviations from social norms could prove to cause conflict, as this type of English usage in countries such as Angola, France and similar non ENL lands may prove to be a difficulty.

In countries such as China where English has no official status, there has been an increased amount of interest in the English Language. ‘In 1959, everyone was carrying a book of the thoughts of Chairman Mao; today, everyone is carrying a book of ‘elementary English’ (p31) This unprecedented growth in the interest of the English language in a country titled the undisputed home of technology, science and rapid invention makes it a harmful activity in terms of linguistics but a beneficial one in terms of world trade, production and communication.

An influx Chinese people wanting to learn English poses the question: How good is the quality of English used in such non ENL countries? In the Chinese product catalogue IBI Household, the descriptions used to describe its respective goods in small captions are written in English which is considered to be very poor to ENL speakers; for example, a product called Space Creator, an organizer used to store household goods is said to be ”The plastic organizer will help you to storage wisely”, instead of ‘This plastic organizer will help you to store your items wisely; Another example being a Car Air Ozonizer which ‘Remove smoke, eliminate air particulate from this compact air ozonizer.

These items are described in a childlike manner, not to mention that they hardly make sense. As a result, if such habits become ingrained in an English learner’s vocabulary, they may become incomprehensible to someone whose first language is English but more importantly, it may become very difficult to root these habits out. This is thus an example of how the use of the English in non ENL countries can be seen as a harmful activity its only reason for its use is likely to be that of English is seen as fashionable.

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Literature Review

The aim of this literature review is to assess current research on the impact of salinity of pore water on the engineering properties of the soil, including shear strength and classification of the soil, ideally using Atterburg limits. The review focuses on the study of different soils and the impact of salinity on the engineering properties of the soil, addressing the types of experiments, the procedures in setting up the samples and the tests conducted as this will provide background information for the tests conducted in this dissertation. The literature review also examines the results of these tests as this will be useful for comparison of data during the analysis stage of this dissertation.

Engineering Properties of Soil

According to Ajam et al. (2015, p.350) the engineering characteristics of fine-grained soils, particularly clayey soils are influenced by a range of factors including density, porosity, and structure, as well as the history of tension and granulation, type of clayey minerals and plastic property. The engineering characteristics are also influenced by the type of minerals and the volume of these minerals in the pore water. This suggests that any change in these characteristics will lead to a corresponding change in the physical and mechanical characteristics of the soil. Engineering properties such as density, shear strength and the plasticity of soil are important as these properties affect the structural performance of the soil particularly under foundations and in other civil engineering applications. In basic engineering theory on soil mechanics, it is commonly assumed that the pore water and solid particles are chemically inert, in other words there is no chemical interaction between the different phases. However, Ajam et al. (2015, p.350) point out that the surface of clayey mineral particles is negatively charged which means that electrochemical forces exist between the solid, liquid and dissolved phases which influences the mechanical behaviour of clayey soil. In addition, it is known that the quantity and nature of electro-chemical forces depends on the type of anion and cation in exchange phase and the impact of this interaction on the cation exchange capacity. Ajalloeian et al. (2013, p.1419) make the point that the properties of water used in construction activities such as mixing concrete is governed by regulations and international standards, however there are fewer standards, governing the properties of water used in works associated with soil for example in the construction of earthen dams. Yet there is evidence to suggest that some minerals such as salt can affect the mechanical properties of soil. Bouksila et al. (2008, p. 254) suggest that the impact of the saline on the soil is dependent on the solubility of the soil. Suganya and Sivapullaiah (2015, p.913) argue that the behaviour of the soil is dependent on the microstructure which in turn can be influenced by the water content and the chemical content of that water. Lolaev et al. (1997, p.215) suggests that the temperature of the soil and the chemical content of the salt can influence the bonds between particles within the micro-structure which in turn affects the engineering properties of the soil. Chaney and Demars (1985, p.219) point out that salt in pore can affect soil behaviour particularly in leaching which in a slope can lead to a landslide.

Salinity and Microstructure

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the change in shear strength in the sample soil by considering the effect of values 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 100% of pore water salinity and it is therefore prudent to examine similar studies, to determine the types of tests conducted and the results of those tests as this can then be used in assessing the outcomes of the dissertation research. According to Santamarina (2003, p.25) soils are particulate materials which means that the behaviour of soils is determined by the forces particles experience, including forces due to boundary loads which are transmitted through the skeleton of the soil and particle-level forces such as gravitational and buoyant forces as well as hydrodynamic forces. Soil particles are also influenced by contact level forces such as capillary, electrical and cementation reactive forces. It is the balance between these forces that determine soil behaviour and very often laboratory testing can be used to understand and predict this behaviour. Sassa et al. (2007, p.143) makes the point, for example that the shear strength of mudstone is dependent on the chemistry of the mineral and their reaction with saline. It is clear therefore that there is a link between saline pore water and the engineering performance of soils, however it can be difficult to predict and simulate this behaviour.

Tiwari et al. (2005, p.1445) suggest that an inward diffusion of the salt into clay can lead to an increase in the mean aggregate radius, which changes the structural component of the soil into what can be described as “irregular aggregation”. In soils that have more than 10% clay content the use of a saline pore water fluid can affect the physicochemical structure of the soil, affecting changes strength and compressibility of the material. For example, Kenney (1967, 1977) cited by Tiwari et al. (2005, p.1445) showed that increasing the NaCl concentration in pore fluid could lead to an increase of up to 200% in residual shear strength. Gratchev and Sassa (2013)

One of the difficulties with understanding the impact of salt on soil behaviour is that according to Chaney and Demars (1985, p.219) it is difficult to match the salinity in the field with laboratory testing because of the interstitial nature of pore-water salinity.

Research on Saline Pore Fluid and Soil

According to a study conducted by Nagase et al. (2006, p.209) the concentration of salt (NaCl) in the pore fluid affects the mechanical properties of soil as evidenced by the fact that during a recent earthquake in Japan, the saline concentration of the soil decreased due to leaching and there was a corresponding decrease in the cyclic strength of soil. Messad and Moussai (2016, p.301) studied the impact of saline on sabkha soils which are typically low strength and high compressible materials in which it is difficult to design and construct foundations. In this study the effect of salts on water content and Atterberg limits of the sabkha soil was conducted with tests using distilled water and natural sabkha brine along with saline solutions with different salt concentrations. The results revealed that the liquid and plastic limits decrease with pore fluid salinity when using conventional water content. However, it was also noted that liquid limit and plastic limit increase when the fluid content method is used.

van Paassen and Gareau (2004, p.327) also studied the effect of pore water salinity on shear strength and compressibility of remoulded clay. The study sought to compare the results with marine clay from the Caspian Sea which has a known lower shear strength than anticipated as well as a higher moisture content. This clay also has lower pre-consolidation pressures than the calculated in-situ effective stress which indicated under-consolidation. The results of the study revealed that increasing pore water salinity, led to a decrease in the moisture content of normally consolidated clays and the remoulded shear strength corresponded to these moisture content changes. The compressive behaviour of the clay is explained using the modified effective stress concept which takes account of the pore pressure and effective pressure as well as the electrochemical repulsive and attractive forces between the clay particles. van Paassen and Gareau (2004, p.327) found that the laboratory tests on the remoulded clays revealed the opposite results to those obtained by taking the measurements in the natural soils, which is attributed to the effects of soil structure and preconsolidation pressure. In addition, the results showed that the measured pre-consolidation pressure depends largely on the salinity of the permeating fluid and it was concluded that it is possible to approximate pre-consolidation pressure close to the known geological stress in marine clays with high pore fluid salinity, using a brine solution that closely resembles the pore fluid chemistry.

Yan and Chang (2015, p.153) studied the effects of pore fluid salinity on the shear strength and earth pressure coefficient at rest (K0) of three fine-grained soils including kaolin, bentonite and a marine clay. The K0 coefficient and the critical state friction angle (I•’) were determined using triaxial stress path testing on remoulded normally consolidated samples. The Atterberg limit test and sedimentation test revealed that the inter-particle force and soil structure of bentonite were affected by the salinity, whereas the other materials were insensitive to the pore fluid salinity, as shown in Figures 1 to 3. In this study Yan and Chang (2015, p.154) estimated the value of K0 using empirical formulas such as Jaky’s formula and Atterberg limits. It was found that Jaky’s formula satisfactorily predicted K0 for kaolin in all conditions with consistent underestimates for marine clay. In contrast prediction using the Atterberg limits failed in all cases, especially for the particularly for bentonite at low salinity.

Figure 1 Triaxial stress path of testing bentonite with different salt contents (Yan and Chang 2015, p. 156, Figure 4)

Figure 2 Triaxial stress path of testing of kaolin with different salt contents (Yan and Chang 2015, p. 156, Figure 3)

Figure 3 Triaxial stress path of testing of marine clay with different salt contents (Yan and Chang 2015, p. 156, Figure 5)

The laboratory tests found that the pore fluid salinity has little impact on the value of K0 and I•’ in the kaolin samples and the marine clay. However, it was also found that an increase in pore fluid salinity has a corresponding significant increase in I•’ for the bentonite and a decrease in the K0. These findings were attributed to the microstructure of the minerals in the materials (Yan and Chang 2015, p.157).

Zhang et al. (2013, p. 69) conducted tests on undrained shear behaviour of loess that was saturated with different concentrations of sodium chloride solution. The aim of the tests was to investigate the effects of NaCl concentration in pore water and desalinisation on the shear behaviour of the samples in undrained conditions. The samples of loess were taken from the ground surface in China and were saturated by de-aired, distilled water with different concentrations of NaCl. Each sample was then subjected to shear in undrained conditions. The samples were then remoulded and re-set into a shear box and re-saturated by passing through de-aired, distilled water and essentially desalinised, and subjected to shear testing, again in undrained conditions. The results of both sets of tests were compared and it was found that variation of NaCl concentration in the pore water affects the shear behaviour of saturated loess, with increases in peak shear strength and steady-state strength corresponding to increases in NaCl concentration until a peak value after which shear decreases with increases in NaCl concentration. It was also noted that the effects were reversible as the peak shear strength and steady-state strength of the desalinised samples recovered to those found in the original sample.

Ajalloeian et al. (2013, p.1422) conducted a study to assess the impact of salt water on the behavioural parameters of fine-grained soil. The tests started by determining the basic characteristics of the soil and water samples, followed by laboratory tests including Atterberg limits, standard compaction and consolidation tests as well as direct shear testing and dispersion tests including the pinhole test and chemical method. The soil sample was graded in compliance with ASTM D 4318 on soil passing no. 100 sieve, consisting of 37% gravel and sand, 35% silt and 28% clay. An XRD analysis of the material revealed that the fine grains of soil consist mainly of quartz, calcite and dolomite with some gypsum and 5% of the clay mineral montmorillonite.

The samples of this fine soil were subjected to three different type of water with varying salt content, namely distilled water, half saline and fully saline water. Atterberg Limits. The tests were performed according to ASTM D 4318 on soil passing no. 100 sieve. For half saline and saline water, this test was performed at 0, 24 and 48 hours after soil and water exposure. The compaction test was used to impact of the type of water on optimum moisture content and maximum dry density. The test was carried out according to ASTM D698-70 on soil passing no. 5 sieve with the saline test carried out at 24 hours and 48 hours after soil and water exposure. consolidation test was performed according to ASTM D2435 on soil passing no. 60 sieve and the process involved compacting a sample at optimum moisture content in a 20mm thick consolidation ring with a 70 mm diameter. The mould was left under loading equipment and a load of 1 kPa was applied on it and the sample was immersed for 24 hours. Then the sample was loaded with the stresses of 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2 and 2.5 kg/cm2. In the direct shear test, performed according to ASTM D3080 on soil passing no. 5 sieve the soil was compacted at optimum water content in 10 x 10mm mould apparatus at stresses of 0.5, 1 and 2 kg/cm2 and shearing velocity was 0.35 mm/min. “Before shearing at each stress, the sample was immersed and consolidated during 24 hours under the same stress” (Ajalloeian et al. 2013, p.1421).

According to Ajalloeian et al. (2013, p.1424), the results showed that plastic limits with distilled, half saline and saline water are 21.31, 20.43 and 20.12 respectively. Salinity has little effect on the plastic limit however this depends on the moisture content of the soil which could affect the interaction between soil and solute in water. But in liquid limit, in which soil moisture is higher, the effect of salinity will be more. The liquid limit has decreased 5 and 17 percent with half saline and saline water respectively. Mahasneh (2004) cited by Ajalloeian et al. (2013, p.1425) attributed the decrease in liquid limit and plastic index by using saline water of Dead Sea to substitution of water molecules by salts that led to the decrease of the double layer thickness and water content and subsequently it stiffened the soil. Ajalloeian et al. (2013, p.1424) also cites Mansour et al, (2008) who indicate that the presence of high valence exchangeable cations in Dead Sea brine decrease the repulsive forces in the soil microstructure thus influencing soil behaviour. This means that the Vander Waals attractive forces are dominant, which increases the capillary stress between particles boundaries. Ultimately this reduces the available surface for interaction with water as shown in the Atterberg limits. In the present study, the lower part of changes of Atterberg limits are attributed to decrease in the double layer thickness and most of the changes can be attributed to sediment salt in the soil pores, because the XRD analysis showed montmorillonit content in the soil was approximately 5%. On the other hand, salt crystals were seen in the soil after drying it. The plastic index also decreased along with the liquid limit because of the increase in salinity of the pore water fluid.

The results showed that the Atterberg limits, compression index and swelling index as well as the coefficient of volume compressibility (mv) and coefficient of compressibility (av) decreased as water salinity increased. In addition, it was clear that the coefficient of consolidation and shear strength parameters increased with increase water salinity. These impacts were attributed to the increasing attractive force between soil particles, which establishes a bond between them, forming salt crystals in pores soil and effectively acting as a cement. Despite the fact that the concentration of saline water is 50 times more than that of half saline water, the difference between soil properties is not noticeable and it appears that the variations on the soil properties decreases as water salinity increases. However, the study also found that excessive concentration of water tends to cause cations to combine with anions to form salts before they can influence the clay minerals. This means that an increase in concentration of water does not have significant impact on the behaviour of the soil. The consolidation tests showed that soil behaviour with all three types of water is similar at high pressure, attributed to the fact that inter-particles bonds are broken at high pressures.

In another study, Otoko (2014, pp.9-10) investigated the impact of saline water from the Atlantic shore on three type of soil including a clay, clayey sand and base course material. Prior to testing 10kg of each of these soil types were dried at 100oC, sieved to establish grading in accordance with ASTM D421 and ASTM D422, as shown in Figure 4 and stored at room temperature.

Figure 4 Particle Size Distribution of clay, clayey sand and base course samples (Otoko 2014, p.10, Figure 2)

An analysis of the physical properties of the above soils indicate that the clay sample has the highest specific gravity of 2.75, with the base course sample having the lowest value of 2.50. The moisture content was also measured and ranged from 15% to 29% for the clay soil, 13% to 15% for the clayey sand sample and 11% to 14% for base course (Otoko 2014, p. 14).

A series of six samples were prepared using 3kg of each of the materials; one mixed with tap water and the other with saline water from the Atlantic Ocean salty for each type of soil. Compaction tests were then carried out to establish optimum moisture content and dry unit weight in accordance with ASTM D698 – 78, ASTM and AASHTO T180 – 90, with results shown in Figures 5 to 7.

Figure 5 Compaction Curves for Clay soil using tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 204, p. 11, Figure 3)

Figure 6 Compaction Curves for Clay sand using tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 204, p. 11, Figure 4)

Figure 7 Compaction Curves for Base course sample using tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 2014, p. 12, Figure 5)

These figures indicate that the maximum dry unit weights of the clay were 20.9, with the clayey sand and the base course material having dry unit weights of 22.5 and 19.5kN/m3 respectively when mixed with tap water. The maximum dry unit weight for the clay decreased from 20.9kN/m3 to 17.5kN/m3 when the material was mixed with saline water. However, it was noted that there was an increase in the maximum dry unit weight for both clayey sand and base course from 19.5kN/m3 to 20.5kN/m3 and from 22.5kN/m3 to 23.2kN/m3 respectively. This is attributed to changes in the intermolecular structure, where in the clay sample the saline induced repulsive force between the salt molecules and the clay intermolecular structure, which increased the intermolecular distances and void ratios in the sample whereas the increase in the dry unit weight of the base course is attributed to a chemical reaction between the salt molecules and soil particles, thus hardening the material and increasing the dry unit weight (Otoko 2014, p.14).

A further 100g of the materials were mixed with tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water for the Atterberg’s Limits test. Six paste specimens were prepared to determine the Atterberg limit of the soils. The results of these tests showed that each of the soils tended to stiffen with decreased Atterberg limits for the samples with salt water as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Effect of Saline water on Atterberg limits and compactions (Otoko 204, p. 13, Table 1)

The samples were also subjected to unconfined compression testing that had been compacted to optimum water content and placed in a cylindrical shaped mould measuring 112.5mm height and 50.0mm diameter as specified in ASTMD 2166 – 85. The results of these tests are shown in Figures 8 to 10 (Otoko 2014, p.11).

Figure 8 Stress strain relationship for Clay soil with tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 2014, p.13, Figure 6)

Figure 9 Stress strain relationship for Clay sand sample with tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 2014, p.13, Figure 7)

Figure 10 Stress strain relationship for Base course with tap water and Atlantic Ocean saline water (Otoko 2014, p.13, Figure 6)

In the above figures, the relationship between the unconfined shear strength and strain from three soil types using tap and salty water show that the clay soil sample and the clayey sand sample have higher unconfined compressive strength for the saline state. This is attributed to the fact that the clay soil has “multi layers of gibbsite and silica sheets with hydrogen bonding linking these sheets” which become closer under axial compression, which increases resistance to compression and leads to higher shear strength (Otoko 2014, p.14). In contrast, the structure of base course contains compacted calcium oxide molecule, which as shown in Figure 10, fails “more rapidly than clay”, with the saline water enhancing the shear strength of the base course, largely because of the conversion of the calcium oxides and hydroxide into calcium chloride, which can resist higher values of shear (Otoko 2014, p.15).

A study conducted by Gratchev et al. (2007, p.349), into the cyclic behaviour of bentonite-sand mixtures that were treated with salt, found that the “cyclic shear strength at lower concentrations of salt was greater than that obtained at higher salt concentrations”. Gratchev and Sassa (2013, p.1817) studied the cyclic behaviour of soil under different physico-chemical conditions by conducting a series of undrained cyclic stress-controlled ring-shear tests on a natural soil permeated with solutions of NaCl, sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) to examine the cyclic behaviour of soil with different pore fluids. The study concluded that an increase in NaCl concentration from 1 meq/L to 11 meq/L leads to a corresponding decrease in the shear resistance of soil to cyclic loading. In addition, it was found that the soil environment affects the behaviour of the soil, for example in acidic and alkaline environments, it was found that the cyclic shear strength of soil decreases compared to specimens with distilled water. The changes in the cyclic behaviour of soil with different pore fluids are attributed to changes in the diffuse double layer of clay, whereby large concentrations of NaCl, NaOH, and H2SO4 can decrease the thickness of the diffuse double layer, thus producing soil structures that are less resistant to cyclic loading (Gratchev & Sassa 2013, p.1820).

Summary of Literature Review

The engineering characteristics of fine-grained soils, particularly clayey soils are influenced by factors such as density and porosity, structure, type of minerals and plastic properties. Any change in these characteristics will ultimately change the physical and mechanical characteristics of the soil. The addition of salt to pore water can affect the behaviour of the soil by influencing the electrochemical forces exist between the solid, liquid and dissolved phases. It is acknowledged that it is possible to conduct laboratory tests to understand the impact of saline pore water fluid on soil behaviour although it is difficult to mirror actual site conditions. A number of different research experiments were investigated, which revealed that:

the concentration of salt (NaCl) in the pore fluid affects the mechanical properties of soil.
the impact depends on the type of soil; for example, the impact of saline pore water on low strength, highly compressible soils, such as sabkha, increases the liquid limit and plastic limit.
increasing pore water salinity in some soils can decrease in the moisture content of normally consolidated clays and the remoulded shear strength, whereas variations of salt content in materials such as loess increases the peak shear strength and steady-state strength.
in some soils, such as kaolin, the Atterberg limits and compression index, as well as the swelling index and the coefficient of volume compressibility decreased, as water salinity increased.
shear strength parameters increase with increased water salinity, attributed to the increasing attractive force between soil particles, which establishes a bond between them, forming salt crystals in pores soil and effectively acting as a cement.
in cyclic behaviour of soil under different physico-chemical conditions an increase in NaCl concentration leads to a corresponding decrease in the shear resistance of soil to cyclic loading.
the soil environment affects the behaviour of the soil, for example in acidic and alkaline environments, cyclic shear strength of soil decreases compared to specimens with distilled water.
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