Julia Schwartz

March 28, 2003

The curious thing about Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is that Stoppard never identifies what Arcadia truly is. Instead, he shows it in the best way possible: the webbed time and the interlocked settings, the quest for paradise, and the search to find a concrete solution all serve to exemplify Arcadia by definition. The mixed plots are the timelessness of Arcadia; Lady Croom’s quest for paradise is its elusive promise; Bernard and Hannah’s research of the events of the past are the defiance of order. Arcadia is, above all, a lack of order, yet from this utter lack of order emerges the highest order of all, just as out of the utter disorder of the rice pudding and the jam – the most mixing possible – arises the singular entity that is at the same time the peak and the nadir of chaos.

When Thomasina dies, she enters completely into the world of Arcadia, where she can partake in the eternal dance. She has left this world because she has figured out its secrets – figured out that they don’t matter, realized that the only thing she will ever be certain of is herself. She has virtually transcended life on the Earth as we know it and stepped into the next level, Arcadia.  Septimus knows this is her fate, and he believes that completing the Coverly set will bring him to her. He gives his life to his work in the hermitage in an attempt to join her, but he will never find her. He has a reason for finding the proof, banning him from Arcadia, yet he is nearly insane to the point of genius, qualifying him – but not to the extent of Thomasina.

Thomasina is a part of Arcadia, because she finds all the mysteries through her passionate curiosity, and she finds the meaning. Yet Thomasina holds the key to Arcadia because she doesn’t care about the meaning of it all – she simply is questioning for the questions, she simply is waltzing with Septimus for the joy of it. The empty shores of Arcadia are all she needs; all she requires is the sand to dance upon in appreciation of the wonders of life. Thomasina has captured the soul of Arcadia, or perhaps the soul of Arcadia has captured her.

When Hannah refers to the “Romantic sham” of “paradise in the age of reason,” she ultimately explains the secret of Arcadia, for the “history of the garden [does say] it all beautifully” (27). The Croom estate was beautiful in 1730 because of the beauty of the spirit that abounds on the lands. Noakes’ transformations are the shams of the place because he is trying to create a paradise, despite the fact that it is apparent that the world is coming to an end, as has been proven by their time in proofs and by the evident decline of the world. Noakes and Lady Croom are trying to superimpose paradise upon devolution and decline, which causes the final garden to be false. It is false because it was an Arcadia before they tried to make it one, it was Arcadia in its original, primitive, unaltered state.

The world, in nature and otherwise, is perfection the way it is – we do not need to change it to make it into a paradise to find Arcadia, for it exists as Arcadia until one human change is executed, and then the beauty and unity of it will forever recede. When someone tries to turn it from its natural order into an aesthetic paradise, it ultimately fails because a past state can never be achieved. There can never be any return to the mythical Eden; once the jam has been dropped into the rice pudding and stirred, it can never be unstirred. As such, once the decline of human life begins – and it must once the time of the paradisiacal Eden has passed – there is no return to paradise that we may seek. It is only a return that we can stumble across blindly, but we will never know we have found it.

           The recognition of Arcadia is like the case of Schroedinger’s kittens: once one tries to confirm that one is in Arcadia, one has lost the meaning of being in Arcadia. As in the case of the kittens, if one knows the kittens are actually dead, logic cannot be defied, yet the very definition of Arcadia is that it is in defiance. It is a place where we must find all the mysteries but lose the meaning, where we can do things in any order – there can be a door regardless of whether or not there is a house. In Arcadia, there are no rules. In Arcadia, there just is.

            Thomasina’s statement to her mother, “If you would have it so,” when her mother sighs with the pride of being in Arcadia is a mockery of her mother, because one cannot know she is in Arcadia – one cannot strive to be in Arcadia. It is impossible to find the emptiness of Arcadia, just as it is impossible to think of nothing, for the harder one tries, the more the task fails. It is impossible to reach a conclusion of Arcadia, just as it is impossible for the iterations of nature ever to end. The infinity of the struggle in Arcadia is the perpetuity of Arcadia; it is its bridge across time and its key to eternity. It is its ubiquity through all our lives and the elusive shadow that we can never hold in our hands.

            Arcadia is a place of completion, where everything has come full circle. There are no imperfections, because in Arcadia, the opposites meet to become one. It is a place where the real and the unreal are indistinguishable, where if you think it, it will be. It is an endless cycle, a flame consuming itself to survive; it is the stove burning its own ashes to continue the fires. Arcadia is a place of timelessness, where time has no importance. The age is that of unity; it is utopian but it can never be sought – Lady Croom will never truly be in Arcadia. Arcadia is an acceptance of life and of death, and a realization that death isn’t changing life.

            Arcadia is a type of nirvana, a state of being, a contentedness with things as they are. It is not the accomplishment that matters in Arcadia; it is the “wanting to know that makes us matter” (75) there. Arcadia is no destination; it is barely a journey. There is no there there in Arcadia – there just is. Arcadia is vastly empty, but at the same time endlessly full. Arcadia is “[going] to infinity or zero, or nonsense” (78), but understanding that they all are the same. The beauty of Arcadia is not in its aesthetic qualifications, but in its emotional completions. The secret to finding Arcadia is to end the search, to defy convention, to understand how to be without being. Then “there’s no time left” (94); then, we will dance.