Hawthorne’s Perspectival Perversity: What if “Wakefield” Were (About) a Woman?; or, Credo Quia Absurdum

TLDR: Henson as discussed by the authors argues that the order of reappropriative and be-longing signification is that of Mrs. Wakefield, rather than that of Mr. Waverley, who is not even made to feel properly guilty and apologetic.

Abstract: Although "Wakefield" opens as a leisurely mnemonic act, it turns into an intensely emotional affair. However, the stance of moral indignation and, indeed, condemnation adopted in many readings of this classic tale seems to be a monological trap, an interpretive ride along Einbahnstrasse. The present close re-reading draws on the combined appreciation of perversity as (i) formal figuration in which the bearings of the original are reversed, (ii) attitudinal disposition to proceed against the weight of evidence (the so-called 'being stubborn in error'). Building on this logic, the paper offers a transcriptive anti-type response to Hawthorne's title. It is meant as a detour of understanding and a reclamation of a seemingly obvious relational and denotative proposition. Inasmuch as "Wakefield" is a distinctive rhetorical performance, foundationally a story about story-telling, its title can be naturalized as identifying the story-teller. Even if this does not come across as lucius ordo, it is argued that the order of reappropriative and be-longing signification is that of Mrs. rather than--as is commonly believed--that of Mr. Wakefield. Informed by object permanence and a peculiar looking bias, "Wakefield" proves to be her-tale rather than his-story. As a secret sharer and a would be-speaking gaze, the wife turns out to be a structural and existential pivot of the narrative. More broadly, Mrs. Wakefield can be appreciated as coarticulator of a ventriloquistic logos and choreographer of a telescopic parallactic vision. Unintentional challenge to both the heresy of paraphrase and the aesthetics of astonishment, this is ultimately to proffer a radical Shakespearean/Kantian re-cognition that in certain spheres there obtains nothing absolutely 'moral' or 'immoral', and it is only a particular perspectival discourse that ma make it so. Keywords: narrative framing--phenomenology--female gaze--motivated irrationality--Prodigal Son --Penelope [So] fixed a gaze, that ... the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. (Hawthorne [1850] 1983c: 171-172) For a woman to be called a Jezebel is every bit as bad as for a man to be called Ahab. (Henson 2009: 9) Nobody needs convincing that it makes a world of difference whether one leaves another for a day, a week, a month or presumably/apparently ad aeternum, which is to say 'forever'. "Wakefield" is an exceedingly poignant story about an unwarranted and potentially interminable aorist transaction of marital severance and separation, one that happens overwhelmingly at the expense of the wife. This "sketch of singular power" (Poe [1842] 1984a: 574) may be a disturbing experience to read on account of how the ignoble husband is not really subjected to any sustained pressure and how in the end he is not in any way punished for his transgression. What is more, he is not even really made to feel properly guilty and apologetic (let alone repentant) and the wife's anguish and trauma are not adequately (let alone fully) acknowledged. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey," "took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife" ... dwelt upwards of twenty years.... [A]fter so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity ... he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse till death. (Hawthorne [1835] 1982a: 298) (2) As author Daniel Stem (1996: 65) transcribes the story's non-ethical dimension, it is admittedly one of the "cruelest" and "ugliest" narratives on record. As such, it seems to excite conversational indignation across the board. (3) In simplest terms, the self-congratulatory ease with which readers can rectify for themselves the ostensible underempathic shortcomings--finally, the frustrated sense of common justice--goes some way towards explaining the story's hold on popular imagination and its enduring resonance. …