Our
destiny is frequently met in the
very paths we take to avoid it.
~ Jean
de La Fontaine
All humans need and
desire contact with others. Relationships enhance the life experience
exponentially making a person’s life more fulfilling and fun; without them,
life is empty, lonely, and boring. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,
social encounters are essential right after food and safety that keep humans
alive. Relationships are rewarding in many aspects, but they aren’t always
easy. The stories Eveline by James Joyce, Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor,
and the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, all share
similar messages people should take into consideration with how they are
creating or building their own relationships with others. After reading and
analyzing these texts, I have discovered a common philosophical viewpoint:
trust issues and the fear of losing the image of an ideal life can affect our
relationships with others and increase the likelihood of loss.
It’s amazing how someone
taking a risk or giving into fear can affect a relationship by strengthening or
weakening it. For example, in James Joyce’s story, Eveline, the main
character is stuck living with her abusive father. After her mother and brother
have passed away, she is the only one living at home working: “She always gave
her entire wages– seven shillings – …but trouble was to get any money from her
father” (5). Her father never wants to risk losing Eveline, but more
importantly, he fears being alone. However, when a sailor named Frank comes
along, Eveline is approached with the opportunity to escape her hard life here.
He provides her with the chance to run off to Buenos Ayres[1]
in the hopes of creating a better life for herself… a better life than her
mother had had (4). The problem with this option is that once she leaves, she will
never be welcome to return. She fears she’d be the scandal of the town: “What
would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away
with a fellow?”(4). Nonetheless, she’s stuck with the risk of leaving the
security of home for what she thinks is her ideal image of life with Frank, or
staying where she is, living the miserable life her mother had lived. While she
considers her options in the story, she thinks to herself, “Home! She looked
around the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a
week for so many years…Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects
from which she had never dreamed of being divided” (4). Eveline wants to live
an adventurous life, yet she is scared to be separated from familiarity. It
seems that when one must make a decision, someone must always lose when an
arrangement needs to be made from two disparate options. In this story, Eveline
could either keep the relationship she has with her father, or taking the risk
of starting a new life with Frank.
Additionally, one who
desperately wants to be loved is vulnerable to prematurely trusting someone who
voices the words he/she longs to hear. When Eveline met Frank, he was the first
man to take interest in her. His words appealed to her desire to leave her
current life: “She was to go away with him by night-boat to be his wife and to
live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her” (4). Before
Eveline laid out the consequences of leaving, she was all for this plan to take
her away from this distasteful life. Unfortunately, while waiting with Frank
near the boarding area for the ship, Eveline’s heart clenches and she is
reminded that she doesn’t know if she can trust leaving with the man who
persuaded her to get this far with his sweet words. The story states, "A
bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: "Come!" All
the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he
would drown her” (7). Reality hit her in the face for she didn’t really know
what was waiting for her at her potential destination. Up to this point, she
had the option of escaping the life she no longer wanted to live, yet something
held her back from boarding the ship to a new life with Frank. I can relate to
Eveline since I am also easily influenced by others’ ideas. Over time, I have
learned to step aside and weigh out the possibilities and my own priorities
before pursuing anything that could cause disturbance to my life.
In the same way, the
characters of Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor also fall into
the trap of trusting people who have a way with words. Hulga has been disabled
most of her life, and as a result has guarded herself by imprinting her mind
that she is useless, ugly, and alone. One day before dinner, a Bible salesman
tried persuading the Hopewells, Hulga’s family, into buying a Bible for the
parlor. When the salesman said “I got this heart condition. I may not live
long. When you know it’s something wrong with you and you might not live long,
well then, lady…” (194), Hulga was caught off guard and realized she wasn’t in
this alone… he had the same heart condition (194)! I think that Hulga, just
like everyone else who’s going through a difficult situation, felt grateful to
know that she wasn’t facing this battle alone; as a result, she did the
unimaginable by asking him to stay. To continue, the salesman stuck around
slowly using his words to manipulate her. He declared he loved her and
convinced her to show him where her wooden leg connects because it’s what makes
her different (199-200). When she agreed, O’Connor wrote, “It was like losing
her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his” (200). All of this was
new. She had never experienced being admired by a boy before; thus, she
couldn’t help but feel closer to him because she wanted to believe his words
were true. It took a while, but Hulga overcame her trust issues about removing
her artificial leg after the Bible salesman made her feel comfortable, loved,
and safe. Once it was off and out of her reach, “She gave a little cry of alarm
but he pushed her down and began to kiss her again. Without the leg she felt
entirely dependent on him” (201). Sadly, the small amount of trust she
privileged him with backfired at her when he ran off with her leg leaving her
helpless in the barn alone. Good Country People demonstrates the risk we
take by trusting people we don’t know very well due to our own need to belong.
Good Country People furthermore, indicates
a type of relationship between a mother and daughter which causes destruction
to the one who is unable to compare to the ideal. Hulga purposely lived the way
she did because it was the closest she could get to her image of a perfect life
for the condition she was in. She had changed her name from Joy to Hulga, which
her mother had refused to call her. Mrs. Hopewell thought the name was the
ugliest name in all languages that made her think of the broad blank hull of a
battleship (191). Additionally, Mrs. Hopewell never took her daughter out in
public for she was embarrassed of what her daughter had turned into. She
mentions, “…if she would only keep herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad
looking” (192). Nonetheless, Mrs. Hopewell was ashamed to tell people that her
daughter was thirty-two years old with a Ph.D, not doing anything with her life
now. She conveys that a parent can brag about their child being a teacher or
engineer, but not a philosopher (192). She feared that her daughter would never
be good enough or outgoing enough to gossip and brag about with her employee,
Mrs. Freeman, especially since Mrs. Freeman had two idealistic daughters. It’s
my perception that Mrs. Hopewell feared she raised Hulga poorly and pretended
to be accepting of the way Hulga chose to live because of the disabilities she
acquired over time. Mrs. Hopewell would rather dream of Hulga being a superior
daughter instead of looking at everything Hulga’s accomplished and being proud
of her.
Conversely, people can
seclude themselves from others in order to decrease the likelihood of revealing
their true selves out of the fear of not being good enough for society. Within
the novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, the two main
characters, Paloma and Renée, both hide away like hedgehogs. For instance,
Paloma thought she would stand out too much in the real world if anyone were to
find out what she was really capable of:
I am twelve years old, I live at 7, rue de Grenelle in an
apartment
for rich people…since I don’t really want to stand out, and since
intelligence is very
highly rated in my family…I try to scale back
my performance at school, but even so I always come first…I’ve
made up my mind: at the end of the school year, on the day I turn
thirteen, June sixteenth, I will commit suicide. (23-25)
To Paloma, the world and
the people in it are everything but her definition of perfect, so at one point
she wants to separate herself from it. Likewise, Renée kept to herself hidden
in her apartment reading copious amounts of novels and tending to her cat after
her husband had passed away. She had absolutely no desire to build new
relationships with others. She states, “I am a widow, I am short, ugly, and
plump… I live alone with my cat… Neither he nor I make any effort to take part
in the social doings of our respective species… I am not liked, but am
tolerated nonetheless…” (19) Renée is very ordinary. She goes about her days trying
not to be noticed for her fear of not being worthy enough for society. Absorbed
in her library, she hides away from worldwide discrimination, pretending she is
a character living a more appealing life. Like Renée, I, too, hid away like a
hedgehog before I learned who I was as an individual. It’s difficult to accept
ourselves for who we are when we are constantly compared to society’s
definition of “beautiful” and “flawless.”
Nevertheless, when reflecting
upon relationships, one might notice that the relationships shared with others
may have impacted their life more deeply than expected. In The Elegance of
the Hedgehog, Renée looks back to all the relationships she’s developed
with others during her last few months alive. During her fifty-four years of
life, she mentions that she was hardly touched by the tenderness of someone
like her deceased husband, Lucien. She made herself accustomed to a lonely life
turning to books and her cat to fulfill her desire for companionship. It wasn’t
until her last few months alive that she was noticed and accepted by others.
Renée’s best friend, Manuela, who had helped her get to where she was, would
always be important to her. And the daughter she never had, Paloma, who was her
kindred soul, had enlightened the last few months of Renée’s life (320). Paloma
pushed her out of her isolated apartment and into the company of Kakuro when
she needed him most. She reflects, “…And you, Kakuro, dear Kakuro, who made me
believe in the possibility of camellia… I hardly know you beyond the person you
were for me: a heavenly benefactor, a miraculous balm against all the
certainties of fate” (319). Kakuro provided Renée with a relationship she had
only ever imaged were real. She never expected someone to impact her life as
greatly, if not greater than Lucien or the Prince Charmings within her books.
All in all, trust issues
associated with the fear of losing either a false ‘ideal’ life or a life that,
although painful, is well-known and understood will inevitably impact our
relationships with others and increase the likelihood of loss and regret. Generally, fear challenges us while our dreams
and hopes inspire us to take risks we might otherwise disregard. Furthermore, I
believe that trust can be extremely difficult to achieve when one is naïve or
gullible which ultimately weakens the strength of a relationship and its
meaning. We are built with the desire within us to be wanted by others, even
though we fear being rejected or judged unfavorably. Relationships are
nevertheless hard to maintain especially with an individual who feels he/she
cannot measure up to the ideal participant. This being said, we are often
surprised on how greatly our lives are impacted by relationships. And yet, in
some cases we push others away in order to continue on with an ideal, or unrealistic,
image of life. I think at this point in time involvement with others benefits
us by forming us into better people which overall results with a better world. We
often take the simplest things for granted. Oscar Wilde once said, “Life
imitates art far more that art imitates Life”. Therefore, trying to achieve
perfection seems pointless for the true joys of life, in my opinion, lie amidst
things such as impactful relationships which could arguably be art.
Works Consulted:
Barbery, Muriel. The
Elegance of the Hedgehog. New York: Europa Editions, 2012. Print.
"Importance of Relationships." Indianetzone
Relationships. N.p.. Web. 18 Mar 2013.
<
http://lifestyle.indianetzone.com/relationship/1/importance_relationships.htm>.
"Jean de La
Fontaine." Art Directory. N.p.. Web. 18 Mar 2013.
<http://www.jean-delafontaine.com/>.
Joyce, James. “Eveline.” Literature and the Writing Process
Ninth Edition. Ed. Linda Coleman,
Robert Funk, Elizabeth
McMahan, Susan X Day. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc,
2011. 4-7. Print.
Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs
O’Connor, Flannery. “Good Country People.” Literature and the
Writing Process Ninth Edition.
Ed. Linda Coleman,
Robert Funk, Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day. New Jersey:
Pearson Education, Inc,
2011. 189-204. Print.
"Oscar Wilde Biography." Bio. True Story. A E Television
Networks, LLC. Web. 18 Mar 2013.<
http://www.biography.com/people/oscar-wilde-9531078>.
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