The Problem of the Closed Narrative or The Problem of Theory

On the surface, identity politics shouldn't be evil. Although I'm not a fan of labels, hey, language is language. It has to exist for people to communicate. Identifying a group is part of that process. (Historically speaking, "stranger" shows up in nearly every language early on in that language's development.)

Unfortunately, inevitably, identity labels get linked to a "closed" narrative, a story that is self-explanatory and set in stone.

An "open" narrative in which people may change based on new information, new goals--where to live, whom to marry, what to work at, what to eat, how to behave--entails two things: (1) risk; (2) responsibility.

That is, a person in an open story will say, Maybe I made the wrong choices. But I made them, and I can't go back, so I'll live with them. But what does that mean for the next choice? After all, I'll have to answer for it.

The popular version of CRT--the secular version of "the Spirit made me do it" (John McWhorter is right about the religious conflation)--is the exact opposite. The underlying ideology propounds that a theory or label supplies all the explanation a person should need or want; recognizing the validity of that explanation will, like recognizing the Spirit, supply all the required (entirely abstracted) sense of self and responsibility. 

Unfortunately, as Jonathan Edwards and other New Calvinists discovered, all the revivals in the world don't necessary lead to anything but...another bunch of revivals. The experience or "performance" becomes its own pursuit.

That is, adopting the group's identity or explanation doesn't automatically entail self-understanding or critical thinking or personal change or long-term change. 

In Chapter 17, Terry is on trial for his attempted assault on Alima. In my version, of course, the assault is a contrived event between Terry and Alima. However, Terry objectively accepts that by all appearances, he did break the law. 

During the trial, Terry suggests a reason why people so readily adopt theory--ready-made identities--when life--relationships, communication--gets messy. 

I [Terry] said [to the Councillors], “I assumed agreement existed.”

Rather to my surprise, many of the Councillors nodded. Apparently the “you should ask at every stage of the seduction” approach hadn’t arrived in Troas.

Of course, the women of Troas are realists. People make assumptions about others’ needs. That’s life. Since we are not (yet) tools of A.I., we don't spend every minute of every day filling out questionnaires: check Box A or Box B.

No one wants that form of communication anyway. We want to be instantly understood—the centers of others’ universes—which wish inspires its own problems. Because--also reality--since we don’t adopt others' versions of our best selves, why would they agree to ours?

I waited resignedly for the Councillors to suggest the contemporary alternative. Since most people don’t halt their behavior to ask permission—and only compulsives and high school bullies justify continual “I saw you do that!” policing—the compromise is usually, “But the proper path should have been obvious."

Not obvious due to honor or training. Obvious because of identity. Join the group, adopt the designated label. Proper attitudes will be downloaded into your brain. All answers delivered. All stories decided upon. A closed book.

Don’t tell me modern Westerners don’t believe in fate.

Terry goes on to consider that being excused because of membership in a group sounds good but lacks the moral punch of "you messed up; you should pay." 

And Terry gets thrown out. Luckily, he wants to go. 

Chapter 17

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

Introduction: Too Much Seamlessness

Over the past few years, I have attempted several retellings of the classic Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. On the one hand, I consider the book to be one of the more interesting and substantive "modern" (1915) utopia novels. On the other hand, like with all utopia novels, it suffers from the burden of its own premise. 

The posts here address the problems of utopia. Each post is connected to one or more chapters in my tribute/critique of Herland, His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding.

First problem:

Is the only response to a utopia another utopia?

The best explanation of this problem actually comes in a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Documents in the Case. The story is told through letters, reports, newspaper articles. One of the reports, written by the murderer's flatmate, John Munting, contains this insightful passage:

 [Lathom] is a real creator--narrow, eager, headlong, and loathing introspection and compromise. He questions nothing; I question everything...I cannot settle and dismiss questions, as he does, in one burst of inspired insight or equally inspired contempt...It was my fault that I did not help Lathom more, for, just because of my uneasy sensitiveness, I understood him far better than he ever understood me. It would have suited him better if I had violently disagreed with him. But I had the fatal knack of seeing his point and cautiously advancing counter-arguments, and that satisfied neither of us.

I have encountered a similar problem when faced with "no, no, Kate, this is the way life is" seamless narratives/theories from people on both the right and the left. 

I cannot agree with them, but I also fail to argue adequately because the response, "But life is more complicated than that--if you research any given time period, you will discover that your theory loses credence and even falls to pieces, especially when you look at history through the experiences of the individuals who actually created it"...comes across as waffling. 

Granted, I am personally drawn to pundits and thinkers who allow for nuance and variety. And I like to think that those pundits and thinkers win in the long-run.

But can one really argue, in the short run, with the "life is this an unarguable seamless theory" mindset?

In my master's program, one of my fellow students used to make these types of arguments, usually by utilizing a shallow version of Marxism that seemed mostly comprised of blame and Marxist terminology. (Not that Marxism offers much--but her narrative was trite, even by Marxist standards.) 

Nowadays, the student would likely wield a trickle-down version of CRT. And, unfortunately, these days, the student might be given more credence than when I attended classes over a decade ago. When I attended classes, the proclamation, "Those workers only said those things because they were brainwashed by the authoritarian establishment" was met with a kind of awful silence. The rest of the students--most of whom were quite leftist--would then move the conversation back to more intelligent ground: let's listen to the workers rather than reducing them to a "poor" group to be pitied, labeled, and disposed of.

I could never figure out whether I should argue with the "I have life all figured out and under my thumb because I have a theory" student or not. It seemed to me that the only person who could argue with her was a right-wing pundit. The two could batter each other with conspiracy theories disconnected from individuality. Everybody in the past was... They could toss labels and derisive comments at each other. 

(I came to the above conclusion about noisy arguers in 2004--it seems a trifle prescient now!)

 

As Kristin says in Last Man Standing (after Mike and Ryan start tossing "Bills" at each other), "Everyone has their own set of facts and a cable channel to back up the opinion that he already has."

In any case, my retelling/reimagining of Herland is an attempt to add nuance and complication to a utopia. And maybe that can't be done! No reason not to try. 

Chapter 1

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Isolation

It is typical of utopia novels/tracts to start with "I met a man who told me about..." similar to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

More's Utopia, for instance, is described by a traveler, Raphael, who claims the island was already populated when a group of Romans and Egyptians arrived there in a shipwreck. The resulting perfection is a combination of those cultures. James Hilton's Shangri-la is described by one man to another man based on the first man's encounter with Conway (the Ronald Colman character in the 1937 movie). Shangri-la is in the mountains and only reached by Conway and his companions when their plane is hijacked. 

All versions of His in Herland have struggled with this problem. In one version, I created trade between Herland, an island, and the mainland over a bridge. 

In the current version, I place Herland in a far more isolated position, even more isolated than in Gilman's book. In the book, the young men hear stories about the country (about the size of Holland) from guides plus they discover woven cloth in a river. Stuff leaks out.

The problem, of course, is that in reality, people also tend to leak out. Why wouldn't Utopia's fisherman keep going? Why wouldn't Herland's citizens up and leave? George Mallory isn't the only one who wanted to climb a mountain because it was there.

In fairness, Gilman's women are infinitely practical, which is a welcome change from rampaging idealism, but human nature is not infinitely practical, male or female. Road trips and rituals like Rumspringa exist for a reason. Good grief, Gilman got a divorce and hauled herself and a child all the way across the country to California--why wouldn't her women do the same? For that matter, at age 25, I drove cross-country in a non-air-conditioned Dodge Colt (stick shift) in the summer with a cat by myself. I would never do that now! (People get more risk-adverse as they age.) 

Even during Japan's most extreme isolationist period, people still knew it was there and eventually showed up in a "here we are; what are you going to do now?" way. (And, yes, people did leave, even if they did so partly unintentionally. Courtesy of Eugene, see John Manjiro, "whose biography would barely be believable as fiction.")

In addition, one of the most fascinating revelations of archeological digs is how much people in the past got around. Goods from Asia show up in medieval England. Folks from England show up in the Mediterranean world.

Not to forget, during the nineteenth century, that time of no-holds-barred nationalism, the attempt by antiquarians to discover the "pure" past of a nation ended in failure. German fairy tales weren't German--for one, a lot of them were French. 

And so on.

Isolation is necessary to utopias. Mobile people undermine utopias since (1) restless people indicate that people care about more than "needs" (sorry, Marx); (2) if mobile people can leave, other mobile people can arrive, and there goes the perfectly structured society. 

Star Trek tackled this problem in several ways (setting aside the utopian ideals of the show itself). TOS tackled it philosophically: How can you thrive if you are too happy? TNG tackled it, to my mind, somewhat more realistically. In "Masterpiece Society," the engineers on the planet are too excited about Enterprise technology to give it up. Now we see the cost of not being part of a space-faring community! No, thanks!

Welcome to human nature. 

To avoid the plot issues created by constantly mobile people (hard to write a critique of a utopia if the upshot is, "Yeah, well, it lasted about ten minutes"), the current version of His in Herland is extremely isolated--though Terry suggests that even this state of affairs can't last. 

People are always going to come.

Chapter 2

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding 

The Problem of Bullying

Many utopias purport not to need a police or other type of civil force. Citizens are described as complying with the society's blueprint. Something as basic as More's city-dwellers NOT agreeing to move to the countryside for 2 years is never addressed (or even contemplated). Goods NOT being automatically distributed as expected is also never addressed. 

The non-compliant behaviors aren't crimes, not by any credible moral standard. Simply--human nature. Suppose a city-dweller decides to leave the countryside before the 2 years of required labor are up? Suppose a city-dweller doesn't agree to give up a garden plot after the allotted time? Or an artisan doesn't want to leave one family to live with another as expected? 

The narrator claims that there are few private disputes in Utopia, which "observation" doesn't correspond to any human society that has ever existed in the course of history. 

Granted, More's Utopia is partly a thought experiment--but one imagines that a thought experiment would include some way to enforce the expected social customs/structure. Faced with how often human beings would fall short in More's Utopia, how could it possibly be kept going as described by the narrator?

There are only two ways: totalitarianism or stigma/condemnation. 

More falls back on a combination. The ultimate punishment is in fact death--first, the malefactor (breaker of customs) is placed into slavery (from which the malefactor can be pardoned), but if the prisoner/slave continues to rebel, the slave is killed. (How slaves are monitored is bypassed: the necessary number of guards is never addressed.)

The section on Punishments and Rewards, however, focuses more on condemning bad behavior (what must not happen) than on establishing laws. The virtuous are rewarded with accolades while the threat of possible stigma lurks around every corner (social media, anyone?). Citizens, for instance, can eat at home rather than in communal cafeterias but "no one does it willingly because it is not thought proper...besides, it would be stupid." 

Guess all us homebodies will have to go live in one of the colonies (thank goodness!). 

Many utopias disguise this inherent bullying with assumptions of compliance. They then rave about harmony and beautiful vistas, rather like small-minded American idealists on a boat ride being ushered about by bored Soviet hospitality managers. Oh, my, everything looks so nice--how can Reagan be so critical of the USSR?!

In Chapter 3 of His in Herland, I have Terry make the following point: 

"To be held inside walls without consent is imprisonment, however beautiful the walls or pleasant the food." 

In Gilman's Herland, the three men are taken captive by a cohort of tough, athletic women, about forty in number. Terry is carrying a gun but shoots over the women's heads. Interestingly (and I think correctly), Gilman has Terry balk at shooting the women directly. He is a product of his nineteenth-century upper-class culture. "Women and children first" was not quite as common as popular culture likes to argue (on the Titanic, most of the crew simply wanted passengers, any passengers, to get in the lifeboats). But the concept existed. Terry, for all his faults, is a man's man. He won't shoot women. He won't shoot anyone in the back. 

I took the guns away since my Terry is somewhat more cool-headed and slightly more ruthless--and is perfectly aware that women can be soldiers.

However, I also have my Terry "pull his punches" in the confrontation with the women. The men have arrived on the island/in the country, imagining they are tourists who will be shown the nearest hostelry. The women see them as invaders and behave accordingly. Terry doesn't want to start an international incident.

Gilman gives the women a bland, remorseless demeanor, but she also tries to present them as non-violent. It isn't...force! Oh, no! It's a kind of...herding...

Gilman is a good writer--a point I will refer back to later--and I want to give her her dues. But Terry is my truthsayer and the truth is...Taking people captive is taking people captive. 

Bullying is bullying.

One of the worst aspects of modern-day bullying is when people argue that their "niceness" or "good intentions" or "high-mindedness" or "identity" or, for that matter, other people's bad behavior/thoughts somehow wipes out the fact that they are using underhanded and cruel techniques to accomplish actually nasty things: take away people's jobs, smear their reputations, steal their life's work, commit violence against them, and attempt through various venues to cow them into submission. 

It's jealousy and small-mindedness under a veneer of benevolent righteousness. 

Likewise, taking people captive--while it might be justified--doesn't transform into something else simply because it is labeled something else. Violent or not, justified or not, the women ignore the men's human rights and put them in the equivalent of prison. 

In Herland, Van, the social scientist, tries to to explain everything (away); Jeff, the chivalrous, well, boob, thinks the women are pure and noble simply for being women. Both try to excuse the women's behavior by labeling it something else. Only Terry sees it for what it is--and he respects it. 

Elizabeth Bathory

To her credit, while keeping Terry somewhat more obnoxious than even I can stomach (but appropriate to his time frame), Gilman allows that Jeff, at least, is off-base. 

As my Terry states in the next chapter:

"Hopefully, the women’s agenda wouldn’t entail screwing us before chopping off our entrails or sending us on suicidal missions against a prowling enemy or playing games with our disemboweled guts or mounting our decapitated heads on spikes." 

My Terry knows more history that Gilman's Terry. Everybody has the capacity to be nasty. Someone doesn't instantly stop being a bully because that someone is female or the upholder of a utopia.   

Chapter 3

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Sameness, Part I: Hair

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a skilled writer. 

Her six protagonists in Herland, if one includes Terry, have distinct and memorable personalities. She achieves this feat easily early on and never wavers:

Van is reflective, diffident, romantic, and observant. He is basically Henry from Northanger Abbey. 

Jeff is chivalrous and mild-mannered. He is more intensely romantic than Van since what he perceives as romance is a narrative in his head and based on almost entirely erroneous assumptions. But he never challenges his assumptions, so hey, he is happy!

Terry is brash, chauvinistic, and domineering. 

Ellador is curious, intellectual, and direct. She and Van become the perfect yuppie couple who will tour the world and write books about it. They will have, in all fairness, a decent marriage. 

Celis in the book is sweet and fragile. I, however, give her a core of ruthlessness. Celis gets what Celis wants. She wants Jeff because she can do whatever she wants with him. That is, my Celis is more Bianca than Katerina from Taming of the Shrew. Butter-won't-melt-in-her-mouth yet her suitors feel the whip hand nonetheless.

Not Gilman's characterization but my characterization was surprisingly easy to impose.

Alima is the fiery, rebel type. I took tremendous liberties with Alima, of course. In the book, Alima and Terry are constantly at odds but both seem to enjoy it (until the end). Think Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. 

Good characterizations and frankly more definitive than one usually finds in utopia novels. 

Here's where things get odd:

In Gilman's Herland, all the women have short hair. 

Gilman is making a somewhat caustic point. In her social class (upper-class Americans, culturally, at least--not quite at the Vanderbilt level but in that ballpark), a woman's hair was her "crowning glory." Gilman was unimpressed. Why should women have to put up with heavy, smothering hair that takes time to wash and comb and style when male lions and horses also have "crowning glories"?

I think Gilman has a point. 

Except all her women have the same hair style. 

As Rodney Stark points out about religion and Yasmine Mohammad also about religion: Remove the social/top-down requirement and people will begin to worship/wear whatever they darn-well please. 

And yet every utopia (left or right, religious or political) falls to pieces around this idea. Sameness becomes equated with comfort and security. 

In fairness, there is some truth to the idea. In cultures where cultural assumptions are grassroots-givens (rather than imposed givens), the same style of dress and hair and speech can create a feeling of belonging. High school cliques exist for a reason.

Gilman is not a fan of cliques and argues for a degree of freedom unique to her utopia. 

Yet her young women don't experiment with their hair? 

Between age 14 to 25, I bleached my hair, dyed it red, dyed it blue, dyed it black, dyed it pink. I grew it long (to my shoulders, which is long for me), cut it short, and shaved it off. I got perms. I tried out wigs. If I'd had longer hair, I would have braided it. To my everlasting gratitude, my mother was more interested than appalled by my experiments during the teen portion of those years. I honestly wasn't rebelling. I was curious. 

I simply don't buy the idea that the young women in Herland--if they are given as much latitude as the text argues--wouldn't do the same. 

For Terry, the lack of differing hairstyles indicates that the country is less free than his instructors argue. Terry is not necessarily right, but the cultural background that would make sartorial agreement a "given" is something Gilman wants to refute and assume at the same time. 

Utopias are always intensely personal. They reflect the author, not the differing realities of all the people who are unlike the author.

Chapter 4

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding 

The Problem of Sameness, Part II, Culture

The problem of sameness occurs in other utopias. Thomas More's Utopia promotes cities that are all "exactly alike" in layout. Plato likewise argues that the elite members of his Republic will share "common houses and meet at common meals." (Gilman was not a fan of communal living and allows for more "me" time and space in her utopia.)

The similarity in architecture and habits extends to an acceptance of established norms (ironically, since utopias are often formed in protest of standing norms). James Hilton's Shangri-la, for instance, though somewhat more hands-off than Plato and More's utopias, is based around the entirely unbelievable assumption that two people in a dispute--over a woman, for instance--will settle it peacefully because one person will let the matter go out of sheer "que sera sera" whateverness (as if an entire culture was run by Bingleys rather than Darcys). 

Hilton has his main character, Conway (who is something of a que sera sera guy himself) question the ability to get people to let things go. As with More and Plato, stigma (or "shame") is the operating factor, the inculcation that certain things are simply "not done." 

Gilman plays with the idea of accepted norms but is less willing to explain precisely where so much harmony starts from. She promotes individuality and an unnerving degree of cultural sameness at the same time. That is, she wants the easygoing "that's just the way things are" attitude of Shangri-la (More and Plato are more willing to punish people). Unlike Hilton, however, she doesn't have an entire tradition of cultural mores to back her approach. 

Shangri-la is based within a Tibetan high-context culture that promotes profound cultural convergence. Gilman wants to force an American/European culture towards the same end while retaining the low-context aspects of that American/European culture. 

In sum--

Herland combines intense individuality where one gets to do one's own thing and talk back to superiors and strike out on one's own path  paired with cultural harmony in which one subordinates oneself, at least in public, to the common good and acquiesces to that public's customs. And every leader is perfect, so they are admired, but if they weren't, they wouldn't be.

Yeah, right. 

An inability to recognize the inherent tension between the above positions is one of the most annoying aspects of people who prat about utopias. Many countries with greater cultural convergence than America/Europe also have far stricter immigration laws. Many countries with greater cultural convergence include far more stigmas about behaviors, even placing those behavior into the category of mental illness. Many countries with greater cultural convergence exhibit far more deference to older people, so that in the BL that I watch, achieving the parents' consent or, at least, lack of disapprobation is considered a primary goal. (So is going to school, getting good grades, working hard, and not causing unnecessary furor in public settings.) Pluralism takes a back seat to not rocking the boat.

The response to these obvious observations is to hack up cultures and people to create imaginary results. Preachers of "it's so much better over there" ignore that most other cultures are as complicated and multi-faceted as their own. Instead, they (1) present those cultures as monolithic entities; (2) "translate" those cultures to fit their needs and views.

In Chapter 5 of His in Herland, Terry complains about his companions' willingness to define the new world they are in as an extension of their own assumptions:

One payoff of our failed escape was I found a kind of refuge, a place to go when the demands of propriety became too much. I went alone. Jeff and Van were convinced that another attempt to escape would—who knows? Our imprisonment hadn’t changed substantially after our first attempt except for an increase in guards. I think Jeff and Van were afraid that another attempt to flee would be “offensive,” like showing up to a house party without a gift.

Chapter 5

His in Herland: Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Work: Nobody Does the Yucky Jobs, Part I

At one point, idealistic Jeff praises the

women for cooperating like "bees." My Terry

points out that a queen bee kills other queens.

Pollyanna with attitude.

One of the major problems with utopias is that they are invented by people who don't understand grunt work or specialization. 

Like many utopia builders, Charlotte Perkins Gilman resided in the class that could be termed "white collar." 

She wasn't as wealthy as her relations, the Beechers. She wasn't as poor as the Alcotts. And she did her own share of grunt work to pay the bills. But she never entirely understood it. 

Many utopia builders don't. 

Grunt Work

Gilman did work hard as a writer and lecturer. She wrote constantly. She traveled constantly. And the work was exhausting. 

But it was work she liked, not work she loathed--namely, it wasn't the boring, niggling, not so interesting stuff that must get done at some point. When people "helpfully" suggest ways for me to care for my elderly parents, I usually roll my eyes. Like utopia builders, their ideas are full of sweetness and light. In truth, 60% of caring for my elderly parents isn't coming up with clever ideas. It's sitting on the phone, waiting to badger someone. And filling out paperwork. And cleaning up messes. 

When More argues that members of his Utopia only have to work 6 hours a day (aside from the two years when they go off to be farmers), he is ignoring that daily grind--the reality that nothing in an urban environment can be sustained without someone filling the potholes and shoveling up the horse droppings. In Lost Horizon, Shangri-la is presented as entirely beautiful and modern--the baths are from Ohio (seriously)--while the well-paid "porters" are credited for the items' arrival. Nobody explains how exactly heavy-duty construction materials, such as pipes, and other items could be carted in over the treacherous passes without (1) numerous porters dying; (2) a major commercial interest noticing. 

And who is putting in all the stuff when it arrives? Are those workers doing the grinding, dusty, dirty work for the good of the other residents? Because they (conveniently) enjoy grinding, dusty, dirty work? They actually might. But it's not the kind of work that can be started and then stopped (only 6 hours a day!) or performed at a leisurely pace (not without causing more problems--see issues in pouring cement). Which means, a group of somebodies is working quite hard behind the façade of delightful and restful beauty.

Roman roads are honored for a reason. Michelangelo's attempt to create decent access to a marble quarry was made for a reason. 

As Terry remarks about the roads in Herland:

“This is no sanctuary of females. There have to be men here,” I kept insisting because frankly, laying asphalt is back-breaking work that requires substantial physical endurance. 

Van argued later that the women used powered machines. A manufacturing site exists on the western edge of the country (we never got to see it). I doubt the possibility of hard work occurred to Jeff. He certainly didn’t seem troubled by the idea that any group of people, including women, spent arduous hours keeping the road he was praising smooth. In Jeff’s mind, hard labor will never be synonymous with the kind of people Jeff personally knows. 

So we walked along the road that Van saw as abstractly detrimental [for environmental reasons], and Jeff saw as wholly beautiful, and I saw as toil.

Someone, Terry points out again and again, is doing a lot of hard work to keep the country clean and functional. 

And there were the assumptions [the mentors] presented as givens, ideas to be accepted without skepticism. Such as, We have no aristocracy.

What does one call a group of people who teach and discuss “national matters” in a well-tended hotel with good food and constant service while others are shoveling tar, scrubbing fountains, cleaning up garbage and refuse, maintaining vehicles, cutting down trees, hunting for plant-threatening insects (Alim’s job) and larger predators, building walls, weeding gardens?

Merely because people aren’t being “paid,” doesn’t mean they aren’t accruing more privileges, more ease than others.

Van argues that the mentors also cleaned and scrubbed. But then Van has no real idea how long it takes to unclog a toilet. Someone else does it for him, just as a whole host of someone elses were maintaining the country’s day-to-day infrastructures while the mentors conversed with us in airy, hygienically clean rooms.

In fairness, Gilman saw grunt work as a specialty. If she had the money (she didn't), she would have willingly paid manual laborers large sums of cash.  

Unfortunately, she didn't understand specialization as a lifestyle. 

To be continued...

Chapter 6

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding