Favorite Female Characters, Anybody?

It is a commonplace in literary criticism that female readers tend to identify with male characters because female characters are so unattractive as to make any identification with them impossible. Finding a female character who is not one-dimensional, pathetic, silly, weepy, boring, and/or sexless is next to impossible even for a very well-read person. Honestly, I can't think of any such female characters.

Except, of course, Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte's fiercely feminist novel has a protagonist who is complex, conflicted, and strong. She is neither a perfect little Madonna who never speaks above a whisper and sacrifices herself with a beatific smile for everybody else, nor a sinner always ready to repent and debase herself in payment for her sins in the last pages of the novel. Jane Eyre feels insulted by the suggestion that her husband should keep her. She relies only on money that is her own. She doesn't marry her love interest until his is completely broken down and dependent on her for even the most basic things.

So this is pretty much the only attractive female character I can think of at this moment. Am I forgetting anybody? Any suggestions?

Chicano Literature

I have recently had an argument with some colleagues about whether the field of Chicano Literature* is still relevant. I think I might have shocked my colleagues a bit by declaring that this field is dead and is becoming more and more so by the second. For a while, positions in Chicano Literature were cropping up at many departments that wanted to see themselves as cool, hip, and in touch. Lately, however, the academic interest in this field has started to wane. Today, opening a position in Chicano Studies defines a department as backwards and obsolete.

In my opinion, the very emergence of such positions is one of the instances of political correctness going in a very wrong direction. On the one hand, opening a position or two in Chicano Literature seems to say that the literary production of Mexican-Americans is important and is worthy of being studied. On the other hand, this approach highlights the otherness of Mexican-American writers. If they write in English, why can't we accept these writers as an important part of English-speaking literature? If they write in Spanish, why can't we teach them as part of Spanish-language literary production?

Another important question to ask here is whether we should create separate areas of knowledge for every immigrant group irrespective of the language they use to write. How is it a productive thing to create these small identity groups breaking up literature into collectives based on nothing other than the author's ethnic origins?

Some academics love looking for some really tiny niches that they can claim as their own very special field of expertise. They forget, however, that this serves to marginalize a certain group and turn it into a perennial Other. I cannot wait for every single department to abandon the concentration on Chicano Studies and turn to Spanish or English literature instead, including everybody who writes in this language without any racial and ethnic reservations.

*For those who are unfamiliar with the term, here is a Wikipedia article on Chicano Literature.

Douthat Comes up with Something Half Decent

I'm very glad that I didn't give up on Ross Douthat after his series of silly and chauvinistic articles. Because today he finally came up with a piece that isn't half bad (If it came from anybody else, I would say the article is pretty much intellectually impotent. Coming from Douthat, however, it's almost a revelation). In his NYTimes article "The Way We Love Now," Douthat talks about how romantic and sexual experiences vary across class lines.

Clyde Griffiths, the protagonist of Theodore Dreiser's amazing novel An American Tragedy, realizes that what distinguishes him from the class of rich and powerful men he desperately wants to join is their seeming indifference to sex. In order to succeed in America, you have to tame your sex drive to the point where it will only exist within the strict patriarchal norms of a Puritanical society. Clyde doesn't manage to do that and sees his dreams of social ascension crumble.

Almost 90 years later, Ross Douthat arrives at the same idea: "The difficult scramble up the meritocratic ladder tends to discourage wild passions and death-defying flings. For bright young overachievers, there’s often a definite tameness to the way that collegiate “safe sex” segues into the upwardly-mobile security of “companionate marriages” — or, if you’re feeling more cynical, “consumption partnerships.” This tameness has beneficial social consequences." Of course, if Douthat had read Dreiser in college, he wouldn't have to struggle so much to come up with this analysis. At this point, however, I'll take whatever I can get.

Of course, Douthat's solution is, as usual, shocking in its blatant contempt towards the lowly proles. The poor should give up on sexual excesses, which in turn should be reserved for the Douthats of the world: "Better, perhaps, if this dynamic were reversed. Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess. (Though such excess is more appropriate in the young, it should be emphasized, than in middle-aged essayists and parents.) But most Americans, particularly those of modest means, would benefit from greater caution and stability in their romantic entanglements."In spite of the parenthetical disclaimer, Douthat's entire piece is obviously motivated with envy towards those who are either too high up or too low down on the social scale to care about the repercussions of their "romantic excess." It's great to see, however, that - whatever the cause - Douthat finally manages to arrive at a thought that can be turned into something productive.

The Epistolary Genre and Television

I am rereading Choderlos de Laclos' beautiful epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons. I'm sure evrybody has seen the film version with the amazing John Malkovich and the profoundly gifted Glenn Close. I watch the movie every few years just to remind myself that there are a couple of American actors who actually know how to act.

As good as the film version is, the novel is, of course, unmeasurably better. It's the XVIIIth century and words matter a lot. Beauty of expression which helps to reveal an incredible depth of meaning is valued above anything else.

I appreciate this novel not only because I'm fascinated with the Enlightenment, but also (paradoxically, it might seem at a first glance) because I really like television. In my opinion, the epistolary genre, so popular in the XVIIIth century, is more of a precursor for the television than any other artistic form.

One of the most engaging things about the epistolary novel is its skill in manipulating different stories at the same time. The epistolary creates suspense by abandoning one story and switching to another when a letter from one of the characters is followed by a letter from somebody else narrating a different tale. In a similar way, a television show abandons a storyline for a while by switching to a different scene.

A XVIIIth century novel always has a moral lesson, simply because it has no choice. So does a TV show. It is very easy, however, to find textual evidence in both that subverts the official morality. It is impossible to resist Madame de Merteuil's charm. Whatever might be said of her at the end of the novel, her letters make her undisputably the most engaging character of the book. A similar thing happens with TV shows. In spite of all efforts on the part off the creators of the show, the protagonist of 24 ends up looking like a sociopathic monster.

A School without a Voice

The university where I spoke at a conference over the weekend recently closed down its departments of foreign languages and literatures. It had never occurred to me that a school could do that and still call itself a "university" (instead of a polytechnic or an institute, for example).

It's shocking to imagine that there would be an actual university (located in the capital of Canada, to make things even more bizarre) that would eliminate any possibility that it students might have to familiarize themselves with other cultures. Is this the future of higher education? Has the goal of universities now become to create complacent little robots who don't think, don't speak, don't wander or wonder but rather just produce and consume ad infinitum?

The war against the humanities started as soon as Bush ascended to power. At Yale, Bush's crony President Levin is in the final stages of implementing the program of changes that will effectively destroy the humanities at that school. I know what happens there from personal experience but I can only assume that the same changes are being introduced in other places. Unlike Carleton, Yale will not go as far as eliminating its language departments altogether (at least for now). It is, however, doing everything it can to make them as poorly funded, irrelevant, and powerless as possible.

I understand how certain forces could see what I'm teaching my students as dangerous. The main thing I'm teaching them is not to speak Spanish or distinguish between realism and naturalism. In my courses, students learn to read critically, think for themselves, formulate their own opinions, argue, and express themselves orally and in writing. Carleton University has decided it doesn't need any of this. Who will be next?