著者

佐々木 英哲

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

人間文化研究 (ISSN:21889031)

巻号頁・発行日

no.4, pp.93-121, 2016-02-26

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In "Mosses from an Old Manse" (1846), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) paradoxically dropped off his mask to blurt, "So far as I am a man of really individual attributes, I veil my face." In making sure of his hidden undissembled intention regarding the author-reader communion, this paper treats "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836), a short fiction written during Hawthorne's apprenticeship to become a professional writer. "The Minister's Black Veil" depicts the unintelligible behavior of the Reverend Hooper, who wears a black veil. Critics are divided over the problem of whether Hooper merits praise or harsh criticism. Existentially aware of the meaning of life, or to use Heidegger's phraseology, Dasein, Hooper warns his parishioners, it seems, of how foolish it is to stay ignorant in plausibly blissful daily activities. If closely inspected, however, Hooper is far from being an Existentialist. He forcefully imposes the same identity as sinners on one and all parishioners, in the name of Puritanism and its dogmatic doctrine, the notion of total depravity. He shows unawares his totalitarian inclination toward essentialism ---- the sort of attitude that Existentialists denounce. Furthermore, he neglects to hold communion with his parishioners and even with God, and thus incarcerates himself in his own solipsistic realm. When we recall the author's above-mentioned confession of "I veil my face," we confront this question: How close is Hawthorne to Hooper the veiled minister? The Deconstructionist Paul de Man points out that, because of its etiological definition of speaking about something other than itself, the deconstruction of the allegory is part of the allegory itself. From this perspective, we can understand that it is impossible for Hooper to allegorically represent the w/Word(s) (of God), the Origin, and the Cause (of Sin) with the use of his black veil, the proxy, symbol, letter, and or language with which he hopes to allegorically convince the congregation of the Puritan notion of total depravity. Aware of how he appears to the eyes of his parishioners, Hooper stops associating with them. He is openly avoided and secretly ridiculed by men and women, young and old. In these adverse circumstances, the degree of their misapprehension over the reason for his veil deepens all the more. In a negative way, Hooper exemplifies the process of what the leading Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida calls "Differance" and attests to Derrida's insistence that allegory deconstructs itself. More than a decade after publishing this story, Hawthorne became a canonical writer by dint of his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850). But around this time he also suffered severe hardships, most of which sprang from misunderstanding on the part of his contemporaries : he was expelled from the sinecure position at the custom house, targeted in a hate campaign by Charles Upham, and incurred the displeasure of locals through his sarcastic depiction of the locally employed officers at the custom house. Moreover, since the 1980s, Hawthorne's support for Franklin Pierce, the notoriously pro-lavery politician who went on to win the presidency, has induced left-minded critics to undermine the writer's literary reputation. In his apprenticeship to become a professional writer, Hawthorne already depicted his future self in the image of Hooper. Portraying both Hooper's liability to be a victim of misapprehension and his resigned acceptance of this fate, the author predicted the fate that was to befall him later in life and after his death. Through the Reverend Hooper, Hawthorne paradoxically allegorized his own nature of veiled otherness in the form of desacralized allegory/parable, and conveyed the difficulty of how to face the unexposed foreign self.

著者

佐々木 英哲 Eitetsu SASAKI 桃山学院大学文学部

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

桃山学院大学人間科学 = HUMAN SCIENCES REVIEW, St. Andrew's University (ISSN:09170227)

巻号頁・発行日

no.22, pp.1-16, 2001-12-10

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Sacvan Bercovitch has clarified in The Rites of Assent that, in stark contrast to European individualism, which is likely to confront society, paradoxically, American individualism has had a share in consensus building and contributed to the Americanization of society. This process is called the American Way. Hester's struggle to multiply the meaning of the letter A in The Scarlet Letter (1850) -from the initial Adultery to Angel and Admirable-does not interfere with the American Way. On the supposition that the nineteenth-century domesticity and gender ideology has stealthily slipped into the seventeenth-century setting of the story, I investigate how Chillingworth the cuckold and Dimmesdale the paramour contribute together to the American Way. Chillingworth is denied the privileges, first, of creating an affectionate, patriarchic family, as evaluated in nineteenth-century America, second, of occupying a patriarchic position, and third, of establishing a male patriarchal gender identity (which he becomes obsessed with retrieving). He becomes all the more sensitive to his own impotency and Abject physique when he sees Pearl, the child of Hester and Dimmesdale. As a "living hieroglyphic," not the Alphabet of the letter A that could be decoded, Pearl is a mere infant-an infant whose etymology is 'incapable of speech'; not the suitable object to be appropriated by the learned man in a prerogative position like Chillingworth, the manipulator of the Language/Logos in the so-called Symbolic of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The author lets the revengeful Chillingworth misuse the nineteenth-century domestic ideology that warned of the threat of that nameless horror represented by the bachelor, i. e., homosexual sex. Chillingworth gains support from this ideology, pretends to be a pious Christian, and takes advantage of the historical fact that the New England colonists were prone to compare men of political power to biblical figures. (For example, Winthrop the first Governor was compared to Moses and Nehemiah, and Cotton the minister was compared to Abraham, Joshuah, and John.) By actually living with minister Dimmesdale on the pretext of treating his psychosomatic condition, Chillingworth creates the sacrosanct family, insinuates domestic ideology, behaves within Dimmesdale's psyche as a sacred father, or punishing super-ego, and thus preys on Dimmesdale with the Oedipal sense of guilt. Psychologically, the old physician confronts the minister as if he were blaming the latter for committing a deed likely to rouse the homophobic, i. e., forming an immature umbilical relation with Hester, mother-goddess-like self-willed woman. To prevent the patriarchy he stands on from backsliding into the pre-Oedipal Eros, and to prevent the basis of patriarchy, i. e., the compulsory heterosexuality, from breaking down, Chillingworth acts as the Law enforcing/castrating father. However, the tactics Chillingworth employs are not flawless in terms of the gender stability he has to maintain. In his observing eyes, Dimmesdale appears to reside in an enviable patriarchic family-the family composed of the minister, Hester, and Pearl, the family exclusive of outsiders. According to Freud's theory of narcissism, Dimmesdale is, first, the model the physician wants to imitate, second, his opponent/persecutor, and third, his homosexual lover. This means that the male gender-apparently based on Emersonian self-reliant man-becomes destabilized, and that the more closely Chillingworth approaches his former state of patriarch, the more difficult it becomes for him to reach his ultimate goal of regaining his masculinity, the gender identity supposedly established on the compulsory heterosexual norm. The author detected the common anxiety shared by the intelligent men of the seventeenth century like Chillingworth and the men of power of the nineteenth century like Hawthorne: the former were fearful of the antinomians who, like Hester, claimed thorough individualism and direct communication with God, and the latter were cautious against those who were influenced by the effect of revolutions in European countries around 1848, and those who imbibed radical concepts of freedom, including proto-feminism and the dismantling of the family. The author lets Chillingworth protect the patriarchy and its foundation of the heterosexual norm and sexism-in a paradoxical way-by robbing him of heterosexuality, letting him remain a bachelor, and uniting him homosexually with Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's homosexual stance is not in conflict with the American Way, i. e., with the cause of preserving the androcentric society, because the heterosexual and the homosexual alike are prone to strive to maintain patriarchy. Punishing and loving the minister, and thus paradoxically placing himself in the American Way, i. e., the patriarchal consensus, Chillingworth barely finds his raison d'etre by forging the Oedipal space of the pseudo-patriarchal-family together with the minister.

著者

佐々木 英哲 Eitetsu Sasaki 桃山学院大学国際教養学部

雑誌

英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.26, pp.47-71, 2012-03-29

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Sacvan Bercovitch has clarified in The Rites of Assent that American individualismhas had a share in consensus building and contributed to theAmericanization of society. This process is called the American Way. IfChillingworth the cuckold and Dimmesdale the paramour contribute together tothe American Way, why did the author hold an emotional and even a somewhatmorbid attachment to Chillingworth?The author lets the revengeful Chillingworth misuse the nineteenthcenturydomestic ideology that warned of the threat of that nameless horror representedby the bachelor, i.e., homosexual sex. Psychologically, the oldphysician confronts the minister as if he were blaming the latter for committinga deed likely to rouse the homophobic, i.e., forming an immature umbilical relationwith Hester, mother-goddess-like self-willed woman. To prevent the patriarchyhe stands on from backsliding into the pre-Oedipal Eros, and to preventthe basis of patriarchy, i.e., the compulsory heterosexuality, from breaking down,Chillingworth acts as the Law enforcing father. By actually living with the ministerDimmesdale on the pretext of treating his psychosomatic condition,Chillingworth creates the sacrosanct family, insinuates domestic ideology, behaveswithin Dimmesdale's psyche as a sacred father, or punishing super-ego,and thus preys on Dimmesdale with the Oedipal sense of guilt.In his observing eyes, however, Dimmesdale appears to reside in an enviablepatriarchic family-the family composed of the minister, Hester, and Pearl,the family exclusive of outsiders. According to Freud's theory of narcissism,Dimmesdale is, first, the model the physician wants to imitate, second, his opponent/ persecutor, and third, his homosexual lover. Chillingworth's homosexualstance is not, however, in conflict with the American Way, i.e., with the cause ofpreserving the androcentric society, because the heterosexual and the homosexualalike are prone to strive to maintain patriarchy.The author detected the common anxiety shared by the intelligent men ofthe seventeenth century like Chillingworth and the men of power of the nineteenthcentury like Hawthorne: the former were fearful of the antinomians who,like Hester, claimed thorough individualism and direct communication with God,and the latter were cautious against those who were influenced by the effect ofrevolutions in European countries around 1848, and those who imbibed radicalconcepts of freedom, including proto-feminism and the dismantling of the family.Therefore, the author lets Chillingworth protect the patriarchy and its foundationof the heterosexual norm and sexism-in a paradoxical way-by robbing him ofheterosexuality, letting him remain a bachelor, and uniting him homosexuallywith Dimmesdale.

著者

佐々木 英哲

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

人間文化研究 (ISSN:21889031)

巻号頁・発行日

no.1, pp.29-81, 2014-11-28

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Melville acquired the knowledge of Gnosticism in 1849, when he bought Dictionnaire historique et critique [The Historical and Critical Dictionary] by Pierre Bayle. Gnosticismmay have helped Melville unlock the door to a realm beyond the wall or the realm hidden behind the mask, the hidden knowledge. According to Foucault, knowledge in the ages from enlightenment to (post-) modernism was not so much truth or untruth as control and possession, in short, hegemonic power. Melville's attraction to Gnosticism is unsurprising if we recall that he possessed and was possessed with knowledge, but dispossessed of power (unpopular in literary circles) and destitute as a consequence. Curiously, however, the author allowed Pierre to nearly become a member of the mysterious mock-commune presided over by Plinlimmon, the man who happens to have the same given name as the third century anti-Gnostic, Plotinus. This paper tries to clarify (1) what factor(s) impel(s) Pierre to accept Isabel's /Plinlimmon's (anti-)Gnostic influence, (2) the direction in which Pierre finally goes, and (3) the pessimistic message, or oracle if you like, that Melville tries to transmit through Pierre's abrupt suicide, the nullification of his progress towards possible liberation for himself and his half-sister. Pierre is snugly bathed in "the brilliant chandeliers of the mansion of Saddle Meadow" as an inheritor-to-be. Pierre unknowingly follows the mode a white male (is forced to) make[s], the mode that perpetually (de)stabilizes his subject position, with recourse to false reality/ identity perception and / or reality/ identity fabrication. Pierre is too embarrassed to stay calm after hearing Isabel recount her life story. He tries to regain his subject position by stealing and lying beneath the "Terror Stone" or the "Memnon Stone" of the Delphi Omphalos (the "navel," or center of the world, in Greek). From there, Pierre says to Isabel, "[T]ell me every thing and any thing. I desire to know all." His burning desire for knowledge about Isabel's identity has a great deal to do with Foucauldian power-compared knowledge. As the intimacy with Isabel deepens, Pierre loses his subjective authority and veers towards Isabel, the representation of Gnosticism. Isabel appears in the occult atmosphere and misuses esotericism/ Gnosticism as an alternative to orthodox Christianity, leaving Pierre with an impression of epiphany, and thus prompting him to lean toward Gnosticism. Under her influence, he debunks his deceased father's genteel middle-class image, dethroning him to the equivalent of Demiurge. Moreover, Pierre is a symbolic look-alike of Simon Magus, the founder of Gnostic heresy, in gleaning inspiration from a suspicious (licentious) woman, Isabel (as Simon does from Helen(a)/Sophia). Imitating the Gnostic and dethroning his Demiurgeous father, Pierre flagrantly compares himself to "the heavenbegotten Christ" and falls into the fallacy of becoming the Demiurge or anti- God. Pierre happens to read a lecture pamphlet allegedly written by Plinlimmon and relapses again into the Anglo-European-centric mentality. This retreat is incited by Plinlimmon, the mysterious man whose surname sounds like Memnon (recalling the Memnon Stone that lies, according the Greek, in the center of the earth) and who shares the same given name as the anti-Gnostic Plotinus. Thus, Plinlimmon, the blue-eyed anti-Gnostic, is a stark opposite to Isabel, the "dark, olive cheek[ed]" (46) pro-Gnostic. Seen from another angle, this implies that Pierre, the nineteen-year-old preparing for initiation into mature adult life, desperately needs knowledge and mock-Messiahs to prop him up. The opposite two, the pro-Gnostic Isabel and the anti-Gnostic Plinlimmon, merge in Pierre's psyche. This is not necessarily to say that Pierre retreats to his starting point. Pierre holds himself so as not to entirely commit himself to the community provided over by Plinlimmon, the mock-utopia of sorts with its potential to change into a radically violent group. Pierre breaks this apparent vicious circle by taking poison from the bosom of Isabel. Thus, it turns out that unlike Foucault, Pierre exposes the inefficiency of Western knowledge, and that unlike Derrida and Levinas, Pierre exposes his pessimistic view about the futility of seeking (a) Messiah(s) in other being(s). He finally realizes that he is heading for a postmodern nowhere where one cannot or should not expect epiphany of a Messiah. In Pierre, Melville warned of the futility of Messiah-seeking. Melville could textually allow Pierre to solve his Messiah problem, but the author could not solve his own Messiah problem, the problem attributed to his traumatic experience of being virtually deserted by Hawthorne, the object of his love and worship.