monk222 | Mar. 24th, 2012

Mar. 24th, 2012

A woman relates her hardships with catcalling and street harassment.

_ _ _

How many leers, how many unwanted comments and touches does it take to take away your right to walk on the same sidewalk, to ride the same subway, as anyone else? How many times must you watch the smile on a stranger’s face widen in perverse excitement at your revulsion? Once a month? A week? More? If my experiences were limited to the above encounters, perhaps I would know.

I was sexually harassed on a regular basis from the year I turned fourteen until the year I left for college. I tried so hard, every day, to ignore it. But I couldn’t. It changed me. The irrepressible nervousness when a stranger approached. Being afraid to look any man on the street in the eyes. Worrying I was being followed. Not wanting to leave my house unless I had to. Crying. Not crying until I got home, then crying. Hating myself for crying. Playing the faces of dozens of men back in my mind—I remember them all. Wondering what would have happened if I had bumped into them in a deserted area. The rape nightmares.

-- Alice Xie, "My Street, My Body, My Right"

_ _ _

Although many men, maybe even most men, are gentlemanly enough, I don't imagine this problem will ever go away. The sexual hunger is perhaps too strong and constant. Men are hurting, too.

(Photo: "American Girl in Italy" (1951) by Ruth Orkin)

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

-- Albert Einstein

I dare say Einstein contributed his fair share.

“In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police to a point where any public protest seems an indecency. But in France everyone can remember a certain amount of civil disturbance, and even the workmen in the bistros talk of la revolution — meaning the next revolution, not the last one. The highly socialised modern mind, which makes a kind of composite god out of the rich, the government, the police and the larger newspapers, has not been developed — at least not yet.”

-- George Orwell

Heh, well, I dare say that time has arrived.

Casanova prefaces his memoirs with this devout testimony of his faith.

_ _ _

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.

The doctrine of the stoics or of any other sect as to the forces of Destiny is a bubble engendered by the imagination of man, and is near akin to Atheism. I not only believe in one God, but my faith as a Christian is also grafted upon that tree of philosophy which has never spoiled anything.

I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of his existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence, prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with power to act.

As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, who can but wonder and adore. Our ignorance becomes our only resource, and happy, truly happy, are those who cherish their ignorance! Therefore must we pray to God, and believe that He has granted the favour we have been praying for, even when in appearance it seems the reverse.

[...]

God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer.

-- Casanova

Back to the action. Claudius and Gertrude have left the scene at Polonius’s urging, and the old chamberlain approaches Hamlet, who is walking through reading a book. Remember, Hamlet’s garb and manner are off-putting and slack, very unprincely. It might be helpful to imagine Hamlet as if he were an alcoholic on a binge, being perhaps a bit unshaven and unkempt and raw of manner, though we know he is not drunk. It has been two months since he met with the ghost of his dead father, and he accordingly feels estranged from Claudius’s court, from everyone, and he still does not know what to do about the call for revenge.

The following is based on Marvin Rosenberg’s discussion of the scene with the smoothing influence of my imagination.

Polonius is wary of the newly strange and uncertain prince, and he is tender in his approach, as if Hamlet were more like a feral cat:

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

Hamlet does not care to waste time and thought on this meddling old fool, and so he speaks disdainfully with scarcely disguised contempt, as he focuses harder on his book:

Well, God-a-mercy.

Polonius is seriously doubtful about Hamlet’s state of mind. He asks,

Do you know me, my lord?

Hamlet bitterly plays with double-meanings. He says,

Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

Thus Polonius is indulged in his fancy that the young prince is practically barking mad, while at the same time Hamlet is obviously displaying his wits in full force. The association of fishiness with women is long held, and it certainly goes back to Shakespeare’s time. Hamlet is not unaware that Polonius is, in a blunt and harsh sense, trying to sell his daughter into high royalty, working to broker a marriage between Ophelia and the prince. Polonius takes Hamlet literally:

LORD POLONIUS

Not I, my lord.

HAMLET

Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS

Honest, my lord!

HAMLET

Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS

That's very true, my lord.

Hamlet seeks to break away again, but Polonius sticks to him. Rosenberg writes, “Hamlet, unable to dislodge this leech, turns on him, with mad talk of breeding, copulation between the sun and a dead bitch. Maggots for children.”

HAMLET

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS

I have, my lord.

HAMLET

Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.

Rosenberg gives us this note: “Hankins reports the folk-belief that the sun could indeed induce pregnancy: nubile daughters were ‘shut up in darkness for several weeks.’”

In reaction to this heated talk, Polonius does not leave, but he does break away for an aside. I favor the interpretation that has Claudius and Gertrude in the wings observing, and that Polonius steps back to them to relate this aside.

How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.

The King and Queen have had enough and leave, and Polonius walks back to engage Hamlet anew:

What do you read, my lord?

Perhaps in exasperation, Hamlet answers:

Words, words, words.

We see this pattern of thrice repetition a couple of times in this dialogue, and the strongest reading may be to see that by the third repetition, Hamlet attains a self-awareness, cutting through his own whimsical irony, penetrating to a deeper self-truth. In this instance, he is indeed just reading and toying with words, rather than acting and doing and making good on his promise to his slain father.

Polonius plows on:

What is the matter, my lord?

At this point, Hamlet may be lost himself on his levels of meaning and irony, confused as to whether Polonius has caught onto his personal trail of meaning, as he asks:

Between who?

But Polonius knows nothing of Hamlet’s inner turmoil, probing again:

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

Hamlet reorients himself and resumes his verbal game:

Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

In another aside, this time to himself (and the audience) only, Polonius shows that although he regards Hamlet to be largely mad and lost, he does catch the malicious intent behind these verbal headwinds:

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

Apparently, they are in that part of the court that has an open-air walkway, and Polonius continues to engage Hamlet in an earnestly helpful tone:

Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

Rosenberg notes that “fresh air was thought to be unhealthful for the mad.”

Hamlet shoots back:

Into my grave.

This may have come straight off the top of his head, a fired shot of whimsy, but this is another moment in which Hamlet can be seen to have unwittingly spoken a sharper truth about himself and his uncertain fate, and he feels the chill of it, that the grave indeed hangs open for him.

Polonius continues to play the straight man:

Indeed, that is out o’ the air.

Then Polonius gives another aside, again just to himself and the audience:

How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.

Polonius may also be unwittingly hitting on how Hamlet’s responses have indeed sometimes proven more pregnant than even he intended. In any case, Polonius is finally ready to leave this encounter:

My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

In his parting words, Hamlet seems to, once again, open himself to another biting reverie about his own dour fate:

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.

I fancy that maybe, in this, he also has some feeling for the good possibility that he may be losing Ophelia's love, if not his physical life.

Polonius says:

Fare you well, my lord.

Hamlet then curses Polonius to his departing back, so as to be doubtlessly overheard:

These tedious old fools!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then enter the scene, and Polonius obligingly directs them to Hamlet, no doubt with a snarl of disdain of his own:

You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

And we will leave the action there.