Incest in Pardon and Marriage - People Fas Harvard

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Incest in Pardon and Marriage tion to the dilemma that the first sexual union posed. Yet Angelo is, to all intents, Claudio (he has stood for Claudio and Claudio has stood for him), and Mariana is, to all intents, both Isabella and Juliet (Ma- riana and Isabella take each other's part, which is also Juliet's part because Juliet and Isabella are akin). Thus the bed trick fulfills inten- tions beyond any one individual's dreams by allowing Isabella to con- summate a kind of incest with Claudio. The aesthetic telos of the sexual unions conjunct in this bed trick is an extraordinary, superlegal trick birth at once incestuous and resurrectional: nothing more or less than the delivery of Claudio as Claudio's son, the telos of the plot. The effect of the bed trick in Measure for Measure, and in bed-trick plays generally, depends upon our holding, for a while at least, the ordinary opinion that there is a significant difference between one person and another. (Not everyone holds this opinion: for a religious celibate in the Catholic tradition, it should make no difference whether he slept with one person or another because for him any act of sexual intercourse would amount to incest of a kind.) In particular, the effect of the bed trick in plays involving incest depends upon our holding the ordinary opinions that there is such a thing as real, absolute knowledge of who one is (i.e., of where one stands in the ordinary kinship structure), or that there is such a thing as real knowledge of what one wants (i.e., of which person one desires sexually). The ordinary opinion that it makes sense to assume that one can really know where one stands in the kinship structure can contribute to tragedy, as it does for Sophocles' Oedipus. Or it can contribute to comedy, as when a man who intends to sleep with his sister does not, either because in the course of the plot he finds that the woman is not his sister, or because another woman has been substituted. In either case, his intent of incest has been transformed into an act of chastity. The ordinary opinion that it makes sense to assume a difference between ignorance and knowledge of which person one desires sexually can pave the way to some seemingly grand teleological revelation. Just as some narratives start with a man such as Angelo, who thinks that he is in love with someone kind of akin to him (his Sister), though he is not, so others start with a man who thinks he is not in love with someone who is akin to him, though he is. A comic plot might reveal that the man is really not in love with the kinswoman with whom he wrongly thinks he is in love, and a tragic plot might reveal that the man really is in love with the kinsperson with whom he wrongly thinks he is not in love.I3 To conceive Measure for Measure as having an unambiguously comfortable ending, one might argue that, although Angelo thought he was in love with a quasi-Sister, he was, without consciously knowing
Incest in Pardon and Marriage it, all along really in love with, and seeking, a quasi-wife; the bed trick and the ensuing events would then reveal to him the real direction of his desires. The same reversal and revelation can be argued for an incest plot: Oedipus, one might say, thinks his wedded love is chaste, but the plot tricks him into acting out his real desires. Similarly, Vincentio in Measure for Memure is at first only vaguely aware of his spiritually incestuous desire for Isabella. In plots where people are in love with persons about whose kinship with themselves they are mistaken or where people are in love un- knowingly, it is as though, if one is lucky enough to live in a comedic world, one can have one's cake and eat it too. That is, one can both intend to commit incest and not commit incest, or both raze the sanc- tuarial taboo against incest and rise above it. In the Hegelian sense, one can both incorporate and transcend-one can sublate-incest and its taboo. All's well here if it ends well and because it ends well. The possibility of postulating transcendentally teleological inten- tion in any such plots depends, however, on granting that there are essential moral and aesthetic differences between: (1) ignorance and knowledge of one's sexual desire and its target, (2) intent and act, or what is private or invisible and what is public or visible, and (3) ignorance and knowledge of who are one's blood kin. Granted these differences, even in the unhappy case of an Oedipus the notion that knowledge of kinship is at least possible means that there can be a happy ending elsewhere. (Indeed, from one point of view a social purpose of the myth of Oedipus is to convince us that absolute knowledge of kinship is possible: when all is said and done, we do not doubt that Jocasta is Oedipus's mother, do we?) On these differences depends our belief in the possibility of marriage (as the union of a man and woman whose relative unrelatedness is ascertainable) and of ordinary politics. But do these various differences make sense? Are they meant to make sense within Measure for Measure, which pushes to their extreme limits the implications of personal substitutions and playacted inten- tions. And, within the context of the simultaneous sisterhood and Sis- terhood of the novice Isabella, do they make moral sense according to the Christian orders and the essential teaching of Christianity? The bed trick in Measure for Measure provides one apparently successful case in practice of the disassociation of individual intent from act, which, from a moral viewpoint, Jesus denied. Without the bed trick and its apparently clear-cut separation of intent and act, Angelo would not be pardoned and Claudio would not be reborn. To a certain extent Isabella's insistence upon the separation of individual intent
Page 1 and 2: Incest in Pardon and Marriage Tlw M
Page 3 and 4: BY DISGUISE and pardon, the ex- cha
Page 5 and 6: Incest in Pardon and Marriage tween
Page 7 and 8: Incest in Pardon and Marriage with
Page 9: Incest in Pardon and Marriage and s
Page 13 and 14: Incest in Pardon and Marriage Life
Page 15 and 16: Incest in Pardon and Marriage posit
Page 17 and 18: Incest in Pardon and Marriage titut
Page 19 and 20: Incest in Pardon and Marriage Does
Page 21 and 22: Incest in Pardon and Marriage the s
Page 23 and 24: Incest in Pardon and Marriage has t
Page 25 and 26: Incest in Pardon and Marriage are i
Page 27 and 28: Incest in Pardon and Marriage basta
Page 29 and 30: Incest in Pardon and Mawiage she mu
Page 31 and 32: Incest in Pardon and Marriage tion
Page 33 and 34: Incest in Pardon and Marriage wedlo
Page 35: Incest in Pardon and Marriage great

Incest in Pardon and Marriage - People Fas Harvard

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?