Marginal Status Of Flora And Miles example essay topic

When relating the divine to the marginal, one is struck by the ambiguity of both terms. Divine being can be supernatural, pure, sweet and naturally good, or, in contrast, bad, evil, vengeful, and inhumane. Marginality defines the place of ambiguity, the thin line between the normal and not-normal, the center of social chaos. Both divinity and marginality blind us, forbid us to see a complete picture.

Society and literature act out the conflicts between good and evil, love and hate, the angelic and demonic child, but are blinded by the very nature of those concrete divisions of positive and negative. Divinity becomes marginality in The Turn of the Screw; James deliberately constructs characters that conform so well to the social expectation of perfection that they cannot be other than the marginal. Again, it comes down to the line between blindness and enlightenment; it i sonly when we doubt and question reality that we can incorporate and comprehend marginality. Children in Early Modern England describes a society that pushed lower class children even further into marginality; children had their own subculture that provided anon-adult view of the world and rejected adult systems of value, order and classification.

This... juvenile subculture included a casual attitude to private property, an addiction to mischief, and a predilection for what most adults regarded as noise and dirt (Thomas 57). Both linked to and separate from the adult world, these children passed the thin line; they were children but unable to act as children. Besides [s] hop-lifting, pick-pocketing, and stealing pigeons and chickens... , [they had] no more idea of what we call justice than... blackbirds... have of nets... (Dickens, qtd. in Thomas 56). The marginality of these children is confirmed by their poverty, their education, their social class, and their age; what makes the social judgment against them final is the fact that they have no adultrepresentativ to speak for them within the system. Without a voice credible to society, they have no opportunity to define themselves beyond that marginality, so they create subculture that re-confirms their own identity within- and despite- their marginal status.

The marginal status of the children discussed in Children in Early Modern England relates them to the divine: ... children [were] perceived as innocent and good and made into a focal point of attention (46) in spite of the fact that they were also... thought to epitomize original sin (45). Children are born into this world innocent and pure even inthe face of original sin. Those encouraged to develop reason, to interact socially, and to maintain beauty reflect that which is innocent and pure; those unfortunate enough to exist outside the boundaries of acceptable society become the embodiment of original sin: uncontrollable wretches pissing upon stones in the Church (57). Society examined the gender roles of children in the same light; girls, the origin of sin and damnation, were expected to perfect themselves socially and morally, while boys, free of the stain of guilt over the human condition, were at times even encouraged to push the limits of normal social play and behavior. The focal point of society splits to include both the devilish and the divine, the pure and the stained; instead of recognizing that these dual oppositions revolve around each other, society creates absolute definitions.

The ideals of Romanticism influenced the way society depicted and dealt with children. The idea of the divine, romantic child became the new focal point by which society interpreted itself and its systems. Children were seen to have... qualities which make [them] Godlike, fit to be worshipped, ... the embodiment of hope (Cunningham 78). Children... [had] the radiance and innocence of reinstated divinity... (Ruskin, qtd. in Cunningham 76), they were... still fresh with the dew of heaven... (76).

In this world view, [c] childhood was... a special time of life in which gender was no longer stressed as an attribute; rather it was the childlike quality of the child which needed to be preserved (75). The increased tensions of a newly industrialized society created in adults longing for the freedom and fantasy of childhood, which developed into a socialized nostalgia for a return to childhood and nature [, ] which was central to the romantic vision (74). In this social system, there are no absolute distinctions between the good child and the bad child; the poor child, like Oliver Twist, is to be pitied (74), the bad childish to be encouraged to be good. An idealization of childhood does not mean that children were removed from the boundary of the marginal; if anything, they became more so as the link between pure divinity and childish innocence began to be explored: Mighty prophet!

Seer blest, / On whom all truths do rest / Which we are toiling all our lives to find (Wordsworth, qtd. in Cunningham 78). Children hold the voice of the divine in their innocence; only by relating to the keener perceptions (73) of children can adults hope to avoid becoming dried up and embittered (73) as the experience and toil of life degrades and corrupts them. However, the keener perceptions (73) of children made them more susceptible to crossing the line between society and the divine and marginal: Little hearts are to betaken (76). God values these little hearts, steals them away from society to preserve their purity, but at the same time removing that which society needs to maintain and regain its innocence and purity. The act of death frees and maintains the purity of the souls of children, leaving society to cope with and grow from the reality of mortality. The little watercress girl discussed in London Labour and The London Poor who... had entirely lost all of [her] childish ways...

(64) symbolizes the duality between experience and innocence. Despite her age and appearance, the girl... was, indeed, in all thoughts and manner, a woman (64), a being trapped between childhood and adulthood, unable to stand on either side of the line. Instead of representing the evils of society, the marginality of this child-woman defines her as the essence of adult experience: at eight, she has endured poverty, the responsibilities of motherhood, physical abuse, hunger, and labor (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 social expectation 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 to believe that the physical beauty of both Flora and Miles is a reflection of their transcendence above ordinary mortals: See him, miss, first.

Then believe it... You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her... look at her (10). Mrs. Grose connection of physical beauty to the marginal is no accident; these children are so perfectly formed that they exist outside the normal boundaries of right and wrong. The governess mistakenly equates their beauty with goodness when she assumes that Mrs. Grose has never known [Miles] (11) to do wrong, following social patterns that demand that beauty and ugliness be equated with their obvious characteristics. The divinity of Miles and 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 to entrance, to mystify, those around them; they become partly symbolic of the corruptive element of the universe, although not of man. They have the ability to corrupt but are not necessarily corrupted themselves. The governess, blinded by... the vision of... angelic beauty (7-8) that was Flora and the passion of tenderness (13) she felt for Miles, was thrown 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 children engineered. She feels charm [ed] (14) by Miles and sees the childish light (11) radiated by 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 to remain untouched, unstained, despite their actions. They seem to have no center of morality, no ruler by which to judge their actions: They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who had- morally, at any rate-nothing to whack!

(19), untouched by the normal restraints and restrictions of mainstream society. Even as the governess wonders at 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 spirits that finally convinces the governess of their marginality: They know- it's too monstrous: they know, they know!

(29). That the children can look through the final marginality of death and not face fear is proof of their divine, marginal status; they do not have the natural, human, aversions to contact with and evidence of the non-corporeal realm. The governess in The Turn of the Screw recognizes that the spirits are not former- [They] had come for someone else (20) - but she does not understand the nature of those spirits. She instinctively sees them as a threat to Miles and Flora, and determines to the last to protect them.

By the end of the novella, she is able to understand the relationship between Godly and Devilish, and she recognizes the ambiguity and blurriness of words such as divine and infernal (66). They are human terms that speak of powers higher than humanity and are equally interchangeable: the Devil can be and usually is 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 cane 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 only system 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 forthe m a place where they could be free of the toils, burdens, humiliations and uncertainties of adult reality; they live in the world between fantasy and reality, the world that the Romantics envisioned when they experienced their nostalgic reliving of childhood. Although a creature of earth and heaven, Miles can t bridge the gap alone; when Quint departs, ... [Miles] uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss... and his little heart, 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 divine can 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 be described as ambiguous and marginal in itself, despite the textual claims that [t] here wasn o ambiguity in anything (James 28). The visions that the governess witness and misinterprets are, even to her human eyes, alarmingly clear.

It is the normal world of mortal experience that appears fuzzy and blurred in relation to a vision of the divine. The clarity that comes from a text such as The Turn of the Screw is one that results in facing ambiguity and marginality without adult inhibitions and fears. Miles and Flora are representative of the uncanny link between adult perceptions of a harsh reality and childlike aloofness to that reality; even in their death Miles and Flora embrace their fantasy, leaving the adults to mourn, grow, and learn.