(this is about two pieces of literature, my master’s thesis, how we define ourselves, and some feminist influences. i should tell you that, although i wrote and considered carefully this entire post, i don’t actually believe it. i just was thinking about it… yes, why yes, i am nuts).

i wrote my master’s thesis on female subjectivity in two classic works of literature: shakespeare’s “the rape of lucrece” and samuel richardson’s clarissa. in some ways, richardson’s later work mirrors shakespeare’s and drawing connections between lucrece and clarissa is not a new idea at all. to be fair, my thesis was not that well done, and i sometimes think i should rewrite it just for the sake of its own integrity. anyway i digress.

in said thesis, i argue (and this is not original thought, really, either) that both lucrece and clarissa define themselves as works of art. initially, both women define themselves by their virtue and the status they have attained by…er virtue :) of that virtue. in a nutshell: lucrece and clariss are both moral paragons, and they know it, and they know that other people know it, and that’s how they define themselves.

(ok, this is all hundreds of years — even thousands in lucrece’s case — before betty freidan, so cut the girls some slack.)

going on (and, yes, i am coming to a conclusive point): both women are raped. this causes their sense of self to suffer; they’ve only defined themselves as moral paragons up until the rapes, and (to make a long story short) both feel that the rape has robbed their of their virtuous standing. which is a problem since “virtuous” is the only sense of self they have yet cultivated.

however, even without betty friedan’s guidance, both woman realize that they need to redefine their sense of self, and thus, my argument continues, they come to define themselves as subjects of a story – their own. both attain a new sense of subjectivity by framing themselves with a story — of their virtue, their rape, and then their end (no spoilers today, sorry).

when writing my thesis, i think i was arguing (its hard to tell – i promise you, it’s not well done) that they redefined themselves as subjects of a story because they had no other choice or because it seemed like the only way out. and my quasi-feminist education has taught me that objectifying ourselves is bad, bad, bad. (ignore the fact that both characters are written by male authors; that’s deeper than i’m going to go right now.) so my thesis’s argument was something along the lines of: they didn’t have any other way to define themselves: they saw themselves as either virtuous beings or as subjects of a story (pieces of art) — and both of those are objectified views of one’s self, and that is so sad. so very sad. lament lament.

ok (now i am coming to my current point, fear not). so last week i learned A Famous Movie Star/Producer (henceforth called Mr. Star) has bought the rights to the life of one of the professors I work near at H– (I don’t know This Professor personally; but we exchange smiles sometimes as he walks past my desk, etc). The Professor has definitely had an amazing life, and I can understand Mr. Star wanting to make a movie/biopic of it. but this news reminded me of my thesis in some ways. clearly, The Professor has objectified himself and is turning the facts of his life over to art.

and maybe that’s the best thing he could do. if you believe (and i do not) that our lives are momentary, ephemeral, and quickly over, then objectifiying yourself is clearly the best way to attain immortality. The Professor will be remembered long after his life has ended because he has entered the art scene. Perhaps some of the smaller truths will be lost, but if the quality of the art is good, the art will last much longer than The Professor ever could.

if some aspect of our sense of self dies when we do and objectifying ourselves is a safe-guard against that, then what’s the problem? why is it considered bad for lucrece and clarissa to objectify themselves? hamlet dies, asking horatio to make sure the story is well told; othello is worried about how his fate will be proclaimed. we do not fault them this; we should understand that the stories told about us actually come to define us once we are gone. and in light of that, i have to think that lucrece and clarissa knew exactly what they were doing. it wasn’t that they released themselves from their status as moral paragons; rather, they each framed their case in a story, objectified themselves for the sake of the story, and thousands (or hundreds) of years later, the modern reader considers them again as moral paragons. so then, from their perspective, they have lost nothing. in fact, in the end, they emerge triumphant against their raped condition — we see no blight on their virtue at all.

objects they may now be, but they have outlasted all of their peers who did not also submit themselves to art.