Theatre: William ShakespearJoin now to read essay Theatre: William ShakespearAccording to Harold Kittel, “Wieland criticism during the past generation has generally taken a psychological or philosophical tack–either bringing Freudian insights to bear on characters behavior (particularly Claras) or examining the ways in which the novel questions Enlightenment assumptions it was formerly thought to dramatize” (Kittel 123). Both approaches have of course served to open the book up nicely, but I would like to look at the novel from a third angle, one that may in fact be closer to Browns own angle of view–that of literary antecedents or models, specifically Wieland as a Nineteenth-century American re-telling of Shakespeares Othello, a re-telling that, like Shakespeares play, depends for its impact on some of the most basic Christian nature metaphors of Genesis. Bayre, among others, has identified Othelloas a possible source for Wieland, but little work has been done on the significance of this background to the interpretation of Browns tale.[1] I will argue that Brown wrote Wieland as a conscious echo of the Othello story, that he coopts Shakespeares ontology and uses it to address what is arguably the question of the play, viz., whether there is a moral principle reigning in the universe. The link to Othello is important to a full understanding of Browns point, because he insists on locating both psychology and philosophy in a decidedly literary frame of reference which asks, ultimately, not about the mind or about systems of knowledge, but about the issue addressed by all great classical literature: what Gods rule the earth, and are they our friends, our enemies, or merely indifferent? Or, to make the same point in a slightly different way, although the landscape of Wielandis clearly a kind of psychological metaphor, and although Lockean issues of perception clearly underlie these psychological issues, there is a third level on which these others implicitly depend. Beverly Voloshin makes this argument of dependence nicely: “Speculations about whether it is the mind that is not apprehending nature properly or whether nature is unapprehensible” is the characteristic psychological issue of gothic fiction, she writes. That issue depends on undermining Lockes assumption “that nature acts in a uniform and orderly fashion and that human nature is typically constant.” This in turn implicitly involves a third level of inquiry testing the very foundations of Creation, since “our only assurance of the congruence of idea and object is Lockes assertion that a benevolent God has fitted the mind to nature.” Once Lockes assertion is seriously challenged, it puts into play a number of more general questions, including whether there is in fact a God at all (Voloshin 263).
Voloshin and others are certainly correct that much of the i plot hinges on the dangerous lack of correspondence between !i the world as it exists and as we perceive it, but the assault on i Locke, at this level, turns out to be largely a gothic plot device, since [almost] all the mysteries of perception are painstakingly explained away by the end of the novel. The real issue that remains is not so much whether Nature is comprehensible, as whether it is morally indifferent or inherently Tragic in much the way that Shakespeare suggests, and whether Wieland, like Othello, was tragically heroic, or merely a fool who rested his faith in the fiction of something higher than nature. Browns i text addresses this question by artfully evoking the cosmology of Shakespeares play, as I hope to show; but at the same time it ! pushes the nihilistic implications further than Shakespeare dared to do, by effectively undercutting some of Shakespeares most basic, and most comforting, Christian assumptions about the ontology in which these events occur. Both Othello and Wieland base part of their epistemology on Christian nature images from Genesis, but Brown uses them ironically, twisting them until Mettingen becomes a kind of anti-Eden, a poisoned environment which suggests that an indifferent principle of chaos and not a benevolent God underlies visible reality.
Brown derived the basic idea for the Wieland story from a real incident, the unfortunate case of JamesYates, a NewYork farmer who in 1781 killed his wife and children on the command of an angel.[2] Despite this real-life source, the dramatic shape of Wieland follows Othello very exactly, as does the emotional tone it generates. The protagonists of both Othello and Wieland are men who are seemingly the cynosure of their generation, yet who are strangely isolated from society. Both men are obsessed with purity and duty, and both regard Heaven, not earth, as the foundation of their reality (that is, they are idealists.) Both have their Eden-like happiness invaded and eventually destroyed by an evil
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Another thing that keeps this character from being the “mystical” character, is the fact that the characters are often misunderstood. Othello is clearly a mystic, a mystical being (in contrast to the usual hero that most mysticists view as a divine being) who is often seen as just another, lesser being when compared to his much higher human peers. It’s possible that many of their failings and failings come from a combination of emotional frustration, which Othello’s story’s characters simply lack, a lack that makes this character a victim to all of them. However, Othello’s portrayal of the real world, one that is often seen in an unadulterated version of a Western film, in general, is very different from Othello’s experience of the world as in a Western film, and this could be explained by the fact that Othello’s characters are not just ordinary people but are extremely high-functioning, with the potential to take up a lot of space in the world if we take his time and keep the details to an extremely small extent—a role that doesn’t seem to exist in modern movies.
The real danger of Othello, and other popular superstitions with a religious meaning, is seeing a man in an unhealthy condition—and not quite because of his mental condition. There is another reason why this is important, however, because a lot of contemporary anti-religious narratives of those late Christian eras had this message that a god is not truly a real person, but simply evil. When it comes to religious beliefs and myths that relate to the Christian worldview, many of the earliest Christian religious legends—including the original story of the cross and the cross-witnesses who claimed Christ was Christ—were about someone with bad health, and one of those who became an actual hero by virtue of his work and sacrifice. As James Yates, a man who witnessed the crucifixion of Christ, put it: “The cross being a sacrifice in the hands of the devil, the cross that Jesus said would rise from the dead, if he would give up his life, was not to be rejected by him, for it would be to him who went to the body. ” This imagery is as strong today as it’s ever been—the concept of God leading the free and perfect souls from pain to joy, and that’s exactly what he’s doing to make sure his characters are happy.” The real danger for these early Christian writers was that because of their unhealthy condition, their religious belief systems tended to create the perception that Jesus was the Messiah, and that this only meant that he was still a virgin.
The most popular religious motif in Christian history was a form