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8/3/2019 Paper Para British Literature

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THE BATTLES FOR THE STORY TO BE TOLD

By Maria Berns

As my own paisito (little country), that is to say the novel that I am writing, was

undergoing a revolution and questioning from its inhabitants, I felt that some thinking was

need about the relationship between the writer and the characters. Contrary to the writing of

a script in which the characters can undergo many changes after the script is finished

because of the intervention of the director, producer, actors, editors, in the novel the

itinerary of a chracter seems definite once it is published. At the same, it came to my

attention and interest the fact that in a book there are more than one writer and that there are

characters written by another writer. it is possible that some of us are not written, but

merely are; or else (I think principally of Friday) are written by another and darker author.

(Coetzee, 143)

Is the novel the outcome of a struggle between the writer(s) and characters for

hegemony or for democracy? Whose word(s) prevails? Whose story ultimately is? Is the

writer present in a novel with signs that a more detailed reading reveals, because it is so

subtle (as if a film director that decides the change of an angle and thus a point of view) that

is seen and understood as a natural development of the story when in fact that change

disturbs or even goes against the characters itinerary in the story?

We can go back to that moment in writing prior to the constitution of the text when

the people involved have no stable relationships and characters can be legitimately

changed, removed, expanded, condensed; the narrator can change his or her interests, needs,

and perspective on the matter and even the story can be modified and wonder what is the

morality prevalent in that intermediary space perhaps the more conflictive moment of the

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novel (perhaps equivalent to the moment that the book is published and it is received by

readers and critics). In that stage, characters change to let the writer find their true self in the

story that he is writing and letting it be told. We can say that there is the heart of he conflict

in that space where the writer writes the story and the story is told, a space where characters

could change the story so that their story is the one to be told.

J.M. Coetzee inFoe deals with some of the issues which are part of this dilemma,

that as the novel advances, seems not to have a resolution as the book that Susan Barton

wants to have written, it is not, but the book that the writer wanted to write is completed.

What makesFoe interesting to this concern is that these backstage dealings are the

substance of the novel. In this novel, Coetzee links the issued related to colonial practices

from European countries to their colonies to the relationship between the writer and his

characters. The political environment that structures the interaction between Cruso, Susan

and Friday (or the Captain-Susan-Friday, or the potential candidates to take Friday back to

Africa, Susan and Friday, Susan and little Susan and Amy and the writer, etc, they grow in

number throughout the novel) is replicated as Foe negotiates the story to be told with Susan,

as Susan concedes and defends herself from further invasion into her "history".

The issues being negotiated are many: the facts to be acknowledged, whose the story

belongs to, the context of the story, the protagonist, the selection of the dark holes, the

relationship between the characters, the naming of emotions and facts, etc. As the questions

of Who am I, who are you, where am I? pronounced mainly by Susan grow in number, the

complexity of identity building in a power relationship is made visible through the story of a

woman who needs a story to be written. Thus writing is a political action and Foe and Susan

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know that, and there is seduction, convincing , manipulation, imposition, so that the story,

the language, the words are under control. Considering that Susan is central and she is the

narrator for the most part (directly and indirectly) is that she can be perceived as the bridge,

the space, the territory where the negotiations take place (the negotiations of the history and

of the story as Foe is the writer and as Susan makes herself so conscious of her potential

reader).

Thus inFoe, Coetzee constructs that moment in the process of creation of the rules

or jurisprudence which creates the illusion of other possibilities that were not written but

nevertheless present in the process of creation. Those alternatives are present in the final

text and manifest the options that the writer didnt pursue but nevertheless were part of the

negotiation process between the writer and characters.

I asked myself how those struggles, negotiations and impositions were manifested

not only in Foe but also in Adam Bede. Are they as evident in a modernist text as Adam

Bede? And that took me to another question: How different is the process of writing from a

modern and postmodern perspective? What are the rules, that is the morality prevalent in

one in the other space of creation? Is there frustration?

In the case of Adam Bede they are mostly present as the commentary of the

omniscient narrator, a man who has his own opinions on the story and characters and he

gives ideas about the alternatives present to the characters and judge them making it clear

that that is his judgement and not the characters. For example, as Adam decides to ride to

Snowfield and meet Dinah for an answer, the narrator says:

And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Adams

behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for

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himself: he would have shaken his head at such a sentiment,

and said, Evils evil, and sorrows Sorrow, and you cant

alter its natur by wrapping it up in other words. Other folks

were not created for my sake, that I should think all square

when things turn out well for me. (Eliot, 348)

Eliot introduces here a self-reflective comment that pertains to the writing of the novel and

the story to be told and the potential conflict with Adams morality, which as well has been

constructed throughout the text.

How democratic can this narrative space be and not lose its identity as a novel?

What is the adequate between the morality of the characters and the morality created by and

through the writing of the novel? How democratic can a writer be and not lose his or her

story?

To think the matter in a more vivid way, I decided to invite to tea some of the people

involved in the writing of the novels Adam Bede and. Although I summoned them to a

theoretical space, I knew that I was putting more than two times together and thus dialogue

would be extremely difficult. I couldnt prevent from speculating who would accept this

invitation, what discourses they bring to discussion, what they thought when I first

contacted them.

The first to arrive was Susan Barton accompanied by Friday. She immediately said

that she has already told it all and wasnt so sure of meeting Cruso again. I told her that this

might be a good opportunity to ask Cruso the story about the wreck and perhaps she could

get more details now that they were out the island. Or perhaps not. I have read Wittenbergs

article based on this idea of narrative as exchange where he asserts that stories are thus not

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only unable to move out of spaces, which the narrative defines as islands, but also cannot

move to islands. Events, which happened outside the space of the island, cannot be told on

it. Hence the contradictory and ultimately meaningless stories which Cruso tells Susan about

his prior history. Cruso of course refuses absolutely to record his life on the island and thus

speak to an outside audience

Yes, it was possible that Cruso wouldnt talk about those other stories that he only

knew and that he could only tell. They had all happened in other places and in other times,

although time was not a variable that seemed to matter to him as he was in Susans tale

involved in an unchanging present through repetition of the tasks and the days, with no past

and no future to look at. I couldnt oblige him, torture or seduce him, and I could only rely

on Susans knowledge of him to make him talk. Friday sat by Susan and settled himself in

that space of silence that was not new to us.

Mrs. Evans arrived next with Adam, Hetty and Arthur, and they seemed a tight

group sitting one by the other. Cruso entered by the back door and looked at Susan with

suspicion. I did what was my own right, she said to him. The captain of the ship stood all

the time by her side, although he didnt say a word. Foe was the next to come and looked at

Susan who blushed and at Cruso who gave him a fierce look.

The round of presentations was exhausting. Marian Evans and Susan seemed to have

made click right away. Both had struggled to affirm themselves in a male dominated

society.

Coetzee was the last to arrive; he was coming directly from the airport after a 24-hour flight

from Sidney. Mrs. Evans had asked for some references about Coetzee and I realized that he

was the only one who knew everybody else and the least known by everybody else.

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I briefly explained the purpose of having them met and particularly Evans group

looked excited at the discussion. And it was Arthur who began: My life was ruined because

of you. I wanted to be good; you know that, didnt you? Mrs. Evans sadly looked at Arthur

and saw that he was handsome, he saw his black eyes and realized that she saw them lighter.

My strongest effort (was) to give a faithful account of men and things as they have

mirrored themselves in my mind. (253) To what Arthur asked her if she didnt question

that mirror, that it might have been defected. Mrs. Evans said, perhaps, the outlines will

sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I (felt) as much bound to tell

you as precisely as I (could) what that reflection was. (253)

Foe looked at Arthur: it is possible that some of us are not written, but merely are;

or else (I think principally of Friday) are written by another and darker author. (Coetzee,

143) Do you mean somebody like God? No, said Evans, the limits of the conditions that

shape our individual lives and the novel, as a form needs to acknowledge that. (Levine, 21)

I think that you were only working with generalizations and didnt see me as an individual,

you only took an aspect of a particular social and economic relationship, you didnt get

much of my own personal thinking. I loved her, and he looked at Hetty who was fighting

her tears back, but confusion worked on her side. Adam looked at Arthur but told nothing.

Susan looked at Arthur and said: there is after all design in our lives, and if we

wait long enough we are bound to see that design unfolding. (Coetzee, 103) and she

referred to that day when she danced in the barn and discovered why Friday danced, and she

was positive that if they had stayed at Foes house, she would never have learned. Mrs.

Evans asked Coetzee what that dance was representing. Coetzee looked at her and said that

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only Friday truly knew. Everybody looked at Friday who looked back at us perhaps

conscious of the power that his silence had over his audience.

I can understand that that you dont want to affirm any false arguments, said Mrs.

Evans, but falsity, which, in spite of ones own efforts, there is no reason to dread (255)

Surely Friday knows that it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about our own

immediate feelings (255) Mrs. Evans referred to the Dutch paintings that she liked so much

because they give faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been a fate

Susan said, no the fact is that he cannot talk.

Mrs. Evans turned to Coetzee, a mute? Yes, Coetzee answered, language has so

many power and for that very reason so many limitations within various discourse of

society, language can not be separated from the characters of a text, nor can the characters

be separate from the text. It is a history of silence, isnt it? Asked Mrs. Evans. Coetzee

stared at her and nodded. "This (are) place(s) where bodies are their own signs." (Coetzee,

157)

Only God knows all my efforts to extract a word out of him, said Susan. I feel like a

slave to his silence, and only because he is part of the story I wanted Foe to write. It is only

words that I can get. And now I see that words are not enough to communicate. How can

that dance be translated into words? Tell me! How can silence be written? I understand, said

Hetty; I felt that killing the baby, my baby, was an expression of silence. And she looked at

Mrs. Evans; this was not the first time over the tea that the characters of Adam Bede looked

at Evans for some answer or to confirm that they are correct. She seemed to be their only

interlocutor giving little care to what the others had to say. I knew that is was wrong, but for

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some dark impulse I did it, and I couldnt think as if somebody were telling me to cancel

any thoughts.

Susans face was wet with tears, I saw you, do you know what I mean, but it was too

late to do anything, because it seemed as it had already been done and there had been no

possibility of reversal. As if there were no doubts. And that, said Susan staring at Foe, it is

nonsense, isnt it Foe? Because what defines us characters is doubt.

There was a long silence and I decided to formulate a question: But whose story are

the novels? Why are they called Foe and Adam Bede? Novels have male names, in one the

writer is a female and has a male narrator, and in Foe the writer is a man with a female

narrator. But the central characters are men, a craftsman and a writer. Both cannot get their

stories straight while their story is being built by the stories of others. Fears and ghosts

(other stories that need/struggle to be told, the subplots) haunt both. And, the writers, both

Evans and Coetzee stress the fact that there is dullness in both their crafts.

Foe looked at me and said: It was not my story, it was hers, Susans, all my effort

was put to tell her story, you all know it, that was Mr. Coetzees project, Susan was the new

castaway. Susan exploded and yelled: I have been telling him my story but he wouldnt

listen, my goodness! We look like an aged matrimony in which the wife complains that she

is not being heard! I was Crusos listener, a good listener, and Foe wasnt a good listener as

good as I was. He kept changing what was important in the story, adding things that had no

importance because it was my story and not his, no matter what he is saying now. I was no

longer in control of the story once I told it to him; I was left with nothing. Not even with

Friday who was the only thing I really had. He took it all as he decided to teach him to

write.

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Susan looked at Coetzee who realized how beautiful the woman was; he had only

seen her in the cabin under the sea. Foe exploded, it was my conflict that fuels the novel,

that is the reason that the book has my name! The Negro didnt exist as a story, it had no

interest to me, how can we know that he was conflicted, that he wanted anything? She

insisted so much that in the end I sat down with him and tried some writing that he did, but

to have something we would need a book of millions of pages, another life.

Meanwhile Mrs. Evans and her characters didnt have the problems that the Foe

group had and watched in a mix of awe and horror. They had their conflicts, yes, but not

about the possibility of the story.

I only wanted to have my story told, to give birth to it, I felt as sterile as Crusos

terraces on the island, and even more when I decided to be my own writer, I felt like Friday

carrying those stones in the island, each mark as a stone, and think of the paper as the

island..." (Coetzee, 87). In fact, there was no difference between the island and the house, I

wrote all these letters to Foe and had no reply: "the life we lead grows less and less distinct

from the life we led on Cruso's island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am" (71).

Since Foe's house functioned as an island, no letters could leave it, and thus none ever

returned. I didnt even know, added Susan, if I was imagining Foe, if I had even imagined

the encounter with him at his doorway, as I had imagined his house so appropriate to a

writer. (From page 49-50) not alike the one I saw and where I was in. I really felt apart.

Even outside, but "the townsfolk pay us no more heed than we were ghosts" (87). Susan

looked at Coetzee: I wanted to be part of a community.

I could understand what Susan was meaning directing her frustration to Coetzee.

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Is Coetzee text closed? Off "islands" out of the reach of an appropriating, colonizing

discourse. The "island" is thus a space resisting its representation in narrative, a place of

refuge, as the woman, or taking the womans voice is:

Coetzees adoption of the feminine narrative voice constitutes

both a strategic evasion of a lack of an adequate vantage point

from which to speak and a strategic encoding of that lack of

authority in the figure of the white woman. The white womens

possession of the word is unstable, unauthorized and also

outside recognized literary forms. (Probyn)

A position that Coetzee would feel comfortable to adopt seeing himself a

marginalized white in a colonialist environment, somebody who writes without authority.

An outcast himself, he had found his space in the characters of his white woman narrator

who construct "her" story from a position of marginality in relation to the canon, its

recognized literary forms, and its masculine dominance. This could be compared to the

reversal movement that Mrs. Evans performed when she adopted a male name in the

Victorian era to create a narrative agency to write with authority, a contradictory

movement having the same purpose: create a position in the literary world, as contradictory

as it may sound. And that gives freedom to the writer.

Coetzee sees himself without authority because the type

of authority associated with his position, as a white male

in South Africa is one whose authoritarian connotations

he rejects and, throughout his novels, attempts to dismantle.

He does not see himself as an author who commands words.

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(Probyn)

He is not the master of his writing, because if he is master some others need to be slaves,

and not only the characters but also himself.

Mrs. Evans took her time to answer: Men have been for centuries the official storytellers.

Women unless they were outcasts as in the case of Susan who walked the roads of England

and received gazes of disrespect didnt travel and come back to tell their stories, nor were

they at home receiving the traveler and listening to their stories. Those men met the

husbands in their workplaces. Women told stories, but they were household stories. And I

wanted to tell a story that involved a community that dealt with issues of justice, as I

followed an honest and righteous man. It was so natural to have a man as the narrator and to

have him as a one among other men and as a sympathetic witness of the womens world.

But you were more brutal with women that you were with men: you had Hetty processed

and sent away as an outcast and, on the other hand, Arthur barren but finally he is able to

come back to the community. It is true, but that is part of that negotiation that you talked

about earlier.

Hetty had been staring at Friday who seemed simultaneously to be seeing nothing

and us all. So, she asked Mrs. Evans, I am surely something beyond the words themselves,

in a fashion similar to this black man? I ask if my silence was appropiately represented, I

wonder if my abandoning the baby was read as silence, because silence is not empty. It is

like those stones that Susan mentioned, it is like that gentleman, she pointed at Cruso.

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Characters dont talk, that is why they need to be written, said Foe, a character is a ghost,

somebody not autonomous but inexorably linked to a writer. But the writer is not a master,

added Coetzee.

Susan intervened: the writing is the only medium to have some substance as a

character and not only a ghost. " When I reflect upon my story I seem to exist only as the

one who came, the one who witnessed..." (Coetzee, XXX) I have asked myself if the role of

women is to tell the mens story, to be their memory and be their storytellers, that being

their slavery, that is the substance of their subjection and, at the same time, their freedom,

because they are delivered that is what women get. When I am rid of Friday, will then I

know freedom? (Coetzee, 149) What do you think Mrs. Evans?

I think that you will never get rid of Friday and that everybody can have his or her

own story of a community, said Evans, all visions are a product of the negotiation between

the writer (no matter it is male or female) and the world that she or he is interested in

representing, in fact, the writer is representing her or his own private experience of that

world, which adds to the collection of representations of a world which can be as many as

people are on the world.

What about the characters representations?, asked Susan.

Coetzee added, that community is your invention.

My perception, answered Evans.

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I wouldnt be so sure, said Coetzee, look at Susan, was she on the roads of England

dragging Friday all along the country to the port of Bristol? She was but only in the realm

of words that I wrote, only there.

You got inspired by words, but those words ultimately referred to a real marooning.

Didnt you hear the anecdote of your story from your aunt?

Yes, and I did research to truly represent the country.

The truth is, said Susan, that in a year, in ten years, there will be nothing left standing but a

circle of sticks to mark the place where the hut stood (and archeology will be necessary, not

literature) and of the terraces, only walls, they will say, these are cannibals (Coetzee, 54)

and my story will be silence, as Hettys is now. And not only absent but irretrievable, as

Friday has always been,.

Nothing forgotten is worth remembering (Coetzee, 18), said Cruso from his

corner. And Adam looked at him and nodded his head disapprovingly, gesture noticed by

Hetty who stared at him in appreciation. Susan took her head in her hands, she could see

how silence augmented, but at the same time how an understanding was being established

with Adam Bede, Arthur and Hetty. Hetty admired Susan strength and said: I wish I had

Susans strength to fight against the rules that were set in the novel, no matter (and she

looked at Evans) how present they were in the society I was born into.

Trying to diminish the tension, I went back to the topic of freedom, and I mentioned

George Levine s idea that subplots limit the protagonists itinerary and I brought to my

guests attention that inFoe, unlikeAdam Bede, the subplots expand the possibilities of the

protagonist and partly the struggle between Foe and Susan is related to this idea of creating

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subplots so as to make the story more interesting and avoid dullness. Having the story of the

wreck or the story of how Friday lost his tongue would create new stories that could spice

the apparent dull tale of the life on the islands.

Yes, Mrs. Evans affirmed, the subplots were my way to create a context not relying

in pure exposition. Although my material was dull itself, this sorrowful happening that

seemed beyond the characters responsibilities shocked the everyday life of this rural

community.

But Hetty had to pay and Arthur and myself. I would have liked to have the opportunity that

Mrs. Barton had to discuss and rebel against her role in the narrative, said Adam in his only

intervention in the afternoon, intervention that stunned Evans.

If I was to write that story again today, believe me, many things would have changed, but

lets be honest, there are others that would remain the same, said Evans; the writer cant

save all the characters.

The character gives all to the writers project and keeps nothing. Do we of necessity

become puppets in a story whose end is invisible to us, and towards which we are marched

like condemned felons? (Coetzee, 135), said Susan, that is our only truth.

Coetzee looked at Evans: Perhaps a rewrite considering the new conditions under which you

would write might create another possibility for Adam, Arthur and Hetty. It was remarkable

that you defied your time to be a writer and mastered writing, but many considered your

women to be too modeled under a conservative model.

Is it better to have a wandering woman asking to a man to have her story written?

Characters should have no doubt about the fact that their story is going to be narrated, said

Evans.

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But what story should be told? asked Coetzee, I make it an issue to reveal the structure of

power that is in the writing of a novel, and thus unveiling the power in society, for me it is

natural coming from South Africa were these articulations are everywhere like the sky or

earth, you cannot perceive or live or write about a topic evading this structure, present

everywhere, even in this tea table, in these words that I am using now to try to communicate

with you.

I began to realize that a slow rebellion was taking place in my living room, the

characters were questioning their respective writers and some even felt that the wrong one

has written them. At this moment is that I made a proposal: lets switch writers and make

Mr. Coetzee write an epilogue to Adam Bede and Mrs. Evans write one to Foe. Apply your

own rules to that writing and you evaluate how you take the novel been written, perhaps the

epilogue is just that or perhaps it is the first chapter of a new novel. Perhaps that will assert

a communicational bond between the teller and the told within a context that is

historical, social, political, as well as intertextual. (Hutchinson, 51). And perhaps Susan

will have her story written and Adam and Arthur will have their personal arguments

exposed.

Mrs. Evans looked at Cruso, Foe and Friday in preoccupation. They were beyond the

type of social structure that she would likely represent. Foe looked back at her: I can help

you. Mrs. Evans opened her eyes in awe as she thought herself as repeating Susans story

about her quest to be represented: I am not Susan Mr. Foe, I am a writer.

So am I, said Foe.

You know, Mr. Foe, there are positions that cannot be altered, reality and representation

dont mix.

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We have language, Mr. Coeetzee replied.

Sometimes a barrier to the truth.

Of course, and Susan knows perfectly about this, but always our only medium to view and

construct reality.

Susan gave Mrs. Evans a look of encouragement; she relied on her, she was

intrigued on how to deal with a writer who is not a man. She remembered her own strategies

to get Foe to write and of course his to get her story told his way, imposition, seduction,

predation, abandonment. I looked at Mr. Coetzee who nodded in approval. And I invited

them all to tea in a year from that date.

After they left, I reflected on the challenges that the writers would have now. And

the characters, as well. I could see that some Crusos attitude as that person with narrow

horizons was getting in Mrs. Evans replicating some of the white colonizer attitudes towards

the subaltern. But, her subalterns, her characters, have been condemned to a silence, that is

to say, an isolated life in which rules established a morality foreign to communal practices,

as Evans knew. This would certainly force her to become conscious of the decisions that she

had for them, not pre-established by tradition. As far as Coetzee goes, his endeavor looked

fascinating though complicated. I wondered whom he would have as his narrator, from

whose perspective the story would be told, which story would the one to be written. The

predictable choice would be Hetty that woman condemned for the crimes that his Susan

committed, but as he left my home I suggested to him that perhaps having Adam as the

narrator might be an interesting choice. His silence was as uncertain as Fridays as

the womens.

Bibliography:

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Bakhtin, Mikhail.Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. Caryl Emerson, Ed. and Trans.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Coetzee, J.M. Foe. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. New York: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1907.

Eliot, George. From The Natural History of German Life. Westminster Review, July

1856, pp. 51-56 and 71-72.

Levine, George. Introduction: George Eliot and the Art of Realism. George Levine

(Ed.)The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Gauthier, Marni. The Intersection of the Postmoderns and the Postcolonial in J.M.

Coetzees Foe. English Language Notes 34, no. 4 (June 1997) : 52-71.

Hutchinson, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Rutledge, 1989.

Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

1981.

Piglia, Ricardo. Formas Breves. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2000.

Probyn, Fiona. J.M. Coetzee: Writing with/out authority, University of Sydney, New South

Wales, Australia, 2002.

Wittenberg, Hermann. University of the Western Cape, Loes Nas, Wittenberg, Hermann;

Cris Ropers (eds) 1995, Inter Action 3, Proceedings of the Third Postgraduate Conference,

Berville: UWC Press, pages 1421-1511.

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