Haste Makes Paste - Reflecting on the Fifties

The American Century Dictionary defines “fear” as an unpleasant feeling aroused by the threat of danger, evil, or pain. While most human beings are blessed with a reasonable sense of this, often keeping them from harm or even death, it is this same fear coupled with an obsessive compulsive drive gravitating towards guilt that have usurped my mind and been the dominate decision-making factor in my life. The largely negative effects of this preoccupation with fear are evident throughout my life, most notably in my behaviors, relationships, and extreme affection for the twelve years between 1950 & 1962.

Often times the “fifties” are characterized as a ridiculously pleasant, innocent, and sunny period. A war had just ended, the boys were back home, and new low-cost housing created a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, baby-booming suburbia. This relatively calm period in time has been forever idealized and memorialized by poodle skirts, juke boxes, and Elvis Presley, which I immediately adhered to upon introduction.

My love affair with the fifties began at a very young age. At the time, I had no idea what it was that drew me to certain things or that there was even a common thread between them all. I listened exclusively to the oldies radio stations when I was young; and have cassette tapes of myself in the first grade playing Oldies D.J., shouting “Come on, everybody! Love the fifties! There weren’t even burglars back then!” My singing voice even sounded just like Elvis Presley reincarnated, and I took every opportunity I could to show this miracle to others. I dressed in a very conservative manner, reminiscent of the styles worn in this period, almost always donning knee length skirts with old sweaters I believed to be from the period. I have loved the fifties with such ardor for such an extended period that some might have called me a “walking time capsule”.

Unfortunately, little has changed since then. My interests and ideals all still orbit around the fifties; my clothes, though now totally authentic from my hidden thrift stores, look very much the same; I still play Oldies D.J., only now I find myself actually on the radio with a small but dedicated audience; and my voice still sounds strangely similar to my Elvis impersonation whenever I sing.

As time has passed and adulthood is slowly coming up on the horizon, a moderate case of obsessive-compulsive disorder has reared its ugly head. Dealing with this has forced me to consider my behavior, past and present, more objectively than ever before. Within this process, I have realized that my obsession with a bygone era is not typical, normal, or even healthy; in fact the more I consider my current predicament, the more I realize my interest in the fifties is indicative of much more than just an affinity for pastel-colored 1957 Chevy Bel-Airs, fuzzy dice and all.

While my understanding of the fifties is obviously ridiculous and definitely idealistic, I see the world today, fifty years later, as dangerous and threatening. I have always found myself afraid and overwhelmed by the harsh reality of what I believe to be a decadent, immoral, and even violent modern world, often leaving me anxious over possible harassment, assault, battery, or even murder. These fears usually appear unfounded or improbable to anyone born with a reasonable mind; for me, however, with my strong belief in an active, powerful, and just God, they are not only probable, but likely coming to me due to transgressions I may have recently made. Anxiety coupled with the fear of God is a very powerful thing; this combination enables even the logically impossible to appear quite possible.

My world is colored in distractions and fantasies which help me forget about the precarious world of now, riddled with trip-wires awaiting my inevitable stumble. In order to survive amidst this chaos, I created a safe-haven in my fifties world. This paradise on earth in my mind, where everyone temporarily put down their vice, picked up the bible and baked apple pie for a decade, is what I have come to rely on.

Fear has permeated my life and is the influencing factor in every gesture I make, every word I utter, and every thought I consider. I realize now, after months of therapy and consideration that this preoccupation with fear extends much further past my clothing, hobbies, and tastes and into my relationships with others, be they strangers, friends, or family.

It is impossible for me to deny friendship to anyone, but, simultaneously, I have no close friends, because I am afraid that their evil ways will somehow influence, involve, or even possibly damn me. Consequently, I find myself constantly being taken advantage of by friends and family, forever doing favors against my will, returning calls out of pity, and even asking enemies to be my bridesmaids. My seemingly charitable character stems out of a fear of banishment or ostracization from the small society in which I am forced to participate in.

Out of what started as pity and ended as fear, I trapped myself in a three-year relationship when a boy from school asked me to be his girlfriend. I went to a small high school where, under his persuasion, I ended all other relationships and social engagements. Were we to break-up he could have easily ostracized me from the only society I knew at this point, which was his society. I turned a blind eye to his faults, and told myself his possessiveness and tantrums were not absurd, but fitting and somehow even my fault. He went as far as to establish rules, such as “no hugging other people.” I desperately tried to preserve his wavering affection and approval for me because I was afraid of enduring retribution directly from him or indirectly from God. I could never play the villain and break-up with him; this would leave me with the blame, with the fault of intentionally hurting someone else; instead, I found myself acting-out passive-aggressively, accidentally breaking the rules. Then, finally, one day, he let me go, leaving me just where I wanted to be, as a victim, out of the relationship, and without blame.

My relationship with my parents is perpetually affected by fear and guilt. I avoid confronting them at all costs because I never want to consciously break the holy commandment, “Thou shall honor thy father and thy mother.” My extreme take on this results in a submission to their every whim. I accompany them to endless social functions and lend them money, even when they spent everything they had on a pet poodle; but I could never open myself up to them. I am careful to never share pictures I took for photography, music I wrote, or even future career plans.

This secrecy is driven by fear. My parents do not understand me, and tease me when they struggle to comprehend my creative endeavors. Their knowledge of my person leaves me vulnerable and weak. Still seeking some approval and praise, I feel forced to share my efforts with strangers. I fear my parents knowing anything about my creations, my faults, or even my behavioral peculiarities because their lack of understanding would result in them criticizing or scolding me out of shame.

Fear continues to play a large part in my life to this day. While it has resulted in what I see as an amazing fashion sense, a superior demeanor, and perfect etiquette, I feel as though it makes a lot of my decisions for me, almost even against my will. Through self-help and therapy, I seek someday to be accepted, understood, and viewed as a valuable member of society, rather than an estranged misfit, tugging at her poodle skirt, teetering on total destruction.

Works Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003.

Urdang, Laurence. The American Century Dictionary. New York: Warner books, Incorporated, 1996.

Passing by Nella Larsen

In her novel, Passing, Nella Larsen uses the many-sided concept of “passing” to slowly and methodically reveal the complex and disturbed character of Irene Redfield. Although Irene is presented as a solid individual—firmly grounded in her person and position—she displays the most unstable tendencies in the novel. With each façade or pass that Irene takes on—and subsequently fails at—the road to her demise is made more clearly visible. Irene’s uncertain use of passing in its various forms is therefore the direct cause of her downfall.

The first (and most obvious) form of passing that is presented in the novel is in reference to racial identity. When Irene converses with Clare on the roof of the Drayton, the reader is subtlety informed that the intrigue surrounding Clare Kendry is due to her success at passing as a white woman. It appears that Clare is unstable and perhaps void of a true identity because of the ease with which she passes over to a completely different culture, seemingly without regret. While Clare shows her tendency toward duplicity, it is Irene who emerges the hypocrite.

It is through this Drayton conversation that the mask of Irene melts and her true character begins to emerge. When asked if she would ever pass as white, Irene says, “No. Why should I?” which would lead one to believe that she is extremely confident and proud of her racial identity (190). The dramatic irony of the scene, however, proves her contradictory. Irene’s statement would never be doubted if she uttered it in any other location, but since she is passing as a white woman at thevery moment she speaks so righteously, the reader can only assume that she holds double standards—Clare cannot pass for white because she does it ruthlessly and for purely selfish reasons, Irene can do it because she does it out of necessity for say, iced tea.

Irene’s inability to commit to a life of passing as white or a life of living as black and white proves her failure at both. Irene looks with disgust upon Clare’s life of passing, but her own conditional passing is somehow ignored. While it might appear that toying with passing every now and then is much better than making it an everyday occurrence, it is a much softer character that shows private interest in what they ridicule publicly.

Irene’s fatal hesitancy does not end at the gates of racial identity, but forcefully pushes on to the emotional side of her person as well. One of Irene’s major struggles in the novel is her method of handling conflict and threats. Instead of opening up to Brian, Clare, or John Bellew about her true feelings and concerns, she chooses to either remain silent or approach the subject from a roundabout way. It is very clear after Irene’s argument with Brian in the car, that she muddles her true emotions with ones that she feels she is supposed to supply. After Irene’s fury momentarily subsides, the author writes,

She was vexed with herself for having chosen, as it

had turned out, so clumsy an opening for what she

had intended to suggest: some European school for

Junior next year, and Brian to take him over (221).

For a split second, Irene puts the well-being of another before her own desires. Her motives for suggesting Europe are selfless and out of love for Brian, but she cannot pass these feelings on to him. Instead, she speaks in circles—almost as if she cannot help it—and then ends the conversation with an outburst, leaving the reader, as well as Irene, frustrated at the miscommunication.

There are numerous instances in the text where Irene fails to pass her desires on to Clare. When the two meet at the Drayton, Irene extends an invitation for a weekend getaway, seemingly against her will, “In the very moment of giving the invitation she regretted it. What a foolish, what an idiotic impulse to have given way to” (186). Irene’s feelings take a backseat position to Clare’s again when Irene struggles over whether or not to answer her phone calls in Chicago and ten years later in New York. Irene has made it very clear that she does not wish to become involved with Clare, but she loses all conviction when Clare turns on her charm.

While her interaction with John Bellew is limited to a handful of occasions, Irene still manages to lose her nerve and refrain from expressing herself in his presence.

There was a brief silence, during which she feared

that her self-control was about to prove too frail a

bridge to support her mounting anger and indignation.

She had a leaping desire to shout at the man beside her (202).

The trouble is that her self-control is much stronger than she realizes—so strong in fact that it is debilitating. Her true desire is to snuff out John’s ignorance by expressing her racial identity and confronting his racist slurs. She fails to pass her emotions on out of a fear thinly veiled by the notion of protecting her race (Clare), firmly maintaining her “self-control.” She is conflicted about the incident throughout the novel, but when given a second chance to redeem herself, she shrivels at the opportunity. Running into Bellew downtown, she unsuccessfully attempts to conceal her identity and severely regrets it later,

I had my chance and didn’t take it. I had only to

speak and to introduce him to Felise with a casual

remark that he was Clare’s husband. Only that. Fool.

Fool (260).

This method of interaction displays a stunted form of passing, one that prohibits the exchange of emotion. Brian, Clare, and John all pass their feelings on to their listeners, while Irene remains the solitary figure who attempts to pass, but only succeeds at her reversion to silence.

A by-product of Irene’s inability to pass her emotions is her ineffectual attempts at passing as a content and happy person. Irene puts on the façade of “happy wife” at the beginning of the text when she says, “You see, Clare, I’ve everything I want” (190). She might have succeeded at this attempt, too, if she did not immediately follow with a revealing statement, “Except, perhaps, a little money” (190). This failure at passing as happy might seem to be a success at passing on her emotions, but Irene does not commit to either. She attempts to lie about her happiness, but then weakens her argument with a contradictory statement. She does not explain bluntly that she is unhappy, thereby forfeiting her opportunity at honesty.

Irene’s decline is escalated when her suspicions of Brian’s infidelity are allowed to brew under her mask of happiness. At tea, she attempts to rationalize this mask, “In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear” (254). She appears to draw strength from the opinions of others, which she assumes would be positive opinions if it appears that she is happy.

Hand-in-hand with her trials of passing as content is Irene’s attempt at sincerity. Not only does Irene smile when she is devastated and withhold honest revelations of her emotions, but she even offers up mistruths, as if to convince herself of the facades that she carries on. Similar to her failure at passing as happy, Irene’s passing as sincere is cut short because of its obvious artificiality. When she offers the invitation to Idlewild, Irene’s countenance betrays the generosity of her words. Clare declines the offer because she knows that Irene is not sincere in asking, “She was annoyed at having been detected in what might seem to be an insincerity” (186).

When all of her attempts at passing have left her exhausted, Irene resorts to the only thing left to cling to—the passing of time. After accepting that Brian and Clare are having an affair (without any evidence), Irene surrenders to the infidelity with the hope that all will be well when Clare leaves in March, “Dear God…make March come quickly” (262). The problem with this hope, is that Irene is not completely convinced that it will make everything well again—especially since there was never a time when everything was well between her and Brian.

Her failure at establishing a solid foundation for her person may be a result of her confusion regarding her identity. While she is confronted with the options to live as black or white, she is also given the opportunity to live as both simultaneously, without passing. Irene proves her ineffectiveness as a person when she chooses to exist in a limbo where her actions never comply with her desires. Passing in its various forms is an instinctive means of survival for the characters in the novel—a skill that Irene simply does not possess.

Girls Who Are Boys Who Are Girls: Exploration of Gender Roles in Shakespearean Plays

Whether a reflection of William Shakespeare’s personal beliefs or an ironic social commentary, the image of masculine power in “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,” “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” and “The Tragedy of Coriolanus” is consistently associated with violence and physical supremacy; the image of feminine power is equated with manipulative tactics and indirect control through words.

There are countless examples of one’s maleness being dependent on an ability to discard passive problem solving techniques and utilize violence. Shakespeare presents a strong contrast to his brawny men with female characters who exert power by agitating their male counterparts with threats, utilizing reverse psychology, and using their sexual wiles to attain what they desire, reinforcing an ultimate dependence on men.

There is much tension in Shakespeare’s mentioned plays regarding the line of division between these two distinct roles. Each of these plays presents a moment when a male character’s gender is challenged by his own competing female tendencies, prompting him to respond with violence; or a female character attempts to assume the male gender in order to gain power, discarding her usual manipulative tendencies.

In order to understand the tensions that exist when a character dismisses (whether momentarily or not) his/her assumed gender traits in Shakespeare’s plays, one must recognize what traits are commonly believed to be true of both the male and female genders.

In her essay, “Sex Roles: The Argument from Nature,” Joyce Trebilcot reverts to basic biological principles to explicate behavioral differences between men and women:

“As the male fetus develops in the womb, the testes secrete a hormone which is held to influence the growth of the central nervous system. The female fetus does not produce this hormone, nor is there an analogous female hormone which is significant at this stage. Hence it is suggested that female and male brains differ in structure, that this difference is due to the prenatal influence of testicular hormone, and that the difference in brains is the basis of some later differences in behavior”(Trebilcot).

After establishing the likelihood of brain differences depending on gender, she goes on to address the common dispositions associated with both genders,“…the uterus is passive and receptive, and so are females; penises are active and penetrating, and so are males”—confirming the traditionally held belief (Trebilcot).

In his essay, “‘Pack Your Heat and Work the Streets’—Weapons and the Active Construction of Violent Masculinities,” Henri Myrttinen explores the connection between males and violence, saying of all factions of men:

“Their lowest common denominator is a view which, as described by Bryson, equates 'manliness' with the 'sanctioned use of aggression, force and violence.' This 'manliness' often needs to be renegotiated through the violent subjugation of others.”

He goes on to say, “Three characteristics linked to the notion of hypermasculinity of interest here are an emphasis on strength, aggressiveness and sexual potence.” While there are exceptions to this view of masculinity, one can easily agree that the generally held belief is that being male is synonymous with aggressiveness and physical power.

Having established what marks one as male or female in a most conventional sense, it is necessary to note that a character is marred for attempting to change their socially assigned gender role in Shakespeare’s plays. A man that displays female characteristics, or rather a lack of malecharacteristics (violence), is not just “unmanly,” but considered weak and pathetic. A woman who displays masculine characteristics is equally criticized and considered domineering or rough. As a result, representatives from both genders experience jeers from others, or are physically penalized.

This punishment is evident in “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” Several characters display typical gender traits to assert power, and other’s experience fluctuating roles. Most obvious is Mark Antony’s feminization of Julius Caesar after his death. Antony speaks for Caesar—literally putting words in his mouth—which is typically associated with male dominance. However, Antony’s manipulative tactics used during his eulogy are easily classified under the category of feminine power devices. Rather than using direct violence by immediately attacking Caesar’s murderers, he plays the humble and hurt friend, using reverse psychology on the crowd to stir the reaction he desires. While this strategy is successful for Antony, it serves to feminize not only Caesar for his silence, but Antony for his manipulation and indirectness—commonly associated with female power tactics.

Marcus Brutus is yet another character who struggles with asserting his masculinity through violence.

Brutus’ wife, Portia, temporarily assumes the masculine gender to express herself, but eventually resorts back to female dependency.

However, does not address the temporary nature of this masculine switch. While Portia chooses to bleed, she submits to her dependence on Brutus by killing herself. Brutus explains the reason for her death to Cassius, saying, “Impatience of my absence/and grief that young Oc emphasizing her failure to cope as a women with a male gender-lect. This play also connects masculinity with intended violence: The women in the play assert their power by manipulation and words, the men assert power by physical force and violence. For instance, Calpurnia begs and eventually kneels to Caesar when she wants him to stay home on the Ides of March, saying, “Do not go forth today. Call it my fear/That keeps you in the house and not your own” (Shakespeare 1554). Caesar submits until he is ridiculed by others for showing fear.

One must also note that Portia’s punishment for assuming masculine traits is her death.

Like Brutus in “Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare’s Hamlet in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” struggles to assert his masculinity through violence. His hesitancy to do so is equated with femininity, with the resulting violence dismissing this tendency of his. By this rationale, one can assume that introspection is a feminine attribute in the world of Shakespeare, while action and directness are inherently masculine. Hamlet is subtly chastised (but chastised nonetheless) for his highly introspective nature. This tendency to over-think is apparent when Hamlet says, “blah blah I must be a manalkdj;.” Hamlet equates his final decision with masculinity, and his decision is that of violence over peace; therefore one can equate violence with masculinity and peace with feminism in Shakespeare’s text.

Macbeth is yet another example of tension between genders and a struggle to maintain one’s socially appointed role. It is quite evident that this tension exists between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth regarding gender and power. Several times throughout the play, Lady Macbeth challenges her husband by saying, “be a manblahblah,”—illustrating how one is marred for deviating from expected behavior. While she is perfectly capable of committing the murderous acts that she is requesting of Macbeth, she manipulates her husband into committing them by threatening his manhood. Because she does not assume male power tactics, she emerges successful—at least for the moment. For Macbeth, in order to prove his manhood, he must resorts to violence.

It is in the “Tragedy of Coriolanus” that one of Shakespeare’s female characters resorts to feminine wiles and not only emerges triumphantly, but does not attempt to assume masculine power traits and is therefore not killed by the author. The mother of Coriolanus, afdgadsf emerges as the powerful woman, who succeeds in maintaining her feminine qualities.

Citations

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford

Edition. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997.

Shakespeare, William. "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar." The Norton

Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine E. Maus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997.

Myrttinen, Henri. "'Pack Your Heat and Work the Streets'--Weapons and

the Active Construction of Violent Masculinites." Women and Language 27 (2004). 09 May 2005 .

Trebilcot, Joyce. "Sex Roles: The Argument From Nature." Ethics 85

(1975). 09 May 2005 .