Whitman One of the Pervasive

Whitman

One of the pervasive themes throughout all of Walt Whitman's poetry is the idea that the individual and the external world are essentially fluid; they mix together and interact in ways that we do not generally believe them to. Certainly, the consequences of this theme are what Michael Moon discusses in his brief essay "The Twenty-Ninth Bather: Identity, Fluidity, Gender, and Sexuality in Section 11 of 'Song of Myself.'" "The Twenty-Ninth Bather" stands as a particularly fascinating portion of Whitman's work because it uses several implicit notions about human interaction, society, and propriety in his attempt to further explore his fundamental theme of fluidity with the universe. Specifically, Whitman employs two basic forms of self-censorship -- which Moon discusses -- with reference to the observer of the twenty-eight bathers. Moon contends that Whitman uses a mature, affluent woman as an example of the limitations the physical world places upon human actions; yet, meanwhile, on some level the woman -- and later Whitman himself -- act upon their desires in ways that the external world is incapable of witnessing. Overall, it is Moon's point-of-view that the woman in the text is used as a way to contrast the features of the world that are physical and those that are mental; yet, he never adequately explores the implications of the particular gender differences that he points out in the work.

Moon writes, "In the poetic passage, economic and class difference are aligned with gender difference," (Moon 587). It is Moon's position that both femininity and class act as confines to people's actions within the modern world. So, on the one hand, it is improper for a person of high social class to partake in such uncultured activities as playing in the ocean with a group of strangers. On the other, it is even more improper for a woman to play in a group of twenty-eight young men. In this way, according to Moon, Whitman deliberately creates a character that is physically unable to act as she, inwardly wishes. Social class is truly more of a theoretical model than a physical reality; it is an approximation of power, privilege, and prestige relative to the whole of society. As such, there exists little quantitative backing for the notion of class. Yet, its perception is most strongly dependent upon individual wealth. Essentially, social class is loosely defined along the lines of affluence, and although the boundaries between the classes have no measurable foundations, the concept is often utilized as a tool for understanding the broad trends that dominate our world. Yet, class -- particularly in Whitman's time -- was also a way of behaving; being a person of class automatically placed limitations upon how one was to act. So, it is undoubtedly significant that Whitman chooses to describe the woman as "handsome and richly drest," (Whitman).

Still, it is not social class that Whitman is most concerned with within this portion of the poem; nor is it this form of behavioral confinement that Moon is most focused upon addressing. The divide between the genders is Moon's central focus; however, it could be argued that blurring this divide is precisely what Whitman seeks to accomplish within the poem. Yet Moon argues that the language of the poem -- at least in the beginning -- suggests otherwise. He tells us that masculinity, in the opening lines of the section, is treated in purely positive and almost fun terms, while femininity is treated in terms of reservation, loneliness and sadness. In these first lines, the woman is treated as little more than the opposite of manhood.

Basically, femininity stands for everything that masculinity does not care to claim as its own; the actual existence and physical reality of this woman's world are determined by external factors, or society's idea of what a woman should be. However, as the poem progresses, it becomes apparent that the reality that this woman lives in is far different than the one she acts upon -- her true essence precedes her physical existence. This means that although human beings are brought into this world in a particular form, the precise way in which they interpret this form is generated by their own consciousness and the setting in which they live out their lives. It is from this philosophical belief that external definitions of femininity impress themselves upon individual women, alter the ways in which they view themselves, and alter the ways in which they behave.

Whitman, therefore, centrally plays upon this idea of the woman character being outwardly perceived as little more than the opposite of the men she observes. Rather than possessing some mutual relationship with men, women assume the role of a minority -- something strange and different. Male run society provides one archetypal form of the ideal woman in order to mold this shapeless mass of humanity into a desirable quantity, and women -- especially women of class -- are forced to act within these confines. It is through this individual feminine ideal that most actual women -- who fail to satisfy this mold -- are demeaned, oppressed, and controlled. This is because through attempting to conform to this ideal, women are surrendering the freedom that the innate differences they posses allow them to supply a wholly new definition of "woman." Whitman seeks to mold these two supposedly opposite ends of the gender spectrum together in this section of the poem by allowing the woman's inner thoughts to become a feature of reality: "In the poem's liminal space, she can have her 'fine house' to 'hide' in, but also fly out of it, 'Dancing and laughing,' at the same time: 'You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room,'" (Moon 858).

It is important to point out that the breaking of the confines of gender is not Whitman's major purpose in this portion of the poem; it is merely one of the many mechanisms he uses throughout his poetry to convey the elemental theme of unity with one's surroundings. Essentially, Whitman seeks to illustrate the limitations that our ordinary conceptions of reality place upon individual identity. So, while it may have mattered at the beginning of "The Twenty-Ninth Bather" that the woman was alone in her well-adorned house, by the end it no longer matters whether the narrator is speaking of the woman, the men, himself, or them all together. Personal identity, from Whitman's point-of-view, is but one very narrow lens through which to view the world. The issue of personal identity is of fundamental importance to Whitman's poetry in that it serves as one of the launch pads from which more comprehensive philosophical theories emerge. It is of the utmost importance that any poet develops a rationale for how and why he or she understands the universe to be distinct from or dependent upon the individual consciousness. Ultimately, this is because any pervasive themes automatically rely upon this distinction -- or connection -- in order to possess any perceptible level of logical cohesion. Personal identity, at its heart, relies upon both metaphysical and epistemological premises; in other words, it deals intimately with the questions surrounding what consciousness is relative to the external world, and how we can know that anything about ourselves. So, in "The Twenty Ninth Bather," we are given a progression from common notions of individuality and isolation, to Whitman's belief that people and the features of the universe necessarily converge -- not surprisingly, this is in a sexual nature.

In this way, the closing lines of the poem suggest both union and the act of sex. Similarly, it is no longer clear -- by this point in the work -- whether it is the woman acting upon her desires, Whitman, or both simultaneously. Of course, this is Whitman's goal: complete unity and fluidity. It is regarding these final lines, however, that Moon's analysis becomes concerned with the differences between the sexes. Although it is most probably Whitman's aim to illuminate the unimportance of this distinction, Moon is preoccupied with the clear gender differences expressed in the beginning of the poem, and attempts to extend this theme to the end. Moon concerns himself with the differences between the female and male orgasm, and the question of whether one is properly represented in the closing lines of the section.

Although the lack of a clear description of feminine qualities seems to bother him, Moon is careful to point out that, for Whitman's time, there are decidedly feminine aspects of this final scene: "Still, there is a very significant difference between not representing the female orgasm in a given section of the text and excluding femininity from its representational program altogether," (Moon 861). Whereas it would have been the norm to exclude any description of the female orgasm for the purposes of propriety, Whitman cleverly finds a way to accomplish this, according to Moon. Yet, it may be the case that an overt description of this is not lacking because it would have been scorned by Whitman's contemporaries; instead, it may simply be the case that the lack of such a description better conforms to the overall progression of the poem and Whitman's philosophical point-of-view. In other words, Whitman is seeking to illustrate why the personal identity of the woman or himself is unimportant regarding the events of the poem. While it may have seemed important in the beginning of the events that the woman was the woman and Whitman was Whitman, by the end of this progression, these distinctions are meaningless. This is one of the fundamental obstacles to defining personal identity: sameness with one's self at any given instant fails to necessarily imply sameness at another point and time. It may be possible to argue that man's body carries something singular with itself through time, but this may have no relation to mental identity. This is the reason why the problem of identity finds itself at the crossroads of epistemology and metaphysics, or of thought and physicality. Whitman position is that this individuality is indeed transient, and it lacks any real meaning from certain points-of-view; these points-of-view, accordingly, may be just as real as those that we commonly accept as real.

We find this theme running throughout "Leaves of Grass." Although much of the particular linguistic devices that Whitman uses underscore the differences between the sexes, it seems to be his fundamental goal to blur this boundary as much as possible. In "Calamus" he writes, "You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only," (Whitman). Once again, in this passage the audience is provided with the distinct differences between what it is to be a boy or a girl, yet then, Whitman immediately supplies the notion that the distinction between these two bodies does not truly exist. The singular nature of the boy and the girl, in this passage, is again important in that it only exists in the narrator's mind. These words are immediately followed by the more objectively physical realization that this unity cannot happen because of the need for social propriety: "I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you," (Whitman). These are purely physical concerns; and like the necessity of the rich woman sitting inside of her house while, mentally, she frolics in a sexual nature with young men, the narrator is forbidden to speak or think of his friend while, in his mind, they are actually together and indistinguishable.