by Edith Critchley
‘I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in’. Discuss the use of images of entrapment in the work of two female novelists of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
Both Byatt and Morrison use the past as a form of entrapment or as the victim of entrapment, but whether this is a call for a collective reconciliation and freeing of both the character’s and the reader’s history or not differs. The plot of A.S Byatt's novel Possession, revolves around the freeing of a love story that had previously been trapped in the catacombs of history. However, Byatt's attitude toward whether the story needs to be revealed for reconciliation remains ambiguous. Within the novel Christabel Lamotte’s dolls act as the form in which the correspondence between the lovers Lamotte and Ash are hidden, hence trapping their history in unrecorded history. The dolls are described as sinister, bring ‘a little deathly’ (pg83) and with ‘blue glassy eyes, filled with dust, but still glittering’ (pg 81) this macabre description unnervingly suggesting some life remains within the dolls. As well as this, the dolls act as the vehicle for the revelation of the truth, LaMotte having written an untitled poem about the figures, as a clue to the letter's whereabouts. Writing:
‘Could dolly tell us?
Her wax lips are sealed,
Much she has meditated
Much-ah- concealed’
Dolly ever sleepless
Watches above
The shred and relics
Of our lost love’ -(pg 82-82)
The idea of the two poets' love being ‘lost’, suggests that somehow their love needs to be found, a call to those investigating the puzzle of the lovers forgotten affair. This sentiment is continued by the riddle-like versification of the poem and the use of rhetorical questions directly addressing the reader. LaMotte and the dolls seemingly daring the reader to look for what they're hiding. However, Byatt's attitude to whether this call by the dolls should be fulfilled remains ambiguous. The image of the dolls as whole beckons ideas of fate and destiny, dolls acting as ways for children to act out their fantasies. In a way out of the dolls' control. This is reflected in the modern plot of the novel, where it appears that the modern day lovers, Maud and Roland are following the destiny of ‘those others’ (pg421). Particularly as Maud and Roland retrace the footsteps of the lovers in their search for this trapped truth. Paradoxically the modern day characters are entrapped by the freeing of the past. This, as well as the sinister nature of the dolls, confuses Byatt's attitude toward freeing the past. Seemingly using this image to warn against freeing some parts of history, yet still acknowledging human curiosity toward a beckoning clue.
Exploiting this ambiguity toward weather history should be released, Byatt also uses Possession to address the beauty of leaving history entrapped within time. Within the prologue, Byatt describes a meadow which is the scene for Ash's meeting with Lamotte's daughter, and event Byatt describes as leaving ‘no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of’(pg508), hence remaining trapped in the past indefinitely. The meadow is vividly full of colour, she writes of ‘blue cornflowers, scarlett poppies, gold buttercups, a veil of speed wells, an intricate carpet of daisies where the grass was shorter’ (pg 508) the use of asyndetic listing building up the intensity of the imagery, and forming a visceral, idyllic, heavenly image. The use of the meadow image as a whole also acts as a way to demonstrate a natural movement of time, meadows flowers dying in winter before reappearing early spring. This sense of a natural movement of time, and natural re-birth reflecting a more positive attitude to entrapped events. Instead of calling for their reconciliation with the present, Byatt is accepting their natural and beautiful fade into obscurity. Less of a call for revealing the truth, and instead one to step into passivity. Demonstrating the beauty of being entrapped in time, like the regeneration of a meadow, and re-birth of spring. Harnessing this beautiful image of entrapped events to suggest a more positive side to it. A.S. Byatt seems to understand the natural human curiosity to uncover the mysteries of the past, addressed through the dolls, but also invites the reader to consider what can and should belong in the past.
By contrast, Toni Morrison as a black woman feels she does not have the privilege to let events fade into obscurity. Therefore she uses images of entrapment to force the stories of the past to be released, to create reconciliation with the present however painful that may be. Sethe in Beloved describes her back as having a ‘chokecherry tree, Trunks, Branches, and even leaves. [with] Tiny little chokecherry leaves’ (pg18) on it. The chokecherry tree acts as a way for Sethe to describe the grotesque scars left on her back after being whipped as a slave by schoolteacher. The precision of the description of the tree, from trunk to leaves presents a depth not just in the scarring of her back but also of the psychological scarring Sethe is victim to. Acting as a physical metaphor for Sethe being trapped within her scarring past. The use of a chokecherry tree itself creates a feeling more permanent and painful than that of Byatt's fleeting meadow, as trees remain all year round, their trunks study and permanent. On Top of this, there is something disturbing in the weaponising of nature, unlike Byatt's beautiful meadow, here a tree is being used to keep a woman trapped. despite the chokecherry tree usually being a source of shelter and food for native American animals, the nature of slavery has turned it against Sethe, as if the land of America itself is working against her. Leaving her trapped in unnatural past psychological trauma. The disjointed nature of the narrative of Beloved, being non-linear, is reflective of this continued entrapment in the past, growing like the chokecherry tree of into different branches of time. The scars of the chokecherry tree, are used by Morrison to demonstrate the permanent scarring of slavery, and its ability to entrap those even if they have ventured into freedom. By writing about Sethe's scars Morrison is as Claudia Tatre writes, writing to ‘rescue her sister from silence’ (Massolit, Professor Gina Wisker (University of Brighton), Morrison: Beloved lectures.). She is confronting a history often neglected in contemporary literature. Therefore using these images of entrapment, to paradoxically free forgotten black women, and call for a reconciliation of past and present.
Transcending this, Morrison also calls for the reader and the wider community to confront the past. House 124 in which Denver and Sethe live alone, distanced from their community is an image of the entrapment caused by previous actions. The novel opens with the statement ‘124 was spiteful’ (pg1), the personification of the house triggering the understanding of the haunting of the house by Beloved, due to her being murder there as a baby. House 124, although described plainly, just as ‘gray and white’(pg1) , is a vehicle for Sethe to be trapped by the specter of Beloved, whom she murdered as a baby, leading to Her community abandoning her. House 124 acts as Sethe's prison, and due to its spite she is trapped within it; being punished for previous actions. an irony when considering how 124 should be a symbol of her freedom, her escape from slavery, instead being used by Morrison to signify how the shackles of slavery transcend physical entrapment, morphing into punishment and ensnaring isolation, unless the past is confronted and released. Eventually, the community's return to 124 creates a healing reconciliation with the past. Banishing Beloved. At which point, although attacking Edward Bodwin, allows Sethe to finally be free, Sethe hearing ‘little hummingbirds’ (pg308)and then beating her arms so ‘she flies’(pg309), and is finally freed, like a bird, from the isolation of her home as the ‘singing women’ (pg308) gather. This forced reconciliation of the community and the past is what frees Sethe from her home although and a violent price. Linda Krumholz writing: ‘Sethe's process of healing in Beloved, her process of learning to live with her past, is a model for readers who must confront Sethe's past as part of your own past, a collective past that lives right here where we live’ (pg 395, African American review, vol 26)*, therefore, it is through Sethe's entrapment within her past, represented by her home that Morrison communicates a collective entrapment of both the reader and Sethe herself; A need for reconciliation from the shadow of slavery.
Morrison and Byatt also use breast milk as an image to reveal women being entrapped in a struggle between their feminine bodies and the societies in which they live. However, the difference in the societal circumstances exposes the gulf in between the conditions of the characters and the writers.
Byatt uses Lamotte's later poetry to explore her natural physical changes after giving birth then giving up her baby, which leaves her trapped within the rejection of her body by high-class society. A french relative of LaMotte's, Sabine, saved many of LaMotte's poems from this time, the verses reeking of a visceral conflict with her own body. One poem reads:
‘My subject is spilt milk.
A white disfigurement
A quite creeping sleek
Of squandered nourishment’ (pg381)
The poem also harnesses gothic imagery, like the earlier dolls poem, but much less playfully. The verb ‘creeping’ playing into this image. However the conversion of breast milk into a ‘white disfigurement’ is far more grotesque, the comparison of a natural process with disfigurement disconnecting LaMotte with her own body, and representing the alienation she feels with her feminity. The oxymoron within the last line increases this image into one of outright disgust. The irony within the image that increases the grotesque nature lies in the fact that LaMotte's body's response is a natural female one, and yet she is forced to isolate herself from it. Giving up her baby so she may return to acceptable British society. By doing so, her breast milk is in surplus and painfully remains within her, keeping her trapped by her physical response. Entrapped by souring breast milk. Asking the reader to address the paradoxical nature of life as a woman, even a wealthy one, in the late 18th century. Continually trapped between feminity and the forced rejection of it- leading to painful and unnatural responses. Yet, Byatt still concedes the necessity of this sacrifice, like Woolf seeming to admit that it allows space for creative expression.
Likewise in Beloved, the motif of breast milk represents the struggle between the repressive system of slavery and the female body. A struggle that Sethe's humanity gets trapped in. For Sethe, her breast milk is used against her. before she can return her breast milk to her baby, who is traveling through the underground railroad to freedom in the north, it is forcibly taken by her owner- schoolteacher. Sethe describes the incident with disgust, ‘they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby’ (pg 236) and uses a simile to compares herself to an animal, stating she felt ‘like the cow, no the goat’ (pg237) the use of this comparison to basic farm animals alienates Sethe, her natural female process used to demote her to less than, further emphasised by the interjection ‘no’ and then continued demotion down a hierarchy of animals. On top of this the fact that she didn't even have control over her bodily fluids is excessively grotesque, a minute example of the level of entrapment within slavery as a whole, so controlling you lack control over your bodily functions. The basic language used in beloved, however, prevents this from being hyperbolic, doubling the pain and embarrassment experienced by Sethe.
Sethe's milk is taken from her and with it any sense of personal female idenitiy. her milk trapping her from her natural self. the example of breast milk as a whole is specifically feminine. The feminity that is weaponised against her to paradoxically make her feel less human. Morrison calling the reader to address how for female slaves, their bodies were turned against them, through rape and assault, causing a loss and isolation from their natural selves. This dehumanising helps the reader understand why Sethe later attempts to murder her children, a massively unnatural action, from a creature so forcibly denatured from herself. Therefore although both Byatt and Morrison explore how breast milk can be used to demonstrate the struggle wich women in the late 19th century live in, the circumstances of the characters are so massively different, that it exposes a gulf in the experiences of modern white and black women. Byatt's character gives up her baby to return to a wealthy life and explores her experience through the traditionally wealthy hobby of poetry. Whereas Morrison's does not have the privilege to experience a natural reaction to pregnancy, she is forced into being an unnatural being. Byatt has the privilege to focus on LaMotte's painful emotional withdrawal, to revel in her spilt milk. Yet Morrison does not. But it must not be dismissed, that in both cases the women are locked in a fight between what they're society deems as acceptable and their bodies, a struggle women of all shades still experience today.
In conclusion, each novelist approaches entrapment through a different lens, one made up of race, origin, and circumstance, that reflects onto their own characters, and then shapes each of their own attitudes. Byatt's remains in a continued state of privilege, she is allowed to muse over whether the past belongs in the past. Yet Morrison feels a strong obligation to shout the truth. Byatt uses LaMotte to explore the conflict between the female body and the wealthy late 19th-century society. But for Morrison, this conflict is one of freedom and captivity. Despite these different lenses both arrive at similar themes of entrapment, a reflection of how, although the degrees of entrapment may vary, its overall commonalities are strikingly similar.
References
*Krumholz, Linda. “The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison's Beloved.” African American Review, vol. 26, no. 3, 1992, pp. 395–408. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041912. Accessed 27 Feb. 2020.
(Massolit, Professor Gina Wisker (University of Brighton), Morrison: Beloved lectures.) https://www.massolit.io/courses/morrison-beloved
Morrison, Toni, Beloved. USA and London: Vintage, 1987. Rpt. 2016.
Byatt, A.S. Possession. London: Chatto and Windus, 1990.
Works consulted
Miller, Jenna (2015) "Dispossessing Femininity in Byatt's Possession," AWE (A Woman’s Experience): Vol. 2 , Article 7.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/13/specials/byatt-possession.html Accessed 1 march 202
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