Till We Can Face the God of C. S. Lewis (Part II)

(This is a continuation of an earlier post.)

A major point, that you have to keep in mind, is that Lewis turned the myth of Cupid and Psyche on its head, making Orual the main character. (If I am not mistaken her name comes from the Hebrew “curse of God.” Lewis uses Hebrew a number of times. In Narnia, there is a character named Emeth. In Pilgrim’s Regress, there is a mountain Jehovah Jirah.) He would not have done that unless he identified with her very strongly. Psyche is a goddess born into human flesh. She is perfect, but, in of herself, uninteresting. She is useful to the story only in terms of how others, particularly Orual, react to her. Psyche, the goddess, bears no relationship to us human beings, and cannot be imitated. Orual, a flawed and ultimately tragic human being, reacting to the divine inherent within Psyche, is of great interest.

Tobie makes the mistake of “skipping” to the end and saying that Orual was selfish. Yes, Orual was selfish, but that is almost beside the point. Her selfishness and her love were the same things. It is not that her love was simply a mask for her selfishness or that her love was somehow inauthentic. Her love was pure; she loved Psyche not for anything Psyche could give her, but for who Psyche was. The problem with Orual was that she could not see that her very love was an act of selfishness and that is what made it so dangerous. It is because she so truly loved that she was blinded to this selfishness. How could love be bad? This is a major theme in Lewis’ thought. It is precisely the “higher” desires that can be the spiritual downfall of the person. It is easy for a person to accept that a desire for money, sex and power can be bad and that people who pursue them are being selfish. When you are dealing with things such as love and honor you can always that you are acting “in the name of heaven.”

Orual is spiritually far superior to the other “human” characters, such as the Fox and Bardia. The Fox is a philosopher. He denies the literal existence of the gods, at least the sort of gods that would interest themselves in human affairs. Lewis, quite subversively, makes the Fox a powerful moral figure. He lives and dies based on Stoic principles, always striving to act according to reason. For all of his moral greatness, though, he is unable to appreciate the spiritual dimensions, right before his eyes. As he tells the heavenly court:

I taught her [Orual], as men teach a parrot, to say “Lies of poets,” and “Ungit’s a false image.” I made her think that ended the question. … I never told her why the old Priest got something from the dark House that I never got from my trim sentences. She never asked me (I was content she shouldn’t ask) why the people got something from the shapeless stone which no one ever got from that painted doll of Arnom’s. Of course, I didn’t know; but I never told her I didn’t know. (pg. 257-58)

Bardia is the exact opposite of the Fox. If the Fox stands for reason then Bardia stands for faith. He accepts as a matter of course that the gods exist and that the gods are concerned with human beings. The problem with Bardia is that he lacks the critical element. Since he is incapable of doubting the gods’ existence he is incapable of questioning the gods, if they are righteous, if they have the right to interfere with humanity or if humanity would be better off without the gods. Ironically enough, since there was never a time when Bardia did not serve the gods, Bardia, unlike Orual and the Fox, never gets that moment of salvation, to submit himself to the gods and accept their grace.

Orual is the combination of the Fox’s reason and Bardia’s faith. She is spiritually aware enough to be unable to rule out the possibility that the gods exist or to make them none issue in her life. Unlike Bardia, though, Orual has the intellectual awareness to doubt the gods’ existence. More importantly, because Orual doubts, she is capable of challenging the gods and rejecting them. It is precisely this “satanic” character who ultimately proves to be the one found worthy of salvation, once she decides to accept it.

Psyche suffers for Orual’s sake. One can look at it as Orual being so evil that Psyche had to suffer in order to save her. One could also look at this as Orual is so great that the gods saw fit to send Psyche down to this earth and had her undergo trials and tribulations all so that Orual might be saved.

Till We Can Face the God of C.S Lewis

Tobie recently put up a post on Till We Have Faces. (See here.) Most people only know C. S. Lewis from his Narnia chronicles. This novel, though, is my personal favorite work of his. This is a very different book than Narnia; it is much more mature and it is quite dark.

One of the things that I love about C. S. Lewis is that he was willing to face up to some of the dark implications of believing in God. Unlike most outreach specialists, Lewis did not take the line that God exists, he loves us, we are going to be saved by believing in him and therefore everything is wonderful. Lewis, throughout his work, questioned God’s goodness and wondered if mankind would be better off without God’s active involvement. This was more than just a literary or rhetorical device, one gets the sense from reading Lewis that he really struggled with these issues and, down to the very end of his life, had his doubts. (Read, for example, A Grief Observed)

Lewis’ dark side finds its expression in Till We Have Faces in the figure of Orual, Lewis’ Nietzschian super-heroine. Anyone who thinks that Lewis was a misogynist, whose female characters were either evil witches or meek, obedient, good little girls, clearly has not considered this novel.

Orual is one of the evil sisters from the Cupid and Psyche myth who cause Psyche to disobey her husband, the god Cupid, by looking at his face and be banished from him. In Lewis’ hands, though, Orual becomes something far more complex than a jealous fairy tale sister. This novel is her defense and her prosecution of the gods. She argues that it is the gods who have sinned: what sort of god gives random commands, that serve no purpose, and damns those who fail to keep them? What sort of god hides his face and only speaks in hints and riddles? Ultimately what she did to Psyche was justified because the gods had no right to take Psyche, the person she loved most in the world, away in the first place. Who gave them the right to interfere with her life and steal her happiness?

For they [the gods] will neither (which would be best of all) go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another: what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman’s buff, and mere jugglery? Why must holy places be dark places? (pg. 218)

It was Lewis’ genius that he almost succeeds at getting us to agree with Orual. Ultimately Lewis’ answer to Orual is that the gods could not face her until she herself had a face. She needed to turn inward and face herself; to come to terms with the fact that she had hurt the people she loved most in the world with her love and because she loved them. In the end, Orual submits herself to the gods and in return is given the gift of grace by Psyche.

I disagree with Tobie, that Lewis is arguing that we blindly submit ourselves to God, accept his will and surrender our own personalities. Lewis’ theology was far more complex than that. For Lewis, the starting point is the fact that we have strong personalities and that we struggle with God, even to the point of hating him. It is only once we have established this adversarial relationship that we can turn around and give ourselves over to him with all of our doubts and issues. It is a dialectical relationship between fighting and submitting, with no easy answers or quick roads to salvation.

Another Ender Post

Dragon recently posted a piece on Ender’s Game. (See here.) She analyzes the novel in terms of Erik Erikson’s theory of social development. I have no background in educational psychology so this piece was a real eye-opener for me.

Senator John McCain in Columbus

Back in the fall of 1999 and the winter of 2000, when I was sixteen and still too young to vote, I cheered on Senator John McCain in his forlorn primary run against than Governor George W. Bush. I had read McCain’s memoir, Faith of My Fathers, and found it utterly moving. It sounds funny now but my thinking back then was that, if Arab terrorists were to carry out a major attack on American soil, there would be nobody better to rally this country than John McCain.

McCain in 2000 was not to be and we got President George W. Bush instead, a decent human being but a mediocre candidate, who proved unqualified for the job of office. As Conservatives, we cannot allow ourselves to be classified as intellectual lightweights. I hope the damage done by the Bush presidency will not prove too great for us to overcome.

Last night I went downtown to the Renaissance Hotel to a McCain rally. We were standing around for about two hours, time I am sure Dr. Goldish would say I could have better spent studying, but it was worth it. We got to see McCain in person and hear him speak. After McCain finished speaking and was leaving the podium I managed to get myself to the front. The person next to me got to shake McCain’s hand.

I feel like we have been given a chance to go back to 2000 and do things right this time. We can elect a genuine American hero as our next president the likes of which the Oval Office has never seen.

Female Spirituality in Medieval Christian Thought: A Bibliography

Ahlgren, Gillian T.W. “Ecstasy, Prophecy and Reform: Catherine of Seina as a Model for Holy Women of Sixteenth-Century Spain.” In The Medieval Gesture: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Spiritual Culture in Honor of Mary E. Giles, ed. Robert Boenig, 53-65. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. 

Benedict, Kimberley M. Empowering Collaborations: Writing Partnerships between Religious Women and Scribes in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 2004. 

 Bell, Rudolph M. Holy Anorexia. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. 

Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York, 1998. 

Bryne, Sr. Mary. The Tradition of the Nun in Medieval England. Washington, DC., 1932. 

Bugge, John. Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal. The Hague, 1975. 

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 

Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982 

Clark, Anne. Elisabeth of Schonau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. “Holy Woman or Unworthy Vessel? The Representations of Elisabeth of Schonau.” In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney, 35-51. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. 

Coakley, John W. Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006. 

Conner, Paul M. “Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua – Enduring Friends.” Studia Mystica 12,1 (1989): 22-29. 

Dillon, Janette. “Holy Women and Their Confessors or Confessors and Their Holy Women? Margery Kempe and Continental Tradition.” In Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden, 115-40. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. 

Elkins, Sharon K. Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. 

Elliott, Dyan. Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennylvania Press, 1999. 

“The Physiology of Rapture and Female Spirituality.” In Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis, 141-73. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997. 

Proving Women: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 

Ferrante, Joan M. To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. 

Frugoni, Chiara. “Female Mystics, Visions, and Iconography.” In Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, trans. Margery J. Schneider, 130-64. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1996. 

Greenspan, Kate. “Autohagiography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography.” In Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance, 216-36. Gainesville, FL, University Press of Florida, 1996. 

Hollywood, Amy. “Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer.” In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine Mooney, 78-98. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. 

Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 

The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechtild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. 

Jantzen, Grace. Power Gender, and Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 

Luongo, Francis Thomas. “Catherine of Siena: Rewriting Female Holy Authority.” In Women, the Book, and the Godly, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor, 89-103. Oxford: D. S Brewer, 1995. 

McGurie, Brian Patrick. “Holy Women and Monks in the Thirteenth Century: Friendship or Exploitation?” Vox Bendectina 6 (1989): 343-74. 

Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. 

“Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation,” Church History 54 (1985): 163-75. 

“Possessed by the Spirit: Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century.” Speculum 73 (1998): 766-67. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. 

Poor, Sara. Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.  

Ranft, Patricia.”A Key to Counter-Reformation Women’s Activism: The Confessor-Spiritual Director.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10,2 (1994): 7-26. 

Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts. Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society ca. 500-1100. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. 

Slade, Carole. “Alterity in Union: The Mystical Experience of Angela of Foligno and Margery Kempe.” Religion and Literature 23 (1991): 109-26. 

Szasz, Thomas. The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. New York, NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1977. 

Thompson, Augustine. “Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood.” Church History 63 (1994): 349-64. 

Voaden, Rosalynn. God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries. York: York Medieval Press, 1999. 

Zilboorg, Gregory. The Medical Man and the Witch During the Renaissance. New York, NY: Cooper Square Publishers, 1969.

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part II)

(This is the continuation of a previous post. See here.) 

 

It would be a mistake to confuse a society with a group of friends. While the societies that populate Orson Scott Card’s novels are often quite small and might be passed off as a group of friends, it is not friendship that binds them. Often the societies in Orson Scott Card’s novels are built by people thrown together against their will. They do not necessarily like each and often never come to like each other. Despite this fact, there is a bond that does form between the characters. Card’s plots tend to revolve around the issue of his characters, despite the fact that there may not be any great friendship between them, attempting to build a society together. For their societies to succeed, Card’s characters must confront the question of what are they willing to sacrifice for it, ultimately for people whom they owe nothing to and have no logical reason to care for. 

The relationships that Ender builds are very different than what you find in Harry Potter. As Dumbledore points out, Harry’s strength comes from his love for his friends, Ron and Hermione. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are a group because they like and care for each other. Their bonds to each other came out of their own free will. The contrast to Harry is Lord Voldemort who, while he has followers, people who worship him as a god and are even willing to die for him, has no friends. Voldemort is completely self-sufficient, loves nothing to him and he has no need for anyone’s love. This, ultimately, is Voldemort’s undoing.

Ender has a lot in common with Lord Voldemort. He is set up from the very beginning as a loner. The people who run the Battle School, purposely isolate him, surround him with people who are hostile to him and, in one case, would go so far as to try to kill him. When Ender succeeds at forming bonds with people he is immediately taken away to another group. Because of this Ender is forced to turn completely inward. The only person he can rely on is himself; he has no friends. Ender’s victory over the Battle School system is that, despite his inability to form friendships, he does build relationships, many of which prove capable of overcoming the limitations of time and space. What Card’s societies can be are families. Families, particularly in the world of Orson Scott Card, are groups of people thrown together, with complete disregard for compatibility or love. Despite this, family members do form bonds of loyalty with each other, even with family members that they dislike and continue to dislike. This connection between societies and families is brought home by the fact that the one close emotional bond that Ender maintains over his years at the Battle School is with his sister Valentine on earth. She reunites with him after the battle with the Buggers and goes with him into exile. In the later books, Ender marries a woman named Novinha and becomes a stepfather to her children. In addition, Ender has a daughter of sorts, a computer entity named Jane. These characters, and in a more abstract way the various residents of Lusitania, become a new society for Ender to deal with. Card purposely blurs the line between society and family to the point that they become extensions of each other. 

Considering Card’s emphasis on societies/families, it is not a coincidence that Card is an outspoken fan of the television show Firefly. In Card’s review of the Firefly film, Serenity, he commented that: 

On that ship [Serenity] we had an interlocking community with a history, rather like what has been a-building with Lost and what was developed over the years with Friends. … The key to this kind of movie is that you create a community that the audience wishes they belonged to, with a leader that even audience members who don't follow anybody would willingly follow. That will be the key to Ender's Game if the movie is ever successfully made; and it is the key to Serenity. 

Firefly and Lost, for that matter, are stories about people thrown together by chance. These people do not necessarily like each other and they may even hate each other, yet they are forced to come together as a common group.

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part I)

Stephenie Meyer, the bestselling author of the Twilight series, has a lot in common with the legendary science fiction author, Orson Scott Card. They are both active members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). More importantly, while neither of them is known for religious novels per se, they both write from a background of faith and bring a strongly religious, though not particularly Mormon, vision to their work. Beyond this, I would suggest that the Twilight series contains certain Cardian elements. This should not be surprising as Stephenie Meyer has publicly stated that she is a fan of Card’s work.

I read Card as a running meditation as to the question of how one builds and maintains a society? What causes people to join together as a society? How does the individual relate to the surrounding society? What brings an individual to make sacrifices, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of his society? These issues underline almost all of Card’s work. For the purposes of this post I will focus on Card’s most famous work, Ender’s Game, and it various sequels.

On the surface, Ender’s Game is about a war between humans and an alien race known as the Buggers. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin attends a school for brilliant children. The purpose of this school is to create the next brilliant military commander, another Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great. The children at this school are being trained for one thing only, war. As such their primary education revolves around military strategy games, either computer games or the mock combat of the battle room.

The war against the Buggers is only an incidental part of the story. What Card is interested in is this Battle school as a group of competing societies. While the main character, Ender Wiggin, is a genius, his real talent is his ability to handle people. Ender is someone whom other people are willing to follow. People admire him and desire to learn from him and emulate him. Ender in turn is someone who honestly desires to help people. The narrative arch of the novel revolves around Ender building societies. Through the various stations that Ender finds himself, whether as a Launchie, as an unvalued member of Salamander army, as a valued member of Rat army, as a Toon leader in Phoenix army, or as the head of Dragon Army, Ender connects to various people and gets them to forge bounds with each other. Many of these people, such as Petra Arkanian and Bean, eventually become his subordinate commanders in the coming war against the Buggers.

What is interesting about Ender’s character is that, even though he is this great leader, he is a reluctant leader and does not seek power or recognition. Ender does not put himself at the center of the societies he builds. He always remains off to the side and alone.

The foil for Ender is his older brother, Peter Wiggin. Peter possesses similar gifts as Ender. The difference, though, between Peter and Ender, and the reason why the Battle school never took Peter, is that Peter lacks a firm moral base; Peter manipulates people for his own ends and is completely untrustworthy. While Ender is away from home at the Battle school playing his war games, Peter plays his own game, attempting, under the pseudo-name of Locke, to become a world leader. What is so interesting, though, about how Card deals with this character is that, while Peter may be immoral, he is not evil nor is he the villain of the story. Over the course of the novel and its sequels, Peter manages to do a tremendous amount of good even if the things that he does always seem to incidentally help him.

Ender and Peter can be seen as models of two different kinds of leaders, who come to be the center of two different kinds of societies. Peter is a political leader, who desires power over other people. He accomplishes his goals by making it in people’s interest to put him in power. He eventually becomes the Hegemon of the entire earth and leads mankind in its expansion to the stars. Ender is a spiritual leader. Even though he leads the first human colony to a foreign planet and becomes its governor, he gives up his post for a life of exile. His legacy is a book that he writes called the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. This book becomes a bible for those humans who go off to settle the galaxy and it spawns a religious movement known as the Speakers for the Dead. In the end, while Peter may have been a great political leader, nothing survives him. While Ender does not build any physical empires, he creates a society, beyond any physical boundaries, that lasts for thousands of years.

(To be continued ...)

A Suggested Reworking of the Magic Flute so not to Offend Feminist Ears (Part II)

(This concludes an earlier post. See here.)

Despite the Magic Flute's Enlightenment sentiments, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to see certain highly patriarchal themes within the story. The world of the Queen of the Night, consisting of women, is the evil side, while the very masculine side of Sarastro is considered to be good. In fact, the librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, was actually quite explicit on this issue. Sarastro, numerous times, declares that the darkness represented by the Queen of the Night is the result of allowing a woman to rule without the oversight of a man. Having a woman rule is against nature and results in chaos and obscuration. What is needed is for a man to rule. Only then can law and reason be maintained.

The fact that such an Enlightenment piece could build itself around the concept that women need to be kept under the authority of men, should not be a shock to any reader of Rousseau. According to Rousseau, democratic rule necessitated that women be kept out of power. Women represent autocracy and the rule of the passions. Men represent democracy and the rule of reason. (See Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Celebres in Pre-Revolutionary France.)

Considering all this, I was thinking that we can redeem this “sexist” play simply by understanding it as a tragedy. Here is the real story that Mozart and his sexist cronies wanted to hide from us. The Queen of the Night rules over a happy feminist kingdom, in which men are not needed and are not allowed. Sarastro, though, tricks her daughter, Pamina to abandon her mother’s feminist paradise for his so-called Temple of Light, which is a seminary devoted to advancing the cause of patriarchal tyranny. He fills her head with thoughts of marriage and religion. He tells her that, by submitting to the patriarchal institution of marriage, she can find completion in this life. Also, he initiates her into the service of Isis and Osiris, which obviously represent the veneration of Mary and Jesus. Pamina learns that a woman should be like the Virgin Mary; she should submit herself to the whims of a patriarchal god and help bring forth the embodiment of patriarchal authority into the world. Next, she must stand idly by as the patriarchal values of blood, sacrifice and suffering are enshrined as unchallengeable religious dogmas.

The Queen of the Night, desperate to save her daughter, enlists the help of a Tamino, who, despite the fact that he is a man, seems to be an open-minded individual. He does not seek patriarchal rule but romantic love. Neither Tamino nor the Queen of the Night realize that romantic love is merely a cover for patriarchy; this is their tragic flaw. The audience is shown early on, through the character of Papageno, that romantic love necessarily leads to patriarchy. Papageno also sings of romantic love, but his idea of romance is catching women and putting them in cages.

Meanwhile, Sarastro’s Moorish servant, Monostatos, having rejected the patriarchal values of his master, who had enslaved him, and embraced the tolerance of Islam that he practiced in his youth, tries to open up Pamina’s eyes to the true nature of Sarastro’s patriarchy, but she will not listen. He tries to get her to love him, but, having absorbed racism as well as sexism from Sarastro, she turns him down.

When Tamino comes to rescue Pamina, he is caught by Sarastro. Sarastro reveals to him the true patriarchal foundations of romantic love. Tamino cannot resist the allure of patriarchy and submits himself to Sarastro’s teaching, much like Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith submits himself to the teachings of Chancellor Palpatine. The Queen of the Night makes one desperate last attempt to ward off the forces of patriarchy. Even though Monostatos comes to her aid, her forces prove unable to overcome the full force of Sarastro’s patriarchy once it is unleashed and all is lost. As the opera ends, Pamina believes that she is going to enter wedded bliss. The audience is shown, though, throw the use of Papageno and Papageno what fate really awaits her; a life of putting out babies without the barest hint of family planning.

There is a serious issue to be confronted here. I once went to a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and the program explained that Shakespeare used this play to attack traditional concepts of hierarchy and gender roles. While I do believe that much of Shakespeare’s work is quite subversive and that Shakespeare had a keen understanding as to the role of hierarchy and gender in society, his work is hardly twenty-first-century college campus liberalism. This is particularly ridiculous as, unlike plays such as Twelfth Night and Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing has nothing directly to do with gender; the play has no women dressing up as men or vice versa. The implication of this is that the only way Shakespeare can be performed is if we pretend that all the politically incorrect material is not there. If political correctness has come to this than the arts are in serious trouble.

While Ohio State’s production of Magic Flute changed Monostatos from a Moor to a white man in Gothic clothing (Why is there no Gothic Anti-Defamation League to sue people for this?), the production still kept Mozart’s sexism and allowed us to see it in all of its glory. I congratulate them for doing something honestly controversial. They are truly standing in the frontlines of artistic freedom.

A Suggested Reworking of the Magic Flute so not to Offend Feminist Ears (Part I)

This afternoon I attended a production of Mozart’s opera, the Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote), put on by the Ohio State University’s school of music. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I suspect that opera purists would snipe at it. The opera was performed using very modern English, using such words as “crap” and “girlfriend.” The production also took certain liberties such as including lines about hamburgers and a quip from one of the male characters about not being interested in another man.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Magic Flute, it is about Tamino’s quest to achieve enlightenment and win the hand of his love, Pamina. As the story begins, Tamino is rescued from a giant serpent by the ladies of the Queen of the Night and taken to their realm. As repayment for her aid, the Queen charges Tamino with a quest to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the hands of Sarastro, the priest of the Temple of Light. Tamino, in true romantic fashion, has fallen madly in love with Pamina merely from viewing her portrait and eagerly jumps at the chance to do this heroic deed. To aid him in this quest, Tamino receives a magic flute that can change people’s hearts and make them do his bidding. Accompanying Tamino is a bird catcher named Papageno. Pagageno’s my favorite character of the story and provides most of the comic relief. The running joke with him is that, in addition to the usual birds he tries to catch, he is also set on catching other sorts of birds, mainly women. In the end he does find himself a mate, her name is Papagena. I have every intention of learning his pieces so I can give them a proper butchering by attempting to sing them.

Tamino and Papageno go to rescue Pamina, but they discover that, contrary to what they believed, Sarastro is not the evil villain they thought him to be. On the contrary the people of the Temple of Light are really the good guys. Everyone in this realm believes in light and reason. (That is everyone except Sarastro’s traitorous Moorish servant, Monostatos.) The Queen of the Night and her ladies are the evil ones and they are trying to keep the world in darkness and superstition. While Sarastro had taken Pamina, he only did it to rescue her from her mother’s influence. Tamino and Pagageno join the Temple of Light and undergo a series of trials to prove their worth and to be allowed to enter the sacred Temple where they will be given true enlightenment.

The Queen of the Night, seeing her original plans fall to ruin, appears to Pamina tries to convince her to murder Sarastro. This leads to one of the most famous arias in opera, “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” (Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart). This is a rather infamous piece amongst singers as it requires the soprano to hit an F6 key, the highest in music. There are few people in the world, capable of singing this piece properly. Enlightenment and true love wins in the end and the force of light defeats the Queen of Night and her followers. Tamino and Pamina are wed and live happily ever after.

Like much of Mozart’s work, the Magic Flute has strung Enlightenment themes running through it. The Queen of the Night represents traditional faith, with her power built on lies and superstition. Sarastro represents the Enlightenment, particularly the Freemasons. He cuts through the obscuration of the Queen of the Night and brings forth the light of reason.

(To be continued ...)

A Case of Medieval Irish Liberalism or was the Bishop Just Plain Drunk?

It is, however, interesting to note that according to the anonymous ninth-century Life of St. Brigid, Brigid was ordained as a bishop. This claim that the saint had received the Episcopal order was perhaps an attempt to explain Brigid’s unique position of honor and authority in the Church, as well as that of her successor abbesses at Kildare. According to the vita, as Brigid knelt to receive the nun’s veil, Bishop Mel “being intoxicated with the grace of God there did not recognise what he was reciting from his book, for he consecrated Brigit with the orders of a bishop. ‘This virgin alone in Ireland,’ said Mel, ‘will hold the Episcopal ordination.’ While she was being consecrated a fiery column ascended from her head.” Later versions of this story, however, attempted to discredit or dismiss this incident, arguing that it had clearly been a mistake: Bishop Mel had consecrated Brigid while he was drunk, thus making it invalid!
(Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of their Sex pg. 94)


You just have to love the Irish.

I can just imagine a group of Catholic Talmud scholars learning together learning together in Yeshivish: It says in Mishnayos Pirquei Avos Ecclesia (Ethics of the Church Fathers) that he who is m'kadesh (sanctifies) a woman as a galach (priest) is oseh tipshus (makes for foolishness). Mesavai (I'll ask you a question); Masah b'Archon Mel (there was an incident with Bishop Mel) that he was m'kadesh Brigid. Lo raiah (thats not a proof); Mimelah (it would seem) he was Irish. And, as it was said in the house of Abba (father i.e. the Pope): ten measures of siquor (drunkedness) were given to the world and nine were given to the Irish.

Palestinian Illegal Immigrants

As it has been reported in news outlets throughout the world, Palestinian militants blew up a large section of the border wall between Gaza and Egypt. Taking advantage of the situation, over 350,000 Palestinians crossed over in order to buy food and other supplies. Egyptian forces at first tried to halt this mass exodus but were overwhelmed. In explaining the situation, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a statement:

I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons. … But today a great number of them came back because the Palestinians in Gaza are starving due to the Israeli siege. Egyptian troops accompanied them to buy food and then allowed them to return to the Gaza Strip.

I must say, it gladdens my heart to see Arabs going at each other for the entire world to see. It is important that the world understands that the problems in the Arab world have nothing to do with Israel.

What is so interesting to me about this whole affair is the fact that the Egyptians tried to keep the Palestinians from crossing the border and when they finally relented they still made sure that the Palestinians went home. Here in the United States, conservatives have been criticized for taking a hard-line stance on illegal immigrants coming over the border from Mexico; these people are coming over for work and it is inhuman to deny them that. Not that the United States is against all immigrants or even all immigrants from Latin America. It is official government policy that anyone who manages to flee Castro’s Cuba can automatically stay. This has led to thousands of Cubans braving ninety miles of shark-infested water in homemade rafts in hopes of making it to Florida and freedom. One has to wonder, why do the Egyptians not show the same humanitarian concern to their Arab brothers that the United States shows to illegal immigrants; clearly the Palestinian situation is a far graver humanitarian crisis. The Egyptians would not even have to give them citizenship. They could give all Palestinians the option of coming over to Egypt to live and work. Mubarak had his soldiers specifically escort Palestinians to make sure they did not stay in Egypt; what is he so afraid of? Surely those Palestinians who crossed should have been given the option of staying.

There should be a moratorium on anyone telling Israel to ease up on border restrictions and allow Palestinians to work in Israel and get food until the Arabs ease up on their borders and do their share to relieve the Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part III)

(This is the conclusion of a series of earlier posts. See here and here.) 

While Libba Bray manages to treat the Victorian world fairly, there is an issue, that Bray jumps around, that I wish she had dealt with directly. While the Victorian world, which Gemma and her friends struggle against, might be highly patriarchal and demand absolute conformity, this same world is also offering them a life of luxury, the likes of which few in that time period could even dream about; this is a life that Gemma and her friends have not earned by any merit of theirs nor would they likely be able to gain it through their own efforts. As such they lack the moral ground with which to challenge the Victorian world. They have little in the way of marketable skills; if they had to earn their own way they would likely find themselves with the factory girls they so pity. While most of the men in these books, with a few exceptions, speak of women in ways that would make moderns blush, the men have a point. Most of the women are in fact little better than grown-up children, to be kept as pets, but not to be taken too seriously. Any attempt to argue for women’s equality in such a world would find itself up against a catch-22. Women, in this time period, are inferior. With some few exceptions, there are no female doctors and lawyers nor are there many women with more than a very elementary education. As such women are not in a position to position to demand access to power or even access to the means to gain power, such as higher education and professional careers. With nothing to bargain with, women have no choice but to submit to patriarchal power and must make do with whatever scraps men choose to throw at them. I would have loved it if Bray would have given a character like Mrs. Nightwing a speech like this to unload on Gemma with, challenging her to earn her ability to challenge the world around her. This would set the stage for what Gemma does at the end of the trilogy, providing her motivation. (Do not worry. I will not spoil the ending.) The books do have one weakness; they tend to wander quite a bit, without anything actually happening. Bray, in ways that are reminiscent of J.K Rowling, likes to have her characters wandering about Spence Academy and the Realms, trying to figure out what the larger story is. This becomes a particular problem with The Sweet Far Thing. It is 819 pages long, nearly double Great and Terrible Beauty’s 416 pages and still significantly longer than Rebel Angels’ 592 pages. The reader spends The Sweet Far Thing waiting for the final climactic battle with the forces of the Winterlands. While the climax has its share of interesting moments, along with a few tragic ones, the whole affair seems to go off as a whimper. Circe, the chief villain of series, proves to be an intriguing and nuanced character; it is a pity, though, that Bray does not do more with her. The Sweet Far Thing’s ability to go hundreds of pages without any important plot developments reminds me of the Order of the Phoenix. The difference, though, is that Rowling possessed a singular ability to keep a reader enthralled in her work; the world of Harry Potter was interesting in of itself. No matter what else may have been happening, I loved reading about Harry, Ron and Hermione. Bray, for all of her talent, lacks Rowling’s ability to be able to get away with having nothing happen. Even Rowling had difficulty keeping Order of the Phoenix afloat, Bray fails. I could happily read Rowling simply for the sake of reading Rowling, I do not love Bray to that extent. Ultimately the Sweet Far Thing should not have been more than six hundred pages; the story could have easily been told in four hundred pages. Despite the Sweet Far Thing's failings, the Gemma Doyle trilogy is a very worthwhile read. I believe that the Orthodox audience would particularly enjoy these books; they are in a unique situation to appreciate the struggles of living within a highly structured environment and the various nuances that come out of such a world.

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part II)

(This is the continuation of an earlier post. See here.)

In my mind, these books are everything that feminist literature should be. Without a question, the issue underlying the series is female empowerment and Bray makes no apologies for it. Gemma and her friends, as women, live in a world in which they have few choices and little control over their lives. The Realms offer them a world in which they have power and the possibility of being able to change the course of their lives back home.

Bray is not defending the Victorian world nor is she trying to turn back the clock. She manages, though, to bring a level of nuance that one does not usually find in literature dealing with women’s issues. There is more to her feminism than pontificating about the plight of women struggling against the tyranny of patriarchy. Bray does not feel the need to preach or pass judgment against the Victorian world. In ways that are very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series, Bray is willing to accept the Victorian world for what it was, warts and all, and instead of mocking it, she has fun with it.

Bray has no interest in polemicizing against men; these books do not break down into intelligent and open-minded women going up against the men, who are all stupid and bigoted. Take for example Gemma’s older brother, Tom; he can be an idiot at times, but Bray manages to keep him genuinely likable. Gemma’s love interest, an Indian boy named Kartik, is a very interesting character. Bray is willing to allow him to be Gemma’s equal, instead of turning him into a male version of a damsel in distress. In truth, the main enforcers of patriarchy in these books are not the men but the women, particularly such characters as Spence’s headmistress, Mrs. Nightwing, Gemma’s grandmother, Mrs. William Doyle, and Lady Denby. Ultimately the message here to women is not that men have wronged them and they have the right to demand their due; instead the books ask women to look inward and ask themselves if they are the cause of their own oppression and, more importantly, how are they, as women, going to take the initiative and solve the problems that face them.

I think the reason for Bray’s success in this matter lies in the fact that she not only writes good fantasy but good historical fiction as well. She has created characters that are true to the time period. Her characters do not break down into the rational, intelligent, modern sounding characters and their bigoted intolerant opponents who are essentially straw-men of premodern modes of thought. Gemma does not come across as a modern feminist in a corset; she believably inhabits the world she lives in. She is not striving to prove that she is the equal of men or that she should be able to be a doctor, lawyer or even the Prime Minister just like a man. It is not that she even rejects her world; she is simply someone who finds herself desiring to have more options and struggles with the implications of this desire. One suspects that Gemma would not fit into the modern world. She still wants and needs the structure of the Victorian world, even if it is simply a moderated version of it.

The character who is closest to modern feminism is Felicity. In a Great and Terrible Beauty, she already has gotten involved with a gypsy youth. In Rebel Angels she experiments with going to a ball in a gown with a plunging neckline. By the time we reach The Far Sweet Thing, she is dreaming of going off to Paris, wearing breeches and working as a model. There is even a hint of a lesbian relationship between her and Pippa. Bray, though, conceives Felicity’s “feminism” not as an intellectual or moral struggle against the forces of oppression, but as Felicity being a brat. Felicity is the sort of character who does whatever she wants; damn the consequences to her or anyone else. This is one of the reasons why she is such a fun character and why we love her, but Bray never tries to imbue Felicity with any sort of moral authority. Instead, she ingeniously uses Felicity to turn tables on modern feminism and mock them in turn.

It does not take a whole lot of imagination to realize how the real-life equivalents of Gemma and her friends would lead to modern feminism. Even Ann, the Neville Longbottom of the group, is, by The Sweet Far Thing, working on becoming a professional actress. It is an interesting question to speculate whether the rise of modern feminism was the inevitable result of the women’s movements of the nineteenth century, but at best this could only have been seen in hindsight. The real-life equivalents of Gemma and her friends could not have conceived that they were a movement, where this movement was heading and if they did they would not have necessarily approved of it.

(To be continued …)