The Beast in the Jungle

            On Wednesday evening it was warm enough to wear shorts to and from lit class. There was a lot of weird traffic on the way though. A serpent of a long TTC bus was slithering along collage and blocking my way until I finally got around. Somebody was blocking eastbound traffic to parallel park and I had to edge into oncoming traffic to pass. Another driver ahead of me was looking for a place to park and she kept on crossing the bike lane, cutting me off, only to find out I guess that she couldn’t park where she thought she could and so she went back onto the street only to repeat the whole thing again. She did this three times before she finally fully crossed over so I could squeeze by.

            I overshot the Fitzgerald building by a few blocks because I didn’t recognize the landmarks from my bike. Last week I’d approached it on foot and found it by number.

            It turned out that there was no class ahead of ours this time. There were about seven people in the lecture theatre and all of them were women. I said, “I don’t suppose that any of you know where the men’s washroom is!” One of them said that she’d seen it last time on the other side of the main floor when she was looking for the women’s loo. I was skeptical because I’d walked all around that level and all I’d found in the direction that she’d indicated was a bold sign that seemed to have been put up out of annoyance, telling searchers, “Washrooms Not In This Hallway”. I gave her the benefit of the doubt though and found a sign I hadn’t noticed last time saying that the men’s washrooms are in basement and on the second floor.

            I went downstairs and as I emerged into the hallway I let out a quick tooting fart before I realized there was a young woman walking nearby.

            Back in the classroom, as people arrived I realized that there are actually quite a few middle-aged students taking this course. More than I’ve seen in any that I’ve taken so far.

            Scott Rayter arrived on time and took roll call. I didn’t have to answer when he said my name because he recognized me and checked me as present.

            I noticed that the chairs in that classroom are actually pretty comfortable for seats in a classroom.

            In this class we looked at a story each by Henry James and Edith Wharton, two major novelists in the early 20^th Century.

            Henry James pushed the limits of the short story. He was interested in how we think about and experience time. His brother, William James was a renowned philosopher and psychologist.

            Henry James traveled a lot but finally settled in England where he renounced his United States citizenship because of the initial refusal of the United States to enter World War I.

            Edith Wharton also traveled a lot but settled in France. She dedicated herself to helping her adopted country during World War I and the French loved her back. She received the Legion of Honour after the war.

Like many of the Lost Generation, James and Wharton didn't live in the States but wrote about it. They were both interested in U.S. Citizens living abroad and how they were perceived. Margaret Lawrence lived in England and wrote about the Canadian prairies.

            They all needed a critical distance in order to be critical.

            Wharton was critical of the destructive power of a frivolous, vain and abusive society. She was also interested in what women do to each other.

            At this time the United States was a cultural backwater. Authors from the States wrote for a European audience and any writer from North America needed to be successful in the U.K.

            James puts U.S. Citizens abroad under a microscope. His characters reflected the reality that people in the United States could suddenly become wealthy. Upstarts like that don’t occur in Europe. The US people abroad were often naïve and unpretentious but the people that treated them most viciously were other US people abroad. The Italian hotel in where the couple in Wharton’s story stay is occupied only by others from the United States.

            “Souls Belated” could mean they haven’t found themselves or soul mates haven’t found each other yet. The idea of lateness of trains and people recurs throughout the story.

            Is it them or is it marriage itself? Did women at that time have identity outside of marriage? Suddenly they have stopped talking because she now has a divorce. He has not yet formally asked her to marry him but commits the faux pas of beforehand verbally assuming that she will. “I thought that just at first you might prefer to be quiet after we are married”. As they travel they pretend to others that they are married but she considers actual marriage to be a trap that she has already just escaped.

 “I was free before”. What does freedom look like for a woman?

            Classic romances are made about couples that are not meant to be together. You don’t start a story about a happily married woman.

            It’s precarious for a cultured woman to not have money.

            This is called naturalistic fiction, where nothing ends happily. There are five sections to the story. The other literary form that is made up of five parts or acts is the tragedy.

            By focusing on Lydia, Wharton exposes him. A well-dressed middle-aged woman on the other side of the room described the other women she encounters as “old fashioned mean girls”. Scott liked that and declared that they are “bitches”.

            Lady Susan thinks that she knows the truth about everyone and that Lydia is perfect. Lydia wants these women to like her and is willing to lie to achieve that goal because if she admitted to having been an adulterous, to being divorced or even single, she would not be accepted. Why does she care about such horrible people? Wharton never answers this question, but to be an outcast is frightening.

            In part five we are suddenly in his head observing her. She is under his surveillance and is silent but in motion. He does not want her to see that he is watching her.

            The use of three dots of ellipsis in the text at the end leaves things open and omits what is next. “ … mechanically, without knowing what he did, he began looking out the trains to Paris …”

            Scott commented with relief that at least Lydia didn’t die in the end like most of Wharton’s heroines.

            We took a break, during which I told Scott that I though he was being unfair to Gannett. I expressed the view that his decision to not try to stop Lydia from leaving was noble.

            After the break we started on Henry James.

            Henry James’s writing changed over time. He was a Modernist writer but not as extremely so as writers like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. Sylvia Plath had a nervous breakdown while reading Ulysses. Henry James was interested in consciousness and how we know what we know. He edited many of his own stories badly.

            Wharton was more successful than James. Later there was a revolt against female novelists but in this period they were popular. He saw himself as more experienced than Wharton but they were close friends.

            Of “The Beast in the Jungle”, can we really know the mind of another? Freud says we can’t even know ourselves.

            In Modernist style the story has no formal intro.

            We never learn what “the beast in the jungle” is. I said that my impression was that “the beast” was that he and possibly her were Gay. Scott confirmed that to be a common interpretation and that queer theorists interpret it as “the beast in the closet”. He offered the view that although the homosexual answer to the mystery is satisfying, it’s too easy. He argued that it is wrong to try to fill in the blanks at all in this story because the answer to the mystery is not the point. The secret of having a secret creates suspense.

            Marcher does not remember the horrible secret that May said that he had previously confessed to her and she never tells him what it was. Are they talking about the same thing? Maybe she doesn’t even really know the thing that he thinks he has forgotten. Who do we believe? Why do we believe some people and not others? There is so much ambiguity and there are so many gaps in the text.

            He is forgetful but she remembers everything. He has coldness about him. We are not meant to trust him and maybe not even her. She is described as being like the Sphinx. There is something almost sado-masochistic about their relationship. She has him bound to her by the secret she claims to know and controls it like a leash. She possesses him by never giving him the details and thus convinces him that she knows him better than he knows himself. We are in his head but never in hers. She is a reader and so are we.

            Deconstructionists love Henry James.

            I offered the theory that perhaps she doesn’t represent a person at all but the Freudian mind part that covers guilt. He said “the superego” but he didn’t seem satisfied, returning to his assertion that filling in the blanks is a mistake.

            Another student with what sounded like Liverpudlian accent declared that the story reads like a meditation on knowledge.

            Fear of the unknown is more terrifying than the object of fear revealed. Freud says that everything represents something else.

            Marcher is nothing with a secret.

            I didn’t realize until I got home that the professor had finished the class an hour early. My neighbour Nicky was having a party out on the deck. I’d never seen her out on the deck at all before that. She called to me and said “Hi!”

            I started making a quick dinner and it occurred to me that the liquor store was still open and that I had the money to buy a beer for the first time in a long time. I went out and a guy called to as if he knew me. Then he said he wanted to ask me something. Because of the way he phrased the question it was becoming obvious that he didn’t know me and that he was panhandling. I told him I didn’t have any money because I was used to not having money. What I would have told him if I’d thought about it was that I couldn’t afford to give him any money.

            I made a steak sandwich with cheese, lettuce and pickles and had it with a can of Creemore.