Alienation In Literature

Alienation in Literature

Industrial revolution brought new conditions to society. By one hand, the economy of Britain, Europe, United States and Japan reached the highest point. By the other hand, it gave birth to social hierarchies. Capitalism reinforced superiority of wealthy people, factory owners and business men over the worker class. Those economic differences broke in some way the ideals of Enlightenment, American and French revolutions. It is important to remember those movements highlighted the relevance of the self out of institutions repression.

Economy and politics were involved in most of the main events of 19th and 20th century. In spite of the advantages they supported to science, medicine, and technology, the individuals got into conflicts due to the need to be superior to his fellow men. An individual may or may not agree with the decisions made to the groups he belonged to. Disagreement most of times caused serious conflicts among nations. In the 20th century, the presence of World Wars seems to be a good example of how difficult was for individuals not to impose their desires, but to make a consensus on the decision they made.

Honoré de Balzac represented the concept of alienation as a greed for money and possession that overpasses the sense of life and humanity. Eugenie Grandet might then be considered the first literary work managing with alienation following Marx definition. Balzac quoted by Finkelstein expressed that “Old Grandet fits Marx’s comment that since money appears to command everything, it is the ‘master’ of everything, and so, ‘when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant’” (1965, p. 146)

In Father Goriot, Balzac explores the other side of alienation. The main character of the story gives the possibility to his daughters to belong to the bourgeois. Those, in the story, the women feel ashamed about his poor origins. Father, by means of progress, alienates from his daughters. Once again, Balzac is portraying the relevance of money and the loss of “humanity” of people.

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina explore by means of their female protagonists the search of a true love relationship which they could not find in middle class life. Meanwhile, Dreiser draws the alienation of human being from his humanity; consequence of lifestyle based on education in “good life”, understanding it as being wealthy. The main character of An American Tragedy, Clyde Griffiths is a victim of society. Even when he found love in a lower class woman, who gets pregnant, society “forces” him to stay in upper class where he is proposed a marriage. In a misfortune, the pregnant woman dies and Clyde is declared guilty and executed. “Whatever the crime Clyde committed, the far greater crime is that which robbed Clyde of his humanity” (Finkelstein, p. 148)

James Tyrone, the father, sacrificed his talent as an actor in order to make his work more rentable and by means of it, earn more profits. It is also discovered through the story that his obsession with savings has to do with his familiar background; he, as an Irish immigrant, suffered poverty in his early years. The mother sacrificed his real desire of becoming a nun or a concert pianist. As a consequence, she had to spend most of his life travelling and caring her children in inappropriate circumstances caused by travelling. Morphine became his favorite shelter to avoid her situation. Indeed, when the story starts Mary has just returned from a treatment in a sanatorium for her morphine addiction. Tyrone brothers were quite different: the older, James Jr., was too close to his mother and has developed anger against his father. He had turned to alcohol and prostitutes. The younger brother, a promise in writing, was so lonesome that his real desire was family’s love. So, those untrue dreams, failed illusions, displacement of humanization by money and anger, bring to scene the alienation of each individual.

The alienation explored in these three authors is a portrait of bourgeois society awakening individual suffering and pain. Finkelstein says:

“In such writers as Balzac, Tolstoi, Dreiser and O’Neill, who have depicted the process of alienation in bourgeois society, there is no accompanying alienation on the part of the writers themselves. As they depict it, alienation is a form of human suffering or self-destruction, and they there-by reveal the alienated themselves as understandable human beings

...