Despite awareness of his dishonesty, Levin is
exceedingly sensitive to being deceived by others. From the very first the narrative makes it
clear that the reason for Levin’s quest for a romance abroad is that “he had
sometimes deceived himself about women” in America, for “they had come to less
than he had expected” (105). Therefore,
he is astonished and deeply hurt when Isabella unveils her deceit of belonging
to the Italian aristocracy. Yet even
when she takes the courage to unmask herself, he keeps assuring her, “I am not
hiding anything”(130). Paradoxically, when Isabella reveals her true
identity, Levin calls himself “a damn fool” not for not revealing himself in
his turn to Isabella, but for “making up fairy tales - Freeman in love
with the Italian aristocracy” (130, italics mine). Even to her last pleading, “are you a Jew?” he
stubbornly asserts, “how many no’s make never?” (132).
Feminist critics would probably argue, and I am
inclined to accept this point of view, that this is the very nature of men -
fear of acknowledging their own guilt, while women do not see any problem in
doing so. Although Isabella, too, misleads
Levin in regards to her real name and background, she is not in conflict with
herself and knows perfectly well who she is. Note that she introduces herself as Isabella
del Dongo by the name of the family whose garden she takes care of right after Levin assures her
of his not being a Jew. Evidently she
has every reason to suspect Levin-Freeman of deception. Clearly, this name occurs to her in an instant
and is not a deliberate mischief, but rather a game.
Nowhere in the narrative does Isabella affirm that she
is from the aristocratic family, though she allows Levin to think so. That Isabella suspects Levin of deceit and is
eager to unmask herself is ingeniously
demonstrated in the scene where she exposes to Levin the little tricks
that Italians resort to in order to attract foreign tourists. “We often pretend
[...]. This is a poor country” (122), she remarks at Levin’s surprise that the
majority of exhibits in the palace are copies. By this phrase Isabella, I would argue,
justifies her deception of assuming another name. However, Levin’s understanding here is feeble,
he is unable to see beyond the surface of Isabella’s words. His understanding
comes later, when the fact -- Buchenwald’s tattoo on Isabella’s chest - is put
before his face.
Levin’s astonishment, again, demonstrates his
annoyance at being deceived. He is “slightly depressed” that he “couldn’t tell
the fake from the real” (123), yet until the very end of the narrative he is
comfortable with himself being “fake”. And
like the personage from Inferno on one of the tapestries exhibited in
the palace “deserved his fate” for “he falsely said he could fly” (123), Levin,
too, “deserved his fate” of being rejected by Isabella, for he falsely said he
was not a Jew.
Clearly, then, while Levin’s deception takes its
origin in the fear of being taken for a Jew and rejected, Isabella’s slight
trick is grounded, apart from the longing to escape from the poor country to
America, on the desire to tell Levin
what he wants to hear: “I did not wish to tell you something you would not
welcome. I thought at one time it was possible you were - I hoped but was
wrong”.
Whereas The Lady of the Lake presents a man and
a girl seeking and failing to find their match with the intention to create a
family, Good Country People presents a man and a girl whose intentions
are far from white purity. Again,
misleading and assumptions of other names help define the story’s main
characters. Both Joy and the “good
country people” whose real name we don’t know, mislead each other in terms of
who and what they are, however, their purposes are altogether different from
the ones of Levin and Isabella
Joy, like
Isabella and Levin, repudiates her own name, assuming the name Hulga. However, in contrast to them, she does it
officially, arriving at the name “first purely on the basis of its ugly sound”
and then realizing “the full genius of its fitness” (2407). By rejecting the suggestive name Joy and
choosing the ugly name Hulga, the girl thinks that she expresses her inner
self. But the fact that she considers
the name “her personal affair”, scowls and reddens as Mrs. Freeman calls her Hulga,
and responds “but in purely mechanical way” when her mother calls her Joy (2406),
suggests that there is a conflict in the girl, with herself as well as with the
surrounding people.
Joy-Hulga, spectacled, smart, rude and caustic, angry
with the whole world for the hunting accident and for her wooden leg, is a big
thirty two-year-old child, defenseless and naive. The hunting accident where her leg was shot
off, it seems, has arrested the girl’s abilities of social adaptation; and at
the age of thirty two, despite the number of degrees she has received, she
behaves and reacts like a ten-year-old child. Her attitude toward life and
people, at least until she meets the “good country people”, is conveyed in one
of the philosophy books she likes to read, “we know it by wishing to know
nothing of Nothing” (2408). What we see
here is continued development of her intellect, in contrast to the arrested development
of her social skills. While the hunting
accident was the triggering event, each instance of her subsequent social
interactions (or lack of them) reinforces the gap between the two.
It is not mere chance, I would suggest, that Joy-Hulga
chooses philosophy as her avocation. The
girl’s ostentatious rudeness, the noises she purposely makes, her sarcasm and
haughtiness is a protective reaction
against the mechanisms of the surrounding world, where she otherwise
feels weak. Plunging into philosophy is
her attempt to escape from reality, and it allows her to delude herself about
obtaining the true meaning of life, or rather, as she perceives, the absence of
such .
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