Andrew Nelson
November 25, 2014
English 226
Dr. Coronado
Bluebeard
America looked
very different in the 1840s. We were quite literally only half the nation we
are today with states like Iowa and Wisconsin only just joining the union
during this decade. America as we know it was still forming; the famous Oregon
Trail expedition was launched from Missouri in 1843, Minnesota became an
American territory in 1849. As a country we were busy adopting traditions and
custom’s that we still have today. The very first ongoing congressional
filibuster occurred in 1841 and the dates of our federal elections were set in
1845. We were very much still trying to figure out who we were as a country and
how we wanted to govern ourselves; trying the balance the need for centralized
laws with the borderline paranoid fear of (non-divine) higher authority that
started at “We the People of the United States…” and continues to this very
day. We see for the first time in this decade the lower class citizens
beginning to not only realize that the American Dream is not within their
reach, but that is it being kept out of their reach by the upper class elite
and, more importantly, deciding to do something about it. Its little surprise
then that the American people would relate to the first act of the play Bluebeard. Based off an old French folktale,
this version of the story was written by the German Poet Johann Ludwig Tieck who
was well known at the time but had yet to have many of his works translated
into English. The translation of Tieck’s version of the story was published in
the literary newspaper “The New World” in 1840. In the first act of this
version we see a lower class citizen being belittled by the nobility even as
they take his ideas as their own. This idea, the idea of those higher up in
society taking credit for the work and ideas of the lower class was a pretty
dear idea to the American people both then and now.
Bluebeard opens up with Heymon, the lord
of Wallenrod Castle, meeting with his advisors and knights, as well as with a
counselor who we are told by Heymon’s brother Conrad “Has given many an
excellent piece of advice which is would have been well if any had taken.” (Bluebeard, Act 1) From this we can
gather that this counselor has a reputation for being wise enough to give good
advice, whether it is taken or not. The character to focus on in this act,
however, is Claus who is listed in the character list as “a fool.” They are
meeting to discuss how to deal with the threat from a rival lord by the name of
Bluebeard who has been conquering other lands surrounding Wallenrod Castle.
When we first see Claus he is introduced as such
“Claus: The fool enters; he is
small and deformed, hump-backed, lame of a leg, and moves very nimbly upon one
crutch.
Conrad: Ah! It is our fool.
Matrin: You Have a Very complete
household.
Conrad: Thank God! We deny
ourselves nothing. A little man, the fool, whom you see before you there, but
he has an excellent, untiring wit of his own. He will make you laugh a whole
evening, even without speaking a word. –But a very good disposition.
Claus: Is it allowable, gentlemen,
that a fool should come into a rational assembly of counsel?
Conrad: Gracious Heaven! He is a
fool, we must allow him a little innocent pleasure, since he does not drink,
and is altogether a pretty good fellow. Take a seat fool, and we sensible
people will take our seats too. [All sit.]” (Bluebeard, Act 1)
We see that Claus
is seen to truly be a fool by the knights and advisors. It’s not that they do
not like him, quite the opposite in fact, calling him ‘altogether a pretty good
fellow’ and praising him for how well he does at his job. It is, however,
painfully clear that they do not respect him. Indeed, they believe that he so
simple and foolish that just listening to their ‘rational’ discussion would be
an entertainment for him. What really displays Claus’s position in the court
and the knights view toward him, is what happens while they are discussing the
assault on Bluebeard
“Heymon: And when we have conquered
him, shall we then take his castle by storm, and divide his treasure?
Claus: And where will Bluebeard be,
meanwhile?
Heymon: Fool, he is to be killed in
the battle.
Conrad: And if he be not killed,
then he will be clapped in irons.
Heymon: But that he will never
agree to, …thus better that he should fall in the fight.
Counselor: Good; ‘t is much better
that he should fall in the fights Sir Heymon. You have expressed exactly my
opinion.
Conrad: Be if he is not killed
after all?
Counselor: Ay Indeed! A good
observation of your brother indeed. If he is not killed after all! He will do
better to fall in the battle, that’s certain; but men are often very singular.
Yes, what think you in this case.” (Bluebeard,
Act 1)
Yes,
what if Bluebeard is alive? The important thing to notice here is how, despite
Claus being the one to bring up questions of Bluebeard’s fate, it is not until
Conrad voices the question that it is taken seriously by the counselor, and by
extension everyone else. Indeed the idea is accredited to Conrad, who is
praised as being wise for thinking of it even though it is clearly Claus’s. We
see this same kind of action later in the Act when the knights come upon Bluebeard
fighting with another enemy. They wait for the fight to finish and, when Claus
suggests they should have attacked Bluebeard while he was fighting someone else
as well, they lament not having their Counselor with them to have told them
that, even though Claus once again just said it.
It
is the pure dismissal of Claus in this act that rings closest to the way that
lower class citizens were being treated at this time. It wasn’t that the
knights thought that he had had a bad idea or a good idea, but that they didn’t
even seem him as capable of having an idea that they should honestly consider.
Indeed, nobody in the room even acknowledges it until it is brought up by
Conrad. They never acknowledge that Claus had an idea, and can’t even
comprehend the idea that they should, indeed they are being nice enough to let
this fool sit in on their rational discussion, that should be good enough for
him. They didn’t believe they had any more responsibility to the people that
they were lord over than what was required to keep them alive. Much the same
view is expressed in Rebecca Davis’s Life
in the Iron-Mill as the mill owner and a friend discuss his employees
“‘Exactly,’ rejoined Kirby. ‘I do not think. I wash my hands of all social
problems,—slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow
limit,—the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if they cut korl, or
cut each other's throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not
responsible.’” (Davis) Though written several years after Bluebeard, Life in the
Iron-Mills also addresses the idea of the upper class not caring about the
lower class citizens while at the same time being the ones who not only put and
keep them in their deplorable conditions, but also reap most of the benefit of
their work. The workers in Kirby’s iron
mill made barely enough to survive from day to day while he is quite clearly
well off and yet he says that it is not his problem. He does not want to even
think about any sort of wider responsibility to his employees he may have.
It’s
no wonder that people started getting angry as they realized that most of the
benefits of their work were going to someone else. Karl Marx explains it by
saying “By producing their means of subsistence, men are indirectly producing
their actual material life.” When we as people work for our living, we are work
for everything that makes up our lives. Everything that we will ever have or be
able to do comes from what we earn when we work. This is the very idea that built
America! Anybody can come here and work hard, and through the power of that
hard work, they can build a better life for themselves and their family. This
wasn't the case for most every worker in the 1840s who made just enough money
at their jobs to keep themselves alive in order to go back and work at their
jobs. Already at this time in our history, we start to see the reality of one’s
station in life being determined less by how hard you worked and more by which
birth canal you happened to pop out of. By taking nearly everything that these
workers were working for, the upper class was talking from them their very
lives. We see these feelings finally beginning to come to a head in 1842.
In
1842 things changed forever within the world of the working American thanks to
the landmark court case Commonwealth v. Hunt. For all of American history
before this case it was a very legally grey area for workers to strike or work
together to insure a better wage for themselves. Workers did occasionally try
to better their lives prior to this “In 1636, for instance, there was a
fishermen’s strike on an island off the coast of Maine, and in 1677 twelve
carmen were fined for going on strike in New York City.” (Nahill) But as we can
see, it didn’t tend to end very well for the workers. With the decision reached
by Commonwealth v. Hunt allowing workers to legally strike and form unions the
American worker was finally able to fight back, able to take back the product
of their work- and their lives.
America
(or at least the idealized concept of America) was founded on the premise that every
man, no matter where he came from could, by the work of his hands and the
strength of his back, forge for himself a better more rewarding life then
whatever he came from. This hope was at the center of every major influx of foreign
migrants, every gold rush, and every borderline-insane push farther west into the
terrifying untamed wilds of North America. Americans risked life and limb on a
regular basis in pursuit of the better life promised by ‘The American Dream’
and it has been proven time and time again throughout history that when push
comes to shove we are willing to fight for this dream. The first act of Bluebeard reminds the working Americans
that they were the real driving force behind America, and that is a message
with just as much meaning in 2014 as in 1840.
Davis, Rebecca H. Life in the
Iron-Mill. Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1861. Project Gutenberg. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/876/876-h/876-h.htm>.
Marx, Karl. "Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions."
1989. The Critical Tradition. New
York: St. Martin's, 1989. 565-69. Print.
Nahill, William. "Commonwealth v. Hunt." RSS. Http://www.twiki.org/, 12 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.
<http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/twiki/bin/view/AmLegalHist/BillNahillWikiProject>.
Pdf Link- Click here!
No comments:
Post a Comment