Centres of Power Flashcards

Centres of Power

A. The Centre and the Margin

1. As Different
- The centre and the margin are presented as distinct entities.
2. The Centre and the Margin As Complementary
- Examines the relationship between the centre and the margin as potentially complementary.

B. Representation

1. Static authority figures
- Characters in positions of power are portrayed as unchanging and rigid.
2. Flexible peripheric characters
- Characters on the margins are depicted as adaptable and evolving.

C. Voices of the margin and of the centre

1. Two voices heard in the text
- Identifies two distinct voices present in literary texts: one representing the centre and the other the margin.
2. The Double – within a single character
- Explores the concept of duality within a single character, reflecting the tensions between the centre and the margin.

D. The Artist

1. Criticising authority
- The artist figure is portrayed as a critic of established power structures.
2. Becoming socially involved
- The artist engages with social issues and becomes an agent of change.
3. Commenting on his/her creation or on him/herself
- The artist reflects on their own work and identity, adding another layer of complexity to their portrayal.

The Centre and the Margin - Different

In modern European history, centres of power are represented by various institutions:
- Economic
- Financial
- Administrative
- Political
- Religious
- Educational
- Legal
- Military
In 19th-century British literature, these establishments are fully portrayed as spheres of central power.

The Centre and the Margin - Centre

Typology of Victorian characters embodying institutions:
- Land/factory owner or capitalist
- Banker
- Mayor or minuscule clerk
- Political leader
- Priest
- Teacher
- Lawyer or judge
- Policeman
- Officer/soldier
These characters are mainly seen as:
- Conformists
- Alienated
- False Puritans
- Upstarts
- Machiavellian
Representatives of central authority are often relegated to the margins of the novel:
- Mainly secondary characters
- Punished by the author (unhappy, isolated, publicly exposed, dead)
- Mocked at

The Centre and the Margin - Margin

Victorian writers, poets, and essayists did NOT consider themselves and their cultural institutions as centres of power.
In Victorian literature, the margin is represented by:
- Outsiders
- Eccentrics
- Non-conformists
- Utopian dreamers
- Dependants

The Margin - Outsiders

Examples of outsiders in literature:
- The artist: Pygmalion, Basil Hallward in The Picture of Dorian Gray
  > In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
- The child: Pip, Alice
- The woman: Lady Dedlock
- Convicts: Abel Magwich in Great Expectations
  > A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briers; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled, and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
- Madmen: Mr. Dick (Richard Babley) in David Copperfield
  > 'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his head cut off?' I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine. 'Well,' returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. 'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?

The Margin - Eccentrics

Eccentrics (who are also outsiders):
- Spinsters: Miss Havisham
- Widows: Miss Trotwood
- Self-isolated characters: Mr. Jaggers, Mariana, Proserpine, Silas Marner
- The detective: Sherlock Holmes
- The lonely scientist: Dr. Jekyll

The Margin - Non-conformists

Non-conformists:
- Social rebels: Caliban
- Upstarts: Becky Sharp
- Sentimental rebels: Edward Rochester
Utopian dreamers are those who want to change their community for the better (Dorothea Brook and Dr. Lydgate).

The Margin - Punch 1881

Charles Keene - Punch 1881 Confidential friend (to elderly and not unattractive spinster). "So, dear, you've given up advocating women's rights?"
Elderly spinster. "Yes, I now go in for women's lefts."
Confidential friend. "Women's lefts! What's that?"
Elderly spinster. "Widowers, my dear!"

The Margin - Dependents

Dependents:
- Jane serving Mrs. Reed and Mr. Rochester
- David being at the mercy of the Murdstones
- Pip depending on his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery
- Estella totally dependent on Miss Havisham
- The Duchess of Ferrara depending on her cruel husband
These characters are (almost) socially marginal and they critically comment upon the centre (the corrupted, the false, the rotten representatives of institutions).
THE MARGIN COMMENTS UPON THE CENTRE UNDERMINING IT.
In Victorian literature the stress mainly falls on marginal characters in the sense that they are the main characters; if so, the margin tends to move towards the centre in terms of the author’s interest.

The Centre and the Margin As Complementary

The Cinderella Complex (a critical term used by Monica Pillat in her book Cultura ca Interior, p. 271) deals with the fact that the centre is disguised in the margin.
It refers to the main hero/heroine who is in the centre of attention, but who, socially speaking, is placed at the very periphery/margin of the community at the beginning.
- The servant
- The governess
- The orphan
- The penniless
At the end of this character’s road, her/his high qualities, virtues and values become publicly recognised and respected by everyone and especially by her/his kindred spirit.
The protagonist has become/revealed what he/she really is, and this makes him/her CENTRAL.
It is his/her message of endurance and spirituality which places him/her in the centre of the fictitious community.

Representation

I. Writers portrayed the characters in the centre of authority as being STATIC:
- They do not change.
- They do not learn anything from experience because they represent the old generation of oppressive system.
II. The characters in the margin are described as FLEXIBLE:
- They evolve:
  - a./ from inexperience or misunderstanding to understanding, wisdom and (half) social integration (positive characters)
  - b./ from inexperience or misunderstanding to decay and alienation (negative characters) (Becky Sharp, Heathcliff- the servant becoming the master)

Voices of the margin and of the centre

I. The above mentioned typology of characters (central vs. marginal, static vs. flexible) is based on two voices distinctly heard in the literary texts between the lines:
- The Mercantile voice of ambitious characters, upstarts and social climbers
- The Puritan voice of positive evolving characters.
II. Sometimes within the same character or with complementary characters (Dorian Grey, the painting - Dorian Grey, the real man; Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson), the reader can hear two distinct voices:
- A diurnal voice which expresses the pragmatic, scientific perspective of the character
- A nocturnal voice (of Romantic influence) which is anti-social or quite strange

The artist

In literature:
- 1. The artist criticises the centre of authority (Fra Pandolf, Basil)
- 2. The artist becomes socially involved (Ladislow, Matthew Arnold’s theory of the elite)
- 3. The artist/ the scientist comments on his own creation or on himself.
The creation rebels (the Lady of Shalott- the artist cannot be understood by the public anymore, Dorian Grey, Pygmalion) fight to liberate themselves from authority (aesthetic authority).