Notions of the Feminine: Literary Essays from Dostoyevsky to Lacan

Literary Essays from Dostoyevsky to Lacan

M. Axelrod

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137502933
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Approaching the question of how male novelists perceive their female characters, this collection of creative yet analytic literary essays unwinds the complexities of male authorship versus narration. Mark Axelrod looks at a wide range of male authors including Fydor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, Carlos Fuentes, and the theories of Jacques Lacan.

1

“Pale Whore, Pale Writer”: Is There Punishment for the Crime?

Abstract: What appears to be one of the more essential problems with Dostoyevsky’s poetics in Crime and Punishment deals, simply, with his occasional lapse into often using the wrong word at the wrong time. Beyond the mystery plot and the occasional melodramatic sentimentalism, Dostoyevsky’s insouciant approach to the art of novel-writing could justify Nabokov’s limp encomium that Dostoyevsky is on the periphery of masterful Russian prose and failed contrivances exist. The major flaw here is his over-use (and general misuse) of the word “pale” which appears oftentimes within the same paragraph and would lead one to ask the question: Why? The essay explores the “why” by addressing Dostoyevsky’s penchant for making his female protagonists to constantly go pale.

Axelrod, Mark. Notions of the Feminine: Literary Essays from Dostoyevsky to Lacan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137502933.0003.

What is the significance of the parentheses when Raskolnikov says, as he does in Part I, Chapter IV, the following:

Hm . . . So it’s settled finally; you, Avdotya Romanovna, are so good as to be marrying a practical and rational man, who has his own capital (who already has his own capital; that’s more solid, more impressive), who serves in two posts and shares the convictions of our newest generations (as mama writes), and who “seems to be kind,” as Dunechka herself remarks. (Dostoyevsky 40)

Is Raskolnikov thinking this? Saying it as an aside? Is it sub-vocalized or said aloud? And if the latter, how does one say a parenthesis aloud? With the apparent arbitrary use of the parentheses, it would appear that either the voices of the characters all have the same tone, at least on one level, or else the use of parentheses is contagious. In either case, the concept of polyphony becomes markedly attenuated.

Indiscriminate use of parentheses is, however, not the least significant problem with Dostoyevsky’s craft. Throughout the entire novel, Dostoyevsky relies on one word to elicit a reader response to a character’s situation: pale. Dostoyevsky’s characters (contrary to what we’ve seen in Tolstoy’s characters) are all in a constant, or semi-constant, state of paleness, but not just paleness, gradations of paleness. For example, in Part III, Chapter III we read, “Indeed, Raskolnikov was almost well, especially as compared with yesterday, only he was very pale, distracted and sullen” (222), and further on we read, “However, even this pale and sullen face brightened momentarily, as if with light, when his mother and sister entered” (222). And in an attempt to outdo Tolstoy, we read in Part III, Chapter IV, “Raskolnikov’s pale face became flushed” (237). In Part III, Chapter V we read, “Raskolnikov silently raised his pale, almost sad face to him [Razumikhin] and did not answer” (263), and we read a little later, “Very well, tell me your little idea,’ Raskolnikov stood expectantly before him, pale and serious” (265).

The allusions to his paleness are abundant and one might be tempted to say that, in fact, Raskolnikov is just “pale” by nature. That is, he’s white. This could be borne out in Part V, Chapter I when we read about Pyotr Petrovich as he “considered his white and noble aspect” (361) and that, perhaps, Raskolnikov is also white. But Dostoyevsky doesn’t say he’s white, but says he’s pale which seems to be a “whiter shade of pale.”

We also find that this problem of paleness goes beyond the main protagonist. In Part V, Chapter III (the Luzhin/anti-Semitic chapter), after Lebezyatnikov accuses Luzhin of slipping a note into Sonya’s pocket, “Luzhin went pale” (399). Four pages later, Luzhin “was silent and only smiled contemptuously. He was very pale, however” (403). This begs the question: Are there degrees of paleness? It could mean that in the intervening pages Luzhin returned to normal color only to turn very pale moments later; however, without the aid of any paleometric devices, it is unclear as to how one would measure the onset of fluctuating anemia.

And in Part V, Chapter IV (the Sonya-Raskolnikov confessional) Dostoyevsky writes: “Again he covered his face with his hands and bent his head. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from the chair, looked at Sonya, and, without saying anything, went mechanically and sat on her bed” (409). This statement is extremely important in that if he suddenly turned pale, then we can assume he, unlike Pyotr Petrovich, is not white to begin with since it would be difficult to tell when a white person turned pale. Yet two paragraphs later we read, “It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face to her; he twisted his lips powerlessly in an effort to utter something” (409). And four paragraphs later Dostoyevsky combines both parentheses and paleness together when he writes: “Listen Sonya” (suddenly, for some reason, he gave a pale and powerless smile, which lasted about two seconds) “do you remember what I wanted to tell you yesterday?” (409). Several paragraphs later when Sonya discovers what Raskolnikov wants to tell her we read, “Sonya began breathing with difficulty. Her face was becoming paler and paler” (410); so we now understand that paleness is not something that Raskolnikov experiences alone, but that most of the main characters experience it, which once again must call into question any notion of Dostoyevsky’s alleged polyphonia. Once again, one may ask as in Tolstoy: Is Dostoyevsky using the same word? Are there gradations of paleness which are lost in translation? Once again, the answer is “no.” In Russian the word for white is transliterated as belyj and the word for pale is blednyj, and those are the only two words used in the adjectival, adverbial, or verb form in association with either “whiteness” or “paleness.” We can, therefore, dismiss any notion that Dostoyevsky was alluding to a particular type of paleness vis-à-vis the situation at hand and that in the original Dostoyevsky was using more than one word to signify that kind of paleness. Obviously, the technique of repetitive paleness must have appealed to Dostoyevsky’s anemic nature (perhaps influenced by his father); however, it is apparent that the use of the word (i.e., abuse of the word) not only undermines the efficacy of the text, but underlines Dostoyevsky’s apparent disregard for his craft.

Yet it is in the final pages of Crime and Punishment that Dostoyevsky’s use of paleness reaches its apparent “spiritual” limits.

They wanted to speak but could not. Tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin, but in those pale, sick faces there already shone the dawn of a renewed future, of a complete resurrection into a new life. They were resurrected by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other. (549)

Sentimentality aside (as well as Dostoyevsky’s apparent oversight that cadavers are also pale), paleness in this context is a semiotic transmogrifier which means something very much different than it did in Luzhin’s paleness and, therefore, presents still another problematic aspect concerning Dostoyevsky’s poetics.

One could posit that, in fact, many of these characters suffer from some kind of anemia, hence their paleness. We could cite deficiency anemia (due to poor dietary intake) or glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency anemia (due to the ingestion of certain drugs) or hemorrhagic anemia (due to the acute loss of blood) or hypochromic anemia (which mainly occurs in females in the third–fifth decades, but which wouldn’t account for males of the same age) or hypoferric anemia (due to iron deficiency) or polar anemia (due to prolonged exposure at low temperatures and a distinct possibility given the Russian climate—at least in winter) or toxic anemia (due to toxins in the blood) or macrocytic anemia (which is applied to a category of anemias of varying etiologies) or, finally, any one of a number of anemic conditions caused by one insult or another that has a negative impact on erythrocytes. But none of these conditions is actually relevant since Dostoyevsky’s characters are seemingly capable of paling at will. It is not the condition of the red blood cells that affects the character’s paleness, but, as with Tolstoy’s blushes and flushes, the situation at the time. And just as Tolstoy’s characters might blush in a given situation, we find Dostoyevsky’s characters paling in a given situation. Curious circulation indeed.

As a reader, one is dependent upon the writer’s rule-making procedures. That is, a writer establishes parameters within the scope of the work and is allowed to break certain rules within those parameters as long as s/he is consistent with them. When a writer breaks those rules which had been previously established, thus establishing a new system of rules, s/he cannot arbitrarily break the new rules without alienating her/him from the reader as well as from the craft. Because of these problems, the unity of Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic novel which, according to Bakhtin, stands above the word, the voice, the accent, is not readily apparent and what remains is his personal valorization of Dostoyevsky for Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment, like Balzac in Le Père Goriot, is much too precipitous to be concerned with such nuisances as consistency and unity when self-righteousness was at hand.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.

Dorland, William Alexander. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1981.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Random House, 1993.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.

2

“Blushes & Flushes”: Anna Karenina ’s Shameful Physiology

Abstract: Not unlike Dostoyevsky’s treatment of “paleness,” Tolstoy experiments with narrational blushing in a way untreated prior to Anna Karenina. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy’s characters either blush or flush at least 66 times, while paling only 5 times; that works out to a “blush-to-pale” ratio of 13:1. No mean feat. This disparity in anatomical color, however, seems to be more of a Tolstoyan preference/penchant (witnessed by his letters) rather than a particular trait specific to character, since of all the major characters in the novel, there isn’t one who does not, at one time or another, blush. The essay explores this rather remarkable Tolstoyan ability to have his characters (primarily female ones) blush and blush again which, similar to Dostoyevsky, raises the question: why?

Axelrod, Mark. Notions of the Feminine: Literary Essays from Dostoyevsky to Lacan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137502933.0004.

In a letter dated: Petersburg, 1 May 1849, Tolstoy writes to his brother Sergei: “I’m ashamed to write this because I know that you love me and that all my stupidity and inconstancy will upset you. I even got up several times and blushed because of this letter, as you will do when you read it; but what can I do?” (Tolstoy, Letters 7). And so begins the original, albeit sorely plebeian, technique of “narrational blushing.” Contrary to Dostoyevsky’s technique of “narrational anemia” (see Chapter 1), Tolstoy experiments with narrational blushing in a way untreated prior to Anna Karenina.

Throughout the novel, Tolstoy’s characters either blush or flush at least 66 times, while paling only 5 times; that works out to a “blush-to-pale” ratio of 13:1. No mean feat. This disparity in anatomical color, however, seems to be more of a Tolstoyan preference/penchant (witnessed by his letters) rather than a particular trait specific to character, since of all the major characters in the novel, there isn’t one who does not, at one time or another, blush; and though Karenina blushes infrequently and Oblonsky, who should blush more, blushes the least, blush they do. The blushing begins as early as Part I, Chapter 3, with “The girl knew that her father and mother had quarreled, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and also that her father must know this, so that his putting the question to her so lightly was all pretense, and she blushed for him. He noticed this and blushed too” (Tolstoy 8), but that’s only a superficial blush from Oblonsky and his daughter. The real blushing begins with Levin in Part I, Chapter 5, where Tolstoy writes:

Oblonsky’s smile was hardly perceptible. “Didn’t you tell me you would never again put on Western European clothes?” he asked, surveying Levin’s new suit, evidently made by a French tailor. “That’s it! You’re in a new phase.” Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown-up people blush who hardly notice it themselves, but as boys blush who are aware that their shyness is ridiculous and therefore feel ashamed of it and blush still more, almost to tears. (18)

But shyness isn’t the only reason Tolstoy’s characters blush. Nor is immaturity. Evidently, there is no real cause for blushing since, apparently, anything can cause a character to blush. Later, in Part I, Chapter 14, when Levin visits Kitty at her home, his confrontation with Countess Nordston elicits numerous blushes from him for various reasons (e.g., the discovery that he repeats himself or in listening to a “compliment” from the Countess). Nor does the blushing predicament attenuate over time. In other words, the preponderance of blushing doesn’t lessen as the characters age and/or grow wiser. In Part II, Chapter 12, Tolstoy, in describing Levin’s reaction to Kitty’s refusal, writes: “When Levin first returned from Moscow, and while he still started and blushed every time he remembered the disgrace of the refusal, he had said to himself, ‘I blushed and started like this when I was ploughed in physics, and had to remain in the second class’” (150). Which begs the additional question: How does he know he’s blushing unless he sees himself? And is it possible to blush upon the thought of a blushful event? Compelling questions indeed which must only be alluded to here; however, it is of interest to note what “blushes” and “flushes” are or may be and what kind of erythema Levin (and others) suffers from.

According to Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, a blush is “a sudden, brief erythema of the face and neck, resulting from vascular dilatation due to emotion or heat” (179) while a “flush” is a “transient redness of the face and neck” (513). But whereas there seems to be only one kind of blush, there are, in fact, a number of different kinds of flushes. For example, there is carcinoid flush, which is associated with carcinoid tumors; hectic flush, which is usually associated with pulmonary tuberculosis; histamine flush, which is sometimes associated with the eating of certain kinds of fish of the scombroid family; mahogany flush, which can be seen in lobar pneumonia; and malar flush, which is a hectic flush at the malar eminence. But, significantly, none of the blushes and flushes we see in Anna Karenina is associated with anything systemic; they are all brief, sudden dilatations usually associated with emotion. Or the appearance of emotion. And even though there’s an allusion here to adolescent blushing (for which there is no definition), Levin will continue to blush throughout the novel. As late as Part VII, Chapter 11, after Levin and Kitty have been married and she is enceinte, Levin still suffers from his “adolescent” case of blushophilia. Tolstoy writes:

I was quite pleased to meet Vronsky. I felt quite at ease and quite natural with him. You see, I shall now try to avoid meeting him again, but the constraint will no longer exist . . . ’ said he, and remembering that whilst “trying to avoid meeting him again” he had gone straight to Anna’s, he blushed . . . But Kitty was not interested in the question of how the people drink; she had seen his blush and wanted to know the reason. (696)

Apparently, Levin wears his “scarlet letter” immediately beneath the epidermis.

But Levin, of course, is not the only one who suffers from “the scarlet malady.” Kitty and Anna flush and blush on occasions too numerous to mention; however, their flushing/blushing usually occurs accompanied by shame, embarrassment, compliment, agitation, or any situation that may produce shyness, which, for Tolstoy, constitutes a rather large range. In Part I, Chapter 2, Kitty and Anna attempt to out-blush each other in a scene of reciprocal flattery, while in Chapter 28, Anna both flushes and blushes in a veritable blushing marathon as Kitty and Dolly talk about Vronsky. “‘It is very silly, but it will pass,’ said Anna hurriedly, and she bent her flushed face over the tiny bag into which she was packi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Pale Whore, Pale Writer: Is There Punishment for the Crime?
• 2  Blushes Flushes: Anna Kareninas Shameful Physiology
• 3  Women in Love: D.H. Lawrences Paean to Misogyny
• 4  The Virgin and the Gipsy: D.H. Lawrences Paean to Misogyny
• 5  Ugly Hairy Mounds, Fierce Hairy Armpits, and Sewer-Like Menstruations: Women as Vulgar Commodity in Fuentess The Old Gringo
• 6  Mediazation and Marginalization of the Feminine in Blls Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
• 7  Gazing from the Inside: Lacan and an Endocrinological Notion of the Male Gaze
• Index