Characters: (3) “Where Lies Your Text?”—Deconstruction

            Batman and Poison Ivy.  Buffy and Angel. King Duncan and Lady Macbeth. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.  Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. No villain = no story.  No hero(ine) = no story.  No Yin. No Yang. Nothing.

            In all things, opposites define each other—whether in language, literature, sports, religion, sexual attraction, the inner and outer walls of our very cells.  The most elegant expression of this is in the figure and philosophy of Yin and Yang. Wikipedia defines it succinctly:

In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a concept of dualism, describing 

how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, 

interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give 

rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

In exploring literary characters, we instinctively decide whether a character is a villain or a hero(ine) and construct the story using those contradictions. French philosopher Jacques Derrida explored what he termed these “supposed contradictions” and showed that they are “irreducible unstable.” This implies that there are infinite ways to interpret a text. This post will illustrate what that means.

Derrida’s theory is called “deconstruction.”  Before we proceed with practicing Deconstructive Criticism, let me stress that we do not deconstruct literature.  What we do is show how the text deconstructs itself. 

One of the easiest ways to show how a text deconstructs its characters is to first identify what we will now term “seeming” opposites, as I did at the beginning of this post.  Then choose a pair, and create a chart with three columns.  Under the characters, I write ways in which they are different.  In the middle, how they are the same. 

For our example, I have chosen Viola and Olivia from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Or, What You Will, in part, because their names are almost anagrams of each other’s—except for Olivia’s having an extra “i.” This, in itself, is fascinating, as for most of the play, Viola is not in her “I” but in the guise of Cesario.  As a male, she is also missing the phallic letter “i.”  Cesario derives from the Latin for “scissors”—apt—she has the “I” cut out.

Viola’s name derives from “Violet” but she is anything but a shrinking wallflower, donning men’s clothing and taking on male roles. But her name also suggests “viol-ate.”  This is one of the ways the text deconstructs: shrinking/violating are opposites. And although Olivia is a reclusive “shrinking violet,” shirking life, the name Olivia says, “Oh Live.”

Viola/Cesario	Same	Olivia
Violate	Oliv(i)a	Oh Live
Manly		Womanly
Worldly		Reclusive
Homeless		Landed
Manhunting		Manspurning
Cesario		Olivia
	Brotherless
	Orphaned
	Veiled
	Assertive
	Smitten
	Dissembling
	Manipulative
	Lyric/Poetic
	Homoerotic
	Straight

Yin/Yang. “Give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.”  Whereas homeless Viola disguises herself as a man to be empowered, landed Olivia finds her empowerment in spurning Orsino and falling in love, although unbeknownst, with Viola, a woman. Viola, in her guise as man, falls in love with Orsino, a man.  Through disguises, they begin their courtships; through the reveals they consummate them through what the play celebrates as traditional marriages.

Opposites usually have mutual scenes/confrontations, so I find one in which the two characters interact, and show—that although they may seem to be different/opposites—they are similar in the ways in which they interact and in their speech patterns.  In Act 1, Scene 5, Viola courts Olivia on behalf of Orsino = Viola is doing the opposite of what she wants, which is to have Orsino for herself…or so it seems.  The interchange between them is introduced by Olivia’s asking her gentlewoman Maria for a veil to “throw o’er my face.”  From lines 163-229, their interchange is written in prose, with Viola courting and Olivia resisting—showing their oppositions, as in this excerpt:

VIOLA    Most sweet lady—

OLIVIA   A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.  

                Where lies your text?”

VIOLA    In Orsino’s bosom.

OLIVIA   In his bosom?  In what chapter of his bosom?

VIOLA    To answer by your method, in the first of his heart.

OLIVIA   Oh, I have read it.  It is heresy.  Have you no more to say?

           

              It’s a tennis match.  Every word Viola lobs over to Olivia is lobbed right back.  Olivia willfully does not get “bosom,” interpreting it not as a man’s heart but his book of words.  Viola sees that Olivia is being petulant, and answers it sardonically—“in the first of his heart,” as if Orsino’s heart is not flesh, or metaphorical his soul, but a book.  And so on.  Opposition. Confrontation.

 Then Olivia throws off her veil of off-putting, and Viola’s text turns lyrical and poetical—as in these first two iambic pentameter lines, with visual color and tactile hand imagery:

VIOLA  ‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white

               Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on…

One more piece of prose from Olivia and she waxes poetical, too:

            OLIVIA   Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit

                             Do give thee fivefold blazon.  Not too fast! Soft, soft!...

These two lines overflow the pentameter—eleven syllables, then twelve—as Olivia rapturizes about Viola’s body through imagery.

            Olivia asks Viola “Where lies your text?”  The word “lies,” on first reading, denotes position.  The pun on “lies” implies prevarication—fibbing.  In a deconstructive reading, the text of Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will tells lies, as all texts do, throughout.  How enriching and freeing it is not to be stuck in easy polarizations—to realize that opposites contain and are necessary to each other.

(1)   Choose your favorite villain/hero(ine) pairing and show how their characters deconstruct. Or,

(2)   Choose a piece of literature and show how two seemingly opposite characters deconstruct.  Or,

(3)   Find two opposing people in your personal or public experience and show how they deconstruct. Or,

(4)   You might try a most exhilarating experiment and choose to show how you and your nemesis can be seen to deconstruct.

Enjoy!  Deconstructive Criticism is fascinating, illuminating, and, ultimately, liberating!

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://www.naturainstitute.com.au/six-main-principles-of-yin-and-yang-relationship/

Text: 

Derrida, Jacque. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins P, 2016.

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will.

Yin/Yang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

Because I Can Teach:

https://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2020/03/characters-2-by-any-other-name.html