30-06-2012, 02:56 PM
Cultural Shift and Conflict of Ideologies in Joyce Carol Oates’ A Bloodsmoor Romance.
Oates is one of the most provocative and prolific American writers. Oates began her literary career in 1963. Since then she has published more than fifty novels; hundreds of short stories in both collections and anthologies; a dozen volumes of poetry; several books of nonfiction, literary criticism, and essays; children fiction, young adult fiction; and many dramas and screen plays.
From her first novel With Shuddering Fall in 1964, Oates built up a literary corpus that mixes Gothic estrangement with high social observation. She concentrates on the spiritual, sexual, and intellectual malaise of modern American culture, exposing the darker aspects of human condition. The typical elements of her works are; seduction, violence, unconscious force, murder, mutilation, child abuse, and suicide. Her protagonists are often suffered from their own emotional weaknesses and sometimes because of the condition of the social milieu. Her female characters are portrayed as dysfunctional, passive, submissive and often prone to exploitation and abuse in male dominated society. Her novells A Bloodsmoor Romance and Mysteries of Winterthurn contain strong feminist overtones and use of Gothic device to explores the ambiguities of gender and the sexual bases of fantasy.
Oates’ A Bloodsmoor Romance is a reading of the nineteenth century text from a twentieth century perspective. It projects the changing culture of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century American history focusing on the lives of several members of the Kiddemaster and Zinn family. Each of them has his/her own passions and desires and in order to fulfill it, they escape from the confinement of American formal societal ethics.
Constance Philippa, the unusual tall girl, has a desire to serve in the military during the Civil War. She is confused about her sexuality. Her ignorance and confusion over this do not enable her to cease the proceedings for the preparation of her marriage with Baron Adolf, who owned the rich heritage, a nine hundred old name and his business being slave trade and ivory. Her mind is obsessed with the identification of her sexuality. From the beginning she is not curious or anxious about her marriage as other girls do. She is in utter confusion while reading books recommended by the elders to get her prepared for the role of wife. Oates registers, “I am yet am not.”(153) her confusion results in replacing dress maker’s dummy on the nuptial bed. She escapes from Bloodsmoor Romance in the guise of a man and never appears as Constance Philippa.
Philippa’s hatred to be a woman is revealed in the way she discards her feminine attire. She tosses her veil and hat on the seat beside her and utters “I shall never be that person again” (589). She tastes the feeling of freedom for the first time when she boards the train alone without the “contemplative gaze” (588) of her chaperons. She even tears all her tight-buttoned and tight-fitting inner garments, which is a compulsion for an American woman to be worn. Philippa, after escaping from the cultural confinement, turns into a man, and makes a dashing career as a riverboat gambler and returns as Philippe Fox to rescue his beloved girlhood friend Delphine from a miserable marriage, upon whom he falls in love. Finally Philippa find the ultimate path, transforming into a man, an act of rebellion against Woman’s fate. She succeeds in her quest for identifying herself and finds a pair for herself.
The next Zinn sister, who escapes from the clutches of the American restrictive culture, is Malvinia. Being a beautiful lady among the bloodsmoor women, she “longs to escape her needle work and the confines of Bloodsmoor”(138). In order to become a stage actress, she elopes with a handsome actor Orlando Vandenhoffen. She becomes a celebrated artist within a short span of time. Malviia, the aspiring artist, though succeeded on the stage, has the mark of beast-a shameful incapacity to suppress her sexuality and physicality. Eileen Teper Bender in “Woman’s Place: A Bloodsmoor Romance, Mysteries of Winterthurn, Solstice and Mariya: A Life” says, “Malvinia to her lovers seem no more desirous of feminine response than a group of necrophilias”.(139) At one stage, Malvinia, who unlocks the cultural confinement, fails in her profession as an actress. She even goes to the extent of committing suicide. The cultural change leads to conflicts and at last she settles as Miss Malvinia Quincy, Spinster Instructress of Elocution, Music and the Thespian Arts. Later she marries Mr. Kennicott, her devotee from her childhood, on condition that they would live as brother and sister.
Octavia is the only Zinn siste, who remains as a only compliant daudhter for the Zinns. She marries Mr. Rumford and has undergone submissively the perverse sexual practices of her respectable husband. Bender in “Woman’s Place: A Bloodsmoor Romance, Mysteries of Winterthurn, Solstice and Mariya: A Life” rightly points out,
Soaring in rhetorical crescendo, ludicurously appointed female characters (heroines, writers) are handmaidens of an aggressively male culture. In literal and figurative house arrest, they are dwarfed and hobbled by sexual ignorance, elaborate rules of conduct, yards caroline, and whalebone corsets. (132)
As a dutiful wife, Octavia satisfies the needs of her husband. She is very cautious in hiding her woes and pain she endures during her night with her husband. Joanne V. Creighton in “Unliberated Women in Joyce Carol Oates’ Fiction” states, “Women in fact, are willing instruments of patriarchy.”(45) Octavia suffers because of the brutal sexual practices of her husband and also of the vicious behaviour of her son Godfrey.
Octavia, in order to satisfy her husband’s sexual fetishes, inadvertently strangles him and this accident results in Octavia’s liberation. Oates Octavia’s another burden is Little Godfrey, her son. This problem has also been solved after his death. Being a good hostess, Octavia can not leave her guests at the time of Little Godfrey’s cruel action of drowning Quincy Zinn’s pet monkey Pip in the Kiddemaster’s well, and results in his death. Oates rewards the virtuous Octavia through their death. Though these deaths affect her a lot, she experiences the feeling of liberty for the first time. At the end of the story Octavia has made the best match with the Irish stable boy, who was her romantic lover before her marriage, and now grown to be a dynamic and respected member of the Bloodsmoor community. Octavia is the representative of the whole nineteenth century American women, who suffer under the patriarchal domination.
The brainy Samantha, the youngest of all the Zinn sisters, is the only heir, who inherits the scientific knowledge of Quincy Zinn. She helps her father in his scientific experiment. She is born with the literal birth mark on her face as her father’s. Quincy Zinn considers removing the birth mark as one of his scientific experiments. Without any compunctions he removes her birth mark, which is highly risky. When Samantha come to know about this in her adulthood, she deeply resents for his action, than feeling grateful for removing the unwanted birth mark. Samantha has been used as an experimental animal in Quincy Zinn’s laboratory in order to test his prowess in cosmetic surgery. This makes her feel resentful than to be grateful.