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Extending Shen's “Covert Progression and Dual Dynamics” to Drama Analysis

2021; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/style.55.1.0089

2374-6629

Zhang,

Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics

Professor Dan Shen's target essay clears up the confusion and ambiguity between the original concept of "covert progression" and five kinds of "other deeper meaning" within the orthodox Aristotelian framework dominated by the single-narrative dynamic of plot development. The covert progression, an undercurrent paralleling the overt plot development, expands the stage where the author generates rich thematic significance and aesthetic effects, inviting readers to reach a more complicated and comprehensive understanding of the fictional narratives concerned.Narrative criticism has long been considered to be confined to the single dynamic of plot development, with various attempts and efforts searching for deeper meanings. These attempts, including Shen's own years ago, have enriched textual interpretation, while, at the same time, sacrificing certain illogical and digressive textual elements for the sake of preserving integrity and coherence in the interpretation of the plot development.The introduction of the covert progression can help change the situation by extending attention to double-narrative dynamics, which often exist in a contradictory, contrastive, or even subversive relation to the plot development, both together functioning in the meaning-making of the text, inviting complicated response from readers. That is to say, a prominent merit of investigating dual-narrative dynamics lies in regarding a text as possibly containing two (or more) different progressions, each existing on its own, rather than subjecting all elements only to a single-narrative progression.A breakthrough from traditional narrative criticism, the theory of "covert progression" calling for attention to an "undercurrent" running parallel to the plot development throughout the text, sheds light not only on short stories, the target essay's focus, but also on drama studies, especially those involving controversy. Experience tells us that reading a play is different from reading prose fiction because readers of a playtext are not typically its "target reader," but rather the players, and the audience they directly address to. A playtext, also called the dramatic text and also read on the page, is an incomplete object until it is transformed into a theatrical text that is dramatized on the stage (Wallis 3). The words in a play are designed to become enacted in a performance, and usually without a guiding narrating voice as in a fiction. Indeed, the storyline of a playtext, mainly composed of dialogues, needs to be extracted by readers from both dialogues and stage directions.In reality, most readers of playtexts often skip over stage directions (in italics) very quickly, intentionally or unintentionally, in order not to interrupt the continuity of the dialogues and the plot development. This quick reading of a playtext may cause readers to miss a great deal of information shaped verbally on the implied stage. The unique components of dramatic spaces, namely, onstage fictional space and neighboring and distant offstage fictional spaces, sometimes provide hotbeds for a covert progression behind the overt plot. In addition, as a kind of public genre performed on the stage, drama often faces more stringent censorship, forcing playwrights to use obscuring techniques to present complicated themes.Inspired by Shen's theory of covert progression and dual dynamics, I would now "consciously search for the possible existence of another narrative movement," whenever encountering "recalcitrant materials" (Phelan 161, qtd. in Shen 8), which are more often than not typical in dramatic texts. Shen's proposal that "we break free of the bondage of the narrative critical tradition since Aristotle," and so free ourselves of "a fixed authorial image" has provided a very useful reading tool for my playtext interpretation, enabling me to see the multifaceted nature of drama and that of the playwrights. Of course, a discovery of an undercurrent may not necessarily reflect the full picture of a narrative, but it offers a way out of the box of the single-narrative dynamic, which helps us see the complexity of the text.As in the case of Lillian Hellman's play Toys in the Attic (1960), the scattered (bi)racial details aroused my doubts and concerns. The play portrays a parentless household in New Orleans and explores the destructive aspects of sibling relations. Julian, the only male of the household, his two unmarried elder sisters, his newly married rich but childish wife, and his widowed mother-in-law, are the main characters in the widely recognized overt plot of the destructive power of suppressed female desires and the fetters of the original family. Julian's troubled marriage, his overnight fortune, and his sisters' intervention, all constitute the impetus of the plot development.Because of the play's high degree of resemblance in characterization to Chekhov's The Three Sisters (1900), sharing the Russian's parallel outlines of unhappy sisters and a ne'er-do-well brother, comparative studies have been made between Hellman's tightly plotted development of twenty-four hours, mismatching the "magnitude essential to serious drama" and Chekhov's most casually developed action covering a period of almost four years. Several negative evaluations have, therefore, occupied the mainstream of existing criticism, some regarding Toys in the Attic as "too heavily plotted to have the conclusiveness of a Chekhov play" (Adler 43), or too artificially modeled after Chekhov's by adjusting the more loosely plotted full-length play into a tightly constructed one, or "too limited in theme and attitude for general or permanent value" (49). As for the scattered elements of the biracial (practically offstage) and the Black (mainly in the background onstage) characters in the play, previous critics have only touched upon them as insignificant digressive supplements for the plot development, more or less marginalizing or skipping these elements since they seem incoherent or illogical in the overt plot.Shen's suggestion of "a consideration of the historical context" has helped explain the scattered (bi)racial elements and New Orleans's French colonial history as represented in those onstage as well as offstage scenes of the play, elements that may seem peripheral or digressive to the plot development but actually play a significant thematic function given its undercurrent of interracial marriage and racial crossing. An important example is the Black driver, Henry, who has a faintly discernible interracial affair with the wealthy widowed white lady Albertine. Though appearing early in the first act, participating continuously in the covert progression, and ending the whole play with his "goodbye" to all, Henry has no obvious intersection with the plot development, but only serves in the private entourage of Julian's rich mother-in-law.The script provides meager account of this character, as we hear only lightly playful comments by other characters on his refined manners inconsistent with his status as a Black servant. But in the covert progression of interracial relationships, Henry becomes an important character connecting such scattered elements as Julian's half-breed married mistress (offstage), Julian's childish wife Lilly's infatuation with Black Voodoo traditions,1 and Henry's half-breed cousin struggling to hide in racial disguise to enjoy the rights of white women before being unmasked in the end. Henry's casual comments and guidance, from time to time, help us extract a coexisting undercurrent of interracial taboos and transgression, continuously paralleling the overt plot development of repressed female sexuality within special original families.Our understanding of the covert dynamics leads to a "fuller and a more balanced understanding of the text," illuminating those supposedly irrelevant details (Shen 24). While the plot development is concerned mostly with family relations and personal tragedies, the covert progression centers subtly on the impending change of American ethnic–racial relations.2 Generating different kinds of tensions, sexual and racial, the dual-narrative dynamics "foreground different character traits and portray different character images" (Shen), as illustrated by Julian, the protagonist, who is, in the overt plot, a noxious incompetent parasite living on women. However, in the covert progression, he is an unyielding sympathy-provoking rebel, struggling in vain to rid the shackles of his original family, and break the cage of racism. The covert progression frees the protagonist from the bondage of a stock character for plot function, as a mere device placed to make the plot work, and thus illuminates the play's more profound ethical and aesthetic values.The exclusive attention of former scholars to the overt plot development has inevitably led to the view regarding Toys in the Attic as "a debt to nineteenth-century well-made play and melodrama" (Adler 48). Hence, without a conscious effort to uncover the play's dual-narrative dynamics, Hellman's play remains an Old-South nostalgia by a native of New Orleans, contrasted to the covert progression of interracial interaction and socioracial changes in the Old South, that can easily elude critical attention.One may wonder why Hellman did not make the interracial narrative dynamic more overt in the plot, but only in a covert narrative progression containing various scattered and vague elements. We can find the answer by reading her play through a sociohistorical lens. "Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States—laws that banned marriage between white people and black people—reflected a historical system of sexual ethics rooted in racism and sexism" (Botham 250), which expounds the socioracial background of Toys in the Attic.The play was produced in 1960, two years after a couple from Virginia (Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man) were charged with violating the state's ban on interracial marriages in 1958, and seven years before the landmark case Loving v. Virginia in 1967, when the Supreme Court's monumental decision declared unconstitutional all state laws that prohibit interracial marriage. Although most American public opinion moved to agreement with the Court's ruling to eliminate discriminatory laws, actual support for the idea of Black–white interracial marriage lagged, as represented in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, a milestone movie production of interracial marriage and social prejudice. As a once-blacklisted playwright,3 Hellman's creation of an undercurrent behind the overt plot to convey the relevant thematic concern in Toys in the Attic is no longer beyond comprehension.Biographical and intertextual information may shed further light on the deep racial concerns in the undercurrent of the play. With the interruption of dramatic creation during the McCarthy years, Hellman left the drama circle after producing her last drama, Toys in the Attic (1960), and began writing autobiographies and memoirs. As a transitional work, Toys in the Attic's concern with racial issues is not only in line with the sociohistorical background of the times, but has also been addressed in her later autobiographical works. In Hellman's first two memoirs,4 her loving portraits of her childhood nurse, and the Black woman who worked for years as her domestic, explore the complexities of biracial relationships and reveal her own struggles with racism (Reames 51). Hellman believes that the drama's function is beyond mere entertainment, but "a vehicle for social commentary, psychological insight, and above all, sharp incisions into the diseased body of a corrupted society" (Brustein 260), a belief that seems to underlie the covert progression in her Toys in the Attic.As shown by the dual-narrative dynamics in Toys in the Attic, the undercurrent undoubtedly provides another thematic and ethical space for the playwright to give fuller play to characterization and thematic presentation. As for the reader, it is only when the covert progression of a playtext comes into sight that a more balanced interpretation and a more satisfying aesthetic experience can be achieved.