"This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going."

- Dolores Price (She's Come Undone)

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They don’t call it growing pains for nothing, I guess.

Surviving the teenage years has to be one of the most important – and potentially self-destructive – points in a person’s life. It’s hard attempting to straddle that interstitial space between rambunctious childhood and responsible maturity, all while negotiating limitations of societal constraints, peer pressure and the ever-constant internal battle of your body’s hormones. And throughout all the emotional turmoil the years between eleven and eighteen (sometimes longer!) brings, one must come to realize and accept the fact that their parents are no longer the supreme overlords of their lives. Once a child hits the age when he or she learns they don’t have to obey their parents, rebellion ensues, often with disastrous consequences.

One such fictional character that embodies this struggle against her parental figure is Dolores Price, the narrator of Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone.

At the age of thirteen, she is raped by her neighbor named Jack and subsequently succumbs to grotesque amounts of binging, reaching heavy obesity by the end of her teenage years. She spends the rest of the novel struggling to come to terms with her life, her weight and her sanity. However, the pivotal moment of her climb (or, more fitting, her expansion) into adulthood comes before she is raped, as she vies with her mother for Jack’s attention.

Dolores has a relatively happy childhood with her “proud and protective” father (Lamb 6). However, her problems begin when her father leaves her and her mother for another woman. Already on rocky grounds with her mother, Dolores’s relationship with her father turns cold, and she never regains a close bond with him. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud says that “being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed [at the time of childhood]” (814). Additionally, Freud goes on to note that these “impulses” are important in “determining the symptoms of later neurosis” (81). I would think it’s safe to conclude that Dolores’s unsteady and emotionally traumatic relationship with her father certainly leads to her later problems growing up, for she lacks the “normal” father-daughter bond that’s important for development. Throughout the novel, she often notes her longing to reconnect with her father, as well as her inability to relate to her mother.

Obviously, Freud’s idea of the Oedipus complex doesn’t perfectly translate to Dolores, for she is a girl where the driving force of the psychosis is typically centered on a boy child. Looking at Oedipus’s story, where he slays his father to marry his mother, “shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes” (Freud 816) where we attempt to subvert and dispute our parent’s authority, all while gaining their love and respect. Again, Dolores never slays nor has a sexual longing for either parent, and yet when she first meets Jack, she seems to be in competition for his attention with her mother.

Ironically, the first notion that this opposition between mother and daughter is occurring is during church services. As Jack is passing the collection basket, Dolores’s “heart pounded almost audibly as I watched him… One time I caught Ma following his movements, too, lip-synching to the offertory prayer rather than praying it” (Lamb 73). Over dinner later that night, Dolores notices her mother flirting with Jack by teasing and poking him, right in front of his wife Rita, who perhaps awkwardly continues to serve dinner. Dolores thinks her mother is acting “so… that word kids [write]… Leaning over and giving him those little slaps whenever he teased her. Horny: that was the word. Ma and her stupid risks, her black-lace bras” (Lamb 78). And lastly, as Dolores is falling asleep right under Jack and Rita’s room, she hears the couple having sex: “I kept imagining them up there, half-naked and feverish – like lovers on the covers of paperbacks” (Lamb 76). She fantasies about Jack, exploring her sexuality through her imagination, which is a completely natural thing for a young girl to do. However, it’s the object of her desire that is a bit un-natural, for Dolores seems to be angry – jealous, even - at her mother for acting so loose towards Jack.

At the age of thirteen, Dolores is well into what Freud deems the “latent stage” of development, where typically there is a repression of desires. However, as she is still young and immature, she can’t completely understand what exactly is happening when Jack begins to flirt and confide in her. She does repress her desires, for she doesn’t come onto to him, and yet she cannot help but admire his attention and crave it. His physical advances make her uncomfortable, but they don’t become dangerous to her until he drives her out into the woods and rapes her.

Dolores has “won” the competition with her mother – and she pays the price for it throughout the rest of her teenage years. After the rape, her mother babies her, providing her with the food and outlets that make Dolores gain obscene amounts of weight. Dolores’s mother sees Jack as the evil villain, with Dolores the innocent victim – which she is – and yet I think Freud would suggest that Dolores was merely playing out the psychosexual urges of a young girl in subverting her mother’s authority to earn her father’s love, which, in this case, has been replaced by Jack. By being unable to mature normally and form a healthy relationship with her real father, Dolores develops neuroses and this directly impacts the rest of her life.

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Freud, Sigmund. "The Interpretation of Dreams." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 814-818. Print.

Lamb, Wally. She's Come Undone. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Print. 

Reflection of a Formal[ist] Presentation

I must admit that I don’t think the presentation went as well as it could have. For starters, Structuralism and Formalism are, at least for me, very complex and I had a difficult time understanding how to present to the class what they comprised without making it sound too much like a lecture (which I also regret to admit that it did take that course). Honestly, I feel like our presentation could have been more in-depth and organized. Because of my illness and hospital stay, and because of some technical issues with my group members, we weren’t able to stay in close conversation, and I don’t think we were able to really pin down our presentation to what it should have been.

When we originally discussed our presentation, we decided to break it up into smaller parts so each of us could have something to present or talk about. I felt at the time that I understood how we could incorporate a class activity into the presentation so that’s what I choose to do, along with help from Danielle. When it came down to it, I think we had some good ideas (trying to get the class to look at symbols and consider their meanings, as well as trying to show the class how to connect structuralism/formalism to literary analysis - i.e. the practical usage of the theories) but I don’t think it went so smoothly in class.

I wasn’t able to see what the rest of the group was going to present about the theories itself, and I felt that we could have incorporated more discussion into the presentation, rather than just lecture. I do understand that what was expected of us was not a simple PowerPoint presentation, which now, looking back, I realize that’s what it became. I did try to get discussion going at the end of the presentation, but I know now I could have also tried harder (or planned better) to get the rest of the group involved in asking questions and generating discussion as well. 

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Two Students, One Text.

Yes, I know that the title of this blog post sounds like the beginning of a horrible, possibly degrading literary joke, but I do think that the activity in class was useful in helping me understand reader-response theory and phenomenology. Attempting to convey in words where the meaning of a text was between two individuals was a great deal harder than it first sounds to be. For example, I came up with multiple interpretations: the meaning is in the text itself; the meaning is in each individual; the meaning is in each individual and the text itself. Additionally, I noted at the time of the activity that perhaps the text’s *true* meaning was if the two individuals – with different backgrounds, personalities and intellects – could agree, more or less, on one solidified meaning in the one text that they both read. “Would that make the text’s meaning universal?” I wrote, thinking at the time that it is the universal meaning that is most important. 

The more the class delved into discussion, the more I began to realize that perhaps the universal meaning isn’t the most crucial thing in a text. Just as each member of the class had a different opinion or thought about the activity, each individual would have a different interpretation or feeling about a text and thus to each person, that meaning would mean the most to him/her.

I think that we tend to only consider our own personal feelings about a particular text when analyzing literature instead of keeping in mind that there are multiple interpretations, and possibly something to learn from what other people think. I find that through communication, discussion and debate with others, I can better develop my own personal ideas about a text. A prime example of this is our class discussions: reading the text at home is much different than when I can listen to a number of other people speak about the same text. I find it helps me understand the readings more than just taking notes by myself (I think Wolfgang Iser is correct when he titles his essay “Interaction between Text and Reader”, but I also think we could expand this into something a little better: “Interactions between Text and Reader, and Other Readers”).

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We'll pretend that it meant something so much more...

   It was rather sweet of him to hold her umbrella, although it had stopped raining a while ago.

   For a moment, she considered telling him this, least his arm get tired, but decided against it. It was cold out, and she had purchased this dress specifically for this date with no concern for the weather. How disappointed she had been when he came to pick her up and it was pouring rain. Hours spend curling her hair appeared to have been wasted in vain. But, he had graciously held the umbrella as she got into the car, and when they arrived at the restaurant.

   At dinner, she was pleased to notice she looked the best out of any of the other women in the room. Dressed in heavy coats and thick stockings, they had looked more suited to be going skiing than on a romantic date. Bare-legged and deliciously swathed in silk, warmed by the wine and her handsome prince across from her, she had anxiously chattered her way through three courses, dessert and coffee.

   And now, as they walked through the park, she clutched his arm closer, snuggling into him. How romantic, how perfect this night had been!

   He had noticed it had stopped raining.

   What he didn’t know was how he had been able to get through this night. He had tried to keep up with the usual conventions of being a gentleman, opening doors and paying the check, those sort of things. The conversation at dinner had been stifled, he thought, or perhaps that was because of the wine. And now, the glossy surface of the river and harsh lighting of the streetlamps only made the night feel even more apocalyptic, like he was treading the line between heaven and hell.

   He felt her tighten her grasp.

   And from somewhere far off, he heard the lyrics to the song that had been playing in his head all day. This is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved her, but you don’t. You touch her skin, and then you think. She is beautiful, but she don’t mean a thing to me.

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When discussing the visual arts - such as paintings and photographs - the lack of concrete words that have been put down on paper to describe what is occurring in the frame often make for interesting interpretations by the viewer. We often lack the knowledge of the specific painter or photographer, the historical or social context in which the art was created or captured, or the personal emotions that went into the creation. Certainly, artists incorporate elements of their own lives or feelings into their works, but when a spectator views a painting or photograph – which is quite a different experience than reading words on a paper – it is up to the viewer to decide what the narrative is.

Formalism and structuralism work in much the same way. Disregarding the facts of who (author), when (historical context), and why (personal feelings), critics who use formalism and structuralism attempt to look at just the work itself and what is trying to get across. They look at symbols, signs, syntax, sentence construction, and style in order to mold an interpretation. They even ignore their own feelings on the work - quite an opposite of reader-response theory! I honestly found it hard to separate my feelings from this assignment. Truthfully, I choose the painting and constructed the narrative in the way that I did for purely personal reasons. I can see myself and a situation I am currently in within the narrative that I wrote above. I understand that formalism and structuralism attempt to separate these personal interpretations to a more solidified interpretation of the work as a whole, and I think I have tried to include some of the elements of these theories in my narrative.

First, I sat and thought about the painting for a while, really looking at what is depicted. I found the picture through a simple Google search, and I have yet to find the name of the artist, so my interpretation is truly one without the knowledge of the author or context. Second, the somewhat cliché, romanticized images of a man and woman walking through the park, hand-in-hand in the rain instantly conjured up the idea of the archetype of the love story. Fyre states in The Archetypes of Literature that it is “pre-literary categories such as ritual, myth and folk tale… [that we] find… reappearing in the greatest classics – in fact there seems to be a general tendency on the part of great classics to revert to them” (1309). What better archetype than the love story between a man and a woman? History has certainly seem an infinite number of stories on this relationship, from Adam and Eve, to Cleopatra and Anthony, to Romeo and Juliet. And third, I looked at the painting itself. I thought that the colors used in the painting, the clashing of the harsh yellow from the lights and mellow blues of the river, symbolized a sort of balance between happiness and despair. Additionally, the use of scattered, almost Impressionist-style brushstrokes conveyed to me a sense of emotional upheaval and panic, which then turned me back to looking at the figure of the man and woman. Their surroundings seem to speak for their emotions and relationship, and so that formed the basis of my interpretation.

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