osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2014-06-08 07:18 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2014-06-08 07:18 pm
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The Extension of Our Sympathies
"The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies." - George Eliot
I've been reading Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch, which I must confess to enjoying more than Middlemarch itself. I've always admired Eliot's literary goal of extending her readers' sympathy, but I find her hard to read, even tedious: Middlemarch's exhaustive delineation of all its characters mental states is rather, well, exhausting.. Of course it's nice to have everyone's perspective on everything, but at the same time, must we get their perspectives at quite such great length?
Mead's book, however, I've been enjoying a lot, particularly for its examination of the way that a favorite book can become a part of the self. "Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it's a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself...There are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft on a tree," she writes.
As such, there's an element of memoir to the book, as Mead is showing how Middlemarch has shaped her (and how her life has shaped her reading of Middlemarch. But Mead keeps the focus firmly on Eliot: both on Eliot's biography and on Middlemarch itself. Mead has more sympathy for Lydgate than I do - I tend to think that, given his opinions, Rosamund Vincy is exactly the wife he deserved - but the chapter about Casaubon, "The Dead Hand," is particularly fine, particularly in its discussion of insecurity and uncertainty.
***
I don't think that art necessarily enlarges the sympathies. In fact, I think there are certain kinds of art where the fact that one's sympathies will remain comfortably unenlarged is part of the appeal - war stories about the action-packed excitement of killing faceless enemies, or love stories where the protagonist's romantic rival is a completely unworthy person whose feelings about being losing their beloved need trouble the reader not at all. Doubtless there are other such stories, too.
Although I think often books have both elements to them - in most books, the circle of sympathy extends this far and no farther, if only because the nature of a book means that the author has to focus on certain things and not others.
For instance, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies play up the "excitement of killing faceless enemies" bit of Tolkien's books (the faceless enemies are there in the books, although perhaps not so much the excitement of killing them?). But I wouldn't say that Lord of the Rings is on the whole an unsympathetic book. It's just that Tolkien directs the readers' sympathy and attention not to finding humanity in enemies, but toward sympathizing with the fallibility of good characters who succumb to temptation, like Boromir and Gollum and Frodo. (Perhaps Denethor, although in a very different way?)
Even for authors who do take enlarging sympathy as their goal, they need to find a receptive partner in their readers. The first time I read Middlemarch, despite all Eliot's care I found Casaubon vastly irritating: I described him, and I quote, as "a cramped and petty man with a mildewed soul, too small to commit any actual evil, but possessed of a personality so arid that it sucks the vitality out of everyone around him."
Clearly I was not about to allow my sympathy to be enlarged, at least not enough to include an anxious, fretful middle-aged pedant. But Mead's book has accomplished what Eliot did not: I do begin to feel for him, despite all the suffering their marriage visits on poor Dorothea.
I've been reading Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch, which I must confess to enjoying more than Middlemarch itself. I've always admired Eliot's literary goal of extending her readers' sympathy, but I find her hard to read, even tedious: Middlemarch's exhaustive delineation of all its characters mental states is rather, well, exhausting.. Of course it's nice to have everyone's perspective on everything, but at the same time, must we get their perspectives at quite such great length?
Mead's book, however, I've been enjoying a lot, particularly for its examination of the way that a favorite book can become a part of the self. "Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it's a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself...There are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft on a tree," she writes.
As such, there's an element of memoir to the book, as Mead is showing how Middlemarch has shaped her (and how her life has shaped her reading of Middlemarch. But Mead keeps the focus firmly on Eliot: both on Eliot's biography and on Middlemarch itself. Mead has more sympathy for Lydgate than I do - I tend to think that, given his opinions, Rosamund Vincy is exactly the wife he deserved - but the chapter about Casaubon, "The Dead Hand," is particularly fine, particularly in its discussion of insecurity and uncertainty.
***
I don't think that art necessarily enlarges the sympathies. In fact, I think there are certain kinds of art where the fact that one's sympathies will remain comfortably unenlarged is part of the appeal - war stories about the action-packed excitement of killing faceless enemies, or love stories where the protagonist's romantic rival is a completely unworthy person whose feelings about being losing their beloved need trouble the reader not at all. Doubtless there are other such stories, too.
Although I think often books have both elements to them - in most books, the circle of sympathy extends this far and no farther, if only because the nature of a book means that the author has to focus on certain things and not others.
For instance, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies play up the "excitement of killing faceless enemies" bit of Tolkien's books (the faceless enemies are there in the books, although perhaps not so much the excitement of killing them?). But I wouldn't say that Lord of the Rings is on the whole an unsympathetic book. It's just that Tolkien directs the readers' sympathy and attention not to finding humanity in enemies, but toward sympathizing with the fallibility of good characters who succumb to temptation, like Boromir and Gollum and Frodo. (Perhaps Denethor, although in a very different way?)
Even for authors who do take enlarging sympathy as their goal, they need to find a receptive partner in their readers. The first time I read Middlemarch, despite all Eliot's care I found Casaubon vastly irritating: I described him, and I quote, as "a cramped and petty man with a mildewed soul, too small to commit any actual evil, but possessed of a personality so arid that it sucks the vitality out of everyone around him."
Clearly I was not about to allow my sympathy to be enlarged, at least not enough to include an anxious, fretful middle-aged pedant. But Mead's book has accomplished what Eliot did not: I do begin to feel for him, despite all the suffering their marriage visits on poor Dorothea.
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Maybe I should pick up Lord of the Rings again too -- the last time I read it I was really young, and my sympathies weren't the most developed thing in the world.
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I don't think that art necessarily enlarges the sympathies. In fact, I think there are certain kinds of art where the fact that one's sympathies will remain comfortably unenlarged is part of the appeal --I think you're so right here. And now you've really got me thinking about if, and how, a novel can enlarge our sympathies if we start out unwilling to have them enlarged. I'm trying to think of a case when I've had my sympathies enlarged when at first I didn't want them to be...
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I felt rather crabby about being requested to sympathize with Casaubon, and I suspect a lot of readers feel the same.
I think if a reader is dead-set against sympathizing, then there's not much a writer can do - there needs to be that initial willingness, even if it's grudging. But I can think of times that I've started out resistant but ended up interested in and/or sympathetic to something: In the Land of Invented Languages made Klingon speakers sound fascinating, and there was an article in the Smithsonian (IIRC) a few years ago that made me rethink my received opinion of Norman Rockwell, for instance.
Of course, both of those are nonfiction. I'm trying to think of a fictional example. I think sometimes in fiction a character will start out seeming unsympathetic but become more sympathetic as the reader learns more about them? Logan Echolls in Veronica Mars is the example coming to mind right now.
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