Author: The Shop Around the Corner

 

Taj Mahal-Agra is a really interesting image to me when it comes to the Victorian’s and British Colonialism. In the background, we see the Taj Mahal and some surrounding buildings as well as a far-reaching body of water that comes into the foreground of the print. Also in the foreground are some ruins of what once was possibly a building or some other piece of architecture that is now crumbling. The ruins in the foreground stand as a staunch difference compared to the beautiful and elaborate building that is the Taj Mahal. The ruins also signify the age of India, how it is an old country which contains old buildings and ruins.

While the Taj Mahal was built many years prior to Britain colonizing and gaining control of India, the difference between the ruins and the Taj Mahal shows an idealized belief of India before and after British control. Before British control, India was crumbling and falling apart. Now, it is able to remain as one structure, beautiful and exquisite. As well, the Taj Mahal is staunchly white while the ruins are much darker. This color difference makes it harder for the ruins to blend into the Taj Mahal. The dark color shows years and years of dirt and sand accumulating on the walls. Meanwhile, the Taj Mahal is pristine. This difference follows with the changes that England was implementing in India. They created a railroad system, abolished slavery and infanticide, all things that seem really good. Meanwhile, they also forced high taxes on Indian citizens and left many of them impoverished by selling goods at high prices but buying at extremely low prices (BBC).

The three men in the foreground also follow with this comparison. None of them are clothed in a way the British would consider proper. One of them is fetching water and one of them has a basket next to him and his garment is laying on top of him to make it seem like he was in the water fishing. The last person is looking in the other direction and has a shield on his back. His front is facing away so it cannot be seen what he may be holding but it seems he is on lookout in case anyone attacks. The way the two men collect fish and water is interesting too because they are not industrialized in any way. They are using their hands and catching the fish and filling the water in what would be considered the hard way.

The fact that there is a man on watch shows that there is a level of fear that they could be attacked. To a British, this could be seen as a barbaric community. Three men from a pre industrialized India, or an India before British rule. The body of water separates the men and ruins from the Taj Mahal and the India that the British rule over and consider better. They don’t want this version of India to seep into the westernized, idealized version that Britain has created.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zx8sf82#zgyq2v4

Elizabeth Lee’s article “The Femme Fatale as Object” focuses on how women were portrayed in art and poetry in the 19th century. She states 

Such a treatment, therefore, not only objectified the woman, but also dismembered her body and her identity; the artistically rendered woman is no longer an individual person but really the pleasing arrangement of shapes and light, easily allowing “peaches and pears” to substitute for flesh. (Lee) 

Looking at Christina Rossetti’s poem “In an Artist’s Studio”, Lee’s description of how women were viewed and portrayed and encapsulated perfectly by Rossetti’s commentary on her brother’s studio and what occurs inside it. She states “A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,/A saint, and angel…” (Rossetti lines 6-7). This girl’s body and identity have been separated, or as Lee calls it, dismembered. The fact that she is nameless means that her identity has been lost. She is also not a person anymore. She is both a saint and an angel, which implies a form of death that has occurred. To be a saint and to be an angel, or both as this girl is, means she has to have died. In Rossetti’s poem, it’s a symbolic death. She is no longer a person to the artist, she is just a muse, something to paint. Her identity and her personhood are lost to the artist.

Rossetti continues by later stating “He feeds upon her face by day and night,/And she with true kind eyes looks back on him” (lines 9-10). The act of feeding calls to mind the act of consuming. The artist is consuming the woman’s image and using it for his art. Meanwhile, the woman looks back ignorantly, not knowing how the artist is using her. This connects with Lee’s claim that a woman’s image becomes just an assortment of shapes pleasing to the eyes “easily allowing “peaches and pears” to substitute for flesh” (Lee). The woman in Lee’s piece is being likened to a piece of fruit, something naturally sweet. The transformation from woman to food allows for her to be consumed by the artist, something Rossetti is commenting on in her poem. The artist is “consuming” the woman’s personhood and rather than spitting out seeds, he is spitting back out an image that leaves her without her identity or even her body, as even that, the artist had full control over how it is portrayed just like the woman’s unnatural body in Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in La Grande Odalisque.

When Laura is freed from the asylum, she is a changed person. Not only are her looks different, but so is her mental capacity and ability to remember. Simply speaking, she has repressed the negative memories that had led to her confinement. Walter Hartright explains that Laura’s mind is “too evidently unfit to bear the trial of reverting to [her memories]” and that in order to help lead her back to health, she must continue to repress those horrifying memories (Collins 428). Freud believes that the repression of memories means that one is repressing their sexuality. Marian and Hartright encourage this repression of memories and therefore encourage Laura in repression of her sexuality and do so by treating her as a child.

Throughout the whole of the novel, Laura is infantilized by her sister, Hartright, Mr. Gilmore, and almost everyone else who has been around her. Marian decides to not share with Laura that she and Hartright are investigating Anne Catherick even though it has a direct influence on Laura’s life and after she escapes the asylum, the new investigation of Sir Percival Glyde is kept secret from her. One of the moments of infantilization that sticks out the most to me is when Laura tries to assert herself as an equal to Hartright and Marian when they are living in London because she wants to contribute to the household financially. When she begs to help out, Laura exclaims “oh, don’t, don’t, don’t treat me like a child” (478). The repetition of “don’t” is reminiscent of a child stuttering when they are overwhelmed with emotions. As she is sharing her feelings to Hartright, she has laid her head on his shoulder in order to be comforted but also places her lower than him. Hartright, therefore, has to hold Laura up, if he were to move away, she would fall. Hartright tries to comfort her, but in the way a father would comfort his toddler and responds that she will sell her paintings. Rather than keeping his word, Hartright hides those drawings and gives her money of his own earnings, much like a parent putting a drawing from their child from the daycare onto the fridge. 

Hartright, in this moment, openly goes against Laura’s wishes of being treated like the adult that she is and continues to infantilize her. Laura then internalizes this treatment and believes and acts like she is younger than she actually is, always having to be told what to do and being comforted by those around her, and almost never asserting herself. Essentially, Laura has the same amount of agency that a toddler would have. Her repression of her memories and what that means for Freud is in direct connection to her internalization of the infantilizing treatment from Marian and Hartright.

Freud claims “that the patient repeats instead of remembering, and repeats under the conditions of resistance” (Freud 151). Laura, in this case is not only just repeating her words when speaking through her stuttering, but she is also repeating the toddler-like behaviors but under the condition of trying to resist her sexuality, as both children and women at this time should not be sexual beings. Hartright and Marian’s treatment of her furthers this repetition and repression, especially with the fact that they do not push Laura to remember but rather would prefer to keep her in the dark of her memories or her marriage, an experience that a child usually would not have, and later of her confinement and therefore of her sexual impulses.

When Mr Hartright first meets Miss Halcombe, he begins his description without even having viewed her face. He describes her as “…tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat” (34). This is yet another instance where Hartright is unable to place the person he is describing into a category. It all comes to a head when Miss Halcombe turns around and discovers, much to his horror, that “the lady is ugly!” (34). He feels betrayed by Miss Halcombe’s figure causing him to expect a beautiful young woman. He states that the adage “nature cannot err” has never been “more flatly contradicted” by his discovery (34). Even though he says that after Miss Halcombe turns around, contradiction permeates throughout his description of her before her face is revealed to him. This contradiction though takes on a Goldie Locks like effect when he describes her body. She is the perfect height and the perfect weight. Her movement was elegant and caused him to grow excited seeing her face. Her face, on the other hand, brought Mr. Hartright back down to earth and he was disgusted by it. Her face contradicts her body. Her body was perfect in every way, but her face was dark to the point where it seemed she may have even had a mustache. This duality of Miss Halcombe, her womanly body and her manly face, puts Mr. Hartright on edge. He is easily able to move past her facial features that he deems ugly and is able to become good friends with Miss Halcombe, but he never views her in a romantic light again. I believe this scene, though, sets up the reader, and Mr. Hartright, to be prepared to be deceived by how a character may seem when they first appear, just as Hartright feels that he was deceived by Miss. Halcombe’s body in thinking that she was a beautiful woman.