A Marxist Reading of James Joyce's Clay and Gordimer's Charmed Lives
By: M. S. Zarei
Political Reading: Marxist Criticism
Marxist literary theory emerged firstly in the writings of the German critic and philosopher Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883). Marx grounded his theoretical assumptions on the notion of ‘determinants’ that has a fundamental role in any Marxist type of interpretation (Bressler 192). Marx tried to articulate a version of reality that could be defined and understood. In this respect, he believed that “social and economic realities were the ultimate determinants of culture and human consciousness.” Marx simply opposed the Hegelian theory of history which argued that ‘consciousness determines life’ and maintained instead that ‘life (social existence) determines consciousness.’ This, in part, entails that our social circumstances determine our lives. Likewise, Traditional Marxism claims that thought is also subservient to the material conditions under which it develops. (82) The clash between the capitalism and the labourers in society, according to Marxism, inevitably, brings about alienation on the part of the labourers. They become alienated from themselves; being constantly seen as production units, as objects rather than human beings. In fact, capitalism reifies them while they remain blind to their own condition because of the effect of what Marxism calls ideology. (Bertens 84)
Definition of Ideology
Ideology, in Marxist view, is what makes us misrepresent the world to ourselves. According to Marxists, “ideology is not so much a set of beliefs or assumptions that we are aware of, but it is that which makes us experience our life in a certain way and makes us believe that the way of seeing ourselves and the world is natural” (Bertens 84). In so doing, the reality one takes for granted is in fact distorted and thus falsely represented as natural. To succumb to ideology, therefore, means to live in an illusory world. The French Marxist Louise Althusser also defines ideology as “the imaginary ways in which people represent to themselves their real relationship to the world” (qtd. in Selden 153). Althusser believes that “Ideology is like the air we breathe and is the seemingly natural discourse which makes possible our sense of existence as human subjects” (Selden 153). Althusser’s views appear different from earlier Marxists who simply took ideology for a kind of ‘false consciousness’ produced by capitalism. Rather, to give a more accurate reason for the existence of ideology, Althusser shares the ideas held by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who believes that due to the processes we go through while growing up, we are left incomplete. Therefore, having been aware of ‘that deep lack’, that makes us yearn for completion, we inevitably turn to ideology to fill up the lack (Bertens 86). We constantly delude ourselves as ideology–to which we have already consigned our free will– addresses us as ‘complete subjects.’
Ideological State Apparatuses and Interpellation
The driving forces behind ideology are the so-called State Apparatuses (religious, cultural, educational, judicial, etc.) that help sustain the dominant ideology at work. All subjects are greeted by the discourse of a particular State Apparatuses. In the same respect, Althusser defines a process called ‘interpellation’ (hailing) whereby ideology works through interpellating (addressing) us in different social roles (subject positions) that we play or occupy, so that we falsely appear to ourselves as complete subjects (Bertens 87). In fact, ideology tries to convince us that we are whole and real, filling up the crack we have all inherited in our fragmented identities.
The Blindfolded Narrative in James Joyce’s Clay
Pierre Macherey in his A Theory of Literary Production (1966) introduces an idea that literary form is capable of transforming ideology into fiction and thereby of showing us its internal incoherences and contradictions. In fact, the writer [here James Joyce], by producing an ideology in the form of a fiction, makes us feel the gaps, silences and absences which in their purely ideological form are less apparent (Selden 155).
Likewise, Clay describes a deceptively simple story whose narrative self-deception attempts, and fails, to mislead the reader. The blind protagonist Maria simply fails to blind even the less attentive reader of the blind spots in her story. Having been portrayed as a product of the Irish Ideology, the “old maid” Maria appears as a figure who “seems to lack everything and therefore embodies total desire, a desire for the recognition and prestige that would let a poor old woman without family, wealth, or social standing maintain her human status in paralytic Dublin…” (Norris 206). It seems that Maria, endowed with an ideological awareness, unconsciously tries to fulfill a Lacanian lack–if not the social and personal shortcomings– of her own life. The story seemingly unfolds by means of the contrasts between the narrator's view of Maria and her own emotionally limited self-awareness.
Maria’s job in the kitchen of a laundry established for the reform of prostitutes obviously does not secure her a proper social standing, yet her self-esteem as an important figure seems to stem from an ideological consciousness that has obscured her vision of reality. Maria has been “hailed” (interpellated) in the place of an important person in the society while in reality she is nothing more than a common dishwasher.
In fact, it is Maria’s social standing, affected largely by the Ideological State Apparatuses (attending the ritual ceremony, for example), that determines her consciousness. Her isolated consciousness thus feeds upon the ideological self-awareness she has been entrapped in.
Halloween
Halloween (October 31) is “the Celtic New Year's Eve and Feast of the Dead, Christianized as the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin and All Saints (November 1) and All Souls (November 2). In Irish folk custom, it is a night of remembrance of dead ancestors and anticipation of the future through various fortune-telling games.” Halloween as a ritual ceremony serves two important purposes in the story. Firstly, it is one of those Ideological State Apparatuses that almost controls Maria’s life. Secondly, it emphasizes the notion of past and ancient values that are embodied in Joyce’s stories. In fact, Maria as an allegorical representation of Mother Ireland is paralyzed by circumstances beyond her control or awareness. She can be taken as a version of the ancient symbolic representation of Mother Ireland dominated by imperial England.
The Charmed Lives of the Other(s)
Gordimer’s Charmed Lives seemingly probes the static and equally pathetic condition of “two harmless and handicapped people” whose mechanical and unchanging lives in the story mirror the very dull lives of the native habitants of the South Africa. These two harmless people were brought out to the country, as two imported ideological models, before Kate Shand was born. The little Kate grows up as her mother subconsciously injects a potion of a false ideology into Kate’s fragmented character, so that the watchmaker’s and the doctor’s faces become “bracketed for ever” in Kate’s own face. The watchmaker Simon Datnow, as introduced earlier in the story, becomes an Other into which Kate looks up and builds her identity. In this respect, the glass cage, where the watchmaker works seemingly for no end, may also embody the Mirror Stage (also called looking-glass stage) where Kate’s own image mirrored as a whole and complete being (as that of the Watchmaker) is but an ideal. The little Kate used to “stand for a long time with her face close to the glass cage [of the watchmaker]” who has been constructed as an ideal by Mrs. Shand. Upon trying “to get her husband to stand up to her” in vain, Mrs. Shand continuously champions the watchmaker against his timid husband’s will to seemingly fulfill her marital lack: “Datnow, she gave her children to understand, was a natural gentleman, a kind of freak incidence among the immigrant relations.” She subconsciously deludes her children to turn to the idealized watchmaker who is now and then symbolized almost as a Father figure for Kate.
The narrative structure, again like that of Clay, develops by the means of contrasts between what the mother (Mrs. Shand) strongly idealizes for Kate and what she herself comes to experience in the characters of the watchmaker and the doctor. This almost brings about a kind of disillusionment on the part of Kate who finally leaves the town where she finds the mechanical, charmed lives of the other(s) hardly accommodating of her expectation. The grown-up Kate finds no glamour in the empty lives of the watchmaker and the doctor, whom her mother still regards with high respect. Likewise, Kate becomes disgusted with the way the two men live; they are blind to their own state of affairs abused by an unknown power. The notion of survival is thus drawn as its most pitiful sense in the story. The watchmaker and the doctor both simply want to survive, regardless of what is happening around them. The whole story seems to be an allegory of an ideologically plagued town whose members including both the native Africans and the immigrants are paralyzed with an unknown power. They are constantly hailed in the roles they play blindly. Yet Kate never tells the reason for her leaving the town, the reason that “had taken shape for her, slowly, out of all her childhood, in the persons of those two men whom she had known…”
Works Cited
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2001.
Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 4th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2007.
Norris, Margot. Narration under a Blindfold: Reading Joyce's "Clay”
PMLA, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Mar., 1987), pp. 206-215
Selden, Raman. Peter Widdowson. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literature Theory. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
