Diet Racism in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice"

I haven't made a blog post in a while, and as I recall I promised to post essays I wrote for class. Unfortunately (from a blog reader's perspective) I am in writing-intensive classes, which fortunately (from my perspective) means that I get to re-write papers! As of yet I have not finished re-writing the essay I wanted to post, so instead of a proper essay, here is the contents of a forum post I made about Merchant of Venice for my Queer Readings class, contemplating historical difference:

In this short essay, I address a surprise I encountered in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and the questions, concerns, and parallels to modern culture I drew from it. The main surprise I encountered while reading Merchant of Venice was the casual racism of Portia. I knew before starting to read Merchant that it has rampant antisemitism, but I was not expecting additional racist remarks towards black folk. There is, of course, rampant racism in our own time and so the presence of it was not a true surprise, but rather the insidious way it was taken for granted was what startled me. 

After the Prince of Morocco chooses the wrong casket, Portia’s line upon his departure is “Let all of his complexion choose me so.” (II.vii.79) In the notes of my copy of the text (The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd Edition), there is a performance comment that notes how many directors cut this line in order that Portia appear as a more sympathetic character. This censure raises the question of how this is replicated in our contemporary culture.

The erasure of unsavory comments in not unlike what I have heard called “diet racism” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdyin6uipy4). That is to say, the person in question presents themselves as being accepting and encouraging of equality, but in actuality still holds racist beliefs and makes racist comments when not in the earshot of the person they are insulting,

Throughout scene seven, Portia makes no outward criticism about the Prince of Morocco, but as soon as he leaves she makes the disparaging comment about his complexion.   Five centuries after Shakespeare, we are still held subject to this casual racism, and so examining this lack of cultural difference by closely looking at Portia's language can help us understand the way in which we have constructed the casual racism that can be found in our own time and place.


Our own historical and cultural moment is different in that this casual racism is often secluded when present in media, unless the character in question is the villain of the piece. In contrast, Portia is one of the protagonists in Merchant and the audience is meant to sympathize with her. 

Desire and Its Cost

The following is from an essay I wrote in Spring of my sophomore year for my Introduction to Global Literature course. I was going through my files on my computer and re-read the essay in a fit of nostalgia. Having decided that it was a shame to let it languish in my cloud, I elected to post it here. I have very little knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita beyond what we read in class, and I have yet to read the entirety of the Mahabharata, so if anyone with more knowledge wants to weigh in on what is in this paper PLEASE do so. I don't want to impose on anyone else's culture, so reach out and let me know what you think! I will edit this post as-needed. :)

Desire and Its Cost

Talia Franks

COML 100A: Introduction to Global Literature

March 31 2016

Can one attain their desires without succumbing to negative emotion?    

To begin, what is desire? More than needing to use the bathroom after a long car ride, or wanting a cold drink after working in the hot sun all day, the desire we speak of now is of the deeper sort. A longing for something. For wealth, for power, for fame, for glory, for companionship. And the question is whether or not once one gets that, is it enough? Beyond desire’s definition, what are the consequences of desire once it is fulfilled or unfulfilled, especially to those that surround us? To look at it from a critical perspective, let us examine desire from the perspective of texts from two different cultures: The Bhagavad Gita from India, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales from Germany, specifically the tales The Fisherman and His Wife and Rumpelstiltskin.

 The Bhagavad Gita warns that desire is a perilous emotion that will lead to destruction, and urges us to cast desire off. In the Gita Arjuna is warned of the dangers of attachment to senses:

(62) Let a man [but] think of the objects of sense―attachment to them is born: from attachment springs desire, from desire is anger born. (63) From anger comes bewilderment, from bewilderment wandering of the mind from wandering of the mind destruction of the soul: once the soul is lost the man is lost.[1]

This attachment is presented as creating the desires that are so dangerous for us and that ultimately cause us to lose ourselves.

The link of attachment to desire is notable; however, the further connection from desire to anger is far more interesting. This link exists because desire causes stress regardless of whether that desire is fulfilled. A person who has achieved their desire yearns for more, acquiring the sin of greed until they can no longer have what they desire; while a person who has missed their desire devolves into anger at their lack. We can examine whether or not this is true through the lens of two other texts we investigated in class, the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife and Rumpelstiltskin.

In The Fisherman and His Wife a poor fisherman and his wife Isabel live in a hovel, where she stays during the day while he goes to catch fish. The fisherman is content with this life, but Isabel is not, and has desires beyond it. Therefore, when the fisherman catches a fish that claims to be an enchanted prince and lets it go free, Isabel has a different reaction and, emboldened by her desire, demands that the fisherman go back and ask the fish-prince to give them a cottage that is nicer than the hut where they live. Her desire has given her motivation and cunning beyond what the fisherman has because her desire enables her to think creatively. In this the brothers are teaching a lesson of how desire can help people achieve their dreams, while contentment stagnates. However, they counterbalance that message by having the wife overreach herself. Isabel grows more and more greedy, becoming first a Queen, then Pope, and finally she wants to control the sun, at which point she is reduced to once more living in a hovel.[2]

The story of the fisherman's wife indirectly parallels the teachings of the Gita, but diverges from them in ways that point towards a more nuanced understanding of desire. Isabel has forgotten where she started in life due to her greed, as her desire for more power has clouded her judgment. This is in alignment with the Gita; however, Isabel nevertheless does achieve her dreams to a certain extent before she goes to an extreme beyond the realm of possibility. The fisherman, by contrast, is almost entirely free of desire, and of both its constructive and destructive consequences. On the one hand, he is portrayed as being at peace with himself and with the state of his life, exactly as the Gita teaches one will become if one withdraws from desire. On the other hand, he is an almost entirely passive character with no goals or potential for growth. His lack of desire for a changed life would have seen them live in the hovel for their lives, never taking the opportunity of the wish. Additionally, the one desire he does have in the story, to stop his wife from asking the fish-prince for more power[3], he never acts on and so she is never stopped and they return to living in the hovel.

From this we can see that the fault of the return to the hovel cannot be placed solely on the wife. Although she had the initial desire, the action could never have been carried out if the fisherman had acted on his own desire to stop her. Therefore, we can argue that ignoring desire entirely can be just as dangerous as acting on it recklessly.

If the fisherman had acted on that desire to stop her, and helped Isabel to learn to control her own desires, their desires could have counterbalanced one another. So although the Gita claims that all desire leads to anger and eventually loss of self, one can argue that desires do not have to lead to this unfortunate fate as long as they are balanced by a sense of realism and the ability to know when to act on them and when to listen to the advice of others.

The majority of the issue with the fisherman and his wife was the lack of a personal connection between them. Isabel had her attachment to the material that caused her desire, and the fisherman was unable to stop her because they lacked attachment to one another. To argue against the Gita, Isabel and the fisherman’s detachment from each other and lack of active engagement in each other’s and their own lives was what caused their lack of mutual desire and control of desire, and with an attachment, their desires could have led to a more satisfactory outcome.

To examine another work concerning desire, we turn to Rumpelstiltskin. In this tale, Rumpelstiltskin’s interaction with desire, namely his desire for the Queen's child, parallels what we have observed in the Gita. His desire for the child, and his anger at not receiving the child, led to such anger that he harmed himself.[4] His greed, in assuming that the child would be his, also leads to foolishness, another symptom of the cycle described in the Gita.

The Miller’s daughter/Queen’s interaction with desire tells a different story, however.  In the beginning, it shows selfish desire causing harm to another; her desire to save her own life causes her to sacrifice the potential life of her first born child. However, once the child is born she has a change of heart and her desire to save her child from an unknown fate with Rumpelstiltskin supersedes her past selfish desire. The tale thus shows us how desire can be born out of concern for the well-being of others, not just out of selfishness.

This desire strengthens resolve and provides great motivation when she needs to discover Rumpelstiltskin’s name.[5] The Queen’s desire to keep her child was ultimately what kept her child safe from Rumpelstiltskin, and after he left, she was left in peace, as far as the reader knows.

So while these tales do tell us that just as the Gita warns, no good seems to come from untempered desire and harm is definitely done to those who desire and those who surround those who submit to their desires, there is also a deeper message that desire is a motivator and an inspiration for achieving a higher life status, when approached with a sense of moderation.

This moderation is a key point that the Gita fails to address. The tales, on the other hand, offer a more detailed exploration of what forms of desire are healthy or unhealthy. The Brothers Grimm are not advocating for a total lack of desire, as does the Gita, but for this continued theme of moderation. When the fisherman and his wife first upgrade to a cottage with a large garden, they have the following interaction:

“See!” said the wife, “is this not charming?”

“Yes,” said her husband,” so long as it blooms you will be well content with it.”[6]

These lines caution that as long as we are content with what we have, we will need nothing else. It is a consideration not as strong in the Gita, but still one that overlaps. In the Gita there is a strong focus on the soul and maintaining the connection to oneself, while The Brothers Grimm allow for a focus on the material in a broader sense. The fairy tales caution against desire by showing a loss of the material when desire is allowed in excess, while the Gita appeals to our desire for a complete and peaceful soul. While the Gita teaches us to renounce our desires in order to achieve a complete and peaceful soul, the fairy tales teach us that desire can be integrated into an emotionally fulfilling life, as long as it is not allowed to go out of control.

 The Fisherman and His Wife is definitely an example of an unhealthy relationship with desire, while Rumpelstiltskin says beautiful things about the way that desire can be harnessed when born out of love, which is what is lacking in the relationship shown in the first tale. What we can glean from that is that desire is a thing of value, but only when people and their love is the cause.

Bibliography

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. 2003. "Rumpelstiltskin." In Grimm's Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Anonymous, 241-243. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. 2003. "The Fisherman and His Wife." In Grimm's Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Anonymous, 105-109. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

Zaehner, R. C., trans. 1969. The Bhagavad Gita. Glasgow: Oxford University Press.

---

[1]Zaehner 52

[2] Grimm and Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife, 106-109

[3] Ibid, 107

[4] Grimm and Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin, 243

[5] Ibid.

[6]Grimm and Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife, 106

Check-in 2

This semester is doing its best to crush me, but I won't let it. I was ill last week, leading up to the weekend, and it caused me to get slightly behind on my work. That said, I was a little bit ahead before this, so I suppose things have just evened out. I still need to get caught up in Pragmatics and Love Poetry – those were the two classes I missed last week – and so right now I'm working through our second homework assignment for Pragmatics, which includes some interesting wordplay involving unicorns, and recreating a Sappho poem for my Love Poetry course.

Our assignment for Love Poetry is to take what fragments are left from a Sappho poem of our choosing from the Anne Carson translation I mentioned before, and 'fill in the blanks' as it were, recreating the poem as if it were written in Sappho's time. Currently I am struggling with this as I fight the urge to modernize the poem and as I try to find a voice not my own.

Speaking of poetry, I have recently undertaken a new project. I know, I know, I don't exactly need more things to keep me busy, but I have to have fun sometimes right? This side project can definitely be considered fun. When I was at Bread Loaf early in the summer I had the privilege of attending many panels and talks, as well as individual/small group meetings with various editors and agents. One of the people that I ended up talking to was Chad Post, who was there as a publisher/editor for Open Letter at the University of Rochester. In addition to publishing, Open Letter runs a weblog and international review source called Three Percent. After leaving Bread Loaf, I decided that I would sign up to write occasional reviews for Three Percent, and I received my first book today (October 4th) and so far I love it. It's a book of poetry, but I shan't say more than that here. Once I finish writing the review and it goes through editing I will be sure to post a link to it on this blog.

On the topic of editing, my work in the Student-Scholar Partnership is going well, and I continue to be very happy with this project. To have a paying job, part-time or no, that is in my desired field is an absolute dream for someone my age, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity.

Literary Translation is my dream, as readers of this blog may know, and as readers will also know, my thesis is centered around Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and translations of her poems. At present I have scaled back the active translations as I am focusing a bit more on the content of my secondary source material for the critical introduction, although I of course work on bits and pieces when I have those rare spots of free time. I have an annotated bibliography of sources for my research seminar due next Monday, so I have also been working continuously on that.

Another research project that I am working on this semester is for my Pragmatics course. I'm still not entirely sure what I want to investigate yet; but our initial proposal (topic & research question, methodology idea, list of proposed papers) is due on the eleventh, so I'll have to come up with something soon.

Although I enjoy all of my courses and projects, I am developing a soft spot for my course on Ancient Greek. Learning this new (to me) language is a bit like solving a puzzle and slowly unwrapping a gift, and seeing all the pieces come together and getting a closer look at the prize is very enjoyable to me. When I am stressed out over bibliographies and papers and poems, untangling a sentence is oddly therapeutic.

Getting out all my thoughts on paper (or on screen I suppose) has a similar affect, so in a way I feel indebted to this blog for helping me process my strengths and weaknesses this semester. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my mind.

Cheers,
Talia

Scribbles

When I find I have written something I am very proud of and have worked very hard on, my immediate impulse is to let someone scribble all over it. If there is anything I have learned in my 21 years of life, it is that the best things always come from collaboration.

In the past this has mostly been on resumes and essays, correcting grammar and formatting and things I may have missed. Where to expand, where to cut down, and here I should put a semicolon. With a creative process, it is something altogether different.

Some people might see scribbles on a page as a challenge, as something to fight against, that you have failed. But for me that is simply not true. Scribbles on the page are the secret ingredient to writing a good poem, essay or short story, or a translation of any of the above. Scribbles on the page show dedication to the topic. For me scribbles on a page are not a symbol of failure but a symbol of success. When I'm working on a project and someone takes the time out of their day to scribble all over my writing or translations I am so, so happy because it's a sign of care and dedication. It's recognition of the fact that what I am doing is hard, but I have people to support me in what I do, and for that I am very thankful.

I could have never gotten to where I am today without the assistance of the many people who have shaped my life, especially the ones that did so with scribbles.

Forgetting

I forgot how to write an essay. It's always like this, I get my sources, I prepare, and then it comes to the blinking line on a freshly opened word document, and I freeze. How do I write an essay? What are words? How do I form thoughts, oh my goodness seven whole pages I'll die. Shaking in my worn out sneakers, panic. Breathe, I have to breathe and focus because I actually know a fair bit about both Harry Potter and Mythology so what makes me so scared? It isn't the grade, because I was fine with the test last week and I haven't worried about it. I think it's the writing. Every time I sit down to write I remind myself that this is what I want to do, what I am good at, but another part of me screams that everything I put to paper is shit and I will fail out of life.

Okay maybe it is a little bit about the grade.

But that doesn't mean it isn't also more. It's the idea of commitment. Dedicating myself to a topic, weighing myself down. But what is a commitment?

It's much easier to say that you are going to do something than to actually do it. But is a commitment really a commitment if you don't see it through?

Sometimes I wonder.

And I think (I know) that I spend so much time in love with the idea of doing that I lose focus on the present. I am consumed by my future, constantly reaching for that fruit just out of my reach, I am holding up a world that doesn't need holding and with a hush I let go and nothing happens but I don't know, I can't know that everything will be alright. Nothing feels alright, it feels broken, I feel broken and that love I put into the present seeps into the future. My future. Don't give up what you want the most for what you want in the moment, but when is my moment? When will what I want arrive? Will I ever be satisfied?