“Bzzz. Bzzz.”, goes the iPhone. 7:39am. The first email of the day arrives, announcing that the manuscripts for Unit 4 have been successfully deposited to DropBox and are now ready for integration. I log in to the shared Google Document status report spreadsheet to confirm that the appropriate cells have been coloured green and the date correctly recorded, and welcome another day as a virtual PM.

The PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) does an excellent job of standardizing and cataloguing the inputs, outputs, and processes required to successfully manage a project using the Waterfall approach. An unwritten assumption of the approach, however, is that project teams and project managers (PMs) enjoy the luxury of working together in a central location, sharing equal access to information, to time, to resources, and to one another. In the context of a modern business, however, the existence of this traditional team structure is fading, and enterprises small and large are composing non-traditional project teams to respond to specific project requirements.

From telecommuting to virtual teams

With the incredible advancements in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) over the past decades, it has become increasing simpler and inexpensive for companies to establish temporary virtual teams to execute projects. The trend began in the 1980s with the introduction of the concept of “telework” or “telecommuting”: an employee could conduct his or her work from home (or a remote location) and communicate with the networked, central office (via phone, and eventually through fax and email) as necessary (Pliskin, p. 166). (For a more detailed overview of IT-enabled telecommuting, see Annex E.)

The idea was avidly adopted by many forward-thinking organizations, recognizing that employees who spent less time on the freeway, or who were now able to produce while stuck at home as required by their personal responsibilities, could be happier and more productive than someone in-office. (For examples of production increases from telecommuting, see Annex A.) Moreover, they could save on the overhead expenses of the additional cubicle space and workstation. Incredible!

Meet the virtual team

Today’s virtual teams are more complex, but share a history with their telecommuting ancestors. As the business trend in recent decades has been to move away from production (assembly-line production and manufacturing) towards the delivery of knowledge and services (Hunsaker, p. 86), the telecommuting model inspired a rise in popularity of virtual teams (Hunsaker, p. 86), allowing external or dispersed experts/consultants, freelancers, and subcontractors to collaborate at the project level.

If a project is defined as “a temporary endeavour under taken to accomplish a unique product or service with a defined start and end point and specific objectives that, when attained, signify completion.” (PMBOK, p. 5), then a virtual project can be defined as a project undertaken by a virtual team: a team of contributors participating to meet the defined project goals without necessarily working in the same location or at the same time. The team is virtual by virtue of the defining characteristic that its members may never meet physically or in real-time:

Virtual teams are groups of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed co-workers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task. (Hunsaker, p. 86)

Contemporary virtual teams can be further distinguished from conventional, face-to-face teams by two key differentiators: (1) they are not necessarily physically co-located, and (2) their communication is more formal, structured, and technologically-mediated (Hunsaker, p. 86-89).  (For a simple chart illustrating the differences between the two teams, see Annex B.)

[No] one technology to rule them all

The technological challenges to virtual project teamwork cannot be overlooked. While there is a growing range of products available enabling “real-time” collaboration between project team members, there is no single technology solution that exists for the management of virtual projects (Hofer, p. 28).  For a list of the ICT tools used by the author in the management of a virtual project, see Annex F.

Until virtual collaboration on projects becomes the norm, project teams continue to create their own “toolbox” using a combination of synchronous and asynchronous tools (Hofer, p. 28). The team selects the technology that best meets their needs. The specific workflow and conditions of each project and its team dictate the technical requirements.

For the time being, email remains the dominant form of communication in virtual teams; the role of wikis, blogs, and other social media has yet to be determined (Hofer, p. 28). However, one can also assume that the prevalence of ICT tools in projects will continue to increase as web-based services become more common in the workplace, and as younger, more “tech-savvy” generations (e.g., Millennials) join project teams.

With the plethora of “web 2.0” and “cloud” services now available to project teams at low- or no-cost, the real challenge regarding technology implementation at the virtual project level is not availability or functionality of such technology, but rather one of adoption. While project managers may keenly embrace new ICT tools to meet their project needs, the tools used will inevitably fall into obscurity if they do not become adopted as routine components in the project workflow. In order for such tools to be embraced by the virtual team and by project stakeholders as integral to project processes, project managers must actively ensure that they are organized, maintained, and kept up-to-date. Further PMs may benefit from providing an overview, demonstration or training about new project tools to the project team to encourage adoption and use. Interestingly, it is reported that the overall experience of working on a virtual team improves as they gain experience and become more comfortable with the technology (Wakefield, p. 438).

So what?

The virtual team’s goals and tasks are not necessarily any different than those of conventional teams. It is, rather, the way they go about accomplishing their tasks and the unique constraints they face, that are different (Hunsaker, p. 87).

In order to succeed, virtual project teams must not only accomplish the objectives and tasks mandated by the project, but they must also overcome the technological and interpersonal challenges imposed by a developing, non-traditional team model. For the virtual project manager, success requires a greater-than-usual commitment to managing the team performance, interpersonal relations and communications.

Overcoming obstacles

The greatest challenges facing virtual team members stem from their non-traditional communication methods: a lack of shared language or vocabulary across geographically- or culturally-dispersed team members increases the risk of miscommunication (Hunsaker, p. 89-90), and a lack of face-to-face dialogue eliminates clarifying non-verbal communication methods such as body language, subtlety and nuance of intonation, tone of voice (Lee-Kelley:2004, p. 655). As formal, technology-based communication replaces the informal, casual, water-cooler and cubicle-chat enjoyed by co-located project teams, team members struggle to share information (Wakefield, p. 435) quickly and effectively.

Further, virtual team members face the decreased visibility of their contributions (both work and opinions) to the project (Hunsaker, p. 90), and by extension, a fear of lack of recognition (Lee-Kelley:2004, p. 655), and must work harder to establish mutual trust and respect with colleagues (Hunsaker, p. 90). It is for these reasons that Liz Lee-Kelley defines virtual team project members as “the invisibles” in her article. (For an illustration of competing factors affecting virtual teams, see Annex D.)

Virtual teams experience more conflict than co-located teams (Wakefield, p. 434), and virtual teams function better with greater managerial guidance (Wakefield, p. 434). As dispersed team members struggle to determine what tasks to complete in what priority, how to complete tasks (Wakefield, 440), and how to collaborate and survive interpersonal barriers, all three types of workplace conflict – task, relational, and process - are exacerbated by the virtual project environment (Wakefield, p. 435-6)

Some research suggests that the same level of task and relationship conflict exists in virtual teams as in traditional project teams (Hunsaker, p. 87). The challenge, however, is how to overcome and mediate these conflicts without the convenience of traditional face-to-face communication.

The virtual project manager as leader

While all project managers are concerned with managing the People, Processes, Information and Technology (PPTI) related to a project, PMs managing a virtual project team have additional hurdles to overcome. While a project manager may traditionally focus on one project with one team in one location, the modern, virtual PM must manage a dispersed team of contributors (Hofer, p. 22). Thus the need for effective project management techniques is paramount. Yet it is not the “hard” or technical skills that a PM must develop to successfully make the transition to managing virtual projects, rather it is his “soft skills” and interpersonal competencies that must be adapted. The added complexity of relationship dynamics in a virtual team environment render traditional approaches to project management inadequate (Lee-Kelley:2004, p. 650).

In a virtual project setting, it is critical that the PM assumes the role of the central project leader (Lee-Kelley:2002, p. 462), assuming additional responsibility than in a typical project by managing project processes, inter-team communications, and coordinating tasks. As the project leader, the PM must become more active in assuming two key roles: (1) performance management and (2) team development. (Hunsaker, p. 91). (For a holistic view of Hunsaker’s guidelines for managing virtual teams over the life of a project, see Annex C.)

To manage team performance, the PM must: clearly specify the goals and direction of all tasks for all team members (Hofer, p. 26-28); establish routine and habitual meetings and communications; establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) and project processes; and continually support the team to overcome challenges in order to maintain momentum (Hunsaker, p. 91-92). To develop “coherence” amongst virtual team members, the PM must create opportunities for trust-building (Hunsaker, p. 92) and provide recognition for successes to foster motivation.

In one study, it was demonstrated that project teams with a strong/positive perception of the project manager as a strong leader believe that their team performs at a higher level (Wakefield, p. 450). The better the project manager is able to performance as a team leader, the better the virtual project team performs (Wakefield, p. 453).

Summary

This paper explored the recent trend in project management of creating virtual project teams of dispersed team members who collaborate using ICT tools. The features and limitations of virtual project teams pose unique challenges to both team members and to project managers. Here is a summary of the key observations and recommendations discussed:

ICT Tools

• There is no single solution for managing a virtual project.
• To encourage adoption, tools must be tightly integrated into the project workflow and processes
• Information must be updated frequently and maintained to remain relevant
• Adoption of new tools can be slow, but gets easier with practice (as the team gains experience)

Project team

• Composed of dispersed contributors: experts, consultants, freelancers, outsourced or 3rd party vendors, etc.
• Research suggests that virtual or telecommuting members may be more productive than co-located counterparts.
• Project-related and interpersonal conflicts will arise, often as a result of miscommunication. Virtual teams must find alternative strategies to overcome these challenges.

Project manager

• PM should become a project leader & advocate
• Virtual PM has two key roles: to manage team performance and team cohesion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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2. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). 4th ed. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, 2008. Print.
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8. Lee-Kelley, Liz. "Situational Leadership: Managing the Virtual Project Team." Journal of Management Development 21.6 (2002): 461-76. ABI/INFORM Global. Web.
9. Pliskin, Nava. "The Telecommuting Paradox." Information Technology & People 10.2 (1997): 164-72. MCB University Press. Web.
10. Wakefield, Robin L., Dorothy E. Leidner, and Gary Garrison. "Research Note--A Model of Conflict, Leadership, and Performance in Virtual Teams." Information Systems Research 19.4 (2008): 434-55. INFORMS. Web.

The first proposition posits that criminal behaviour is learned. (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). Just as one learns to tie his or her shoelaces or to prepare a meal, so too does one learn to pick a lock or copy a credit card. Sutherland is careful, however, to note that learned behaviour is neither invented, nor inherited. (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). The skills and techniques required for criminal activity are not innovations, and they are not automatically obtained from birth, or through association with criminals; rather, they are acquired through a process of learning.

In the second proposition, Sutherland refutes the possibility that criminals and deviants must witness criminal behaviour in order to learn it. Rather, he states that one learns criminal behaviour through social interaction and communication (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). In a family structure, for example, one may learn to respect and obey the law, or to believe in a certain religious worldview. This communication-based discovery and realization also occurs when learning about criminal activities. For example, one may come to learn about prostitution through discussion with others, and by witnessing the nonverbal responses of these others towards the activity, such as rolling the eyes or staring.

Sutherland’s third proposition begins to explain the observations of Shaw and McKay, who observed that consistent high rates of crimes within members of similar social conditions. He argues that most learning of crime and deviance takes place in interaction with members of intimate, personal groups, and that methods of impersonal communication – such as television, films or newspapers – are less influential or effective in learning (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). The greater implication of this proposition is that it locates trust at the root of social interactions that encourage deviance. For example, children and youth would likely first learn how to shoplift or how to graffiti public spaces from their close friends, rather than from general acquaintances.

The fourth proposition expands Sutherland’s concept of learning to identify what is acquired through communication with intimate others that enables criminal activity. He describes how through this learning process an individual gains not only the skills and techniques required to commit the crime, but also the “motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes” that accompany the behaviour (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). Merely learning how to commit a crime is not cause alone for one to actually engage in the activity. Instead, Sutherland calls attention to a subjective component: individuals also learn, or assimilate, the social, cultural and psychological attitudes that drive a violation of the law (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). Such rationalizations and attitudes also explain the common excuse for criminal behaviour as warranted or deserved. A rapist, for example, may reason that his or her actions were justified as the victim was “asking for it” by flirting or by wearing revealing clothing, an attitude he or she likely developed through association with others of similar beliefs.

The fifth proposition further elaborates upon the issue of criminal motivation: as individuals are surrounded by a “cultural conflict” of competing ideas from both law-abiding citizens and criminals, pro-criminal or anti-criminal intentions are developed based on learned conceptions of the law as either “favourable” or “unfavourable” (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). In other words, one develops opinions of the law that either encourage or discourage action. For example, one who drives faster than the speed limit (“speeds”) may justify his or her actions by viewing the law as unnecessary; he or she may view the limit as unreasonably low, or judge that the road is clear and safe and that a limit should not be imposed.

As Sutherland points out, however, interaction with pro-criminal groups does not necessarily produce criminal behaviour. Thus in the sixth proposition, Sutherland argues that an individual becomes delinquent only when “definitions favourable to violation of law” exceed “definitions unfavourable to violation of law” (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). In other words, it is not the amount of exposure to criminal ideology that is important, rather it is the ratio of attitudes (“definitions”) towards crime – whether pro-criminal or anti-criminal influences are stronger - which determines whether an individual embraces criminal behaviour or not (Lilly et al., 42). For example, although recreational marijuana use is illegal in much of North America, an individual may be exposed to opinions from close friends who view laws prohibiting its use as unfair and without scientific foundation, and who provide assurance that the chances, and consequences, of getting caught are minimal. In such a case, the individual would be exposed to more “definitions” that encourage the law violation than those that discourage it, and therefore would be driven to behave criminally.

In the seventh proposition, Sutherland avoids oversimplifying the social learning processes, by describing how “excess definitions” (associations, attitudes, patterns, etc.) are affected by four factors: “frequency, duration, priority and intensity” (Sutherland & Cressey, 123). How often, for how long, how early in life, and from whom an individual is exposed to criminal associations will affect the relative impact on an individual’s behaviour. For example, a young child who is raised by a drug-addicted parent will be exposed to stronger definitions of deviant behaviour than a teenager who witnesses a cousin snorting cocaine at a party. In this case, the child would be frequently exposed (frequency) for many years (duration) in early life (priority) to pro-criminal definitions.

The eighth proposition reiterates the logic behind the criminal learning process. Sutherland explains that, like any other skill or knowledge, the process by which one attains and develops pro-criminal and anti-criminal patterns is the same as any other learning process (Sutherland & Cressey, 124). In learning, one is not only able to imitate or reproduce behaviour, but rather understands and develops it. A thief who steals cars or burgles houses, for example, will hone his or her skills to become more efficient and effective in doing so, learning over time to become quieter, faster, and more precise in such activities.

Sutherland’s final proposition makes the important claim that the motivations for criminal and law-abiding behaviour cannot be the same, and therefore crime cannot be a result of general needs and values, such as a desire for wealth or social status (Sutherland & Cressey, 124). The actions of a student who plagiarizes an essay or assignment, for example, cannot be justified by a general desire to do well academically; this would not explain why all students do not participate in the same deviant behaviour.

Works Cited

1. Gomme, Ian McDermid. The Shadow Line: Deviance and Crime in Canada. 4th ed. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007.
2. Lilly, J. Robert, Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. 4th ed. London: Sage Publications, 2007.
3. Sutherland, Edwin H., and Donald R. Cressey. "A Theory of Differential Association." (1960) Criminological Theory: Past to Present. Ed. Francis T. Cullen and Robert Agnew. Los Angeles: Roxbury Company, 2006. 122-125.
4. Winfree, L. Thomas, and Howard Abadinsky. Understanding Crime. 2nd ed. Toronto: Nelson Thomson, 2003.

While society encourages all citizens to display unrelentless individualism in pursuit of economic and material success, however, opportunities for advancement and goal-attainment are not equally accessible (Winfree & Abadinsky, 165). Thus According to Merton, crime and deviance are caused by an imbalance in social order, when individuals utilize the most efficient and convenient means, including crime, to achieve their goals (Cullen & Agnew, 171). This imbalance, in which some individuals (particularly those of the lower- and lower-middle social classes) are disadvantaged and have few prospects of reaching goals, produces a strain (Gomme, 50). Merton argues that some individuals and groups are subject to a particular pressure as they struggle to attain the common cultural goals, with restricted means and access to fewer “legitimate” channels (Winfree & Abadinsky,166). As a result, such individuals are under considerable strain, to which they adapt in any one of five possible ways (Gomme, 51).

The first, and most common, reaction to anomie is conformity. Most people are conformists. Conformists accept both the culturally-defined goals, and the societally-restriced means of achieving such goals, as legitimate. They strive for success through the socially-acceptable avenues of educational and occupational advancement. Although many (especially lower-class and lower-middle class citizens) are unlikely to attain the desired, idealized ends, they obey social rules anyway (Gomme, 50) and “grin and bear it” (Winfree & Abadinsky, 166) without deviation or complaint. When unable to achieve their goals or to achieve “success”, they claim responsibility for such failures (“I didn’t work as hard as I could have”), and continue to conform to social expectations. Excellent examples of conformists include cheerleaders, university students, as well as most “nine to five” corporate employees. These people accept the imposed “ultimate” goal of monetary and social success, and attempt to reach it by working diligently and following the predetermined educational and vocational paths.

The second possible reaction to anomie is that of innovation. Merton believed that much of criminal behaviour could be categorized as “innovative”. Innovators are people who continue to embrace monetary and material success as a worthy goal (Lilly et al., 57) but who turn to crime or deviance upon realization that their social status or experience limits access to legitimate means for success (Winfree & Abadinsky, 166). Gomme suggests that the archetypal example of an innovator is the “gangster”: a young immigrant with intelligence and ambition who abandons “proper” means to success in favour of crime (51). A similar example would be a drug dealer, who – like most conformists – desires wealth and social status, yet who attempts to achieve such ambitions through illegal activity (Lilly et al., 57). Innovators, however, are not necessarily violent or serious offenders: people who lie about the work experience or educational background on a resume or in an interview would also fall into this category.

Another of Merton’s possible adaptation mechanisms to anomie is called ritualism. Ritualists alleviate the strain of anomie by lessening their own aspirations of success to a point where goals are more practically attainable (Gomme, 51). They accept their caste and social position, and consistently adhere to the organizational means they are required to follow (Winfree & Abadinsky, 166). Ritualists tend to avoid taking risks (such as law violation), and are comfortable living within the confines of daily routines (Lilly et al., 57); as Gomme describes, “for ritualists, the means become ends in themselves” (51). A telemarketer or agent in a customer service department, for example, may demonstrate a ritualistic response. While accepting that personal wealth and social prestige are unlikely life outcomes, he or she will behave conventionally and acceptably by working hard; it is likely, however, that he or she will revise goals to be better aligned with practical possibilities (for example, by aiming to make the most commission, or be promoted to a supervisory role.) Similarly, bureaucrats and administrators who work in large institutions (e.g. government agencies) are also likely to display this ritualistic response, adapting their ambitions to match available possibilities for success. As they outwardly maintain conformity to socio-cultural norms and do not violate the law, ritualists are not seen as a threat to the social or organizational structure (Gomme, 51).

The fourth adaptation reaction - possibly the most discouraging - is retreatism. Retreatists make a more dramatic response to the stress of anomie. Strained by the forced expectations of social “success” through conventional and traditional avenues, retreatists essentially “give up”: they renounce both their obedience to cultural goals and to the social norms that dictate acceptable ways to reach success (Lilly et al., 57). As Durkheim observed, suicide can be seen as the “ultimate retreat” (Winfree & Abadinsky, 166). A homeless person and an individual who withdraws from the educational system can also be said to exhibit retreatist reactions by relinquishing the desire to attain culturally-defined goals as well and by retreating from activities (means) to pursue such ends.

The fifth type of adaptation to anomie outlined by Merton is rebellion. Rebellion can be called the most threatening and dangerous reaction mechanism, and it is certainly the greatest challenge to (and biggest critic of) established, normative society (Winfree & Abadinsky, 166). Rebels not only discount and reject the prevailing system that determines “legitimate” means and ends, they intend to overthrow it (Gomme, 51). Alienated from social and cultural structures, rebels propose new goals and means for success (Lilly et al., 57). Contemporary Marxists and socialists, for example, who advocate group rather than individual success, and who desire equal distribution of wealth, are threats to prevalent capitalist doctrine, and would be classified as rebels. Similarly, radical terrorists are examples of Mertonian rebels: they reject the conventional idea of economic and material wealth as ultimate goals, and propose new means to success (e.g. suicide bombing and “holy wars”).

Works Cited

1. Gomme, Ian McDermid. The Shadow Line: Deviance and Crime in Canada. 4th ed. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007.
2. Lilly, J. Robert, Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. 4th ed. London: Sage Publications, 2007.
3. Cullen, Francis T. and Robert Agnew, eds. Criminological Theory: Past to Present. Los Angeles: Roxbury Company, 2006. 171-178
4. Tierney, John. Criminology: Theory and Context. 2nd ed. Essex: Longman, 2006.
5. Winfree, L. Thomas, and Howard Abadinsky. Understanding Crime. 2nd ed. Toronto: Nelson Thomson, 2003.

To answer these questions, one must consider that it would have been far too easy for Milton to cast Satan and his followers as simple heathens, tyrants or monsters; this would assert that evil is recognizable, knowable, and easily-avoided. What Milton demonstrates in his sympathetic depictions of the devils, rather, is a far more complex understanding of the essential nature of evil as a strong, seductive force that one must resist with vigilance. Milton’s final depiction of Satan in Book 10, in which all the devils are reduced to hissing serpents, offers readers a lasting vision of evil. The transformation of the devils into snakes recalls Satan’s serpentine disguise as the Tempter in Book 9, and reasserts that what makes evil so dangerous is not its size, shape or form, but rather its luring temptation.

Between his introduction in Book 1 to his final appearance in Book 10, Satan takes on many forms – initially of his own choosing, although eventually imposed by God – which significantly affect his character. These transformations, along with Milton’s use of simile and metaphor, inform the portrayal of Satan and dramatize his gradual moral denigration. Satan is first described as a massive (1.222), stately, human-like being, (1. 197) with a shield as big as the moon (1. 284-7) and a spear like the tallest pine (1.292). He is compared to the Titans (1.198) and thus associated with mythological heroes. Later, he transforms into a preying "cormorant" (4. 196-8), spying on his future prey (Adam and Eve) and devising tactical plans. In the Garden, he assumes the form of various animals in order to get close to Adam and Even, specifically a tiger (4.403), a lion (4.402), and a toad (4.800). After being caught and evicted from the Garden, he decides to assume the form of a snake in Book 9. (9.83-6)

The final depiction of Satan in Book 10 revisits this serpent form. He finds Hell deserted, and must journey into Pandemonium to find the other fallen angels. As the fallen angels see Satan, they welcome him joyously, and he addresses them with a gloating speech filled with pride. He tells them of the temptation of Eve and how brought about the fall of Man ("Him by fraud I have seduc’d / From his Creator" 10. 485-6) with a lowly apple. He says that the rebellious angels "as Lords" can "now possess… a spacious World, to our native Heaven / little inferiour" (10. 466-8). Expecting applause and praise from his audience, Satan hears hissing:

And the dire hiss renew’d, and the dire form
Caught by Contagion, like in punishment,
As in thir crime. (10. 543-5)

Satan himself is also reluctantly transformed into one of the "monstrous Serpents", "a greater power" ruling him, "punisht in the shape he sin’d" (10. 515-7). Snakes are crawling all through Pandemonium, and the devils are quickly turned into snakes, unable to speak:

He would have spoke,
But his for hiss returnd with forked tongue
To forked tongue, for now were all transform’d
Alike, to Serpents all (10. 518-21)

In its final appearance in Book 10, then, evil is returned to a snake form that harkens back to Satan’s disguise in Book 9. Having illustrated Satan in so many deceiving shapes, why did Milton deliberately deliver his final portrayal of evil in the same serpentine form of the "Tempter"? What does this final presentation of Satan and the devils reveal about Milton’s notion of evil?

As Milton chose the snake form as the final image of evil, one can assume that he located some important revelations about the nature of evil in his portrayal of Satan’s serpent in Book 9. Thus to discover Milton’s final claims about evil, one must recall the important passages that describe Satan in his serpentine costume. In Book 9, Milton describes why Satan selectively chooses his snake form:

.. and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for in the wilie Snake,
Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native suttletie (9.90-2)

What is remarkable about the snake form, above all other animal disguises, is that it is inconspicuous, camouflaging Satan’s evil wile, wit, and subtlety. It is in this shape, then, that Satan is successful in his temptation of Eve:

So glister’d the dire Snake, and into fraud
Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree
Of prohibition, root of all our woe (9. 643-5)

Satan’s success can thus be largely attributed to his wise selection of disguise, for in it he is able to lead Eve "into fraud". For Satan does not assume the monstrous shape of a bear, a lion or a tiger to scare Eve, but rather as a satanic snake is able to get close to and cleverly influence her:

In her ears the sound
Yet rung of his perswasive words, impregn’d
With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth (9.735-7)

Interestingly it is not by any force or grandeur that Satan succeeds in his temptation of Eve, but rather through his argumentation, in which his "persuasive words" seem logical ("impregn’d with reason") and truthful.

What these three passages offer is a consistent characterization of evil in its snake form as "wily", fraudulent, and "persuasive" The serpent is an effective disguise because it allows Satan to full utilize his essential evil qualities: guile (9.568), impassioned (or "spirited") speech (9.678), and fraudulence (9.531). Moreover, the serpent of Book 9 is much more than a snake, but rather is of the worst kind of evil: it is the "Tempter" (9.550, 9.568, 9.678) of Man to impiety, disobedience and sin.

In his final embodiment of Satan and the devils as snakes in Book 10, Milton chooses to expose evil in its truest form. In altering the somewhat sympathetic Satan from his original heroic depiction to a simple snake, Milton is more importantly reducing evil to its essence: temptation. For the final vision of Satan and the devils is not as monstrous beasts, but rather as luring tempters. Thus what Milton offers his readers as a final taste of Satan and his followers, as snakes, is wholly important to his understanding of the great threat of evil itself. It appears that Milton wants to define evil, above all, as "the lurking Enemie / that lay in wait" (9. 1171-2): a persuasive, deceptive and seductive temptation that must be resisted.

Furthermore, the transformation scene of Book 10 is a reflection and reminder of divine justice. Rather than punishing the fallen angels by death, enslavement or torture, God’s retributive "eye-for-an-eye" justice is instituted. As evil (through Satan) tempted Man with the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, so too much all evil and the devils endure the same ritual. They must engage into the same temptation that lured Eve. The devils’ punishment to live as snakes, forever tempted by fruit on a glorious tree that turns to bitter soot and ash upon biting, echoes Satan’s temptation of Eve. Evil must forever suffer the pains of desire, without the hope of wish fulfilment, a punishment befitting their crime. To have the devils frozen in a state of perpetual desire and unattainable satisfaction is fit for a group of evildoers who continue to battle God through their disobedience.

The devils’ inability to speak, and ability only to hiss, further emphasizes this point: for God (and the good) will no longer allow Satan and evil to have a "voice" to which Man is susceptible; he can no longer tempt through false reasoning, lies and justification, and is stripped of his ability to do further harm. Thus not only does Milton in this scene expose evil as the greatest temptation, he also reaffirms God as omnipotent, and as the great good that will always prevail over evil.

In Milton’s Good God, however, Dennis Richard Danielson tries to legitimize the actions of God as both just and good. To do so, Danielson employs a range of theological theory to demonstrate one crucial point: the presence of sin in the world is attributable to human agency and free will. Danielson argues that free will is crucial, because without it humanity would have only been serving necessity, and not participating in a free love act with the divine (87). This allows God the Son to function as a sotoriological model in which salvation is offered and mediated through the crucifixion. Humankind, then, is the receiver of God’s grace, redemption, and dispensation. Danielson hopes to demonstrate that Milton’s God is by definition good, ultimately enacting justice for Man’s disobedience with a consideration for compassion and human redemption.

Though both authors present articulate and convincing arguments, one key consideration is lacking: the notion of God’s omniscience. Theological accounts of God attribute to Him an infinite and all-encompassing knowledge that is neither limited by time nor by space: omniscience. Though both Empson and Danielson accept God’s foreknowledge of the Fall, they seem to neglect God’s foreknowledge of Man’s salvation. Without this more complete framework, both the claims of God as a tyrant and God as good are equally tenable. Understood within a framework of omniscience however, God’s ends justify His means: Milton’s work is one that fully appreciates God’s salvific character and attempts to justify his goodness vis-à-vis his foreknowledge of Man’s participation in His grace.

Furthermore, the two books never reach a consensus as to who God is. Although both associate Him with God the Father in Milton’s text, Empson and Danielson disagree as to whether God the Son (Christ) is fully included within this personification. While God the Father appears a harsh and exacting universal master, the Son encompasses more gentle characteristics and human qualities. In establishing the goodness of Milton’s God, however, one must consider God as a unity of both the Father and the Son, figured through two separate characters within the epic.

In order to evaluate God in Paradise Lost according to an applicable notion of "goodness", it is fundamental that one consider the divine omniscience that Milton so greatly affords to Him. Moreover, the "goodness" of Milton’s God is intimately intertwined with a concept of His justice – both as the ruler of a divine state, and as a father vis-à-vis humankind – and the enactment of Mercy and Redemption towards His creations.

Empson’s key critique of Milton’s epic, and by extension of the Christian Creation story, is that God functions as a tyrant, much like "Uncle Joe Stalin" (146). Even with His foreknowledge of the Fall of the angels and of Man, God does not intervene to prevent the suffering of His creations, and, as Empson sees it, even orchestrates these events in order to necessitate His being. Empson thus views God’s actions, or lack thereof, as a kind of enslavement; He devised a situation in which Man was doomed to fail, only to be later liberated by Him (through the Son). (Empson 116) While convincing, Empson’s analysis is suspect: he neglects Milton’s understanding of omniscience, and is thereby unable to pursue this assumption to its logical end. God’s omniscience affords Him foreknowledge not only of Man’s disobedience and the Fall, but by definition also encompasses a foreknowledge of Man’s ultimate salvation, during which the God the Son liberates Man of his sinful and fallen state.

Moreover, as Danielson logically asserts, foreknowledge is not commensurate with culpability. Although God knew that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge, He neither commanded them to do so, nor influenced their decision. As God the Father explains:

… they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadown of Fate,
Or aught by me immutable foreseen,
They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formd them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthral themselves (3.115-125)

Here Milton rejects the possibility that God is complicit in Man’s error, and reiterates that it is Man’s free will ("Authors to themselves") that leads to the Fall. Thus His foreknowledge is that of human nature, and of Adam and Eve’s ability to disobey His command. God knows the ultimate outcome, but until that outcome is solidified in action, the possibility exists for Man to act differently.Empson further attempts to discredit God by arguing that in having complete knowledge of the immanent danger posed to Adam and Eve He somehow subverts justice by allowing Satan to live after the fall of the rebel angels. This argument is not legitimate, however, in light of God’s passive response to the Fall: in no way does He enlist, encourage or aid Satan in his temptation of Eve. Here, God’s role is not active in the sense of furthering the plot within Milton’s story. Rather, it is a counterpoint by which the plot is revealed, and functions as the mechanism through which the Son is able to mediate between the ultimately transcendent and invisible God and nascent humanity.God is unchallengeable ("Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent, / Immutable, Immortal, Infinite / Eternal King", 3.371-4), and it is impossible that He act outside of His nature. Milton’s God, being the definition par excellence of justice, cannot act in a way that is unjust, even if it is to further His own aims. Thus God’s foreknowledge in Paradise Lost functions only insomuch as it allows God to know the future; He is, however, still reliant on the instigation of others before He commences His plan for human redemption. In contrast, the punishment that is reserved for Satan, though he is allowed to live, is one of state justice in which an errant subject is exiled and barred from the divine community. This approach to understanding God’s just actions, however, is too narrow: it does not encompass all facets of justice s applied by Milton in his treatment of God. As will be seen later in a comparison of God’s response to the disobedience of Man with that of the rebel angels, God is a complex figure who is able to enact different kinds of justice and goodness towards His creations.Milton further develops the notion of God’s justice in the dialogue between the Father and the Son in Book 3. In this conversation, the Father engages the Son in the question of what to do about the impending disobedience of the two founding humans. Father and Son (God) agree that Adam and Eve have transgressed, but the real question is what kind of consequences should be imposed. The Son reminds the Father of the necessity for justice:

For should Man finally be lost, should Man
Thy creature late so lov’d, thy youngest Son
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joynd
With his own folly? that be from thee farr,
That farr be from thee, Father, who art Judg
Of all things made, and jugest onely right. (3.149-155)

This does not much seem like the voice of a Stalinist tyrant who seeks simply the subordination of His creations. This passage suggests that although God, as the judge "of all things made", can only judge rightly ("…thee…[who] jugest onely right"), it is the kind of judgment that needs to be negotiated. How should God punish his "so lov’d" creation who has disobeyed "by fraud"? Raphael explains to Adam how Man inherently differs from the angels:

To spiritual natures; only this I know,
That one celestial Father gives to all.
To whom the Angel. Therefore what he gives
(Whose praise be ever sung) to Man in part
Spiritual, may of purest Spirits be found
No ingrateful food: And food alike those pure
Intelligential substances require,
As doth your rational; and both contain
Within them every lower faculty
Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,
Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,
And corporeal to incorporeal turn. (5.402-13)

Man, created by that "one celestial Father", thereby shares a nature with God the Son that is not shared with Satan. This proclamation of a shared relationship between God and Man recognizes that a different kind of justice is necessary: one that takes into account this "spiritual" relationship, not simply diversion from the law of a state. In this way, Milton depicts God, anticipating Man’s immanent disobedience, as a father who seeks to save a wayward child. God’s justice and salvation with the Son, who freely offers himself to stand in the stead of mankind:

Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace; (3.227)
Life for life
I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Account mee man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee
Freely put off, and for him last dye
Well pleas’d, on me let Death wreck all his rage (3.235-40)

Here, "Account mee man" indicates that the Son identifies himself not only as divine, but also as fully human. Milton’s verse echoes Jesus’ words as described by Matthew in the New Testament:He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. (King James Version, Matt 26:42)The Son’s words "thy word is past" are important when compared to their parallel in the New Testament gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus submits to God’s plan ("thy will be done"). The "cup" that Jesus wants to be removed from him is the same "Death" (3.240) that Milton sees as the atonement for humanity’s errors.God chooses not only to sacrifice Himself through the figure of the Son, but also exacts a justice that more convincingly reflects familial, rather than judicial, obligation. In comparing the above passage to the gospel of Matthew, the figure of Christ strengthens Milton’s imagery of the filial relationship shared not only between God the Father and the Son, but also the relationship that all humanity engages in vis-à-vis these two characters. Man is not only God’s creation, but also His child in much the same way that Christ is son to the Father ("Father, thy word is past"). Christ submits to the will of his father, not to of some overlord of a state. He chooses to participate in the redemption of Man in an attempt to correct the deficiency in the divine relationship with humankind achieved in the fall.
Both excerpts indicate that the Son (Christ) is given the choice to sacrifice himself in the place of humanity, and in this way, Milton’s text speaks to the Son’s subordination to the will of the Father, and the acceptance of His obligations towards brothers in creation.Redemptive action, another positive aspect of God’s goodness, is challenged by Empson by his accusation that God has created both the angels and Man as a tribute to Himself. Empson posits that God’s ends are narcissistic, that he wants to become the avenger of his creations’ cause. (103)Milton’s description of Eve’s dream in Book 5, in which a disguised Satan tempts her to disobey God’s command, suggests that the true crime in the eating of the tree of knowledge is the attempt at being God-like ("Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods/ Thyself a Goddess, not to earth confined" 5.77-8), a crime similar to the dominative schemes of the angels. To correct this presumption humanity must make amends, and Milton’s God explains exactly how this is to be accomplished:

But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posteritie must dye,
Dye hee or Just must; unless for him
Som other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Say Heav’nly powers, where shall we find such love,
Which of ye will be mortal to redeem
Mans mortal crime, and just th’unjust to save,
Dwels in all Heaven charitie so deare? (3.208-16)

Some perfect human, devoid of the initial stain of the fall must be sacrificed in lieu of humanity ("Dye hee or Just must; unless for him / Som other able, and as willing, pay / The rigid satisfaction, death for death"). For this sacrifice to be valid it must also be the free-choice or will of the divine being that stands in for humanity. In this way Milton is demonstrating that the free-act of a divine character that somehow participates in the divine nature is the only thing that can correct the evil wrought by Adam and Eve. Milton, later, further emphasizes that this divine character must also be fully human, and as such is able to erase the sins made by his brethren:

The Head of all mankind, though Adams Son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee
As from a second root shall be restor’d (3.285-8)

Milton demonstrates that far from being a tyrannical lord, God and the Son function as a collaborative team that desire nothing but the return of man to his pre-fallen state. Furthermore, God is not even able to dominate in this aspect because human agency and free-will are not abandoned. Not only will the Son sacrifice himself pre-emptively in Book 3 for the not-yet-occurred Fall of Man, but Man himself will have a role in his own salvation. To successfully navigate atonement, humanity will have to admit and repent of their former disobedience:

Before him reverent, and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the Air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeign’d, and humiliation meek.
Undoubtedly he will relent and turn
From his displeasure’ in whose look serene,
When angry most he seem’d and most severe,
What else but favor, grace, and mercie shon? (10.1087-96)

Milton does not reflect here the attitude of extreme grace in which humanity is fully reliant upon God’s interventions for salvation. Rather, humanity can participate in redemption through prayer and confession. This is a positive aspect of God’s justice: it allows humanity to remain independent and active, and not fully subordinated to His divine plan. There is still the potentiality that Man could choose to act otherwise, even in light of God’s redemption, and Man is allowed to remain an active co-covenentor of the pact between God, the Son, and Adam and Eve. The line "undoubtedly he will relent and turn" indicates that Adam and Eve are not performing these supplications merely to expiate their own guilty sentiments, but as an offering with the end of restoring their former relationship with God. Adam and Eve also acknowledge that the judgement of the Son earlier in Book 10 was just, and that due mercy and grace were demonstrated ("What else but favor, grace, and mercie shon?").Empson in Milton’s God seems to neglect another integral element of God’s goodness in furthering his tyrannical discourse. Empson never mentions either God’s motive in the creation of mankind nor the love that Milton associates with God towards humanity. When one considers these two elements it becomes evident that God demonstrates a mercy towards humanity in Paradise Lost that he never demonstrates towards the fallen angels. This is figured in Book 3 when God discusses the place of Man in His cosmology:

To me are all my works, nor Man the least
Though last created, that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By loosing thee a while, the whole Race lost.
Though therefore whom thou only canst redeem,
Thir Nature also to thy Nature joyn (3.276-83)

Milton, through the figure of God, makes it clear that the motivating factor in redemption is His merciful love of humanity that supercedes his theodicy. In ignoring this, Empson leaves out the major vindication of God as good and just. God’s love is not passive but active; He seeks a method by which He can spare humankind the fate that has been decreed for the fallen angels led by Satan. Continuing this dialogue, Milton envisages a future for Man that is free from the necessity of covenantal law and atonement:

Then thou regal Scepter shalt lay by,
For regal Scepter then no more shall need,
God shall be All in All. (3.339-41)

The image of the sceptre is particularly stirring; reminiscent of symbol of justice, it is to be put away once the right relationship with Man is established (through the salvation of the Son and the repentance of Man). The sceptre, instead of being the ultimate symbol of God and His kingdom, is set aside in favour of a mercy that shall overcome the failings of Man. Milton extends this idea by describing the differences in the offences committed by the fallen angels and Satan, and those committed by Man:

Justly then accurst,
As vitiated in Nature: more to known
Concern’d not Man (since he not further knew)
Nor alter’d his offence; yet God at last
To Satan first in sin his doom apply’d
Though in mysterious terms, judg’d as then best:
And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall. (10.169-74)

Milton describes that God, instead of arbitrarily passing the same judgement on both Man and Satan, understands their disparate natures. God blames Satan and the angels more heavily than humankind; they had closer access to and knowledge of divinity. He sees that they were aware of what their rebellion meant, and were therefore more knowingly committed fault. Mankind, on the other hand, is a newly-formed creation that existed in a state of innocence and perfection ("God made thee perfect, not immutable" 5.524) until tempted by Satan:

The guilt on him, who made him instrument
Of mischief, and polluted from the end
Of his creation; justly then accursed,
As vitiated in nature: More to know
Concerned not Man, (since he no further knew)
Nor altered his offence (10.166-71)

The blame is cast on the serpentine figure of that fallen angel who "polluted" Man, and Adam and Eve are blamed merely for having been ignorant enough ("since he no further knew") to trust the tempter. Milton, deviating from the script of Genesis, then sends the Son to judge both Adam and Eve. The Son establishes their complicity and yet recognizes their ignorance in the crime committed, yet clothes them to hide their nakedness and vulnerability:

As Father of his Familie he clad
Thir nakedness with Skins of Beasts, or slain,
Or as the Snake with youthful Coate repaid (10.215-7)

Milton uses this passage to further elaborate upon God’s relationship with Man: the figures of Adam and Eve are associated in paternal relationship ("As Father of his Familie") with both God the Father and the Son. This nurturing demonstration emphasizes Man’s closeness with God that was inaccessible to the angels. Furthermore, "nakedness" serves here as a symbol of Man’s vulnerability to further attack; in clothing Adam and Eve, God the Son demonstrates an act of nurturing and kindness that pre-empts their ejection from Eden by cloaking them against the harshness of their new reality on Earth. As Milton elaborates:

Of Beasts, but inward nakedness, much more
Opprobrious, with his Robe of righteousness (10.220-1)

This metaphor of nakedness is extended by Milton to include not just physical vulnerability but moral vulnerability ("inward nakedness") as well, signalling that God not only prepares their bodies for the future, but protects their souls for their immanent separation from Him as well.The final demonstration of God’s mercy that Milton describes is the place of Death that has been released from Hell. Death, usually something antithetical to the immortality of God and the angels (and formerly of Adam and Eve) is subverted in a mirror image in much the same way as the conceptual framework of Hell. Milton creates death as a boon offered by God to alleviate the suffering of separation from Him:

I at first with two fair gifts
Created him endowd, with Happiness
And Immortalitie: that fondly lost,
This other serv’d but to eternise woe’
Till I provided Death; so Death becomes
His final remedie, and after Life
Tri’d in sharp tribulation, and refin’d
By Faith and faithful works, to second Life,
Wak’d in the renovation of the just,
Resignes him up with Heavn’d and Earth renewd. (11.56-66)

Milton, through the figure of God, argues that instead of being a curse, death in this sense functions as a liberation ("His final remedie"). Instead of a perpetual separation from God ("eternise woe"), humanity is offered the hope of death, and a possible future reunion with the Godhead ("Resignes him up with Heavn’d and Earth renewd"). Life, instead of the eternal bounty initially offered, becomes a quest of trial and tribulation ("Tri’d in sharp tribulation, and refin’d") whereby the cloak of righteousness offered by the Son functions to prepare ("Faith and faithful works") and hone the soul for a future meeting with God. The renovation of the just is exactly this trial that seeks future renewal of both heaven and earth as places accessible to humanity.God’s ultimate goodness is found in his commitment to Man, whom He never leaves. On the contrary, He sends the Son (as a human) to judge Man by man, and provides protection for a future that is devoid of God. This future is not ultimate, however, and Milton sees hope in the possibility of a future reunion with God. A tyrant would not care so for his citizens, and rather would mete out harsh and swift justice. Instead, Milton’s God is willing to understand the particular natures and frailties of Man, and allow a mechanism by which humankind can escape their doomed state.Perhaps the greatest significance of Paradise Lost is not the loss of the Garden of Eden, but rather the loss of a utopic relationship we, as humans, enjoyed with God as father. Milton associates humanity’s development of the understanding of the transcendent nature with the Fall. Without this event, Man would never have had the opportunity to learn of the nurturing aspects of divine justice, and would have been consigned solely to a covenantal relationship with Him based on law. Any critique of Milton that discounts God’s inherent goodness does not take into account the complexity of judicial and parental justice that is manifested through divine mercy and redemption. Through the Fall, God’s omniscience was able to anticipate a time in which law would no longer be necessary, and humanity would follow God through a love that superceded obligation.

WORKS CITED

1. Danielson, Dennis Richard. Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.   Empson, William. Milton's God. London: Chatto & Windows, 1961.
2. Holy Bible: King James Version. Toronto: Penguin, 1974. Toronto: Penguin, 1974.
3. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. Toronto: Penguin, 1974.

It can certainly be argued that New Critical theory reflects a Platonic worldview in how it perceives structures of meaning. New Criticism admits to the presence of an objective “truth”, and posits that the fact that one can refer to such a truth is one way in which we can assess a work’s value. Plato, expresses disdain for the poets, for poetry, and perhaps for all the creative arts; he suggests that they hold an undeserved power in their ability to depict reality and to influence the behaviour and attitudes of the public. In contrast, however, the New Critics suggest that while poetry and literature must bear meaning, they also need to escape the confines of meaning made only through morality. Thus in order to unearth value in a work outside of its moral lessons, the New Critics assert that literary criticism ought to also consider the formal elements and structures that comprise it.

What Aristotle offers to New Critical analysis is a structure that is removed from the notion of morality: a “post-ethical” structure (Ransom 877). Aristotle locates “objective truths” not in the content of the poem but rather in its adherence to rules of taste, structure, formalism, language, diction, etc. (Abrams 7). This critical method gives New Critics a framework through which to evaluate poetry and literature more objectively, without falling into traps of moral relativism. It also contributes to the construction of a timeless poetic tradition that validates older poetry: for in placing value in a work’s structure and creative technique, it allows us to consider works beyond their socio-historical context.

Aristotle, unlike Plato, felt no reserve in including poetry as an important task because he had distanced himself from the absolute realities found in Plato. According to Abrams, Aristotle was the first of the contributors to literary criticism that introduced structural criterion as an element for understanding poetry (7). Aristotle emphasizes the physical structure and components of poetry above their moral “meaning” or instructional content (Aristotle 50). Like Aristotle, the New Critics emphasized the importance of the structural and technical - rather than the conceptual or moral – elements of a work (Wimsatt and Beardsley 945) - such as the intentional use of metaphor, irony, and tension (Aristotle 48). In developing a framework for literary criticism around these formal components, there appears a universal ideal and a timeless tradition by which all poetry can be judged (Eliot 784).

Richards’ New Critical perspective also places an emphasis on the Aristotelian idea of catharsis. He argues that poetry is textual form that organizes and releases one’s impulses and attitudes (Richards 576). Similarly, one of the major features of poetry for Aristotle was this idea of release through catharsis (Aristotle 54). Both Richards and Aristotle assume that there is a relief that is found for the reader through study and understanding. This notion is furthered by Abrams in his suggested analogy of the poem as a projector that contributes to the object (reality) (Abrams 1). As in Aristotle, Abrams conceives of an “objective” reality that can be altered and informed by an artistic work.

Aristotle also contributes to the New Critical valorization of an intense process of artistic creation and interpretation, through which the reader and the poet are joined in the esoteric creation of art (Wimsatt and Beardsley 946). There is a difficulty in interpreting a work, but also in the process of its creation in accordance with structural form (Eliot 786). Thus, the necessity for a certain morality in Aristotle is realized in the “post-ethical” understanding of poetry in New Criticism (Ransom 878). Morality, or the pedagogical element of moral instruction, is found in the packing (creation) and unpacking (interpretation) of a work, not necessarily in the values it espouses (Ransom 879).

Thus Eliot’s conception of a poetic “tradition” is an attempt at an Aristotelian notion of a poetic Form (Eliot 784) : “Art is never made better but it is changed” (Eliot 785). While art and poetry remain eternally associated with the process of creation, Aristotle’s embrace of formal and structural elements allows the New Critics to envision complex poetic innovation, beyond morality.

Works cited

ENGL 317 (Theory of English Studies 3 - Philosophical Approaches) Coursepack #1. Edited by David Hensley.

The comedy of the play itself, however, has its roots in classical literature following very closely the structural ideals of the middle and new Greek comedy. The consequences of following classical structures are that the play adopts many of the societal trappings that would seem incongruous with Elizabethan England. Not only was the Bard composing a simple and thoughtless comedy, but he was also constructing a social commentary in which various gender roles were investigated and negotiated within classical frameworks. If one considers A Midsummer Night’s Dream it becomes clear that Shakespeare was interested in discussing the role of women in society particularly vis-à-vis the metaphors of fertility and the liminal space of the forest whilst maintaining the near myth-like classical framework of the play. Shakespeare’s theatrical interest in femininity may stem from his own particular time. In Elizabethan England, like most other places of the period, notions of ‘maleness’ and masculinity did not need to be investigated as they were dominant. Instead, in literature and text, it was women’s roles that were to be negotiated through the lens of a classical, male-dominated society much like that presented in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This paper will seek to demonstrate Shakespeare’s dependence on classical Greek comedy, investigate the conception of the ‘female’ gender through the metaphor of fertility and the liminal encountering space of the forest.

The Greek comedy was a dominant genre in the sense that the requirements of comedy had not significantly changed since Aristotle’s text on Poetics, however, individual remnants of these works were extremely rare. The very place of classical literature in a humanist age made these genres elite and dominant forces that were set up as examples to be used and modified to suit contemporary Elizabethan plots. Shakespeare, like his contemporaries, was cognizant of these literary forms and though there is no one play to whom he is directly indebted it is clear that the overarching principles of the genre were in the forefront. To demonstrate this link it is necessary to discuss the origins and purposes of Greek comedy and demonstrate how they are present in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Greek comedy arose out of Dionysian festivals (to celebrate the God of vineyards and of agricultural fertility). Though these plays began as small folk traditions they quickly expanded in importance in the Hellenic area to be included in major festivals in Athens. Of particular interest for Shakespearian analysis is the comedies of the middle and new period as they were renowned for their social critique, not of individual personalities but of classes and of social constraints. New comedies, in particular, included the ‘lighter’ elements such as love, and it was often the misfortune of lovers that were ridiculed. These elements are poignantly clear in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Elements of social critique are seen in the opening scenes of conflict between Helena and her father Egeus. The caricature of an overbearing parent demanding the unquestioned submission of his child (particularly his daughter) fits within the structures of middle comedy and its sharp attack on parental (and also governmental) authority. The misfortunes of Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia all provide humorous fodder similar to that provided in the new comedies. The point of this critique was not so much to level complaints against society but to laugh at the bumblings of an individual in love and unable to express it to his beloved. Both Greek and Shakespearean comedy taunted the domineering father and the lax lover, they was not intending to present a perfection of the world but rather a comedic interlude wherein the lax morals of the society were flaunted.

In both the Greek and Elizabethan periods, theatre was a place of masculine purview. Women were neither actors, nor playwrights nor producers, and lacking involvement in creation, their characters were often presented in highly stereotyped ways. Plays were written, produced, directed and acted by men, it was rare that masculinity was the target of investigation. Women, as the problematic characters both of the Greek period and the Elizabethan were the subjects of investigation. Society demanded women’s subordination, but as history, and Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate, they had their own power. It was the nature of this power that posed significant problems for the male characters of both reality and the boards. The female characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are all in their own way headstrong and uncontrollable. This is independent spirit in a woman is in complete contradiction with the popular wisdom of the time. A woman’s public place, if she had one, was that of the wife and mother. Outside of these two roles women could not be trusted not to usurp male power. Egeus’ demand of daughterly obedience from Hermia typifies this exchange of comedic power because the real negotiation is the stewardship of the household. If Hermia is allowed to disobey her father, she socially castrates him as family head. Thus the crux of the play becomes the subordination and usurpment of female power and the righting of the social order. This fits within the paradigms of classical humour as often the unruly female becomes the symbol for social disintegration. A Midsummer Night’s Dream uses this understanding of social hierarchy upon which to base its critique and its humour, only once the females (Hermia, Helena and Titania) are suitably cowed is the hierarchy re-established in its proper patriarchal form in much the same way that Greek comedy used its humorous interludes to emphasize its own social vision.

If gender roles are at the crux of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then it becomes necessary to demonstrate the particular role that was established for women as well as how this is denoted through the various signs and metaphors in the play. As established previously, the two socially and publicly acceptable roles for the female were that of wife and mother, and interestingly those are the two roles that all the females flout in one way or another. To begin with Hermia refuses to marry Demetrius, the favourite pick of her father, and the man to whom she has been betrothed. Instead she illicitly loves Lysander and concocts a plan to escape her father’s authority in favour of her lover’s.

“ Egeus: Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and, my gracious duke,
This hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child”

Problematic in this instance is the fact that Hermia is undermining her father’s right to determine his own progeny and the alliances forged within the family. As such the motifs of fertility are subverted by the female to exclude the crucial element of male choice. In the case of Titania an even more blatant refusal of male authority is present. Titania, in her youth, had a voteress who gave birth to a young Halfling and later died. The marital dispute over the fate of this young boy becomes the driving element of this particular subplot. Oberon, as the King of the faeries, cannot countenance spousal disobedience and launches on a plan to force Titania, his wayward wife, into a life of obedience and mastery. This is done through the use of a serum, dewy and liquid, that is liberally applied over the eyes, forcing the victim to fall in love with the first creature seen upon awakening.

“Oberon: It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it ‘love in idleness’.
Feth me that flower – the herb I show’d thee once.
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.”

Like Hermia, the real conflict centers around male authority and in this way is making a commentary about the gendered role of females rather than the less problematic one of males. Titania and Hermia as expectant wives (and in the case of Titania erstwhile mothers) must be made to surrender to male authority to preserve the fabric of social order and harmony. The males are never subordinated to the females, and the way that Egeus, Demetrius and Oberon behave underscores the nature of male gender as one of authority and lordship over the physical, social and emotional lives of the females under their care. This kind of control gives the males of the play access to determine their fertility, to tame the energetic and disobedient women so as to physically conquer her and make her mother. The chronological period of the play underscores this. As a may play it is intimately linked with the new harvest and with fertility. The dreamlike quality of the forest period is reminiscent of Dionysian fertility rites. By this is meant that the conflict between Oberon and Titania and Demetrius and Hermia (and consequently Helena) is not about sex. Instead the conflict arises about social position as the women are not looked at as agent’s of pleasure, but rather as individuals whoa re disobedient to their social function. This makes it highly reminiscent of festival plays or carnival as for one night the women are allowed to flout their societal role (with the permission of the men, of course) to invert reality and to live by their own standards. As with festivals or Carnival, however, reality is soon righted and the superior knowledge and command of the male figures the women are soon brought back to their rightful places through the act of marriage, the ultimate subordination of women to men through legal charter and physical conquest.
“Carnival was observed throughout Europe during the early modern period […] Traditionally this was a time of hedonistic excess and transgression. Carnival permitted and actually encouraged the unlimited consumption of special foods, drunkenness and a high degree of sexual license, and it often led to street violence and civil commotion. The custom of masking and disguise made it easier for the participants to get away with violations of social order, and indeed it was typical of Carnival that social order was turned upside down.”

The fertility metaphor is particularly important when considering that the faery realm (and therefore the majority of the play) is governed through the lunar cycle. The faeries are only able to come out a night and the moon is the guide by which they manage their lives. The lunar cycle as the typification of the feminine becomes a time of chaos and it is only once the sun comes out that reality is restored and the proper social function of women is re-established under the purview of the male. In this way the domination of the female is a nature v. science moment. The realm of the castle from which the women escape and the kingdom of Oberon that Titania rejects represent the scientific and ordered world of the male. The female, on the other hand, is governed by a different and more mysterious force such as the night wherein all is shadowed and all is possible. In this way, like nature, it is necessary that women be subordinated for the continuation of the species and for the rightness of the social order. Nature can only be made efficient once it has been subordinated to technology, and in much the same way it is only once the women are brought out of the forest that they become fertile ground for procreation based upon their subordination in marriage.

The backdrop for the majority of A Midsummer Night’s Dream occurs within the context of the forest, a place of dreams and mystery comparable to the scenery in many classical plays. The importance of the forest is that it provides a liminal environment that is neither the masculine ordered world of the estate that will host the marriage of the Duke and his soon to be wife Hypolita nor is it the purview of Oberon the faery King. As festival plays often celebrated fertility and marriage the forest is a place of in between, a perfect environment for the negotiation of female gender roles:

“...we are led to feel the outgoing to the woods as an escape from the inhibitions imposed by parents and the organized community.”

Had the story taken place in the castle it would have been well within the purview of the masculine world but the inclusion of the forest leads to a place where male rules of social and public conduct are not dominant. The viewer of the play is introduced into an environment of female gossip and of gender negotiations without the dominant presence of the male characters.

“[…] presents a female-centered world reminiscent of the Amazons, a world, of “women who gossip alone, apart from men and feeling now no need of them.” It also, as Margo Hendricks has recently demonstrated, does so in the context of a passage that elides “female and geographic fecundity”.”

In fact, the play makes quite clear that it is the lack of male authority that allows the women to act in socially subversive ways. In rejecting the King in favour of the young Halfling, Titania moves her court to a bower and essentially creates a household independent of the authority of her earthly master Oberon.

“Oberon: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
Titania: What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsword his bed and company.
Oberon: Tarry, rash wanton! Am I not thy lord?
Titania: Then I myst be thy lady.”

Both Elizabethan and classical cultures were one of sexual segregation with strictly defined roles. In reality women were separated from men from a young age living under the auspices of their lordly fathers or husbands to whom they owe allegiance.

“The social structure of early modern England was based on a highly differentiated system of rank, degree, and privilege. A complex social hierarchy assigned a traditional order of precedence to be observed on public occasions, and it determined both the division of labour and the allocation of authority.”

The male elements of this forested area is the serum used by the intercessor Puck to confuse and humiliate the women. As previously noted the dewy whiteness of the liquid is reminiscent of semen and it is spread over the victims eyes to display the vagaries and enchantments of their refusal to accept male authority. In this way Helena and Hermia are pushed towards the objects of their love. Hermia is rejected by both Lysander and Demetrius who are now attracted to Helena. Because of her rejection of the male authority of Egeus, Hermia is punished and loses the man for whom she ran away from the rightful household of her father. Titania, in a similar way, is humiliated for her refusal to accept the male authority of Oberon and is made to love an ass, Bottom the Weaver. In this way the women, even though they remain in the forest a place of gendered congregation, are subjugated to their rightful man’s authority and domination. The absurdity of the love confusion mirrors classical Greek comedy and it also serves the function of demonstrating the illicitness of female love. Hermia and Titania, having flouted their earthly masters are punished throughout the night and made to look foolish. Helena who had been faithful to her friend and followed her as a function of her role as hand-maiden was made, for one night, the object of the affections of two men in order to punish Hermia. Though the forest, as a liminal state, is by definition temporary it serves the comedic function of making the women ridiculous and shameful.

In addition to its authoritative function, the forest also serves in the metaphor of fertility. As a place of liminal desire the forest stands for the untamed natural image of the female that needs to be conquered and exposed by the male in the light of day. Much of the classical world is transposed in the forest. As previously noted, the festival play that was A Midsummer Night’s Dream focuses on the celebration of marriage and fertility as did the Dionysian comedic festivals of the Greeks.

“ Shakespeare, in developing a May-game action at length to express the will in nature that is consummated in marriage, brings out underlying magical meanings of the ritual while keeping always a sense of what is humanly, an experience. The way nature is felt is shaped, as we noticed in an earlier chapter, by the things that are done in encountering it.”

The festival of Elaphebolion, for example, one of the nights of comedic celebration harkened the taming of nature and the return of fertility to the land. It began in the wilds of the countryside and a statue of the God Dionysus was marched from there to the civilized area of the town center where his restorative natural acts were celebrated. Two other festivals of the Gamelia and Anathesteria were two other Dionysian celebrations that harkened marriage and licentious activity. The fertility marked in these celebrations was really the domination of the masculine over the feminine. Nature as a symbol in these festivals was highly feminized. The ‘natural’ was untamed and difficult, it required a male intercessor to make it fit for consummation. Agriculture has always been a highly male symbol that stood for the rape and conquest of nature and its conformation to male desire in much the same way that Puck’s intercession for Oberon and the other male characters was seen as the prelude to the subordination of female desire in the play. The presence of the Duke’s marriage signals the time of festivity that symbolically drives the women into the forest who therefore are prepared for their own symbolic fertilization consummated on the night of the marriage and with the blessing of Titania and Oberon.

The resolutions of all conflicts between the male and female characters of the play sees no compromise on the part of the men. Rather, the women learn in the forest their true place which is their subordination to the male characters and the giving over of their unruly desires to those of their male counterparts. The relationship between Titania and Oberon, as the symbols of fertility whose strife has lead to erratic agricultural produce in the land lifts the veil of twilight that has clouded the eyes of Lysander and Demetrius. When they return to the castle to celebrate the marriage of the Duke they are women fully chastised and cowed to male desire. In this way the rightful order of the world is reinstated and the time of female frivolity over. In many ways the play demonstrates how the time of social inversion and the carnival have given over the righting of authority and the absurdity of the night passes into the well ordered structure of the day. The play concludes with each women being physically tamed in their marriage bed sealing the rightfulness of male authority not only for the women but also symbolically for civilization through their progeny that were, hopefully, conceived on that night.

Not only a ‘light’ Shakespearean comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the story of male subversion of female power and the fertility acts that are often the focus of classical as well as Elizabethan imagery. The male characters live in a world of order and of that finds women ultimately problematic. One must keep in mind when reading Shakespeare that though these plays havea great deal to offer in terms of the dissection of human nature, they are essentially plays written about men by men. The plays themselves, in their historical context, were presented exclusively by male actors and in this way there is very little authentic representation of females. What the work does offer, however, is a contemporary view of male attitudes towards women and the place that these women occupied in a male dominated society. Through the images of the festival play, generally celebrated at fortuitous events such as marriage it is clear that women in this culture represented the continuation of society through their fertility. As in nature, however, male attitudes towards fertility are themselves highly regulated by domination and force. Women, in setting up their own households, subvert this male power and the authoritative function of this text is to demonstrate the impossibility of truly achieving this in such a masculine environment. As in Dionysian festivals, women are celebrated for their ability to give life as done through the male dominated constraints of marriage. In the liminal environment of the forest these gender roles can be navigated and exposed and made ridiculous by the men who seek to congregate with women if only to master them.

Had Molina and Valentin’s relationship ended at love and not encompassed the more basic of human motivations and feelings than it would be a rather disappointing novel. Instead, Puig tackles the notions of sexual perversity, challenges ideas of gender stereotyping and forces the reader to re-evaluate their notions of helplessness and love. In turn both Molina and Valentin must face their essential selves: Molina who wants to understand himself within a purely womanly matrix and Valentin who is distrustful of any female element within his psyche because he is petrified it will chip away at his political resolve. Through the seemingly unending dialogue between Molina and Valentin, one quickly realizes that Puig has brought one into a world of observation where the author apparently allows the characters to play out their most basic instincts. Notions of the feminine and masculine and intertwined in Freudian fashion and the reader is called upon to revisit notions of normalcy within life and love. Manuel Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman will be evaluated in this paper by firstly defining and addressing the Freudian aspects of both Molina and Valentin’s particular sexual perversions as well as by concluding with an analysis of what and whom the spider woman really is within the text.

The first section of this essay will be dedicated to defining and analyzing sexual perversion within the two main characters of Puig’s work, Valentin and Molina. Sigmund Freud described homosexuality as the most important perversion of all as well as the most repellent in the popular mind.[1] It is a perversion that occupies much psychic energy and space within culture, especially those which are built on the basis of machismo. Sexual activity itself can be described as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it.[2] According to Freud, each human infant begins its life with a sexual disposition which is innately bisexual and therefore has an intimate knowledge of perverse sexual longings.[3] This bisexuality is not negative, however, it is a necessary precondition for the successful socialization and gendering of the individual that is appropriate to their culture. The goal in normal development is that as the child grows they will eventually abandon their innate bisexuality through repression and sublimation with the goal of establishing appropriate gender lines and boundaries so as to create later heterosexual relationships. Repressed and sublimated perversions help to form, and are intrinsic to, normality. The might also be said to be the cement of culture, helping to constitute the social instincts.[4] Within this framework it becomes important to see Molina and Valentin representing different aspects within the development of sexual perversions within the human psyche.

Valentin as the epitome of masculinity and machismo in Latin American culture appropriately shuns anything resembling femininity. When first in prison her berates Molina for what her perceives as an excess of emotion and sentiment, and prefers to reminisce about his political struggles than contemplate the “softness” of life. In this way Valentin is the perfect example of the sublimated and repressed individual that Freud discusses in his sexual perversions. Repression seeks to conceive itself in terms of psychic stability and sees its function as the maintenance of social stability. This sets up within the individual (and Valentin for that matter) a situation of antagonism between instinctual desire that cannot be abated within the prison and the demands of civilization as symbolized through the figure of Marta his heterosexual love object. Though Marta represents the appropriate object of Valentin’s affections, he is oddly attracted to Molina the middle aged man who claims that he is a woman. This seems to bolster Freud’s analysis of sexual perversions as he stated:

“ Indeed, everyone, says Freud, has made a homosexual object choice, if only in their unconscious. In short: ‘in addition to their manifest heterosexuality, a very considerable measure of latent or unconscious homosexuality can be detected in all normal people’.”[5]

Valentin in Kiss of the Spider Woman represents the successful repression and sublimation of perverse sexual desire. Though he eventually succumbs to desire with Molina he never abdicates his heterosexuality and he never relinquishes his desire for his female partners. In fact his experimentation and dabbling with homosexuality can be understood through Freudian analysis on the perversions.

“More than any other kind, modern civilization demands high levels of sexual repression, the energy of the sexual instincts being ‘displaced’ or sublimated into increased or higher cultural activity and development. But there is a limit to the extent to which this can work, and in practice the result is that in avoiding the pressure to sublimate, the individual may turn to perversion and other forms of deviation which run counter to the requirements of civilized sexual morality.”[6]

In this way Valentin is adhering to social expectations in his role as the political rebel. His repression of his more feminine qualities and therefore his rejection of his bisexual roots equates to a situation in which increasing pressure is placed on his psyche. Out of this he initially uses politics as an outlet through which he can prove his masculinity, prowess and power and utterly subordinate his feminine qualities (such as his love for Marta).

Molina, on the other hand, also demonstrates aspects of sexual perversion that are somewhat more profound than the cursory statement that he himself is homosexual. The homosexuality itself is rarely problematic for Freud. In fact the great psychologist once noted that he was not sure whether homosexuality was even a perversion. Molina, however, is a very particular homosexual because he does not identify with many of the stereotypes often associated with homosexuals in prison. He is not muscular, he does not subscribe to his own brand of chauvinism and torture. In fact, the important of Molina is that he identifies with women going so far as to want to be a woman himself. In this way Molina can be described as more of a Queen than a homosexual of normal stereotype. In fact, according to Freudian notions of sexual perversion this makes Molina the more conservative of the two individuals. Given that Freud’s theory states that each individual is born with homosexual impulses that are acted upon in youth and slowly sublimated in adulthood, being sexually perverse is not a question of transformation.[7] Instead, sexual perversity, or in this case homosexuality is directly related to a human remaining in a static understanding of their own sexual and gendered relations. Molina’s acceptance of his female aspects is reminiscent of this in the way that he has maintained his androgyny and homosexual leanings.

“- Sure, you’re not in any way interior. Then why doesn’t it occur to you to ever be… to ever act like a man? I don’t say with women, if they don’t attract you. But with another man.
- No that’s not for me.
- Why?
- Because it’s not.”[8]

Molina, as a character seems to represent the very extremes of anormality and this is possibly also related to Freudian theory. Only through the self-repression and sublimation (as seen in Valentin) can society be cemented and achieve the preconditions that are needed for normalcy (i.e. continuation of the species). Molina as a character is only creative in his ability to adapt stories, otherwise he is a follower of Valentin. As a Queen (a male character embodying the characteristics of the feminine) Molina is passive though nurturing and caring. The real “work” is done by Valentin (symbolized through his dominant sexual position as well as his position as a leader of society and a political revolutionary). Therefore the highly bisexual and androgynous individual Molina is unable to assume his full position in society. When he does in fact try to do so at the end with Valentin’s followers he is brutally killed because they are unsure as to whether he will stand up to torture.

The second aspect of this essay concerns the very nature of the Spider Woman metaphor in the text. In Kiss of the Spider Woman many films are recounted by the gay character Molina in which there is a theme of female subversion of power and the feeling of helplessness or martyrdom towards events in life.

“The image of the spider woman herself pervades the novel. She appears in different versions, as cat woman and zombie woman. She is an enigmatic, archetypal version of the female.”[9]

Given that, as previously discussed, Valentin and Molina represent two polarized genders of masculine and feminine that are investigated through the culture in the prison as well as through the Hollywood stereotypes that are promoted in the films that Molina recounts.

“Molina, the homosexual queen, identifies with cat woman. He identifies wityh her beauty, purity, and altruyism and with her ultimate strangely powerful martyrdom. Of course Molina is emotional, intuitive and “female” in orientation in contrast to Valentin who is rational, logical and “male”.”[10]

In many ways the reader must ask the question of who the spider woman really is. Is it Molina with his intense desire to seduce and possess Valentin? Is it Valentin as the one who ultimately outlives Molina and maintains his own gendered sexuality? In fact the answer to who is the spider woman is more complex than any of these cursory answers.

“- And know what else I felt, Valentin? But only for a second, no more.
- what? Talk to me, but just…don’t…move…
- For just a second, it seemed like I wasn’t here … not here or anywhere out there either..
- ….
- It seemed as if I wasn’t here at all … like it was you all alone.”[11]

Though like the black widow spider the spider woman in the play is traditionally understood to kill the man she sleeps with, it is not Valentin or Molina that directly kill eachother and therefore this metaphor cannot hold.

The answer is found in the last scene of the book wherein Valentin has his morphine induced vision in which he sees Molina as well as others in his life protruding from the spider’s web with the fat body of the spider at its center. In some ways Molina is the individual, who in the prison represents the female, and therefore is responsible for renewing Valentin’s contact with his static and dynamic feminine powers.[12] However, it is not Molina himself who is at the heart of this, instead it is his weaving of cinematic stories that puts Valetin into contact with his elusive feminine self. It is the stories, the norms of society in the Freudian sense the greater purpose that is seductive, not the charms of a fading middle aged prisoner. In this way both Valentin and Molina are seduced by the movie-stories trapped in the threads of a rigid heterosexual script. Valentin and Molina are both victims of the highly gendered and hierarchical society of Argentina as well as the world at large.

“Nevertheless, in the end, it is Molina himself who is seduced by his own movie stories, trapped in the threads of a rigid script. Indeed in Valentin’s morphione dream, which closes the novel, Molina – as seductive, though nurturing spider woman – is inescapably caught in an essentialist web of gender: unable to move.”[13]

The movie stories serve as evidence for their normative power over the individual and their ability to define what is and is not appropriate behaviour. This is further cemented by Molina’s self-description as female, he cannot consider himself male and display all the softer emotions of a female just as Valentin cannot keep his political activities and yet surrender to the seductive power of Molina. The Spider woman metaphor therefore refers to society as a whole. The way in which society spins an essentialist web in which gender and sexual identity is fed to the prisoners and then related again and again through stories.

“ – And what’s masculine in your terms?
- it’s lots of things, but for me … well, the nicest thing about a man is just that, to be marvelous-looking, and strong, but without making any fuss about it, and also like walking very tall. Walking absolutely straight, like my waiter, who’s not afraid to say anything. And it’s knowing what you want, where you’re going.”[14]

The very fact that Molina consistently repeats these stories functions to a great degree like sublimation and repression in Freudian psychology. In this way the true spider woman becomes the overarching norms and expectations inculcated at birth into the average human being.

In conclusion Kiss of the Spider Woman is a tale of seduction but not necessarily of gay love. Though Molina and Valentin do find their own brand of affection the real story is how each of them is seduced by the expectations of society and learns to either deny or succumb to their allure. The Spider woman is society who spins a web around each individual and informs them of who they are to be. Freudian ideas of sexual perversion explain the allure of stepping away from the web but ultimately explains how each and every one is hopelessly caught in the web, dangling.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Dollimore, Jonathan. “Freud’s Theory of Sexual Perversion.” Sexual Dissidence. Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. OxfordP: Clarendon Press, 1991. p. 95

[2] Dollimore, Jonathan. p.95

[3] Ibid

[4] Dollimore, Jonathan. p. 96

[5] Dollimore, Jonathan. p. 97

[6] Dollimore, Jonathan. p. 101

[7]Dollimore, Jonathan. p. 96

[8]Puig, Manuel. “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” New York: Vintage International, 1978, p. 243

[9] Pinet, Carolyn. “Who is the Spider Woman?” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. 45(1/2) p. 20

[10] Pinet, Carolyn, p. 22

[11] Puig, Manuel. p.219

[12] Wiegmann, Mira. “Re-visioning the spider woman archetype in Kiss of the Spider Woman” The Society of Analytical Pyschology, (2004:49), p. 398

[13] Zimmerman, Shari. “Kiss of the Spider woman and the Web of Gender” Pacific Coast Philology (1988:23), p. 111

[14] Puig, Manuel, p.46

Yet Videodrome’s gift is not without consequence: with each passing second of its viewing, the show gains more control over Max. The Videodrome signal plagues Max with a fatal tumour that acts as a mind-control device to posit the directives of its greedy capitalist creators, eventually morphing him into an obedient, media-controlled assassin. Let me first quickly clarify what I mean by ‘crime’. In Videodrome, crime takes on a specialized form. There are no ‘white collar’ crimes: money laundering, embezzlement, blackmail, or any law-bending for profit. On the flipside, there aren’t any crimes of desperation, either: stealing to avoid starvation or squatting in abandoned buildings. Rather, the crimes in Cronenberg’s film are all ‘crimes of passion’, driven by a desire for pleasure.

In the world of Videodrome, one is a criminal neither to survive nor to profit, but rather to indulge in the sadistic, self-contained pleasures of the mind’s sinful requests. Even amongst the most heinous of acts committed in the film – torture and murder – crimes are governed only by an uncontrollable, subconscious hedonism, and lack any ‘rational’ logic, intentionality or purpose. In this light, it is the protagonist’s propensity towards violence and sadistic sexuality that implicates and incriminates him in Cronenberg’s world of dereliction and vagrancy.

Although the film’s main storyline - and perhaps its primary thematic ‘mission’ - is to question the shifting role of human beings in an increasingly media-saturated society, this is not merely another science-fiction movie or ‘new age’ horror flick. Rather, the visual effects and filmic aesthetic that Cronenberg delivers suggest that he is also interested in a complex discussion of human psychology.

A visual analysis of this 1982 film may reveal some of this complexity. In the world of Cronenberg’s Videodrome, crime (in particular violent crime and sadism) is the result of an ‘everyman’s’ innate, abject desires infecting his subconscious. The film realizes this claim visually by establishing three key premises: (1) that the protagonist, Max, is the ‘everyman’, (2) that he has an interior capacity for imagination and desire (a ‘subconscious’) separate from the actuality of ‘reality’, and (3) that this subconscious has become perverted by illicit and taboo criminal desires.

The first of these premises is perhaps the most important; Cronenberg must establish the protagonist as an ‘everyman’ in order to make any universal arguments about the psychological (and visual) nature of crime. Max fits the profile of the ‘common man’ in three ways. Most obviously, he is the ‘average [Canadian] Joe’: he is a white, heterosexual, middle-class man.

Second, Max also has a connection to the ‘masses’ in his professional life, as one who makes decisions about programming content for Civic-TV. Through decisions about which programs to air, Max is both literally and metaphorically able to direct a viewer’s perception of a particular ‘reality’, and acts as an information censor, filter, or gatekeeper; Max is thus the everyman’s ‘eye’ insomuch as he controls his audience’s perception of the external world.

Lastly, the film provides many visual clues to emphasize Max’s status as everyman. He is the meeting ground of socio-cultural class distinctions - faulted, but not condemned; perceptive, but not genius: an imperfect man in an imperfect world. Unlike the richly-decorated offices and perfectly-tailored three-piece suits of esoterically-spoken Professor O’Blivion (said to be modelled on famed media theorist Marshall McLuhan) or the scruffy, tattered appearance of the many unnamed low-class ‘TV-junkies’, Max appears unremarkably plebeian in his appearance and surroundings.

One first encounters Max at the beginning of the film, in his cluttered apartment. His first act upon waking is to glance idly at some black-and-white still photos of naked women from a Japanese softcore-porn show, “Samurai Dreams”, while devouring remnants of an old pizza. Inadvertently smearing tomato sauce on one of the photos, he wipes it off absently on his housecoat. Such visual ‘mess’ and clutter testify to Max’s semi-sleazy and piggish character: while not entirely boorish in behaviour, it is clear that Max is neither well-mannered nor refined, but rather faulted and plebian by nature.

Max also chooses to surround himself in ‘blue collar’ surroundings that echo his status: he attends business a ‘meeting’ with a porn distributor at the seedy Classic Hotel, for example, where people are yelling at each other early in the morning, and the rooms are run down. Similarly, the Spectacular Optical shop and the technical suite (‘pirate’s lab’) at Civic-TV share in an old and weathered quality, offering paint-peeled hallways beset with collections of dust and litter. Throughout the film, Max displays other similar qualities that hint at his everyman-ness: he chain-smokes, indulges ritualistically in pornographic material and dresses sloppily to the point that, in one scene, the professor’s daughter, Bianca O’Blivion, comments to Max: “you look like one of father’s derelicts.”

Moreover, the whole film possesses a seedy, low-tech, retro feel (no doubt due in part to its twenty-plus-year-old film stock) in its colour and texture. It appears that the film features a war between colours: warm tints and hues of orangey, rust-like red compete with a family of dull, muted shades, vying for the viewer’s attention. (It is interesting how in some scenes this colourful ‘tinting’ or hue is so strong as to make the film appear almost monochromatic, like a Film Noir.)

The dominant hue is a kind of earthy, dried-blood orange-red: it is found, primarily, in the colour of the Videodrome show, with its electrified clay wall and scantily-clad victims in red or orange attire, but also in many other places, from the pizza stain to the rusted wreckage of the ‘condemned vessel’ (the location of Max’s eventual suicide) at the film’s end. Red and yellow suffuse the scenes in Max’s apartment, especially when Nicki Brand (Blondie’s Deborah Harry) – Max’s pleasure- and pain-seeking female counterpart - is present. Max’s ‘hallucination helmet’ pulsates in Videodrome-orange; he wears an orangey-brown leather jacket in the later scenes. Reds are combined with black in the torture chamber and Max’s night-time apartment throbs with organic shadows and coloured lights, and dominate the representation of his sadistic sexual encounters with Nicki.

There is an opposite set of colours, too, though by comparison they seem almost non-colours. The charcoals and greys of Max’s outfits, particularly in the first part of the film, signify his repressed and mechanical self (but note his black dressing gown with red pinstripes expressing his private ‘secret’ life). The spiritual O’Blivions also lack strong colour; the daughter, Bianca, dresses in neutral shades, and father, Professor O’Blivion’s, television image is washed out.

Offices and professional locations, such as the Rena King Show and the C-RAM studios, are presented in dull blues, teals and greys. Barry Convex is habitually in charcoal or grey business suits. The Spectacular Optical logo is in cool, bright yellow-greens, and there is much pale green and off-white to be seen in corridors and on walls in public places throughout the film. There is in fact a kind of regimen of opposition between the visceral “Videodrome” pigments and these denatured blacks, greys, whites and various pale shades. Max’s apartment, for example, looks grey and colourless by day, (and is decorated with wall art which is exclusively black-and-white) but comes alive at night during the scenes with Nicki, where it develops pools of colour and shadow that are in extraordinary contrast to its daytime appearance.

As Max views more of the Videodrome program, the transmission causes him to hallucinate increasingly violent and passionate scenarios, making it difficult for the viewer to differentiate between the filmic ‘reality’ and phantasm. In one scene, he aggressively slaps his secretary Bridey for snooping around his apartment – but a moment later it is revealed that he has dreamt the occurrence. In another scene, Max entertains himself with a daydream-like sexual fantasy in whip he repeatedly whips Nicki – moaning, clearly enjoying the pain – only to discover (upon waking) that he has whipped – and bound, gagged and beaten – his trusty porn-dealing associate Masha. The hallucinations are, however, marked by their vibrant, warm, orange-red hue, suggesting not only that all of Max’s sexual and sadistic ventures are illusions, but also that the presence of such colouring automatically denotes a break/distance from reality. Cronenberg’s use of colour in Videodrome echoes Body Heat, released a year earlier. Much like Videodrome, Kasdan’s film uses rich colours like red to signify decadence, sexuality, desperation, passion and sin – and more importantly, both a mental and bodily decay, similar to Max’s rust-coloured hallucinations.

The active and exiting red shade acts as an attention-grabber, stimulating a physiological response in the audience to heighten awareness of Max’s changing psychological state. The presence of his hallucinations, then, alerts the viewer to the fact that Max is waging an internal war against himself; that his mind – stricken by delusion and delirium – is in conflict with ‘reality’.

Thus in Videodrome, one may observe, in a broad sense, an inconsistency between the passionate, warm, sinful colours of Max’s hallucinations, and the dull, muted shades that represent his mechanized, repressed, normative life as an everyman. Cronenberg’s use of colour in tandem with plot lends one to speculate that there is a more important battle at hand, beyond colour. What one witnesses, rather, is a disparity between the rational, dull, and quite unremarkable happenings of external ‘reality’ and the passionate, sexual, and visceral occurrences of the vibrantly-tinted interior world of Max’s hallucinations; what the Videodrome signal has inflicted on Max, then, is much more than simple hallucination or tumour, but rather it has unleashed his taboo subconscious.

Crime is first experienced as a viral infection when – it is explained - the signal from the Videodrome TV program itself enters the mind and slowly infests the host body with both a physical tumour and a psychological one (an instruction, or ‘programming’, of the individual). Yet although Max’s sadistic and murderous desires are largely driven by his ‘infection’, he is already more susceptible than others to the signal due to his (and the ‘everyman’s’) innate addiction to and appetite for deviance – for drugs, for violence, for sex. For although the TV ‘virus’ exploits his desires and perhaps overrules Max’s judgement, Max already had a taste for, a propensity towards, sexual taboo, violence, sadomasochism, and all things passionate, savoury, ‘savage’ (primal), and unruly.

Similarly, Nicki Brand, another victim of the ‘pure’ philosophy of the hyper-violent Videodrome show and its ‘virus’, is already laced with a predisposition for the forbidden. The desire to embrace the full perversions of the Videodrome show doesn’t come as a shock to viewers - during her first sexual encounter with Max, she desires the pleasurable pain of having her ears pierced and her breasts burnt with cigarettes – as she exhibits a desire for the kinky and illicit early in the story. It appears, then, that the Videodrome signal is simply the inspiration, or enabler, of previously present – although concealed – subconscious desires.

What is troubling about the film’s foray into Max’s subconscious is not only his insatiable thirst for sexual deviance and violent pleasure; what is truly disturbing is that this thirst seems to have taken on a life, an agency, of its own. An analysis of the graphical manifestations of crime in Videodrome suggests that Cronenberg conceives of crime (violent sexuality and sadism) as an actively independent organism, a sort of parasite or disease that infects and exposes - and ultimately perverts - the latent desires of the mind.

The first case of this parasitic, criminal ‘infection’ occurs just after Max has been ‘programmed’ with psychological instructions from the Videodrome signal. During another bout of hallucinations, Max withdraws a pistol from a large, open wound in his abdomen (he had ‘stashed’ it there previously) in order to begin his first assigned task as assassin: to kill his business partners at Civic-TV. As he slowly, with great anguish, removes the weapon from his body – dripping with bodily slime – the pistol begins transforming, both organically and mechanically, forcing metal cords into his hand and wrist, fusing weapon and body. Once this semi-living OrganiGun (my choice of name, not Cronenberg’s) has spread far and deep enough into Max’s body, it appears to ‘feed’ off him parasitically, collecting blood and strength for its own use, performing actively and independently of Max. Thus although Max may have previously desired violence, murder and torture in the subconscious, it is only once he is physically infected by the ‘virus’ (the pistol) that he turns to crime.

The notion of a latent criminal entity or being is also exemplified in a discussion of the character of Barry Convex. Convex was one of the creators of the Videodrome TV show and its infectious signal, yet – as a greedy, malicious and shrewd businessman – he stands to represent ‘the man’ in corporate, capitalist America. While Convex’s character is not principally ‘evil’ in the film, he is primarily established as a ‘wrong-doer’ for his semi-possible plan for international psychological domination of the masses. When Max shoots and kills Convex during a trade show appearance, one witnesses a disgustingly-fantastical ‘cancer-death’: the skin and casing of Convex’s face and body fragment to reveal blood-covered, pulsating organism-like tumours, as if the disease-demon of crime and corruption has been physically released and spread throughout the body. Here one can see that Cronenberg (and his brilliant special effects director, Rick Baker) has brought ‘life’ - persona, agency and characterization – to the perverse ‘infection’ of illicit subconscious desire.

The ethical and social responsibility of Max’s Civic-TV channel is challenged early on in the film during an interview on the Rena King Show (see prologue). Max’s response (“I… give my viewers a harmless outlet for their fantasies and their frustrations”) seems naïve –even a way to circumvent responsibility – and appears to contradict Cronenberg’s own vision. For in interpreting the filmic aesthetic of Videodrome, it appears that the director is interested in making a statement about the nature of human violence and desire, claiming (on visual terms) that crime (sexual violence, sadism, and murder, in particular) is the result of perverse, taboo and abject desires entering and ‘infecting’ the subconscious. Perhaps Max – and the ‘everyman’ he represents - is the author of his own misfortune, planting the seeds of perversion with which he will eventually be infected.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Body Heat. Dir. Lawrence Kasdan. Perf. William Hurt, Kathleen Turner. DVD. 1981.

2. Gyrus. “Psychoplasmics: Body Mutation and Dualism in the films of David Cronenberg”.

3. Ham, Martin. “Excess and Resistance in Feminised Bodies: David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Jean Baudrillard’s Seduction.” January 2004.

4. Kipp, Jeremiah. “Flipside Movie Emporium: Videodrome Movie Review” Review published Feb 8, 2001.

5. Laing, Rowan. “A Comparison between the Theories of Marshall McLuhan and two films by David Cronenberg.” Spring 2000.

6. Ulaby, Neda. “The DVD Room: Videodrome”. October 29, 2004.

7. Videodrome. Dir. David Cronenberg. Perf. James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits. DVD. Universal, 1983.

In reflecting a particular socio-cultural ‘reality’, art and literature have also played a historic role in constructing meta-narratives of criminality. This paper will explore the way in which mass-media ventures of the late-nineteenth-century, specifically popular illustrated fiction, served to shape Victorian notions of criminality by establishing an archetypal, Asian ‘Other’ as a villainous criminal.

The nineteenth century is often characterized by its rigid Protestant attitudes and values, and its “prudishness and high moral tone”. In England, Victorians were well-known for their fixed ideological attitudes, which featured a notion of the inevitable corruption of the poor, repressed sexuality, and a strong tendency towards reformation.

As technological advances encouraged mass production and spawned the so-called ‘industrial revolution’, urban populations in Europe (and North America) greatly increased. By 1851, for example, over half of the British population was living in urban regions. As cities developed, the traditionally upper- and middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant inhabitants of urban communities were burdened with the arrival of diverse groups of aliens. With their inherent ‘Other-ness’ – including, among others, a foreign set of religious doctrine and decree, suspect cultural practices, and visible signs of foreignness - such underrepresented and relatively powerless under-classes of new immigrants/foreigners were seen as posing a threat to the existing, traditional worldview and ‘moral order’ of established, white, Christian, British society.

In London, for example, a noteworthy increase in the number of Indian and Chinese emigrants meant that the city was swelling with a new social underclass of destitute/desperate/poor immigrants. As Curtis Marez describes:

Of particular concern to Londoners was the increasingly visible presence of the Chinese in [London’s] East End. During the 1880s and 90s, Chinese emigration to England, particularly London, greatly increased. By 1881 there were over 665 Chinese in England, up from 147 twenty years earlier.

As immigration increased, Britain was able and eager to indirectly blame its newcomers for a myriad of social dilemmas: Asian ‘foreigners’ were thus (indirectly) held responsible for the general ‘corruption’ of the Christian soul, having imported the problems of poverty, drugs, and immorality to their new home. As discussed in “Opium for Victorian England”:

The “oriental” element was accused of badly influencing the moral British society, further disseminating prejudice and partial representations of Asians, while diminishing the role of England itself in its own infliction.

The notion of an ‘Oriental contaminant’ had also made its way across the ocean, to the United States, where both Chinese immigration to major US cities and the import of opium was on the rise. As Jeffrey Scot McIllwain describes:

…The rumour amongst non-Chinese that wealthy young men from respectable families and, more importantly, many young women and girls were being induced to visit the Chinese opium dens, where they were reputedly “ruined morally and otherwise”.

The most obvious example/case of this ethnic scapegoating is evident in a discussion of Victorian opium use. Opium use in Britain was a widespread and quite unremarkable part of daily life for over a century in the latter half of the nineteenth century. One estimate claims that approximately eighty percent of working-class English families used opium for some medicinal purpose on a regular basis. As a remedy, opium was relatively cheap and easily accessible: physicians dispensed opiates directly to patients, or the drugs could be prescribed and sold over the counter at a pharmacy. As Barry Milligan describes in Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture:

Britons could buy opium in pills, powders, and plasters, liniments, lozenges, and laundanum, syrups, suppositories, and seed capsules straight off the poppy stalk.

It seems ironic that while both Victorian government and society demanded a rigid standard of behaviour from citizens, there were some dubious realities hidden from public discussion. While its medicinal uses may have been well-documented, for example, the general public was not aware of opium’s popular ‘recreational’ value.

It appears, however, that ethical and moral questions about opium use only arose after the mass immigration of Chinese to London:

…To many English people the Chinese nonetheless appeared to constitute a threat to public safety. Fear of the Chinese helps explain the fin-de-siècle outcry over opium, for even though opiates were widely available throughout the nineteenth century, they were only perceived as a problem when coupled with increasing Chinese emigration to London.

Opium smoking had long been a commonplace - and traditional - indulgence in China and India, and this recreational habit transferred well to Victorian society. For members of the leisure class, pressured by a constant obligation to ‘keep up appearances’, opium became a closeted - although legal - way to break from the binds of the Victorian society that “prescribed an unfaltering strength of will and constant sobriety from every individual”. In this sense, opium dens provided a locale for wealthy, ‘responsible’ British citizens to shake off their masks of decency and sobriety away from public view.

It should be noted, however, that while the ‘criminal’ act in question (opium smoking) was not illegal during the period, it was nonetheless perceived as a morally reprehensible social deviance (or rather, a particular ethnic ‘flaw’), and can thus be considered synonymous with ‘crime’.

How, then, did this secondary, socially-unacceptable habit of opium-smoking for pleasure surface in the public arena? How did ‘the masses’ finally come to know of these ‘crimes’? As the reality of opiate use was largely hidden, it became part of the agenda of art and literature to reflect the social reality of a leisure-class indulgence in opium’s sinful pleasures.

While the fine arts may have been able to depict this social ‘underworld’ through painting or portraiture, their reach would have been limited to a small, select audience of a privileged class. Instead, such information reached the working-class populace through mass-produced, popular fiction. In particular, the distinct genre of the detective story provided the ‘everyman’ with a window into the many underground realms of decadent upper-crust Victorian society. In doing so, such fiction also emerged as a method which “satisfied a Victorian desire for social and epistemological order” by – accurately or not – classifying and categorizing types of social personalities.

Thus types (both stereotypes and archetypes) emerged in popular fiction as an index of various social personalities, and more specifically, of criminals and criminality. The most blatant cases of criminal (mis-)representation in such fiction emerged in ‘den narratives’ – tales of travels (usually a rich, white man’s) into the seedy urban underbelly of the opium den. These stories chronicled ventures into the crypt of the basement opium den to observe the desolate ‘opium masters’ in their own domain. I suspect that den narratives became popular at least in part due to their depiction of the opium den as deeply interwoven with, almost integral to, British society. As Barry Milligan describes,

…With the influx of Oriental immigrants in the 1860s, popular journalists and fiction writers began to portray London’s East End opium dens, with both delight and trepidation, as miniature Orients within the heart of the British Empire.

In their implicit suggestion of an opium den as a “miniature Orient within the heart of the British Empire” - as an urban core - den narratives gained the trust of white readers, echoing fears of a disease-like spread of Orientalism and a strong desire to escape responsibility for national difficulties. The tales also spoke to a specific socio-cultural audience, depicting a pseudo-scientific, supposedly ‘objective’ account through which society could identify, contain and manage these delinquents. As described in “Restyling the Secret of the Opium Den”:

Most opium den narratives promise to expose the secrets of the occult den, and, crucially, promise that the secrets it reveals are objective truths. Carefully designed to thrill the reader, they achieve their frisson by presenting themselves as straightforward and unadorned accounts of reality.

Thus such texts almost always attributed the heinous, morally-reprehensible act of opium-smoking to a particular brand of suspect: the ‘exotic’ ‘Chinaman’ . In Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray”, for example:

… A gentleman finds thrilling adventure within the familiar city by travelling in disguise through dark and gloomy streets to a secluded lair. The den in Wilde’s novel is, like those depicted in other texts, a doubly exotic site where the gentleman mingles with social and racial others, pursuing illicit satisfaction among vicious criminals and grotesque “Orientals”.

As the genre became increasingly popular, the texts also began to feature complementary illustrations. Such images reflected the same sordid, fantastical underworld of opium-culture as the stories they accompanied, and for this reason, can be considered visual den narratives. The symbolic connotations employed by such visual texts is particularly interesting: it seems that the opium den made such a fascinating landscape for indirect socio-cultural warfare precisely because it served as a point of comparison between British and Chinese culture (or perhaps, native and immigrant culture), although the two were (during the late nineteenth century) inextricably linked into the cultural fabric of one another.

Of all the turn of the century visual den narratives, the most notable (such as Sherlock Holmes’ opium exploration in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”) can be found in one publication. For a sixty year period beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, The Strand Magazine remained one of the leading popular fiction magazines in the UK (and later in the United States), delivering stories to a mass audience in a cheap monthly format. The publication targeted family readership with a variety of stories from a milieu of genres – including fictitious tales of crime, mystery, “illustrated interviews” and even “portraits of celebrities” – and attracted readers with stories from famous writers of the day (most notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s popular “Sherlock Holmes” series).

The publication’s greatest draw, however, was not only its claim to prominent authors, but also its exceptional publishing quality. To draw readers’ attention, The Strand published most articles alongside original artwork and photographs from popular artists , boasting “a picture on every page” (which was very expensive to produce at the time); it thus became as well-known for its visual components as much as for its literary counterparts.

The Strand’s exceptional visual tradition began at the dawn of its first publication in January 1891; this first edition, a 112-page volume, featured a series of accompanying photographs and illustrations.

One image from the first edition – “A Night in an Opium Den” (author and date unknown), typifies this type of visual den narrative common to late nineteenth-century England. Published in The Strand Magazine in 1891, the image, (like most in the same tradition) uses various aesthetic and cultural signs/motifs/symbols/cues to stereotype/typecast ‘Chinamen’ as villainous vagabonds and criminals, in contrast to the supremely ‘virtuous’, law-abiding Victorian citizens. Timothy L. Carens further elaborates:

Both London, a Pilgrimage [Gustave Doré’s effort at documenting 1890s London photo-journalistically] and “A Night in an Opium Den” (1891) feature illustrations of Asians smoking in the den to complement descriptions of the degenerate “Orientals” who have established colonies in the back alleys of the city. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, they served as crucial evidence of the secret reality glimpsed by unbiased spectators.

One should note that the image doesn’t make any direct claims to such an intent; however, the caption (“In the [opium] den”), the visualization of the figures (with long thing ponytails, traditional garb and slanted eyes), and the surrounding narrative text (a story of an Englishwoman’s venture into addiction with the ‘Chinamen’) make it safe to assume that this is a rendering of Chinese ‘opium masters’ in their basement den.

Of all the aesthetic characteristics of “A Night in an Opium Den”, the most apparent/visible formal feature of the illustration is its colour, or lack thereof. It appears to be a black and white etching, although it is hard to be certain of the medium or the technique involved in its production. The stark black and white contrast – similar to a film noir or an Edward Gorey illustration - add to the image’s dramatic, or theatrical, quality.

The three figures – as well as the setting in general – appear in high contrast, which adds to the intensity of the image. Like film noir or pulp fiction magazines, the black and white contrast serves to heighten the dramatic impact of the scene: as bright candlelight hits their faces, the figures appear grotesque, exaggerated, and somehow sinister or corrupt, as if their physical environment were mirroring their interiority. This depiction of the ‘Chinamen’ as morally and socially inferior creatures was fundamental to upholding a Victorian notion of the ideal WASP in contrast to the newly-arrived, lower-class den-dweller. As Sandra S. Phillips notes:

… It was convenient to think of [the lower class] as belonging not only to a different class, but to a different race. Social thinks found evidence for this in what they saw as a propensity for a low state of morality, and a concomitant propensity for crime. Such philosophers believe that the ease with which the poor might enter into crime was revealed in their appearance. Thus, when a criminal was visualized by popular moralizers… he looked like a brute, like a less evolved being.

One may also view the image as a criminal document – such as mugshot - more than an artistic creation: as if a hidden camera or police photographer were to have ‘captured’ the criminals in the act. This is accentuated by a torn, hanging cloth that seems to frame the ‘crime scene’, much like a theatrical curtain. This approach – of utilizing dramatic criminal imagery while also making truth to ‘capturing’ a crime in a semi-journalistic fashion – is similar to that employed decades later by ‘True Crime’ magazines. One gets the feeling that the wrong-doing ‘Chinamen’ have been discovered in their natural habitat (a lair of sin), much like the confines of feared animals at a zoo.

The artist’s chosen distance from the scene is also worthy of consideration. The image’s ‘gaze’, if you will, is far enough away from the characters to deny facial detail or emotional expression, and thus limits a viewer’s interpretation of the criminal persona to one of a poor, Chinese ‘everyman’. However, the distance between the artist’s ‘eye’ and the scene suggests a geographical remoteness between the viewer and subject. To the nineteenth-century reader, this may have meant that the crime was taking place in an alien locale (that of the hidden, basement den), or that, moreover, one ought to view these savage, barbaric, and corrupt individuals from a position of authority and judgement, as if on trial for their crimes.

The image’s textural patterns – which include a delicate use of hatching and cross-hatching - lend to a certain sense of unrefinement and roughness. Such coarseness suggests a certain desperation, almost as if these den-dwellers have been physical scraping or clawing through the scene (as suggested by the torn hanging cloth and bed sheet) in search of something (perhaps one is to suspect a desperation for food, drink, money or drugs, as is expected of most ‘addicts’ and vagabonds). Furthermore, such torn fabric, along with the broken ceiling boards, minimal-at-best interior decoration and table-bed furniture hybrid, contributes to the scene’s tone of dinginess and destitution. In depicting an encounter with the Chinese as a “viscerally disturbing, profoundly exotic experience”, the images constructs the Chinese as absolutely foreign to English sensibilities, and expresses subliminal racial disgust and ethno-cultural scapegoating.

One may wonder about the motivation for this unintentional exoticism and scapegoating of Victorian crime. At the time, crime could be associated with a dangerous, or suspect, ‘taste’ for foreign sensation. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that during times of colonial expansion, the transmission of such ‘foreignness’ through crime and dissent (that is, the transformation of the British [good] into Asian, and particularly Chinese [bad]) could realize Victorian fears of social and political ‘decay’.

Such visual den narratives thus provided an outlet via which Western audiences could come to ‘know’ the new, alien members of their society.; and by the same token, such visualizations of ‘crime’ became a key proponent of Victorian stereotypes (and perhaps prejudices) of the immigrant ‘Other’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Carens, Timothy L. "Restyling the Secret of the Opium Den." Reading Wilde, Querying Spaces. New York University. 15 Oct. 2005 .

2. Forrester, Stephen. "Doyle, Houdini and The Strand Magazine." 27 Oct. 2005 .

3. Marez, Curtis. Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

4. Marez, Curtis. "The Other Addict: Reflections on Colonialism and Oscar Wilde's Opium Smoke Screen." ELH 64 (1997): 257-287. JSTOR. 29 Oct. 2005.

5. McIllwain, Jeffrey Scott. Organizing Crime in Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc, 2004.

6. Milligan, Barry. Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. London: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

7. "Opium for Victorian England." Victorians' Secret: Victorian Substance Abuse. University of Texas at Arlington. 22 Nov. 2005 .

8. Phillips, Sandra S. “Identifying the Criminal.” In Sandra S. Phillips, Mark Haworth-Booth and Carol Squiers. Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1997, pp. 11-32.

9. Pittard, Christopher. "Victorian Detective Fiction ~ An Introduction." Victorian Detective Fiction. 2003. University of Exeter. 9 Nov. 2005 .

10. Strand magazines and bound volumes from PRBooks. 6 Nov. 2005 .

11. Willis, Chris. "Crime, Class and Gender." 3 Nov. 2005 .

PLATE LIST

1. A Night in an Opium Den. http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/exhibits/wilde/images/opiumden.jpg.