by Aimee Levesque (Buffalo State College)
Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina is an amatory work of fiction that follows a young woman (Fantomina, Celia, Widow Bloomer, Incognita) of distinguished birth who, through the use of masquerade, expresses her sexuality and wins the man of her desires, Beauplaisir. By successfully overturning eighteenth-century literary conventions and societal expectations of women, Haywood strips the power of passion and desire away from men and gives it to their female counterparts to do with as they please. Thus, Haywood illuminates the double standard that exists in the eighteenth century regarding matters of the heart.
The female character in Fantomina is dangerously inexperienced. Haywood writes that she is “young, a Stranger to the World, and consequently to the Dangers of it” (41). Yet she also comes across as being quite confident. She initiates interactions with Beauplaisir and is a force to be reckoned with as she shrewdly gains his affections four separate times through the anonymity of disguise. Sadly, however, Beauplaisir tires of Fantomina on each occasion and lives up to the societal stereotype of the male rake that turns women into tragic heroines.
There are times in the narrative when one might find the idea of Fantomina’s numerous transformations completely unbelievable. Interestingly, Haywood does little to ensure believability beyond stating that Fantomina is a master at metamorphosis and although there are those who swear that, “no Disguise could hinder them from knowing a Woman they had once enjoy’d…she was so admirably skill’d in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what face she pleas’d” (57). Ultimately whether or not one accepts Fantomina’s disguises in love, in a time when literary realism has not yet developed, is in the hands of each reader.
Although I found Fantomina to be charmingly mischievous and unconventional, I admittedly had my own issues with the believability of the text and often found myself wondering how Fantomina could have successfully navigated the maze of multiplicity without making a mistake on at least one occasion – a small slip of exposure, one wrong accent, or an absent-minded choice of dress. Perhaps she did fail at some point that we are not told of by Haywood I have often wondered if Beauplaisir himself actually knew of Fantomina’s true identity and, rather than end the conquest he enjoyed, played ignorant and continued to take advantage of her until she was pregnant. It would be easy for him to deny paternity and although doing so would end this game of a practiced Libertine, there were surely more games to play and more women to conquer. I am not sure if I would stretch the narrative this much, but thoughtful scenarios such as these allow for the continued exploration of desire and deception in eighteenth-century literature.
The unconventional ending of Fantomina is another aspect of the novel worth considering. When the female protagonist is sent away to live in a French Monastery because of her indiscretions, there appears to be an unexpected freedom that is given to her by her mother. Although the blame of conquest and the fault of her subsequent pregnancy are put entirely upon Fantomina, her departure does not signal the onset of harsh consequences. Rather, the doors of opportunity are opened for a young girl who has made a few mistakes along the way toward maturity. Hope remains that Fantomina will learn from her mistakes and make a new life for herself in France. We may imagine that a girl like Fantomina, who is so entrenched in fantasy and disguise, will never find happiness in marriage. Perhaps she will find more amorous intrigue in France. The uncertainty of Fantomina’s future is, to some extent, exciting by comparison to the ends of other transgressive heroines. By the end of the eighteenth century, a prototypical femme fatale will emerge in Gothic literature, one who if placed in the same situation as Fantomina, might suffer a fate of physical brutality or death.
After reading Fantomina, I continue to wonder about the following: Why does Haywood construct a scenario in which a woman of distinguished birth chooses to step into the role of a prostitute as a way to get a man. Surely, every eighteenth-century woman knew that prostitution would not be conducive to true love and finding a husband. Secondly, are readers meant to see the first sexual encounter between Fantomina and Beauplaisir as a rape because of her indecision, her tears and her lamentations before, during and after the act while he is described as being “bold” and “resolute” (46)? If we do consider the first encounter rape, then what does Fantomina’s continued pursuit of Beauplaisir say about the quality of her character? And of the status of women in eighteenth-century society?
I am also intrigued by Fantomina’s class “jumping:” she goes from gentlewoman to prostitute, then maid to widow and finally, to Lady. While each of these roles illuminate feminine power in each of their classes, what does Fantomina’s reversal of social status – high to low to high status again – imply about how she sees the world in which she lives. Finally, although cross-dressing and role-playing are visual tricks meant to entice Beauplaisir, what does their use in the novel imply about eighteenth-century society?
Works Cited
Haywood, Eliza. Fantomina and Other Works. Eds. Alexander Pettit, Margaret Case Croskery, and Anna C. Patchias. Ontario: Broadview Press, Ltd. 2004
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Woman Power in Fantomina
by Anita Nicholson (Cornell)
Contrary to its putatively gender-normalizing conclusion, Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina generates a narrative of sexual subversion and female authority. The repetitive occurrence of female protagonists inverting gender hegemonies from the prostitute to Fantomina’s mother to the convent, produces a ‘gynocratic’, or woman-centered novel. When juxtaposed alongside the nameless, beguiled admirers and the named, yet four-flushed BeauPlaisir, the narrative constructs a hierarchy of female over male, contradicting the possibility of its reinstating archetypal gender roles through its questionable inclusion of assault. While acknowledging seemingly anti-feminist sections, this essay will articulate how Haywood’s text empowers its atypical heroine through Haywood’s syntax and plot, her covert theme of naming and the conclusion itself. Despite her antithetical ideologies, Haywood remains centuries ahead while incorporating the very themes of contemporary pop culture: Woman Power.
The novel’s opening section establishes a socially inverted, female-oriented paradigm through the novel’s architecture, Fantomina’s authorial perspective and her gender-based assumptions. By deliberately situating Fantomina above the male aristocracy, through her box location, Haywood spatially partitions the PlayHouse a la the Panopticon where Fantomina serves as judging Syndic above the pit-seated male audience. Haywood’s syntax iteratively casts men as naïve tools subject to Fantomina’s scrutinizing eye. Fantomina articulates her ‘contempt’ of the men while labeling them as ‘depraved’ (227). By writing the narrative from her protagonist’s perspective, Haywood furthers the dichotomy of female as subject and male as object while infusing her discourse with chess-based imagery by making Fantomina a queen and the males her pawns.
The novel’s female authority continues through its inversion of sexual commodification. Considering Haywood’s Fantomina is ’accountable to no body’, the syntax linguistically neutralizes the male audience’s power. While accountability implies responsibility for one’s conduct, the definition also means to ‘be computed’ or ‘chargeable’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Fantomina, lacking accountability, lacks ‘chargeability’ or ‘purchasable-ity’. Additionally, despite the ‘crowd of purchasers’ endeavoring to ‘out-bid’ themselves on her nameless guise and initially hidden face, they unknowingly invert the very structure they seek to instate in offering material goods with no promise on a return.
The novel iteratively obsesses over gender politics by repeatedly authenticating female power. In the opening, Fantomina is “a little diverted” in giving “disappointment” to so many, receives a “world of satisfaction” in engaging yet refusing BeauPlaisir (229), and pursues her lover in the hopes of ‘compelling’ him to do what she wished (234). Additionally, keeping 18th century syntax in mind, I find it interesting Haywood continuously capitalizes ‘power’ and woman’, while endlessly repeating both terms. Interestingly, Fantomina’s dominance seems incomplete if enacted upon the few, the low and the female; yet, satiated when enacted upon the masses, the many, and the male. The reoccurrence of the ‘observer’ ideology harkens to the panopticon, creating a dichotomy of intendant and intended: "observing the surprise he would be in to find himself refused by a woman who he supposed granted her favours without exception' again woman capitalized” (229). It is the low subverting the high, the female overcoming the male and the prostitute thwarting the client. However, Haywood’s validation of female power through sexuality, troublingly parallels yet possibly inverts the assault Fantomina already experienced at BeauPlaisir’s hands.
While Fantomina’s masquerade implies muted sexual power as Lady_ , in stepping outside herself she becomes more herself and in withholding her name she retains her power through her mutability. Her face and flesh remain fluid and easily shift from the facially wrapped Fantomina to the innocent-seeming Celia to the insatiable Widow Bloomer to the mythic masked Incognita, a la Psyche. In possessing multiple names, she possesses multiple ranks, titles and distinctions while maintaining her inverted gendered hierarchy: she "forebore discovering her true Name" so "he should not have it in his Power to touch her Character" (231). She remains ephemeral, untouchable and uncontainable while always denying BeauPlaisir the knowledge of her identity. To name is to own and Fantomina remains unowned.
Additionally, her initial nom-de-plume, Fantomina, implies ‘Phantom Pantomime’. In invoking the image of a shadow doppelganger, she creates a woman who she hides behind to become herself. In externally reflecting her internal desires, she deflects her known identity through linguistic difficulties while “hearing herself praised” in “the person of another”. Despite her muffles, wraps and veils, her admirers recognize her: some cried 'she is like' and named 'her own name' (227). However, the simile ‘is like’ in implying congruency also entails opposition. In seeming ‘like’ herself she cannot be, which forms a rhetorical masquerade. In stepping outside her identity, she retains her body, thoughts and form; but, in acting upon her sexual desires, she is assumed different from who she is. Ironically, her desire saves her reputation over the masquerade itself.
Although the novel’s ending seemingly reiterates 18th century sexual hegemonies, it is the female body who eventually captures, nullifies and suppresses Fantomina’s sexuality. It is her mother, a ‘woman of penetration’, who eventually penetrates her disguise: "though she would easily have found Means to have screened even this from the Knowledge of the World had she been at liberty to have acted with the same unquestionable Authority over herself" (246). It is the birth of her daughter that finally ‘invades’ her body and nullifies her guise by distorting her features (246). Finally, it is the nunnery, the Catholic representation of female authority, that imprisons and contains her.
Despite my rushed treatment of this novel, it is highly feminist including its allusion to Cupid & Psyche and to Haywood’s own novel ‘Love in Excess’. Additionally, from the cunning Fantomina exhibits in securing her safety: "she might with more security to her honor entertain him a t a place where she was mistress” (229), her refusal “to be treated at [her] own lodgings” (230) and her repudiation in granting him the “Power to touch her character” (231), all scream Girl Power. Yet, admittedly, I find Fantomina’s rape at BeauPlaisir’s hands and Haywood’s categorization of it as ‘ruinous pleasure’, questionable. Additionally, although Fantomina initially served as the author of her own story, Haywood disrupts the narrative by containing her sexuality despite the matriarchal ending. While I congratulate myself in avoiding referencing Terry Castle, it is the iterative use of the masquerade that enables Haywood to temporarily suspend sexual paradigms and craft a feminist text based on the manifestation of sexual desires through the carnival.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Fantomina Discussion Will Begin on December 17th
On December 17th, please join graduate students Aimee Levesque (Buffalo State College), Anita Nicholson (Cornell), and Dena Rosenberg (NYU) for a discussion of Eliza Haywood's Fantomina; Or, Love in a Maze (1725). Haywood's texts is available from UPenn's Celebration of Women Writers or in affordable hard copy edition from Broadview Press.
***
The Samuel Richardson Society will host a February reading of Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Because there is no online edition of Richardson's novel, you might want to plan early for this reading. Rush to your library and check out a copy, or consider requesting a copy of Jocelyn Harris's edition from the University of Otaga. Information about how to go about this is available here.
*ADDENDUM: Regretfully, Dena Rosenberg will be unable to participate in the group discussion of Fantomina. Instead, look for an essay by Emily Friedman (University of Missouri)*
Monday, October 15, 2007
Imitating Jesus and Socrates: Franklin as Gramsci’s Organic Intellectual
by Ami Blue, Eastern Kentucky University
In “The Formation of the Intellectuals,” Marxist Antonio Gramsci describes the two scenarios from which the world’s intellectuals emerge. Although Gramsci believes that all men can be intellectuals, few men play the role of professional intellectual in economic, social, or political arenas. Benjamin Franklin was crafted from birth by his society—namely his father—to become an American organic intellectual—born and raised by a specific society to affect an economical, social, or political change (Gramsci 1138). Gramsci lists the necessary traits and accomplishments of an organic intellectual in any one of these three discourses, and Franklin emerges not as one—a mere mortal organic intellectual—but as all three types in the more formative early years of his record.
In the economic realm, Gramsci’s organic intellectual takes the form of the capitalist entrepreneur (1138). Franklin exposes his capitalistic endeavors by slickly maneuvering himself into the Pennsylvania Assembly printer’s job (66) and even divulging his interests in the “profitability” of moving up in the political game (98). Franklin’s entrepreneurial efforts began with his part ownership of the newspaper with Meredith, soon followed by his opening his own stationer’s shop (67, 69).
Socially, Gramsci’s ideal organic intellectual is an industrial technician. Franklin exhibits early signs of industry in redesigning the street lamps (118-119), but he also repeatedly comments on his own industry (37, 39, 65, and 69; #6 on the big 13, p. 83) and then marries a woman “as much dispos’d to industry and frugality as myself” (80). Moreover, Franklin’s multitudinous inventions place him among America’s most memorable and famous industrial technicians.
Politically, Franklin secured work printing paper currency (68) and became increasingly involved in state and local political matters (72, 78). In a more service-oriented capacity, he instigated creating America’s first library (72) and restructured and regulated the “city watch,” or fire workers’ union (99-100). These were among the first of his myriad political actions, too plentiful to name here.
Gramsci outlines copious desirable intellectual traits, including capacity for direction, intellect, and assuming the role of confidant to investors and customers. In his letter, Vaughn points to Franklin’s affect on “the future of great men,” as though Franklin hadn’t spent much of his life directing the economical, social, and political decisions of such a crowd (74). As far as intellectual capacity, the book speaks for itself, but Franklin also actively sought intellectual stimulation, thus forming Junto (63). He also enjoyed lifelong patronage from customers (66) and support of investors (67).
Vaughn writes to Franklin, “Your account of yourself . . . will show that you are ashamed of no origin” (75). Gramsci would consider this the final mark of an organic intellectual: one who comes from the place he later restructures politically, economically, or socially—as if shepherded from birth by a diligent father unwilling to see his brilliant son lost at sea. Gramsci adds that only the “elite” among entrepreneurs can organize “society in general” because he will want to favor his own class. Franklin’s love for industry, frugality, and his egalitarian worldview wouldn’t permit him to reserve benefits for only his own; Vaughn says as much when he accredits Franklin with proving “how little necessary all origin is to happiness, virtue, or greatness” (75).
Gramsci provides stricter standards for the elitist organic intellectuals, and Franklin exceeds them all. Here are some questions that arise from all of this in terms of discussion: Considering the upcoming politically charged election and Franklin’s success as an organic intellectual, which of Franklin’s character traits should social activists adopt when hoping to inspire social, political, or economic change? Which of those persons running for President measure closest to Franklin, and into what organic intellectual role(s) does she/he fit? For whom would Franklin vote? What textual evidence affirms your conclusion?
Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: MacMillian Pub. Co., Inc: 1962.
Gramsci, Antonio. “The Formation of the Intellectuals.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton (2001): 1138-1143.
In “The Formation of the Intellectuals,” Marxist Antonio Gramsci describes the two scenarios from which the world’s intellectuals emerge. Although Gramsci believes that all men can be intellectuals, few men play the role of professional intellectual in economic, social, or political arenas. Benjamin Franklin was crafted from birth by his society—namely his father—to become an American organic intellectual—born and raised by a specific society to affect an economical, social, or political change (Gramsci 1138). Gramsci lists the necessary traits and accomplishments of an organic intellectual in any one of these three discourses, and Franklin emerges not as one—a mere mortal organic intellectual—but as all three types in the more formative early years of his record.
In the economic realm, Gramsci’s organic intellectual takes the form of the capitalist entrepreneur (1138). Franklin exposes his capitalistic endeavors by slickly maneuvering himself into the Pennsylvania Assembly printer’s job (66) and even divulging his interests in the “profitability” of moving up in the political game (98). Franklin’s entrepreneurial efforts began with his part ownership of the newspaper with Meredith, soon followed by his opening his own stationer’s shop (67, 69).
Socially, Gramsci’s ideal organic intellectual is an industrial technician. Franklin exhibits early signs of industry in redesigning the street lamps (118-119), but he also repeatedly comments on his own industry (37, 39, 65, and 69; #6 on the big 13, p. 83) and then marries a woman “as much dispos’d to industry and frugality as myself” (80). Moreover, Franklin’s multitudinous inventions place him among America’s most memorable and famous industrial technicians.
Politically, Franklin secured work printing paper currency (68) and became increasingly involved in state and local political matters (72, 78). In a more service-oriented capacity, he instigated creating America’s first library (72) and restructured and regulated the “city watch,” or fire workers’ union (99-100). These were among the first of his myriad political actions, too plentiful to name here.
Gramsci outlines copious desirable intellectual traits, including capacity for direction, intellect, and assuming the role of confidant to investors and customers. In his letter, Vaughn points to Franklin’s affect on “the future of great men,” as though Franklin hadn’t spent much of his life directing the economical, social, and political decisions of such a crowd (74). As far as intellectual capacity, the book speaks for itself, but Franklin also actively sought intellectual stimulation, thus forming Junto (63). He also enjoyed lifelong patronage from customers (66) and support of investors (67).
Vaughn writes to Franklin, “Your account of yourself . . . will show that you are ashamed of no origin” (75). Gramsci would consider this the final mark of an organic intellectual: one who comes from the place he later restructures politically, economically, or socially—as if shepherded from birth by a diligent father unwilling to see his brilliant son lost at sea. Gramsci adds that only the “elite” among entrepreneurs can organize “society in general” because he will want to favor his own class. Franklin’s love for industry, frugality, and his egalitarian worldview wouldn’t permit him to reserve benefits for only his own; Vaughn says as much when he accredits Franklin with proving “how little necessary all origin is to happiness, virtue, or greatness” (75).
Gramsci provides stricter standards for the elitist organic intellectuals, and Franklin exceeds them all. Here are some questions that arise from all of this in terms of discussion: Considering the upcoming politically charged election and Franklin’s success as an organic intellectual, which of Franklin’s character traits should social activists adopt when hoping to inspire social, political, or economic change? Which of those persons running for President measure closest to Franklin, and into what organic intellectual role(s) does she/he fit? For whom would Franklin vote? What textual evidence affirms your conclusion?
Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: MacMillian Pub. Co., Inc: 1962.
Gramsci, Antonio. “The Formation of the Intellectuals.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton (2001): 1138-1143.
Social Immobility: Franklin’s Autobiography and Class-Based Humor
by Teresa Coronado, University of Oregon
Among other readings, Franklin’s Autobiography has been read as a tract promoting the American Dream. I would argue that Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is about the suppression of the individual self. Specifically, Franklin thwarts class mobility for those who do not possess Franklin’s performative skills. While the text offers how-to advice on transcending class, this advice also imposes a workman-like rigidity that cannot successfully imitate the flexibility of Franklin’s own performance of class transcendence. In the Autobiography, Franklin is a fluid caricature of a self; however, he creates an automated system of representation for others—prompting him to laugh at those who unbendingly follow his lead.
The idea of rigidity, fluidity, elasticity and inelasticity is developed from Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter which insists that: “The laughable element [. . .] consists of a certain mechanical inelasticity, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being” (Bergson 10). In his Autobiography, Franklin is pliable; in fact, he is so adaptable that careers have been made in arguing who the “real” Franklin was, especially in his Autobiography. However, his Autobiography does not offer advice on pliability. Instead, it offers advice on an automatism that renders its follower ridiculous.
Franklin’s mutability materializes through his comic masks and performances of class. As Robert F. Sayre remarks, “Franklin readily slipped into poses in the Autobiography because he had lived in a fluid world. His day-to-day identities approached poses” (Sayre 23). These poses, I argue, are the poses of class—performances, as it were, he learns from his well-bred parentage. Franklin, who can trace his lineage to established, respected, although not wealthy, Puritan stock, is mythically understood to have come from great poverty and a lower-class background. However, in his upbringing, Franklin was brought up in what we would now classify as middle-class values. Franklin’s father, for example, “always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life” (24). In this manner, Franklin says, “I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me” (24). Rather than learning to care about the types of foods placed before him on the table, Franklin learns the art of conversation—an art that would help him throughout his life. In the homespun revolutionary era, only the aristocrats could really stand out with visible physical class markers, such as clothes and home goods—everyone else relied on the acting out of valued qualities such as conversation and mannerisms. Such acting out—or imitation—of middling sort qualities, such as table conversation, both undermines and supports class hierarchy. Franklin, who can do both, shows the weakness of structure while aspiring to strengthen it with his own admittance.
Franklin is, as aforementioned, elastic in his adaptability to class performance—the humor is in the inelasticity implied in the performance of others who attempt to follow his lead. Colleen Terrell argues that “Franklin’s detailed account of his labors in the art of virtue suggests that the construction of the self presents as a great technical challenge, demands as great a skill, as the manufacture of a time-piece. And indeed, the two crafts had identical goals: the regulation of behavior” (Terrell 116). Further, Terrell finds, “where the Autobiography encodes an iterable process, circulating a representative pattern for the further reproduction of citizens in the Franklinian mold, the text itself becomes a machine for the manufacture of virtue” (Terrell 132). Thus, Franklin’s elasticity becomes the mechanization for the inelasticity of others—by Bergson’s reckoning, a laughable element in any human being.
One of the best examples of performance is in Franklin’s own description of his learning process. His first writings were transcripts of the Spectator—a series of mechanical reproductions that helped Franklin learn the style of more learned men. After copying and recopying different articles from the Spectator, Franklin found that “by comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and corrected them” (29). This act of copying and correcting is as, Jennifer T. Kennedy argues, “an act of practiced forgetfulness” (221). Kennedy writes that Franklin trained “his memory to remember the words of the Spectator as if they were his own, to make himself, in short, a spectator of his own mind” (Kennedy 221). Franklin writes of his experiment that he sometimes “had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious” (29). This exercise is, as Kennedy says, “intentional mortification” of one’s own memory (221). Franklin writes that he has, in effect, suppressed his memory—but he counters this by, in fact, remembering the process by which this was done.
Franklin may have improved his writing through imitation, but he recognizes this as imitation. In teaching others to perform this imitation, Franklin suggests that others subsume their memory, without giving them the tools to remember this erasure—a function of becoming inelastic. Franklin argues that “those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, tho’ they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible” (101), but any person who tries this is already educated and of Franklin’s class. Writing requires an education, and the writing that Franklin is arguing for—through reading and copying—requires both the physical tools for the attempt as well as the leisure time to pursue such an endeavor. In encouraging this type of imitation and forgetfulness, Franklin encourages the absorption of self into a rigid model based upon a non-existent mold. Class performance is imitation, and Franklin encourages this performance to be as rigid and, therefore, laughable, as possible. The Autobiography does not allow for class mobility—Franklin closes that door behind him.
Works Cited
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. London: Macmillan, 1911.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography and Other Writings. Ed. L. Jesse Lemisch. Afterword by Carla Mulford. New York: Signet-Putnam, 2001.
Goloboy, Jennifer L. “The Early American Middle Class.” Journal of the Early Republic 25 (2005): 537-45.
Kennedy, Jennifer T. “Death Effects: Revisiting the Conceit of Franklin’s Memoir.” Early American Literature 36.2 (2001): 201-34.
Sayre, Robert F. The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1964.
Terrell, Colleen E. “Republican Machines”: Franklin, Rush, and the Manufacture of Civic Virtue in the Early Republic. Early American Studies 1.2 (Fall 2003): 100-32.
Among other readings, Franklin’s Autobiography has been read as a tract promoting the American Dream. I would argue that Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is about the suppression of the individual self. Specifically, Franklin thwarts class mobility for those who do not possess Franklin’s performative skills. While the text offers how-to advice on transcending class, this advice also imposes a workman-like rigidity that cannot successfully imitate the flexibility of Franklin’s own performance of class transcendence. In the Autobiography, Franklin is a fluid caricature of a self; however, he creates an automated system of representation for others—prompting him to laugh at those who unbendingly follow his lead.
The idea of rigidity, fluidity, elasticity and inelasticity is developed from Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter which insists that: “The laughable element [. . .] consists of a certain mechanical inelasticity, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being” (Bergson 10). In his Autobiography, Franklin is pliable; in fact, he is so adaptable that careers have been made in arguing who the “real” Franklin was, especially in his Autobiography. However, his Autobiography does not offer advice on pliability. Instead, it offers advice on an automatism that renders its follower ridiculous.
Franklin’s mutability materializes through his comic masks and performances of class. As Robert F. Sayre remarks, “Franklin readily slipped into poses in the Autobiography because he had lived in a fluid world. His day-to-day identities approached poses” (Sayre 23). These poses, I argue, are the poses of class—performances, as it were, he learns from his well-bred parentage. Franklin, who can trace his lineage to established, respected, although not wealthy, Puritan stock, is mythically understood to have come from great poverty and a lower-class background. However, in his upbringing, Franklin was brought up in what we would now classify as middle-class values. Franklin’s father, for example, “always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life” (24). In this manner, Franklin says, “I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me” (24). Rather than learning to care about the types of foods placed before him on the table, Franklin learns the art of conversation—an art that would help him throughout his life. In the homespun revolutionary era, only the aristocrats could really stand out with visible physical class markers, such as clothes and home goods—everyone else relied on the acting out of valued qualities such as conversation and mannerisms. Such acting out—or imitation—of middling sort qualities, such as table conversation, both undermines and supports class hierarchy. Franklin, who can do both, shows the weakness of structure while aspiring to strengthen it with his own admittance.
Franklin is, as aforementioned, elastic in his adaptability to class performance—the humor is in the inelasticity implied in the performance of others who attempt to follow his lead. Colleen Terrell argues that “Franklin’s detailed account of his labors in the art of virtue suggests that the construction of the self presents as a great technical challenge, demands as great a skill, as the manufacture of a time-piece. And indeed, the two crafts had identical goals: the regulation of behavior” (Terrell 116). Further, Terrell finds, “where the Autobiography encodes an iterable process, circulating a representative pattern for the further reproduction of citizens in the Franklinian mold, the text itself becomes a machine for the manufacture of virtue” (Terrell 132). Thus, Franklin’s elasticity becomes the mechanization for the inelasticity of others—by Bergson’s reckoning, a laughable element in any human being.
One of the best examples of performance is in Franklin’s own description of his learning process. His first writings were transcripts of the Spectator—a series of mechanical reproductions that helped Franklin learn the style of more learned men. After copying and recopying different articles from the Spectator, Franklin found that “by comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and corrected them” (29). This act of copying and correcting is as, Jennifer T. Kennedy argues, “an act of practiced forgetfulness” (221). Kennedy writes that Franklin trained “his memory to remember the words of the Spectator as if they were his own, to make himself, in short, a spectator of his own mind” (Kennedy 221). Franklin writes of his experiment that he sometimes “had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious” (29). This exercise is, as Kennedy says, “intentional mortification” of one’s own memory (221). Franklin writes that he has, in effect, suppressed his memory—but he counters this by, in fact, remembering the process by which this was done.
Franklin may have improved his writing through imitation, but he recognizes this as imitation. In teaching others to perform this imitation, Franklin suggests that others subsume their memory, without giving them the tools to remember this erasure—a function of becoming inelastic. Franklin argues that “those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, tho’ they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible” (101), but any person who tries this is already educated and of Franklin’s class. Writing requires an education, and the writing that Franklin is arguing for—through reading and copying—requires both the physical tools for the attempt as well as the leisure time to pursue such an endeavor. In encouraging this type of imitation and forgetfulness, Franklin encourages the absorption of self into a rigid model based upon a non-existent mold. Class performance is imitation, and Franklin encourages this performance to be as rigid and, therefore, laughable, as possible. The Autobiography does not allow for class mobility—Franklin closes that door behind him.
Works Cited
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. London: Macmillan, 1911.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography and Other Writings. Ed. L. Jesse Lemisch. Afterword by Carla Mulford. New York: Signet-Putnam, 2001.
Goloboy, Jennifer L. “The Early American Middle Class.” Journal of the Early Republic 25 (2005): 537-45.
Kennedy, Jennifer T. “Death Effects: Revisiting the Conceit of Franklin’s Memoir.” Early American Literature 36.2 (2001): 201-34.
Sayre, Robert F. The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1964.
Terrell, Colleen E. “Republican Machines”: Franklin, Rush, and the Manufacture of Civic Virtue in the Early Republic. Early American Studies 1.2 (Fall 2003): 100-32.
A Franklin Autobiography
by Caroline Wigginton, The University of Texas at Austin
In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, this essay is a narrative account of my literary encounters with this Franklin text. As a literary scholar and teacher, this narrative speaks to many questions I have about my pedagogical self-fashionings. I would like my narrative and the questions it asks to open up a conversation about the place of Franklin in the literature classroom and ultimately about the decisions we make as individuals with personal narratives about the texts we teach.
I first read Franklin’s Autobiography in my junior year of high school. Though the class and the teacher inspired my love of literary studies, the discussion of Franklin was mostly forgettable. I remember the teacher emphasizing individualism and Franklin’s “self-made man” mystique. The teacher, like many others do, presented Franklin as the quintessential American, embodying the American dream. The teacher used this theme throughout the course to discuss every text and, while the details about Franklin have been lost, his founding relationship to the theme of American individualism is still one of the key ways I think about his autobiography.
I next read Franklin over a decade later during an independent study course in graduate school, just a couple years ago. As a graduate student working Early American Literature, I couldn’t avoid Franklin any longer, but it turns out I couldn’t avoid thinking about individualism either. I read Franklin alongside Sacvan Bercovitch’s Rites of Assent (Routledge, 1992). At that time, I felt Franklin’s text to embody Bercovitch’s belief in consensus/dissensus and its place within U.S. culture. Bercovitch argues for dissensus as an essential component of American consensus: “[Radicalism] was a strategy of pluralism everywhere to compartmentalize dissent so as to absorb it, incrementally, unus inter pares, into a dominant liberal discourse” (21). In reading Franklin through the lens of Bercovitch, I argued for Franklin’s Autobiography as personalized dissensus, a component of individual maturation: man versus himself. By doing so, it implies that American dissensus occurs most productively at the individual level. At the individual level, dissensus loses its radicalism and transformatory power within larger power structures.
My most recent encounter with Franklin occurred this past summer when I designed my first syllabus for a literature course. After several years of being a teaching assistant and then teaching composition, I had finally been asked to teach my Department’s introductory course for English majors, typically full of freshmen and sophomores who had not read or written about literature since high school. In designing this course, I knew I wanted to begin with a colonial American text and build upon my expertise in that field. After scrolling through the Heath and Norton Anthologies’ Tables of Content and perusing my own bookshelves, I quickly identified Franklin’s Autobiography as a potential text. My two previous readings of Franklin spoke well for its inclusion since they indicated that the text was approachable both in terms of understanding its literal meaning and in terms of its theme of American individualism, one which might open up the radical and not so radical potentials of literature.
Yet I found myself questioning whether I wanted to pass on my first lesson in American literature. Would selecting this text be an implicit agreement with my high school English teacher’s year long theme of equating American literature with American individualism? After all, within U.S. national mythology, Franklin continues to hold a mystique as simultaneous genius and self-made man. His important role within Revolutionary intellectual debates and the crafting of the Constitution extends his individualism to America’s roots, a somewhat contradictory conflation of the American tradition with the ability to escape tradition. I didn’t believe I could teach Franklin without this theme becoming a frequent area of discussion.
As much as I enjoy Franklin’s Autobiography, this theme implies that works speaking less explicitly to individualism, especially those by writers of color who frequently embrace community, are not really American literature. However, I wasn’t ready to forget Franklin and choose another author and text. Perhaps I could teach Franklin alongside something less canonical? The Norton Anthology of American Literature places Franklin immediately before a section of texts by Samson Occom, an eighteenth-century Mohegan minister and an author about whom I have written. I considered teaching Franklin alongside Occom’s eloquent, angry, and moving personal narrative. A recent compilation of all Occom’s works (The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century Native America, ed. Joanna Brooks, Oxford UP, 2006) includes a more complete version of this narrative and publishes for the first time a paragraph in which Occom explains his motivations in writing his narrative. This paragraph could help students more easily see that Franklin’s desire to “make himself” throughout his life and through his Autobiography cannot be unquestionably extended to other autobiographies of the period. However, would that result in a more complicated reading of Franklin, individualism, and American nationalism or would it result in eliding Occom’s deep commitment to his Mohegan and pan-Indian communities? Would it simply cause students to incorporate Occom’s dissensus into a multiculturalist American nationalism?
I don’t want to imply that Franklin’s Autobiography is not complex, only about individualism, and not an important text for students of American literature to read. I do want to question how we as teachers escape repeating our earliest lessons in literature when we no longer agree with them, but they are so deeply embedded in how we approach literature. For me, my earliest lessons appear to be an unavoidable lens through which to read a text for the first time. They are interpretations that I worry my students will be unable to avoid when they are so obvious within dominant U.S. cultural ideology (whether or not they are the “correct” interpretations). In response to texts which are too rooted in what we don’t want to teach about literature, whether it is Franklin for me or an entirely different text for someone else, do we do what I did and simply reject them? Do we only teach them outside introductory literature courses where students (and perhaps we teachers) are less unsophisticated in our approaches? Do we embrace them and simply tell our students other ways of reading? Do we see them as opportunities, choosing to spend more class days on them and leading our students through different readings, moving further and further away from our first thoughts? I ended up teaching Phillis Wheatley’s Complete Writings, but that’s a whole other narrative . . .
In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, this essay is a narrative account of my literary encounters with this Franklin text. As a literary scholar and teacher, this narrative speaks to many questions I have about my pedagogical self-fashionings. I would like my narrative and the questions it asks to open up a conversation about the place of Franklin in the literature classroom and ultimately about the decisions we make as individuals with personal narratives about the texts we teach.
I first read Franklin’s Autobiography in my junior year of high school. Though the class and the teacher inspired my love of literary studies, the discussion of Franklin was mostly forgettable. I remember the teacher emphasizing individualism and Franklin’s “self-made man” mystique. The teacher, like many others do, presented Franklin as the quintessential American, embodying the American dream. The teacher used this theme throughout the course to discuss every text and, while the details about Franklin have been lost, his founding relationship to the theme of American individualism is still one of the key ways I think about his autobiography.
I next read Franklin over a decade later during an independent study course in graduate school, just a couple years ago. As a graduate student working Early American Literature, I couldn’t avoid Franklin any longer, but it turns out I couldn’t avoid thinking about individualism either. I read Franklin alongside Sacvan Bercovitch’s Rites of Assent (Routledge, 1992). At that time, I felt Franklin’s text to embody Bercovitch’s belief in consensus/dissensus and its place within U.S. culture. Bercovitch argues for dissensus as an essential component of American consensus: “[Radicalism] was a strategy of pluralism everywhere to compartmentalize dissent so as to absorb it, incrementally, unus inter pares, into a dominant liberal discourse” (21). In reading Franklin through the lens of Bercovitch, I argued for Franklin’s Autobiography as personalized dissensus, a component of individual maturation: man versus himself. By doing so, it implies that American dissensus occurs most productively at the individual level. At the individual level, dissensus loses its radicalism and transformatory power within larger power structures.
My most recent encounter with Franklin occurred this past summer when I designed my first syllabus for a literature course. After several years of being a teaching assistant and then teaching composition, I had finally been asked to teach my Department’s introductory course for English majors, typically full of freshmen and sophomores who had not read or written about literature since high school. In designing this course, I knew I wanted to begin with a colonial American text and build upon my expertise in that field. After scrolling through the Heath and Norton Anthologies’ Tables of Content and perusing my own bookshelves, I quickly identified Franklin’s Autobiography as a potential text. My two previous readings of Franklin spoke well for its inclusion since they indicated that the text was approachable both in terms of understanding its literal meaning and in terms of its theme of American individualism, one which might open up the radical and not so radical potentials of literature.
Yet I found myself questioning whether I wanted to pass on my first lesson in American literature. Would selecting this text be an implicit agreement with my high school English teacher’s year long theme of equating American literature with American individualism? After all, within U.S. national mythology, Franklin continues to hold a mystique as simultaneous genius and self-made man. His important role within Revolutionary intellectual debates and the crafting of the Constitution extends his individualism to America’s roots, a somewhat contradictory conflation of the American tradition with the ability to escape tradition. I didn’t believe I could teach Franklin without this theme becoming a frequent area of discussion.
As much as I enjoy Franklin’s Autobiography, this theme implies that works speaking less explicitly to individualism, especially those by writers of color who frequently embrace community, are not really American literature. However, I wasn’t ready to forget Franklin and choose another author and text. Perhaps I could teach Franklin alongside something less canonical? The Norton Anthology of American Literature places Franklin immediately before a section of texts by Samson Occom, an eighteenth-century Mohegan minister and an author about whom I have written. I considered teaching Franklin alongside Occom’s eloquent, angry, and moving personal narrative. A recent compilation of all Occom’s works (The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century Native America, ed. Joanna Brooks, Oxford UP, 2006) includes a more complete version of this narrative and publishes for the first time a paragraph in which Occom explains his motivations in writing his narrative. This paragraph could help students more easily see that Franklin’s desire to “make himself” throughout his life and through his Autobiography cannot be unquestionably extended to other autobiographies of the period. However, would that result in a more complicated reading of Franklin, individualism, and American nationalism or would it result in eliding Occom’s deep commitment to his Mohegan and pan-Indian communities? Would it simply cause students to incorporate Occom’s dissensus into a multiculturalist American nationalism?
I don’t want to imply that Franklin’s Autobiography is not complex, only about individualism, and not an important text for students of American literature to read. I do want to question how we as teachers escape repeating our earliest lessons in literature when we no longer agree with them, but they are so deeply embedded in how we approach literature. For me, my earliest lessons appear to be an unavoidable lens through which to read a text for the first time. They are interpretations that I worry my students will be unable to avoid when they are so obvious within dominant U.S. cultural ideology (whether or not they are the “correct” interpretations). In response to texts which are too rooted in what we don’t want to teach about literature, whether it is Franklin for me or an entirely different text for someone else, do we do what I did and simply reject them? Do we only teach them outside introductory literature courses where students (and perhaps we teachers) are less unsophisticated in our approaches? Do we embrace them and simply tell our students other ways of reading? Do we see them as opportunities, choosing to spend more class days on them and leading our students through different readings, moving further and further away from our first thoughts? I ended up teaching Phillis Wheatley’s Complete Writings, but that’s a whole other narrative . . .
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Stay Tuned for Benjamin Franklin Discussion (beginning October 15th)
Discussion of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is set to begin on October 15th. Graduate students Teresa Coronado (University of Oregon), Ami Blue (Eastern Kentucky University), and Caroline Wigginton (UT-Austin) have all volunteered to contribute essays that will get the discussion started.Franklin's autobiography is available online through UVA's e-text server here. It's also available for purchase in various affordable editions from Amazon.
Our December discussion group will read Eliza Haywood's Fantomina. I'm currently seeking volunteers to write short essays for that discussion. If you'd like to write an essay that will get people talking about Haywood, drop me a line at cblvf2@mizzou.edu by November 15th.
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