Holy. Gypsies. Batman.
I am not equipped to write this post. At all. Feminist analysis on the basis of race or nationality is not really my strong suit on a good day as I tend to stumble over my own white, United States citizen privilege. Add that to the fact that much of what I know about Romani culture is from Disney’s “Hercules,” that Wikipedia entry, and the analytical work I’ve read on Jenny Calendar from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” (Note: stuff on Jenny is quite limited – as is stuff on the numerous race issues that show had – but this essay is truly amazing, as is all of his other analytical essays on Buffy/Angel. I reread it before posting this. Further noting that all of his essays are beyond spoilery, so.) So I am feeling beyond inadequate in posting this but something needs to be said about that time Maggie ran away to join the gypsies because, wow. Holy gypsies, Batman.
A final note: I am only just beyond this incident in terms of my own reading and, as before, I can not even pretend to predict why Eliot chose to include this scene or what purpose it serves in the overarching narrative of the novel. As such, I suspect that I will return to the issue when I do know, as I can only say so much about the implications without knowing where it fits in the broader framework. This will be a close reading of that particular passage/chapter with some inferences made as to larger importance/meaning.
The first element of the interpretation of this scene is to return to the question of why Maggie is a problem. She’s a girl who is rambunctious (her brother is similarly tempered but much less of a problem), her hair won’t stay in curls (she is, again, insufficiently feminine because she doesn’t fit into beauty standards), she is not enough of a Dobson, and now most importantly, she is brown.
She has a dark complexion. She is frequently measured up against her cousin Lucy who is fair and sweet and clean and good. Maggie is not sweet or clean or good and that is reflected in her outward coloring. In true Victorian physiognomic fashion, Maggie’s exterior is as dark and unkempt as her interior. (I use the word “Victorian” unproblematically here because I am referring to the time of publishing – 1860, safely ensconced within the Victorian era.)
Because of all of these reasons, but mostly because of her skin and hair (because Tom is very young and probably does not fully understand that it is Maggie’s lack of sweetness or goodness that he is also ultimately referencing), Tom taunts her with the assertion that she ought to join the gypsies.
Maggie is a problem because she does not fit the idea of white femininity (and, furthermore, white female beauty) that she ought to. Within her family, Maggie is a gypsy and a wench (her father’s term of endearment for her).
The second element of interpretation is to ask why Maggie finally snaps and runs away. (This is ultimately quite similar to asking why she cuts her hair. Unlike Tom, who always runs away, Maggie responds to threats of punishment from her parents – here, the way external forces are trying to put her in the white, female beauty box and how they deal with her failures respecting that – by staying in one place. When she cuts off her hair, she refuses to even come downstairs for tea. Maggie freezes or becomes immobile when threatened. This is common enough that Tom has no doubt that they will find Maggie in more or less exactly the place she was left – by the river.
So why, this time, does she run?
When Maggie cut her hair, she was taking out her frustration with prescriptive white, female beauty on her own body. She was, in a way, punishing her own body for failing – she stayed for more because she had, in some ways, already hurt herself more than any outside force could further hurt her. She’d recognized her own failings and given herself enough punishment.
But this time, it was about Lucy. Lucy, again, is the external embodiment of all that Maggie can’t quite seem to achieve or be. When Maggie finally hits the point where she can no longer tolerate Tom’s celebration of Lucy’s goodness, Maggie shoves her adversary into the mud. In this move, she ruins Lucy’s cleanness, her purity, her light complexion. As tears stream down Lucy’s face, she is no longer quite sweet, either. But what Maggie hasn’t managed to spoil, even temporarily, is Lucy’s goodness. Maggie has only held a light to her own badness. She can’t seem to fix the problem by further damaging herself – by cutting her hair – OR by damaging others – by shoving Lucy into the mud. She is now faced with an unsolvable problem – herself – and the threat of even more, constant punishment. So Maggie runs.
(It is worthwhile to note that Eliot, in the title of the chapter, suggests that Maggie is running away from her “shadow.” That can either be read as Maggie’s own darkness, the thing she can’t escape from, or Lucy’s brightness, the thing that appears in the sunlight and that Maggie can’t quite touch or integrate into herself. Either way, this is consistent with the above interpretation.)
The big interpretive question is: what does Maggie expect to gain from running to the gypsies, in particular?
Maggie sees herself, very specifically, becoming their queen. She anticipates that she will be taken in by them and they will be grateful. She will be able to teach them all that she has learned from her books and she will be, finally, worshiped as she is meant to be. Maggie imagines that this is her fairy tale – this is where she will find her place of belonging, where people appreciate her. Beyond that, she anticipates that she will colonize her fairy tale in true paternalistic fashion – she will make the gypsies more educated and, by virtue, more white and they will give her their resources.
The most interesting thing about this expectation is that she still does not identify with the gypsies, despite being constantly asked to believe that she is one. She expects that they will automatically recognize and respect her whiteness, even though the white world does not.
The problem, for Maggie, ultimately comes when she finds that she doesn’t fit in there, either. Not as a gypsy, and not as a white colonizer. She cannot lower herself to eating their food and they have no interest in hearing about her books. She is not one of them and she cannot make them one of her. She must, again, remove herself from this situation. Maggie uses her failed experience with the gypsies to prove to herself that she does, in fact, belong with and in the white world.
The problems with this are multiple. First, Maggie’s entire experience rests on the assumption that she is better than or above an entire group of people – especially one that she does not even know and has never before experienced. Second, Maggie’s experience is truly an experience of failed colonialism – she wants to use the people she thinks that she is better than. Maggie, for all intents and purposes, is using another culture to find her place in her own.
The biggest problem with all of this is that we are never really asked to question the darkness or the badness of the gypsies. In fact, we can’t challenge this because we need their unchallenged impurity to prove that, when Maggie doesn’t fit, she doesn’t fit in with that. Her assumption of betterness is proven, rather than challenged.
Through this scene, to complicate matters, we see that Maggie is a problem merely within the scope of her own limited white world. She doesn’t fit with gypsy culture but she is not a problem within it – she never contemplates, even for a moment, morphing herself to fit with them; they must change to fit with her. Maggie is white and not of the lowest classes. She has a stable home (that is, she has a home to run away from) and knows her lineage (so much so that she wants to escape it). Maggie benefits from her privilege in the broader world – the reader gets the sense that she is driven home and generally respected within the gypsy community because they, too, understand her privilege. (And, thus, know the trouble that could come to them by somehow harming her.) Even at their own camp, Maggie isn’t the problem – they are.
And the most unfortunate part out of all of this? That it all just remains a plot device.
It could’ve been worse – the gypsies could’ve been absolute monsters. Eliot treats the gypsies as people, as characters. (We even get to see a little bit of individualized personality.) They’re merely different from Maggie and the Tullivers (and the Dobsons etc), is all. But, the problem is, they’re not merely different from Maggie. Maggie is a part of the system that systematically oppresses them and she further exploits that by running away to them. And we’re never once asked to question that system or that exploitation.
George Eliot Summer 2011 