A Piteous Victim

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Abstract：On the perspective of psychoanalytic criticism, three human psyche models propounded by Freud, Jung and Lancan were employed to reveal the psychological trace of the tragic character, the grandmother in The Acorn-gatherer. Back to the country life in late Victorian England, a lonely elderly widow had to bring up her illegitimate grandson, but her grandson couldn’t bear her mistreatment, left home and died accidentally. The old grandmother bore the hardship strenuously but had to live her old and ailing days lonely which is like a candle guttering in the wind. Deluged with the social discrimination and bias led by the collective unconscious, her help doesn’t come from anyone in the utilitarian oriented grass roots. Nor does it come from the Lord’s real redemption owing to a country woman’s limited knowledge and inwardness. Under the great strain from the grey society, she was gradually distorted mentally. As a result, she was victimized by the grey tide of the society but she herself was a victimizing force to her grandson. The psychological exploration of the piteous victim can thoroughly interpret the author’s implication, i.e. condemning the evils of the society and man’s wicked nature.

Key words：The Acorn-gatherer, the grandmother, psychoanalytic criticism

中图分类号： H319 文献标识码： A 文章编号：1672-1578（2013)01-0008-04

Richard Jefferies’ The Acorn-Gatherer depicts the miserable life of an illegitimate child in a backward village. On the surface, the short story will surely arouse our deep sympathy towards the wretched boy, and provoke our huge resentment to the unrelenting grandmother. We are wondering what makes the old woman treat her grandson callously and whether she has not but a heart of stone. Indeed, the interpretation of the grandmother seems as elusive as a labyrinth. However, on the deeper level, an exploration into the psychological trace of the grandmother after careful perusal, will shed light on the author’s message and in the meantime, an apparently imperious but actually a tragic character — the grandmother, will conjure up in our mind.

In order to unveil the grandmother’s psychological trace, let’s date back to the country life in late Victorian England. Although the industrial revolution changed the climate of the country life more or less, it still remained deeply religious and inherently stuffy. Almost all the country people were habitual church-goers, at least once and probably twice, every Sunday. The Bible was frequently and widely read by them; so too were religious stories and allegories. One overriding female virtue was to postpone sexual intercourse until marriage, viz. women were supposed to have no sexual union during courtship — a hand around the waist, a small kiss, and a fervent pressing of the hand was probably the accepted limit in most cases. The people then put high value on social status and family’s fame and laid strong stress on personal honor and valor.

In the ferment against the sexual union before marriage, her daughter dated with a hardened drinker; and in the ethos against illegitimacy, her daughter had a boy before marriage and died young，thus casting a gloom over her village and sullying the family fame . What an ever-unwashed disgrace to the family!The living boy is a permanent symbol treated with distain in such social landscape. Along this line of thinking, her neighbors might be pondering on to whom her daughter’s depravity should be up. Was it up to her mother, the grandmother? If she had disciplined her well, she wouldn’t have gone astray. As a corollary, they must have practiced zero tolerance towards her and her grandson. Doubtless, the grandmother was living in isolation spiritually and racked with the pang of the sense of repel.

If her living in discrimination only started from this family disrepute her daughter brought about, would she ill-treat her grandson like that? Presumably, the answer is ‘No’. From the description of her daughter’s downfall, her father, i.e., the grandmother’s husband didn’t show up at all. As a patron saint, daughter is under the custody of father before marriage. For a fancy-free girl, her father is poised to clutch a horsewhip to protect his daughter from any unwelcome suitor. Without her life guardian, the daughter’s downfall is explicable. By implication, we can discern that the grandmother was a widow early on. Ever since her daughter was a little girl, they had suffered from the feminization of poverty, living from hand to mouth day after day.

As observed above, in late Victoria England, people were steadfast adherents and they held to the notion that widowhood and the loss of children are the disaster God spells. “Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children’ — both these things shall come upon you in a moment, in one day: the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments.” (Isaiah 47:8~9) In the same vein, the loss of her husband coupled with that of her daughter could bode no good for the grandmother’s family, letting alone to say she had an illegitimate grandson. Being inundated with the social bias, the grandmother was considered as an unholy woman in the village long ago.

According to Freud, the human psyche is divided by the tripartite model, namely the id, the ego and the superego. The id is the source of all our aggressions and desires. It is lawless, asocial and amoral. Its function is to gratify our instincts for pleasure without regard for social conventions, legal ethics, or moral restraint. The ego is regulating agencies, which protect the individual. It regulates the instinctual drives of id so that they may be released in nondestructive patterns. The superego functions primarily to protect society. Largely unconscious, the superego is the moral censoring agency, the repository of conscience and pride. (Charles E. Bressler, 2004:122-123 )

Prevailed by frugality and overwhelmed by discrimination throughout her life, the grandmother had to take up the over-all responsibilities to bring up the grandson at her debilitating age, rain or shine. Child-raising, a boy in particular, is diametrically a grueling task. All men have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Why did she have to fulfill her assigned prescribed obligation to remain a domestic slave in the gutter? Her id wants her to abandon the grandson and ‘enjoy’ her rest life more easily. However, like an internal censor, her superego is governed by moral principle and causes her to make moral judgments in light of social pressure. The boy’s father was an incorrigible drunkard. If she couldn’t look after the boy, who should be in charge of him? The boy might be sent to an orphanage. If so, inevitably she would get denounced as a selfish and irresponsible woman by the others in her community? They might be reflecting on, “What a repellent life she’s living! After her daughter’s death, how could she be totally unconcerned with her own grandson?” She would surely suffer from moral scruples and mental disquietude. How could her ego serve as the intermediary and maintain a balance between the opposing forces of id and superego? “To be or not to be, it’s a problem.” Although the odds were against her, the grandmother had no choice but to be thrown upon herself to bear the duty. But deep in her mind, she suffered from the inferior complex and lacked the sense of belonging and recognition of her neighbors in the village. She was repressed and even somewhat suffocated by the power of her superego — the moralistic social principles, the ethical imperative and the so-called right social code of behavior.

Freud argues when certain repressed feelings or ideas can’t be adequately released in the way of displacement and condensation, people will suffer from neurosis. (Charles E. Bressler, 2004:125) In reality, man does need an outlet to release the repressed feelings. So, to the grandmother, what’s her special outlet? How could she achieve the spiritual balance instead of being neurotic? How could she fuse into the community in her village? What is her countervailing force against the ‘right’ social code of behavior?

Her high profile of religious piety might serve as the outlet because the ostensible sense of superiority seems to provide a kind of remedy for the inferior feelings at the bottom of the heart. At the prayer meeting held in her cottage, “she prayed herself aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect.” She took the lead in the religious activity and she appeared presumptuous, “The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue eyes that looked every one straight in the face”; even “superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class.” Every Sunday, she went every length to providing a public show for the rest in her cottage: forcing her grandson to read the Bible, which is far beyond his ability. Actuality, the three scenes all give full play to her inferior feelings and her fear to be otherized by her neighbors. Yet, her allegiance to God in the religious observances adds a deterrent force to her, bolstering their social identity; her religious zeal and ‘rectitude’ testifies her competence and integrity, ameliorating her sense of repel; and her seeming enthusiasm for the religious services uses as the countervailing force against the right social code of behavior and enables her to take others down a notch in the interaction. To put it more specifically, the public show of the bible reading convinces ‘the others’ of her innocence for the family’s disrepute. Anyway, in the religiously-oriented community at that time, her participation into the religion is somewhat like her character witness. In this way, she proved that she was as good as the other ‘chosen’ and probably even better than some of the others.

Under the double spiritual pressure — her status of widowhood and her daughter’s dishonorable life, the grandmother countered her inner unbalance with the devotion to the religious activity to attain her balance. But the point is whether she achieved the psychological balance? The answer is an emphatic ‘No’, otherwise she would not beat her only grandson ‘from habit rather than from any particular anger of the moment’. Then next question to be posed is whether all the church-goers are the real chosen by God? Or, what is a real Christian?

A real Christian can get the salvation, peace and rejoicing from God. “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”(Isaiah 55 An Invitation to Abundant Life: 12) “As the mountain surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore.” (Psalms 125:2)

A real Christian is like the light in the physical world and he puts God’s commandments into practice all his life. Still, what’s the essence of God’s commandments? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31) Has the grandmother been redeemed by God? Has she grasped the essence of love? If she did, she wouldn’t have such a weird behavior. So the upshot is that she was only a church-goer, not a real God’s daughter. What she acquired from the Bible is sheer a smattering of knowledge. Although it is written in the Bible as “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline.” (Proverbs 13:24), yet she went to extremes partly because of her immeasurable inferior feelings, and partly because of her specious reason of light.

Why isn’t her reason of light sensible, but paranoid? As described in the short story, she was only a laboring woman without good education, undifferentiated with the rest in her cottage. She affected to be presumptuous, however, she was nobody but an ignorant woman. In fact, she was unable to revolve the meaning of life, or the value of God’s words in her mind. What she actually did is only to go with the tide blindly. The moment she beat her grandson severely or she made him read the Bible in the public eye, she might be crying in her heart, “Look, I teach my child as the same as you do, in God’s way. Their downfall is nothing to do with me.” The moment “she prayed herself aloud among them” at a prayermeeting in her cottage, she might consider that she preceded others mentally. To put it in another way, she didn’t live for herself, not for God either, but for the others in the community. That’s why she frequently said she had done her duty even when she knew her grandson was dead. What she concerns was whether she would be reviled by others. The duty she fulfilled for others not only puts her on the rack but also leads her grandson to the death, though she ‘carefully’ tended her grandson: “his clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy and repaired.” It is her ignorance, her blind and paranoid behavior that led her into an abyss of gloom of life.

Then, what is the origin for her ignorance, her blind and paranoid behavior? By and large, her morbidity is caused by the social prejudice, the so-called ‘right code of behavior’ and the people’s relentless attitude towards the underdog in the society. Or in a word, ‘the collective unconscious’ shapes her anomalous deed. ‘The collective unconscious’ is put forward by another great psychologist, Carl G. Jung.

Jung maintains the unconscious of human psyche consists of personal and collective unconscious. The former one, the personal unconscious, is the image or thought at any particular moment, so it’s changing, different from one another and unique with one’s own color. The latter one, the collective unconscious houses the cumulative knowledge, experiences, and images of the entire human species. According to Jung, people from all over the world respond to certain myths or stories in the same way not because everyone knows and appreciates the same story but because lying deep in our collective unconscious are the archetypes. Archetypes are not ready-made ideas but are predispositions, causing us to respond to stimuli in certain ways. Furthermore, they are inherited genetically, making up an identical collective unconsciousness for all humankind. (Charles E. Bressler, 2004:126-127 )

As Freud views that it is the unconscious that governs a large part of our actions. Furthermore, although the personal unconscious is distinct from others, it’s greatly influenced by the collective unconscious. What’s people’s response to the archetype of a widow, an incurable drunkard, and an illegitimate boy? Generically, people might hold it against the grandmother and expect to keep some distance socially and psychologically with her. She, her illegitimate grandson was held up as a scarecrow to the rest. As a poorly-educated underdog in the society, the grandmother is mastered by the collective unconscious and has little control over it. She was inundated with the ideological storm flooding her hither and thither, largely negating her value, no wonder she became a monomania with a kind of twisted personality.

A distorted grandmother can’t walk out of the shadow which the collective unconscious throws on her; a presumptuous grandmother can’t gain the redemption from God because her limited inwardness can’t get her so far. She was struggling on the edge of a cliff and incarcerated in a blind alley. She was afflicted but she had to grit her teeth and clench her fist to bring up the illegitimate boy at her aging time. What an over-burdened cross she had on her shoulder! Was there anyone she could turn to? Was there anyone helping her out of the trouble? Was there anyone soothing her great pain? Where on earth did she live?

She lived in a dark society where crowded a world of sinners. Although a world of people purported themselves to be Christians, many of them were just the lukewarm worshippers and the backsliders. In the milieu, most of the people were self-centered and put a premium on their own business. That’s why“no one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a railway, brooks and a canal” after her grandson had run away. When he was drowned in the ‘river’, a dealer passed by but “he did not want any trouble … so he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying.” “A barge came by, and the steerswoman knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale.” “No use picking it up… there was no reward”, she meditated.

The two characters Richard Jefferies portrays in the short story just reflect the miniature of the society back at that time and even nowadays as well. The color of the society is grey all the time. Because of the grey society and the sinned rank and file, the Lord sent his beloved son to the world to save our soul, elevating and sanctifying our life. The Atonement does reveal the limitless mercy and love of the Lord. But the journey to the paradise is full of tribulations. Not anyone claimed to be Christians can overcome all the temptations and reach the consummate destination. “Listen!A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on god soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” (Matthew 13-3~8)

In the 3 parts of the human psyche presented by another psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, he insists that during the mirror stage in the imaginary order, we come to recognize certain objects. But when these objects or sounds are not present, we yearn for them. Such objects become symbols of lack for us and this sense of lack will continue to plague us for the rest of our lives.(Charles E. Bressler, 2004:129-123) In this analysis, the grandmother’s sense of lack was growing stronger and even stronger in her life: the loss of her husband in her early life, the loss of her only daughter in her mid-life, and the loss of her only grandson in her late life. To put it briefly, the grandmother lived a life devoid of love. She couldn’t control her fate and lived in great shadow of loneliness, helplessness and hopelessness.

Is the grandmother a piteous victim? Deluged with the social discrimination and bias led by the collective unconscious, a lonely elderly widow had to bear hardship and tide over the hard situation strenuously, bringing up her grandson and tending him carefully, in want of love all her life. She lifts up her eyes to the hills — from where will her help come? Her help doesn’t come from the Lord nor does it from anyone in the utilitarian oriented grass roots. She can little control for her own fate owing to her limited knowledge and inwardness. Under the great strain from the grey society, she was broken and distorted mentally. She was wronged by the so-called right code of the society but she was doing something wrong to her grandson; she was hurt by the social prejudice but she hurt her grandson; she was victimized by the utilitarian tide of the society but she herself was a victimizing force to her grandson. The society is cruel and grey. The majority of the people in it are stooping so low in the pursuit of material things. “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose or forfeit themselves?” That’s the author’s message. Like Manzhen in the Eighteen Springs of Eileen Chang, or Qiqiao in the Golden Lock Notes, they were unable to get out of the control of the grey society, turning out to be a victimizing force for others. Thus, the kind of the epitome of the victim can thoroughly interpret the darkness of the society, the wicked nature of man. A kind of tocsin for the readers throughout the world, isn’t it?

Bibliography：

[1]Bible.Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation [Z]. China Christian Council.Nanjing: Amity Printing Co. Ltd., 1995.

[2]Bressler, C. E. Literary Criticism: an Introduction to Theory and Practice[M]. Third Edition.Beijing:Higher Education Press, 2004.

作者简介：陈擎珺(女，36岁)，英语语言文学硕士，讲师，研究方向：文学批判，教学法。