A journey from Witches to captivity to wild nights. I began this blog with the concept of self identity based on the captivity narratives and Young Goodman Brown.
Psychology defines the self concept as a mental model of the self. According to Personality :A Systems Approach by John D. Mayer from the University of New Hampshire; "The positivity or negativity of the self-schema is referred to as an individual's self-esteem. Models of the world,, on the other hand, are representations of the outside world by which we navigate our surroundings. the tell us the rules by which the world operates"(168).
The concept of self is one that transcends throughout all of the literature we have explored on this journey. Personal psychology is the essence of the interpretation of literature, in addition to historical knowledge and historical context. These two are essential in understanding and interpreting literature and applying what we read in history as well as in literature to our daily lives.
History allows us to have perspective and gives us the context of the time period in which a piece takes place. The importance of the history literature connection could not be depicted any better than it has been in this class. Imagine, reading Young Goodman Brown without any historical knowledge of the time and place.
“And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing on ward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil”.
When looking at this again and imagining it out of context it reminds me of the classic version of Snow White when she is lost running through the forest. Or an odd sort of narration of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
How would we view the Conquest of New Spain without the history that gives it meaning? How do we understand and interpret Self Reliance and Civil Disobedience without the historical knowledge?
The fact is, we don’t.
Back to personal psychology and the concept of self in literature; how do you prove who and what you are? Someone along the way posed this question in response to one of my blogs. I think a lot of the literature that we have explored in this class has asked us to deal with a similar version of this same question. How do you prove who and what you are to yourself and to others? How does Young Goodman Brown return to society after experiencing and seeing all that he has and try to appear unchanged by his experiences.
“The next morning young Goodman brown came slowly into the street of Salem Village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed on Goodman brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema.”
For a man of this time to shrink away from the minister as if he were to be detested is frightening. How does Goodman Brown return to the town and understand his position in society, what does he call himself and how does he feel about all that he has experienced. We discussed this as a class briefly but I find this to be a crucial illustration of what these people experienced everyday.
This is beside the point, however, I have read this piece many times and this is the first time I noticed that the minister was “talking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast” I don’t know about other people but graveyards do not typically give me an appetite and I would imagine that if I were to give a sermon I would not look upon a graveyard as a place to meditate on that sermon. Though I have read this piece so many times this strange paring has never stood out to me as unusual until now. I assume that the graveyard is near the church yard as many are and were always and that is why the minister’s morning stroll would lead him past the graveyard but even knowing this does not exactly comfort me in the strangeness of this description.
Back to the Puritan experience: How did the people of Salem carry on knowing that at any moment they could be damned? How did the men aboard the Whale ship Essex sit back while crew members were being eaten and how do those that partook in eating their fellow men return to society in any normal way after experiencing these horrors? It is the extreme nature of these experiences that brings me back to the idea of the concept of self and who we really are verses who we project ourselves to be to others. The sense of self, like literature is very unpredictable and at the same time based on history.
Another mental model that personality psychologists talk about is referred to in the previously sighted textbook as the life story. The life story is a description of a typical sequence of events describing the protagonist and other people. The stories people chose to tell will highlight some aspects of a person or a life and de-emphasize other aspects that might not fit the purpose of the telling of the story."Such stories" states Mayer, " are the means, in part, by which we define our identity for ourselves and for others". In this way Mayer and other personality psychologists seem to be trying to provide an answer for our previously mentioned question, how do you prove who and what you are to yourself and others; in other words, how do you prove yourself to others and what is your own understanding of yourself?
Interestingly, enough it seems psychologists are saying that we often identify with ourselves and with others by defining our self concept which we are able to do by sharing our life story.
I find this to be a fascinating connection between psychology, history and literature. Our history is our life story which defines our psychology: the self concept which in turn creates our literature.
This was touched on in our Emily Dickinson facilitation by Tony DeGenero and I.
Emily tells us:
CVI
I felt a cleavage in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
Is this not an intriguing look at creating literature and the intrinsic nature of the mind and the self?
Miss Dickinson has a very unique representation of the "I" in her work that is not unlike other poets though her stylistic approach is. She sometimes uses the "I" as herself such as in this piece or in other pieces she writes from another persons point of view making the "I" someone else such as in,
XVI
I ’m wife; I ’ve finished that,
That other state;
I ’m Czar, I ’m woman now:
It ’s safer so.
How odd the girl’s life looks
Behind this soft eclipse!
I think that earth seems so
To those in heaven now.
This being comfort, then
That other kind was pain;
But why compare?
I ’m wife! stop there!
The unique aspect Emily Dickinson takes on in this piece is directly related to her life story in that she has embodied Susan Huntington Gilbert, (former bestfriend/lover) present sister in law. Yet, even thought the I in this piece serves as Susan or 'Sue" speaking she is actually mocking Susan's role as the wife because she resents it. In the second stanza she even speaks to herself; the girl with the soft eclipse mentioned is actually most likely referring to Emily. So what lesson would Emily Dickinson teach us about the self concept and life story?
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What have we learned about literature and history, and literature and the self concept on this journey together?
Literature is always current no matter how historical it is. Cotton Mather: On Witchcraft still speaks to us today. Emily Dickinson's love poems carry on themes of love that we still experience today. I was personally able to make a connection in class between Poe and Jeffery Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides. An older text and a contemporary one.
History is absolutely necessary to make literature come alive. Literature cannot sustain itself without history and contextual evidence of those historical underpinnings. (see Goodman Brown.
and last but never least,
We rely on the concept of the self, image of the self and self theory in order to create the life story and this is what allows all of us to be writers of great literature.
