Binaries in “The Fly” by Katherine Mansfield and
“A Dead Woman’s Secret” by Guy de Maupassant.
Antonella Olivero
The world can be seen from a limitless number of perspectives and, in consequence, we cannot assume that there is only one possible meaning in what we read. “Deconstruction presumes to remake the way people read” (Derrida, 1960), helping them focus on all the elements of the writing, looking for new meanings, different points of view from which analyze the text, and offering opportunities to criticize. Derrida argues that texts are complex and contradictory, full of oppositions and inconsistencies, and that our way of writing, therefore, is ruled by binaries. In Of Grammatology, Derrida claims that, in every binary, the first term is always described as superior and original whereas the second one is inferior and dominated. Through Deconstruction, the reader recognizes the ignored part of the binary as the centre in order to reveal all those possible interpretations which are suppressed when the first part is assumed to be the most important.
Since Deconstruction, as it has already been said, looks for the ignored part of a binary to be the centre of the analyses, my proposal for this paper is to “kill” two of the binaries present in the short stories The Fly, by Katherine Mansfield, and A Dead Woman’s Secret, by Guy de Maupassant. These binaries are: Death vs. Life and Admiration vs. Deception.
The first binary is Death vs. Life. In this case, the second term in the binary is given the privileged position. In The Fly, for example, part of the conversation between the old man and the boss is about the boss’s son, who is dead, and how his grave is kept: “The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept,” piped the old voice, “Beautifully looked after. Couldn't be better if they were at home (…) it's all as neat as a garden.” The death of his son makes him feel, in a way, not only sad and deceived, but also angry because he cannot accept it. Consequently, once he has seen the fly’s efforts to be alive, the boss decides to sentence the little insect to death. In A Dead Woman’s Secret, death is also assigned the superior position and it is characterized as “an infinite peace, a divine melancholy, a silent serenity”. The woman’s death brings to her son and daughter feelings of sadness since she is, at first, pure and blameless and her loss is thought to be unfair: “And they loved her as they never had loved her before. They measured the depth of their grief, and thus they discovered how lonely they would find themselves.” But then, when the dead woman’s secret is revealed, death brings a different feeling to the siblings, feelings of uncertainty and deception, since that person they thought was untouchable, ends up being nothing but a liar: “(…) without looking again at the mother upon whom he [her son] had passed sentence, severing the tie that united her to son and daughter, he said slowly: ‘Let us now retire, sister’.”
On the other hand, we can consider both stories from another point of view, placing Life as the privileged part of the binary. In the case of The Fly, the boss’s life is affected by his son’s death, realizing, after some time has passed, that he is incapable of overcoming the terrible loss: “Six years ago, six years...How quickly time passed! It might have happened yesterday. (…) Something seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn’t feeling as he wanted to feel.” In fact, he refuses to recover since he knows that everything he had dreamed of won’t be fulfilled: “Life itself had come to have no other meaning.” In the same way, in A Dead Woman’s Secret, the siblings’ life is affected by their mother’s death. At first, they seem to remember her because of the good person she was: “And they loved her as they never had loved her before. They measured the depth of their grief, and thus they discovered how lonely they would find themselves.” But then, when the secret is found out, their lives change radically since their mother turns out to be as sinful as any other common person, and thus they cannot remember her as a pure person. The past becomes a lie for them; they realize they have admired someone who is not a saint. Both parts of the binary are closely connected, and consequently, both parts are influenced by the other.
The second binary is Admiration vs. Deception. First of all, if both short stories are read without deconstructing them, without seeing beyond the texts, it can be found that admiration – the first term in the binary – is taken as the important part. This perspective is observable in The Fly, for example, when the boss remembers his son: “Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy”. The father admires his son so much as to believe him capable of going on with his business, without thinking of any other future possibility for him, not even death. Also, when the fly appears in the story, the boss feels admiration for the little insect’s courage: “He’s a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly’s courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die (…)”. The same happens in A Dead Woman’s Secret, when the author refers to the dead woman as an untouchable person: “The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life had been blameless”, or also, when the priest says she was a saint. The admiration that the judge and the nun feel for their mother reflects on the pain her death causes, without thinking of any possibility of corrupting that admirable image they have of her.
But what happens if deception turns to be the important part of the binary? In the case the texts are read from a different perspective, deconstructing them, paying attention to the ignored, then deception emerges as a new possibility, offering a different point of view. In The Fly, the attitude that the boss has when testing the fly’s survival efforts show how disappointed he feels because his son is no longer alive. As it was said before, he refers to the fly’s courage as “The way to tackle things” or “The right spirit”, in contrast to his son’s death, which is the result of not trying hard enough to keep himself alive. It can also be said that the boss is waiting for the insect to die in order not to feel more deceived if the insignificant insect survives: “(…) there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen into the inkpot.” In the case of A Dead Woman’s Secret, deception comes when, reading the letters from their mother’s lover, the judge and the nun stop crying as a sign of disappointment. Their mother, who moments ago was untouchable, is just a common person, with secrets and sins, just as everyone else: “When he turned around again, Sister Eulalie, her eyes dry now, was still standing near the bed (…)”. Their attitude towards the new event represents a change in the way they see their mother: They cannot accept a corrupted image of their mother. This way, deception is clearly the important part of the binary now.
To conclude, it can be said that when the dualisms in a text are deconstructed, it is possible to analyze a piece of writing from a great number of perspectives, replacing a superior part of a binary by an ignored one, causing on the reader different impacts and giving him the chance to look for entirely diverse meanings. And that is the process those texts have been through, they have been deconstructed.
References
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/deconstruction.php (October 12th, 2009)
http://www.cobussen.com/proefschrift/200_deconstruction/210_hierarchical_oppositions/hierarchical_oppositions.html (October 13th, 2009)
http://www.orientalia.org/wisdom/Philosophy/Deconstruction.shtml (October 17th, 2009)
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Deconstruction (October 19th, 2009)
http://home.mesastate.edu/~blaga/deconstruction/deconstructiox.html (October 19th, 2009)
Mansfield, K, (1923), “The Fly”. Online Edition. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~YZ8H-TD/misc/fly.html
De Maupassant, G, (1903), “A Dead Woman’s Secret”. Online Edition. http://www.shortstoryarchive.com/m/dead_womans_secret.html
In this picture: A garden in Salta