Garofalo focuses on how Keats poem “Eve of St. Agnes” presents a commodity culture through the ideas of deferral and consumption. She states that Madeline’s virginity is a luxurious commodity, because of its scarcity. The commodity creates an erotic desire for Madeline, which she explores through deferral and self-denial. This desire controls Madeline through the sensation of possible loss, reflected not only through Madeline but also through the beadsman. Since only one person can consume a scarce object, Madeline, like the beadsman creates a product (the deferral of her virginity) only to be consumed by Porphyro and shows that this commodity culture is more concerned with wanting than possessing. Porphyro’s consumption of Madeline’s scarce commodity leaves Madeline with a lack of gratification and a sense of loss that will again be projected into another commodity.
Garofalo’s argument is not fully developed. She is vague on certain notions of social theory (i.e. Marx’s commodity) and instead of extrapolating on the specifics of one social theory, she casts a wide net without explaining its full context in relation to the poem. She is not clear about Madeline’s sacrifice. Is it her deferral, her virginity, or the rituals she performs to St. Agnes? Also, Garofalo states that the modern mode of consumption deals with an individual’s desire to possess (their want) instead of possession itself. The assumption that deferral and self-denial fuel one’s desires is never completely proven but is still assumed as superseding the possession of the commodity.
When applying Garofalo’s argument of the commodity’s deferral and consumption to the poem, there are new ways this poem stands out. Is the beadsman really denying himself pleasure or is he satisfying his desires through deferral? In what ways could Madeline’s pleasure through deferral and self-denial also establish Porphyro as a commodity?"
Garofalo draws on earlier critics to argue that Keats' poem is full of desiring objects, and that these objects reflect the desires of human subjects: “things have desiring voices and desiring gazes that reflect the desires of the human inhabitants of the castle while also legitimizing and amplifying these desires” (355).
ReplyDeleteOn p. 356, she argues that these objects are evacuated of serious religious meaning that would have been essential to the Medieval world in which the poem is set; the “glamour” of objects, their surfaces, replaces this theological content. She uses evidence from stanza 24 and 25, specifically the stained glass window, to make this point. Her next point is that this world of desiring things appears to reassure us of plentitude and fulfillment, but this really just a reflection of the human desires the object mimic (357).
After establishing how objects appear in the poem and their relationship to the human subjects, Garofalo goes on the argue that there are two ways that objects promise fulfillment in the poem: by appealing as a prize in a system based on violent competition, and by offering themselves as the result of self-denial (358). The first mode she associates with Porphyro and his pursuit of Madeline: through her purity, virginity, clothing, and the objects she is linked to (doves, lambs etc.), she is figured as “the ultimate object of desire in the poem” (359).
But Madeline is also seeking after fulfillment, but in a way that corresponds to the Beadsman’s self-denial than with Porphyro’s competition with her male relatives. Like the Beadsman, Madeline seeks “the pleasures of deferral” by engaging in a ritual that promises pleasure in the future by denying pleasure in the moment (361). Garofalo links this to modern capitalist consumption, a mode of consumption driven by wanting rather than having (362). In this system, potential enjoyment takes the place of actual enjoyment; for Madeline, the objects in her dream are more important than objects in her ‘real life’.
In the section of the article I sent via e-mail, Garofalo describes the outcome when representatives of these two systems of object-oriented fulfillment come into contact with each other:
“In the poem, though, both forms of enjoyment, indulgence in luxury objects made valuable against a backdrop of violent competition, and enjoyment of delay and self-denial, produce the disturbing effect that people fail to relate to one another and become enclosed in fantasies that make human relations impossible” (363)
Madeline is isolated and cut off from other people in her dream state (clasped like a missal book in her bed), and Porphyro plays songs on a lute and rest on her pillow. She argues, “[b]oth Madeline and Porphyro become embalmed in their fantasies and are unable to respond to their beloved. Here, the lovers maintain a relationship only to their fantasy of each other rather than with another subject” (364).
As a consequence, when Madeline wakes up, Porphyro turns “pale as smooth-sculptured stone” (l. 297); he is frozen under her gaze and cannot move or reply. She is equally disturbed and at first can only moan and utter “witless words” (l. 303); she sees only the difference between her fantasy Porphyro and the real Porphyro before her, who looks completely dead.
What is the result of this disruption of the fantasy worlds produced by the allure of objects?