ELC Saunders #3, Notes on American Classics (2018)

Although this blog is primarily about the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, I have also started adding entries regarding the practice of Evolutionary Literary Criticism (ELC), which is more or less the application of evolutionary psychology to literature. Here are some observations on the monograph below, a recent publication in the field. This entry is observation number three.

Saunders, Judith P. American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018.

This month's discussion: Chapter Two: Nepotism in Hawthorne's 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux'

This chapter is a solid contribution to the scholarship on this story. When I first read the story, I did not understand it, and this paper allowed me to grasp the story's meaning better. That having been said, I did not find this discussion as eye-opening as the chapters on Wharton and Franklin (discussed in previous blog entries). Further, I do not think that Hawthorne's protagonist's behavior was plausible in an evolutionary sense, which was part of the reason I could not understand the story when I read it years ago.

The basic plot of the story is that a man arrives in a New England village looking for his relative. The relative is a British military officer who controls the political establishment of the town. The protagonist is repeatedly surprised and offended because the townspeople treat him rudely and are not helpful. Because he is related to a powerful person, he expects them to be deferential. At the end of the story, he discovers that, just that night, the revolutionaries had attacked the Major and overthrown his government. The story ends with the sight of the Major tarred and feathered and paraded out of town. Years ago, I was confused by the fact that the protagonist explodes in laughter at the end of the story. Now that I know more about humor, it makes at least a little more sense.

A humorous event is often structured in a way that there are two interpretations of the beginning of the event. The initially dominant interpretation is revealed to be incorrect, and the secondary interpretation quickly reveals itself to be the correct one. A joke often leads by offering an interpretation of a situation; then the punchline reveals the misinterpretation. So, for the statement, "I've had the most wonderful evening, but this wasn't it," the listener is led to believe that the statement is a compliment, only to have the last four words reverse the interpretation. And humor often has an element of social tension that is released in the resolution.

This Hawthorne story is structured like a humorous event: the protagonist cannot understand the behavior of the townspeople until he discovers the overthrow of his relative's power. In a rush, their behavior all makes sense. And there is an aspect of social tension released. Had the Major continued to be in power, the rudeness of the townspeople would not have made sense politically. Because he is gone, their rudeness makes perfect sense. Saunders argues that this political calculation would follow evolutionary logic.

Personally, I think that the protagonist would not have laughed; rather, he should have been fearful for his life. Had the townspeople thought that the protagonist could have reversed his kinsman's fortunes, they might have killed him. The leaders of the French Revolution did not kill the aristocracy en masse until they feared that other monarchies, sending armies to France, might restore the king and the nobility to power. The Hutus did not genocide the Tutsis in Rwanda until they thought that Paul Kigame's army would win the war. The Turks genocided the Armenians in part because they perceived the Armenians as allies of their enemies, the Russians.

In this story, the protagonist seems to join the revolutionaries, so for now, he is safe. In the immediate resolution of the incongruity, laughter is appropriate. While a person such as the protagonist actually might have been in danger, Hawthorne was writing a patriotic story with a positive overtone. If he had added a more realistic hint of murder or genocide, he would have ruined the subtext he was attempting. Nevertheless, in an actual situation like this, the protagonist might have been in as much danger as a child with an evil stepmother.