McIsaac_ElectiveAffinities - iSites

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 167
Renounced identity conceived this way must, for the aesthetic reasons that
enable it, exclude a priori anything Hke an actual union between a man and
woman. Rather than some male-female bond in this text, it is in fact the urrelationship
between mother and daughter that is described with the language
of romantic love, as a delightful union of "mutual understanding and synchronized
heartbeats too perfect to be rent asunder, even in death" (Gl: 32). Thus
depicted, Gabriele's femininity will always already be in conflict with what it
purportedly desires, the outward realization of "true love."^^
The perpetual conflict arising out of Schopenhauer's conception of femininity
needs to be recognized as the major factor driving her narrative's interest
in tableaux vivants, a factor too easily overlooked if the novel is read merely as
a confirmation of Goethe's greatness. One thing critics have missed by giving
Schopenhauer too little credit is the operation of unannounced tableaux vivants
in her text. Such a moment can be recognized, for instance, in the Marquise's
public presentation of herself following her arrival in Germany, staged in her
bedrooms behind a curtain that is suddenly dropped to reveal a calculated and
opulent display of a posed woman in a long white gown (G2: 154-56). On
the one hand, this tableau vivant stages femininity in a way consistent with
its appearance throughout Schopenhauer's text, namely as a question of how
a woman's private desires (implied here by the bedroom environment) are
resolved or exploited with respect to her expected social functions.*^ On the
other hand, this elaborate presentation figures the Marquise as a negative foil
to Gabriele (see G2: 156), developing the tableaux-based contrast of Gabriele
and Aurelie in a way that presumes familiarity with the place of tableaux
vivants in existing thought about femininity. It does not matter if the reader's
familiarity derives from Goethe's novel, or even that Goethe, too, used unannounced
tableaux vivants in his novel, especially in light of Schopenhauer's
blatant references to Goethe's text.
The high/low divide has so blinded critics that Schopenhauer (as imitator)
has not been viewed as a reader capable of appreciating the subtler
dimensions of Goethe's text, let alone be recognized as a (sharp) writer with
a strategic relationship to Goethe and his writing. For all of Schopenhauer's
admiration for Goethe, her drawing on his novel can be read as part of a narrative
strategy designed to speak to readers in the prevailing idiom, using subtle
differences and variations in the use of tableaux vivants and attitudes to reveal
the limitations of renounced identity. One such difference results from the
systematic association of femininity with attitudes and tableaux. For while
conventions such as loose hair and a lack of makeup are used in Gabriele's
tableau vivant as markers that her innermost, private desires for Ottokar are
revealed in order that they ultimately be resolved (Gl: 99-100),*' I wish to
question whether any path was ever open to Gabriele other than the striving
for aesthetically mediated loss, particularly in Hght of the conflict's educational
roots. But paradoxically, Schopenhauer's desire to illustrate the proper