Does
Elizabeth Bennet reject Mr Collins’s proposal?
Fiction appears to describe a world – but what is being described? A world that is created in the process of being described.
Does
Elizabeth Bennet reject Mr Collins’s proposal?
In one sense no: there are no such people and no such episode. In another sense yes: if you read the novel you can verify that she does
It depends on whether the question is taken to be about the actual world or about (the world of) the novel Pride and Prejudice.
The sentences in fiction that use names (‘Elizabeth Bennet’, ‘Mr Collins’) and report events do not differ in meaning from the sentences of ordinary non-fictional discourse. The difference is this: the sentence ‘Elizabeth B has rejected Mr C’s proposal’ would normally in non-fictional discourse be the expression of an assertion, and to make an assertion is to be committed to the truth of what one asserts. The storyteller however is invoking a convention whereby the usual commitment implied in assertion making is suspended – she is pretending to make an assertion (or making an as if assertion). Similarly with names: to use a name to refer to some person in ordinary discourse carries a commitment to there being an actual person to be referred to, whereas in fiction this commitment too is suspended – the storyteller pretends to refer to a person called Elizabeth B.
It is because telling a story (or enacting a play) involves conventions that suspend the commitments of ordinary discourse, conventions that are generally well understood by both tellers and hearers, that it is inappropriate to say that a fictional narrative is false.
The paradox of fiction
In the world
of Shakespeare’s play Othello Desdemona is an innocent wife who is killed by
her jealous husband. In the actual world Fred watches this scene enacted. Fred
grieves for Desdemona.
The paradox:
1 Fred grieves for Desdemona
2 Grieving for someone implies a belief that the person exists
3 Fred does not believe that Desdemona exists
The problem is apparent interaction between fictional and actual world.
1 Fred is deluded: he really believes that what is represented as happening is actually happening, or has happened.
Comment: this can occur, either because the signals that indicate fiction are obscured or because the reader/viewer is unfamiliar with the conventions; but it is very implausible that this is what normally happens when one is moved by fiction.
2 Fred really grieves but for real women whose fate he is reminded of by seeing the play.
Comment: fiction certainly can operate in this way and is often used to draw attention to the plight of e.g. the homeless, or the victims of some particular injustice (fiction as documentary). In such cases the fiction is transparent to the actual world, puts the reader/viewer in mind of an actual situation so that it is some feature of actuality that is the object of emotion. But is all fiction like this? Fred may protest that it is Desdemona he grieves for.
3 For the time he is watching the play Fred is fictionally witnessing the events enacted on stage, is (fictionally) horrified by Othello’s killing of Desdemona and grieves for her. (Walton’s solution)
Comment: this solution has the viewer enter the fictional world. As a temporary resident of the world of the play Fred believes that Desdemona is strangled and grieves for her. It’s a matter of make-believe or (in the same sense as Searle’s) pretending: Fred makes-believe that he believes, pretends that he grieves, though he may actually have grief-sensations, sob, etc. The grief cannot be real because the belief is not. What the spectator actually, as opposed to make-believedly, feels is (Walton’s term) ‘quasi-emotion’.
4 Fred’s emotion of grief is caused by a thought, caused by watching the play, and the intentional object of the grief is the content of that thought, what it is the thought of, viz. of a woman answering to the description of Desdemona unjustly killed by her husband. (Lamarque’s solution)
Comment: the essential components of Lamarque’s solution are (a) the suggestion that an emotion can be occasioned by a thought and need not involve a belief in the existence of the object of the emotion: (b) the suggestion that the object of emotion is not Desdemona, but the character Desdemona, which, in the actual world, consists in a set of descriptions to be found in the play or implied by it.
Given that the three elements of the paradox cannot all be true, one or other has to give. If we resist the possibility of temporary delusion as a general explanation (solution 1), and reject solution 2 because it shifts the object from fiction to the actual, we are left with Walton and Lamarque (unless you can come up with a solution of your own).
Accepting either may seem to involve a sacrifice. If we accept Walton we can make sense of saying that it is Desdemona that Fred grieves for, since fictionally she can be referred to and be the object of beliefs and emotions, but Fred’s grief is also fictional, and to some that will be hard to swallow. On the other hand if we accept Lamarque Fred’s grief can be the genuine article, but he cannot straightforwardly grieve for Desdemona.
Do we have to choose between Walton and Lamarque? Rather than being rival theories, could they be accounts of two different ways of responding to fiction? Waltonian Fred indulges in a game of make-believe, fully aware that he is doing so, but all the same going into it heart and soul. Lamarqean Fred is a cooler customer, more disengaged from the fiction, and though moved, not prepared to talk as though he and Desdemona occupied the same world.
‘It seems an unaccountable pleasure which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety and other passions that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy’ (David Hume, ‘Of Tragedy’)
1 The spectator of a tragic drama derives pleasure from the experience
2 The spectator of a tragic drama experiences such unpleasant emotions as pity and terror
3 No one derives pleasure from the experience of unpleasant emotions
Let us assume that ‘no one’ in 3 is not to include masochists, but the generalisation is meant to cover all human beings whose compassion and aversion to fear are within the normal range.
1 Unpleasant emotions are one component of a complex experience which as a whole is pleasant, the unpleasant emotions being overwhelmed and their effect on the mind weakened, by the pleasure afforded by other elements of the drama, such as its dramatic vitality, vivid characterisation, etc.
2 What would otherwise be unpleasant emotions are transformed into pleasure by the force of a stronger positive emotion (Hume’s account)
3 Unpleasant emotions aroused by the spectacle of suffering and injustice allow the spectator to reflect on her creditable responses of compassion and indignation. The unpleasant emotions are not transformed into pleasant ones, but become the objects of higher order emotions, and thus part of a total experience that is satisfying.
(Feagin’s account)
4 In the context of drama the emotions are devoid of some of their normal concomitants: nothing bad has happened and no obligations to act are involved. (Part of Levinson’s account of the analogous problem about music, but applied to drama.)
Some of these solutions may be combinable
Philosophers have tended not to question 1, that tragedy gives pleasure; but it perhaps should be questioned. At least it should be remarked that ‘pleasure’ covers a wide range of experiences and responses. The experience of tragedy may be painful but rewarding.
This paradox has nothing essentially to do with fiction, drama or film. It is raised by the big dipper – by any experience in which some feeling or sensation that is inherently unpleasant is willingly undergone for the sake of enjoyment. Fiction comes into it because that is one source of such experiences.
Credits
Pride and Prejudice pic thanks to Soulmates
The Death of Desdemona
thanks to Princeton
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Last revised 16:03:05 |
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John Benson |
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A module of the BA Philosophy programme Institute of Environment Philosophy and Public Policy | Lancaster University | e-mail philosophy@lancaster.ac.uk |
