Tropes
While reading RM, especially the part about identification and consubstantiality, I tried to apply the terms to Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette. I was trying to utilize Burke's concept of identification with reference to Lucy Snowe, the protagonist of the novel. Although she is not identical with M. Paul (female vs. male, Protestant vs. Catholic), Lucy may identify herself with him: both teach and both experience anxiety (she as an introvert; he as an extrovert). She intuits consubstantiality and at the same time she is aware that she is an unique individual. She has the sense of being both separate joined with M. Paul and separate from him, s a distinct substance (as she acts together with him and they have certain attitudes that make them consubstantial).
Interesting application to
Interesting application to literature! Burke would be proud.
Though I haven't read the particular novel you mention, it made me think about another Victorian novelist, George Eliot. She does similar kinds of things in her novels. In Adam Bede, for example, Eliot suggest consubstantiation between Adam and Dinah, though they seem very different in terms of occupation and feminist values. Though Adam initially misidentifies Dinah (and in some sense, Dinah misidentifies Adam), Eliot makes it painfully obvious that Dinah and Adam are essentially consubstantial and that they belong together. Hetty, the pretty, morally corrupt moron, is obviously nonidentical with either Adam or Dinah. By the end of the novel however, Dinah forces all the main characters to identify with the condemned infanticide. It is this aspect of fatalistic heavy-handedness that draws me to Victorian literature; the early Victorian period, the novels are moralistic in the sense that they are wedded to Christian values like faith, true love, etc. By the end of the period we get writers like D.H. Lawrence and Philip Gosse whose work demands consubstantiality and is strongly fatalistic too, but in a Nietzschian, not a Christian sense.
Dee, I enjoyed your
Dee,
I enjoyed your application. I have not read George Eliot's novel but I understand your commentary. We could identify so many literary works in which we perceive the characters' tendency toward identification and consubstantiality. I also think that identification and consubstantiality is highly characteristic of the Millenials and not characteristic of the Generation X. What do you think about this?