Fig. 1: Flowers from Alcatraz.
Learning Record: Midterm, Revised
April 27, 2006
"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, 'If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'" [NOAB, John 8.31-32] The Jews were nonplussed: "What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free?'" [NOAB, John 8.33] Jesus clarifies: he means freedom from sin and its enslaving influence, and the truth in question is the Christian truth. In order to be free according to Jesus, you must believe in the Christian God.
Is this the freedom the builders of UT were referring to when they inscribed "The Truth Shall Set You Free" in an imposing gothic font on the Main Building? Did they intend to free the students from sin, as Jesus did? This seems unlikely, as the University of Texas was founded as a primarily secular institution, despite the occasional Biblical reference. Personally, I do not find the Christian truth to be particularly freeing. Generally, being "free from sin" involves having to follow a bothersome set of rules for behavior. The founders must have interepreted "the truth shall set you free" more broadly, as a call to freedom from ignorance and the pursuit of knowledge. In keeping with that ideal, it seems reasonable to me to examine my own search for freedom this semester in light of the knowledge I have acquired.
Many of the books we have read this semester involve a search for freedom, successful or otherwise. Stephen Daedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is oppressed by Catholicism. At the beginning of the book, as a child, he has difficulty understanding his surroundings and expressing himself -- he is trapped inside his own head. Finally, Stephen experiences an aesthetic epiphany and achieves freedom by becoming an artist. The "truth" that Stephen discovers is the girl on the beach, who seems to him to be a "strange and beautiful seabird" [Joyce, 171]. The beauty of the girl causes in Stephen an "outburst of profane joy." [Joyce, 171]
In my case, like Stephen's, some freedom has come with experience. I used to write nightly in a journal when I was in about third grade or so. My day-to-day thoughts were simplistic: I talked infinitely about my mood and the injustice of my parents. (The journal ends with, "This is no longer a journal! This is now a SPY NOTEBOOK!!!" I'd just read Harriet the Spy.) Instead of understanding what was going on, I wrote pages of vitriol about my family's move to Michigan from Ohio. I had no idea how limited my thinking was! I suspect I will look back on this essay ten years from now and feel the same way. Perhaps the most important truths I have encountered on my pilgrimage have been simple ones about how the world works or why people act the way they do -- ideas that would have been completely incomprehensible to me ten years ago.
Jude in Jude the Obscure and Sarah in The French Lieutenant's Woman are both trapped by their social status and lack of fortune. Their positions severely limit their options and determine their actions to some extent. Even Fowles' wealthy characters cannot escape the obligations of their station. Ernestina's prospects, for example, are limited to aristocrats and wealthy businessmen. In contrast to A Portrait, however, freedom from class constraints is not a positive development in The French Lieutenant's Woman. Sarah is a modern woman in that she sees through the class prejudices of her time, but she is ultimately a tragic character. (Based on the endings in which she spurns Charles, which had always seemed most realistic to me.) Charles sees a union with Sarah as impossible, but when he finally overcomes his class consciousness and admits his love for her, he fails to achieve happiness and instead causes the misery of others. Sam and Mary successfully transcend class barriers and scrounge out an existence as members of the lower middle class, but this transformation is only made possible by lies and deception. When she was a maid, Mary had "infinitely the least selfishness," [Fowles, 75] but after her rise to the post of mistress, Mary is no longer free from sin: symbolically, she wears the brooch Sam stole from Charles [Fowles, 424].
I have little in common with the class-obsessed Victorians. As a middle-class college kid, I have nothing to complain about. Probably I will attend graduate school, buy a nice apartment and an expensive laptop, and live out the rest of my life without really caring about the price of gas. I could even make Stephen's choice and live a starving artist's existence without suffering much from class. In these modern times, birth and money are no longer guaranteed passes to virtue. I suppose we are lucky to be free of such superficial concerns.
What to do? The Sarte-reading friends I have tell me that my business major will cost me my soul. The S&P-obsessed ones wax lyrical about Michael Dell and Jack Welch, and don't see the point of all this theory. I'm torn between being a well-heeled professional and buying my dad the BMW he's always been too pragmatic to treat himself to, or adding to the sum total of culture by creating for a living. One truth I have found is that either option -- intellectual or professional -- is valuable. In terms of a "vision for the future," my strongest belief is that we are free to decide. Personally, however, I find the professional route more compelling.
Even if they manage to escape the constraints of their class, Fowles' characters are limited by the culture of Victorian society. Ernestina feels such a strong sense of duty that she quashes all sexual thoughts, having evolved a "kind of private commandment" -- "I must not." [Fowles, 29] Ernestina may be free in the sense originally meant (free from sin), but she is constrained by her sense of duty and societal pressures. Duty precludes her from having sinful thoughts, but she also fears "a bestial version of Duty" [Fowles, 29], a necessary component of marriage. Much like Ernestina, Charlotte Bronté's Jane Eyre has trapped herself. She sees herself as small, pale, and ugly, and as a result cannot conceive of a better life for herself. When leaving Lowood, she initially desires liberty, but then offers "a humbler supplication" for "a new servitude." [Bronté, 99]
Societal or psychological constraints seem the most dangerous to me, since they cannot be identified and thus fought. We are now freer than we have ever been politically, socially, sexually. Nonetheless, I am sure future generations will scoff at us the way we look down on the poor, repressed Victorians.
When I first read Jane's supplication for a new servitude, I discounted it as self-defeating. However, Jane's words point to a larger truth: that absolute freedom is impossible or even detrimental. Sarah, the modern woman, has the ability to see through the artifices of her time, but she also seems to be free from concern for Charles' well-being, and acts cruelly. I am reminded of a discussion in TC125K, Perspectives on Creativity: it was said that some constraints on creativity, such as the sonnet form, actually help the creative process. It seems very human to find some limitations comforting.
Considering this, my goal in life is not to achieve absolute freedom. Intellectually, I want to be as free as I can -- to know as much as I can, and to be liberated from false assumptions, like Jane's and Ernestina's societally-imposed conceptions. However, my "vision" is not that of a true free spirit. A truly free person could live almost randomly, picking and discarding ideals as they serve his desires. Such a person would probably be hedonistic -- and much like Sarah. But I cannot discard all ideals.
My "vision," such as it is, is to become a lawyer. My dream is to spend the rest of my life arguing with other people and speaking publically. This dream is unlikely to inspire others, in my opinion, and doesn't really translate well into a t-shirt slogan. But the reason law appeals to me is because, in pursuing it, I can pursue a closely-held ideal: self-improvement. As a highly competitive field, law appeals to me because I know it will challenge me.
It might seem strange that I want to spend my life doing something so cold and unaesthetic, having spent most of this essay talking about the transformative power of knowledge and the aesthetic. However, I don't think that I would have to abandon literature and art in order to practice law. Ideally, I can retire early and spend ten years touring Italy. I'm not interested in having an impact on future generations. John Maynard Keynes once said (to quote him out of context) "In the long run, we'll all be dead." I would rather have the respect and admiration of my peers, and more importantly, of myself. I will be happy practicing law.
Works Cited
Bronté, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Penguin, 2003.
Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant's Woman. Back Bay Books, 1998.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York, NY: Penguin, 1977.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Michael D Coogan, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Image Sources
Fig. 1 & 2: original.
Fig. 3-5: taken by Professor Bump.