The Divine And The Marginal Essay, Research Paper

When associating the Godhead to the fringy, one is struck by the ambiguity of both footings. Adivine being can be supernatural, pure, Sweet and of course good, or, in contrast, bad, evil, vindictive, and inhumane. Marginality defines the topographic point of ambiguity, the thin linebetween the normal and not-normal, the centre of societal pandemonium. Both deity andmarginality blind us, forbid us to see a complete image. Society and literature act outthe struggles between good and evil, love and detest, the angelic and diabolic kid, but areblinded by the very nature of those concrete divisions of positive and negative. Divinitybecomes marginality in The Turn of the Screw ; James intentionally constructs charactersthat conform so good to the societal outlook of flawlessness that they can non be other thanthe marginal. Again, it comes down to the line between sightlessness and enlightenment ; it isonly when we doubt and inquiry world that we can integrate and comprehendmarginality. Children in Early Modern England describes a society that pushed lower classchildren even further into marginality ; kids had their ain subculture that provided anon-adult position of the universe and rejected grownup systems of value, order and categorization. This. . .juvenile subculture included a insouciant attitude to private belongings, an dependence tomischief, and a preference for what most grownups regarded as noise and soil ( Thomas 57 ) . Both linked to and divide from the grownup universe, these kids passed the thin line ; theywere kids but unable to move as kids. Besides [ s ] hop-lifting, pick-pocketing, andstealing pidgeons and poulets. . . , [ they had ] no more thought of what we call justice than.. . blackbirds. . .have of cyberspaces. . . ( Dickens, qtd. in Thomas 56 ) . The marginality of thesechildren is confirmed by their poorness, their instruction, their societal category, and their age ; what makes the societal judgement against them concluding is the fact that they have no adultrepresentative to talk for them within the system. Without a voice believable to society, they have no chance to specify themselves beyond that marginality, so they create asubculture that re-confirms their ain individuality within & # 8211 ; and despite & # 8211 ; their fringy position. The fringy position of the kids discussed in Children in Early Modern Englandrelates them to the Godhead: & # 8230 ; kids [ were ] perceived as guiltless and good and madeinto a focal point of attending ( 46 ) in malice of the fact that they were besides. . .thought toepitomize original wickedness ( 45 ) . Children are born into this universe inexperienced person and pure even inthe face of original wickedness. Those encouraged to develop ground, to interact socially, and tomaintain beauty reflect that which is guiltless and pure ; those unfortunate plenty to existoutside the boundaries of acceptable society become the incarnation of original wickedness: unmanageable wretches making upon rocks in the Churche ( 57 ) . Society examinedthe gender functions of kids in the same visible radiation ; misss, the beginning of wickedness and damnation, wereexpected to hone themselves socially and morally, while male childs, free of the discoloration of guiltover the human status, were at times even encouraged to force the bounds of normalsocial drama and behaviour. The focal point of society splits to include both the devilishand the Godhead, the pure and the stained ; alternatively of acknowledging that these double oppositionsrevolve around each other, society creates absolute definitions. The ideals of Romanticism influenced the manner society depicted and dealt withchildren. The thought of the Godhead, romantic kid became the new focal point by whichsociety interpreted itself and its systems. Children were seen to hold. . . qualities whichmake [ them ] Godlike, tantrum to be worshipped, . . . the incarnation of hope ( Cunningham78 ) . Children. . . [ had ] the glow and artlessness of reinstated deity. . . ( Ruskin, qtd. in Cunningham 76 ) , they were. . .still fresh with the dew of heaven.. . ( 76 ) . In thisworld position, [ c ] childhood was. . .a particular clip of life in which gender was no longerstressed as an property ; instead it was the childly quality of the kid which needed to bepreserved ( 75 ) . The increased tensenesss of a freshly industrialized society created in adultsa yearning for the freedom and phantasy of childhood, which developed into a socializednostalgia for a return to childhood and nature [ , ] which was cardinal to the romanticvision ( 74 ) . In this societal system, there are no absolute differentiations between the goodchild and the bad kid ; the hapless kid, like Oliver Twist, is to be pitied ( 74 ) , the bad childis to be encouraged to be good. An idealisation of childhood does non intend that childrenwere removed from the boundary of the fringy ; if anything, they became more so as thelink between pure deity and infantile artlessness began to be explored: Mighty prophesier! Seer blest, / On whom all truths do rest/ Which we are laboring all our lives to happen ( Wordsworth, qtd. in Cunningham 78 ) . Children hold the voice of the Godhead in theirinnocence ; merely by associating to the keener perceptual experiences ( 73 ) of kids can adults trust toavoid going dried up and embittered ( 73 ) as the experience and labor of life degradesand corrupts them. However, the keener perceptual experiences ( 73 ) of kids made them more susceptibleto traversing the line between society and the Godhead and fringy: Small Black Marias are to betaken ( 76 ) . God values these small Black Marias, bargains them off from society to preservetheir pureness, but at the same clip taking that which society needs to keep and regainits artlessness and pureness. The act of decease frees and maintains the pureness of the souls ofchildren, go forthing society to get by with and turn from the world of mortality. The littlewatercress miss discussed in London Labour and The London Poor who. . .had entirelylost all of [ her ] infantile ways. . . ( 64 ) symbolizes the dichotomy between experience andinnocence. Despite her age and visual aspect, the miss. . .was, so, in all ideas andmanner, a adult female ( 64 ) , a being trapped between childhood and maturity, unable tostand on either side of the line. Alternatively of stand foring the immoralities of society, the

marginality of this child-woman defi

nes her as the essence of adult experience: at eight,she has endured poverty, the responsibilities of motherhood, physical abuse, hunger, andlabor (66-67). Her declaration of I ain t a child (68) inspires pity, Christian charity,and a renewed sense of social responsibility. The children in The Turn of The Screw form a bridge between the socialexpectation of goodness stemming from beauty and the innate corruption of the soul. Inthe beginning of this tale of delicious (James 2) horror, the governess is encouraged tobelieve that the physical beauty of both Flora and Miles is a reflection of theirtranscendence above ordinary mortals: See him, miss, first. Then believe it. . . .Youmight as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her. . . look at her (10). Mrs. Grose sconnection of physical beauty to the marginal is no accident; these children are so perfectlyformed that they exist outside the normal boundaries of right and wrong. The governessmistakenly equates their beauty with goodness when she assumes that Mrs. Grose has never known [Miles] (11) to do wrong, following social patterns that demand thatbeauty and ugliness be equated with their obvious characteristics. The divinity of Milesand Flora is not a radiance of peace and innocence, as in the Romantic vision of childhood;it is, rather, a reflection of the duality between human and divine, society and marginality,that is generally and conveniently ignored. Other evidence of the otherworldly qualities exists in the children s ability toentrance, to mystify, those around them; they become partly symbolic of the corruptiveelement of the universe, although not of man. They have the ability to corrupt but are notnecessarily corrupted themselves. The governess, blinded by . . .the vision of . . .angelicbeauty (7-8) that was Flora and the passion of tenderness (13) she felt for Miles, wasthrown off [her] guard (14) into a trap . . .to [her] imagination, to [her] delicacy,perhaps to [her] vanity; to whatever. . .was most excitable (14) that the childrenengineered. She feels charm[ed] (14) by Miles and sees the childish light (11) radiatedby Flora even as she recognizes the possibility that they have the ability To contaminate.. . [and]. . . [t]o corrupt (12). The marginal status of Flora and Miles is further supported by their ability toremain untouched, unstained, despite their actions. They seem to have no center ofmorality, no ruler by which to judge their actions: They were like the cherubs of theanecdote, who had– morally, at any rate–nothing to whack! (19), untouched by thenormal restraints and restrictions of mainstream society. Even as the governess wondersat their ability to corrupt, she notices the remarkable state of their personal purity: [they]struck me as beginning anew each day (19). Time has not made these children slaves;they [have] never for a second suffered (10) the human indignities of guilt, uncertainty,remorse, and fear because they are above them. It is their casual approach to the spiritsthat finally convinces the governess of their marginality: They know– it s toomonstrous: they know, they know! (29). That the children can look through the finalmarginality of death and not face fear is proof of their divine, marginal status; they do nothave the natural, human, aversions to contact with and evidence of the non-corporealrealm. The governess in The Turn of the Screw recognizes that the spirits are not forher– [They] had come for someone else (20)– but she does not understand the natureof those spirits. She instinctively sees them as a threat to Miles and Flora, and determinesto the last to protect them. By the end of the novella, she is able to understand therelationship between Godly and Devilish, and she recognizes the ambiguity and blurrinessof words such as divine and infernal (66). They are human terms that speak ofpowers higher than humanity and are equally interchangeable: the Devil can be and usuallyis charming and irresistible, and God is simultaneously punisher and redeemer. Even though she can recognize the duality and ambiguity of human nature, thegoverness is unable to shake her impression that the possession of Miles and Flora canbe anything but evil. Determined to end forever the connection Miles and Flora have withthe marginal, she separates them and attempts to get them to admit to their obsessions. When Miles loses the connection to Peter Quint, he loses his connection to the onlysystem that had ever supported him. The children walked in a world of their invention (28) and lived freely by the rules of that world. Their subculture, if you will, created forthem a place where they could be free of the toils, burdens, humiliations and uncertaintiesof adult reality; they live in the world between fantasy and reality, the world that theRomantics envisioned when they experienced their nostalgic reliving of childhood. Although a creature of earth and heaven, Miles can t bridge the gap alone; when Quintdeparts, . . .[Miles] uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss. . .and his littleheart, dispossessed, stopped (87). Little hearts are to be taken (Cunningham 76),only this time God didn t do the choosing. A human act of interference with the divinecan only be corrupt, and while Miles is freed to pursue his spirits and fantasies, both thegoverness and the reader are left with the uncertainties of human experience. The fate of Flora is never known, leaving the reader in a position that can only bedescribed as ambiguous and marginal in itself, despite the textual claims that [t]here wasno ambiguity in anything (James 28). The visions that the governess witnesss andmisinterprets are, even to her human eyes, alarmingly clear. It is the normal world ofmortal experience that appears fuzzy and blurred in relation to a vision of the divine. Theclarity that comes from a text such as The Turn of the Screw is one that results in facingambiguity and marginality without adult inhibitions and fears. Miles and Flora are representative of the uncanny link between adult perceptions of a harsh reality andchildlike aloofness to that reality; even in their death Miles and Flora embrace theirfantasy, leaving the adults to mourn, grow, and learn.