{"id":2243,"date":"2025-03-26T04:17:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T04:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2025-03-26T04:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T04:23:11","slug":"these-gaze-theyre-trying-to-murder-me-subject-and-object-in-lee-hamiltons-at-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/03\/26\/these-gaze-theyre-trying-to-murder-me-subject-and-object-in-lee-hamiltons-at-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"These Gaze! They’re Trying to Murder Me: Subject and Object in Lee-Hamilton’s “At Rest”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In <\/span>Being and Nothingness, <\/span><\/i>Jean-Paul Sartre insists upon the power of the gaze. According to his existential philosophy, humans understand their relationship to others and the world around them primarily through the sense of sight. Often, this results in a battle for power. When one gazes upon \u201c<\/span>the Other<\/span><\/i>,\u201d the Other becomes \u201can object\u201d in the eyes of the gazer (343). This puts the gazer in a position of authority, as they can reduce the Other\u2019s existence to pure conjecture. Perhaps the Other\u2019s \u201cvoice\u201d is nothing more than \u201ca song on a phonograph;\u201d perhaps a \u201cpasserby\u201d is nothing more than \u201ca perfected robot\u201d (340). However, there always remains a \u201cpermanent possibility of <\/span>being seen <\/span><\/i>by the Other\u201d (344). This forces the gazer to look inward, recognizing themself as \u201ca being-as-object for the Other\u201d just as the Other is a being-as-object for the gazer (344). In other words, the gazer finds that they are nothing more than \u201can object for the Other,\u201d something to be ogled at and judged (349). Suddenly, the gazer finds the world \u201calien,\u201d \u201cfor the Other\u2019s look embraces [their] being and correlatively the walls, the door, the keyhole\u201d (350). Nothing is certain any longer. Is the gazer less real for being gazed upon, or must the Other be acknowledged as a cognitive being? A power struggle arises from a mere sideways glance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In art, the gaze is often subverted, challenged, or confused. Famously, Michel Foucault questions the nature of art that gazes back at the viewer. In the painting <\/span>Las Meninas<\/span><\/i>, for instance,<\/span> an artist wields a palette and brush while staring directly forward. When standing in front of the painting, it seems as if the artist gazes directly upon the viewer. In Foucault\u2019s opinion, \u201cthe observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity\u201d (444). To put it more simply, the painting raises the question of whether the viewer is \u201c[s]een or seeing\u201d (444). If one applies Sartre\u2019s philosophy, the painting also raises a question of power. Can a piece of artwork exert authority over its beholder? Whose world is more real\u2014the painting\u2019s or the gazer\u2019s? Who gets the last laugh, and who gets the last look?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In his poem \u201cAt Rest,\u201d Eugene Lee-Hamilton invites such questions by inviting the gaze. In the opening lines, the bed-ridden poet makes a dying request: \u201cMake me in marble after I am dead; \/ Stretched out recumbent, just as I have lain\u201d (lines 1-2). The statement seems audacious, even defiant. In \u201cmarble,\u201d Lee-Hamilton could be sculpted in any position. He could loom as large as Michaelangelo\u2019s <\/span>David<\/span><\/i> or lounge as comfortably as Donatello\u2019s <\/span>Saint John the Evangelist. <\/span><\/i>He could finally escape his \u201cdaily rack,\u201d or torture device (line 12). Instead, he chooses to remain \u201crecumbent,\u201d just as he has stayed for the better half of his life. Evidently, Lee-Hamilton\u2019s disability constitutes an essential aspect of his identity. It is more important to him that this fact remains than any other. Yes, he wants his epitaph to acknowledge his creative capacities, too, but only if it first acknowledges that \u201chis misery\u201d compelled him \u201cto create\u201d (line 11). No matter what, his disability must come first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0As a disabled man in an era of rigid masculinity, Lee-Hamilton likely encountered the gaze repeatedly throughout his life. Confined to a bed, he would have stood out as a weak, feminine, asexual object. The Victorian man was expected to dominate the Victorian woman intellectually, socially, and sexually. Lee-Hamilton, on the other hand, would not have been expected to do any of these things. First, his disability would have rendered him an object that could quite literally be picked up, moved, and put out of sight. Then, the gaze would reduce him to an object once again, relegating him to a shadow existence in which his \u201cconsciousness\u201d itself was called into question (Sartre 340). All his power, both physical and mental, would be usurped by the able-bodied caretaker or gazer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0By becoming artwork, though, Lee-Hamilton can reassert his masculine agency. He invites \u201cthose who care\u201d to \u201csee [him] once again \/ Such as they knew [him] on [his] hard wheeled bed\u201d (lines 3-4). In welcoming the gaze, Lee-Hamilton takes control of it. Implicitly, he suggests that if he must be beheld, he should be regarded as artwork. No longer will he be considered inferior; he will ascend above the able-bodied beholder into the lofty realm of art. Moreover, in becoming a statue, Lee-Hamilton can finally gaze back. As Foucault argues, artwork can upset power dynamics established by the gaze. Instead of one party exerting authority over the other, art fosters a state of \u201cpure reciprocity\u201d (444). It levels the playing field. It forces the gazer to gaze inward, reminding them that they, too, are an object. It activates the superego. It forces a temporary empathy, a brief coexistence. With his \u201cmotionless and marble head,\u201d Lee-Hamilton casts a stony glance upon his beholder (line 5). He demands not only to be seen but to be recognized as an equal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cLook me in the eyes,\u201d he says. \u201cI am here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Foucault, Michel. \u201cThe Order of Things (Preface, Las Meninas).\u201d <\/span>Art and Its Significance: An <\/span><\/i>Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, Third Edition<\/span><\/i>, edited by Stephen David Ross, State\u00a0<\/span>University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 440\u201354. <\/span>JSTOR<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>doi.org\/10.2307\/jj.18254729.53. Accessed 25 Mar. 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lee-Hamilton, Eugene. \u201cAt Rest.\u201d <\/span>Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, <\/span><\/i>Mosher Press, 1908, p. 23.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sartre, Jean-Paul. <\/span>Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. <\/span><\/i>Translated\u00a0<\/span>by Hazel Barnes, Washington Square Press, 1992.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre insists upon the power of the gaze. According to his existential philosophy, humans understand their relationship to others and the world around them primarily through the sense of sight. Often, this results in a battle for power. When one gazes upon \u201cthe Other,\u201d the Other becomes \u201can … Continue reading These Gaze! They’re Trying to Murder Me: Subject and Object in Lee-Hamilton’s “At Rest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[136013,136006,136005,136012,136011,136007,136010,136008,136009],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts","tag-art","tag-disability","tag-eugene-lee-hamilton","tag-gaze","tag-jean-paul-sartre","tag-masculinity","tag-michel-foucault","tag-poetry","tag-sonnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}