Alien Integration
A discussion of the "other" in
Silas Marner and
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
Jeremy Chapman
3726223
This essay will study the alienation of a fictional character, and will discuss the eventual reintegration of this character into his/her environment through redemptive processes that induce psychological change. The alien figure is significant as a tool to induce a feeling of separation from the character's environment that makes their eventual redemption and rediscovery of their surroundings all the more potent. In fact, the outcast from society can be viewed as an archetypal symbol of alienation from society and its trimmings. In literature in general, this symbolic personage is used often; Coleridge's exquisitely shunned mariner, Kafka's haunted J_____ in The Trial, and many of Dostoyevsky's more pitiable characters. These ranks are further swelled by the works to be studied here: Silas Marner by George Eliot, and The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Both Marner and Browning's nameless mother are outcasts from their particular society and environment. The causes of this estrangement are peculiar to their cases, yet are similar on select symbolic levels. The use of light and dark imagery to stress difference in both texts is apparent, and so is both the need for possession mixed with the interaction of children. I will try to show that this archetype is responsible for a large part of the conflict that makes these texts exciting. This conflict between the included and the excluded is largely psychological in nature, a sort of (wo)man vs. mind, for neither character seems to be acting in response to direct outside influences, instead they seem to be tormented from within. First, we will discuss the weaver of Raveloe in Silas Marner, then Barrett Browning's runaway slave.
Silas Marner
The idea for Silas Marner came to Eliot she says "... quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, in early childhood, seen a linen-weaver with a bag on his back." (1). Further, shortly after the publication of Silas Marner, she said that the story had its roots in "a childhood recollection of a man with a stoop and expression of face that led me to think he was an alien from his fellows." (2). Eliot portrays Marner as she imagined the weaver's emotional state; as a solitary figure, apart from the world around him, and generally shunned as a human being.
"His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response"(p. 34). He is mesmerized by his work, numbed as it were, weaving throughout the night like a spider continually repairing a wind-damaged web. The vision of Marner as a spider in his lair is evinced by the line " He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection."(p. 12). This is reminiscent of the tragic tale of Arachne, the most skilful weaver of Lydia in Asia Minor, who was transformed into a spider after she dared to challenge Athena to a contest. Arachne was doomed to weave evermore. Marner's weaving is something that he clings to as a foothold against total dissolution of his persona, just as the gold is a tangible symbol for trade with the outside world (although he does not use it for trade, he simply wishes to accumulate it) and something to be respected and coveted, the loom is a concrete symbol of his worth in the world. Eliot writes on Marner's gold horde "His gold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like its own.", the gold separated from the general pool of monies, just as Marner's "power of loving" is ostracized from the communal society as a "hard isolation".Marner is in fact forced into his life of exile by a spiritual catastrophe at Lantern Yard, whose belief in divine revelation through the drawing of lots, and the rejection of the ordinary processes of human justice is contrasted with the religion of Raveloe. "Raveloe effects Silas's redemption through a process of integration with a society in which religious myths (for, of course, that is what they ultimately are for the agnostic George Eliot) are the projection of its own values of human love and sympathy." (3). In order to illustrate the village's rejection of Marner, Eliot indirectly suggests at his sorcery (through the interpretation of the villagers) and at his alienness. Also mentioned as exiling factors are the themes of communal closeness and family roots "How was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?"(p. 2). Marner's new lodgings in Raveloe are of a different character than Lantern Yard, but as prosperous and congenial as it is, Raveloe will not wake Marner from his apathetic state or cast light on his religious darkness for a long while yet. The town is cast as appropriately shabby and dull, but with a homely warmth common to small villages. In fact, it seems that "... George Eliot, in spite of her ironic presentations of the flaws of Raveloe, approves of Silas's progressive affiliation with its life. She shows systematically how his participation in social intercourse humanizes him... ...[and] brings to light the warmth and friendliness of the residents of the village." (4). Marner's re-integration is thanks mostly to the normalizing influence of the community, especially that of Dolly and Eppie, but also coming from the church and the natural environment.
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
Barrett Browning wrote The Runaway
Slave at Pilgrim's Point (hereafter The Runaway Slave) in response
to a request from friends in the anti-slavery movement; it is a tale involving
a slave woman, who is separated from her lover, raped by her white master, and,
finally, strangles her "too white" infant. The poem was first published in the
American abolitionist journal The Liberty Bell in 1848, two years after Barrett
Browning submitted it. The delay in publication of The Runaway Slave
attests perhaps to a hesitation on the part of the editors when confronted with
what Barrett Browning described in a letter to her friend Hugh Boyd as the poem's
"too ferocious" quality (5). That Barrett Browning
delighted in the poem's fiercely oppositional stance is partly attributable to
the fact that she wrote the poem during the time of her honeymoon, when she was
most certainly still exhilarated by her defiance of her father in eloping with
Browning (6)
. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had firsthand
knowledge of exclusion; she was a confined invalid at age 22, and was dominated
all her life by her patriarchal father. She gives a voice to this anguish at
being "other" with violent force in The Runaway Slave. It is a poem
with a message to all who have ever been marginalized or repressed, crying freedom
with a resounding vehemence. The dual symbolism of dark and light is used extensively,
with nary a stanza missing these contrasting shades. The black slave represents
the marginalized, the white pilgrim's tool for taming the wild American landscape.
Yet the darkness is more, it is used to illustrate this essential conflict in
the slave's mind over the existence of this strange duality of dark and light.
"And yet He has made dark things/To be glad and merry as light:"(V, 1-2). She
seems perplexed at the oppression her people have suffered, as if longing for
a re-evaluation of the criteria of dark and light. The runaway slave does find redemption
of a kind at one point, when the speaker describes how, after the "Earth, 'twixt
me and my baby, strewed-/All, changed to black earth,-nothing white,-"(XXVII,
2-3) (the killing of the child), she "sate down smiling there and sung / The
song I learnt in my maidenhood" (XXVII, 6-7). The mother's chanting of the name
of her lost lover indicates that she is finally "reconciled" with the child;
and the child's response with the same song from beyond the grave reinforces
that their "souls" are indeed "join[ed]" in death. This parallels Marner's meeting
with Eppie, and the comfort it brings his reclusive soul. Unfortunately, the
slave's reconciliation proceeds only with the death of her child, which is a
type of self-immolation in order to draw attention to her (and her people's)
plight. There does seem to be some confusion between the voice of the slave
woman and the voice of Barrett Browning in the lines "Indeed we live beneath
the sky,/That great smooth Hand of God stretched out/On all his children fatherly,/To
save them from the dread and doubt/Which would be if, from this low place,/All
opened straight up to His face/Into the grand eternity." (VII). For Barrett
Browning, God's protective hand is always stretched out over all his children;
if only slaves and masters alike were able to perceive this and to understand
their relationship to the "eternal" then slavery would necessarily be done away
with. This idealistic longing for God to make white and black true sisters is
a reaction to the slave's alienation from the "Washington-race" (XXXII, 4). "I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky./The
clouds are breaking on my brain;/I am floated along, as if I should die/Of liberty's
exquisite pain./In the name of the white child waiting for me/In the death-dark
where we may kiss and agree,/White men, I leave you all curse-free/In my broken
heart's disdain!"(XXXVI). On one level, the poem's repetitive balladic patterns
serve a polemical purpose--to highlight the stark oppositions between the slave's
point of view and the cruel indifference of the white men who oppress her. The
speaker's language is thoroughly sentimental ("I fall, I swoon!"), which suggests
that she finally rescinds any capacity to question her own position: now when
she looks at the sky she ceases to consider the various possibilities it might
hold (that is, alienation from or connection with God), glorying instead in
her suffering and finding herself to be elevated emotionally by it. Marner goes
through such an episode, when he is in his miserly stage; the gold serves as
a symbol for his self-enforced separateness. Like Marner, the slave seem to
have no lasting grudge with her wrongdoers, stating "White men, I leave you
all curse-free"(XXXVI, 7). "The seven wounds in Christ's body fair,/While HE
sees gaping everywhere/Our countless wounds that pay no debt."(XXXIV, 5-6).
Overall, it seems that Barrett Browning constructs the slave as a self-defined
Christ figure who depends on other people's reaction to her to redress the wrongs
done to her, rather than speaking and acting in her own right. In conclusion, the links between
the infant's role in redemption, and the use of dark/light imagery show
the similarities between these two tales. Barrett Browning's slave is redeemed
by the death of her child, Marner by the life and happiness of his. The infanticide
practiced by the freed slave woman is similar to the situation in Toni Morrison's
Beloved. However, in Morrison's novel, the mother-child connection
is redemptive precisely because the murdered infant Beloved, haunts her mother
Sethe, demanding to be recognized by her. The Runaway Slave differs
from Morrison's tale because the dead child is at peace with his mother and
waits for her in heaven, implying that their suffering under slavery can be
deferred under this recourse to an idealized vision of unity in death. In both
texts, the redemption is almost wholly psychological, influenced by others,
but ultimately in an inner struggle for acceptance and sociality. Bibliography ed.
Collins, Thomas J. & Rundle, Vivienne J. The
Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory Broadview Press, Canada 1999 ed. Draper, P.R. George
Eliot The Mill and the Floss and Silas Marner Macmillan Press Ltd., London 1977 Hadikin, Lillian Critical
Essays on George Eliot Barnes & Noble, New York 1970
Johnstone, Peggy Fitzhugh The
Transformation of Rage New York University Press, New York
1994 ed. Kelley, Philip and Lewis, Scott
The Brownings' Correspondence Wedgestone Press, Kansas 1988 Markus, Julia Dared
and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (Alfred
A. Knopf, New York 1995 1. Hadikin, Lillian Critical
Essays on George Eliot
Barnes & Noble, New York 1970
2. Ibid.
3. Draper, P.R. George
Eliot The Mill and the Floss and Silas Marner
Macmillan Press Ltd., London 1977
4. Auster, Henry
Essay: A Qualified Redemption of
Ordinary and Fallible Humanity
in George Eliot The Mill on the
Floss and Silas Marner
Macmillan Press Ltd., London 1977
5. ed. Kelley, Philip and Lewis, Scott The
Brownings' Correspondence
Wedgestone Press, Kansas 1988
6. Markus, Julia Dared
and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (Alfred
A. Knopf, New York 1995