Lecture 08 - Imagining the Future

Lecture 8: Imagining the Future
English 192
Summer 2013
15 August 2013
Miss Prism. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel,
Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
Cecily. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you
are! I hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end
happily. They depress me so much.
Miss Prism. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That
is what Fiction means.
Cecily. I suppose so. But it seems very unfair.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Second Act

A few questions about papers
● Structure?
● Formatting & grammar?
● Relation to the paper prompts?
● Anything else?

The meaning of life: two views
“the duty and purpose of man in this world is to
fight unceasingly against the evils that Tribulation
had loosed upon us.” (41)
Aunt Harriet: “Henry will turn me out, I think. He’ll
find another wife, how can give him proper
children. There’ll be nothing – nothing in the world
for me – nothing.” (71)
An unnamed Fringes man: “They [the Old People]
weren’t God’s last word like they thought: God
doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be
dead. But He isn’t dead: and He changes and
grows, like everything that’s alive.” (153)

Women’s opportunities
Anne: “I’m a woman – I’ve a right to marry and
have children.” (91)
Anne: “I’ve got Alan – and you want me to waste
years waiting for someone who may never come
– or whom I may hate if he does. You want me to
give up Alan, and risk being cheated of
everything. Well, I don’t intend to. […] I’ve as
much right to get what I can out of life as anyone
else. […] What is going to happen to the other
two then – the two who’ll be on the outside?
They won’t be in any group. Do you mean they
ought to be cheated out of everything?” (92)

Uncle Axel: “But a woman who is in love is a
different proposition. She lives in a world where
all the old perspectives have altered. She is
blinkered, single-purposed, undependable in
other matters. She will sacrifice anything,
including herself, to one loyalty. For her, that is
quite logical; for everyone else it looks not quite
sane; socially it is dangerous.” (95)
“Anne’s suicide was a tragedy, but no one saw
any mystery about it. A young wife, pregnant
with her first child, thrown off her mental
balance by the shock of losing her husband in
such circumstances; it was a lamentable result,
but understandable.” (102)

“Aunt Harriet had been more than ready to
break the Purity Laws. So had Sophie’s mother.
It made one wonder how many mothers there
might be who were turning a blind eye towards
matters that did not actually infringe the
Definition of the True Image – and perhaps to
things that did infringe it, if the inspector could
be dodged.” (126)

Women’s virtue
Joseph, to Harriet: “You have much to pray for.
Not only have you blasphemed by producing a
false image, but in your arrogance you have set
yourself against the law, and sinned in intent.”
(72-73)
“My father’s voice went on explaining about the
need for Purity in thought as well as in heart
and conduct, and its very particular importance
to women.” (74)

“Petra remained unabashed. ‘She [the woman from
Sealand] says I’ll get better still if I work at it, and then
when I grow up I must have babies who can make
strong think-pictures, too.” (145)
Gordon, the “spider-man”: “this one [Rosalind] can
have children. I’ve had a fancy for some children a long
time now – even if they do happen to take after their
father a bit.” (163)
Sophie: “He [Gordon]’s kind to me, David. He’s fond of
me. You’ve got to have as little as I have to know how
much that means. […] I’d have given him babies gladly,
if I could.” (167)
Sophie: “Oh, God, what’s the use? If he weren’t in love
with you what good would I be to him – like this?” (177)

Figures of contemporary problems
The Sealand woman: “They [the Old People]
had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-
operate constructively in small units; but only
destructively in large units. They aspired
greedily, and then refused to face the
responsibilities they had created. They created
vast problems, and then buried their heads in
the sands of idle faith. There was, you see, no
real communication, no understanding between
them.” (156)

The “magic bullet” fantasy
The Sealand Woman: “They [the Old People]
could never have succeeded. If they had not
brought down Tribulation which all but
destroyed them; then they would have bred
with the carelessness of animals until they had
reduced themselves to poverty and misery, and
ultimately to starvation and barbarism. One way
or another, they were foredoomed because
they were an inadequate species.” (157)

The fantasy of perfect communion
“‘But Tribulation –’ I began.
“Uncle Axel moved impatiently. ‘A word,’ he
said, ‘a rusted mirror, reflecting nothing. It’d do
the preachers some good to see it.” (78-79)
“What, then, could there be for any of us tied
closely to a half-dumb ‘normal’ who can never
at best make more than a clever guess at
anyone else’s feelings or thoughts? Nothing but
prolonged unhappiness and frustration.” (93)

Petra’s repetition of the Sealand woman:
“people who can only talk with words have
something missing. She says we ought to be
sorry for them because, however old they grow,
they’ll never be able to understand one another
much better. They’ll have to be one-at-a-times
always, never think-togethers.” (145-46)
“And we don’t have to flounder among the
shortcomings of words; it is difficult for us to
falsify or pretend a thought even if we want to;
on the other hand, it is almost impossible for us
to misunderstand one another.” (93)

The fantasy of progressive triumph
The unnamed Fringes man: “It’s your parts
where the old Devil’s hanging on and looking
after his own. Arrogant, they are. The true
image, and all that. … Want to be like the Old
People. Tribulation hasn’t taught ’em a thing.
…” (153)
The Sealand woman: “We are the New People
– your kind of people. The people who can
think-together. We’re the people who are going
to build a new kind of world – different from the
Old People’s world, and from the savages’.”
(156)

“The Old People brought down Tribulation, and
were broken into fragments by it. Your father
and his kind are a part of those fragments.
They have become history without being aware
of it. They are determined still that there is a
final form to defend: soon they will attain the
stability they strive for, in the only form it is
granted – a place among the fossils. …” (182)
“We have a new world to conquer: they have
only a lost cause to lose.” (183)

A brief comment about the ending
Deus ex machina [day-uus eks mak-ina]. The “god
from a machine” who was lowered on to the stage by
mechanical contrivance in some ancient Greek plays
(notably those of Euripides) to solve the problems of
the plot at a stroke.[...] The term is now used
pejoratively for any improbable or unexpected
contrivance by which an author resolves the
complications of the plot in a play or novel, and which
has not been convincingly prepared for in the preceding
action: the discovery of a lost will was a favourite resort
of Victorian novelists.
— The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

Lecture 08 - Imagining the Future

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Lecture 08 - Imagining the Future