L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between
Instructions:
1- Divide yourselves into 2 GROUPS.
2- Each group should answer 11 questions.
3- When posting your answers, don't forget to copy and paste the author and the questions you're answering. Finally, write the names of the members of your group.
Deadline: SAT 6th, October -12.00 p.m.
Critical Essays on The Go-Between
Source 1: Jay, Betty. “Method and Myth in L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between.” Studies in Literature and Language. Vol. 5,
No 3,2012,pp.1-9. Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture. Jan 14 2017.
<www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/viewFile/j.sll.../3469>
Questionnaire:
1.Read the definition below of T.S. Eliot’s mythic method. How does Hartley use this method in The Go-Between?
2.What is the brand new 20th Century for Leo Colston? How and Why is he disappointed in it?
3.What makes Leo’s experience in the adult world of Brandham Hall so damaging in the end?
4. Leo says that he excels in “his undertaker’s art.” What does this view imply?
5.”His aspiration leads Leo, in turn, to discover the terrible power of language…” (Jay 2). Explain what this quote means.
6.”Doubly estranged, Leo will struggle to decipher the complex exchanges to which he is party.” (Jay 3) Why does Leo fail in all the strategies he uses (curses, letters to his mother, sabotage, Black magic)?
7.Although he’s somewhat a snob, Leo Colston is unmistakably middle-class. How does he try to fit in in Brandham Hall and who helps him?
8.”Unable to comprehend these elevated figures [the adults at the Hall], Leo instead chooses to associate them with one of the principle structures through which he gives ‘shape and significance’ to the world.” (Jay 4) Why can’t he understand the adults? Which structures does he use to give meaning to the world?
9.How is Leo both like and unlike Icarus/ˈɪkərəs/ [Greek Mythology-The son of Daedalus, who escaped from Crete using wings made by his father but was killed when he flew too near the sun and the wax attaching his wings melted]?
10.”Although Leo undergoes a sexual awakening at Norwich/ˈnɒrɪtʃ/, his experience there also entails a more materialistic element which in turn, leads him to interpret the wealth and privilege of the Hall in a particular way.” (Jay 5). Explain this quote.
11.”The spiritual importance of the Zodiac, which Leo describes as his ‘favourite religion’ (Hartley 62) depends upon the female figure, the Virgin (or Maiden), and is therefore built on illusion.” (Jay 6) How important is Marian in Leo’s psycho-sexual development? How does she disrupt all his epistemological [Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion] structures? What event makes Leo try to intervene in Marian and Ted’s affair and why does he do this?
12.Why does Leo suffer a breakdown at the end? What elements contribute to this?
Source 2: Mulkeen, Anne. Wild Thyme, Winter Lightning: the Symbolic Novels of L P Hartley. London: Hamish
Hamilton,1974. Print.
<duneizum.ru/tuheh.pdf>
Questionnaire:
1.How is the book structured? What is Hartley’s aim in using such a structure?
2.”Leo’s childlike vision was unreal,.. Leo goes off [to Brandham Hall] totally unprepared.” (Mulkeen 2-3) Explain why this is so.
3.What does Leo think of the heat and why? What is the heat linked to?
4.What do Ted and Marian represent and why?
5.What’s the symbolism behind Leo’s destruction of the belladonna?
6.Which of the author’s favourite motifs do we find in The Go-Between and what does it mean?
7.What type of characters does Hartley favour in his fiction?
8.”Hartley’s novels are peculiarly experiential…” (Mulkeen 5). Explain what this means. What consequences does Leo’s experience have for him?
9.”…the choice of identities or ideals of masculinity open to Leo (to man) at the beginning of the twentieth century is inadequate…” (Mulkeen 5). Explain this quote.
10.”In the figure of Ted… Hartley explored one of his favourite themes: the duality of the natural,…”(Mulkeen 6). Explain this quotation.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete2nd group: Carolina Paduán, Delfina Cremona and Florencia Magnago.
ReplyDeleteSource 1: Jay, Betty. “Method and Myth in L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between.” Studies in Literature and Language. Vol. 5,
No 3,2012,pp.1-9. Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture. Jan 14 2017.
12.Why does Leo suffer a breakdown at the end? What elements contribute to this?
Mythical and linguistic structures in The Go-Between enable Leo to order his experiences, but these structures fail as a consequence of the events of the Summer and the exuberant child is lost. Leo goes through many complicated situations during his stay with the Maudsley family. The drama of witnessing, or even that this is swiftly followed by a disaster as it is the suicide of Ted Burguess that henceforth connects desire and death. Clearly, these events can be understood in terms of the trauma they induce since they overwhelm the boy and cannot be assimilated into his existing epistemological structures. However, Leo’s breakdown can be comprehended if it is also taken into account his relationship to the mythic and in particular those systems that enable him to not only know but also to master the world.
Source 2: Mulkeen, Anne. Wild Thyme, Winter Lightning: the Symbolic Novels of L P Hartley. London: Hamish
Hamilton,1974. Print.
Questionnaire:
1.How is the book structured? What is Hartley’s aim in using such a structure?
Hartley experiments with a new structure, one which can move back and forth between single and double vision and enable us to experience the dialectic between fact and imagination. The book is about seeing, about vision and double vision.
Its frame-story is the encounter of a 65 year-old bibliographer with his diary, the diary which tells the story of the summer of 1900 and the blighting of his life; the frame-story of 50 years in the life-span of this man. In the Epilogue we see the final comprehension of that blight, brought about by the reading of the diary.
In between there is the summer itself and the story of the love, the affair between a daughter of the upper classes -Marian Maudsley of Brandham Hall in Norfolk-, and an intensely physical, masculine young farmer -Ted Burges, the tenant of nearby Black Farms-. We see this love story through the eyes of a too innocent, too hopeful young Leo Colston, and seen now through the eyes of his soured present self. The story told by a 12-year-old Leo on a diary, now retold by a 65-year-old Leo over the content of that diary. The meaning of that summer and love affair, the meaning of life and love in general, all that looking through the two pairs of same eyes fifty years apart and so contrasting the their viewpoint.
This frame structure, the single/double pair of eyes through which the author has us look, is the means by which he makes his narrative into a romance.
The elder Leo, paging through the diary, recreates each scene for us with the freshness and wonder and the symbolising imagination of the young Leo, who saw the figures in the central triangle –Marian, Ted and Hugh- as gods and goddesses of the Zodiac. But the elder Leo is aware of the real facts; they were not such but very fallible humans playing a dangerous game with a little boy.
I'd like to add something to the answer to QUESTION :What he sees in the outhouse, Mrs. Maudsley’s hysteria and Ted’s suicide contribute to his breakdown/trauma/amnesia. It also brings about the collapse of his mythical method. This system -the zodiac- provided him with a way of mapping individuals onto a structure which contains and glorifies them, but it's inadequate for dealing with the reality of the events that happen as a result. Its magic and the reverence it inspires, as it enables Leo to comprehend the strange adult world of the Hall, are laid waste when the ‘key’ to the pattern – Marion as Virgin – no longer fits. Bringing about the collapse of Leo’s favourite religion, the primal (i.e. sexual) scene destroys Leo’s sense of the world and his place within it. Identity, desire and meaning are all destroyed.
DeleteThe answer above is for QUESTION 12.
DeleteFOR QUESTION 1:
DeleteEliot says that ‘We are tellers of tales...’ We try to give our confusing experiences a sense of coherence by arranging the episodes in our lives into stories. We aren’t being deceptive or telling lies. Through our personal myths, we discover what is true and meaningful in life and we compose a heroic narrative of the self, to live well, with unity and purpose. The Mythical Method looked to the past to find meaning and understanding to what has been lost or destroyed in the present. It’s satirical: it shows how much the present has fallen; comparative: highlighting similarities structurally; historically neutral to escape the present to a revived future, confused when fusing the realistic and phantasmagoric, ordering in its approach to morality and imaginative passion. It doesn’t offer a escape to a better past but an entry to a confusing present.
Critics connect TGB’s depiction of sexuality, class and gender to the symbolism with which Hartley is frequently identified. Such connections can be illuminated by considering T. S. Eliot’s mythical method: the narrator uses a personalised version of the ‘method’ advocated by Eliot. Associating his world to the Zodiac, Leo’s use of the method enables him to order and control his experience for a short time. Although he has the mastery he wants, the method makes him vulnerable to the dramas that unfold around him. Once the integrity of this mythic structure (Zodiac) is threatened, Leo’s own disintegration is assured. As he has absolute faith in the Zodiac, Leo recognises later a different mythic parallel at work in his life: his fate is twinned with that of Icarus. This figure demonstrates Hartley’s continuing concern with both method and myths and suggests that his narrative – like Leo – can offer the reader a critical perspective on the workings of each.
2.”Leo’s childlike vision was unreal,.. Leo goes off [to Brandham Hall] totally unprepared.” (Mulkeen 2-3) Explain why this is so.
ReplyDeleteLeo’s childlike vision was unreal, it idealised, it left no room for evil and so could be used and crushed by evil, and by the pride and passion within the child himself. At 12 Leo is on the threshold of seeing himself as a man; still in his imagination he wonders whether to identify himself with the Archer or with the Water of the Zodiac picture on his diary. And he is actually jealous of them both because of the Virgin, which is for him the “key to the whole pattern, the climax, the goddess” and in his imagination he likes to replace them and have the Virgen all to himself on the Zodiac.
Leo sees the 20th century as the dawn of a new Golden Age. His religion is the Zodiac in which the divinities are noted for their immortality and their immunity from harm and disability; and in Brandham Hall, he lives among the immortals. He thinks himself as a magician, able to control Nature and events; for him “two and two never make four, if he can make them five”.
Being the product of the narrow society of a typical British boy’s school and the son of an unorthodox and pacifist father, and a conventional and inexperienced mother; Leo goes off to Brandham Hall totally unprepared in the summer of 1900 to his first meeting with the great world and higher society. He is invited by his school friend Marcus Maudsley to spend his vacation at Brandham Hall. Wearing heavy, formal clothing, he is unprepared for the summer’s unusual heat, intoxicated with the beauty and elegance and ease of life among the country gentry. He is convinced that they are divine, immortal, like the zodiacal figures in his diary. But after catching up into their life and having being given a new summer suit, he feels equally powerful and glorious and invulnerable.
3.What does Leo think of the heat and why? What is the heat linked to?
The symbol of the heat pervades the entire atmosphere of the book. The heat had been an enemy for Leo since his experience of the fever of diphtheria but in the summer 1900 his encounter with the heat of Brandham Hall -which is everywhere- is felt as a liberating power with its own laws. In his green suit and in that exalted society, he wants to explore the heat, to feel its power and to be at one with it. He wants to be like a tree or a flower, with nothing between him and Nature (heat). Summer and its heat are the medium through which he loses his schoolboy abilities to distinguish between dreams and reality and without noticing it, he crosses the bridge from reality to dream: he is the master of Nature, of the heat, of the thermometer.
The symbol of the heat is linked to Ted, the water-carrier, the beautiful young farmer whose powerful body spoke to him of something he didn´t know. Leo thinks of “spooning” as a kind of game grown-ups played, and Ted explains to him that it is something Natural, because it is part of being in love.
When Leo first visits Ted at his farm, he feels all the heat of the afternoon to be concentrated where they stood. Ted represents heat, he represents nakedness, the body, the physical, the masculine, the colour of the corn between red and gold.
4.What do Ted and Marian represent and why?
ReplyDeleteTed represents Nature and complete oneness with Nature, he represents Hedonism: the kind of self-forgetfulness, self-glory, depending on nobody’s approval that their own.
Marian represents the ideal beauty, the Virgin of the Zodiac, she is his Maid Marian, his fairy-godmother.
She is also linked with the heat. She is also the heat, the powerful force to which Leo responds, which he wants to explore, embrace, control, but whose deadly power he does not comprehend.
Marian is carrying on a passionate affair with Ted and using Leo as an uncomprehending go-between. Leo do not understand the force that draws them together any more that he understands the force the draws the steel to the magnet in the thermometer he is always consulting; but he feels its strength and a suggestion of its beauty and mystery. Leo is Mercury of the Zodiac, the messenger among the planets, he is like the mercury of the thermometer, conveying, conducting heat; all that while remaining an alien element. The heat which pervades the novel is the heat of Human Nature –the overriding passion between Marian and Ted which dominated their lives-. Human Nature is like the heat, strong and beautiful but it can also dry up and kill.
This powerful force of Nature is for Leo an intruder in his world of the Zodiac. According to his idealised view of life, it should be an unbroken progression of blisses. Without this intrusive force (love affair/Nature/heat) he thinks there would have been no ridicule, every day would have been a highlight, and everything he saw would have ministered to his happiness. Convincing himself that he is restoring order, universal order, Leo, still uncomprehending, betrays Marian and Ted by changing the time for their meeting. They are later caught and tragedy follows.
5.What’s the symbolism behind Leo’s destruction of the belladonna?
Leo’s incomprehension of Marian and Ted’s behaviour results in him trying to “solve the problem”. He casts a spell over them using the Belladonna or nightshade plant, which represents two things: the ambiguity of sexuality, its beauty and deadliness, and the ambiguity of Marian and the situation in which she is involved, which is also beautiful but dangerous. The secret encounters between Marian and Ted are those of lovers, whose feelings are not only pure and true, but also prohibited. These opposed aspects of the situation and of the plant itself reflect what Leo undergoes at Brandham, as he is fascinated and scared by the lovers’ behaviour but he does not understand quite well the situation due to his innocence, and finally he is destroyed by it, “killing” and burying himself alive as he does to the Belladonna.
6.Which of the author’s favourite motifs do we find in The Go-Between and what does it mean?
Hartley’s favourite motif is that of human beings believing themselves as “self-perfectible”, without any faults or evil. Through Leo we can observe that this human tendency can be dangerous and destructive. Leo idealizes Brandham’s people, comparing them to gods, but the author shows us that there are evil in each human being and in Nature itself, and it should not be ignored or it could cause destruction. Leo, innocent and inexperienced, arrives at Brandham unprepared to face that world, which is so different to his, and as a result he is not able to deal with the situation. There is an implicit criticism of the education of those times, that believed some topics such as sex and violence were better not to be talked about, and there is also a criticism of those who ignore the consequences the twentieth century’s wars had in the society.
FOR QUESTION 5:
DeleteThe Belladona or nightshade plant – symbol both of the ambiguous Marian and the ambiguous mystery of sex in its beauty and deadliness – is destroyed by Leo, being a perfect example of the entire experience which he undersgoes at the Hall: his innocence, his unknowing but fascinated involvement in sexual intrigue, his terror and the unimagined destruction it brings, the living death and burial he brings upon himself. When Leo destroys the belladonna, there’s a strongly sexual symbolism involved: the encounter of the innocent Leo with the unsuspected but deadly force of Nature (and human nature in particular). It’s an example of the way in which Hartley can present complexities of inner experience through the detailed description of a symbol or analogy /comparison.
7.What type of characters does Hartley favour in his fiction?
ReplyDeleteHartley often uses in his novel a character called “go-between”, a middle class boy, man or sometimes woman, who acts as a kind of observer and see life in an innocent, humanistic way. This character is usually between two opposed ideas or situations, and if he/she chooses any of them, the consequences can be devastating. If a side is chosen, the results are so bad that the character ends up choosing the opposite to what he chose first. This allows the readers to question if something is wrong or not and to search the truth.
8.”Hartley’s novels are peculiarly experiential…” (Mulkeen 5). Explain what this means. What consequences does Leo’s experience have for him?
The quote refers to what has previously been mentioned. Hartley makes the readers think about what is happening and analyse it from different points of view. The readers are involved in the story in such a way that they start to question some ideas they have always had.
Leo is a go-between character. Due to his naivety, he chooses a side in which he experiences new and attractive situations and ideas he has never known, and he thinks the people who are involved on them are immortal and indestructible. When everything crashes down, resulting in the death of Ted and in the destruction of many lives, Leo switches sides and chooses the opposite option. He rejects all human experiences such as sex, love and even human relationships. He leaves aside his imagination and based his adult life in studying facts, which he believes to be more trustworthy than human nature.
FOR QUESTION 7:
DeleteThe consequences of the choice, whichever side it falls on, are usually so bad as to send the go-between to the opposite side, usually also bad – the end result being to enable us, if not him, to question whether something is not wrong with the world-view that sets up such a choice.
9.”…the choice of identities or ideals of masculinity open to Leo (to man) at the beginning of the twentieth century is inadequate…” (Mulkeen 5). Explain this quote.
ReplyDeleteThe Archer or the Water-carrier, Trimingham or Ted. Trimingham is the gentle, chivalrous representative of a dying tradition, bearing the scars of an ‘impersonal’ war.A complex symbol, he is compare to Janus, with two sides. Like the war, conflict and suffering for which in some ways he stands entities which can be evil, the result of passion and pride and to be scared of losing face, but which can also be good, the nurturer of strength, humility, self-discipline and compassion. Hugh stand for tradition and the warrior past, but his tradition is cut off from its roots and dying. On the other hand, Ted is seen as the ideal representation of life: the overwhelmingly, physical, natural, hedonistic.
10.”In the figure of Ted… Hartley explored one of his favourite themes: the duality of the natural,…”(Mulkeen 6). Explain this quotation.
It makes a special reference to the dual nature of sexual love. the heat which is all around young Leo, the passion between Marian and Ted in which he is caught up, are overpowering, dizzying. By letting the readers experience that heat and that passion through Leo’s eyes, Hartley lets the audience take an oddly fresh look at the mystery and intoxication of sexual attraction. Yet all the time that we are experiencing that intoxication and aware of the sheer physical power of beauty of a Ted and, obliquely, of the force of the passion between him and Marian.
FOR QUESTION 10:
DeleteI’d also add that with Ted, Hartley explores one of his favourite themes: the duality of the natural – Nature can be beautiful and at the same time, terrifying (in this novel, the focus is on the dual nature of sexual love). Thus the heat that overpowers everybody, that is all around, the heat symbolised by the passion between Ted and Marian. Leo is caught up in this passion and finds it dizzying, overpowering. By letting us experience the heat/passion through the eyes of a child, Hartley permits us to have a fresh look at the mystery and intoxication of sexual attraction (impossible to avoid, impossible to defend yourself). However, he makes it very clear that Ted’s physical power and beauty and the force of his passion can be dangerous, is potentially deadly ( the story of the death of the fifth Viscount Trimingham in a duel over his unfaithful way is a foreshadowing of the tragedy that is about to happen). Ted is identified with the sheaf for which the reaper will come back, he’s associated with the gun (with which he will kill himself) and there’s blood that he smears on Marian’s letter.
GROUP 2: I've made some comments throughout your post to help complete some of your answers. However, your answers are OK, all in all. Good job!
DeleteSource 1: Jay, Betty. “Method and Myth in L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between.”Studies in Literature and Language. Vol. 5,
ReplyDeleteNo 3,2012,pp.1-9. Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture. Jan 14 2017.
1.Read the definition below of T.S. Eliot’s mythic method. How does Hartley use this method in The Go-Between?
In The Go-Between, the character of Leo Colston makes use of the “mythical method” when writing the story in his journal. He is constantly making reference to the Zodiac, which helps him to organise and master his narration. However, in the course of time, this will cause him to be deeply involved in the dramas that surround him.
What is more, when the principles of Leo’s mythic structure are endangered, his individual dissolution is guaranteed. In other words, since he has such a strong conviction in the Zodiac, he cannot notice another mythic parallel at work in his life. For instance, in the novel there is a parallel between him and Icarus’s destiny, which manifests Hartley’s preoccupation with method and myth. Thus, it is evident that the story and the main character present to the reader a critical view on the working of each.
2.What is the brand new 20th Century for Leo Colston? How and Why is he disappointed in it?
Leo Coltson feels excitement about the “glorious destiny of the 20th century”, he strongly believes he is a man, when he is actually only a child of 12 years old. Moreover, his destiny will be determined by the events of his summer at Brandham Hall, which will destroy his awakening passion, hope and imagination. Eventually, he will become a solitary, disappointed and defeated man, since everything he dreamt of will never happen.
3.What makes Leo’s experience in the adult world of Brandham Hall so damaging in the end?
Apart from the fact that Leo faces terrible events for such a young age, what most damages him is that for all his life he will believe that passion and death are closely connected. Therefore, he will never allow himself to love anyone or even have a relationship with a woman, since he is so afraid of intimacy. What is more, he renounces to “the mythical method”, which will lead to the loss of every type of desire he could experiment. For instance, he never had sexual intercourse and probably he never will.
4. Leo says that he excels in “his undertaker’s art.” What does this view imply?
The events he stores in his mind as supressed memories traumatised him in such a way that he lost his childhood’s innocence and became a lonely and unhappy person. Before the terrible summer, he used to express all of his feelings and thoughts through the art of writing, which he in fact was pretty good at. However, due to the trauma he suffers, he stops writing and he works as a librarian, instead of becoming a writer. In other words, he does a job that is related with what he likes, but he could never be successful as a writer since he supressed his feelings, desires and somewhat his imagination and creativity, which are essential qualities for a professional writer.
5.”His aspiration leads Leo, in turn, to discover the terrible power of language…” (Jay 2). Explain what this quote means.
“His aspiration leads Leo, in turn, to discover the terrible power of language and to understand for himself, the consequences of a simple verbal transgression”. This quote refers to the fact that Leo (who wants to become a recognised writer), after his classmates have read his diary, uses code-making and code-breaking (black magic) in order to stop them from bullying him and to take revenge. In this way, he invents a sequence of curses by mixing figures, algebraical symbols and some Sanskrit characters. Consequently, he creates a great sense of malevolence, as he knows that his partners will read his diary and probably get cursed. Surprisingly, the magic apparently works, because Jenkins and Strode (the tormenters) have an accident in which the almost die. As a result, the bad treatment ends and Leo’s status raises. Moreover, this event makes Leo believe in the power of language.
FOR QUESTION 1:
DeleteEliot says that ‘We are tellers of tales...’ We try to give our confusing experiences a sense of coherence by arranging the episodes in our lives into stories. We aren’t being deceptive or telling lies. Through our personal myths, we discover what is true and meaningful in life and we compose a heroic narrative of the self, to live well, with unity and purpose. The Mythical Method looked to the past to find meaning and understanding to what has been lost or destroyed in the present. It’s satirical: it shows how much the present has fallen; comparative: highlighting similarities structurally; historically neutral to escape the present to a revived future, confused when fusing the realistic and phantasmagoric, ordering in its approach to morality and imaginative passion. It doesn’t offer a escape to a better past but an entry to a confusing present.
Critics connect TGB’s depiction of sexuality, class and gender to the symbolism with which Hartley is frequently identified. Such connections can be illuminated by considering T. S. Eliot’s mythical method: the narrator uses a personalised version of the ‘method’ advocated by Eliot. Associating his world to the Zodiac, Leo’s use of the method enables him to order and control his experience for a short time. Although he has the mastery he wants, the method makes him vulnerable to the dramas that unfold around him. Once the integrity of this mythic structure (Zodiac) is threatened, Leo’s own disintegration is assured. As he has absolute faith in the Zodiac, Leo recognises later a different mythic parallel at work in his life: his fate is twinned with that of Icarus. This figure demonstrates Hartley’s continuing concern with both method and myths and suggests that his narrative – like Leo – can offer the reader a critical perspective on the workings of each.
FOR QUESTION 2:
DeleteBecause Leo was born in the late Victorian era, he sees the turn of the century as ‘the dawn of a Golden Age,’ bringing with it a welcome movement away from an era ruined by sickness and death, that has left him fatherless. He’s excited because the 1900 will bring about his coming-of-age, he’ll be 13. His stay with the Maudsleys in Brandham Hall – 19 days in the summer of 1900 – will completely destroy Leo’s early passion, promise and creativity and lead him into a solitary life.
ReplyDelete6.”Doubly estranged, Leo will struggle to decipher the complex exchanges to which he is party.” (Jay 3) Why does Leo fail in all the strategies he uses (curses, letters to his mother, sabotage, Black magic)?
During one of his crisis at the Hall, Leo won’t be able to use his strategies effectively. For instance, he will fail in sending clear letters to his mother, asking her to call him to go back home; he will fail in preventing the lovers’ meeting (sabotage); and he will also fail in doing Black Magic. These things will happen because not only the past is considered foreign to him, but also the upper-class culture. Furthermore, Leo will face for the first time, the indecipherable (in his experience) adult world of desire, which he cannot understand. As a result, he will end up kind of blocked/shocked, so he will lose his faith in the symbolic structures (Zodiac), in his spells and his writing skills.
7.Although he’s somewhat a snob, Leo Colston is unmistakably middle-class. How does he try to fit in in Brandham Hall and who helps him?
Although Mrs. Maudsley and Marcus think that Leo belongs to a high social rank, because of his home address (‘Court Place’), he is unmistakably middle-class. Consequently, despite being a bit of a snobbish person, Leo is completely out of place at the Hall. He does not understand complex class relations and sexual exchanges, which puzzles him. Therefore, he depends on Marcus’s guidance as regards propriety to fit into the world of the social elite. As a result, their bond is strengthened, even more at school, where they share a schoolboy language, to which Leo has to adhere in order to be integrated. However, there is a limit regarding how far this guidance can go, for Leo will continuingly face concepts and mannerisms that are strange to him or difficult to understand, as the Hall is not where he belongs to.
8.“Unable to comprehend these elevated figures [the adults at the Hall], Leo instead chooses to associate them with one of the principle structures through which he gives ‘shape and significance’ to the world.” (Jay 4) Why can’t he understand the adults? Which structures does he use to give meaning to the world?
ReplyDeleteLeo is called into question by his inability to understand complex class relation and sexual exchanges at the Hall. But Leo is unable to comprehend the adult’s world because he does not belong there, besides, he is at the Hall due to a misunderstanding. The apparent grandeur of his home address, “Court Palace”, is probably what leads Mrs Maudsley to identify him as a suitable companion for her son. One consequence of his mistaken identity is that Leo is very much out of place at the Hall. For this reason, he depends on Marcus to guide him in questions of propriety. And, what further consolidates their relationship is shared an adherence to schoolboy language.
Alongside this language is a code, or system of ethics, which governs Leo’s actions when he is at school and to which he must adhere if he is to be integrated there. Caught between home, with its religious edicts and school, with its limited but studied acts of defiance, Leo invariably manages to meet the demands of both. Thus, he is able to say his daily prayers. Eventually, when he finds himself unable to decide upon a course of action (whether to peek at Marion’s unsealed letter), it is to this schoolboy code that Leo returns. In so doing, he uses a resource belonging to childhood in order to negotiate the problems that arise as a consequence of his forays into the adult world. Leo depends upon Marcus to guide him in matters relating to the Hall, so that he must better translate himself into this foreign realm, crossing from his middle-class origins into the world of the social elite.
Unable to comprehend these elevated figures, Leo instead chooses to associate them with one of the principle structures through which he gives ‘shape and significance’ to the world. The Zodiac epitomises Leo’s aspirations but equally, his belief that there is an over-riding order and structure to the world. Before his arrival at the Hall, the Zodiac is an object of contemplation for Leo, who privately debates which figure he most identifies with and might one day become: the Archer or the Water-Carrier. The structure and design of the Zodiac also mirror the nascent desires which Leo experiences at the Hall.
At its apex is the Virgin, or Maiden. From the outset, she represents for Leo “the key to the hole pattern, the climax, the coping-stone, the goddess”. Once at the Hall, this figure will be connected to Marian, the woman he will come to desire and who will inadvertently bring about the collapse of both the body and his elaborate epistemology.
While Leo is inspired by a Zodiacal ordering of the universe, his own movement through the celestial realm of the Hall is thwarted by genteel poverty. His mother’s decision to save money by skimping on his wardrobe means that Leo, attired in thick Norfolk suit, can do little but suffer and with it the unexpected heat-wave. Embarrassed by the “mild persecution” Leo is eventually rescued by Marian. Seemingly attuned to his predicament, nonetheless also exploits the proposed shopping trip for her own ends. The expedition which takes them in search of a new suit enables her to meet with her lover. Unaware of Marian’s opportunism, Leo is delighted by her intervention on his behalf. The shopping trip produces euphoria in Leo, who readily succumbs to Marian’s charm.
9. How is Leo both like and unlike Icarus/ˈɪkərəs/ [Greek Mythology-The son of Daedalus, who escaped from Crete using wings made by his father but was killed when he flew too near the sun and the wax attaching his wings melted]?
ReplyDeleteAlong with the sustained solar metaphor which runs throughout the narrative and connects – through intensifying heat – desire with danger. As yet acknowledge by Leo, it is Icarus, a figure who exists outside of the Zodiac, who will prove to be his truest and most convincing double.
Regardless of the numerous other guises in which Leo appears – magician, postman, Robin Hood, Mercury, Shylock – the novel insists that the best parallel for his life is to be found in the story of the flying and falling boy. In the prologue, when he conducts an imaginary dialogue with his boyish self, both Leos recognise in the story of Icarus, the arc of their shared narrative. As Leo says to the boy he once was; “Well, it was you who let me down, and I will tell you how. You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me” (ibid., p. 17). But unlike Icarus, whose flight is orchestrated by Daedalus, but whose advice to his son goes unheeded, Leo has no father to guide him. For both, Leo and his mythic double, however, the ecstasies induced by escape from the earth, render each one oblivious to the dangers ahead. In Leo’s case, the transformation he undergoes when in Marion’s company leaves him newly conscious of his “wings”, and is simply suggestive of “an emerging butterfly” (ibid., p. 44)
10.”Although Leo undergoes a sexual awakening at Norwich/ˈnɒrɪtʃ/, his experience there also entails a more materialistic element which in turn, leads him to interpret the wealth and privilege of the Hall in a particular way.” (Jay 5). Explain this quote.
ReplyDeleteAstonished by Marian’s largess during the shopping trip, Leo tries to understand what appears to be a “godlike” plenitude. With his recourse to the Zodiac Leo is able to “contemplate the incomprehensible” (ibid., p. 46). He begins to understand Marian’s elevated status because he sees how it might be encompassed by the more familiar design. At the same time, the Zodiac also helps Leo to place the elite group he encounters at the Hall and who prove to be equally vexing to him. In order to make sense of the world, Leo depends heavily upon what might be described as a structuralist principle; value and meaning are easier to grasp whenever the external world can be mapped onto a clearly demarcated taxonomy and hierarchy. This initial connection between very different manifestations of hierarchy, earthly and heavenly, is further underscored by Leo’s relationship to the aristocratic Triminghams. Even though his family has suffered a decline, Trimingham is, from Leo’s perspective, the living embodiment of an ancient lineage. The Trimingham line comes to represent a comforting historical continuity to Leo, even though his first perusal of their genealogy sees his attention drawn to the places where such order fails to cohere.
Although the missing Viscounts and anomalous names almost spoil the entire arrangement for Leo, eventually he will choose to overlook these flaws in order to avoid devaluing such a powerful system of signification. His subsequent realization that the ninth Viscount is not missing because he still lives fills him with joy.
As he claims kinship with this ancient order, by virtue of his stay at the Hall, Leo associates the genealogy, based as it is, on a careful delineation of a superior world, with his Zodiac. While Leo is able to discover the identity of the ninth Viscount, the other gap in the order – which Leo chooses to ignore – proves more ominous. The fifth Viscount is erased from the written record because of his wife’s indiscretion and the duel which claimed his life. Later, the unruly Marian will further challenge the authenticity of this historical record, her own indiscretion casting doubt over the continuity the Trimingham bloodline supposedly represents.
The presence of Trimingham inspired Leo to “act on a grander scale” (ibid., p. 69) and it is this that leads him to cross “the rainbow bridge from reality to dream” (ibid., p. 70). Even though Leo seems to undergo a symbolic rebirth at this juncture and gains admittance to the Zodiac as a result, it is evident that the question of where precisely he is located within this celestial universe goes unanswered. However, while Leo’s place in the Zodiac is not fixed, his admission into this alternative world is guaranteed by Trimingham himself. Assigned the role of Mercury, or “the messenger of the Gods” by him, a delighted Leo imagines himself “threading his way through the Zodiac, calling on one star after another” in “a delicious waking dream”.
11.”The spiritual importance of the Zodiac, which Leo describes as his ‘favourite religion’ (Hartley 62) depends upon the female figure, the Virgin (or Maiden), and is therefore built on illusion.” (Jay 6) How important is Marian in Leo’s psycho-sexual development? How does she disrupt all his epistemological [Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion] structures? What event makes Leo try to intervene in Marian and Ted’s affair and why does he do this?
ReplyDeleteOccupying the pinnacle of Leo’s Zodiac is “the Virgin, the one distinctively female figure in the galaxy”. As the sole female in this universe, the Virgin provides both a spiritual and a sexual dimension to the Zodiac. Unable to assign a precise meaning to “the goddess” (ibid., p. 7) – even before he encounters a living version in Marian – Leo understands only that she occupies the most crucial and elevated place in his structure. Indeed he does not seek to better articulate the significance of this figure beyond such an acknowledgement that her place is there.
Marian, of course, cannot be said to embody the corporeal purity that the Virgin symbolises. Her failure to adhere to the strict codes governing sexual morality and class loyalty mean that her actions will eventually turn the genealogical order etched in the murals, into a lie. The tenth Viscount will be the result of an illicit coupling between Marian and Ted.
As the inspiration for Leo’s first and only experience of desire, she is the focal point for his psycho-sexual development. However, Marian’s function extends beyond this dimension because as “the Goddess”, she provides both the “key” and “climax” to the Zodiac. Equally, Marian’s presence disrupts all of Leo’s epistemological structures, confounding him until the last.
Utterly spellbound by Marian, Leo becomes her messenger, relaying details of planned assignations between her and her lover, a man for whom Leo also develops an abiding affection. The lover’s increased dependency upon Leo and his errands ensure that all three are bound by the secrecy that surrounds their undertakings. Since Ted is aligned with the Water-carrier, Leo is uncertain how his path can legitimately be made to cross that of the more elevated Virgin. Given Marian’s exalted position in Leo’s imaginative structuring of the universe, the knowledge that she has been engaging in what is understood to be a base exchange with Ted threatens – at least initially – the order of his belief system.
At first glance, it seems that the letter cannot represent but a multiple challenge to Leo. It convinces him that he has been used by the lovers and ends all attempts to resolve the enigma of their exchange by resorting to fantasies which see Marian cast as advisor and rescuer to Ted. Instead of these grandiose visions of Virginal omnipotence, Leo discovers what he considers to be Marian’s “shame”. It is news of Marian’s planned betrothal to the Viscount, a match that seems natural given the superior position of each of them that leads to his attempts at intervention. Once Marian and Trimingham are paired, her continued relationship with Ted not only disturbs Leo’s sense of propriety by calling to mind those furtive post-card exchanges. it represents a transgression that threatens his beloved Zodiac and the aristocratic order alike. Astounded to discover that Marion wishes to continue with Ted despite her engagement to Trimingham, Leo tries first to extricate himself from his role as “postman” (ibid., p.104) before devising more elaborate plans to end their contact. Significantly, his relationships with both Marian and Ted unravel because of his failure to understand the idiom adopted by these representatives of the “foreign” (ibid., p. 5) adult world. Disarmed by Marian’s insults and confounded by Ted’s opacity, Leo feels himself to be rejected by them both.
Just as he shapes his narrative in order to appease his mother’s sense of righteousness, Leo intervenes to edit the verbal message given to Marian by Ted. By altering the time of their meeting he envisages that Marion’s impatience will be exhausted before Ted’s late arrival. This slight amendment sets in motion the catastrophic events which lead to the discovery of the lovers, in flagrante delicto, by Mrs Maudsley and Leo. Resorting once more to the Black magic that redeemed him at school, Leo searches for a spell that has “a symbolical appropriateness”, to the present moment of crisis. Although this spell seems to break the connection between Ted and Marian, it does so in an unexpected way, bringing about the destruction of Ted and perhaps even Leo himself.
ReplyDeleteStudents: Corgnali Daiana, Gutierrez Betiana and Serfaty Soledad
Your answers are very good. I've added a few comments here and there to complete some of them. Good job!
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