Barthes, The French, and the Muslims

Think back to our discussions earlier this discussion on how we look at literature.  On the one hand, we saw some arguments that we should evaluate text without any considerations about the author's contexts. Then we moved to Barthes who asked the question "What about the reader?" This question forced us to consider how being in a certain environment affects how we read and understand literature.

In Bharati Mukherjee's novel The Holder of the World, we get a rare chance to really consider this question by looking critically at different time periods, geographies, and world views. While the allusions to Hawthorne's work are painfully obvious, and we are expected to consider how the meaning is changed, I find myself wondering how we might consider this story in the context of a different readership, a different worldview.

In the novel, we get a good glimpse at what the transposition of Puritan to India looks like. While Mukherjee goes into depth explaining how the two cultures are completely different, yet at the same time the same, I can't help but make comparisons to various bits of French literature that I have read, and noting the differences.

One of the most important differences to note is how the Eastern world is viewed. In Mukherjee's novel, early in part three, Hannah remarks that "Muslims' aversions and their attractions struck familiar chords with devout Christians. They had a haven, a hell, a book, a leader, a single god; they knew sin and tried to repent..English attitudes saw Islam as a shallow kind of sophistication...Muslims had restrictions, which were noble and manly." Alongside this, she also remarks how afraid she is of Hinduism for how opposite it is from her own religion. However what this illustrates is that the thought process at this time allowed for thoughts of Eastern peoples in a way that is familiar and understanding, even though it is very different.

This makes a sharp contrast to most French literature of the era, which always illustrated the East as extremely outlandish, with strange, incomprehensible customs and ideas. They were a marauding, savage people, and, most importantly, unenlightened of intelligent, western ways.

For example, in Moliere's famous work Le Bougeois Gentilhomme, the final act is an exhibition in the obscene. In order to fool a greedy, foolish father into allowing his daughter to marry the man she loves, rather than a rich nobleman, her friends and family put on an elaborate farce. They bring a representative of the "Grand Turk" who has an silly title, something that might translate to "The Grand Boobah" or something like that, who intends to honor the father with titles and agree to marry his daughter to the son of the Grand Turk, who is really the daughter's lover. The representative however, is described as wearing strange clothing, he performs strange rituals, and speaks in a strange language, which demonstrate the prevalent thought process of the time that the East was a strange and unknowable place. The idea was to ridicule the unknown for amusement.

COVIELLE: Finally, to complete my assignment, he comes to ask for your daughter in marriage; and in order to have a father-in-law who should be worthy of him, he wants to make you a Mamamouchi, which is a certain high rank in his country. 
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Mamamouchi?'
COVIELLE: Yes, Mamamouchi; that is to say, in our language, a Paladin. Paladin is one of those ancient . . . Well, Paladin! There is none nobler than that in the world, and you will be equal to the greatest lords of the earth. 

Similarly, in Corneille's great work Le Cid, the "Muslim's" (oftentimes, in French literature, the term Saracen is used as a blanket term to describe Eastern peoples, including Indians, Turks, and others) attacked one of the major port cities. They are depicted as incredibly violent, bloodthirsty heathens who are bent solely on conquest.

"If anything, Hannah had a Christian's skepticism about other faiths, bolstered by a  Muslimized intolerance for idolatry. Hannah was a pure product of her time and place, her marriage and her training, exposed to a range of experience" p220. So what do we get in the end? A re-affirmation that we walk away with totally different conceptions of reality based on who we are, where we are, and what we read. The English/American/Puritan viewpoint regarding the East is incredibly different from that of the French. Thus, especially when reading Holder of the World, we have to constantly e considering how we ourselves are reading this novel, just as we must look and critically examine how the characters in the novel are examining their own situations.