Monday, June 28, 2010
Cupcake Wars
Last night, my fiancé and I watched Cupcake Wars for the first time, and it was good! To me, there is no way to go wrong with cupcakes. The best part was that a vegan cupcake maker won! I'm not vegan, but I am health-conscious, and I love vegan desserts! I hope to get some of the recipes from Vegan Cupcakes' baker Chloe.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
On Zizek and Proletariatization
“What is ecological crisis if not another form of proletariatization? We are being deprived of the natural substance of our existence. What is all the struggle for intellectual property if not an attempt to deprive us of the symbolic substance of our lives?”- Slavoj Zizek What Does it Mean to be a Revolutionary Today? Marxism 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw
In every scope of our existence, we are being controlled, manipulated, and\or oppressed. We really do need to be radical if we hope to escape the capitalist system and truly be free from oppression. The culture industry permeates, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, everything, even film and other forms of entertainment, perpetuating the maintenance of the imbalance of power. I can now see the exploitation of resources as a means of maintaining power and not just a means of accumulating wealth.
Considering the recent BP oil spill and the ecological damage it will cause to fragile ecosystems globally for years to come, I can see that many people may predict the rise of gas prices. They may even predict a corporate push for alternative energy, a market that will become commercialized and regulated- where we, the consumer, will pay for services rendered, taxes, and fees when now, if we can afford it, we can harness alternative energy for free if we can afford the complex systems to do so- just like the electric industry. Overall however, people will most likely not yet realize that the created dependency on oil and other raw materials- energy, steel, petroleum, and chemicals- is pushed through the cycle of manipulation, whose sole purpose is to maintain the power held by the few over the many. This crisis is just another way of maintaining economic dominance over the common people (Adorno and Horkheimer 1223-1225).
Adorno and Horkheimer see culture as a means of domination and oppression. They say that the manipulation of the ruling class is evident through culture because “the formalization of procedure is seen through the end product similarities” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1225). Everything we experience is filtered through the culture industry, and reality is becoming interchangeable with the manufactured worlds of music, television, and film. We are no longer free to imagine; when we interact with the culture industry; we emit programmed reactions to situations and events. There is no original style anymore either. To the culture industry, style is just the aesthetic form of domination (1225-1227).
Great artists, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, did not and will never have flawless style. They claim that artists are those people who “used style as a way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of suffering” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1228). They say that great artists are cautious of both culture and style, especially when style is conveyed in art. Style in art is always ideological, and style cannot be separated from the thing which makes art able to transcend reality (ibid.).
Baudelaire would agree with Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of style. He saw style as representations of professions and classes from history in various combinations. The culmination of style is the dandy because they create themselves out of the desire to express their originality. Baudelaire, in contrast with Adorno and Horkheimer, believes the origin of style is the soul or spiritual reality. An extension of this belief is the notion that nature teaches nothing but crime; Baudelaire assesses that people need man-made cosmetics and form of entertainment to truly learn. Baudelaire is an advocate of the culture industry (Baudelaire 800).
Arnold would call the culture industry anarchy. The cycle of manipulation and culture industry are mechanisms that deter culture from its true purpose, the understanding and pursuit of perfection. Individuals are too busy with the created distractions of the culture industry to realize there is a higher function of man. Arnold says, “Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated” (Arnold 828). Adorno and Horkheimer would explain that it is both the culture machine and film industry that isolate everyone, create false identity, and perpetuate their own existences by claiming that it is a business that millions of people participate in them, especially with regard to the film and entertainment industries.
Benjamin would concur with Adorno and Horkheimer when they claim that the film industry doesn’t even pretend to be art anymore. Benjamin gives two reasons why mass and mechanically reproduced pieces of art are not art. First, process reproduction can bring out features that may not have been seen clearly in the original piece. Second, copies can be in places, both in time and space, that the original might never have had the opportunity to travel to. Film, it follows, is not art.
Benjamin says that Fascism, through all facets, especially art via film, organizes the proletarian masses without effecting the current structures for the maintenance of power. True salvation, Benjamin says, comes from giving people the chance to express themselves instead of giving them what they want. He sees the maintenance of power and domination as war.
Zizek has reminded me that we are constantly at war with the unseen bourgeoisie. We are enslaved by the division of resources and the crises created by those who have power as well as by those who want power. I always knew the world man created was not natural. This world, especially money, isn’t natural, and the people who are glorified in our society are those who lie to us for a living; they are actors. Those who have made- and continue to make- decisions that shape our ever-changing, dramatic landscape, both the natural and artificial world of Man do so to take away our abilities to truly provide what we need to survive in this world ourselves. The longer our resources are kept away from us and manipulated into vastly different consumable forms, the longer the oligarchy can ensure their power over the masses. The less access we have to the natural world, the more divided we are based on the allocation and exploitation of resources.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. “Culture and Anarchy: From Chapter 1. Sweetness and Light.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001)
Print. 825-832.
Baudelaire, Charles. “Painter of Modern Life.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001) Print. 791-801.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York
(2001) Print. 1167-1185.
Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Thomas. “Dialectic of Enlightenment.” The Norton Anthology
of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001) Print. 1223-
1239.
Zizek, Slavoj. What Does it Mean to be a Revolutionary Today? Marxism 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw
In every scope of our existence, we are being controlled, manipulated, and\or oppressed. We really do need to be radical if we hope to escape the capitalist system and truly be free from oppression. The culture industry permeates, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, everything, even film and other forms of entertainment, perpetuating the maintenance of the imbalance of power. I can now see the exploitation of resources as a means of maintaining power and not just a means of accumulating wealth.
Considering the recent BP oil spill and the ecological damage it will cause to fragile ecosystems globally for years to come, I can see that many people may predict the rise of gas prices. They may even predict a corporate push for alternative energy, a market that will become commercialized and regulated- where we, the consumer, will pay for services rendered, taxes, and fees when now, if we can afford it, we can harness alternative energy for free if we can afford the complex systems to do so- just like the electric industry. Overall however, people will most likely not yet realize that the created dependency on oil and other raw materials- energy, steel, petroleum, and chemicals- is pushed through the cycle of manipulation, whose sole purpose is to maintain the power held by the few over the many. This crisis is just another way of maintaining economic dominance over the common people (Adorno and Horkheimer 1223-1225).
Adorno and Horkheimer see culture as a means of domination and oppression. They say that the manipulation of the ruling class is evident through culture because “the formalization of procedure is seen through the end product similarities” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1225). Everything we experience is filtered through the culture industry, and reality is becoming interchangeable with the manufactured worlds of music, television, and film. We are no longer free to imagine; when we interact with the culture industry; we emit programmed reactions to situations and events. There is no original style anymore either. To the culture industry, style is just the aesthetic form of domination (1225-1227).
Great artists, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, did not and will never have flawless style. They claim that artists are those people who “used style as a way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of suffering” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1228). They say that great artists are cautious of both culture and style, especially when style is conveyed in art. Style in art is always ideological, and style cannot be separated from the thing which makes art able to transcend reality (ibid.).
Baudelaire would agree with Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of style. He saw style as representations of professions and classes from history in various combinations. The culmination of style is the dandy because they create themselves out of the desire to express their originality. Baudelaire, in contrast with Adorno and Horkheimer, believes the origin of style is the soul or spiritual reality. An extension of this belief is the notion that nature teaches nothing but crime; Baudelaire assesses that people need man-made cosmetics and form of entertainment to truly learn. Baudelaire is an advocate of the culture industry (Baudelaire 800).
Arnold would call the culture industry anarchy. The cycle of manipulation and culture industry are mechanisms that deter culture from its true purpose, the understanding and pursuit of perfection. Individuals are too busy with the created distractions of the culture industry to realize there is a higher function of man. Arnold says, “Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated” (Arnold 828). Adorno and Horkheimer would explain that it is both the culture machine and film industry that isolate everyone, create false identity, and perpetuate their own existences by claiming that it is a business that millions of people participate in them, especially with regard to the film and entertainment industries.
Benjamin would concur with Adorno and Horkheimer when they claim that the film industry doesn’t even pretend to be art anymore. Benjamin gives two reasons why mass and mechanically reproduced pieces of art are not art. First, process reproduction can bring out features that may not have been seen clearly in the original piece. Second, copies can be in places, both in time and space, that the original might never have had the opportunity to travel to. Film, it follows, is not art.
Benjamin says that Fascism, through all facets, especially art via film, organizes the proletarian masses without effecting the current structures for the maintenance of power. True salvation, Benjamin says, comes from giving people the chance to express themselves instead of giving them what they want. He sees the maintenance of power and domination as war.
Zizek has reminded me that we are constantly at war with the unseen bourgeoisie. We are enslaved by the division of resources and the crises created by those who have power as well as by those who want power. I always knew the world man created was not natural. This world, especially money, isn’t natural, and the people who are glorified in our society are those who lie to us for a living; they are actors. Those who have made- and continue to make- decisions that shape our ever-changing, dramatic landscape, both the natural and artificial world of Man do so to take away our abilities to truly provide what we need to survive in this world ourselves. The longer our resources are kept away from us and manipulated into vastly different consumable forms, the longer the oligarchy can ensure their power over the masses. The less access we have to the natural world, the more divided we are based on the allocation and exploitation of resources.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. “Culture and Anarchy: From Chapter 1. Sweetness and Light.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001)
Print. 825-832.
Baudelaire, Charles. “Painter of Modern Life.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001) Print. 791-801.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York
(2001) Print. 1167-1185.
Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Thomas. “Dialectic of Enlightenment.” The Norton Anthology
of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001) Print. 1223-
1239.
Zizek, Slavoj. What Does it Mean to be a Revolutionary Today? Marxism 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Social Construction of Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer’s disease has an unclear history that is being reevaluated. Some theorists feel that Alzheimer’s disease was caused by a series of events. As advances in science should make the cause of Alzheimer’s disease clear and concrete and the development of sound treatment options a reality, the advances in science and technology are instead showing that Alzheimer’s disease may instead be just a natural part of the aging process. Bioethicists are urging for pre-natal screening of infants for dementia and other possible hindering abilities in the hope that people will voluntarily choose to abort their fetus or euthanize newly born babies born with impairments.
On the opposite end of the age continuum, the debate over assisted suicide, especially for the elderly, has long had no resolve. A new trend by the medical community is to urge people at risk for dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease to voluntarily end their lives for the sake of preserving their intrinsic happiness or to not burden family. By explaining the history, construction, and deconstruction of Alzheimer’s disease, this paper can then explore the treatment of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia and better assess the issue of assisted suicide.
According to Gaines and Whitehouse, two authoritative researchers who have spent decades studying Alzheimer’s disease, Alzheimer’s is a natural disease. The goal of their paper “Building a Mystery: Alzheimer’s Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond” is to explain the medical and social construction of Alzheimer’s disease, “evaluate the cultural and ethical significance of recent developments in Alzheimer’s disease research, and the latest extension of Alzheimer’s disease- MCI (mild cognitive impairment)” (Gaines and Whitehouse 61). Dr. Alois Alzheimer was a German neuroscientist who worked in psychiatry. In 1906, he noticed what he considered to be empirical evidence for pre-senile dementia. As dementia was already considered an affliction that was extensively categorized by another German psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin, who was working on a paper for publication, Kraepelin did not consider there was enough of a statistical difference to separately list Alzheimer’s in his paper or grant Alzheimer’s a “disease label” (Gaines and Whitehouse 63).
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was largely ignored until 1971 in which Kraepelin wrote a second paper detailing the various types of dementia. Gaines and Whitehouse explain that Kraepelin labeled Alzheimer’s findings on the differences of amyloid plaques neurofibrillary tangles in part because of “personal ties and mutual affiliation with the Royal Psychiatric Clinic in Munich” (63).At the time, there were only two reported cases. The advent of staining showed that the two people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease had lesions, but autopsies revealed these lesions were not identified with the plaques and tangles Alzheimer noted. As such, there was still not etiology for Alzheimer’s disease (63-64).
Starting in the 1960’s there was a movement from the medical community to show that Alzheimer’s disease was separate from the aging process. The use of the electron microscope, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, helped to construct the disease. Two scientists said they found the same data, but they interpreted it differently. The differences in interpreting the data made Alzheimer’s disease an ideal candidate for extensive research. Over time, risk factors became clear but the medical community was still no closer to discerning the etiology of Alzheimer’s. Interest in the scientific medical community kept increasing throughout the discovery and use of neurochemistry and genetics, but there was no funding available for continuous research in the hope of discovering the disease’s origin (Gaines and Whitehouse 64).
Finally, political and social forces joined together to “transform a rare condition into a common condition” (Gaines and Whitehouse 65). The scientific medical community had to separate the disease from the aging process and they had to find a reason to request funding. During the sixties, there was a boom in the aging population. While the elderly were not a cause for funding medical research, the fact that people were getting older and living longer was a worthy cause; coupled with the increase in consumerism, biomedicine and bioethics began to advance in new directions (Gaines and Whitehouse 65).
Consumers began to question their doctors, medical research, and the medical community as a whole. Medical efficacy, paternalism- keeping conditions or the truth about medical conditions from a patient, and practice became issues of concern for the medical community, especially with non-physicians entering the field to observe and report on medical practices. Gaines and Whitehouse cite the consumer movement and aging population as the “social factors [that] pushed for research on a condition that was increasingly burdensome to members of the general public…The social impetus for formulation of a disease entity conceptualized in ways that make it appear that the ‘it’ so delineated is or will be treatable and perhaps even curable or preventable; that is to say, there is a development of a discourse of hope” (Gaines and Whitehouse 65).
There is still no concrete cause, and while many factors are said to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease- like exercise, healthy living habits, the inflammatory and\or genetic processes- there is still no treatment or cure. The older theories regarding AD are now emerging again as science and technology reveal there is no genetic understanding for the disease. In 2002, there was a drastic shift in thinking about AD in the scientific medical community. At a conference, the key note speaker said he felt the medical community had hit a wall as, he was certain, no new significant medical findings would be presented (Gaines and Whitehouse 66-69). Thomas Kirkwood reaffirmed this conclusion. Gaines quotes Kirkwood as explaining “[the] processes reified as pathology and disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are common and inevitable as the human brain ages” (Gaines 83).
Gaines stands behind Kirkwood in his explanation that aging is the biggest risk factor in causing Alzheimer’s disease. A large amount of chance is also involved in developing Alzheimer’s or other related dementia. Kirkwood explains, “’cells (will be) burdened with protein aggregates and similar materials that will increase with aging. Once again, which cells will experience this fate and which will continue to function healthily is strongly influenced by chance’” (Gaines 83).
The scientific medical community then stopped addressing Alzheimer’s as the vehicle for dementia and began to focus on mild cognitive impairment, which is considered a natural part of the aging process. Gaines and Whitehouse claim that the connection between MCI, which is said to be a precursor for AD, and the disease itself is unclear. MCI is categorized on the “spectrum of the continuum of cognitive aging”, along with Alzheimer’s disease (Gaines and Whitehouse 70). As Whitehouse points out, identifying different kinds of MCI means “studying the heterogeneous processes of brain aging” (Whitehouse 88).
Anne Davis Basting would agree with Gaines and Whitehouse that Alzheimer’s disease belongs on the dementia-related spectrum of cognitive aging. She worked with people who either had AD or had symptoms equal to those of mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease in Chicago and New York. Basting conducted a series of workshops to capture the stories of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD), and all of the participants had some form of 24-hour care. Basting points out that people with ADRD have no “ability to comprehend chronological time systems, so they need someone to translate the world for them” (79). Basting hoped that work gathered in these workshops would show the participants as functioning, thinking, creative people rather than as the disease. All of the stories told in both series of workshops had similar themes like “longing for freedom, acceptance, love, and intimacy with family or lovers” (88).
Knowing ADRD people have lost the ability to tell stories about themselves or incidents that happened to them from their own memories, Bastings would give the participants a valued social role to act out. The participants were able to retain the abilities to respond as a group and to shape a story with fragments of their own memories. With each visit, the participants’ ability to relate to each other became more focused, and parts of each person’s personality emerged clearly within the group setting. Basting wanted to give a voice to those who are often shut away and only seen as shells of their former selves. She did give people with ADRD a voice by creating a website, a play, and an art exhibit based on the collected 100 stories compiled from the participants in her workshop. In doing so, she hoped to change the stereotypes of ADRD people from isolated and crazy people to real people with drastically different needs for living (89-92).
Care for people with ADRD is a difficult responsibility. As Bastings points out, by mid-stage Alzheimer’s, most people need 24-hour care. The burden is on the family to decide the appropriate care for their family member. In “Shouldering the Burden of Care,” two professionals are given a case regarding a woman that has dementia. The daughter feels it is her obligation to care for her mother, especially since her mother asked to not be put in a home. Unfortunately, the daughter had to stop focusing on her career and family, is increasingly stressed and anxious, and no longer has the financial resources to care for her mother at home. Her brother does not want to take his mother-mostly because he feels that care is a woman’s responsibility- but he also feels she should not be put in a nursing home. The two medical professionals both agreed that the ethical course of action is to place the mother in the care of professionals who can watch her constantly and give her the level of care she needs and deserves. The concerns the family in the case study has are valid, but they are part of the social construction of Alzheimer’s as a disease as well as the myth of control, directly relating to obligations made to the mother (Case Study 14-15).
In the article “Under the Floorboards”, Michael Bavidge reinforces the strength of the conclusions Whitehouse and Gaines have drawn about the foundation of MCI as well as the history of Alzheimer’s disease. Bavidge explains, “We need not worry that values structure the institutions and practices that characterize medicine, but we should be concerned about the influence that commercial interests and political agendas have on the development of medical practice” (77).
The social construction of AD and its 1971 listing as a disease directly relates to the ways in which society views people with ADRD. What scares people most about Alzheimer’s and other related dementia is that these conditions are beyond an individual’s control, yet they transform one’s perception of their identity and sense of self beyond all recognition. The myth of control has taken over with regard to finding the origin of the disease to no avail. People, desiring to have control over the fate of their mental health and natural brain aging, have started making up cures, like the curebies of autism, directly relating to diet, the amount of exposure to aluminum, and various other trends that most likely will not have an impact on whether or not they develop ADRD.
The myth of control has also been used as an excuse. Some bioethicists and genetic counselors are urging people developing symptoms or are at risk for dementia related diseases to take control of what is happening to them by committing suicide. Even worse, some genetic counselors are urging parents to terminate a pregnancy based on the possible quality of life that child will have. These genetic counselors are suggesting these people take control of their own lives, or the lives of their unborn children, and do what is right or good, according to the standards imposed by society.
Conservative bioethics urge for the birth of all lives. In the paper “Conservative Bioethics and the Search for Wisdom,” the author argues that liberals suggest it is okay to abort fetuses with health conditions (Cohen 45). In reality, liberals suggest the abortion of fetuses as it effects the life of the mother; liberals do not feel that any person has the right to grant life or death based on how the child will view their quality of life. Abortion should be solely determined by how the child will affect the quality of life of the mother, in turn effecting the quality of life of the child, if it were to be born.
The decision to have abortions should not be shaped by the myth of control enforcing the societal standards of species-typical function. The myth of control forces the parents in this situation to evaluate how their own lives would have been different if they were born with certain impairments. The myth of control forces the perspective of the “I” self and singular experiences rather than through a collection of possible, positive ways to live. The myth of control and the social construction of disease force people to see there is only one way to be; that way is the social standard of normal.
The same is true for the liberal view of suicide. Suicide, especially assisted suicide, is a personal choice that should be based on one’s own desire to live or not. It should not be based on if one is at risk for developing or has ADRD or any other condition that reflects various types of species typification. An important person in the shaping of the decision of pregnancy termination will be the genetic counselor.
Genetic counseling is becoming increasingly important in our society. Genetic counselors meet with families considering terminating pregnancies and will act as an advisory mediator between geneticists, medical professionals, and patients of said professionals. Patterson and Satz take a feminist stance to this new, important societal role. More importantly, genetic counselors are integral to shaping the societal views and attitudes of people with disabilities and impairments. The authors state that the “attitudes and actions of genetic counselors influence the material situation and the self-concept of those with disabilities” (Patterson and Satz 118).
It is sad that our society has so many social constructions, like chronological time and organizing systems, that American culture is not yet accommodating for many members who experience a natural part of the aging process. The American world exists for those who are capable of bringing in wealth to strengthen the nation; it seems to not yet be able to acknowledge there are many ways to accomplish the same tasks. Care for our own relatives becomes a burden, impeding individual success and social mobility. America has turned the caring for our elderly into a capitalist enterprise, where after a certain point in the aging process, these people who were once valued in their social roles are shut away and ignored. While there is no solution for the natural aging processes of the brain, perhaps American society will begin to make new avenues of care available for those who will also one day be less than abled in some form or another.
Works Cited
Basting, Anne Davis. “’God is a Talking Horse’: Dementia and the Performance of Self.” The
Drama Review 45, 3 (2001): 78-94. Web. Project MUSE Database. 18 April 2010.
Bavidge, Michael. “Under the Floorboards: Examining the Foundations of Mild Cognitive
Impairment.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 75-77. 18 April 2010.
Case Study. “Shouldering the Burden of Care.” Commentary by Stacy J Sanders and Eva Feder
Kittay. Hastings Center Report September-October (2005): 14-15. Web. Project MUSE
Database. 18 April 2010.
Cohen, Eric. “Conservative Bioethics and the Search for Wisdom.” Hastings Center Report 36,
1 (2006): 44-56. Web. EBSCO Host Database. 18 April 2010.
Gaines, Atwood D. “Alzheimer’s Disease, Aging, and Chance.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 83-85.
18 April 2010.
Gaines, Atwood D. and Peter J. Whitehouse. “Building a Mystery: Alzheimer’s Disease, Mild
Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 61-74. 18 April 2010.
Patterson, Annette and Martha Satz. “Genetic Counseling and the Disabled: Feminism Examines
the Stance of Those Who Stand at the Gate.” Hypatia 17, 3 (2002): 118-142. Web.
Project MUSE Database. 18 April 2010.
Whitehouse, Peter J. “Demystifying the Alzheimer’s as Late, No Longer Mild Cognitive
Impairment.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 87-88. 18 April 2010.
On the opposite end of the age continuum, the debate over assisted suicide, especially for the elderly, has long had no resolve. A new trend by the medical community is to urge people at risk for dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease to voluntarily end their lives for the sake of preserving their intrinsic happiness or to not burden family. By explaining the history, construction, and deconstruction of Alzheimer’s disease, this paper can then explore the treatment of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia and better assess the issue of assisted suicide.
According to Gaines and Whitehouse, two authoritative researchers who have spent decades studying Alzheimer’s disease, Alzheimer’s is a natural disease. The goal of their paper “Building a Mystery: Alzheimer’s Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond” is to explain the medical and social construction of Alzheimer’s disease, “evaluate the cultural and ethical significance of recent developments in Alzheimer’s disease research, and the latest extension of Alzheimer’s disease- MCI (mild cognitive impairment)” (Gaines and Whitehouse 61). Dr. Alois Alzheimer was a German neuroscientist who worked in psychiatry. In 1906, he noticed what he considered to be empirical evidence for pre-senile dementia. As dementia was already considered an affliction that was extensively categorized by another German psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin, who was working on a paper for publication, Kraepelin did not consider there was enough of a statistical difference to separately list Alzheimer’s in his paper or grant Alzheimer’s a “disease label” (Gaines and Whitehouse 63).
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was largely ignored until 1971 in which Kraepelin wrote a second paper detailing the various types of dementia. Gaines and Whitehouse explain that Kraepelin labeled Alzheimer’s findings on the differences of amyloid plaques neurofibrillary tangles in part because of “personal ties and mutual affiliation with the Royal Psychiatric Clinic in Munich” (63).At the time, there were only two reported cases. The advent of staining showed that the two people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease had lesions, but autopsies revealed these lesions were not identified with the plaques and tangles Alzheimer noted. As such, there was still not etiology for Alzheimer’s disease (63-64).
Starting in the 1960’s there was a movement from the medical community to show that Alzheimer’s disease was separate from the aging process. The use of the electron microscope, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, helped to construct the disease. Two scientists said they found the same data, but they interpreted it differently. The differences in interpreting the data made Alzheimer’s disease an ideal candidate for extensive research. Over time, risk factors became clear but the medical community was still no closer to discerning the etiology of Alzheimer’s. Interest in the scientific medical community kept increasing throughout the discovery and use of neurochemistry and genetics, but there was no funding available for continuous research in the hope of discovering the disease’s origin (Gaines and Whitehouse 64).
Finally, political and social forces joined together to “transform a rare condition into a common condition” (Gaines and Whitehouse 65). The scientific medical community had to separate the disease from the aging process and they had to find a reason to request funding. During the sixties, there was a boom in the aging population. While the elderly were not a cause for funding medical research, the fact that people were getting older and living longer was a worthy cause; coupled with the increase in consumerism, biomedicine and bioethics began to advance in new directions (Gaines and Whitehouse 65).
Consumers began to question their doctors, medical research, and the medical community as a whole. Medical efficacy, paternalism- keeping conditions or the truth about medical conditions from a patient, and practice became issues of concern for the medical community, especially with non-physicians entering the field to observe and report on medical practices. Gaines and Whitehouse cite the consumer movement and aging population as the “social factors [that] pushed for research on a condition that was increasingly burdensome to members of the general public…The social impetus for formulation of a disease entity conceptualized in ways that make it appear that the ‘it’ so delineated is or will be treatable and perhaps even curable or preventable; that is to say, there is a development of a discourse of hope” (Gaines and Whitehouse 65).
There is still no concrete cause, and while many factors are said to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease- like exercise, healthy living habits, the inflammatory and\or genetic processes- there is still no treatment or cure. The older theories regarding AD are now emerging again as science and technology reveal there is no genetic understanding for the disease. In 2002, there was a drastic shift in thinking about AD in the scientific medical community. At a conference, the key note speaker said he felt the medical community had hit a wall as, he was certain, no new significant medical findings would be presented (Gaines and Whitehouse 66-69). Thomas Kirkwood reaffirmed this conclusion. Gaines quotes Kirkwood as explaining “[the] processes reified as pathology and disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are common and inevitable as the human brain ages” (Gaines 83).
Gaines stands behind Kirkwood in his explanation that aging is the biggest risk factor in causing Alzheimer’s disease. A large amount of chance is also involved in developing Alzheimer’s or other related dementia. Kirkwood explains, “’cells (will be) burdened with protein aggregates and similar materials that will increase with aging. Once again, which cells will experience this fate and which will continue to function healthily is strongly influenced by chance’” (Gaines 83).
The scientific medical community then stopped addressing Alzheimer’s as the vehicle for dementia and began to focus on mild cognitive impairment, which is considered a natural part of the aging process. Gaines and Whitehouse claim that the connection between MCI, which is said to be a precursor for AD, and the disease itself is unclear. MCI is categorized on the “spectrum of the continuum of cognitive aging”, along with Alzheimer’s disease (Gaines and Whitehouse 70). As Whitehouse points out, identifying different kinds of MCI means “studying the heterogeneous processes of brain aging” (Whitehouse 88).
Anne Davis Basting would agree with Gaines and Whitehouse that Alzheimer’s disease belongs on the dementia-related spectrum of cognitive aging. She worked with people who either had AD or had symptoms equal to those of mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease in Chicago and New York. Basting conducted a series of workshops to capture the stories of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD), and all of the participants had some form of 24-hour care. Basting points out that people with ADRD have no “ability to comprehend chronological time systems, so they need someone to translate the world for them” (79). Basting hoped that work gathered in these workshops would show the participants as functioning, thinking, creative people rather than as the disease. All of the stories told in both series of workshops had similar themes like “longing for freedom, acceptance, love, and intimacy with family or lovers” (88).
Knowing ADRD people have lost the ability to tell stories about themselves or incidents that happened to them from their own memories, Bastings would give the participants a valued social role to act out. The participants were able to retain the abilities to respond as a group and to shape a story with fragments of their own memories. With each visit, the participants’ ability to relate to each other became more focused, and parts of each person’s personality emerged clearly within the group setting. Basting wanted to give a voice to those who are often shut away and only seen as shells of their former selves. She did give people with ADRD a voice by creating a website, a play, and an art exhibit based on the collected 100 stories compiled from the participants in her workshop. In doing so, she hoped to change the stereotypes of ADRD people from isolated and crazy people to real people with drastically different needs for living (89-92).
Care for people with ADRD is a difficult responsibility. As Bastings points out, by mid-stage Alzheimer’s, most people need 24-hour care. The burden is on the family to decide the appropriate care for their family member. In “Shouldering the Burden of Care,” two professionals are given a case regarding a woman that has dementia. The daughter feels it is her obligation to care for her mother, especially since her mother asked to not be put in a home. Unfortunately, the daughter had to stop focusing on her career and family, is increasingly stressed and anxious, and no longer has the financial resources to care for her mother at home. Her brother does not want to take his mother-mostly because he feels that care is a woman’s responsibility- but he also feels she should not be put in a nursing home. The two medical professionals both agreed that the ethical course of action is to place the mother in the care of professionals who can watch her constantly and give her the level of care she needs and deserves. The concerns the family in the case study has are valid, but they are part of the social construction of Alzheimer’s as a disease as well as the myth of control, directly relating to obligations made to the mother (Case Study 14-15).
In the article “Under the Floorboards”, Michael Bavidge reinforces the strength of the conclusions Whitehouse and Gaines have drawn about the foundation of MCI as well as the history of Alzheimer’s disease. Bavidge explains, “We need not worry that values structure the institutions and practices that characterize medicine, but we should be concerned about the influence that commercial interests and political agendas have on the development of medical practice” (77).
The social construction of AD and its 1971 listing as a disease directly relates to the ways in which society views people with ADRD. What scares people most about Alzheimer’s and other related dementia is that these conditions are beyond an individual’s control, yet they transform one’s perception of their identity and sense of self beyond all recognition. The myth of control has taken over with regard to finding the origin of the disease to no avail. People, desiring to have control over the fate of their mental health and natural brain aging, have started making up cures, like the curebies of autism, directly relating to diet, the amount of exposure to aluminum, and various other trends that most likely will not have an impact on whether or not they develop ADRD.
The myth of control has also been used as an excuse. Some bioethicists and genetic counselors are urging people developing symptoms or are at risk for dementia related diseases to take control of what is happening to them by committing suicide. Even worse, some genetic counselors are urging parents to terminate a pregnancy based on the possible quality of life that child will have. These genetic counselors are suggesting these people take control of their own lives, or the lives of their unborn children, and do what is right or good, according to the standards imposed by society.
Conservative bioethics urge for the birth of all lives. In the paper “Conservative Bioethics and the Search for Wisdom,” the author argues that liberals suggest it is okay to abort fetuses with health conditions (Cohen 45). In reality, liberals suggest the abortion of fetuses as it effects the life of the mother; liberals do not feel that any person has the right to grant life or death based on how the child will view their quality of life. Abortion should be solely determined by how the child will affect the quality of life of the mother, in turn effecting the quality of life of the child, if it were to be born.
The decision to have abortions should not be shaped by the myth of control enforcing the societal standards of species-typical function. The myth of control forces the parents in this situation to evaluate how their own lives would have been different if they were born with certain impairments. The myth of control forces the perspective of the “I” self and singular experiences rather than through a collection of possible, positive ways to live. The myth of control and the social construction of disease force people to see there is only one way to be; that way is the social standard of normal.
The same is true for the liberal view of suicide. Suicide, especially assisted suicide, is a personal choice that should be based on one’s own desire to live or not. It should not be based on if one is at risk for developing or has ADRD or any other condition that reflects various types of species typification. An important person in the shaping of the decision of pregnancy termination will be the genetic counselor.
Genetic counseling is becoming increasingly important in our society. Genetic counselors meet with families considering terminating pregnancies and will act as an advisory mediator between geneticists, medical professionals, and patients of said professionals. Patterson and Satz take a feminist stance to this new, important societal role. More importantly, genetic counselors are integral to shaping the societal views and attitudes of people with disabilities and impairments. The authors state that the “attitudes and actions of genetic counselors influence the material situation and the self-concept of those with disabilities” (Patterson and Satz 118).
It is sad that our society has so many social constructions, like chronological time and organizing systems, that American culture is not yet accommodating for many members who experience a natural part of the aging process. The American world exists for those who are capable of bringing in wealth to strengthen the nation; it seems to not yet be able to acknowledge there are many ways to accomplish the same tasks. Care for our own relatives becomes a burden, impeding individual success and social mobility. America has turned the caring for our elderly into a capitalist enterprise, where after a certain point in the aging process, these people who were once valued in their social roles are shut away and ignored. While there is no solution for the natural aging processes of the brain, perhaps American society will begin to make new avenues of care available for those who will also one day be less than abled in some form or another.
Works Cited
Basting, Anne Davis. “’God is a Talking Horse’: Dementia and the Performance of Self.” The
Drama Review 45, 3 (2001): 78-94. Web. Project MUSE Database. 18 April 2010.
Bavidge, Michael. “Under the Floorboards: Examining the Foundations of Mild Cognitive
Impairment.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 75-77. 18 April 2010.
Case Study. “Shouldering the Burden of Care.” Commentary by Stacy J Sanders and Eva Feder
Kittay. Hastings Center Report September-October (2005): 14-15. Web. Project MUSE
Database. 18 April 2010.
Cohen, Eric. “Conservative Bioethics and the Search for Wisdom.” Hastings Center Report 36,
1 (2006): 44-56. Web. EBSCO Host Database. 18 April 2010.
Gaines, Atwood D. “Alzheimer’s Disease, Aging, and Chance.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 83-85.
18 April 2010.
Gaines, Atwood D. and Peter J. Whitehouse. “Building a Mystery: Alzheimer’s Disease, Mild
Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 61-74. 18 April 2010.
Patterson, Annette and Martha Satz. “Genetic Counseling and the Disabled: Feminism Examines
the Stance of Those Who Stand at the Gate.” Hypatia 17, 3 (2002): 118-142. Web.
Project MUSE Database. 18 April 2010.
Whitehouse, Peter J. “Demystifying the Alzheimer’s as Late, No Longer Mild Cognitive
Impairment.” PPP 13, 1 (2006): 87-88. 18 April 2010.
Disability and Social Construction in America, part 2
Before I’d done the readings from Harriet McBryde Johnson and Taira with Amundson, I formed an opinion based on the rights of and access to both abortion and assisted suicide. I believed that abortion should be based on the mother’s own personal reasons with respect to her autonomy. Assisted suicide should be legalized for the personal autonomy of the individual. I still maintain these opinions; however, while the right to abortion and assisted suicide should be based on autonomy because of an individual’s desires, I now understand that for many- especially as relating to the abortion and infanticide of children with disabilities and the assisted suicide of individuals with disabilities and dementia- choice is determined by prejudice and would be forced, as autonomy is not really free.
Cosmetic normality reinforces many stigmas that justify eugenics. As Amundson pointed out in his 2000 paper, the concept of normality and not the concept of function is what currently controls “thought[s] about disadvantages caused by biological atypicality” (ibid.). He goes on to explain that “if thought about the level of functional performance rather than the mode, fashion, or style of function, the disadvantages of the disabled would not seem so natural and inevitable” (ibid.). This distinction between level and mode of function is important when considering the quality of life of people with disabilities.
Misinterpretations about quality of life and the maintenance of normality are the basis for eugenics and euthanasia. In “Unspeakable Conversations” Harriet McBryde Johnson discusses her interactions with Peter Singer, a philosopher who insists on the legalization of infanticide and assisted suicide. He insists on the legalization of “kill[ing] under some circumstances, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that” they aren’t “’persons,’” and to be a person, one must possess “awareness of [one’s] own existence in time” as well as the “capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live” (Johnson 2003). According to Singer, infants aren’t people because they are born without self-awareness. This definition of “person” also includes people who have lost their “sense of personhood or the distinction between past, present, and future”. Singer claims that these individuals have lost their right to live.
While researching Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) spectrum disorders, I learned that many people with ADRD, while needing 24-hour care because they have no concept of time as it is structured in our world, still have a sense of personhood. Singer would disagree, but in the paper Anne Davis Basting wrote about her workshops with ADRD patients. Giving each person assigned roles to act out enabled the patients to share glimpses of their former lives. Basting was able to give a voice to many silenced, shut away in the gulag. I write, “The participants were able to retain the abilities to respond as a group and to shape a story with fragments of their own memories. With each visit, the participants’ ability to relate to each other became more focused, and parts of each person’s personality emerged clearly within the group setting (89-92)” (Wilson project).
On the opposite end of the age spectrum, we have no proof that babies are born without self awareness. There are many documented cases of people recalling events that occurred at various ages. Many sociologists note the variable age of children coming into consciousness between ages 2 and 5. Some people have even reported cognitive memories of events they experienced in the womb.
Singer’s argument, is based on the assumption of absolutes. He says, “Let’s assume we can prove, absolutely, that the individual is totally unconscious and that we can know absolutely [they’ll] never regain consciousness” (Johnson 2003). While we can assume these conditions, we cannot know conclusively what is going on inside a person or their cognitive ability while they are unconscious. Being unable to communicate does not directly correlate with the inactivity of the mind.
Taira and Amundson express that if some decisions were left up to medical professionals responsible for care, many people who do not have a voice with which to defend themselves would be euthanized. Taira experienced the prejudices that come with the social construction of disability first-hand after suffering TBI. She was still gripping with visual-spatial difficulty when she overheard and understood that medical professionals felt her life was not worth living since her accident. The bias present in the medical community is what perpetuates the fear gulag and maintains the assumption that having a disability no longer makes life worth living. Taira realized that there would be no true freedom in assisted suicide. She explains, “True freedom is possible only in the context of equality” (ibid.).
The inequality of people with disabilities can lead to the mass killing of people based on prejudice regarding intrinsic happiness and a misunderstanding of functionality. Singer’s perspective is a leading force in maintaining the stigmas surrounding normality and quality of life, especially the stigma that a person with a disability has a diminished quality of life compared with an abled person. While some things are incurable, Johnson tells Princeton students that many people with disabilities “live long, interesting, incurable lives”.
Currently, people with strong biases and prejudices about the quality of life have the power over individuals with disabilities. Their prejudices can lead to mass genocide of people with disabilities. As Harriet wrote, “the veneer of beneficence” is “not about autonomy, but about nondisabled people telling disabled people what’s good for them…Choice is illusory in a context of pervasive inequality… [and it is]structured by oppression.” Most importantly, Johnson stresses, the option for assisted suicide should not be offered until assistance with daily living is offered.
Cosmetic normality reinforces many stigmas that justify eugenics. As Amundson pointed out in his 2000 paper, the concept of normality and not the concept of function is what currently controls “thought[s] about disadvantages caused by biological atypicality” (ibid.). He goes on to explain that “if thought about the level of functional performance rather than the mode, fashion, or style of function, the disadvantages of the disabled would not seem so natural and inevitable” (ibid.). This distinction between level and mode of function is important when considering the quality of life of people with disabilities.
Misinterpretations about quality of life and the maintenance of normality are the basis for eugenics and euthanasia. In “Unspeakable Conversations” Harriet McBryde Johnson discusses her interactions with Peter Singer, a philosopher who insists on the legalization of infanticide and assisted suicide. He insists on the legalization of “kill[ing] under some circumstances, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that” they aren’t “’persons,’” and to be a person, one must possess “awareness of [one’s] own existence in time” as well as the “capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live” (Johnson 2003). According to Singer, infants aren’t people because they are born without self-awareness. This definition of “person” also includes people who have lost their “sense of personhood or the distinction between past, present, and future”. Singer claims that these individuals have lost their right to live.
While researching Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) spectrum disorders, I learned that many people with ADRD, while needing 24-hour care because they have no concept of time as it is structured in our world, still have a sense of personhood. Singer would disagree, but in the paper Anne Davis Basting wrote about her workshops with ADRD patients. Giving each person assigned roles to act out enabled the patients to share glimpses of their former lives. Basting was able to give a voice to many silenced, shut away in the gulag. I write, “The participants were able to retain the abilities to respond as a group and to shape a story with fragments of their own memories. With each visit, the participants’ ability to relate to each other became more focused, and parts of each person’s personality emerged clearly within the group setting (89-92)” (Wilson project).
On the opposite end of the age spectrum, we have no proof that babies are born without self awareness. There are many documented cases of people recalling events that occurred at various ages. Many sociologists note the variable age of children coming into consciousness between ages 2 and 5. Some people have even reported cognitive memories of events they experienced in the womb.
Singer’s argument, is based on the assumption of absolutes. He says, “Let’s assume we can prove, absolutely, that the individual is totally unconscious and that we can know absolutely [they’ll] never regain consciousness” (Johnson 2003). While we can assume these conditions, we cannot know conclusively what is going on inside a person or their cognitive ability while they are unconscious. Being unable to communicate does not directly correlate with the inactivity of the mind.
Taira and Amundson express that if some decisions were left up to medical professionals responsible for care, many people who do not have a voice with which to defend themselves would be euthanized. Taira experienced the prejudices that come with the social construction of disability first-hand after suffering TBI. She was still gripping with visual-spatial difficulty when she overheard and understood that medical professionals felt her life was not worth living since her accident. The bias present in the medical community is what perpetuates the fear gulag and maintains the assumption that having a disability no longer makes life worth living. Taira realized that there would be no true freedom in assisted suicide. She explains, “True freedom is possible only in the context of equality” (ibid.).
The inequality of people with disabilities can lead to the mass killing of people based on prejudice regarding intrinsic happiness and a misunderstanding of functionality. Singer’s perspective is a leading force in maintaining the stigmas surrounding normality and quality of life, especially the stigma that a person with a disability has a diminished quality of life compared with an abled person. While some things are incurable, Johnson tells Princeton students that many people with disabilities “live long, interesting, incurable lives”.
Currently, people with strong biases and prejudices about the quality of life have the power over individuals with disabilities. Their prejudices can lead to mass genocide of people with disabilities. As Harriet wrote, “the veneer of beneficence” is “not about autonomy, but about nondisabled people telling disabled people what’s good for them…Choice is illusory in a context of pervasive inequality… [and it is]structured by oppression.” Most importantly, Johnson stresses, the option for assisted suicide should not be offered until assistance with daily living is offered.
Disabilities and social construction in America part 1
Disability in the media, autism, and intersex are all issues I learned about in my philosophy class through University of Hawaii, Hilo. Disability in the media perpetuates the stereotypes of normality and the stigmas associated with disability. I was surprised to learn that the heroic death of a person with disabilities feeds the social prejudices associated with disabilities and that deafness takes a secondary role to other social stigmas.
Many people with autism have heightened senses and cannot function in the environment the way normal people expect them to. This doesn’t mean that they cannot communicate or feel or see. What surprised me most about autism was that there is a spectrum which includes overstimulation in hearing, touch, and seeing in various degrees. People with autism have extremely active minds and cannot process all of the sensations they receive at once. It’s not that there’s nothing going on inside; there’s actually too much.
Intersexuals have to deal with different social circumstances. The pressure applied to parents to pick a gender for their new-born child has left many people permanently scarred and in pain. I did not know there measurements for the size of genetials that define a person as male or female. I also didn’t realize there were so many ways for the genitals to be incomplete.
Overall, what I am most surprised with about disabilities are the choices parents make with regard to their children before the children can express their own autonomy and make choices for themselves. If the parents are abled, they want the corrective surgeries and implants. They will change their baby’s diet. These drastic changes that may or may not help their child “adapt” to the world around them is really a vain attempt in the hope of having their child be cosmetically normal instead of accepting their child for who the child is.
Social construction explains the effectiveness of the medical model. The reason for many of the surprising traits of a disability is the stigmatization of disability and impairment in our society. The stigmatization of individuals with disabilities stems from the medical community because the social construction of impairments and disabilities reifies the notion that life is not worth living if one has a disability. This socially constructed fear is the foundation for cosmetic normality and the basis for parents acting out of fear as well as in the hope of a finding a cure for their child.
According to the medical model of disability, disabilities are intrinsic to the individual that has them, and disability is the direct result of a physical condition. Therefore, the focus becomes not how well a person can perform certain tasks but the mode or way in which these tasks are performed. The medical model allows for the lack of accommodation of various disabled people and argues for the maintenance of a normal function. Norman Daniels states the three levels of health care are preventative health care, curative and rehabilitative, and services for individuals who cannot be rehabilitated. With cosmetic normality being more important than helping individuals function better in their daily lives, the social stereotypes, stigmas, and fears about disabilities are maintained (Amundson 2000).
By reifying abelism via claims about the quality of life and the biological origins of disability, accurate information about disabilities and impairments released to the public is suppressed. The stereotypes that cause parents to make terrible decisions on behalf of their children continue to be perpetuated. Most of the public remains terrified of variations in people that occur naturally- either during development in the womb or during the aging process- and unaware of the possible dangers their perspectives may have on the lives of others.
Many people with autism have heightened senses and cannot function in the environment the way normal people expect them to. This doesn’t mean that they cannot communicate or feel or see. What surprised me most about autism was that there is a spectrum which includes overstimulation in hearing, touch, and seeing in various degrees. People with autism have extremely active minds and cannot process all of the sensations they receive at once. It’s not that there’s nothing going on inside; there’s actually too much.
Intersexuals have to deal with different social circumstances. The pressure applied to parents to pick a gender for their new-born child has left many people permanently scarred and in pain. I did not know there measurements for the size of genetials that define a person as male or female. I also didn’t realize there were so many ways for the genitals to be incomplete.
Overall, what I am most surprised with about disabilities are the choices parents make with regard to their children before the children can express their own autonomy and make choices for themselves. If the parents are abled, they want the corrective surgeries and implants. They will change their baby’s diet. These drastic changes that may or may not help their child “adapt” to the world around them is really a vain attempt in the hope of having their child be cosmetically normal instead of accepting their child for who the child is.
Social construction explains the effectiveness of the medical model. The reason for many of the surprising traits of a disability is the stigmatization of disability and impairment in our society. The stigmatization of individuals with disabilities stems from the medical community because the social construction of impairments and disabilities reifies the notion that life is not worth living if one has a disability. This socially constructed fear is the foundation for cosmetic normality and the basis for parents acting out of fear as well as in the hope of a finding a cure for their child.
According to the medical model of disability, disabilities are intrinsic to the individual that has them, and disability is the direct result of a physical condition. Therefore, the focus becomes not how well a person can perform certain tasks but the mode or way in which these tasks are performed. The medical model allows for the lack of accommodation of various disabled people and argues for the maintenance of a normal function. Norman Daniels states the three levels of health care are preventative health care, curative and rehabilitative, and services for individuals who cannot be rehabilitated. With cosmetic normality being more important than helping individuals function better in their daily lives, the social stereotypes, stigmas, and fears about disabilities are maintained (Amundson 2000).
By reifying abelism via claims about the quality of life and the biological origins of disability, accurate information about disabilities and impairments released to the public is suppressed. The stereotypes that cause parents to make terrible decisions on behalf of their children continue to be perpetuated. Most of the public remains terrified of variations in people that occur naturally- either during development in the womb or during the aging process- and unaware of the possible dangers their perspectives may have on the lives of others.
Matthew Arnold and Greek Influence
Arnold is said to be the first modern critic. He is the founder of sociological literary criticism and criticism as we know it today. He was the first to warrant a critical theory that could be beneficial to both authors and society. For Arnold, there was no clear distinction between “culture and critical values [which] seem to be synonymous…” (Lakshmi). Arnold highlighted this point in Culture and Anarchy by using Greek stratifications of social class to demonstrate a comparison between ancient civilization and the modernity of Victorian England. “Sweetness and Light” is an extended allegory of the classification of Greek society.
The text is modeled according to Plato’s Socrates, with the narrator teaching difficult concepts to the reader, albeit not via dialogue. The narrator represents a “sagacious mentor [who] serves as a thematic link between each of the chapters, underscoring the importance of self-knowledge in order to fully engage the concept of pursuing human perfection,” (Anon.). The Socrates-like narrator points out the classifications and divisions of each group’s role and participation in culture. The classifications of the types of people in Victorian England are represented by the Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace.
Barbarians, in Greek society, were everyone who was not Greek. There were two forms of barbarians; they were the uncivilized and the noble savage. Arnold likens the Barbarians to “the aristocratic segment of society who are so involved with their archaic traditions and gluttony that they have lost touch with the rest of society for which they were once responsible” (Anon). Arnold felt that the conservatism of the aristocracy made them sheltered and primitive, unaware of the progression of Victorian England. Given the primary definition of a Greek barbarian, Arnold most likely doesn’t view the aristocracy as truly English. The Barbarians are not the only group who is isolated from Victorian English culture.
The Philistines were a race of people mentioned in the Old Testament as well as in ancient Greek texts. They were part of a great migration, destroying civilizations who were known in Cyprus, Crete, and other Greek isles. According to Dr. J Bosland, “The Philistines are viewed as participants in the great migration of the period round 1200 B.C., which caused the fall of so many empires,” (Bosland), but they were also the catalyst for a new culture. Their “pottery, architecture, military power, and certain similarities with Homer's Greek heroes” (Bosland) are most likely the basis for Arnold’s labeling of the middle class.
He addresses “the selfish and materialistic middle class who have been gulled into a torpid state of puritanical self-centeredness by nonconforming religious sects” (Anon). Arnold feels this class is tricked into ignoring the true purpose of culture. These might be the disparagers to whom he refers at the beginning of the of the text. This class may be the reason he makes his argument for the expansion of the English meaning of curiosity. This group tries to buy into the power and conservatism of the aristocracy thus further repressing the lower-class.
The Populace, to Arnold, is the only redeemable class. The Populace represents “the disenfranchised, poverty-stricken lower class who have been let down by the negligent Barbarians and greedy Philistines. For Arnold, the Populace represents the most malleable, and the most deserving, social class to be elevated out of anarchy through the pursuit of culture” (Anon). According to Arnold, these people are really only worthy of redemption because of their lack of involvement and inability to monetarily succumb to the anarchy perpetuated by the barbarians and philistines.
Arnold attempts to outline the pursuits of culture and anarchy. Arnold defines culture as the collaboration of both pursuing the passion for doing good -finding the will of god- and scientific passion, which is in pursuit of knowledge. Culture is a collective activity in which everyone must participate in order to gain knowledge and understanding. Culture, in order to work as a collective, requires all individuals to “forsake egocentricity, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness and to embrace an equally balanced development of all human talents in the pursuit of flawlessness,” (Anon.). To have an effective, useful culture is to fulfill the purpose of mankind, and it cannot be done by focusing on individuality. (Arnold 827-829).
In contrast, anarchy has the individual as the nucleus. Anarchy is described as “the absence of a guiding principle in one's life which prevents one from striving to attain perfection. This lack of purpose manifests itself in such social and religious defects as laissez faire commercialism and puritanical hypocrisy,” (Anon.). By focusing on other things as ends in themselves, one has no need to strive for something better; there is no need no search outside one’s own paradigm, and this narrow-minded focus on the self ignores the community as a whole. Focusing on the self “can only lead to a future of increased anarchy as the rapidly evolving modern democracy secures the enfranchisement of the middle and lower classes without instilling in them the need for culture,” (Anon.).
Arnold states culture is the study of perfection. This idea is very similar to Plato’s conviction that our existence is to remember the world of the Forms through serious study via one’s being and society. Arnold felt strongly that only by reflecting on the ideals of Plato could resolve occur for the moral and ethical conflicts that arose from the clashing realms of society, politics, and religion. He explains that by focusing on a “perfection which consists in becoming something rather than having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,” (Arnold 829), something like focusing on the pursuit and understanding of the Good, civilization has a use and the purpose of man will be fulfilled.
Works Cited
Anon. Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism Matthew Arnold.
Enotes. 2010. Web. 02 June 2010.
http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/culture-anarchy-an-essay-political-social
Arnold, Matthew. “Culture and Anarchy: From Chapter 1. Sweetness and Light.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001)
Print. 825-832.
Bosland, J. The Philistines. 1999. Web. 04 June 2010. http://www.bga.nl/en/articles/filist1.html
Lakshmi, S. N. Radhika. Matthew Arnold as a Literary Critic. Web. 02 June 2010.
http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/arnold.html
The text is modeled according to Plato’s Socrates, with the narrator teaching difficult concepts to the reader, albeit not via dialogue. The narrator represents a “sagacious mentor [who] serves as a thematic link between each of the chapters, underscoring the importance of self-knowledge in order to fully engage the concept of pursuing human perfection,” (Anon.). The Socrates-like narrator points out the classifications and divisions of each group’s role and participation in culture. The classifications of the types of people in Victorian England are represented by the Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace.
Barbarians, in Greek society, were everyone who was not Greek. There were two forms of barbarians; they were the uncivilized and the noble savage. Arnold likens the Barbarians to “the aristocratic segment of society who are so involved with their archaic traditions and gluttony that they have lost touch with the rest of society for which they were once responsible” (Anon). Arnold felt that the conservatism of the aristocracy made them sheltered and primitive, unaware of the progression of Victorian England. Given the primary definition of a Greek barbarian, Arnold most likely doesn’t view the aristocracy as truly English. The Barbarians are not the only group who is isolated from Victorian English culture.
The Philistines were a race of people mentioned in the Old Testament as well as in ancient Greek texts. They were part of a great migration, destroying civilizations who were known in Cyprus, Crete, and other Greek isles. According to Dr. J Bosland, “The Philistines are viewed as participants in the great migration of the period round 1200 B.C., which caused the fall of so many empires,” (Bosland), but they were also the catalyst for a new culture. Their “pottery, architecture, military power, and certain similarities with Homer's Greek heroes” (Bosland) are most likely the basis for Arnold’s labeling of the middle class.
He addresses “the selfish and materialistic middle class who have been gulled into a torpid state of puritanical self-centeredness by nonconforming religious sects” (Anon). Arnold feels this class is tricked into ignoring the true purpose of culture. These might be the disparagers to whom he refers at the beginning of the of the text. This class may be the reason he makes his argument for the expansion of the English meaning of curiosity. This group tries to buy into the power and conservatism of the aristocracy thus further repressing the lower-class.
The Populace, to Arnold, is the only redeemable class. The Populace represents “the disenfranchised, poverty-stricken lower class who have been let down by the negligent Barbarians and greedy Philistines. For Arnold, the Populace represents the most malleable, and the most deserving, social class to be elevated out of anarchy through the pursuit of culture” (Anon). According to Arnold, these people are really only worthy of redemption because of their lack of involvement and inability to monetarily succumb to the anarchy perpetuated by the barbarians and philistines.
Arnold attempts to outline the pursuits of culture and anarchy. Arnold defines culture as the collaboration of both pursuing the passion for doing good -finding the will of god- and scientific passion, which is in pursuit of knowledge. Culture is a collective activity in which everyone must participate in order to gain knowledge and understanding. Culture, in order to work as a collective, requires all individuals to “forsake egocentricity, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness and to embrace an equally balanced development of all human talents in the pursuit of flawlessness,” (Anon.). To have an effective, useful culture is to fulfill the purpose of mankind, and it cannot be done by focusing on individuality. (Arnold 827-829).
In contrast, anarchy has the individual as the nucleus. Anarchy is described as “the absence of a guiding principle in one's life which prevents one from striving to attain perfection. This lack of purpose manifests itself in such social and religious defects as laissez faire commercialism and puritanical hypocrisy,” (Anon.). By focusing on other things as ends in themselves, one has no need to strive for something better; there is no need no search outside one’s own paradigm, and this narrow-minded focus on the self ignores the community as a whole. Focusing on the self “can only lead to a future of increased anarchy as the rapidly evolving modern democracy secures the enfranchisement of the middle and lower classes without instilling in them the need for culture,” (Anon.).
Arnold states culture is the study of perfection. This idea is very similar to Plato’s conviction that our existence is to remember the world of the Forms through serious study via one’s being and society. Arnold felt strongly that only by reflecting on the ideals of Plato could resolve occur for the moral and ethical conflicts that arose from the clashing realms of society, politics, and religion. He explains that by focusing on a “perfection which consists in becoming something rather than having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,” (Arnold 829), something like focusing on the pursuit and understanding of the Good, civilization has a use and the purpose of man will be fulfilled.
Works Cited
Anon. Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism Matthew Arnold.
Enotes. 2010. Web. 02 June 2010.
http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/culture-anarchy-an-essay-political-social
Arnold, Matthew. “Culture and Anarchy: From Chapter 1. Sweetness and Light.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. Norton: New York (2001)
Print. 825-832.
Bosland, J. The Philistines. 1999. Web. 04 June 2010. http://www.bga.nl/en/articles/filist1.html
Lakshmi, S. N. Radhika. Matthew Arnold as a Literary Critic. Web. 02 June 2010.
http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/arnold.html
Friday, June 4, 2010
How Politics and Printing Shaped Middlemarch
George Eliot wrote during the early Victorian period in England, which is classified by the reign of Queen Victoria. During this time, industry began to flourish and the middle class began to gain power. The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the new class political and economic means to unite against land owners. This was a time of great turmoil and change, creating a disparity between the newly forming middle class and the ever-increasing lower classes, which were “thrown off their land and into the cities to form the great urban working class” (Columbia 2005). The new social phenomenon of the middle class created an increase in literacy which led to the rise of the novel, and Middlemarch provides a critique of social norms and values, feminine empowerment, and new questions about morals and philosophy.
The second chapter of Ian Watt’s book Rise of the Novel is directly related to the rise of the middle class. While the lower class rarely completed school beyond the mandatory age of attendance, the middle class had continue to go to school beyond age 5, dividing their time between school and work, because middle class jobs in commerce, administration, and the professions required literacy for employment (Watt 39-41). As the middle class increased, so did the literacy rate of England. Leslie Stephen is quoted as explaining, “The gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the literature addressed to them” (Watt 36).
Books were expensive, and though the reading class increased, access to manuscripts in full form was limited. Longer stories, called folios, were printed, but reserved for the very rich in limited quantity. Short stories were released in the form of serials in affordable publications like periodicals. Stories published in the cheapest forms were stories abridged into the forms of ballads or chapbooks, which were “abbreviated chivalric romances”, and new stories of criminals or extraordinary events (Watt 43). Pirated copies of works were printed and distributed at a lower price “for the gratification of those who were impatient to read what they could not yet afford to buy” (Watt 43).
Novels, which were in the mid-price range of publications, were like comics are to the reading public now; they were released in volumes called duodecimos. Middlemarch was originally released in eight volumes. Upon its initial publication, the book was seen as central to feminist issues. Then, no critics mentioned the work for over one hundred years. In 1976 however, the book was fervently reviewed by feminist scholars who chastised and rebuked the book as well as the author. Both Eliot and her novels were not seen as examples of feminism to most of the women’s studies community; however, her work was seen as “realistically depicting the possibilities open to most nineteenth century women…” (Siegler 1998).
For the last twenty years, Eliot and Middlemarch are important for feminist critiques of nineteenth century literature. Elizabeth Grosz is cited in “’This Thing I Like my Sister may not Do’: Shakespearian Erotics and a Clash of Wills in Middlemarch” by Carol Siegel because she explains what makes a work of literature feminist. Siegel states:
“’Neither the author, the reader, nor the content of a text explains how we are able to designate it as feminist.’ A feminist text is one whose style ‘render[s] the patriarchal or phallocentric presumptions governing its contexts and commitments visible’ in such a way as to question ‘the power of these presumptions in the production, reception, and assessment of the texts’ and to ‘facilitate the production of new and perhaps unknown, unthought discursive spaces’” (Siegel 1-3).
As this definition is applied to Middlemarch, both Dorothea and Rosamond are strong feminists as they are presented in Books One and Two.
Dorothea is a young woman of sixteen who strives to be pious and devoid of all desire. She wants to live an extremely devout life with knowledge of religion being the ultimate goal to her happiness. When faced with the presentation of a proposal of marriage from Mr. Casaubon, who is over fifty but published and recognized for his religious knowledge and interpretation, as well as the possible proposal from Sir James, who is a baronet that would do anything to ensure Dorothea’s happiness, Dorothea chooses Casaubon. She chose him over Sir James before he even asked. Many of the supporting characters including Dorothea’s uncle, Sir James, and her sister Celia think Dorothea is making a terrible mistake. Nevertheless, by the end of Book One, she “had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome” (Eliot 60).
It is also on page 60 that we meet Rosamond Vincy, who is the traditional beauty of the story. In manner, character, and appearance, Rosamond is Dorothea’s diametric opposite. In fact, at a dinner party to announce and celebrate Dorothea’s engagement, many of the men, whether married or not, compared the beauty and talents of these two women and how they appeal to each man’s desires. Rosamond is more refined than Dorothea, but she has an equally elevated taste in her preference of men. While the standards for Rosamond’s future husband are different than Dorothea’s, they are equally unattainable for most men.
George Eliot has been harshly criticized because of the resolve of her characters. Most often critiqued are the manner in which her female heroes resolve their issues. Eliot, Siegel explains, often “resolve[s] her heroines’ life crises with marriage” is seen as “fidelity to the truth of ordinary women’s lives” (Siegel 1). It seems that while now it is mostly accepted that Eliot’s realistic approach to relationships and marriage, as contrasted with Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is a fair representation for the way life was for women in the nineteenth century, many feminist critics cannot accept Dorothea as a strong female representation of a hero.
What makes Dorothea such a strong female hero during Book One is her desire to stick with the qualities that make a man great to her. She wants to marry a learned man from whom she can learn. The reaction to her decision to marry the older, less attractive, less wealthy Mr. Casaubon illuminates the expectations and social values of a husband of the society in which she lives. Valuing the knowledge and religious preferences of a potential husband over possible social status illuminates, as Grosz says, causes the patriarchal assumptions of the time to become visible.
In “The Key to Epic Life?: Classical Study in George Eliot’s Middlemarch,” Hilary Mackie questions the representation of Dorothea in the Prelude and evaluates what should make an epic, with regard to classical literature, life. Mackie’s hypothesis is, “Within the fiction of the novel, however, we see Dorothea and other characters try in various ways, but fail, to make sense of their lives through the study, employment, or imitation of classical models” (Mackie 53). What the author is missing is that Dorothea is not trying to imitate the life of some past saint, but she is trying to live up to her own ideal; morality is her way to live an epic- beyond any classical literary conventions- life.
The morality of Dorothea and the Prelude has also been debated in the field of philosophy. With regard to Middlemarch being an example of a morality tale, philosophers debate the role of fiction in shaping the society in which it is published. Rohan Maitzen answers Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Eliot’s novel by applying Nussbaum’s own criteria to the novel to prove it is an exemplary illustration of how fiction can contribute to philosophy by answering the question, “How should one live?”
The role of the novel in philosophy means that “the novel may share generic features which compliment or correct conventional philosophical discourse” (Maitzen 191). The terms Nussbaum set for the ethical evaluation of fiction include:
1. Analysis of the text’s literary properties
2. Every aspect of form and style expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not
3. Discovers this “sense of life” through close reading the engaged experience line by line
4. Reveals the character of the implied author, the would be friend urging us on a particular ‘pattern of desire’ (Maitzen 191).
Nussbaum bashes Eliot and Middlemarch in comparison with Henry James’ work, but Maitzen spends half of her essay showing that Nussbaum’s biases have elevated James beyond a fair evaluation of what a moral novel is.
When she moves on to evaluating Eliot’s novel, Maitzen shows that the Prelude outlines with “clarity, precision, and quiet confidence of the erudite narrator” (Maitzen 197) what the tale will be. Maitzen explains that the narrator possesses knowledge to interpret the story and life of St. Theresa as well as explain the significance of St. Theresa’s life to the modern audience. Clearly exhibited in the Prelude is the sense of life Eliot is going to describe; Maitzen says, “What is important and what is not in this fictional world” is the history of man (198). By using grand language, Eliot “encourages us to admire their idealistic plan and to lament the practical limits of domestic reality,” and also suggests “that it was worthy of epic treatment” (Maitzen 198).
Middlemarch and its history are full of controversy and debate about its validity as both a feminist and moral story. Never have I read a story about which critics are so conflicted. Without consensus, the novel proves to stand alone as a great work of literature that comments on social norms, feminist ideals, the value of virtues, and the life and times of women in the nineteenth century.
Works Cited
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “The Victorian Age.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia
2005. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0858005.html 28 Feb. 2010.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Ed. Bert G. Hornback. Norton: New York. 2000.
Mackie, Hilary. “The Key to Epic Life?: Classical Study in George Eliot's Middlemarch.”
Classical World 2009. 103:1. 53-67.
http://cletus.uhh.hawaii.edu:2146/journals/classical_world/v103/103.1.mackie.pdf 27
Feb. 2010.
Maitzen, Rohan. “Martha Nussbaum and the Moral Life of Middlemarch.” Philosophy and
Literature 2006. 30. 190-207.
Siegel, Carol. “This thing I like my sister may not do': Shakespearean Erotics and a Clash of
Wills in Middlemarch.” Style. Spring98: 32, 1. Academic Search Premier.
http://cletus.uhh.hawaii.edu:2060/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=103&sid=94177b8b-be7b-4637ac17d5227a7c34@sessionmgr111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=1516862 28 Feb. 2010
Watt, Ian. “The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel.” The Rise of the Novel. Penguin:
Victoria 1963. 36-41.
The second chapter of Ian Watt’s book Rise of the Novel is directly related to the rise of the middle class. While the lower class rarely completed school beyond the mandatory age of attendance, the middle class had continue to go to school beyond age 5, dividing their time between school and work, because middle class jobs in commerce, administration, and the professions required literacy for employment (Watt 39-41). As the middle class increased, so did the literacy rate of England. Leslie Stephen is quoted as explaining, “The gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the literature addressed to them” (Watt 36).
Books were expensive, and though the reading class increased, access to manuscripts in full form was limited. Longer stories, called folios, were printed, but reserved for the very rich in limited quantity. Short stories were released in the form of serials in affordable publications like periodicals. Stories published in the cheapest forms were stories abridged into the forms of ballads or chapbooks, which were “abbreviated chivalric romances”, and new stories of criminals or extraordinary events (Watt 43). Pirated copies of works were printed and distributed at a lower price “for the gratification of those who were impatient to read what they could not yet afford to buy” (Watt 43).
Novels, which were in the mid-price range of publications, were like comics are to the reading public now; they were released in volumes called duodecimos. Middlemarch was originally released in eight volumes. Upon its initial publication, the book was seen as central to feminist issues. Then, no critics mentioned the work for over one hundred years. In 1976 however, the book was fervently reviewed by feminist scholars who chastised and rebuked the book as well as the author. Both Eliot and her novels were not seen as examples of feminism to most of the women’s studies community; however, her work was seen as “realistically depicting the possibilities open to most nineteenth century women…” (Siegler 1998).
For the last twenty years, Eliot and Middlemarch are important for feminist critiques of nineteenth century literature. Elizabeth Grosz is cited in “’This Thing I Like my Sister may not Do’: Shakespearian Erotics and a Clash of Wills in Middlemarch” by Carol Siegel because she explains what makes a work of literature feminist. Siegel states:
“’Neither the author, the reader, nor the content of a text explains how we are able to designate it as feminist.’ A feminist text is one whose style ‘render[s] the patriarchal or phallocentric presumptions governing its contexts and commitments visible’ in such a way as to question ‘the power of these presumptions in the production, reception, and assessment of the texts’ and to ‘facilitate the production of new and perhaps unknown, unthought discursive spaces’” (Siegel 1-3).
As this definition is applied to Middlemarch, both Dorothea and Rosamond are strong feminists as they are presented in Books One and Two.
Dorothea is a young woman of sixteen who strives to be pious and devoid of all desire. She wants to live an extremely devout life with knowledge of religion being the ultimate goal to her happiness. When faced with the presentation of a proposal of marriage from Mr. Casaubon, who is over fifty but published and recognized for his religious knowledge and interpretation, as well as the possible proposal from Sir James, who is a baronet that would do anything to ensure Dorothea’s happiness, Dorothea chooses Casaubon. She chose him over Sir James before he even asked. Many of the supporting characters including Dorothea’s uncle, Sir James, and her sister Celia think Dorothea is making a terrible mistake. Nevertheless, by the end of Book One, she “had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome” (Eliot 60).
It is also on page 60 that we meet Rosamond Vincy, who is the traditional beauty of the story. In manner, character, and appearance, Rosamond is Dorothea’s diametric opposite. In fact, at a dinner party to announce and celebrate Dorothea’s engagement, many of the men, whether married or not, compared the beauty and talents of these two women and how they appeal to each man’s desires. Rosamond is more refined than Dorothea, but she has an equally elevated taste in her preference of men. While the standards for Rosamond’s future husband are different than Dorothea’s, they are equally unattainable for most men.
George Eliot has been harshly criticized because of the resolve of her characters. Most often critiqued are the manner in which her female heroes resolve their issues. Eliot, Siegel explains, often “resolve[s] her heroines’ life crises with marriage” is seen as “fidelity to the truth of ordinary women’s lives” (Siegel 1). It seems that while now it is mostly accepted that Eliot’s realistic approach to relationships and marriage, as contrasted with Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is a fair representation for the way life was for women in the nineteenth century, many feminist critics cannot accept Dorothea as a strong female representation of a hero.
What makes Dorothea such a strong female hero during Book One is her desire to stick with the qualities that make a man great to her. She wants to marry a learned man from whom she can learn. The reaction to her decision to marry the older, less attractive, less wealthy Mr. Casaubon illuminates the expectations and social values of a husband of the society in which she lives. Valuing the knowledge and religious preferences of a potential husband over possible social status illuminates, as Grosz says, causes the patriarchal assumptions of the time to become visible.
In “The Key to Epic Life?: Classical Study in George Eliot’s Middlemarch,” Hilary Mackie questions the representation of Dorothea in the Prelude and evaluates what should make an epic, with regard to classical literature, life. Mackie’s hypothesis is, “Within the fiction of the novel, however, we see Dorothea and other characters try in various ways, but fail, to make sense of their lives through the study, employment, or imitation of classical models” (Mackie 53). What the author is missing is that Dorothea is not trying to imitate the life of some past saint, but she is trying to live up to her own ideal; morality is her way to live an epic- beyond any classical literary conventions- life.
The morality of Dorothea and the Prelude has also been debated in the field of philosophy. With regard to Middlemarch being an example of a morality tale, philosophers debate the role of fiction in shaping the society in which it is published. Rohan Maitzen answers Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Eliot’s novel by applying Nussbaum’s own criteria to the novel to prove it is an exemplary illustration of how fiction can contribute to philosophy by answering the question, “How should one live?”
The role of the novel in philosophy means that “the novel may share generic features which compliment or correct conventional philosophical discourse” (Maitzen 191). The terms Nussbaum set for the ethical evaluation of fiction include:
1. Analysis of the text’s literary properties
2. Every aspect of form and style expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not
3. Discovers this “sense of life” through close reading the engaged experience line by line
4. Reveals the character of the implied author, the would be friend urging us on a particular ‘pattern of desire’ (Maitzen 191).
Nussbaum bashes Eliot and Middlemarch in comparison with Henry James’ work, but Maitzen spends half of her essay showing that Nussbaum’s biases have elevated James beyond a fair evaluation of what a moral novel is.
When she moves on to evaluating Eliot’s novel, Maitzen shows that the Prelude outlines with “clarity, precision, and quiet confidence of the erudite narrator” (Maitzen 197) what the tale will be. Maitzen explains that the narrator possesses knowledge to interpret the story and life of St. Theresa as well as explain the significance of St. Theresa’s life to the modern audience. Clearly exhibited in the Prelude is the sense of life Eliot is going to describe; Maitzen says, “What is important and what is not in this fictional world” is the history of man (198). By using grand language, Eliot “encourages us to admire their idealistic plan and to lament the practical limits of domestic reality,” and also suggests “that it was worthy of epic treatment” (Maitzen 198).
Middlemarch and its history are full of controversy and debate about its validity as both a feminist and moral story. Never have I read a story about which critics are so conflicted. Without consensus, the novel proves to stand alone as a great work of literature that comments on social norms, feminist ideals, the value of virtues, and the life and times of women in the nineteenth century.
Works Cited
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “The Victorian Age.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia
2005. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0858005.html 28 Feb. 2010.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Ed. Bert G. Hornback. Norton: New York. 2000.
Mackie, Hilary. “The Key to Epic Life?: Classical Study in George Eliot's Middlemarch.”
Classical World 2009. 103:1. 53-67.
http://cletus.uhh.hawaii.edu:2146/journals/classical_world/v103/103.1.mackie.pdf 27
Feb. 2010.
Maitzen, Rohan. “Martha Nussbaum and the Moral Life of Middlemarch.” Philosophy and
Literature 2006. 30. 190-207.
Siegel, Carol. “This thing I like my sister may not do': Shakespearean Erotics and a Clash of
Wills in Middlemarch.” Style. Spring98: 32, 1. Academic Search Premier.
http://cletus.uhh.hawaii.edu:2060/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=103&sid=94177b8b-be7b-4637ac17d5227a7c34@sessionmgr111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=1516862 28 Feb. 2010
Watt, Ian. “The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel.” The Rise of the Novel. Penguin:
Victoria 1963. 36-41.
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