THE PREFERRED TYPE AND CONFLICT IN FROST

Transcription

1 Chapter 5 THE PREFERRED TYPE AND CONFLICT IN FROST The narrative genius of Frost is that he is able to combine a number of modes of plot presentations and character portrayals in varying combinations. While using third person narrative story, dramatic dialogue, dramatic monologue, lyric and other shades of poetic portrayal Frost manifests his narrative dexterity. In the realm of character depiction also he made his mark. Whether it be in the use of the technique of dialogue or the depiction of actions and conflict or in direct narration Frost could

2 achieve marvellous results in creating convincing character portraits. Many of Frost's most striking characters are revealed in a single line; some of them without even a word.... [The character] stands out as clearly as though the artist had put in every wrinkle and trouser crease. In his stolid reiteration of the one sentence, one sees his father behind him and his father's fathers stretching back in a vague row (Untermeyer, 22). The present study examined a number of dramatic narratives bringing out the distinguishing features of the character depiction in them. In the ten famous dramatic poems analysed in the foregoing discussion only one, that is "A Hundred Collars" presents an all male scenario. The others are conflicts between men and women mostly in a rural domestic setting. Even among these household tales all except one deal with encounters between husbands and wives in one way or the other.

3 Frost chose to portray diverse scenes from family life in order to depict his character gallery. The various marriages that he has presented in these dramatic narratives meet with different fates. In "The Hill Wife" and "The House Keeper" the couples have already separated. "The Witch of Coos" and "A Servant to ServantsM present Women whose husbands' apathy has driven them mad. "Home Burial" is yet another story of wedded life on the brink of collapse and "The Fear" is the depiction of a curious relationship which is also under immense strain. Not all marriages in Frost's poems are under the threat of rupture, though. "The Death of the Hired Man" is perhaps the sunniest of all marriage portrayals. Even under the shadow of the destitution and final death of the hired man Silas, the deep rooted understanding and effective communication between the couple Mary and Warren are palpable in the whole of the narrative. "In the Home Stretch" presents another memorable couple who are deeply sensitive of each other's sentiments and are eager to fulfil the 216

4 other' s innermost desires. The dramatic narrative of a rather high pitched conflict, "Snow," with its focus on the conflict between the eccentric preacher, Meserve and Helen Cole, deals also with the mutual understanding and reciprocity that is there between the couple, Fred and Helen Cole. Whether under threat of marital disruption or not, Frost's domes tic portraits, almost exclusively, concentrate on relationship between husband and wife. This could be a reason why the other members of the families are generally out of sight. The absence of children, a widely noted aspect of the domestic tales of Frost, authenticates the premise of such an exclusive focus. Even in "Home Burial" a poem about the lost child and the bereaving mother there is hardly any direct reference to the child. As Kearns remarks, 'that the grave exists at all is proof of their fruitful sexual union, and it sets them apart from Frost's other couples" (Kearns, 1931, yet the curious absence of any other hint about the person of the child is quite disturbing. Another son depicted in "The Witch of Coos" is no more a child

5 but already a middle aged man who is somewhat retarded and the 'narrative in the narrative' has its exclusive attention on the life of the couple. These marital depictions with all their prospects for intimacy and dedication, turn out to be portrayals of barrenness in more than one sense. "It is as if conception is thwarted by a jealous nature which pulls women and men outside into a symbolic union with earth rather than a fruitful union with one another" (Kearns, 194). The marriages delineated in dramatic narratives, such as "The Hill Wife," "The Fear," "The Housekeeper," and "A Servant to Servantsu are all characterised by alienation of the husbands and wife from each other in a profound manner. The present study has selected ten of the famous Frost narratives to compare and contrast the patterns of characterisation and conflict delineation. Among these the odd one is surely "A Hundred Collars", its narrative situation being a strange encounter between two divergent male types in a hotel room. The setting for the rest of the

6 dramatic narratives are all homes, making everyone of them domestic tales of one type or the other. Characters and setting in the Dramatic Poems of Robert Frost A Hundred Collars The Witch of Coos Fred Cole Helen Cole Lafe Prof.Magoon the witch hotel room home Fie. 7: The Characters and Setting Four of these are direct and exclusive encounters between men and women, presumably

7 spouses. "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial," "The Fear" and "In the Home Stretchrr are all two-character domestic dramas depicting conflicts of a household kind. The five piece narrative, "The Will Wife" closely follows these, once again depicting the lonely world and utter alienation of another couple. The two confessional narratives of Frost examined here, "A Servant to Servants" and \\The Witch of Coos, " though they use the mode of women narrating the tales to some passer-by having a listening heart, are in fact marital tales of great pathos. The underlying conflict is in fact between the speakers and their respective husbands, one is living and the other is dead a long while ago. Another narrator, the one in "The House Keepern creates only an occasion to present the story of John and Estelle the off -the-stage dramatis personae of the central story of this strange tale of cohabitation. Though Estelle has left John and his house, her mother is still there and the narration and the story in flashback takes place at home. "Snow" is the dramatisation of the contrast

8 between the turbulent nature out there and the cosy home of the Coles and draws a parallel in the contrasting personal styles of the tumultuous and impulsive character of Meserve and the sedate life of the Couple. The home of the Coles serves as the setting for this clash of temperaments. Richard Poirier's remark is pertinent here; "Frost is often at his best when 'home' is at its worst" (Poirier, 111). In his best dramatic narratives men and women come alive and confront each other and the drama becomes quite intense when it is enacted at 'home', more so because much of the restrictions and formalities fade away within the informal setting of the family. In this way for the poet 'home' turns out to be a "a place, a form, a mode of discourse in which often unmanageably extreme states of feeling occur" (Poirier, 134). The study reveals a pattern in the depiction of men and women in the poems of Robert Frost. As his choice setting for his dramatic narratives is home, there is a tentative inclination in his works towards a select pattern of characterisation. The foregoing analysis using the typology of Carl Jung 221

9 educes an indicative categorisation of the principal characters of the ten selected dramatic narratives. Characters and Types in the Dramatic Poems of Robert Frost Fred Cole A Hundred Collars The Witch of Coos Laf e Prof. Magoon the witch ESFP INTP INFJ FiP.8 :Characters and haes

10 Out of the nine women characters except one all the others are feeling types. Helen Cole in ''SnowU is the only exception to this rule. She, a thinking extravert, oversteps the amused but gentle Fred and takes over the responsibility of handling the fanatical adventurer, Meserve. All the other women characters, some of them reserved and others outspoken, share the common thread of feeling characteristics. The typical woman in Frost narratives shares the characteristics that distinguish feeling types. They "Value sentiment above logic....usually find it hard to know where to start a statement or in what order to present what they have to say. Many therefore ramble and repeat themselves, with more detail" (Myers, 68). The description immediately brings to our mind Amy in "Home Burial", the woman in "A Servant to Servants" and a host of other women. Richard Poirier's observation throws light on these woman characters: "Extravagance" of imagination such as is found in "The Witch of Coos" and "A Servant to Servants" derives from characters who react 223

11 vigorously against quite specifically portrayed domestic confinements of "home"... Especially when a woman is the speaker in such poems the bursting out of imagination comes in the form of images at once terrifying, comically macabre, and sexually charged (Poirier, 118). Five of the women presented in the poems scrutinised above are introverts. Amy in "Home Burial" and the women in "A Servant to ServantsN and "The Hill Wife" are excellent samples of this characteristic. They are people with "Minds inwardly directed, frequently unaware of the objective environment, interest and attention being engrossed by inner events" (Myers, 56). This introverted temperament accounts for Frank Lentricchia observation: Women are frequently distinguished from men in Frost's poems by their serious lack of drive to preserve self. They are much too open to shock, seem not to have the strength... to throw up against psychological chaos a momentary stay (Lentricchia,64). 224

12 The dominant men in Frost narratives, on the other hand, have extravert and thinking characteristics. In the poems under study only one character, that is Dr. Magoon, is clearly depicted as introverted, all the others being extraverted. An extravert, more so an extraverted thinker has focus and activity there in the world outside. Extraverted thinking person's "goal is solution of practical problems, discovery and classification of facts, criticism and modification of generally accepted ideas" ((Myers, 78). The description directly points to the picture of a practical minded Warren in "The Death of the Hired Man," the clearer headed husband in "The Servant to Servants," and Meserve and Lafe and numerous other characters depicted by Frost. All of them are people full of life and activity, ready to talk and find quick solutions to problems around. Extraverted thinker "is fed from objective data-facts and borrowed ideas" (Myers, 78). Their conservative and conformist stance is evident from the attribute given to Frost's men, the proverb quoters. The neighbour in "Mending Wall" who 225

13 repeats "Good fences make good neighbors" (1. 27) is the most memorable of these proverb quoters. In "Death of the Hired ManN Warren is depicted with his fixed idea of home. The woman in "The Servant to Servants" says that her husband Len looks on the bright side of everything and "Len says one steady pull more ought to do it./ He says the best way out is always through" (11. 55, 56). Amy's husband in "Home Burial" is the most curious of all when he says to his wife '"Three foggy mornings and one rainy day/ Will rot the best birch fence a man can build' " (11. 92,93). These extraverted and often sensing type of men are very much at home out of doors and take pleasure and pride in work. John in "The House Keeper", Lafe in "A Hundred Collars", the husband in "The Hill Wife:' are all outstanding examples of this male characteristic. "More than his women, Frost's men, with some exceptions, play the game according to the rules. They take pride in their workmanship, like the poor home-burier, and thereby can hold life's destructive terrors at bayn (Rosenthal, 111).

14 When Frost's extraverted thinking men and introverted feeling women come and interact many a time the men seem to dominate. When the selfassurance and nonchalance of the men is juxtaposed with the loneliness and agony of the womenfolk the readers' sympathies very often go with the latter. "In such poems as 'The Fear, 'Home Burial, and 'A Servant to Servants, ' for example, sensitive wives are so caught between the lonely natural world and the rigid proverbs of their husbands that, locked in an unutterable loneliness, they disintegrate into hysteria and slump into depression" (Cox (19821, 146). The poet seems to realise how blind and hard a proverb quoter can be and depicts the plight of women with great pathos. Katherine Kearns in "'The Place Is the Asylum': Women and Nature in Robert Frost's Poetry" puts forward an interesting contrast between men and women, especially in relation to insanity. Men and women possess the power to make each other mad, yet it is the man in "A Servant to Servants" who must be locked away. Women are powerful, active, magnetic in their madness. 227

15 ... Men are rendered impotent; they can only pursue unsuccessfully or withdraw into themselves. They have nowhere else to go, because Frost's world is controlled by a powerful femininity. As brides or as keepers, women dominate households (Kearns, 191). This brings to our mind the plight of many men in Frost narratives. The husband in "Home Burialt' is totally at a loss as to how to cope with his hyper sensitive wife; charming Fred has to tow the line of the assertive Helen Cole in "Snow"; in "The Fear" Joel is overpowered by the high pitched emotional reactions of his frenzied wife; and we can only sympathise with the husbands of both the witches for their sad predicament. In all these different dramatic encounters, men and women confront each other in different circumstances, but a unifying thread is discernible among these diverse tales. In the poems under scrutiny a pattern of conflict is evident and the analysis using the instrument of MBTI unravels it convincingly. A quick perusal at the character profiles will reveal a fairly general encounter 228

16 between the thinking and feeling types. With the varying shades of the personality attributes of participating characters these encounters take divergent hues of drama. Characters, Types and Conflicts in the Dramatic Poems of Frost Joe ISFJ snow Meserve Fred Cole ESTP ENFJ P-J Helen Cole ESTJ A Hundred Collars Laf e ESFP SF-NT Prof. Magoon INTP The Witch of Coos the witch INFJ Fie. 9 : Characters and ConSct

17 As the analysis highlights a conflict between two principal characteristics, that is, thinking and feeling emerges as the soul of drama in these narratives. Nancy Vogel's remark about a steady conflict in Frost's poems is pertinent here. "One of Robert Frost's constellations of intention can be found in the cluster of poems dealing with justice and mercy" (Vogel, 205). According to Reuben Brower the essence of "The Death of the Hired Man" lies in the pull and its resolution as mercy tempers justice" (Brower, 162). This antagonism between mercy and justice which in Jungian terms is a conflict between traits of feeling and thinking is in one way or the other the persistent characteristic of numerous Frost poems. The interplay of these characteristics is noted by many. In Fire and Ice Thompson observes how Mary overpowers Warren through the gentle but persistent assertion of her feeling characteristics: The psychological implications of the poem becomes apparent only when one recognizes the gradual ascendancy of the wife's latent pity and kindness until it dominates the husband's 230

18 outspoken intolerance and anger (Thompson, 112). To look at the real life situation, Isabel B. Myers cites various research findings on type compatibility among married couples and remarks on the wide spread prevalence of thinking-feeling divide, "Likeness on TF should be hardest to achieve because there are more feeling women than thinking women on our culture, and more thinking men than feeling men, though these differences may b decreasing" (Myers, 130, 131). Alo Sircar in Figuring Out Frost comes to a conclusion concerning these attributes, "The conflict is between...mercy and... justice and the world can hardly do without either, however irreconcilable they might appearn (Sircar, 36). Looking for patterns of confrontation among character types of the dramatic poems of Frost the second most significant conflict is between the intuitive and sensing characteristics. Discussing conflict in "The Death of the Hired Man" Thompson observes, "Mary's intuitive grasp, contrasting

19 throughout with Warren's slow searchings, goes to the heart of that troublen (Thompson, 113). Intuitives, more of them women, see, hear and feel certain phenomena that sensing characters, most of them men, find it almost impossible to comprehend. The woman in "The Witch of Coos" and Mary in the poem about the hired man, in their own peculiar way, stretch out beyond the other characters using their intuitive traits Discussing the two contrasting characters in "West-Running Brook" John C. Kemp mentions a certain technique that Frost uses in *The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial,I' and "Fear." The underlying conflict is based on "tension between the wife's inquisitive, speculative, visionary character and the husband's pragmatic rationalismfr (Kemp, 203). Intuitive-sensing conflict is a confrontation between what is perceived through senses and what is seen through an inner perception. While sensing people focus on the information available, the intuitives seek to find meaning and possibilities. The woman and her husband in "In the Home Stretch," Mary and Warren

20 in "The Death of the Hired Man," Lafe and Dr. Magoon in "Hundred Collars," are pairs of characters whose confrontation become vivid and rich through the deft use of this intuitive-sensing conflict. Robert Frost's domestic and other tales are depiction of excellent human dramas of high realism and psychological depth. The proverb quoting, workaholic husbands and emotional and confused wives meet in the arid and lonely setting of homes. The preferential depiction of women with feeling and men with thinking characteristics results in the portrayal of thinking-feeling conflict as the essence of these dramas. A sensing-intuitive conflict is surely the next preference of the poet. Whereas among the assortment of female characters there is a fine balancing between the intuitive feeling and sensing feeling types, the preferred male specimen in these poems is extraverted sensing thinking character type. The wide array of character sketches presented in the dramatic narratives of Robert Frost is a

21 portrait gallery of a unique sort. The study discovers typical Frost patterns of dramatic mode as well as character depiction and uncovers a distinct pattern of conflict in these people poems.