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 wishes 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--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 Nothing to Do

Fiction, poetry, art, even mythology pose a problem for utopians. Upholders of utopias supposedly like all that stuff (one is supposed to appreciate Art) but art has this difficult-to-monitor tendency to break out in unexpected ways. The Bible is a great example since no matter how many times people attempt to reduce it to a specific set of rules suitable to a specific social order, other people come along and said, "Hey, look! This story of Joseph--or Exodus--can be used in a completely different way."

Luther started a religious revolution and then lost his cool (which he never had much of anyway) when people said, "Oh, does that mean I can start my own religion!?" 

Consequently, many utopian so-called novels turn into polemics. Even Lost Horizon--which gets the closest to pure story--falters in the middle so Conway can reflect on the meaning of life. 

Preachiness is an aspect of the form. In fact, some utopia tracts are tracts, not novels. Even Samuel Richardson, while writing the Twilight of his day (Pamela), spent a great many chapters wittering on about social propriety and the role of servants, etc. etc. etc. 

The central chapters of Herland are almost entirely "here's how the society works" exposition as opposed to the novella's earlier action and dialog. 

I give a number of characters in His in Herland various reflections on life, religion, industry & economics, education. But I didn't want to lose sight of the narrative arc. I needed to add action! 

Terry was the action! 

Terry's disruptive influence is mentioned in the book, but Gilman restricts that influence to constant arguments between Terry and Alima. In the book, they are basically Ross & Rachel. 

The revolving door relationship actually makes sense but the lack of other avenues doesn't. It is unimaginable that the men wouldn't be put to work doing something. All those jobs Gilman pretends don't exist or, rather, pretends don't take time and grinding effort (as long as they are done by professionals), like washing dishes and changing dirty nappies. Hauling firewood or whatever fuel the country uses. Building stuff. 

Her men are products of their class and seem to take for granted that they don't have anything to do...so they hang out with their foresting girlfriends/wives all day.

Reality: nobody, male or female, agrees to be bored for that long. Victorian men going to their "clubs" without fail sounds impressively dull. Some men did do this, but many more were involved in philanthropic and scientific societies; the ones who weren't got into trouble with cards, duels, opium, and STDs. 

Van, at least, has the benefit of continuing his work as a sociologist and writer, but there is no good reason he couldn't also be put to work on printing or transcribing books. Doctor Jeff is not expected to keep regular clinic hours, and Terry--the planner and explorer (businessman)--is entirely at loose ends. 

In the central part of the novella, Gilman implies that the men are free to go where they want. There's no reason Terry couldn't simply walk away from (another) argument with Alima and start exploring the way he wants to. Yet he doesn't.

To forestall the obvious, I keep the men more monitored.

And I get Terry into trouble. In his own words, "I was getting ready to broach the subject [of Alim leaving] when I nearly blew everything by behaving like a character in a Rider Haggard novel."

Chapter 11 not only contains a scene of Terry getting into trouble, it challenges an utopian ideal, namely that removing ornamentation (jewelry, hair ribbons, makeup, sports apparel, etc. etc.) will also remove the desire to peacock. The women wear a kind of uniform (Van never notes any radical dissimilarities in dress). Herland heavily implies that the end result is more freedom of the self and equality.

Terry doesn't believe it.

Terry is (mostly) right, as an Ohio State University study discovered. And as Mrs. Pollifax notes in Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station, despite China being a supposedly classless society, demarcations of class are still noticeable: "[P]erhaps [Mr. Li's] attire wasn't modest at all, she thought, as she glanced around and compared him with the other Chinese waiting in line, for his sandals were leather, not plastic."

The individual wants to be heard.  The individual wants to do "my own thing," and should the individual get paid, the individual wants to spend that money on whatever the individual desires. 

No utopia can simply expurgate those impulses. No matter how abstract and philosophical utopians try to be, all those Rider Haggard behaviors--making the wrong things, pursuing the wrong ends, exploring the wrong places--keep throwing characters back into story. 

Thank goodness! 

Chapter 11

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Art

I mention in the previous post that utopia novels or tracts tend to get a tad tedious--that is, they tend to turn into polemics rather than stay focused on story. The inherent fear of artistic license--that the novel or tract's readers will NOT react as required--creates texts in which the characters lecture others. In Gilman's text, they aren't even supposed to dress up, wear jewelry, and distinguish themselves visually. 

Here's the truth: Utopians fear art. 

Plato wanted to ban plays. Religious utopias waffle over holidays, maypoles, and the theater. Political utopias put comedy under fire.

Gentleman of Moscow by Amor Towles does an exceptional job painting the moral and artistic annihilations of the Soviet Union. (The protagonist's idealistic friend, who joined the new government, is eventually sent to Siberia for daring to assert in a memoir-type piece that Berlin bread--produced through the art of baking--is better than Russian bread.) 

As I argue in my thesis, a deep abiding fear of language--especially fiction--runs through all social orders. Every village, city, and state includes people who are sure that nobody else gets "the joke":  irony, satire, puns, riddles, tall tales, gags, farce, punchlines, knock-knock jokes. Such people tend to be rather humorless anyway--and they often substitute "teasing" for true humor--which makes one wonder if they don't get the joke. 

They will never admit it. Everyone else is completely helpless in the face of exaggeration, nuance, context, non-lecturing literature, flights of fancy, dreams. Everyone else must be protected against such dangerous stuff.

I wish I could argue that all these folks come out of the "special knowledge" Ivory Tower left, a bunch of academics divorced from reality shaking their fingers at all those people bamboozled by the companies and studios that the academics don't approve of. And these academics exist!

The truth is, however, that anyone in any field is capable of feeling that other people have missed the point and must be harried until they are "fixed" of their bad thoughts--inoculated against so-called bad opinions, attitudes, art--at which point the penitent will be allowed to return to the fold. 

In my experience, the harriers or sermonizers are practicing a kind of transference. They are quite susceptible themselves to trends and fads. As the C.S. Lewis quote indicates, they are terrified of appearing "uncool"--not unlike teenagers who group together for protection against anything that differs from the group. It takes time and moral growth to do what they love, not what is "approved."

In Chapter 12 of His in Herland, Alim and Celis discuss folklore. Celis argues that the mentors want to produce "goodness" at the expense of creativity. (My Celis is rather hard-headed and practical. Here, she is observing, not necessarily starting a revolution.)

I [Alim] protested. People innovated. They improved machinery. They came up with new educational methods.

“Not outrageously,” Celis said. “Why do you think the old stories are never told in Troas’s theaters? The ones with unkind parents, brutal kings, devouring monsters? Wars. Famine. Fallen cities. The mentors draw lines. There’s an edge to the world. If we fall off it, we’re lost.”

“People tell the stories anyway.”

“Sure. But the fear is always there. Nobody, not even your Terry, believes someone can explore an idea and not become it.”

“Maybe they do become it. I met Terry and now—” Now I know what I don’t have. Now, I'm considering what else might be possible. 

Celis said, “You can’t be the hero and the villain and the monster and the deviant all at once. Not in reality.”

Unless people are heroes and villains and monsters and deviants all in one.

In the end, no matter what Utopians try, fiction is inherently uncontrollable. Its goal is to lie, enchant, bamboozle, astonish. Its prevalence suggests that human desires precede the supposed ideals of human religious, scientific, economic and political systems. If human desires come first, seamless order will never be entirely possible, no matter what leaders force onto people. Compromise is the only solution. A utopia will always fracture and dissolve. 

One of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quest, contains one of my favorite scenes: Tim Allen's character has to explain to the alien commander that his show (a take-off of Star Trek) is a fabrication ("Explain it to him in words a child could understand"). The character is deeply apologetic.

Yet, at the end of the movie, Galaxy Quest: The Television Show has been revived. The dangers of fiction are weighed against its joys and found less important, not because the dangers may not exist but because a world without fiction is dull and empty and robotic and non-human. It is a world run by lecturing woke academics and offended humorless moral leaders--that is, well-meaning members of any field or group who feel the need to "enlighten" everyone else and manage their intake. (Literary Weight Watchers.) 

Woe to that generation that replaces our superficial, tacky, sometimes downright stupid television programming with high-minded dramas addressing issues of class, race, orientation, and gender alongside accompanying disclosures of said dramas' underlying ideologies ("triggers") as well as their purposes and applications. A curse upon your heads! (I wrote parts of this post several years ago. Rereading it, I felt positively prophetic!)

When it comes to fiction, the important questions are: Do we viewers/readers believe? Does the story work? Do the characters live for us? Do we care about them? Are we carried away by the story? Are we satisfied?

Leave the "I'm SO appalled" attitude to the sermonizers. Leave the fun of the thing to the rest of us. 

Chapter 12

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding 

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, violate a social standard. 

During the trial or hearing, 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

The Problem of How to Get Out

Utopias are not automatically closed environments. However, leaving a utopia is almost always difficult. In Lost Horizon, despite continual warnings, Lo-Tsen (book)/Maria (movie) leaves Shangri-la, whereupon she immediately dies from old age--after a tremendous number of people are killed in an avalanche (movie).

Even when the risk isn't physical, the communal pressure to remain can be tremendous. The underlying justification of all utopias postulates that it's so exactly what humanity needs, anyone who wishes to leave must be damaged in some way. The damaged person either needs to be fixed or expelled. 

The practical problem--and one explanation for the knee jerk negativity--is that a loss of citizens requires restructuring of the remaining social order. 

I propose a still older explanation. Utopias often bleed into the fairy realm, and leaving the fairy realm always requires payment: 

Tam Lin transforms into various animals, Rip Van Winkle--and others--lose time. Eurydice can only leave the Underworld if her lover performs a task. 

Tasks often involve sacrifice. As Terry says in Chapter 18, "I was here in the tunnels to take risks."

I support this particular trope. A change in life brings along costs. It requires that the protagonist delivers up something of the self. Alim, a citizen of Troas in His in Herland, accepts that he may never be able to return. He "acts on the world," choosing to leave rather than simply follow Terry's lead (Terry sacrifices his reputation--such as it is--for the ability to leave).

Writing problems arise when writers don't want their protagonists to take this risk. 

The writing problem doesn't appear to be attached to suffering. Suffering delivers cache. Rather, writers come across as reluctant to force their protagonists to live with a choice. Perhaps writers fear having their protagonists make the wrong choices. Perhaps writers don't want their characters to have to choose. 

Nevertheless, it must happen. Keeping one's options open is hardly the point. The protagonist accepting responsibility is the point. 

I recently read a disappointing Christmas story. In the story, the protagonist--who went into a series of foster homes when his mother died--learns that his father is a substitute Father Christmas, an elf who filled in for Santa one night. 

Not a bad premise. (I'm not troubled by overdone premises.)

Unfortunately, however, the writer wanted the foster situations that the protagonist suffered to be horrible. Look at all that suffering! 

Except then, the writer wanted to let the substitute Santa off the hook. The biological dad couldn't check in on his son because...ah...he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get back to Santa's world...except people can...so...he was afraid Santa would be mad...except Santa is a really swell guy...but it's nobody's fault and nobody's responsibility because the substitute Santa lives in another world...except the protagonist can visit...only the substitute Santa can't leave...except people do leave all the time...and by the way, the protagonist is about thirty, so the substitute Santa had three decades to overcome all the waffling. 

And the telephone system blew too--

amazingly enough.

It reminded me of Tom Hanks' character in You've Got Mail trying to invent reasons for his supposed no-show. 

I was disgusted. The protagonist's father abandoned his son and had no good narrative reason not to check in on him for thirty years. 

If a protagonist is going to abandon responsibility, the reason had better be a good one ("God" or "my clique" or "the social order told me too" or "I must for the sake of a perfect future" is not an acceptable reason). Otherwise, the protagonist needs to step up. 

In a sense, I've come back to where I started with these posts: to keep people in (isolated), there has to be a reason--and it has to be believable. If people determine to leave, they must bargain with the world's rules or--in the case of Terry & Alim--the Fates. 

As one of my Greek gods tells Terry, “Everyone’s story has to be checked.”

Terry arrived through the tunnel--Alim and Terry leave through the tunnel after paying a toll: Fantasy Writing 101. 

Chapter 18 & Chapter 19

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding