Realistic versus Romantic Fiction

Henry James aged 11 with his father

One of the things that made the twentieth century such a somber era to live in was the lack of a romantic outlook in the prevailing literature and culture. Anything short of "realism" in prose fiction was frowned upon by the literate elite, whereas in the visual arts, representational images gave way to undecipherable smears and in poetry, meter ceded to formless epigrams and stream of consciousness ramblings.


The move away from romanticism did not begin all at once at the turn of the twentieth century. Henry James, an American ex-pat author of the realistic tradition, straddled both centuries. In an early trip to Europe, he met with Dickens and George Eliot, ostensibly romantics. He also had a period during which he esteemed the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American romantic of the highest caliber. But somewhere along the way, Europeans like Balzac and Turgenev  led him toward social and psychological realism.

Henry James in 1890
Source: Wikipedia

What does realism consist of in fiction? While it purports to be a movement that shows life as it is and people as the social animals that they are, one of the characteristics by which readers of fiction recognize realism is a depressing penchant for painting small people leading ordinary lives filled with uselessness and despair. It is not so much that a work of realistic fiction does not have a plot -- the best of them actually do -- as that the plot often shows the gradual death of all hope in the lives of ordinary people. 

Take as an example, Washington Square by Henry James. I read it the day before yesterday and reviewed it yesterday, here:

Aya Katz Review of Washington Square

In my review, I compared Catherine Sloper, the heroine of Washington Square, with Catherine Halsey, a minor character in The Fountainhead. Washington Square is a very short novel with no subplots. The Fountainhead is a rather longish novel, with several subplots that feed neatly into the main plot. The two Catherines, though, encounter very similar experiences. They are both ordinary women with no special talent, grace or beauty, but each of them does have genuine feelings and a certain degree of backbone and self-respect, and each is jilted by a man she has fallen deeply in love with, while a paternal figure who disapproves of the match does his best to stand in the way and even gloat when things do not work out.

The tragedy for Catherine Sloper in Washington Square is not just that she lost a would-be lover, but also that she stopped loving her father as a result of this event, so that in the end, though she was a very loving and loyal person by nature, she no longer loved anybody and lived a life of quiet suffering. This is especially hard on someone who does not have any other real interests besides her relationship to other people. Catherine did spend her time doing other things. She was not idle. She embroidered. She volunteered to help the poor. But the way that Henry James described her, she was not consumed or obsessed by these activities. They were just a way to pass the time. 

In Rand's version of the story, Catherine lost her soul, because she seemingly forgot how very much she had felt for Peter Keating. I mean, she remembered all the events -- including the feelings she had had -- but she no longer felt that way, and she could no longer even imagine feeling that way, when she met Keating again years later. 

From a deep romantic point of view, a love once experienced never dies. If that love dies, then the capacity to love dies with it. In The Fountainhead, it was as if Catherine had had a lobotomy.  She is not the main heroine, and her lack of courage in maintaining a consistent emotional life is contrasted with the behavior of Roark and Dominique, whose love endures despite all manner of trials and separations -- including faithlessness on the part of Dominique. 

 Ayn Rand herself surprised people by still harboring deep feelings for the man she first fell in love with in Russia decades later, despite the fact that he gave her no reason for maintaining those feelings. (Read The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden.)

The contrast between how being jilted is treated by a "realist" and a "romantic" highlights the different psychologies of both personality types and shows us that the real issue is not realism or lack thereof. There is more than one psychological reality in the universe, because there is more than one type of person. What seems realistic to one does not necessarily seem so to another. And when an entire literary movement is made to appeal to a certain personality type and to crush all others, this is a political move. It is not about aesthetics or about psychology or about realism. It is about how certain people want reality to be. 

In Rand's work, the person wanting reality to be that way is Ellsworth Toohey, Catherine Halsey's uncle, who is deeply involved in art and architecture and literature, and is staunchly against romanticism. But in Henry James' novel, it is Catherine's own father, Dr. Sloper, and he is more concerned with being right than in his daughter's happiness. While there is a certain psychological realism in the way this process is described, not all fathers are like that. 

Jean Laffite is forced to accept his daughter  Denise's marriage to a man he despises
Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain

Some care so much about a daughter's happiness that they might even tolerate a son-in-law they despise rather than choosing to ruin the daughter's life.. And when they are proved right, instead of gloating, they try their best to fix things. Instead of recriminating with their daughters, such fathers stand by and support their injured daughters emotionally, to allow them to heal and love again. 

After Denise realies her mistake, Jean does not gloat
Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain

If realism means showing a worst case psychological scenario, then Washington Square is an excellent example of realism. Yet it is good to keep in mind that a sad story is not sad simply because of what has happened, but because of how people deal with what has happened. And while in terms of what physically happens in a Henry James novel, we may safely say it is nothing much, psychologically characters suffer extreme devastation. In a romantic story, where a great deal of physical violence may take place, characters are allowed to grow and heal and try again, even if they have made a very bad mistake the first time around. 

Denise discusses her new beau, Frank Little, with her father
Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain

Henry James was very squeamish about sex, so nothing even remotely sexual is alluded to in Washington Square. But whether a work is explicit or not, some understanding of the psychology not only of affection and attachment but also extreme passion is required. And a truly realistic work must take into account that the happiness we find in life is as much due to our own personality type as to the things that may or may not happen to us. Active characters, like Denise Laffite, take matters into their own hands, and even if they are sorely beaten in their quest for happiness, they learn to pick themselves up and have the courage to try again.

But there is more to the contrast between a romantic work and a work of realism than the ways they handle love and marriage. There is also the attitude toward money, work, and patriotism that plays a part. In Washington Square embroidery is a genteel, pointless occupation for women. In Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain weaving is both an artistic occupation for Denise and the hope for founding a textile industry for her father. Obsession with work and with building things is a characteristic of romanticism as much as is obsession with love, and all of these are seen as primary, while established society is a secondary matter.

That such people existed in reality as well as in fiction  is borne out by the fact that the American frontier was settled, that the Revolutionary War was won, that the American constitution was written, and the War of 1812, which saw Americans beaten and humiliated in the Sack of Hampton, still ended in American victory --- financed not by the government, but by independent privateers.

If realistic fiction only paints characters whose whole world is social and their place in society is static, then it omits the small but signifcant segment of humanity that does not value people based on their zip code or whether they live uptown or downtown. Some people do pioneer new ideas and live in wild places and fight to defend a country they love despite its government's rejection of them. But then other people go the other way. 

It is probably no coincidence that Henry James ended up leaving America and becoming a naturalized British subject. 

The Difference Between Karma and Revenge

There must be a great many closet Buddhists or Hindus among us these days, because wherever I turn I see something about karma. Religions seem to come out at us from the East, shrouded in mystery and a strange sort of dignity, and there is a great attraction in eastern religions for those who have spiritual tendencies, though they have squarely rejected the Western religious traditions. The Laffite and Little families were not immune to Eastern influences. Jean and Denise Laffite both seemed to know something about the I Ching,  and copied out quotations in their notebooks. But for all the attraction that he may have felt for the wisdom of the far east, I am pretty sure Jean Laffite was never a Buddhist. He believed in revenge, not in karma.

What is the difference between revenge and karma? Revenge is active and straightforward and involves punishing someone who has wronged you. Karma is passive-aggressive, and it involves waiting around for the universe to punish someone you don't like and then gloating about it.

The benefits of revenge is that it metes out direct justice for a specific wrong in a way that can be easily understood by all concerned, including disinterested onlookers. Revenge creates catharsis, releases anger, and allows life to return to normal more quickly after a bad event. Revenge speeds up the mourning process and brings inner peace. Revenge also has a good effect on society as a whole.  The world becomes a better place when someone works out correct revenge against an appropriate target, because everyone stands forewarned that misbehavior toward others does not pay. All the usual reasons for the criminal law are found in a revenge act properly executed: punishment, deterrence and a way to cut down on recidivism.

Now the sticking point is, of course, that it has to be the correct target.  If you attack an innocent third party for something that someone else did to you, then you are spreading injustice and sowing discord and suffering and war. So it is very important to go after the correct target and only the correct target. Bombing an entire village for something one person did is not proper revenge. The slogan that "an eye for an eye" will make all the world blind is actually based on the idea that you will go after the wrong target and create an avalanche of wrongdoing, instead of going after the original wrongdoer and help to enforce the law and cut down on crime. Revenge, properly executed, leads to closure.

In Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain, an act of revenge is even something that makes eventual forgiveness possible. It's not possible to forgive a wrongdoer when he is not penitent and will not apologize.  People rarely make a heartfelt apology unless they are truly contrite. Contrition is more easily achieved after experiencing a punishment that is related to the crime by an avenger who is kind enough to explain the connection.

Now compare this straightforward method of meting out justice with the ways of karma. Karma presupposes that the punishment for bad behavior will be doled out by the universe in an unfolding of mysterious long-deferred cause and effect. Rather than punishing your enemy, you have only to kick back and relax and wait for something bad to happen to him. People who believe in karma enjoy gloating over the misfortune of others.

The problem with that is that bad things happen to everyone.  Sometimes very bad things happen to very good people. Gloating over every misfortune is an ugly trait that some humans have. The Germans have a name for it: Schadenfreude.

Good people do not enjoy the undeserved suffering of other people. They do not tell a rape victim that she must have had it coming, or a holocaust survivor that he must be paying for the killing he did in a previous life.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/02/24/shirley-maclaine-lambasted-for-comments-about-holocaust-victims-and-karma/

According to Shirley MacClaine:

“What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before…. The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.”

It is the belief in karma that perpetuates suffering by blaming victims for the wrongs that they suffer. Killing isn't bad. Murder is bad. Until and unless people learn to tell the difference, there can never be any peace, neither the conventional kind, as in the cessation of war, nor the internal kind, as in closure after a terrible injustice. A great man does not gloat  over the undeserved misfortunes of another, even if it is his own worst enemy. He does, however, avenge wrongs against himself and his family.

Lotus Flower
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Tema_Nezahat_Gokyigit_Park_1060584_nymphaea.jpg/240px-Tema_Nezahat_Gokyigit_Park_1060584_nymphaea.jpg

What is your Love About?

A first meeting with the love of your life may or may not be dramatic. In Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain, I had Jean Laffite and Theodosia Burr meet on board The Patriot after he saved it from a British attack and then proceeded to commandeer it for his own use, having found that the Captain and all of the crew had been killed as prisoners aboard the British ship he sank.

from http://cms.toptenthailand.net/file/picture/20131119133038170/20131119133038170.jpg

In the sequel, Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain, Jean Laffite unwittingly introduced his daughter Denise to the man she would marry by inviting him to make her a spinning wheel.

from http://bjws.blogspot.com/2012/11/sewing-indoors-1800s.htm
by Platt Powell Ryder, an American artist 1821-189

Denise had just come out of a disastrous marriage to a pirate, and she was dressed all in black because her father had recently killed him to avenge her, and she had made the statement that she wanted henceforth to remain a spinster. Taking her literally at her word, Jean Laffite commissioned a spinning wheel to be made for her by Francis Little, who turned out to be her future husband.

Of course, I made all that up because I'm a novelist. In real life, it may not have happened anything like that. But does it really matter how they met? Does it ever matter? According to this article  recently read, it does not, but people sometimes feel very deeply that it should.


Modern Love: When the Words Don't Fit by Sarah Healy

Should your first meeting make a great story to tell the grandchildren? Well, not necessarily. If there is nothing to sustain a long-term love, then we are certainly not going to marry someone because it would make a great story. But the entire sum total of your love should make a great story, and that is where the article left me cold.

Is a meeting at a bar where friends introduce you really all that conventional? (I've never had anything like that happen to me.) And what exactly is a conventional marriage, the kind the author is happy to claim she has? This has got me quite mystified. Every love story is about something. What is a conventional marriage about?

A person once answered me with this: "Sex, companionship, children." But even in a conventional marriage, aren't the sex, companionship and children about something? Something bigger and more important and at the same time much more personal than such a generic listing of three nouns?

In a novel, to be interesting, a love story has to have both a plot and a theme; conflicts built in that enhance and ignite the love and keep it going for a very long time. For Theodosia and Jean, they loved one another because of her Battle against Britain and his War Against Spain, because she loved her country and her father, and because he loved the Constitution and hated tyranny. He wanted to avenge her wrongs, because it was too late to avenge his grandmother directly. They served as surrogates for other people they had loved and worshiped, and they also served as agents of catharsis whenever their interests clashed. His deep respect for Thomas Jefferson, but her hatred for the man who ruined her father and his alliance with James Wilkinson who had been the chief witness for the prosecution at Burr's trial for treason were both jarring and hateful to Theodosia. How could she keep loving Jean and still hold on to her honor?

 The sex, companionship and children in Jean and Theodosia's story were a byproduct of their plot and theme. They were not an end in themselves.

from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBJTPyaStxBT-nQRWtoHND7Ibw-45u2egINtqes9rt9OOezGecXVGo4xL_x30xGny-gLbr7s6130XYjs7ndXAy6Loahm9SwNBP5d7UIdposqg5eI8M5FrMgiL9DHJbaIHpaNuq7kQkxUc/s640/1800+Vilhelm+Hammershoi+(Danish+Artist,+1864%E2%80%931916)+Young+Girl+Sewing,+1887.jpg

In the case of the romance between Denise and Frank, I made the story much more understated. Still there was a story. It was the conflict between the high spirited, imaginative Denise and her artistic and domestic urges, and the question of whether kindness alone can sustain passion. Sometimes after rough sailing, we want a little peace in our lives. But peace is never enough. There has to be art and beauty and courage and a common cause. And ultimately, in order to be sustainable, a marriage has to have a built in theme and a recurring conflict. For Frank and Denise it was art and weaving and furniture making and all while facing up to evil.

Do you have a love story in your life? If so, then you know what it's about. You don't have to tell, of course. It can remain your secret. But it can't be about nothing. There's no such thing as a conventional love. If it's conventional, then it's not love.

Daughters of El Cid: The Importance of Feeling Important

Romantic fiction, as opposed to naturalist fiction, is intended to make the reader feel important, while identifying with important people in a story. Naturalist fiction tends to do the opposite, making the reader feel unimportant, while identifying with insignificant characters in a story.

However, it is not always simply a matter of identifying with kings and princesses, as in a fairy tale or a Disney movie. Sometimes the important person in a piece of romantic writing is a child or a slave or a pauper, who is seemingly powerless, but still manages to make a big difference not only for himself, but also for others in the story. Sometimes in a naturalist piece of fiction, a character can be wealthy or powerful, but rendered ineffectual by anxiety or fear or the psychological inability to act.

I have always enjoyed stories about people who, no matter their social position, are able to make a real difference in the big world that surrounds them. But I have read literary theory to the effect that what makes naturalist fiction more appropriate for today's readers is that they are powerless to make a difference in the big world, so they must focus on their small lives instead. As if the average person in the 19th century, who read romantic fiction, somehow had more of a say in the big, wide world.

And then, paradoxically, we see memes that say: "People died to give you the right to vote. People shed blood to give you a voice. Now go out and vote. It is the only way for you to make a difference."

Really? People died to make sure that we can answer a multiple choice question? Yes or No. True or False. Red or Blue. Is there any true self-expression in that? How can you make a difference by merely flipping a switch or filling in a line or blacking out a circle? Isn't it obvious that the people who shed the blood to let us vote were making a difference, while our actual vote makes no difference at all?

The people who frame those multiple choice questions have all the power. What it is that we are voting about is more important than what we vote. But we are effectively cut off from any representation there, where it counts, in the secret, smoke filled rooms where all the real decisions are made. (Or are those rooms smoke-free these days? I have no idea.)

Statue of El Cid
(from the wikipedia)

Theodosia and the Pirates, both parts, is a fairy tale set in a time when it still was possible for a person of humble origins, like Jean Laffite,  to make a big difference. In one sense, these are stories about fairy princesses: both Theodosia Burr and Denise Laffite are figurative daughters of  El Cid, a legendary savior of his country, who was forced to go into exile and was branded a traitor, due to political machinations. El Cid straddled party lines, represented both Christians and Moslems, and ruled over a pluralistic state for the benefit of all. And without a single ballot having to be cast!

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

(Things that will help you to think about what the chapters of the book mean)

http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2014/06/16/reading-guide-part-1-theodosia-and-the-pirates-the-war-against-spain/

http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2014/06/19/reading-guide-part-2-theodosia-and-the-pirates-the-war-against-spain/

http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2014/06/21/reading-guide-part-3-theodosia-and-the-pirates-the-war-against-spain/

http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2014/09/08/theodosia-and-the-pirates-reading-guide-part-4/

http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2014/09/08/theodosia-and-the-pirates-part-5-a-reading-guide/

Motherless Fathers of Motherless Daughters

Today is Father's Day, and as usual I will recommend to your reading two articles about famous fathers.The first is Aaron Burr:

http://www.historiaobscura.com/aaron-burr-as-a-father/

The second is Jean Laffite.

http://www.historiaobscura.com/jean-laffite-as-a-father/

This morning, it occurred to me that Aaron Burr and Jean Laffite had more in common as fathers than one might suppose: they were both brought up motherless, and they both became fathers to motherless children.

Aaron Burr remembered his mother to some extent, and what he did not remember was available for him to learn from the journal she left behind.

http://www.historiaobscura.com/the-journal-of-esther-edwards-burr/ 

Jean Laffite did not remember his mother at all, according the Journal of Jean Laffite. But he was lucky that he had his grandmother to raise him in his mother's stead. Jean Laffite said that he owed all his ingenuity to his grandmother.

Inscription on one of Laffite family Bibles
p. 220 of Stanley Clisby Arthur's book, Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover

Although Jean Laffite and Aaron Burr had no mothers to  raise them, they each came from strong families with a sense of  duty and a desire to raise children. Neither of them was abandoned, and each received a good education, according to the means and the understanding of the family.

In those days, there were no debtors' prisons for fathers who failed to pay child support. There were only debtors' prisons for people who failed to pay the debts that they owed to others which they had promised to pay. If a man did not support his children or wanted nothing to do with them, he was free to abandon them. The loss, society felt, was his own.

As a result, fathers who took care of their children did so out of a strong internal urge to support their families and to nurture their children. Both Jean Laffite and Aaron Burr were absentee fathers, in the sense that their work kept them away from their children for many months and years. But they were both involved in their children's lives, supporting them financially and in more personal ways.

In my two Theodosia and the Pirates books, I focus on the parallel relationships between Aaron Burr and Theodosia and Jean Laffite and Denise. Both Theodosia and Denise grew up without a mother, and both had a close relationship with their famous father.

http://www.amazon.com/Theodosia-Pirates-Battle-Against-Britain/dp/1618790072/

http://www.amazon.com/Theodosia-Pirates-War-Against-Spain/dp/1618790099/

Synopsis of Theodosia and the Pirates in Chinese

Are you a student of history and also of the Chinese language? Did you know that Jean Laffite was enthralled by the I Ching?  Not only he, but also his daughter Denise Laffite Little, quoted from the I-Ching in their personal scrapbook notations.

In the 19th century, it was common for people to keep scrapbooks in which they copied poetry and philosophy that appealed to them, interspersed with clippings from the newspaper and very personal family mementos. It was the closest thing to a Facebook page that they had, and sometimes one person would write in another person 's notebook or scrapbook. If you are interested in this, you can find out more about it at the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center in Liberty, Texas, where many of the artifacts concerning the life of Jean Laffite and his family are stored.

Even before I knew this about Jean Laffite, I imagined that as a world traveler, he had come across some aspects of Chinese culture and being an open-minded speculative thinker, he may have adopted some of what he learned. So in Theodosia and the Pirates, I had Jean Laffite deal with Theodosia's morning sickness by applying pressure to the correct spot, according to acupuncture, to relieve her nausea. In the book, he says he learned this from a Chinese sailor.

Just as Jean Laffite was influenced by Chinese culture, I also wish to have an influence back on Chinese culture, so it is my great desire that my novel, Theodosia and the Pirates, should one day be translated into Chinese.

So far though. all that I have managed to accomplish in that directions is to translate the synopsis of Theodosia and the Pirates into Chinese.

In the following book trailer, the narrative is the Chinese synopsis.

The text of the synopsis, written in traditional Chinese characters, can be found here: http://www.pubwages.com/34/%E8%A5%BF%E5%A5%A7%E5%A4%9A%E8%A5%BF%E5%A9%AD%E5%92%8C%E6%B5%B7%E7%9B%9C Here is a short glossary of unusual terms or proper names within the synopsis, in case you are a beginning student of Chinese and need some help: 西奧多西婭 -- Theodosia 海盜 -- pirates 愛國者 -- Patriot 讓·拉菲特 -- Jean Laffite 新奧爾良之 -- New Orleans 英國 --Britain  奧多西婭 -- Spain 伯爾 -- Burr 亞歷山 -- Alexander 漢密爾頓 -- Hamilton 國稅局 -- Revenue Service 麥迪遜 -- Madison 火藥 -- gun powder
Let me know how you do reading the text and listening to the video, if you are a student of Chinese. If you are native speaker of Chinese, please let me know how the text can be improved.