In Mew's short story A White Night the reader's abjection, save for the conspicuous outrage at the woman's live burial, is sourced predominantly from the acquiescence of the story's narrator, Cameron. What remains more incomprehensible than having taken part in this villainy was to abide it, to act as an enabler. Cameron remains throughout the barbaric proceedings merely a “photographic presence” (Showalter xviii), “For him, the terrible fate of the woman is both a 'spectacle' and 'a rather splendid crime” (Showalter xviii). Given in Cameron's own impartial monologue: “it hadn't once occurred to me, without her sanction, to step in, to intervene;” (150). A White Night observes the recurrent theme of negation evident in many of Mew's writings; Mew often portrays “...tensions of a strongly emotional nature submitting to restraints in which although there is some element of choice, the mind or conscience dictates a negative.” (Rice 52) and it is here that the reader's aversion is most firmly rooted. A White Night betrays the modern sensibilities of its readers by validating the oppression of women at the time it was written. The story can be seen retrospectively as “a warning of female destiny” (Showalter xvii) as the men witness but do nothing to remedy the injustices suffered by women - who in turn accept the events without protest as though to signify this is how things have and always will be.
The repercussions of Cameron's inaction are two fold and execrable, resulting not only in the death of the young woman but in the irreconcilable trauma suffered by his sister in response to the events. At the story's onset Ella is “daring and robust, a New Woman who can rough it with the men.” (Showalter xviii); however by the story's end Ella is reduced to a mere shadow of her former self, scarred as “'the horror of those hours' continue to haunt her and to visit her dreams” (Showalter xviii). Cameron reflects: “[Ella] hasn't ever understood, or quite forgiven me my attitude of temporary detachment.” (153) It is here the reader discerns further outrage. Cameron remains a “detached bachelor observer” (Showalter xviii) bereft of the protective instincts any virtuous individual would hold in regard for their own sister. He remarks unsympathetically: “it was not for [Ella] at all that I was consciously concerned.” King had attempted to put an end to the victim's otherwise drawn out quietus, likely out of some esteem for feminine dignity peculiar to his brother in law. Cameron voyeuristically deprives the victim of this final mercy, revelling in a form of soul bondage with her. A White Night serves as a “frightening allegory of patriarchal silencing” (Gribben 318), engendering in its readers an almost instinctual aversion to the “unethical exercise of power by men over women” (Gribben 318) presented within the text.
The latter of these two texts, Louise Glück's Gretel In Darkness, takes the poetic form of Gretel's lyrical address to her brother Hansel some time after the events of the Grimm fable. Glück presents a Gretel incapable of reconciling herself with the horrific events of her past as she remains ruled by internal delusions that cloud out the facts of the reality around her. Perhaps the most distressing aspect of the poem is the representation of Gretel's lost innocence and realisation of the psychological repercussions such an event would seed in the fragile mind of a child. Gretel in Darkness sensibly encapsulates the “living and hallucinatory quality of a child's fear, and the tendency of children to color a past horror with all the vividness of a present one.” (Wooten 6). Gretel's recollections are lucid and pervaded with incessant self interrogation; she laments “Why do I not forget?” (10). Glück challenges the reader's dominant preconceptions of the fairy tale genre by reinterpreting it in a realised fashion. There is no 'happily ever after' to be found in Glück's telling, “Unlike the fairy tale, Glück's poem leads to no satisfying resolution; abandonment and psychic hunger are continuous.” (Upton 131).
In summation, the horror philosophy remains a canvas unable to be painted with broad strokes. Like all art, horror may grow out of a limited context but achieves significance in relation to its universality. What remains so pervasive about horror is that it is entirely subjective; however, as one matures, fear becomes more complex and grounded in worldly events. In the time since the publication of A White Night and Gretel in Darkness horror has continued to evolve; and although they may not scare their audiences in the traditional sense, they do in fact work well to create other ambitions of horror through their visceral first person narratives and their subversion of the reader's generic sensibilities.
Works Cited
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Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.
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Gribben, Bryn. "Masculinity and Spectacle in Mew's "A White Night": Into the Cave, Not Up the River." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 49.3 (2006): 311-25. Print.
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Glück, Louise. "Gretel In Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. 1943. Print.
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Hill, Joe. "Chapter 42." Heart-Shaped Box. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. 306-07. Print.
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Mew, Charlotte. "A White Night." The Oxford Book of English Short Stories. Ed. A. S. Byatt. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. 139-54. Print.
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Rice, Nelljean McConeghey. A New Matrix for Modernism: a study of the lives and poetry of Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.
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howalter, Elaine. "Introduction." Introduction. Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993. xvii-xviii. Print.
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Upton, Lee. The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery, in Five American Poets. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998. Print.
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Warner, Val. "Mary Magdalene and the Bride: The Work of Charlotte Mew." Poetry Nation 1.4 (1975): 92-106. Print.
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Wooten, Anna. "Louise Glück's The House on Marshland." Poetry Nation 4.3 (1975): 5-6. Print.
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lust4life (student)
