In Joyce Carol Oates' Do With Me What You Will, the characters seem to change very little over the course of five hundred plus pages. Though toward the end, there are some important shifts in the characters and their sense of identity, it is Ardis Carter who displays the most marked transformations during the novel. As a woman who sought independence at an early age, Ardis has spent her entire lifetime creating new identities for herself.
After chastising her daughter Elena for not being "normal", Ardis goes on to say how important it is to be independent. "When I was your age, I was totally independent. Of other people, of other people's ideas of me. I didn't give a damn for anybody", Ardis tells Elena bragging about her youth (88). This sense of independence gives Ardis the ability to do something that few people seem capable of; it gives her the ability to decide for herself who and what she will be. Ardis even tells Elena early on: "we're our own ideas, we make ourselves up; some women let men make them up... they're helpless to invent themselves... but not me, I'm nobody's idea but my own" (79).
Clearly, Ardis has ideas for new inventions regularly. She is seen as this nearly mythical creature - as someone who was never a child - by her ex-husband. She creates herself as the perfect, devoted creature for Mr. Karman until she gets what she wants from him. Ardis even changes her and Elena's last name and asks Elena to "guess how much they're worth - our lovely last names" (72). To Ardis, a name is an easy thing to change because it is only a label for her creation and her creation is simply a thing to help her get what she wants.
After arriving in Detroit and arranging a successful marriage for her daughter, Ardis thinks up a new creation named Marya Sharp. When Elena is introduced to Marya for the first time, she doesn't quite know how to react: "Elena looked at Marya Sharp's face and saw it shift slowly into the face of someone she knew" (138). Marya confirmed that she was Elena's mother and referred to the cosmetic surgery she had done, the name she'd "taken on" (139), and her new television show.
Not long after this meeting, Elena runs into a woman while out shopping who she is certain is her mother. "The woman smiled in recognition, happily" (152), but tells Elena she is mistaken. The woman introduces herself as Olivia Larkin and proceeds to tell an entire tale of how she has been repeatedly mistaken for Marya Sharp, how she and Elena have previously met, and how flattering it is to be mistaken for a woman like Marya. Meanwhile, Elena is certain this is her mother simply assuming one more creation.
Instances like this happen often for Elena because one could never be too certain what face or personality Ardis would put on from one day to the next. The whole thing was terribly confusing to Elena who sometimes "noticed a woman who resembled her mother" (382), but was afraid to say anything for fear of being mistaken. At other times, Elena did not see her mother at all and was later admonished for ignoring her mother when they had both been in the same place.
Ardis seems to be such a successful chameleon that these changes of persona and identity cease to come as a surprise. It is then, not surprising at all to discover Marya is engaged to be married to a gentlemen from London who Elena had never even heard of. It is less surprising that the marriage takes place secretly with Marya having already moved to London by the time Elena hears of it next. Marya has taken on a new identity of Mrs. Nigel Stock and is quite as committed to it as to any of her previous roles. She is determined that she "will make a permanent home... not just be a 'transplanted' American" (458).
Although it can be argued that all identity is nothing more than a surface performance, Ardis seems to be the queen of the stage. With an effortless grace, Ardis shifts from one identity to another in an attempt to get for herself whatever she most wants. She says in her farewell, "those of you who know me will understand what this kind of life will mean to me" (458), yet the only conclusion to draw from that is she means the type of life where nobody will know her at all and she is free to reinvent herself as often as she wishes in a new place. Ultimately, it seems as though this choice to invent and reinvent an independent identity is fulfilling to Ardis. Though she changes herself constantly, it seems to always be on her terms and her means seems to always bring about her desired end. Perhaps, Oates argues through this character we all should all strive to create an identity that makes us happy and fulfilled rather than allowing other people to define us through their eyes. A little power and control over ourselves and who we are clearly goes a long way to true freedom.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
So, is Ardis a success in terms of the novel, while Elena who observes that she "could only love herself through [Jack]" (463) is a failure? Or are both portraits by Oates intended to critique the difficulties women may face in creating a stable, healthy identity? Ardis, as you say, seems to find her own chameleon-like practices very fulfilling. She seems to know herself and know what she wants. So, is there a stable core there around which she just wraps her different identities? And if this is a positive approach to life, what are we to think of Elena? Ardis does not form strong attachments to anyone except in terms of what they can do for her...and this is how she feels about her daughter, as well. (Of course, I'm sure that JCO does not intend to suggest an ideal in any of her novels!) Surely her child-rearing practices are not recommended!
ReplyDeleteIs there any way in which Ardis and Elena are at opposite ends of some spectrum of identity-formation modes? It doesn't seem that way to me. They don't balance that well with each other.
I don't think they balance each other well at all, but... let's look at Ardis from a queer theory-esque perspective for a moment. (Ok, maybe just a generally post structuralist perspective...) Ardis seems to have a very firm grasp of the fact that identity is a performance. Everyone creates his or her identity and that gives us the freedom to alter that performance as often as we choose to, or as often as it is beneficial to us.
ReplyDeleteI think it is easy for this type of life to be fulfilling, because once one accepts identity as a constructed performance and is able to consciously make the decision to construct it (identity) for themselves rather than letting someone else cast the role... what is more independent and fulfilling than that?
Elena's identity does change throughout the novel, and is also constructed, but it is constantly be constructed by the most powerful outside force in her environment at the time. Elena seems to lack the basic understanding that she can dictate how her identity is created.
For me, it is this difference in understanding that is the dividing line between success and "failure" rather than the difference between the actual identities each woman displays.
Tell me I'm making sense. :)
You are making sense, but this perspective seems to offer up Ardis as a role model for self-knowledge and female self-actualization. Do you see signs that this is what JCO wants us to believe? While you are right in saying that Ardis is in many ways more interesting than Elena and a more interesting focus for our attention, it really does seem to be Elena's story. Are we supposed to believe that her changes toward greater self-knowledge are positive but forever doomed to be incomplete?Is there any sense that we are to value the changes that Elena undergoes more than those of Ardis, perhaps because Elena has to struggle against so much, including against Ardis? Ok, I'm doing what I said we shouldn't do, which is try to extract some kind of message or overarching meaning from the text. Maybe it's wrong to be asking this of the text. Maybe we can enrich our understanding once we start talking about the other novels and see how they progress. The short stories seem to have a more clear trajectory, even if they end in the middle of nowhere. Does it help to look at this book in the context of our understanding (if we can call it that!) of the two short stories we discussed?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure there is a "right" or "wrong" in the context of the novel, and I'm certainly not sure that Oates is even looking at two completely different things here. Elena could be just in an earlier stage of development.
ReplyDeleteI do see that Ardis represents something positive in the sense that she has this freedom Elena doesn't experience. Elena finds her own freedom though when she begins her affair, goes to see Mered Dawe speak, waits outside for Jack because she is certain if she waits long enough he will come outside... in these ways, she finds control over herself and her path in life.
I don't see where Elena ends up as being negative, but just not as fully independent as Ardis. I certainly think Elena has had to fight harder to get to that point and there is value in that. Ardis seemed to naturally have this sense of freedom of identity while Elena was taught to have whatever identity was expected of her.
The shift in her character is tremendous, but it does not indicate a real hope of her learning to define herself on her own terms rather than through the lens of others. Then again, as my last post indicates, choosing to identify through the lens of what others expect you to be IS a valid choice of identity.