The Power of Example Fantomina and Pamela - Literature Essay Samples

To act as an ‘example’ is to influence another’s actions. If the effects are, as Johnson claims, ‘powerful’, a responsibility of care accompanies the role of example. This responsibility may seem unnecessary, as the example seizes the ‘memory’, and exists only as a mental influence. However, this influence only temporarily exists in the mind. The ‘effects’ are realised in actions, capable of affecting individuals in a surrounding environment. A responsibility is therefore present in the conscious effort to exhibit one’s behaviour as a positive moral example, in order for these ‘effects’ that are realised in others to also be positive. Johnson specifies that these effects are produced ‘without the intervention of will’. Perhaps this suggests that the responsibility of example is present in all action, not simply the conscious activity of moulding oneself in to a positive influence. If the †˜intervention of will’ is removed, neither the example, nor the individual affected by the example have a choice as to which of their actions act as the example. Both Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela engage with this concept of all action as ‘example’. Even seemingly arbitrary actions have powerful effects, suggesting that all action is inescapable from a moral responsibility. Throughout the eighteenth century novel, the characters are often categorized by social class. Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina challenges the concept that the powerful effect of ‘example’ is restricted to social class, and it’s associated customs. The effects of example are so powerful that they disregard social hierarchy, and are able to affect individuals across class boundaries. Fantomina’s original example, the prostitute in the opening scene, is unnamed but central as the influence that ‘excited a Curiosity in her to know in what Manner these Creatures were addressed.’[1] Physically restricted by social class, Fantomina resides in a box, whilst the prostitute remains in the ‘Pit’. Interaction with her example therefore does not occur, suggesting that the power of example can be active through gaze alone. However, her ‘curiosity’ is ‘excited’, not created. This suggests a generalized dissatisfaction w ith her experience of class restrictions that has remained dormant, but is still deeply established within a history of female repression. Fantomina is only able to act upon this frustration now through the introduction of an example she can imitate; the prostitute offers an approach that will bypasses the restrictions of female tradition. The power of example is arguably lessened by this argument, as the ‘curiosity’ already exists within Fantomina. Furthermore, the gaze provokes her ‘curiosity’ to a ‘kind of violence’, so that the prostitute’s influence almost completely surpasses the process of taking ‘possession of the memory’. As soon as Fantomina witnesses the ‘Manner’ the prostitutes act, she begins to enact her ‘resolutions’ (Haywood, p.227). For this ‘Frolic’ to be possible, Fantomina must lower herself to below human form, to a ‘Creature’, in order to consciously n eglect the burden of responsibility associated with the status of a Lady. [2] Haywood therefore refuses to align Fantomina with a class-specific, restrictive example. If the power of example were so influential as to affect Fantomina through sight alone, even the interaction with an upper class example would be arguably ineffectual. Instead of a freedom to cross social boundaries, Richardson’s Pamela displays an expectation that example should be restricted by social class. Margaret Anne Doody suggests that none of Richardson’s female characters are ‘absolute’, and need a constant positive example to make them so. [1]. Richardson thus presents Lady Davers as the character who should exist as this upper class example to make Pamela ‘absolute’. Yet, her vocabulary rejects this expectation: ‘the Wench could not talk thus, if she had not been her Master’s Bed-fellow’ (Richardson, p.384). A lower class terminology, that includes ‘wench’, creates a parallel between the two women –Pamela regularly calls Mrs Jewkes a ‘pursy, fat Thing’– that suggests both require a polite example to become ‘absolute’, regardless of their ancestry (Richardson, p.114). Lady Davers is therefore identified as a bad example, and h er influential ‘power’ is lessened. Unlike Fantomina, Pamela can choose to refuse both the sight of, and interaction with her expected ‘example’. Additionally, this interplay of characters occurs in private, suggesting a difference between this and public discourse. Lady Davers freely engages with the subject of desire, an emotion expected to be neither felt nor discussed by women. This presents the role of an upper class example as perhaps exclusive to a public construction of behavior, that exists only to fulfill social expectations. In private, Richardson inverts these public expectations of example. Pamela is able to refuse Lady Davers’ negative influence by recognizing her own morality as a better example. Ironically, the girl accused of acting as her ‘Master’s Bed-fellow’ acts as the positive example that will make the Lady ‘absolute’. ‘Power’ of example can therefore vary according to recipient. Pa mela commits this scene to memory, as she recounts it to Mr B. later, yet does not allow this influence to ‘take possession’ of her. In Pamela, the power of example is restricted to the socially superior, a concept condemned by Richardson through Pamela’s refusal of Lady Davers’ influence. Richardson and Haywood also present their protagonists as the example, and explore how ‘powerful’ their effects are upon others. Tassie Gwilliam comments ‘it is easy to see how the line separating the woman who performs for an audience without knowing it from the woman who consciously performs for that male audience can blur’. [1] This concept separates Pamela and Fantomina as characters. The effects of example are arguably more powerful when they derive naturally within an individual, as opposed to a performance. Pamela possesses, and emanates, the attributes of a good example naturally: For Beauty, Virtue, Prudence, and Generosity [†¦] she has more than any Lady [†¦] she has all these naturally; they are born with her (Richardson, p.423). Authenticity seems to influence how powerful an example is. Pamela is defined a truer example than ‘any Lady’, as morally positive attributes are ‘born with her’. This suggests that the occurrence of these qualities naturally is more influential that a conscious performance, a mere imitation of a natural example. Through being ‘born’ with ‘Beauty, Virtue’ and ‘Prudence’, Richardson implies it be almost hereditary, rejecting the association of a refined sensibility with the upper class. Pamela’s parents are classed as socially inferior due to their poverty, yet morally they are such powerful examples that it appears to be inherent in their DNA. Perhaps Pamela has only maintained this existence as a natural example through her original position in the social hierarchy. In comparison, Lady Davers’ privileged upbringing has taught her a proper, public conduct, suggesting that any virtue she exhibits is a performance. Whilst this praise is spoken by Mr B., Pamela reports them to the reader through the epistolary form. This secondary layer of narrative distances the reader from the reality Pamela experiences, defining her narrative as, however close to realism, a performance. As Gwilliam suggests, the ‘line’ between an unconscious and conscious performance is blurred. However, this performative epistolary form is irrelevant when considering Pamela as an example. She is identified as a natural positive example, and this aligns her Gwilliam’s more positive definition of the ‘unconscious’ performer. The woman who consciously performs is thus condemned as almost incapable of existing as a positive moral example. After acting as Fantomina, Haywood’s protagonist constructs a number of different identities –the widow, the servant, Incognita –who each consciously perform a public, virtuous behavior. Pamela maintains this virtue in private, whilst Fantomina submits to both her own and Beauplaisir’s desire: ‘by these Arts of passing on him as a new Mistress [†¦] I have him always raving, wild, impatient’ (Haywood, p.243). Haywood almost encourages a condemnation of Fantomina as a bad example. She actively performs as the woman who unconsciously performs, each character feigning a virginal status and ignorance of Beauplaisir’s true nature. However, to Beauplaisir, this performance is reality; she is an ‘unconscious’ performer to him, ‘passing’ as a new Mistress each time. In order to sustain this pretense in private also, Fantomina must change her identity constantly to match the requirements of Beauplaisir’s desire. Therefore, she claims ‘I have him’, implying a female, dominant possession, yet is also as ‘wild’ and ‘impatient’ as him. Fantomina’s virtue is a public performance, and cannot exist as a positive moral example through a lack of consistency. Her identity and virtue changes in private, suggesting Fantomina does not possess the natural attributes of a virtuous example that Richardson’s Pamela does. Refusing this moral example is perhaps self-conscious. She consistently labels her affairs as an ‘Art’, suggesting a submergence so far in to her reality based on performance that she cannot return to a reality to fulfill social expectations of this morally positive example. According to Gwilliam, Fantomina is categorized as the woman who ‘consciously performs’, and thus she cannot emanate the pow er of example naturally. Haywood acknowledges Fantomina’s actions as a bad example of virtue, and instead presents her as a positive example of female independence. Fantomina’s effects of example are therefore powerful, however not in the expected, or same, context as Pamela’s. Thus far, the power of example has been assumed to be undeniable in influence. Yet, both novels also challenge how ‘great’ the external influence of example is compared to one’s own conscious, internalized desires. In Haywood’s Fantomina, Beauplaisir refuses to act as a morally positive example, and instead chooses to sate his own desire. This is emphasized by Fantomina’s expectations of how women should be ‘addressed’ by men, even when she identifies herself as a prostitute: she told him, that she was a Virgin, [†¦] [it was] far from obliging him to desist –nay, in the present burning Eagerness of Desire (Haywood, p.30). Gentlemanly conduct is an ‘[obligation’] for Fantomina, and she especially expects this after revealing her virginal status. Yet, Beauplaisir’s conduct is perhaps immune to the power of a gentleman’s example, especially in this moment. With example, it’s influence is committ ed to memory, and then a period of time passes before it affects the subject. This ‘burning Eagerness of Desire’ is instead identified as existing in the ‘present’, where spontaneous emotion overpowers any influences that may exist in the memory. An insistence is reflected also in syntax. The dash not only adds a breath, as if to imitate physical pleasure, but creates a momentum in the sentence that mirrors the increasing progression of action that Fantomina struggles to slow. As an experience of the moment, desire seizes the person without the ‘intervention of will’, similarly to the effects of example that Johnson establishes. If desire produces the same effects, but originates instead from internal influence, it suggests that the power of external example is not as ‘great’ as Johnson suggests. Arguably, the power of example could be seen as greater as desire exists as an emotion. Yet, as soon as this emotion is felt in the †˜burning’ ‘present’, it demands to be physically sated also. Desire therefore induces as much action as the power of example influences. Therefore, the ‘power’ of example is temporarily overpowered as ‘great’, as desire forces imminent action, whilst example can be rejected when it still exists as a mental influence. This allows Beauplaisir to ignore the morally positive example exhibited by gentleman, and choose to sate his desire instead. Throughout Fantomina, Beauplaisir is immune to the power of positive example. In Pamela, Mr B. only adheres temporarily to the eighteenth century ‘rake’ stereotype. His initial refusal to accept the responsibility of example transitions from Beauplaisir’s insistent moment of desire to a consistent, genuine love. His original choice that favors desire over either following or exhibiting a respectable example, is recounted by Pamela in Letter XI. It is addressed to her Mother alone, despite almost every other letter being addressed to both parents. This suggests that male desire, and it’s consequences for women, was a subject to be addressed by women alone: ‘I found myself in his Arms, quite void of Strength, and he kissed me two or three times, as if he would have eaten me’ (Richardson, p.23). In her nervous state, Pamela is void of ‘Strength’ physically. Yet she also actively refuses any emotional agency, subsequently denying any d esires felt. She ‘found’ herself draped on him, and ‘he kissed [her]’, emphasizing his dominance over her through the order of pronoun. Only through presenting this experience as undesired can Pamela preserve her virginity wholly, as she refuses even lustful thought. Her lack of agency is further suggested in Mr B.’s almost animalistic strength, becoming primal in his desire to ‘[eat]’ her. This emphasizes the physical ‘violence’ that desire can inadvertently cause in the urge to be sated, provoking Mr B. to actions almost ‘without the intervention of [his] will’. As the novel progresses, the powerful effects of Pamela’s morally good example reform Mr B. Richardson suggests this is only possible through marriage. The sacrament forces Mr B.’s relationship with Pamela to the public sphere. She is, by law, now a Lady, and is considered an equal and able to inflict her example upon her husband. Therefo re, the effects of Pamela’s virtuous example are consistently more powerful than the ‘rake’ stereotype. However, it is only when Pamela ascends the social hierarchy, is she given the opportunity to inflict it. Each novel explores the ‘power’ of example. In exploring the success of an example, it must be considered if the example presented is identical to what the author intended. Richardson and Haywood both display protagonists that exhibit an example, respectively good and bad. However, each character cannot, and does not maintain this example constantly throughout each novel. Fantomina and Pamela must diverge from their expected behavior for each author to engage with a certain sense of realism. Therefore neither exist as a wholly good, or wholly bad example: Fantomina is seemingly an example of the consequences of female desire, yet refuses to submit to shame or repentance; and Pamela is seemingly an example of perfect virtue, yet eventually submits to her desire. The characters may only exist as true examples when exhibiting these flaws that distance them from their assumed example. The true example is in how each protagonist overcomes the stereotype that society forces up on them. Both Fantomina and Pamela, to different extents, do not exhibit the example they are supposed to. Yet, the examples they do display, of independence and consistence of virtue, are made more ‘powerful’ in effect, as they must steadily struggle against social expectation. Without these flaws that differ from their expected example, the characters would be in a conduct book, and not a romance. Bibliography Ballaster, R., Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) Doody, M. A., The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel ed. by John Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Gwilliam, T., Samuel Richardson’s fictions of Gender (California: Stanford University Press, 1993) Haywood, E., Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze (London: Black Swan) Richardson, S., Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded (Oxford: OUP, 2001)

Essay about The Opium War and Great Britains Influences...

While westerners in China pushed to claim rights and generally oppose Chinese reformers who worked to better China, the Chinese government and society continued to face internal problems. While westerners in China pushed to claim rights and generally oppose Chinese reformers who worked to better China, Chinese government and society faced internal problems. Being a main target for imperialism, China faced much western influence. One of the events that marked the beginning of intense western influence was the case concerning the Opium Wars. A main imperialistic power, Great Britain, began trading China opium, a heavily addictive drug, in exchange for tea and silk. At first, it seemed like a positive idea – the Chinese†¦show more content†¦A second point to be mentioned is the Spheres of Influence, which were predetermined after the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing and the Treaty of Tientsin. A Sphere of Influence is considered a region where a separate state has a tight grasp over the other country’s political, economical, and social standpoints. Being a form of colonization, the countries that created the spheres were Britain, France, Germany, R ussia and Japan. As a result, the angry and disgusted China organized the Taiping Rebellion. Then, the United States issued the Open Door Policy, where the weakened China would be forced to open trading ports with most European countries and the United States. This plan failed and only enraged the Chinese. In an attempt to rebel and finally be set free, China created the Boxer Rebellion. Marking feelings of intense hate, hostility, and patriotism, the Chinese attempted to rid their country of foreigners. At its end, the Boxer Rebellion depicted the Chinese’s true feelings and hostility at their breaking point. It required force of British, French, Russian, American, German and Japanese troops to finally finish it off. 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Intrusive Images, Neural Mechanisms, And Treatment...

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Old Goriot Honore de Balzac free essay sample

This aim has, on the whole, been consistently pursued in both divisions of French fiction, the idealistic and the realistic novels. Works of these two types appear, judging from their names, to move in different planes. But the connection of both kinds with life has been fairly close, and, in the seventeenth century, discussion of popular romances was so much the preoccupation of social circles such as the Hotel de Rambouillet, that not only did the novelist try to portray characters he saw, but the leisure classes often sought to model their life after the pattern of the fiction they read. At the threshold of the seventeenth century we come upon one of the most important novels ever written in France because of its influence, even if to-day unread except by specialists, the great pastoral romance â€Å"Astree. † Though the scenes of the story take place in a world impossible and unreal by its anachronisms, and though the characters are as untrue as can be to the civilization of the Gaul in which they are supposed to live, nevertheless the author, Honore d’Urfe, would have us see in his creations human beings, perhaps in some cases to be identified by a key. Their language, highflown and sentimental though it be, fulfills the author’s desire to analyze feelings. So the shepherds and the shepherdesses, the knights and the nymphs of the story, discuss love in all its actions and reactions, and try to define the various kinds of love, faithful, fickle, or Platonic. â€Å"My shepherdesses are not needy ones who have to earn a living,† D’Urfe admitted. But he supposed, at least, that their sentimental experiences were those of human beings. The same purpose may safely be attributed to the successors of D’Urfe down to the middle of the seventeenth century and to the novels of Mlle. e Scudery. In their stories of fantastic experience and of Romanesque incident, or of romantic adventure in distant lands, the authors would have us believe in the verisimilitude, if not in the truth of the characters they describe. So the novels of Mlle. de Scudery, though they are supposed to take place in the days of the great Cyrus or of early Rome, are nevertheless intended to be read in the light of history contemporaneous with the author. If this statement be true of the professionally idealistic romance, it is the more so of the realistic novel. The â€Å"Roman bourgeois† of Furetiere and the â€Å"Roman comique† of Scarron are most useful documents for the knowledge of life in the seventeenth century and the character of individual people. We come to the same conclusion about Madame de la Fayette’s â€Å"Princesse de Cleves,† which, as a reaction against the long romance of fantasy and chivalry, has been called the â€Å"first modern French novel. † Certainly no better example of the literary spirit of its period could be found. Brief and to the point in its descriptions, it is the psychological analysis of a woman’s heart written by a woman, and is no less truthful than the great tragedies of Racine. The eighteenth century was, on the whole, very matter of fact. It was an age of rationalism and of science. Consequently its novels have much the same quality. A satirical writer like Voltaire permits himself whimsical unrealities in his stories, but most writers pose as truthful chroniclers. Lesage’s picaresque novel â€Å"Gil Blas,† Marivaux’s â€Å"Marianne,† and the Abbe Prevost’s â€Å"Manon Lescaut† seek to impart the effect of reality. Even Rousseau’s emotional â€Å"Julie† would fain be a painstaking and accurate picture of human nature. Rousseau is looked upon as the source of the romantic school which, after his death, occupied so important a place in the literary history of the earlier nineteenth century. This school consciously reacted against what it considered the cut-and-dried rationalism of the hitherto reigning literature, and advocated the cult of feeling and a return to nature. This nature included the outer world of mountains and rivers, and intellectual descendants of Rousseau such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of â€Å"Paul and Virginia,† and Chateaubriand run riot amid the flora and fauna of exotic landscapes. But, strange as it sometimes seems now, the romanticists thought themselves better portrayers of human nature than their opponents had been. It is true that to us the fiction of the romantic age is apt to appear a chaos of imaginative weavings. But if we eliminate the vagaries of which has been called the â€Å"lower romanticism,† with its fantastic and melodramatic incidents often foreign in origin, if we omit also the exuberance of Dumas, we find that the French romantic novelist was usually intent on portraying human nature, just as the classicist before him. We are prone to call the heroes of romanticism a motley herd of eccentrics. The romanticist said that life consists of varied experiences, that souls are multiform, and that the drab monotony of classicism portrays only commonplaces which do not make up the whole of life. In such a novel as Victor Hugo’s â€Å"Notre Dame† we have a characteristic example of romantic fiction. Here the author has sought to reconstruct the Paris of the late Middle Ages, though modern scientific objective historians may say he has not succeeded; he has tried to people this city of his imaginative reconstruction with varied characters, each one intended to show more individuality and more vigor than the anaemic kings and heroes of late neo-classic tragedy. Something new and different was always the aim, because life and character are protean. But so it also comes about that this novel, engrossing as it may be to the reader, seems a gallery of curiosities more than a collection of human beings. Victor Hugo would not have understood that his novels might, after his time, derive their chief interest less from this portrayal of character than from their incidents, and particularly from their tearful emotionalism and the vague humanitarianism which is in the spirit of modern democracy. Of George Sand we are less justified in saying that she tries to copy life exactly. The object of art, she says in the first chapter of â€Å"La Mare au Diable,† is to make us love the objects of its interest and it need not be blamed if it occasionally flatters. Art is not a study of positive reality; it is a quest for ideal truth, and the Vicar of Wakefield was a more useful and a healthier book than the Paysan perverti and the Liaisons dangereuses. † In some of her novels she tries to reconstruct social Utopias and indulges in a semirhapsodic mysticism, in others like the â€Å"Marquis de Villemer† she at least means to portray life. But in stories like â€Å"La Mare au Di able† and â€Å"La Petite Fadette† she frankly idealizes the existence of the peasants in her native Berry and composes pretty prose pastorals with an individuality of charm that we do not find elsewhere. The effect of a novel by Balzac is totally different from that of one by Hugo. Yet Balzac, the realist, like Hugo, the romanticist, is trying to portray human nature. But though Balzac had passed through a brief romantic discipleship in youth, his great literary production belongs to a very different school. Instead of seeking exceptional heroes, apt therefore to appear morbid eccentrics, instead of making these characters vehicles for the author’s moralizings and his views on civilization, Balzac aimed at the close and painstaking study of the men and women of his time. His plan of composition illustrates his careful method. No longer handling his pen, as Hugo did, like a broad brush, Balzac corrected and recorrected his work in proof until the original text was unrecognizable in its final form. Balzac’s men and women are, in their way, as individual as any character of romanticism. Nobody is likely to forget old man Goriot, or the miser Grandet, or to confuse them with other characters in fiction. But Balzac, if we neglect the epic sweep of his constructive imagination in devising and harmonizing the multitudinous characters of his â€Å"Comedie humaine,† helped to initiate the new realistic school which succeeded romanticism. This was the method of the photograph or of the daguerreotype, the close reproduction of details of life and manners. Consequently, the novels of Balzac are most valuable documents for the study of the period they chiefly describe, the reign of Louis Philippe, when the moneyed bourgeoisie or middle-class was in control, and when material interests were much more prevalent than one would infer from reading the romanticists alone. Balzac’s stories are apt to deal with the selfish and sordid side of life, but that results rather from the social conditions of the time or from the bias of his mind than from the inherent demands of his method. The perfection of realism is to be found in Gustave Flaubert, in a such a book as â€Å"Madame Bovary. † There the accurate portrayal is faithfully carried out, and the men and women of the Norman province whom he seeks to describe are not only photographic in their exactness but live by the touch of genius. Realism might appear in theory the perfect literary method in fiction, if verisimilitude be accepted as the author’s goal. Yet the personal bias of the writer may, no less than in romanticism, make the novel deviate from the truth of life through the cult of the exceptional. Much of the moral disapprobation which has been expressed for the modern French novel during the past generation is based on dislike for the â€Å"naturalism† of authors like the Goncourt brothers and Emile Zola. The naturalists delighted in description of vice and disease, the dramshop, the hospital and the brothel. That such a literary treatment of life does not necessarily belong to realism can be seen in the works of Alphonse Daudet and in some of those of Guy de Maupassant. Both of them wrote novels, but some of the best work of both, certainly of Maupassant, was done in the short story, or nouvelle. Alphonse Daudet has often been called the â€Å"French Dickens,† and his realism has much that is akin to that of the English writer. His characters stand out as individualities to be remembered, they have their little peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, and his narrative is interwoven with constant sentimental and pathetic incidents to touch the reader’s feelings. Moreover, as in â€Å"Le Petit Chose,† like Dickens in â€Å"David Copperfield,† he writes from the full memory of his own youthful hardships. In his short stories he has composed little masterpieces of grace and tenderness, as well as often of brisk wit and good-humored satire. Guy de Maupassant was the literary disciple of Flaubert, consequently a more objective realist than Daudet. Some of his writings unfortunately astound by the crudeness and brutality of the narrative and descriptions, but yet when he wishes, no author in French literature portrays more faithfully and more unerringly. Thus it may be inferred that the great masters of French literature have generally aimed to copy life. This does not imply that the fanciful and the whimsical have been banished—Alfred de Musset’s â€Å"White Blackbird† is a proof of the contrary. But the romantic tendency, however popular, has been less genuinely French in its sources and influence, and the various complicated schools of art for art’s sake have almost always had a transient rather than a permanent effect. But the great writers of realism have been masters in creating children of the brain whose actions and characters we may discuss almost with the vivid interest we feel for men and women of history. C. H. C. W.   was born at Tours on May 20, 1799. His father, Bernard Francois Balssa, who adopted the form of the family name made familiar by the novelist, came of peasant stock from the south of France. Honore went to school at Vendome, Tours, and Paris, later proceeding to study law, and spending three years in a solicitor’s office. But when his father wished him to devote himself definitely to the practice of law he revolted, and at the age of twenty-one took up with determination the profession of letters. For five years he lived in very straitened circumstances, producing unsuccessful dramas and a large number of equally unsuccessful novels, chiefly after the pattern of the English â€Å"School of Terror. † The prospect of making a living by his pen remaining dark, he went into business in 1825 as a publisher, printer, and type-founder; but all he seems to have gained from this enterprise was a large debt, which burdened him ever after, some experience of life, and a knowledge of the details of business, of which he availed himself in his later writings.