Deciphering Human Texts

Deciphering Human Texts

Mikah Berky

As different as night and day, the protagonists of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out both struggle to define themselves within the context of their societies. Through the magistrate and Rachel’s narratives, the reader becomes engaged in their difficulties and triumphs in grasping the elusive concept of self. Focusing on the discovery of identity and the external and internal imposition of shape upon it, Waiting for the Barbarians and The Voyage Out require the reader to invest personal responsibility in the stories.

Struggling to define herself in a world filled with social expectations and regulations, Rachel’s few outlets for personal expression are repeatedly stifled and remodeled by the people around her. At the beginning of The Voyage Out, Helen Ambrose contemplates, “[. . .] if Rachel were ever to think, feel, laugh, or express herself [. . .] she might be interesting though never exactly pretty” (Woolf 25). This thought captures an essential aspect of Rachel’s dilemma in her struggle for identity throughout the book. Rachel can never freely express herself without anticipating the forceful imposition of someone else’s will. Coping with the constant attempts of others to mold her, Rachel can only be her self when she is alone.

Sheltered by her restrictive society, Rachel Vinrace turns to the escape of music and books as a means of defining her self. The reader glimpses moments of Rachel’s actual identity through her pursuit of these endeavors. These activities often take place behind closed doors, creating a sense that she presents one formal mask to the world, dropping it only when she is alone. Music gives her a means of escaping the rules of a world that have never been explained to her. Rachel’s view of the world is “that nobody ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but that was what music was for” (Woolf 37). Music becomes her medium for expressing herself. Throughout the course of the novel, Rachel’s passion for music remains unchanged, becoming the only element of her identity that does not evolve.

In Santa Marina, she continues her quest to understand her world and self through books. Inside the haven of her own room, she immediately begins expanding her perspective, devouring books of which her aunts would disapprove. As she reads poetry, plays, and novels, Rachel for the first time in her life begins to form her own conclusions (Woolf 124). Frequently modeling and remodeling them, she begins to seek answers to her own personal questions. At times Rachel seems almost comically ignorant by the standards of today’s modern world, but her struggle is much more than a petty crisis. Tied to the core of her being, Rachel’s understanding of identity is connected to her ability to withstand the imposed expectations of her society. “Rachel's need to read the world, to understand the sights before her, to find meaningful patterns, is about survival, about life and death” (Swanson). However, even as she discovers clues to the workings of her world, she still has difficulty interpreting their meanings. In part due to her inability to read the world, she is very easily influenced by those around her.

One way Woolf emphasizes the forceful sculpting of Rachel’s identity is through the suppression of her music. On board the ship in her encounters with the Dalloways, both husband and wife physically or verbally squash her art (Wharton-Smith 16). Mrs. Dalloway verbally interrupts and stops Rachel’s playing, while Mr. Dalloway physically sits on Bach sheet music in his intrusion into Rachel’s room (Woolf 57, 75). The Dalloways provide the initial shaping influences that instigate Rachel’s trip to Santa Marina and her subsequent experiences. Each of the Dalloways leaves a mark on Rachel, in the form of a book and a kiss (Briggs 67). Clarissa Dalloway gives Rachel a copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, even after Rachel explicitly states her dislike for Austen (Woolf 58). Once again, Rachel’s attempt to express herself is smothered. Richard Dalloway also gives Rachel yet another reason to fear expressing herself. After Rachel confesses her “shivering private visions” to him, Richard Dalloway proceeds to “pick holes” in her philosophy (Woolf 66). This experience “betrays Rachel's trust and violates her, confirming Rachel's sense of the danger in trying to express oneself as a woman” (Swanson). Mr. Dalloway goes even further in shattering Rachel’s sense of identity by forcibly kissing her (Woof 76). His kiss not only breaks all of her boundaries, but it is also Rachel’s first introduction to the idea of sexuality. To the modern reader, a kiss seems like a mild infringement compared to the blatant sexual violence depicted in the media. For Rachel, however, it is a frightening invasion. Richard Dalloway’s violation has the same impact as a rape on Rachel’s psyche (Swanson). The effect of his “rape” upsets not only her present mental state, but it marks Rachel permanently. “Incest and other forms of sexual abuse are precisely about violating physical and psychic boundaries, and childhood abuse interrupts the victim's development of personality and psychic defenses. A symptom of childhood sexual abuse is just this inability to maintain [. . .] a separate identity” (Swanson). Carrying with her the lasting baggage of Mr. Dalloway’s kiss, Rachel is unable to embrace her own identity throughout the entire novel.

While the kiss shapes Rachel, it alone does not cause her failure to take ownership of her life. In South America, the people around her, including Helen and Terence, who are closest to her, begin to mold Rachel’s spirit according to their opinions. At a picnic with the hotel guests, Hirst asks if anyone is a Christian. Rachel replies that she is and Helen tells her, “You’re not a Christian. You’ve never thought what you are” (Woolf 145). Once again, Rachel’s endeavor to publicly define her self is torn to pieces. Being constantly bombarded by the roles others have written for her, it is impossible for Rachel to discover her own self. Every attempt she makes to assert herself becomes an opportunity for public humiliation. Helen, thinking that she has Rachel’s best interests at heart, constantly shapes her, but does not even allow Rachel to experience her own growing and changing opinions without being mocked. At the dance, Rachel expresses her fluctuating identity when she says with complete frankness, “‘I’ve changed my view of life completely!’” Helen responds to those nearby that Rachel’s opinions vary from day to day (Woolf 163). By discounting Rachel’s own personal discoveries, Helen belittles her sense of self.

Once Rachel becomes engaged, Terence assumes a larger role in shaping her identity. The importance of marriage in Rachel’s Edwardian society gives Terence heightened authority and influence. Melissa Wharton-Smith describes Rachel as “a young woman socially-manipulated into accepting marriage as her future” (14). The name Rachel literally means “female-sheep” and she lives up to the meaning of her name by bending to the pressures of her society (Wharton- Smith 15). As her fiancé, Terence gains an increased power of persuasion over her. The betrothal shifts the primary influence on Rachel’s identity from Helen to Terence. Within the context of a romantic relationship, Rachel has much higher stakes to ensure that her actions and thoughts suit Terence’s preferences. She does not ever entirely lose sight of her search, but their relationship becomes a distraction.

In tandem with Rachel and Terence, Woolf illustrates an extreme loss of identity in the relationship between Susan and Arthur. Susan, past the prime marrying age, is desperate to secure a husband. When Arthur offers her the security of marriage, she jumps at the chance and remodels herself so that he has no reason to change his mind. When they first begin courting and discussing interests, “Susan ascertained what Arthur cared about, and professed herself very fond of the same thing” (Woolf 139). The fact that Susan voluntarily alters her opinions for Arthur illustrates how powerful the pressure to marry is. While Susan’s desperation has reached such a level that she goes to any lengths to secure her marriage, including giving up her own identity, Rachel does not submit as easily. Arthur does not ever impose his opinions on Susan; she accepts them herself. Terence, however, must do more than watch the pressures of society mold Rachel.

Terence takes an active role in forming Rachel. Woolf again utilizes the trope of Rachel’s books and music that begins with the Dalloways. Like Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway, Terence infiltrates Rachel’s psyche through her few outlets of escape. After their engagement, Rachel practices piano while Terence works on his book. Eventually, Terence asks her to stop playing, describing the tune as “an unfortunate old dog going round on its hind legs in the rain.” In nearly the same breath, he insults her choice in books, calling them trash and commanding her to read “poetry, poetry, poetry!” (Woolf 292). By imposing his will on Rachel’s only means of escape from the world, Terence attacks her on the most personal level possible. Eventually, succumbing to the constant pressure to conform to the will of others, Rachel falls ill with a fever. In the novel a source of the fever is connected to her trip on the river, but Diana Swanson suggests that “the only thing that we are sure that Rachel caught on the trip is her engagement to Terence. It is the engagement, as part of the patriarchal sexual system, that proves fatal to Rachel.”

Smothered by the many demands forced upon her, Rachel’s psychological distress manifests itself physically in the form of her illness, which leads to her death. Because she can never claim her own identity, in a sense she ceases to exist. Her physical death symbolizes the final obliteration of her identity. Only in death can Rachel and Terence achieve the “perfect happiness” that they struggled to maintain in life. In the moment Rachel dies, Terence expresses an incredible joy at his sense of completeness. “They had now what they had always wanted to have, the union which had been impossible while they lived” (Woolf 353). In losing herself, Rachel becomes Terence’s ideal partner.

Like Rachel, the magistrate and narrator of Waiting for the Barbarians seeks to understand his role in his society, but his quest is never successful. Although the magistrate begins the novel imposing meaning on others of his society, his search for identity allows him to experience the perspective of the oppressed. Coetzee physicalizes the intellectual concept of oppression that Woolf explores in The Voyage Out through torture. Seeking answers to the atrocities of the Empire, the magistrate attempts to decipher his world. No matter how hard they try, both Rachel and the magistrate are unable to read and comprehend the forces that shape their identities.

When Colonel Joll appears at the magistrate’s oasis and begins torturing, interrogating, and killing prisoners, the magistrate denies his own culpability (Coetzee 5). Connected to the role of torturer because of his service to the Empire, the magistrate begins to probe for answers even as he unconsciously blocks out his own responsibility. After Colonel Joll performs his first interrogation and kills the old man prisoner, the magistrate cuts open the body bag so that he can examine the man’s wounds (Coetzee 7). Looking for a sign that will explain the rationale for the man’s death, and eliminate his personal connection to it, the magistrate is unable to find one. Limited in his search for the truth by his own bias, the narrator is prevented from recognizing his identity as a torturer. “[He] attempts a searching, sincere, and well-intentioned self-examination; yet he comes no closer to telling the truth about himself and remains instead in self-deception” (Yeoh). Even as the magistrate denies his knowledge of the torture that continues as Joll brings back “barbarians” to the oasis, he is unable to abandon his quest to find the truth. The magistrate states, “I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering” (Coetzee 21). Similar to Mr. Dalloway’s kiss, the initiation of torture at the oasis destroys the foundations of the magistrate’s understanding of his world and incites his quest.

After Joll finishes torturing more innocent subjects of the Empire, the only remaining evidence is the barbarian girl. In his unconscious search for absolution, the magistrate attempts to read the scars of the barbarian girl, inadvertently aligning himself with the Empire. Although like Rachel, he searches for his place in society, the magistrate’s desire to shape the barbarian girl into an answer ties him to Terence. Like Terence who believes his attempts to mold Rachel are in her best interests, the magistrate becomes an unintentional torturer to the barbarian girl. Instead of healing the barbarian girl, the magistrate’s “confused effort at expiation actually perpetuates her oppression” (Phelan 236). Because the magistrate does not understand exactly what he desires from the girl, she cannot provide him fulfillment. At the end of the book, Mai tells the magistrate that the barbarian girl expressed anguish over their relationship, and that often she would “cry and cry and cry” because she did not understand what he wanted (Coetzee 152). At times, it seems that the narrator only wants to separate himself from the guilt of association with the Empire’s deeds. He justifies his actions, “There is nothing to link me with torturers, people who sit waiting like beetles in dark cellars. How can I believe that a bed is anything but a bed, a woman’s body anything but a site of joy? I must assert my distance from Colonel Joll!” (Coetzee 44). The magistrate’s fascination with the girl’s broken body reveals that she is more than just a “site of joy.” The girl acts as a memorial to his guilt. Gilbert Yeoh suggests the magistrate’s actions stem from a desire for self-consolation. Ironically, the search to relieve his guilt only serves to strengthen the magistrate’s ties to the torture of the Empire.

Searching for a truth in the girl’s scars, the magistrate connects himself to Joll by his attempts to read her body. Rosemary Jolly states,

Both Joll and the magistrate . . . turn the “girl” into a text from which they believe the truth will originate, Joll through implanting the marks of torture upon her and reading the result as proof of her guilt, and the magistrate by attempting to possess the truth behind torture by reading the “script” that Joll has “written” on her body. (qtd. in Craps 62)

The magistrate cannot find an answer to separate his identity from that of the Empire because he is trying to interpret a truth generated by the very same organization he hopes to escape. In seeking an answer in the girl’s body, the magistrate hopes to extract meaning from her, just as Joll did in her torture. Both Joll and the magistrate have specific truths that they seek from the girl. Joll wants evidence of a barbarian plot against the Empire and the magistrate wants reassurance of his innocence. They both present the illusion of seeking truth, but neither man is able or willing to accept anything but the answer he wants. “The only truth which Joll can conceivably extract from the body of the tortured is precisely that ‘verity’ he has projected into or onto the blank space of the victim” (Moses 121). While Joll refuses to accept anything but his own truth, the magistrate is incapable of comprehending an answer different than the one he seeks. The magistrate does not understand himself, much less the barbarian girl. His search for a context for his identity is severely limited by his inability to decipher signs in front of him.

The magistrate repeats his ritual of washing the barbarian girl in the hopes of uncovering his reasons for performing the ritual. He says, “It has been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her” (Coetzee 31). Lost in a cycle of ritual cleansing, the magistrate no longer knows what he wants to find, but only that he will not be satisfied until he understands. Susan Sontag states in her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence,” “A person who becomes silent becomes opaque for the other person; somebody’s silence opens up an array of possibilities for interpreting that silence, for imputing speech to it” (qtd. in Worthington 236). The magistrate repeatedly asks the girl to describe her torture for him, but she evades his questions and remains silent on the subject. In her refusal to speak, she becomes “opaque” and unreadable to the magistrate. Her silence allows the magistrate to puzzle over many meanings for his ritual, but it prevents him from ever actually comprehending. Even long after the barbarian girl has returned to her people, the magistrate still debates his purposes. Looking back on his relationship with the girl, the magistrate says, “Though I cringe with shame, even here and now, I must ask myself whether, when I lay head to foot with her, fondling and kissing those broken ankles, I was not in my heart of hearts regretting that I could not engrave myself on her as deeply” (Coetzee 135). Even removed from his fascination with the girl, the magistrate cannot understand his actions.