The Cat’s Meow: Coraline’s Self-Identification Through Her Animal Double

Introduction 

In the early 1900s, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure delivered lectures to his students at the University of Geneva. In his General Linguistics course, de Saussure focused on language (langage) as a system of signs and ideas. De Saussure theorized that langage could be broken down into two main ideas; the first component of langage—the langue—refers to the abstract or theoretical form of a language, while the second component—the parole—identifies the way that the abstract is used in practice. This theoretical-versus-practical binary carries down into the linguist’s identification of a single linguistic unit: the signe or “sign.” The sign is a double entity made up of the signifier (signifiant) and the signified (signifié).

De Saussure’s langage and the concept of the sign both reflect a notion of duality: without one half, the other half cannot exist. These dual halves oppose and reflect each other and yet, must coexist so that the product—in de Saussure’s case, linguistic communication—can also exist. In his own theoretical ways, Carl Jung identified a similar binary in the human psyche: the shadow, or “shadow aspect.” This shadow serves to complete a person’s identity: the shadow inhabits and consists of the darkness of Man—his animalism, his anger, his fear—without which no individual is complete. In Saussurian terms, the individual body is the signifié—a body serving the purpose of a concept. Without a shadow serving the role of the signifiant, however, the material body is incomplete and meaningless.

The struggle for meaning is a recurring trope in behavioral psychology, and so these ideas of self-identification can often be found in fields that reflect psychological understanding. In the field of young adult literature, for example, the coming of age novel, or Bildungsroman, often puts a protagonist in an environment where they must struggle against odds to find out who they, themselves, truly are. These quests for self-identification often come by means of travel: Lewis Carrol’s Alice falls through a rabbit hole and must discover herself in the absurd world of Wonderland; C.S. Lewis’s Lucy and her siblings walk through a wardrobe and must discover truth in a world unlike their own; Philip Pullman’s Lyra Belaqua and Will Parry cut their way into parallel universes in a quest to discover their own sexual and psychological identities.

In his essay, “An Eye for an I: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Questions of Identity,” David Rudd uses Freudian theory to examine the way symbols and devices in the world of Coraline help the titular character discover her own place in the world. This essay seeks to achieve similar goals, but with different materials. Whereas Rudd examine symbols and the ways in which Gaiman’s writing reflects Coraline’s self-identification process, this essay will examine the way Coraline—as a signifié—is made whole by the signifiers in the world around her and the world that reflects her own. Structurally, the essay will examine the “real world,” then elements of the “other world,” and finally examine the way elements of the story exist in the liminal space of the two worlds.

Coraline and the Residents of the House

The work of characterization in a novel is rarely achieved by listing a character’s physical and mental traits. Instead, the reader knows that the eight-year-old girl is an eight-year-old girl because she acts like one, is treated like one, or is identified as one by elements in the story (such as other characters, or by the character themselves). Gaiman’s Coraline uses an interesting mechanism to give his characters identity: the empty flat. The big old house in which Coraline lives is shared with her neighbors: Miss Spink and Miss Forcible live below Coraline “with a number of ageing Highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock” (Gaiman 3); a “crazy old man with a big mustache” (4)—we later learn he is named “Mr. Bobo”—lives above Coraline with his mouse circus. Coraline and her parents have just moved into an empty flat in the center of the house that sits parallel to a (supposedly) empty flat on the other side. Coraline finds that the passages between her flat and the neighboring, empty flat have been bricked-up, and it is inaccessible to her when her mother unlocks the door for her.

For Coraline, this world is one in which she is ignored. As Rudd notes in his discussion, “Coraline’s boredom and loneliness are beautifully captured when she represents her state on paper for her mother. She writes the word “mist” thus…[with] the “I,” significantly dropped out…. Coraline is clearly the lonely “I” which, punning on the word above, is not missed (i.e. she is overlooked)” (Rudd 160). Coraline’s loneliness is shown in the way she acts around her parents: she frequently attempts to be involved in her parents’ daily lives, but she is rejected each time: her mother suggests she “read a book…watch a video. Play with your toys. Go and pester Miss Spink or Miss Forcible, or the crazy man upstairs” (Gaiman 6) and her father gives her pen and paper and sends her off to “count all the doors and windows. List everything blue. Mount an expedition to discover the hot water tank. And leave me alone to work” (7). When Coraline’s parents are kidnapped, their plea for her to help them is literally backwards (57), because of the mirror, but would also seem backward because it is the parents who should be protecting the child, not vice-versa. In Coraline’s eyes, her parents ignore her and want nothing to do with her.

Her neighbors aren’t much better (not that they have any responsibility to be better than her parents). Miss Spink and Forcible, and Mr. Bobo all repeatedly call the young girl “Caroline,” despite Coraline’s corrections. Even though they entertain her, Miss Spink and Forcible ultimately ignore Coraline’s problems: on page 19, “Coraline wondered if they’d forgotten she was there” and on page 50, they ignore Coraline when she tells them that her parents have gone missing. Even though Coraline is very interested in his project, Mr. Bobo won’t show his mouse circus to Coraline because they aren’t playing their instruments correctly (4).

In the early stages of the novel, and up until the point where she returns to her own world to stay, the world for Coraline is one of isolation and neglect. The world is only this way for Coraline, however, because she has not yet come into an understanding of who she is. As Rudd demonstrates in his “mist” example, Coraline is either “refusing to be contained by the mist (insisting on her independence)” or she wants “to be a part of it, having the mist descend and embrace, or envelop her” (Rudd 160). Coraline reveals her craving for individualization in her desire for the Day-Glo green gloves that her mother refuses to buy for her (Gaiman 23) and yet still seeks the company and approval of her parents and neighbors. Coraline fashions herself as an “explorer” and spends plenty of time outside discovering her new home, and inside cataloguing doors, windows, and blue things. Coraline’s actions and desires show, rather than tell, that she is in search of herself.

Because she has not achieved a stage of self-realization, though, she is ignorant to the fact that she is not as alone as she believes herself to be. While it is true that her parents are busy with work, Coraline doesn’t actually seem to know what it is they do: she knows that “both her parents worked, doing things on computers,” (7) but there is no indication of what kind of computer work it is that they do. Coraline’s mother buys school clothes for Coraline that she does not like, but they could very likely be based on the uniform of her new school. When her parents ask for help in the mirror, they aren’t just asking her to do something that reverses their parental role with their child—they are trusting her to be capable of saving them.

Coraline’s ignorance extends to her neighbors, as well. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible both warn her of the danger facing the child, but she ignores the warnings in her tea leaves and wonders “who they thought they were talking to” (20). Additionally, even though Miss Spink and Forcible give Coraline a tool that could help her in the “other” world—the stone with a hole in the middle—she fails to recognize its value until she has run out of other options. Coraline shows prejudice against Mr. Bobo and his mouse circus by calling him a “crazy old man,” and she doesn’t even recognize that he has a name until she has already returned from the “other” house for the final time (155).

In her own world—her “real” world—Coraline is incomplete. She is parole without the langue; she is the signifié without the ability provided by the signifiant to understand the world. In her developmental stages, as described, Coraline understands herself as a person would understand a word that is completely foreign to them: the word is clearly there, and surely it means something, but without the signifiant—without the other half of its dual nature—it can mean nothing yet.


Coraline and the Other Residents

When Coraline crosses through the threshold into the “other” house, Coraline finds herself in a world not unlike her own. “The carpet beneath her feet was the same carpet they had in her flat. The wallpaper was the same wallpaper they had. The picture hanging in the wall was the same that they had hanging in their hallway at home. She knew where she was: she was in her own home. She hadn’t left” (Gaiman 27). Coraline learns, of course, that this other house is not the same as her own. The concept of “other”—here, a house—appears in many science fiction stories as the “alternate universe” or “parallel reality.” This “other” house exists beside her own and seems the same, but it is widely different.

The “other” residents are physically different because they all have buttons in the place of their eyes, but the more extreme differences that Coraline recognizes is in their personalities. Her “other” mother is attentive (overly so), her “other” father can cook food that easily rivals her real father’s food. The “other” Spink and Forcible are young and aerobic. The other Mr. Bobo doesn’t seem as fun-crazy as the real one—also, he plays with rats that sing menacing songs, instead of mice that play instruments. These other residents are interesting to Coraline in a way that the real residents are not—and they get her name right, every time. The “other” residents are all opposites of their “real” selves, and for Coraline, this seems appealing.

In a linguistic sense, however, these residents are no different from their “real world” counterparts. They all still represent a single half of a whole. It is merely because Coraline met the “real” beings first that she recognizes these new ones as different. That being said, the signifié is actually Coraline’s concept of the “real” character, and the signifiant develops with Coraline’s experience of the other. Because Coraline meets both versions of the characters in the house, she is able to use experience to create a fully understood idea of who they are.

At this stage of Coraline’s coming-of-age, a linguistic interpretation would identify “youthful ignorance” as the signifié and “experience” as the signifiant. By learning more, Coraline can imagine Miss Spink and Forcible as being the actresses that they remember being. Experience lets Coraline realize that, while training a mouse circus is certainly interesting, there may be something secretly frightening about a man who locks himself away and speaks to vermin. Coraline learns to respect her father’s attempt to cook for her, even if it isn’t good, and she appreciates her mother even more when she is replaced by the dangerous and terrifying “other mother.”


Coraline and the Beldam

Coraline’s relationship with this “other mother” however, is particularly interesting, because she inhabits two very specific roles. Her first role, as the “other mother,” is the same as the other “other” characters: she, like the others, serves as a Jungian “shadow” reflection for the “real world” counterparts. This shadow role is not necessarily dangerous, because it serves to promote Coraline’s growth—by dealing with the “other mother,” Coraline develops a closer attachment and appreciation for her own parent.

The other mother’s other role, however, is truly dangerous and terrifying. In the role of the “beldam[i]” (as she is named in the 2009 film adaptation of Coraline), the other mother has the power to create and manipulate elements of the “other” world, as well as the power to capture the souls of the innocent. While the ability to create is one that is held by mothers—and even their ability to create life requires the assistance of male influence—the ability to capture the souls and memories of children is not a typical motherly trait.

Because she fulfills this otherworldly, non-mother role, the beldam must be a different type of sign. In this other world, the beldam is like a god. She has created the world and fills it with things for her own desire, and yet despite her ability to create, she does not have complete control of the actions of her creations; she cannot affect free will. When Coraline encounters the beldam, she is encountering a psyche-half of a god-type character (the other half of which, according to a Judeo-Christian understanding of the celestial, can never be known).

The beldam creates a world that is everything a person could want, without reservation. This world lacks necessity and responsibility, however. In the beldam’s world, Coraline can have anything she wants, and she can do anything she wants. The price of staying in this world is high, though; as the beldam says, “Mirrors…are never to be trusted” (77). The children who choose to stay in this world have willingly chosen to never return to their real world. In doing so, they give up their signifié and corporeal bodies. With their bodies, they lose their memories as well and—in essence—become nothing but vague warnings for the next child. Something keeps Coraline from making the same mistake as the children before her, though: “I have no plans to love you,” she tells the beldam. “No matter what. You can’t make me love you” (77). Coraline not only manages to return to her own world, but she saves the souls of the three lost children, and her parents, as well. So what exactly is it that gives Coraline the strength to survive her ordeal?


Coraline and the Cat

The answer to that question, it seems, can be found stalking around the grounds, and walking between worlds: the cat. Coraline has no double in the “other” world, a fact which she, herself, recognizes: “Was there an other Coraline? No, she realized, there wasn’t. There was just her” (69). Coraline, because she has not yet achieved an adult self of realization, is able to travel between the worlds. The children must’ve also been able to make the journey, but somehow they were not able to make it back. The black cat that Coraline finds on the grounds of the real world follows her into the “other world,” though, so how is it that the cat can travel, too? Other animals have their “other world” counterparts: the mice have rat counterparts and even the terriers have their thespian doubles, so why not this cat?

In her 2004 lecture, “Cheek by Jowl: Animals in Children’s Literature,” writer and critic Ursula K. Le Guin examines the roles that animals play in young adult novels. Section VII, “Fables and Psychic Fragments” is an examination of stories like Coraline in which humans take a central role and animals take the form of support. In Le Guin’s discussion, she talks about the cats in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy: “The two cats in the story, who have a minor but important role, do what cats have often done in myth and fable: they cross between worlds” (Le Guin 101). World crossing cats aren’t the only similarity between Gaiman and Pullman’s work, however. The daemons in His Dark Materials, according to Le Guin, are somehow connected to a person’s maturity: “Until you reach puberty your daemon may take any animal shape at any moment; with your sexual maturity your daemon settles into a permanent form, always of the other gender” (101). For Coraline, the cat serves much the same purpose as Pullman’s daemons. “They are fragments or images of the human psyche given animal shape” (Le Guin 102).

Coraline’s cat does not change shape, but it is unmistakably similar in function to Pullman’s daemons. When the cat speaks for the first time, its voice sounds “like the voice at the back of Coraline’s head, the voice she thought words in, but a man’s voice, not a girl’s” (Gaiman 35). The cat offers advice to Coraline as a form of reflection, and even when it’s not talking, Coraline is still able to derive meaning from him. The cat has no name and tells Coraline, “now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are” (37). This implies that the cat needs no name because he already knows who he is. The cat represents a form of self-awareness that Coraline desperately needs, and without it she would never have been able to escape from the beldam’s world.

If the cat is Coraline’s key to self-awareness, and indeed serves the role of Coraline’s shadow, her signifiant, then she literally embraces her identity before encountering the beldam: “She went back to the cat, bent down, and picked it up. The cat did not resist. It simply trembled. She supported its bottom with one hand, rested its front legs on her shoulders. The cat was heavy but not too heavy to carry” (125). Coraline carries the weight of her identity and impending adulthood—a weight which is “not too heavy”—and confronts the beldam. Coraline then literally throws her identity—the cat—right into the face of the beldam (131) before escaping back to reality with the souls of the lost children, and the lives of her parents who remember nothing.


Conclusions

After Coraline escapes, the rest of the pieces fall into place. Coraline learns Mr. Bobo’s name, she returns the stone to Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and yet, there is still something amiss. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible seem to have difficulty reading Coraline’s tea leaves: “Oh dear. No, I have no idea what that signifies. It looks almost like a hand” (Gaiman 151, my italics). Because Miss Spink and Miss Forcible do not share Coraline’s experience, they cannot fully identify the meaning of the sign in the cup—they have the signifié, but lack the signifiant in this situation. Coraline’s experience allows her to combine the two parts and understand the sign, here, though, and so she is able to defeat the beldam’s hand. This final episode shows that, no matter how much experience a person has (such as the aged Spink and Forcible), there are always things one can never fully grasp (like the hand). Coraline was able to understand signs by looking at their completed form, and in doing so achieved a fuller sense of who she was, herself. Coraline succeeds where the other children could not because she embraces who she is, and in doing so, Coraline proves the importance of self-identification, but also warns that the process of self-identification is never truly done.

Works Cited

De Saussure, Ferdinand. Writings in General Linguistics. ED. Simon Bouqyet and Rudolf Engler. Trans. Carol Sanders and Matthew Pires. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2002. Print.

Le Guin, Ursula K. Cheek By Jowl: Talks & Essays on How & Why Fantasy Matters. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2009. (pg 43-108). Print.

Rudd, David. “An Eye For An I: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline And Questions Of Identity.” Children’s Literature in Education 39.3 (2008): 159-168. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

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[i] I use the term “beldam” here in the hope that another name for the character can eliminate the confusion between the “other mother” as a mother-shadow, and the “other mother” as a representation of some unknown god-like force. “Beldam” comes from an archaic term meaning “witch” or “hag,” and may have connection to John Keats’s ballad, “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” The children souls in the film adaptation refer to the other mother as such.

Meaning Through Language, Story, and Discourse: A Comparative Analysis Between the Structure of "The Wife of Bath’s Tale" and "The Tale of Florent"

        The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer and The Tale of Florent by John Gower, both tell the story of a knight’s quest to answer a question: What is it that women desire most? Both stories come to the same conclusions and share multiple aspects of plot, but despite these similarities the tales exhibit different reactions in the reader. Chaucer and Gower share an almost identical discourse in their tales, yet there are elements within the writing, itself, that turn these quests into two very different stories. Through-out the discourse of this essay, I will attempt to show that (1) the narrative flow of these stories can be broken down into a genre-form and explained formulaically while at the same time (2) delineating from the formula to reveal opposing binary themes of public vs. personal ideals (3) which is done through careful word choice and structure.

            Before continuing, I must first bring definition to some of the ideas that will be presented here. In any form of literature there is a distinct difference between the discourse and the story. The discourse of a story refers to what is actually written. In the terms of this essay, I shall henceforth refer to the discourse of the works in question in terms of their plot points. The story, however, refers to the entirety of the work, including that which is not actually written. The story, therefore, brings in the reader’s inferences (based on textual knowledge) on what is not on the page, such as background details, the political influences of the characters, and even the intertextuality between the narrators and the place of the narrator’s character within their own work (Alisoun, in Chaucer; Genius, in Gower). It is also important for the reader to understand my meanings of “public” and “personal”. Public refers to the way the tale displays a self-conscious need to recognize the importance of public affairs and the way that that need would impact the story. The personal, on the other hand, is an emotive approach that emphasizes the way the story creates lessons and ideas through characterization; the personal approach will also characterize the narrator of the tale in a way that the public approach cannot. The personal and public approaches provide different readings to each tale, and are therefore important to consider herein. With terms thus explained, we shall move on to my first point.

        (1) Narrative flow can be broken down into genre-form and explained formulaically. A genre, in terms of literature, is a simplistic category into which texts can be broken down and grouped together based on form, style, and subject matter. By breaking down The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Tale of Florent, I have been able to identify the main identifying features of each tale, and listed them into a sort of flow chart:

Knight commits a “crime” à Knight is held accountable à An authoritative female intervenes à Quest is assignedà Knight finds answer with help of old woman à Knight is pardoned because of his correct answer à Knight lays with his new wife, who gives him a choice à Knight gives sovereignty to wife àWife transforms àThey live happily ever after

This chart can be broken down into even simpler terms now:

ProblemàQuestàComplicationàComplication SolvedàQuest ContinuesàQuest Completed with Lesson Learned from ComplicationàHappily Ever After

Each tale’s discourse relies on the same narrative plot points. This discourse closely resembles the form of a fairy tale: the knight must go through a redemptive process by fulfilling a request, and when faced with a hardship, he makes a clever decision based on what he has learned on his quest in order to fix the problem, and live happily ever after. Now, as far as the importance of these similarities goes, that’s about as important as it is going to get: The similarities are important in so far as they reveal the way each writer is writing about the same material. I could expand on the way that these tales are similar, but the important bit is that they are structurally similar enough to exist inside the same genre. The plots are similar, the characters are similar, and the problems are similar, so it should be safe to assume that the messages are similar, right?

            Unfortunately, by simplifying these tales into a genre-form, we exclude the details of the delineations, and if we fail to recognize these differences, then we will also fail to realize that the messages are not, in fact, similar at all. To elaborate, think of a fairy tale that would fit this genre. Let’s use “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example: Red, (the ‘knight’) is on her way to her grandmother’s house (the ‘quest’), when she encounters a wolf (the ‘complication’). She manages to escape the wolf, and continue to her grandmother’s house, but when she gets there, she discovers that the wolf is pretending to be her grandmother (and thus the quest is solved with knowledge gained from the complication). The woodsman chops up the wolf and they live happily ever after. “Little Red” has many variant forms, but the framework is still there. By breaking the tale down into parts, however, we lose the main point: the moral theme.

This brings us to my second point: (2) delineating from the formula reveals the opposing binary themes. In “Little Red”, we learn not to talk to strangers, or we can learn to trust our instincts, or we could learn any number of things, depending on how the tale is told. In Gower’s tale, Genius reports on the “facts” of the story which reveal the effects of social standing and morality in the tale. In Chaucer’s tale, the narrator Alisoun uses narrative digressions from the plot line in her telling to reveal aspects of the plot that make it a tale that is more about the personality of the fairy tale. Because each tale is told using delineations and differences from the basic plot structure, different themes can be created.

            Let’s look, first, at Gower’s tale: The Tale of Florent has a complex structure that relies solely on ‘reporting’ the details of the story until the very end, where Genius speaks directly to Amant in order to deliver the moral of the story. In this report of Florent’s quest, we can pick up on the specifics of the story. Refer back to the narrative flow-chart. Florent (the knight in this tale) is guilty of accidentally killing Branchus, the son of the land’s ruler. Though Branchus’s parents want revenge, they cannot simply kill him, due to his social standing (as the emperor’s nephew). The “grantdame” therefore tasks him with finding out “What alle wommen most desire.” (pg.2). This bit of social commentary differs severely from Chaucer’s version in which the (unnamed) knight is guilty of raping a girl. Alisoun (The “wife of Bath”) tells a personal story, rather than simply reporting the details. In addition, by leaving the knight nameless, his personality can be applied to connect with anyone (whereas, assigning the name “Florent”, the connection is lost). When Alisoun’s knight is being given his task, Alisoun takes great stride to point out many of the answers that the knight receives on his quest. This view provides insight on the types of things that a woman (Like Alisoun herself) might desire. By placing a focus on these feminine details, rather than on the sociopolitical commentary, Chaucer’s tale becomes much more personal than Gower’s.

            Chaucer also uses an interesting narrative device to add more personality to his tale. The Wife digresses in her tale, which is to say that she breaks away from the main tale to report on details of another tale. The intertextuality that Chaucer uses, specifically in the wife’s digression about Ovid’s tale about Midas (ll. 952-82), provides a feel to the text, giving it properties of a story actually being told. In addition, if we look closely at Alisoun’s report on the tale of Midas, she seems to purposefully misreport details, taking the role of Midas’s confidant away from the barber (In Ovid’s tale), and giving it, instead, to Midas’s wife. It is the wife, in Alisoun’s report, that cannot keep the secret about Midas’s “two asses eres.” The wife’s focus on women was also metatextually represented earlier in lines 925-34, when she described the way in which some women answered the knight’s question:

Somme seyde women loven best richesse,

Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse,

Somme riche array, somme seyde lust abedde,

And oftetyme to be wydwe and wedde.

Somme seyde that oure hertes been moost esed

Whan that we been yflatered and yplesed.

He gooth ful ny the soothe, I wol nat lye.

A man shal wynne us best with flaterye,

And with attendance and with bisynesse

Been we ylymed, both moore and lesse.

Alisoun begins speaking in third person terms (“somme seyde”), but then, whether intentional or not, she slips into the first person (“oure hertes”, “that we been”). Genius, in Gower’s tale, never breaks into the first person in this manner, which keeps his personality out of the telling.

            Building off of that last point, I will now steer us toward my final point: that the binary themes of public vs. personal are achieved through (3) careful word choice and structure. We’ve already touched on this point when looking at the way the wife of Bath breaks into first-person terms. Let’s look even closer now, and examine the actual writing style of these two different tales. Both Gower and Chaucer’s tales use structured meter in a way that emphasizes the binary oppositions. Gower’s tale is written in Rime Royal (iambic tetrameter with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme). The effect of this form gives the tale a formalistic sound. Just as the “grantdame” is conscious of the political ‘audience’ she has, and the way Genius is sensitive to the duty of reporting on the story, without personal influence, Gower is intent on using the rigid form to progress the tale. Chaucer’s tale, however, uses couplets written in iambic pentameter to push his narrative along. This style gives the tale more “bounce”, if you will, and keeps the tale lively and personal. The iambic pentameter, which prevails through the tale, is used to allow emotive personality to exist, in place of self-conscious textual awareness.

        Looking even closer than the specific line structure, we can even pick up on the themes by examining the use of verb voices. Let’s compare the “grantdame” (Gower) to her Chaucerian equivalent, the Queen. When speaking to Florent, the grantdame uses passive constructions: “thou stoned in juggement”, “There schal non other thing availe,/ That thou ne schalt thi deth receive.” (pg.2) These constructions reflect Genius’s passive role in reporting the story. The Queen, however, uses active constructions: “I grante thee lyf, if thou canst tellen me…yet wol I yeve thee leve for to gon” (ll.904-908). These active constructions imply impulsiveness and a sort of on-the-fly storytelling, which characterizes Alisoun’s personal influence on the story. The techniques of voice control exhibited by the character speakers reflect, doubly, upon the writers of the stories, themselves.

Gower à Genius à Grantdame 

Chaucer à Alisoun à The Queen

Gower writes in a passive, reporting way, and so Genius narrates that the Grantdame speaks in a passive, reporting way. Likewise, Chaucer writes in an active way, and therefore tells the story of Alisoun who is actively telling a story about a Queen who speaks in an active manner. The differences between the passive and active, and therefore public versus personal are then linguistically called back directly to the author himself.

            To help demonstrate what this all means, let’s look at dialogue from each tale:

Gowerà Geniusà Grantdame (page 2)

Chaucerà Alisounà The Queen (lines 902-12)

“Florent, how so thou be to wyte Of Branchus deth, men schal respite As now to take vengement, Be so thou stoned in juggement Upon certein condicioun, That thou unto a questioun Which I schal axe schalt ek swere, That if thou of the soothe faile, There schal non other thing availe, That thou ne schalt thi deth receive. And for men schal thee noght deceive, That thou therof myht ben avised, Thou schalt have day and tyme assised And leve saufly for to wende, Be so that at thi daies ende Thou come agein with thin avys.” … And seith: “Florent, on love it hongeth Al that to myn axinge longeth: What alle wommen most desire This wole I axe, and in th’empire Wher as thou hast most knowlechinge Tak conseil upon this axinge.”

“Thou standest yet,” quod she, “in swich array That of thy lyf yet hastow no suretee. I grante thee lyf, if thou kanst tellen me What thing is it that wommen moost desiren. Be war, and keep thy nekke-boon from iren! And if thou kanst nat tellen it anon, Yet wol  yeve thee leve for to gon A twelf-month and a day, to seche and leere And answere suffisant in this mateere; And suretee wol I han, er that thou pace, Thy body for to yelden in this place.”

The two speakers are essentially saying the same thing. I have highlighted the sections that correspond between the passages in different colors. Now we can apply my numbered argument to the two dialogues: 

The Tale of Florent

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

1) Grantdame says:  Florent has committed crimeàI will ask a questionàYou’ll die if you don’t answeràYou have time to look for an answeràWhat do all women desire? 2) The way that the grantdame arranges her words makes it more formal. She states the crime, then punishment. She reveals the conditions that will allow him to repent, and the amount of time he has to do so. And then she concludes with his task. The grantdame’s dialogue reveals nothing of her character, but, instead, gives a ‘show’ for the court. 3) Gower writes in passive constructions, which comments on the way Genius narrates the way the grantdame speaks. Things happen to Florent in a very consequential manner, and those consequences are laid out in the grantdame’s speech.

1) The Queen says: Knight has committed crimeàI will ask a questionàWhat do all women desire? à You’ll die if you don’t answeràYou have time to look for an answer 2) The way that the Queen arranges her words makes it more personal. She states the crime, but then immediately tells what the knight can do to repent. Then she warns him to be careful, and closes by letting him know that he has some time to answer the question. The dialogue’s arrangement gives more character and emotion, and acts in a more informal tone. 3) Chaucer writes in active constructions, which comments on the way Alisoun narrates the way the Queen speaks. The knight has done things, and he must do things in order to save himself. He’s spoken about actively, and it is his activity that will save his life.

By comparing the two texts in this manner, one can graphically see the way that language, story, and discourse can affect the theme of a story. Though the tales are similar in base-structure, the differences in the structures create two entirely different stories. In addition, the minute word choices which differ create solid founding for the implication that they are, indeed, told in different manners. The Tale of Florent and The Wife of Bath’s Tale appear, in basic terms, but the only way they could truly be the same, is to remove the language from them. In truth and closing, the only way they could be the same, is if they were, in every aspect of language exactly the same.

Bibliography

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 105-22.

Gower, John. “The Tale of Florent.” Confessio Amantis vol.1. Ed. Russell A. Peck. Trans. Andrew Galloway. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000.

It Can Wait

            “So where do you want to go before prom?”

            We were walking to lunch; class had just ended. Spring was making its first real appearance, and all was calm. L was excited that I had asked her out to prom. She wasn't even going to go that year, but since I asked, then of course she would go. She, like most of the girls in my class, was head-over-heels in love with me. It was only a few weeks before prom, and I had never heard my fun-sized girlfriend talk so fast. As usual, I had other things on my mind, so I wasn't really hearing what she had to say… which would be why she smacked my arm.

            “Are you even listening to me?”

            I nodded my head, and suggested a nice restaurant that wasn't so nice that our wallets would be ravaged. There were plenty of cheap places in our small country area, but of course the prom itself would be held out of the area. This meant, to me, an annoying amount of planning: finding somewhere to eat, making reservations, finding directions on how to actually get there. She continued talking after that, but I still had other things on my mind.

For as long as I could remember, it had been like that. Overly excited girl, plus a sweet, loving, nicer-than-he-should-be me, equals one of the cutest couples ever. I had been nominated for homecoming king for two years now, and was on the ballot for prom, as well. People liked me well enough. As long as I kept playing their game, their way, I would be fine.

            The major downside to this equation, however, is that I have never actually been interested in that way. I've known for quite some time that I’m not like most guys. I’m simply not that interested in girls. I mean, most of my best friends are girls. I often found myself liking a girl a lot, and being really great best friends with her, and then she would want to start dating. Of course, I would date her.

            There I would be, time and time again, romantically involved with this girl that I only had feelings of friendship toward, rather than feelings of love. Inevitably, the girl would get upset because I didn't want to make-out, or feel her breasts, or have sex with her.

It just wasn't in me.

            It was at an early age that I discovered how hateful people could really be. I didn't grow up in a bad part of town, just a part where people all shared the same opinions. The community would always get along well, as long as no one challenged their ideas. A peaceful, conservative, white Christian community. That’s what I grew up with.

            I remember times when people would cause trouble. A black person might try to join our church, or a scandal might arise where so-and-so slept with the wife of a different so-and-so. The harshness of my community would deal with these people. One time specifically, the father of one of my friends tried to buy out a bunch of land to build some sort of complex. The community caused such an uproar, that it turned out I couldn’t see my friend any longer.

            Times like those made me realize that my community would rather base their judgments on ideas that others have. No individual person ever had an idea unless they asked their neighbors what they thought first. I couldn’t take that. I knew inside that I was different from these people. I knew that I couldn't just stand by and let hate and bigotry control me like it did those people. I hated the way they thought and acted. Because of their actions, I formed very strong opinions on justice and fairness. It also gave me a sense of fear: a fear that I would be shunned for being different. And no one was more different or less tolerated than gays….

            “Move it, faggot!” Someone gave me a shove, in a hurry to get to lunch. I glared at him running ahead of us.

            “You know he wasn't saying anything about you, right?” L asked me, looking up at me. I just shrugged. Yeah, I know. It’s just one of those terms people use without thinking.

Gays, Faggots, Homos, Pansies, and Queers. It left a sour taste on the tongue. Being called any one of those names would be cause for a fight. And why wouldn't it? Everyone in the area knew what those people were like.

            Faggots were monstrosities on Earth. They wore girls’ clothing and talked with lisps. They were rapists and pedophiles, sexual predators stalking any guy they laid their eyes on. The term described people with limp wrists and condemned them to hell. No one ever wanted to be one of them. In my mind, however, none of those things were true. They were simply stereotypes people had invented to shun a group of people they didn’t like or agree with. I knew, however, that people wouldn't think about that. Back home, in the small country area I lived, there were plenty of hillbilly rednecks who knew exactly how to deal with these freaks of nature…

            She hit me again. “There’s something on your mind—I can tell!”

            “What do you mean?”

            “You just agreed to wear a neon-orange tuxedo to prom! I was testing to see if you were paying attention.” She was good. I had to admit. She knew I would never wear something that bright to a dance.

            “It’s nothing. I’m just thinking about an assignment for English I have to finish.” That’s right Walt. Blame it on school work again. One day you will have to tell her the truth, you know. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

            I really did care about L. I cared about her more than she could know. I cared about her so much that I was actually hiding my true self from her for even longer just so she could be happy. At least, that was what I told myself. The truth was that I was afraid—afraid to let people know how I really felt. I would never be treated the same if they knew.

            I couldn’t be gay, after all. I didn’t wear tight fitting clothing, or dress like a girl. I bought all my clothes at Goodwill, so I obviously didn’t dress that fashionably (unless you are ninety years old). I didn’t have the earrings or the lisp. I was still a virgin too! I couldn’t be one of those creepy guys who look around for sex like those homos do. I didn’t go out and rave to dance music at clubs while hyped up on drugs either. I was just a good student—a nice guy who followed the rules.

            “Why don’t you ever do your work on time? I mean, I know EVERYONE turns Mr. T’s work in late, but you never really struck me as the type.” She never would let go. We turned the corner, walking toward the cafeteria. At least there I might be able to drown my thoughts with the voices of all the students talking over everyone else.

            I often tried to drown out those thoughts, to find distractions. That’s part of why I had a girlfriend. She distracted me, made me feel normal. I hated what I felt inside. I hated who I was—every morsel of my being, I felt, was an abomination. I needed the distraction. It only worked on rare occasions, though, and that day was not one of them.  All around me, I saw those I wanted. People I knew I could never have, not if I wanted to keep my identity. Not if I wanted to stay safe....

            “Oh my god!” L cried. French fries, chicken nuggets, and chocolate milk flew as a guy at a table near us accidentally tripped, flipping his tray into the face of the guy across from him. I pulled L aside so she wouldn’t get in the way of the lunch-covered student who was, at that moment, climbing over the table toward the student who had just tossed his food. Teachers, quickly swarmed to the area, but not before the dairy covered teen landed a punch in face of the other.

            “You dirty faggot!” cried Milk-Stain. Blood dripped down from the nose of the other boy, the one on the ground, the one that everyone at my school knew was gay, even if he wasn’t ‘out’. They were both headed for the principal’s office. They would both be punished, regardless of the fact that only one of them did any fighting.

            There were other reasons that I couldn’t say anything, and one of them had just punched that kid in the face. I knew that the gay community was discriminated against. If people knew I wasn’t interested in girls, then they would, of course, think I was gay. I was mortified of being treated like that. I had already experienced some of that before, and didn’t want to go back.

Two years before, I found myself getting hit by and picked on by a group of guys calling me gay. (There’s no way they could’ve known though, because even I wasn’t sure at that point.) Why were they doing this? Turns out, my best friend had come out of the closet, and everyone assumed that I was his boyfriend. The rumor spread like wildfire and caused immediate repercussion. My current girlfriend, one I had actually had since middle school, dumped me because she didn’t want to be a “fag hag.” I had people kick in my locker, steal stuff from my backpack, and vandalize my belongings. I was even being confronted by my parents and church elders! It all eventually cooled off when J had to transfer to a different school.

J and I were extremely close friends. We did everything together. Thinking back on it now, I believe we connected so well because we both knew we were different. We opened up to each other all the time, and never kept things from each other. Being friends with J made me think about things though. I knew even then that I was different. Seeing all that he had to deal with, just to affirm his identity made me proud. I could see that he had finally come to terms with who he was, and even though he faced hate and torment because of it, he was stronger willed now—stronger now that he was sure of who he was.

            “Did you know that J’s parents divorced because he was gay?” I asked L.

            “What? That’s stupid. I hate people sometimes. It was his dad, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “I never did like him. His dad, I mean.”

            It was when she would say things like that I felt that she loved me enough to be okay with me, no matter who I was. My parents, however, I knew would react differently.

            My mother, paragon of acceptance, would be okay with it, given time. I know she loves me for who I am, no matter who that may be. My father, however, was an entirely different story. I loved him like a son should love his father, but I never could get along with him. He had so many expectations of me. I was supposed to be the perfect son for him—I was the one that he tried for, after all—but I could never be that son he always wanted. I couldn’t be the football star with the girlfriend that would make everyone jealous. I was always sure that, as much as he and my mom fought already, if he were to ever find out about me, the fighting would get so bad that they would divorce.

            Growing up I can see how I must’ve disappointed my father time-and-time again. I was never the sport-oriented son he wanted. I played soccer for two seasons, but I ended up giving that up. He pushed me to be a hard worker then—to be a man. He had me perform tasks well outside my comfort area, such as chopping wood for fire, or working construction with him. I was never the outdoors type, and I often turned out to be pretty lazy as well.

            Perhaps it was because of my father’s desires that I developed a sense of manhood that was almost completely contrary to his own beliefs. For my father, Man was supposed to be big, strong, and powerful. Man chooses a wife and has children. Man provides for his family by having a job, and it is the family’s job to support Man’s home. Man’s son would learn directly from Man in order to become Man himself. Man was above all and therefore could treat all as such.

            My version of Man, however, was based on different morals. I believed that Man is defined by how one treats those around him. Man strives to be the best he can, but would never treat anyone as if they were any less than he. Man can be Man, without needing a wife. All he needs is caring.

            When I told my dad about my version of Man, he called me a pussy. I was a pansy little child, and it was his responsibility to wear that idea out of me. I made many trips to the woods to grab a switch, and would of course have to go back again because I never got one good enough. I fully understood that I was a disappointment to him.

            I did however, excel in one area: academics. I was the smart child, and for that I was praised, but I could always tell that my father wished I had been more of a man than I was turning out to be…

            She was giving me that look again. “You know I love you, no matter what, right?” She could see straight through me. She knew I had something serious on my mind, and that it was about me and her.

            “As I love you with all my heart, darling.” Every time I uttered those words, I felt the guilt build up in me. I couldn’t live with it all. I mean, I did love her, but I wasn’t in love with her. I couldn’t keep living like this. I had to tell her the truth.

            “L, I have to tell you something really important.”

            “Yes?” She looked up at me, cutest smile on her face. She was holding a Prom Girl catalog in her hand, several pages marked with post-it notes. I looked from her, over to the guy sitting across the table, perfect smile and all, chatting away to his friend beside him. This was it. I was about to do it. I was about to tell her everything.

 Looking back at her, I felt a knot tie in my stomach.

 I can’t. I can’t do it.

            “I love you. Just wanted you to know.” She smiled and turned back to her book, giggling because I had made her happy. I guess that was something I was good at: making others happy. Maybe I could live with that. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living a lie. I knew, however, that I couldn’t live being fake. I had to prove to myself who I was. I had to discover myself. I would tell her, but not now. Let her be happy for now.

 It could wait until later.

***

“Do you think I’m preeeetty?” S asked. Our director was throwing a party to celebrate the closing of RENT, so there I sat in his basement-bar: the un-entertained designated driver. I was caught up in my own thoughts when S collapsed onto the couch beside me. She held in her hand the tenth Solo cup that I had seen her with that night. Her breath, as she slurred out her question to me, stank of san gria.

            With the naïve hope she would leave, I told her what she wanted to hear. Instead of leaving, however, she put her arm around me. “You’re a cutie, you know that?” I could barely keep myself from laughing as she sat there and hit on me. I tuned her out when she started telling me her life story.

            Hampden-Sydney had been an entirely new experience for me. College. I had met new people. I had experienced life being out and open. And the year was drawing to a close, too. Soon I would have to go back home and deal with my family again.

They all knew who I was then. They all knew I was gay. They had heard it through the grapevine, and I confirmed it. They claimed they weren’t mad. They claimed that everything was the same. But I knew that things were different now. I noticed when the phone calls became less frequent. I noticed the way that, when we did talk, they were careful with their words. My ever-faithful siblings relayed to me about our parents’ fights. They used to fight about money, alcohol, and my older sister’s shenanigans.

Now they fought about me.

“I bet all the boys fight over you!” S was practically in my lap at this point. She had spilled a bit of her fruity drink down my leg, and the wetness had brought me back from my thoughts. I grabbed a randomly discarded shirt and used it to mop up my leg. I then coaxed the drink from S’s hand and placed it on the table. She began to whine for her ‘juice’, but I laid her head down and began to stroke her hair, alleviating her complaints. “You’re so sexy from this angle!” she told me.

I had always had a hard time believing that I was physically attractive. I still do. But when I came to college, I drew the attention of every man-loving guy who went to the school, as well as some from the neighboring towns. Suddenly, I was given any guy I wanted, and I took advantage of that. My first months were spent trying to find and keep a guy. I kept trying to form a relationship, but it turned out that they weren’t interested that way.

A good three months into the year, I realized that I didn’t really care anymore. There were still guys who wanted me, but I wasn’t interested.  At first, I thought that I just wasn’t interested in the guys around the school anymore. I tried contacting guys from back home again, but after speaking with them, I found that they were all the same: sex-starved horn-dogs who could care less about forming an actual relationship. And since I didn’t have the same desires as them, they lost interest.

So now, I was stuck. I didn’t seem to have any interest in guys, and I still had no interest in girls. All I had was this label.

            “Why aren’t you drinking, silly? It’s yummy!” S’s hangover was going to be terrible, I could tell. She was switching topics every five seconds at this point. “How come I never see you at any parties, huh?” If she wasn’t intoxicated, I probably would’ve tried to answer her questions. It’s not like I didn’t answer them almost daily, anyway. But my explanation would be lost on her.

Back home, my coming-out didn’t even have an effect on the relationship I had with my community, because I was still fairly unknown. I wasn’t the type of person to go out and meet new people. I stuck to my home, and left only for work.

            Now that I was at college, however, I had no choice but to face the community. Unfortunately for me, these people were even less accepting than the ones back home. When I got to Hampden-Sydney, they already knew I was gay. It was on my Facebook, after all. I didn’t think it would be a problem.

            Now my fears of being gay had been realized. People here don’t just ignore me like the people back home. Now people go out of their way to call me faggot, queer, homo. I get pushed as I walked by people. I can’t make friends.

My roommate was occasionally hostile, even to the point where I had to switch rooms for fear of my safety. I felt alone. I had a few friends, but they were pretty much all gay, themselves. The only reason, it felt, that we bonded is because we were in the same boat.

            And even within my group of gay friends, I was further put out of the crowd. These guys were the gays that people talked about: fashion-obsessed, bitchy, and snobbish. They treated ‘gay’ more like a lifestyle than a way of life. I had nothing against them, but since I was none of those things, they often picked on me as well. I was alone and trapped.

            I dropped S off at her dorm. I even walked her inside and passed her off to her roommate, who thanked me for bringing her back safely. The drive back to my school was short, but plenty long to think about everything. What did I actually want? Would I ever be able to figure myself out?

            I thought about how the day had gone. I thought about how, when I went to turn in a paper earlier, a group of guys had called me names. That paper had me so proud. I didn’t bother remembering their faces. I didn’t listen to their torment. I was past that.

            I left. I left the paper sitting in the box outside my professor’s office with those guys who called me faggot, who threatened me with words. My breath drew short as I thought about my paper. I raced to my professor’s office to check on the paper. It was there. But it wasn’t in the box outside his door. It was on the floor. Balled up. Like trash for the janitor to find in the morning.

            I picked the trash up, folding open my desecrated pride. Scrawled across the front in black ink was the word FAG in large letters. I turned with the paper and began to walk back to my room. I was shaking and crying before I even realized. I had been vandalized. This work that I was so proud of had been attacked. It hurt worse than if they had actually hit me. The product of several nights’ worth of digging through painful memories had been vandalized, balled up, and discarded as though my work didn’t matter.

            I could always print out another copy. I told myself that over-and-over, but still…. I shook violently and cowered behind a bush. I was afraid. I looked down at the paper. “It Can Wait”, I read. “’So where do you want to go before prom?’”

            At that very moment, there was nothing more I wanted than to go back to that point. prom. When the most important thing was where I wanted to take L to dinner. I read my paper. It felt like an old story. Uncompleted. It ended. Without an end. There was no real resolution. It left the reader wanting. I had had no more to write, but now, after what happened, I felt like I had an ending.

This paper has taught me to be strong. I can endure through the issues I’ve been presented. I know I’m gay. I know it’s hard to deal with, but I believe I’m strong enough to survive the trials. I never thought I’d be able to say that to myself, but I finally have. I know that there will still be hate against me. There will probably be more violent acts to come. But I will have to deal with them when they come.

            I wiped my tears and marched back to my room. I went directly to my computer, and began to write. I had to get it all down while it was still fresh in my mind. When I was done, I went to sleep. In the morning, I typed these last few sentences to wrap it up. In a minute, I will print it and turn it in.