Interpretive Problem Essays
I'm On the Outside Looking In
The first question that I had regarding the story was why did the author use the underpinnings of Christian metaphors. That was rather odd to me in a gothic tale. However, I found after a closer reading that such a thing only served to obscure a deeper truth, which was the relationship between the narrator, the landlord, the undertaker and Fettes, whom the story is written about.
In the essay, I attempt to prove to that Fettes is the undertaker, the landlord, and the narrator which proves how the narrator could know so much about the events that happened between Fettes and his nemesis, MacFarlane.
Could we have a case of lost or stolen identity in Robert Stevenson’s gothic tale The Body Snatchers (1884)? The story opened identifying the key characters in the story: the undertaker, the landlord, a man called Fettes, and the narrator, (in that order) whom the text says met together regularly at the George, a local neighborhood bar. None of Fettes’ friends have names; only titles: the undertaker, the landlord, and the narrator. At the George they are mulling over their suspicions about what each believed was real truth behind the confrontation they witnessed between Fettes and the esteemed Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane who had come to the aid of a man at the George.
Not only is the story set up to be read from the end to the beginning of the events between Fettes and Macfarlane; but the order in which the narrator the key characters in the story is also significant. It’s significant because it shows the progression in which Fettes lost himself perhaps to Macfarlane. Fettes the undertaker is who he was consumed as after he dealings with Macfarlane. Fettes the landlord is who he was before he was a landlord; and finally once upon a time, he was just Fettes. He worked as somewhat as an undertaker during his tenure with Macfarlane. He received and helped to prepare dead bodies for dissection. This appears to be where his breakdown takes place. The text also states that he was a landlord, “…a man of education obviously, and a man of property…” (1)
The story was told from the narrator’s point of view about Fettes as an understudy of Dr. Macfarlane. He described how the two men met while in medical school anatomy class and used cadavers for their dissecting experiments. Whenever they would run out of cadavers, they would produce their own cadavers, through murder.
How Does He Know?
The narrator boasted that, of the three, he was the best at getting to the bottom of the issues between Fettes and Macfarlane, than either the landlord or the undertaker, and claimed that “perhaps there is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events.” (3) How can the narrator be so graphic and detailed in his story telling of the events that transpired between Fettes and Macfarlane when in the text it never says that he told anyone anything other than “ 'See if you can hold your tongues,' said he. 'That man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have repented it too late.'” (3)
How could he be able to recall conversations between Fettes and Macfarlane that he, from all practical standpoints was not party to? At that point, all that any of Fettes’ friends knew about what happened between Fettes and Macfarlane, except Macfarlane, were merely suspicions. Besides, it would be highly unlikely given Fettes’ disposition about his involvement in the murders that he would breathe a word of that to anyone. Not even his closest friends. To do so, would put him in jeopardy with the law and Mr. K.
There is no mention of where he got his information, yet he tells the story as if he was a fly on the wall. After Fettes’ confrontation with MacFarlane, Fettes left the George and faded out into the night. This is where Fettes’ voice disappears altogether. Since we know this, how can we believe anything the narrator says?
This is exactly the point anticipated by Stevenson, so to make the narrator’s voice believable, there is a sprinkling of Christian metaphors and imagery throughout the text to build trustworthiness. Who wouldn’t trust a church-going Christian back in those days? For example, he mentioned Fettes’ absence from church, as was stated earlier. Another time he describes how startled they were when a drunken Fettes snapped out of his drunken stupor at the sound of the name “Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane”. He said it was “…as if a man had risen from the dead”. Next he uses Fettes own words when he explained why he looked so rough in comparison to Macfarlane. Fettes said it was sin and rum. Then of course there was the blatant declaration that Fettes made “You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted.” (2) When confronting Macfarlane, he added, “I heard your name; I feared it might be you. I wished to know if after all, there were a God; I know now that there is none. Begone!” (3)
However, the use of Christian rhetoric is not sufficient to establish trustworthiness. It doesn’t make the narrator a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes one a car. Perhaps if he had been described as a Bishop, or a Priest in that day, his words would have had more weight to them.
While one could approach it from other angles, the patterns of the story, starting with the order of descriptions of Fettes’ friends, help to make sense that Fettes is the narrator. Fettes suffered an identity crisis and over time, Fettes was reduced to his lowest common denominator in this succession: Fettes the man, Fettes the landlord, and finally Fettes the undertaker; which is the exact opposite of how he begins the story. To tell his story at all was so sensational to him, that he had to step outside of himself, not just to tell it, but to keep from totally losing his mind, and possibly going into apoplexy, like the gentleman at the George
It’s hard to determine whether Fettes’ identity was lost or stolen. Whatever the case, it was as if he was snatched from himself and reduced to what he could only speak about in third person as a narrator. Fettes lost himself gradually, to Macfarlane as he was lured into a web of murder and deception that he couldn’t synthesize mentally. Perhaps Fettes was a Christian once, which could explain another reason for the Christian voice. Could it be that it was a part of him that was crying out that I’m not a bad guy. I used to go to church, I used to believe in God, but now I am a mentally challenged alcoholic who can only talk to my-selves about what I’ve been through. In essence, I’ve been snatched too – not my body, but my soul!
In the essay, I attempt to prove to that Fettes is the undertaker, the landlord, and the narrator which proves how the narrator could know so much about the events that happened between Fettes and his nemesis, MacFarlane.
Could we have a case of lost or stolen identity in Robert Stevenson’s gothic tale The Body Snatchers (1884)? The story opened identifying the key characters in the story: the undertaker, the landlord, a man called Fettes, and the narrator, (in that order) whom the text says met together regularly at the George, a local neighborhood bar. None of Fettes’ friends have names; only titles: the undertaker, the landlord, and the narrator. At the George they are mulling over their suspicions about what each believed was real truth behind the confrontation they witnessed between Fettes and the esteemed Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane who had come to the aid of a man at the George.
Not only is the story set up to be read from the end to the beginning of the events between Fettes and Macfarlane; but the order in which the narrator the key characters in the story is also significant. It’s significant because it shows the progression in which Fettes lost himself perhaps to Macfarlane. Fettes the undertaker is who he was consumed as after he dealings with Macfarlane. Fettes the landlord is who he was before he was a landlord; and finally once upon a time, he was just Fettes. He worked as somewhat as an undertaker during his tenure with Macfarlane. He received and helped to prepare dead bodies for dissection. This appears to be where his breakdown takes place. The text also states that he was a landlord, “…a man of education obviously, and a man of property…” (1)
The story was told from the narrator’s point of view about Fettes as an understudy of Dr. Macfarlane. He described how the two men met while in medical school anatomy class and used cadavers for their dissecting experiments. Whenever they would run out of cadavers, they would produce their own cadavers, through murder.
How Does He Know?
The narrator boasted that, of the three, he was the best at getting to the bottom of the issues between Fettes and Macfarlane, than either the landlord or the undertaker, and claimed that “perhaps there is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events.” (3) How can the narrator be so graphic and detailed in his story telling of the events that transpired between Fettes and Macfarlane when in the text it never says that he told anyone anything other than “ 'See if you can hold your tongues,' said he. 'That man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have repented it too late.'” (3)
How could he be able to recall conversations between Fettes and Macfarlane that he, from all practical standpoints was not party to? At that point, all that any of Fettes’ friends knew about what happened between Fettes and Macfarlane, except Macfarlane, were merely suspicions. Besides, it would be highly unlikely given Fettes’ disposition about his involvement in the murders that he would breathe a word of that to anyone. Not even his closest friends. To do so, would put him in jeopardy with the law and Mr. K.
There is no mention of where he got his information, yet he tells the story as if he was a fly on the wall. After Fettes’ confrontation with MacFarlane, Fettes left the George and faded out into the night. This is where Fettes’ voice disappears altogether. Since we know this, how can we believe anything the narrator says?
This is exactly the point anticipated by Stevenson, so to make the narrator’s voice believable, there is a sprinkling of Christian metaphors and imagery throughout the text to build trustworthiness. Who wouldn’t trust a church-going Christian back in those days? For example, he mentioned Fettes’ absence from church, as was stated earlier. Another time he describes how startled they were when a drunken Fettes snapped out of his drunken stupor at the sound of the name “Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane”. He said it was “…as if a man had risen from the dead”. Next he uses Fettes own words when he explained why he looked so rough in comparison to Macfarlane. Fettes said it was sin and rum. Then of course there was the blatant declaration that Fettes made “You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted.” (2) When confronting Macfarlane, he added, “I heard your name; I feared it might be you. I wished to know if after all, there were a God; I know now that there is none. Begone!” (3)
However, the use of Christian rhetoric is not sufficient to establish trustworthiness. It doesn’t make the narrator a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes one a car. Perhaps if he had been described as a Bishop, or a Priest in that day, his words would have had more weight to them.
While one could approach it from other angles, the patterns of the story, starting with the order of descriptions of Fettes’ friends, help to make sense that Fettes is the narrator. Fettes suffered an identity crisis and over time, Fettes was reduced to his lowest common denominator in this succession: Fettes the man, Fettes the landlord, and finally Fettes the undertaker; which is the exact opposite of how he begins the story. To tell his story at all was so sensational to him, that he had to step outside of himself, not just to tell it, but to keep from totally losing his mind, and possibly going into apoplexy, like the gentleman at the George
It’s hard to determine whether Fettes’ identity was lost or stolen. Whatever the case, it was as if he was snatched from himself and reduced to what he could only speak about in third person as a narrator. Fettes lost himself gradually, to Macfarlane as he was lured into a web of murder and deception that he couldn’t synthesize mentally. Perhaps Fettes was a Christian once, which could explain another reason for the Christian voice. Could it be that it was a part of him that was crying out that I’m not a bad guy. I used to go to church, I used to believe in God, but now I am a mentally challenged alcoholic who can only talk to my-selves about what I’ve been through. In essence, I’ve been snatched too – not my body, but my soul!
And the Truth shall make you free.
As a forerunner in the feminist movement at a time when the double standards of sexuality and purity were perhaps at their peak, Victoria Woodhull made her case for social freedom or the “free love” movement in her speech “And the Truth shall make you free,” by using Christian rhetoric and metaphors, and the law.
In the beginning, she attempted to establish credibility right up front by entitling her work “And the Truth shall make you free”, using a part of a biblical passage from John 8:32 KJV as the title. This signified that what the audience was about to hear was a certain liberating truth. Notice that in the title, Truth has a capital “T” perhaps adding another layer of credibility. Did Woodhull expect that in doing it this way that it would imply that either God or Jesus endorsed it?
What’s interesting to note is power of inference that is used by naming this work as such. To say that the “…the truth will make you free” implies that one is bound by lies; and these lies about love and sexuality and women she will dispel in this speech. Now having established these things upfront, one could only conclude that what the audience was about to hear is in a way, a gospel truth or right up there with it.
So what was the author’s point in writing this way, particularly since she is a self-proclaimed spiritualist, and boldly decries Christianity as failing in the past 1800 years to do what some would expect her new movement or new doctrine to do overnight? Woodhull says directly “They must not expect that the Free Love, before it is more than barely announced to the world, can perform what Christianity in eighteen hundred years has failed to do.” (Woodhull 1028)
Woodhull wrote that way to connect to her audience. It was her way of becoming all things to all people so that she can win…some. She was applying the Apostle Paul’s declaration in
I Corinthians 9:22 “to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” This was yet another tactic or strategic Woodhull used. For the movement’s sake she was willing to be a Christian for example, which was the moral compass of that day, and by using Christian rhetoric to convince others that she was one of them to win them over to her side.
However, the above statements were rather audacious assumptions that Woodhull makes about both about Christianity and what the public expects from a movement, her movement, that she admits is just getting off the ground. First, what makes her qualified to judge the success or failure of Christianity? Next, who can legitimately bring a charge against her cause that most knew nothing in detail about because it was so new? However, in making such a statement, it seemed that what Woodhull was trying to shield the ideology of her movement against perhaps those who would attempt to compare it to Christianity. In other words, it’s as if she said, give it (Free Love) some time. Eighteen hundred years have passed and Christianity has not succeeded at relieving our society of debauchery, brutish men and debased women, as well as ignorant and fleshly lusts (1028), but I tell you Free Love will do it in time, if given the chance.
It was just a chance that Woodhull wanted. A chance to prove that her Free Love, which she defined as “the law by which men and women of all grades and kinds are attracted to or repelled from each other, and does not describe the results accomplished by either; these results depend upon the condition and development of the individual subjects.” (1032) could work. Moreover, she further explained her belief as: “I believe in love with liberty; in protection without slavery; in the care and culture of offspring by new and better methods, and without the tragedy of self-immolation on the part of the parents.” (1035) That statement might have been the secret desire of every woman at the time, and what’s wrong with that? What was it about Free Love that so demonized Victoria Woodhull?
Perhaps it was her response to the question, was she a Free Lover that sparked a flame in fire and brimstone-infused press community, to which she replied,
Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. (1026)
Woodhull, however, fights fire with fire, which is partly her point in writing this way, and comes against the Christian right of her day as “an accuser of the bretheren,” using their own words and theories against them. For example, she accuses Christians of being pharisaical, as in being legal enforcers as it relates to God’s laws, because they are the foundation of her opposition.
Quite too much of the old pharisaical spirit exists in society to-day to warrant its members’ claims, that they are the representatives and followers of Christ. For they are the holier-than-thou kind of people, who affect to, and to a great extent do, prescribe the standards of public opinion, and who ostracize everybody who will not bow to their mandates. (1031)
Perhaps to shame them into accepting Free Love, she pointed out to them how Jesus chose His disciples, and how He dealt with people in general, claiming that there were those in the church at that time who would not welcome them in their great cathedrals. In another passage she used as religious rhetoric the cliché for lack of a better word, based on a question in John 1:46 KJV “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” This was a question that was asked about Jesus, since He was from Nazareth which was a place of ill repute in that day. Woodhull claimed that “The Church seems to have forgotten that good does sometimes come out of the Nazareths of the world, and that wisdom may fall from “the mouths of babes and sucklings.” (Ps. 8:2 KJV) She and her movement were for all intents and purposes to be believed as the good things out of a bad place.
Her speech is heavily laden with Christian rhetoric in an attempt to convert people to her way also. Woodhull, at the beginning of her speech, went as far as to seek to compare the reception of her movement to the day in biblical times when after the resurrection, the Jewish leaders persecuted the followers of The Way, and blasphemously called them Christians in contempt of their existence. She remarked how that today the name Christian is synonymous with “all that is good, true and beautiful” (1027), to imply that the same would one day be true of the term “Free Love”.
At certain places in the speech, it was almost like a “we’re in this thing together” kind of mode, particularly when she described our Christian brotherly duties. In reference to a previous comment which involved how Christians “forgetting the teachings of Christ, condemn and say, ‘Go in your sin’”, Woodhull seeks to connect with the audience as a Christian and say “It is our Christian and brotherly duty to persuade him instead that it is more to his good to do something better next time, however, assuring him he only did what he had a right to do.” (1030)
With her command of scripture you would think she was a born again Christian. Woodhull conveniently used passages like “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” (1027) a reference from Luke 23:34 KJV when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying for the people who were about to kill him. This passage worked well for her because it metaphorically and rhetorically supported and reflected her feeling that people were crucifying her for her movement. And of course, rather than render evil for evil, implying by this the use of this passage (Luke 23:34) that she appeared to take the position that Jesus did, and at least verbally, forgave her opposition, choosing to believe that they didn’t understand.
Yet it doesn’t take a close examination of the speech to reveal that she was not Christian at all, despite all of the rhetoric; it is merely implied through her use of Bible knowledge. In fact, she declared that she is a “devout spiritualist and a transcendental socialist.” (1035). That is why it was so easy for her to speak about “inalienable, constitutional, and natural” (1026) and human rights, because the doctrine that she adhered to was the doctrine of Natural Rights.
There is a saying that I like to quote whenever I see religious manipulation and any other form of deception, and it is: “a half-truth is a whole lie”. Woodhull manipulated her knowledge of the Bible to gain acceptance for her cause. She understood, as the true politician that she was, that rhetoric goes a long way, particularly Christian rhetoric. If twisted just right, this type of talk, and the consistent pounding of it, could cause a weak-minded Christian to question their understanding of what God said much as Eve did with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. If successful, she could have systematically called into question what they believed and easily shamed them with what she would say would be their hypocrisy, and ultimately break them and then sway them her way.
Hypocrisy? History records Victoria Woodhull as publically renouncing the Social Freedom: Free Love movement after she married a millionaire philanthropist and settled in London, England. What does this say about her “truth” since she renounced her cause? “…money answers all things.” [Ecclesiastes 10:19 Paraphrased]
In the beginning, she attempted to establish credibility right up front by entitling her work “And the Truth shall make you free”, using a part of a biblical passage from John 8:32 KJV as the title. This signified that what the audience was about to hear was a certain liberating truth. Notice that in the title, Truth has a capital “T” perhaps adding another layer of credibility. Did Woodhull expect that in doing it this way that it would imply that either God or Jesus endorsed it?
What’s interesting to note is power of inference that is used by naming this work as such. To say that the “…the truth will make you free” implies that one is bound by lies; and these lies about love and sexuality and women she will dispel in this speech. Now having established these things upfront, one could only conclude that what the audience was about to hear is in a way, a gospel truth or right up there with it.
So what was the author’s point in writing this way, particularly since she is a self-proclaimed spiritualist, and boldly decries Christianity as failing in the past 1800 years to do what some would expect her new movement or new doctrine to do overnight? Woodhull says directly “They must not expect that the Free Love, before it is more than barely announced to the world, can perform what Christianity in eighteen hundred years has failed to do.” (Woodhull 1028)
Woodhull wrote that way to connect to her audience. It was her way of becoming all things to all people so that she can win…some. She was applying the Apostle Paul’s declaration in
I Corinthians 9:22 “to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” This was yet another tactic or strategic Woodhull used. For the movement’s sake she was willing to be a Christian for example, which was the moral compass of that day, and by using Christian rhetoric to convince others that she was one of them to win them over to her side.
However, the above statements were rather audacious assumptions that Woodhull makes about both about Christianity and what the public expects from a movement, her movement, that she admits is just getting off the ground. First, what makes her qualified to judge the success or failure of Christianity? Next, who can legitimately bring a charge against her cause that most knew nothing in detail about because it was so new? However, in making such a statement, it seemed that what Woodhull was trying to shield the ideology of her movement against perhaps those who would attempt to compare it to Christianity. In other words, it’s as if she said, give it (Free Love) some time. Eighteen hundred years have passed and Christianity has not succeeded at relieving our society of debauchery, brutish men and debased women, as well as ignorant and fleshly lusts (1028), but I tell you Free Love will do it in time, if given the chance.
It was just a chance that Woodhull wanted. A chance to prove that her Free Love, which she defined as “the law by which men and women of all grades and kinds are attracted to or repelled from each other, and does not describe the results accomplished by either; these results depend upon the condition and development of the individual subjects.” (1032) could work. Moreover, she further explained her belief as: “I believe in love with liberty; in protection without slavery; in the care and culture of offspring by new and better methods, and without the tragedy of self-immolation on the part of the parents.” (1035) That statement might have been the secret desire of every woman at the time, and what’s wrong with that? What was it about Free Love that so demonized Victoria Woodhull?
Perhaps it was her response to the question, was she a Free Lover that sparked a flame in fire and brimstone-infused press community, to which she replied,
Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. (1026)
Woodhull, however, fights fire with fire, which is partly her point in writing this way, and comes against the Christian right of her day as “an accuser of the bretheren,” using their own words and theories against them. For example, she accuses Christians of being pharisaical, as in being legal enforcers as it relates to God’s laws, because they are the foundation of her opposition.
Quite too much of the old pharisaical spirit exists in society to-day to warrant its members’ claims, that they are the representatives and followers of Christ. For they are the holier-than-thou kind of people, who affect to, and to a great extent do, prescribe the standards of public opinion, and who ostracize everybody who will not bow to their mandates. (1031)
Perhaps to shame them into accepting Free Love, she pointed out to them how Jesus chose His disciples, and how He dealt with people in general, claiming that there were those in the church at that time who would not welcome them in their great cathedrals. In another passage she used as religious rhetoric the cliché for lack of a better word, based on a question in John 1:46 KJV “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” This was a question that was asked about Jesus, since He was from Nazareth which was a place of ill repute in that day. Woodhull claimed that “The Church seems to have forgotten that good does sometimes come out of the Nazareths of the world, and that wisdom may fall from “the mouths of babes and sucklings.” (Ps. 8:2 KJV) She and her movement were for all intents and purposes to be believed as the good things out of a bad place.
Her speech is heavily laden with Christian rhetoric in an attempt to convert people to her way also. Woodhull, at the beginning of her speech, went as far as to seek to compare the reception of her movement to the day in biblical times when after the resurrection, the Jewish leaders persecuted the followers of The Way, and blasphemously called them Christians in contempt of their existence. She remarked how that today the name Christian is synonymous with “all that is good, true and beautiful” (1027), to imply that the same would one day be true of the term “Free Love”.
At certain places in the speech, it was almost like a “we’re in this thing together” kind of mode, particularly when she described our Christian brotherly duties. In reference to a previous comment which involved how Christians “forgetting the teachings of Christ, condemn and say, ‘Go in your sin’”, Woodhull seeks to connect with the audience as a Christian and say “It is our Christian and brotherly duty to persuade him instead that it is more to his good to do something better next time, however, assuring him he only did what he had a right to do.” (1030)
With her command of scripture you would think she was a born again Christian. Woodhull conveniently used passages like “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” (1027) a reference from Luke 23:34 KJV when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying for the people who were about to kill him. This passage worked well for her because it metaphorically and rhetorically supported and reflected her feeling that people were crucifying her for her movement. And of course, rather than render evil for evil, implying by this the use of this passage (Luke 23:34) that she appeared to take the position that Jesus did, and at least verbally, forgave her opposition, choosing to believe that they didn’t understand.
Yet it doesn’t take a close examination of the speech to reveal that she was not Christian at all, despite all of the rhetoric; it is merely implied through her use of Bible knowledge. In fact, she declared that she is a “devout spiritualist and a transcendental socialist.” (1035). That is why it was so easy for her to speak about “inalienable, constitutional, and natural” (1026) and human rights, because the doctrine that she adhered to was the doctrine of Natural Rights.
There is a saying that I like to quote whenever I see religious manipulation and any other form of deception, and it is: “a half-truth is a whole lie”. Woodhull manipulated her knowledge of the Bible to gain acceptance for her cause. She understood, as the true politician that she was, that rhetoric goes a long way, particularly Christian rhetoric. If twisted just right, this type of talk, and the consistent pounding of it, could cause a weak-minded Christian to question their understanding of what God said much as Eve did with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. If successful, she could have systematically called into question what they believed and easily shamed them with what she would say would be their hypocrisy, and ultimately break them and then sway them her way.
Hypocrisy? History records Victoria Woodhull as publically renouncing the Social Freedom: Free Love movement after she married a millionaire philanthropist and settled in London, England. What does this say about her “truth” since she renounced her cause? “…money answers all things.” [Ecclesiastes 10:19 Paraphrased]