"Respectability"

Last week for the Winesburg, Ohio test I read a new chapter of the book that I hadn’t seen before. “Respectability” was a story that deeply resonated with me. The tale of Wash Williams, beginning with Anderson’s eerie description of the grotesque monkey to the finish of Wash’s account was haunting. To me, Anderson draws a parallel between Wash and the gorilla in his initial description. The gorilla is horribly ugly, brooding in a cage and isolated from the city - dwellers outside. It reminds the women who pass by of men - or a man. From this description arises a theme, one of gender differences and perception- the women are reminded of grotesque men they know and later Wash despises all women because of his wife’s actions. People often judge one another based one just one individual representative of a group, and this is very evident in the relationships between men and women in “Sophistication.”

He sees women only as zombies for lack of a better word, describing them as dead inside, soulless. They exist only to feed on the life forces of men as Wash’s wife cheated on him. I can see the connection between Wash and a terrible animal; it seemed significant to me that the monkey sat noiselessly in its cage as Wash festers silently in his hatred and isolation. He never expresses his feelings to his wife about her cheating, only holds it until he explodes - like a ferocious monkey let out of its cage. And they’re not cute. They’re dangerous. Pet monkeys mangle their owners all the time. They’re like the silent killer. I’m willing to bet a large sum of money that more people die each year in monkey attacks than in shark attacks.

In addition to this animalistic connection, “Respectability” is inundated with irony. Most prominent is the main character’s name: Wash. Anderson takes care to encrust Wash’s character with grime, both figurative and literal. Even the whites of his eyes are dirty according to the author (another white reference in Winesburg, like the white dress soiled by blood in “Paper Pills.” ) The grime of his appearance seems to suggest the crusty nature of his soul - like countless layers of filth, Wash surrounds himself constantly with feelings of ineffectuality, resentment, and then hatred.

The main character’s name, Wash, signifies cleansing. It hints at a renewal of life, of spring, of freshness. It also signifies baptism and purity of spirit. Wash’s character epitomizes the opposite: he builds up sin instead of washing it away. He is the very personification of moral and physical decay, of fetidness, and of an unclean spirit. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I am drawn to him, interested. I feel that this betrayal of my expectations is what makes Wash’s character so interesting. He’s like a ticking time bomb that I’m watching with bated breath. In these respects, “Respectability” for me was without a doubt one of the most fascinating short stories in Winesburg, Ohio.

Cunegonde as a Secondary Character

Cunegonde is one of Candide’s many companions throughout his adventure. She is the daughter of the baroness and is of very royal blood. Like many of Voltaire’s novel’s characters, Cunegonde in my opinion does not at first or even second glance have much depth. She begins like Candide – young, carefree, and lusty, secure in her youth, beauty, and wealth. Like Candide, she is exposed to the teachings of the bumbling Dr. Pangloss and becomes convinced of his worldview, that this is the best of all worlds- in other words, radical optimism. Candide shares these views at the beginning of the novel and throughout his miseries; in my opinion, he has not changed much by the end (thus, the quest he undertook seems ironic and pointless). Though he does assert more rationally, “We must cultivate our garden,” make our own luck in other words, Voltaire gives no other indication that his views on optimism have changed, other than some sparse and cautious questions he asks. During the worst times, he retains his sunny hope for the future. In having such a static character, Voltaire ridicules this philosophy.

So what does he mean to say to me with Cunegonde as a character? Taking up where we left off, Cunegonde endures seeing her lover booted from the castle. She witnesses her father and brother butchered and her mother torn apart. She his raped and tortured repeatedly, made to work as a slave, witnesses countless brutal events, and is brutalized herself beyond imagination.

So when we meet up with her again after all this, has her life perspective been altered as we would expect a normal person’s to? Voltaire does not go particularly in depth into this- is he saying that she doesn’t really count because she’s a woman? I don’t think so. I don’t really understand the story, to be honest, because I have trouble relating to novels with little internal voice and emotion. I did notice that Voltaire depicts short scenes in which Cunegonde briefly questions the things that have happened to her, the justness of her situation. To me, this indicates that Voltaire intends to characterize her as a person of low intelligence and of little consequence except in her relationship to the novel’s title character.

She appears to serve, for the most part, as a Holy Grail figure, an object of Candide’s seemingly never-ending quest. Cunegonde has all the qualities of a quest’s reward- she is beautiful, virtuous (at least in the beginning), and in love with the hero. He goes to all the corners of the world to find her. So what does it mean when they are finally reunited for the last time and she has become terribly ugly- fat and sunburned according to Candide? Does it mean that she never was that beautiful, that Candide simply built her up in his mind as a figure of unlimited beauty? And that after his trials, his prize has become meaningless? To me, this is yet another way that Candide’s quest can be seen as ironic.

But what if Cunegonde really did lose her beauty? Does she deserve it? How does it really affect her besides decreasing the likelihood of her being raped? Sure, Candide doesn’t really like her anymore but he is still determined to marry her. And that- is it really out of honor or is he simply unable to let go of the holy grail that he has put so much effort into finding, despite the fact that he doesn’t really want her anymore? Though Cunegonde herself doesn’t have much depth, her relationship to Candide makes her a significant figure in the novel.

Isolation in Winesburg, Ohio

I’ve always had some trouble “getting into” short stories or collections of short stories because I felt that I didn’t have time to become connected to the characters and really care about them. To me, Winesburg, Ohio has felt like a stepping stone between the novel and the short story that I truly enjoyed. Maybe “enjoyed” is an overstatement. It’s not an overstatement actually, just not the right word. I “connected with” many of the chapters in the sort of emotional literary way that I generally think of as good. But they were depressing. The theme of isolation that, I felt, pervaded the novel was made particularly striking to me through Anderson’s strong use of characterization.

Wing Biddlebaum, one of the first figures characterized by Anderson, it one of the most sad and isolated characters. He is separated from the rest of society, not by some defect of personality but by a physical ailment, his hands. They scare away other people, to the point that he seems to view them as their own entity out of his control. The second character, Doctor Reefy, also seems to live a very lonely life, only able to be expressive when he is alone, with his scraps of paper. This is very sad. Yes. Yes it is sad. It is sad that many people cannot seem to communicate outside the means they’re comfortable with, even if heavily intoxicated- not to say that Doctor Reefy is intoxicated. It’s just hypothetical. But he would probably still just resort to his pieces of paper.

One of the most touching stories to me was that of Tom, Elizabeth, and George Williard. Whenever Tom’s character was mentioned, I was reminded heavily of Willie Stark in demeanor; Tom is a brutish figure who is eager to make his way in politics, whose wife gradually becomes a diminished figure in their relationship and even their home. He has big dreams for his son, just as Willie has dreams for his son, Tom. Tom of Winesburg, Ohio heavily pushes a successful career for his son George. The story kept drawing my attention to Elizabeth’s lost life, the spark that she used to have but no longer possesses and suggests that she is trying to regain the spark vicariously through George. It was like a breath of relief to me when she didn’t kill her family, although the ending to their vignette wasn’t quite cheerful.

Alice Hindman’s story in “Adventure” was another fascinating but extremely depressing tale. The idea of her waiting for years and years for a man that I know will never return to her is almost inexpressibly sad and also sort of universal, as all of us at some time have been in a similar situation, unwilling to face the truth or desperate for some kind of closure. When she breaks down and acts out, I felt like I was looking into a mirror (except without the nudity). The isolation that permeates many of Anderson’s tales is a feeling that feels very relate able to me and likely many of his other readers.

Foster Connections

When I first picked up How to Read Literature Like A Professor, I was really skeptical about how much the book would enrich my reading. I have my own methods and ways of thinking, just like everyone else, and it was almost blasphemous to me to think that I would be told how to read by Thomas Foster. However, after a few initial adjustments, I grew to enjoy Foster’s book and appreciate the literary connections that were previously invisible to me (in addition to wanting to read nearly all the books he recommended in his reading list). With the Books on File project, I revisited Foster’s literary connections in relation to Candide by Voltaire and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Throughout the entirety of Candide, the title character is on one quest or another, whether to find his love Cunegonde or reclaim massive amounts of money. At the end of the novel, Candide wises up somewhat and insists that “we must cultivate our garden.” He has gained some perspective on his place in the world, finally giving up after multiple retries at gaining wealth and success. However, Voltaire includes no other indications that the blissfully ignorant man has changed his philosophy (which is not really his own philosophy, as it is taken directly from Pangloss’ own views due to Candide’s trusting nature). Therefore, it is my opinion that the quest symbolism in Candide is ironic because quests in novels exist on a base level to evolve the characters who undertake them, according to Foster (P 235). Because Candide undertook such a massive journey, beginning as a blissfully optimistic figure, I expected him to change significantly as a character. That he doesn’t is ironic and perhaps indicative of Voltaire’s views towards mankind, that it is ignorant, naive, and unwilling to change. When I reached the end of the book and thought, “what did that mean,” the book felt empty to me unless I considered Voltaire’s irony in having Candide undertake this quest.

In the project, I also drew connections with Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The link that stands out to me most between Hardy’s novel and How to Read Literature Like A Professor was Foster’s chapter on vampires and other literary monsters. In my opinion, Alec D’Urberville is a classic example of this. He’s dark, mysterious, lecherous of virginal young women, and satisfies his urges by using Tess, just as a vampire uses its victims. In the rape scene, Tess’ skin was “traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive (119)” – almost like a symbolic vampire bite. Vampires leave just the bodies of their victims behind- this seems to indicate that Alec has taken Tess’ spirit and what he leaves is an empty shell of a person, which raises new questions and layers of meaning for her subsequent actions. The connection of D’Urberville to a vampire, in my opinion, adds a richness and mysticism to Tess of the D’Urbervilles that would otherwise not have been present, so I appreciate the fact that Foster’s novel was so effective in illuminating literary connections that I will be able to use in all of my future reading.