Commonplace 131 George & Bad Faith.
George would have hated Existentialism. Simone de Beauvoir would have outwitted his whingeing self-pity with her thoughts on Ambiguity click; Albert Camus would have bored him with tales of great football matches he had played, having just revealed that your life is blessed if you don't want to ditch it all and kill yourself click. And Jean Paul Sartre would have challenged him over his willingness to let his whole life be one long demonstration of Bad Faith. Nothing sums up our man better than this, and, as much as George Orwell's assertion that all George's stories are about 'Not enough money' is correct, in fact what the fictional work is primarily about, is Bad Faith.
Arguably the most important thing Sartre ever gave us was this concept. In a nutshell, it refers to conscious and unconscious lies we tell ourselves to prove we don't have life choices. Because of this blocking of our options, we miss out on all the things we really want to experience, and deny all the things we want to feel. We do it for several reasons, the most obvious being fear of change, fear of failure, and plain and simple laziness. In psychotherapeutic approaches, change is seen as the most problematic challenge to us all, because we prefer to dwell in our own safe comfort zones. We go out of our way to sabotage the actions of others that might lead to their change so that we don't have to.
Twentieth century Humanists put forward the notion of 'authenticity' as a state of highest consciousness, and this is akin to Good Faith - as in, being what we are, not what we are not, warts and all. There is nothing wrong with any of our authentic feelings or emotions, even the less than flattering ones, or our survival strategies. Knowing oneself and one's motivations is the basis of authenticity, but if these insights lead us to contemplate bad actions, it is the job of free will to decide which ones to follow through on, and which ones to suppress. Morality leads us to make the decisions we deem best, unless religious faith of some kind is our guiding light, in which case, we follow dogma. Knowing our real selves, being aware of our rationalisations and strategies for lying to ourselves, and our acceptance of the place of abdicating free will in the process, all contribute to authentic behaviour. As in the work of Erich From in his 'Fear of Freedom', and with a nod to Karl Marx, we have nothing to lose but our chains.
In The Whirlpool, Harvey Rolfe feels incapable of realising his potential, though he knows he is not happy or fulfilled. His wife, Alma, can only play a role in her own life, and is forced to exist in a world of surface and veneer (partly because her creator disapproves of her), and aches to break out and explore something more authentic, which is why she is so seduced into flirting with the demimonde dark side of illicit fast company. What should be - to men - her life's purpose (ie motherhood) leaves her cold. The agony of hopelessness she feels when she has to face up to her inauthentic life makes her realise she feels inadequate to the struggle and can only achieve authenticity by committing suicide - possibly the ultimate act of Good Faith - or accidental overdose. In fact, accidental overdose makes her death all the more emblematic of Bad Faith. Rolfe's life of Bad Faith becomes more deeply ingrained and he lives on, even more of a hollow vessel, because his hard-won insights don't produce positive change - but he endures without a wife to blame it all on.
'Born in Exile' is all about its male protagonist's battle to attain a state of mind where his comprehensive Bad Faith is overcome. Godwin Peak finds Sidwell Warricombe attractive because of her unaffected authenticity, such a contrast to his self-aware, negative and nihilistic nature. He wants to be saved from himself, and has insight into his own lack of Good Faith, but falsely invests his energies in the wrong direction. He wrongly assumes her social position is what makes her so authentic, and fails to see the real girl behind the façade of class. In spite one of the novel's premises being his congenital aptitude for falsehood, Godwin is essentially truthful to himself, but his misreading of situations - particularly his underestimation of Sidwell's truly authentic nature - leads to his downfall. He wrongly assumes people are puppets playing a part that only he can see is a false one - whilst being the most false of them all. Again, this inner struggle ends in death.
As George couldn't square the circle in his own life - how to live the authentic life always eluded him - it's understandable that he couldn't bring this sort of resolution to his characters. That mish-mash of guff that is 'The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft' is riddled with Bad Faith, and it is almost impossible to conceive of any other better demonstration of the concept in a piece of fiction. Examples of what has stopped Ryecroft (and George) from living the authentic life: lack of money; lack of recognition; lack of a good housekeeper; lack of tasty food; being misunderstood and underestimated; lack of a soul mate or simpatico like-minded educated friends; indifferent health; inclement weather; too much sunshine; geography; ennui; being out of the times/fashion; not living in a dead culture spouting a dead language; lack of affect... every page has an example or two, so choose your own. Even when Ryecroft pretends authenticity - his much-vaulted appreciation of his good fortune in having a regular income; his luck in having an excellent housekeeper; the flowers in the lane; coal in the fireplace; solitude - you know he should be quietly screaming inside raging against this total lack of meaning his life has, now he has no grit in his oyster. It is the equivalent of having your mind slowly erased, like some wayward Hal 9000 computer, singing 'Daisy' as you die click. After all is said and done, if that paltry amount of dosh (£300) gave Ryecroft his 'freedom', why on earth didn't he put some effort into earning that amount - with his brains and capabilities? Was it Bad Faith or bone idleness at play (in character and author)? Which is the other thing that explains some of George's massive under-achieving.
The Odd Women is where George struggles to deconstruct the elements of Bad Faith that make up the average woman's lot in life, and contrasts it with that of men who have either no moral compass (Everard Barfoot - not a very subtle allusion to his place in the story!) or no insight into their own Bad Faith (Edmund Widdowson - another clunky name trick). Women have always had to suppress and repress all manner of desires in order to live under the protection of men. George considered himself a bit of an expert on Woman (I know, it's laughable, but there you have it; he really did think he was entitled to a voice on this topic), and never missed a chance to tell us girls where we are going wrong. At every turn, women who strive for self-improvement (which would lead to independence and possibly Good Faith) are punished for it in George's fiction. Here, we have Monica Madden forced to suffer under the control-freakery of Edmund Widdowson, who inveigles her into a marriage they both know will be disastrous, because he himself is unable to recognise his own true feelings and thus find authentic ways to express them. Bad Faith on both parts brings them to misery. Monica is mangled in a relationship she saw as a sanctuary from loneliness and want, but found to be a prison; Widdowson suffers because he was unaware of his true feelings (such as his tendency to be a control freak martinet) and finally loses the thing he really wants because he doesn't know how to win her heart - guess how it gets resolved?
Death is the only outcome George can offer Monica, though she is spared suicide in favour of death from childbirth. Widdowson, now living up to his name, goes to live with a rich man friend called Newdick. (Newdick?! Paleeze.) The baby girl gets lumbered with two sisters who think because they can read and write they can run a school - just like George's own sisters did; shades of George's first son, Walter. Makes you wonder if that wasn't always George's plan for the boy, even in the days before he blamed it all on his second wife, Edith, and that the poor lad wasn't always destined to be a little income for the Gissing girls. The Odd Women was written long before he snatched the child away from his mother and foisted him on unwelcoming aunts and grandmother in Wakefield. Maybe in The Odd Women George sowed the seeds for Ellen and Madge to get their heads round the idea of school-teaching as a way to ensure they were never his financial dependants.
Alain de Botton does a very good job explaining Bad Faith here click - for Dummies like me.
To get more of Albert Camus: click
George would have hated Existentialism. Simone de Beauvoir would have outwitted his whingeing self-pity with her thoughts on Ambiguity click; Albert Camus would have bored him with tales of great football matches he had played, having just revealed that your life is blessed if you don't want to ditch it all and kill yourself click. And Jean Paul Sartre would have challenged him over his willingness to let his whole life be one long demonstration of Bad Faith. Nothing sums up our man better than this, and, as much as George Orwell's assertion that all George's stories are about 'Not enough money' is correct, in fact what the fictional work is primarily about, is Bad Faith.
Arguably the most important thing Sartre ever gave us was this concept. In a nutshell, it refers to conscious and unconscious lies we tell ourselves to prove we don't have life choices. Because of this blocking of our options, we miss out on all the things we really want to experience, and deny all the things we want to feel. We do it for several reasons, the most obvious being fear of change, fear of failure, and plain and simple laziness. In psychotherapeutic approaches, change is seen as the most problematic challenge to us all, because we prefer to dwell in our own safe comfort zones. We go out of our way to sabotage the actions of others that might lead to their change so that we don't have to.
Sartre came up with his notion of Bad Faith in 1943's 'Being and Nothingness'. George had an inkling of it sixty years before, when he wrote about characters who find it impossible to benefit from their social advantage, or who struggle to follow their preferred life's purpose. His people are often trapped inside prisons of their own lack of imagination, where they can't see alternatives to the misery they endure. Here are a few examples:
In The Whirlpool, Harvey Rolfe feels incapable of realising his potential, though he knows he is not happy or fulfilled. His wife, Alma, can only play a role in her own life, and is forced to exist in a world of surface and veneer (partly because her creator disapproves of her), and aches to break out and explore something more authentic, which is why she is so seduced into flirting with the demimonde dark side of illicit fast company. What should be - to men - her life's purpose (ie motherhood) leaves her cold. The agony of hopelessness she feels when she has to face up to her inauthentic life makes her realise she feels inadequate to the struggle and can only achieve authenticity by committing suicide - possibly the ultimate act of Good Faith - or accidental overdose. In fact, accidental overdose makes her death all the more emblematic of Bad Faith. Rolfe's life of Bad Faith becomes more deeply ingrained and he lives on, even more of a hollow vessel, because his hard-won insights don't produce positive change - but he endures without a wife to blame it all on.
'Born in Exile' is all about its male protagonist's battle to attain a state of mind where his comprehensive Bad Faith is overcome. Godwin Peak finds Sidwell Warricombe attractive because of her unaffected authenticity, such a contrast to his self-aware, negative and nihilistic nature. He wants to be saved from himself, and has insight into his own lack of Good Faith, but falsely invests his energies in the wrong direction. He wrongly assumes her social position is what makes her so authentic, and fails to see the real girl behind the façade of class. In spite one of the novel's premises being his congenital aptitude for falsehood, Godwin is essentially truthful to himself, but his misreading of situations - particularly his underestimation of Sidwell's truly authentic nature - leads to his downfall. He wrongly assumes people are puppets playing a part that only he can see is a false one - whilst being the most false of them all. Again, this inner struggle ends in death.
As George couldn't square the circle in his own life - how to live the authentic life always eluded him - it's understandable that he couldn't bring this sort of resolution to his characters. That mish-mash of guff that is 'The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft' is riddled with Bad Faith, and it is almost impossible to conceive of any other better demonstration of the concept in a piece of fiction. Examples of what has stopped Ryecroft (and George) from living the authentic life: lack of money; lack of recognition; lack of a good housekeeper; lack of tasty food; being misunderstood and underestimated; lack of a soul mate or simpatico like-minded educated friends; indifferent health; inclement weather; too much sunshine; geography; ennui; being out of the times/fashion; not living in a dead culture spouting a dead language; lack of affect... every page has an example or two, so choose your own. Even when Ryecroft pretends authenticity - his much-vaulted appreciation of his good fortune in having a regular income; his luck in having an excellent housekeeper; the flowers in the lane; coal in the fireplace; solitude - you know he should be quietly screaming inside raging against this total lack of meaning his life has, now he has no grit in his oyster. It is the equivalent of having your mind slowly erased, like some wayward Hal 9000 computer, singing 'Daisy' as you die click. After all is said and done, if that paltry amount of dosh (£300) gave Ryecroft his 'freedom', why on earth didn't he put some effort into earning that amount - with his brains and capabilities? Was it Bad Faith or bone idleness at play (in character and author)? Which is the other thing that explains some of George's massive under-achieving.
The Odd Women is where George struggles to deconstruct the elements of Bad Faith that make up the average woman's lot in life, and contrasts it with that of men who have either no moral compass (Everard Barfoot - not a very subtle allusion to his place in the story!) or no insight into their own Bad Faith (Edmund Widdowson - another clunky name trick). Women have always had to suppress and repress all manner of desires in order to live under the protection of men. George considered himself a bit of an expert on Woman (I know, it's laughable, but there you have it; he really did think he was entitled to a voice on this topic), and never missed a chance to tell us girls where we are going wrong. At every turn, women who strive for self-improvement (which would lead to independence and possibly Good Faith) are punished for it in George's fiction. Here, we have Monica Madden forced to suffer under the control-freakery of Edmund Widdowson, who inveigles her into a marriage they both know will be disastrous, because he himself is unable to recognise his own true feelings and thus find authentic ways to express them. Bad Faith on both parts brings them to misery. Monica is mangled in a relationship she saw as a sanctuary from loneliness and want, but found to be a prison; Widdowson suffers because he was unaware of his true feelings (such as his tendency to be a control freak martinet) and finally loses the thing he really wants because he doesn't know how to win her heart - guess how it gets resolved?
Death is the only outcome George can offer Monica, though she is spared suicide in favour of death from childbirth. Widdowson, now living up to his name, goes to live with a rich man friend called Newdick. (Newdick?! Paleeze.) The baby girl gets lumbered with two sisters who think because they can read and write they can run a school - just like George's own sisters did; shades of George's first son, Walter. Makes you wonder if that wasn't always George's plan for the boy, even in the days before he blamed it all on his second wife, Edith, and that the poor lad wasn't always destined to be a little income for the Gissing girls. The Odd Women was written long before he snatched the child away from his mother and foisted him on unwelcoming aunts and grandmother in Wakefield. Maybe in The Odd Women George sowed the seeds for Ellen and Madge to get their heads round the idea of school-teaching as a way to ensure they were never his financial dependants.
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| It's as if he's been reading my mind! |
Authenticity is all about empowerment, and empowerment is the most political of human aspirations. Women will always be up against the lack of power they experience, which feeds into and forms the personal empowerment - or lack of it - that leads to Good Faith behaviours and thoughts. When we are financially dependent on men; when we are victims of our biology (not my phrase); when crackpot religion keeps us in slavery, we are eternally damned to be to blame for everything that goes wrong with anything, anywhere, and we are framed by imagined inadequacy. But, consider this: is there really any chance men will ever willingly relinquish the power they have? Or will we have to pry it from their cold, dead hands? That might have been an interesting inclusion in the works, Mr G.
For the sublime Bill Murray's take on it click. What a fella.
Alain de Botton does a very good job explaining Bad Faith here click - for Dummies like me.
To get more of Albert Camus: click
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