Monday, November 29, 2010
Victorian Collective
After class on Thursday I kept thinking about collectives. The Borg and the Drummers are definitely collectives. Their minds are like one, inter-connected and almost without free thought. One is many. The more I thought about it the more I kept thinking the Victorians in The Diamond Age are a sort of collective. The Victorians want everyone in their phyle to think alike and act a certain way. They do not like people who speak up and cause dissent. They want to go on living their comfortable lives and not have anyone make any waves. This is why Finkle-McGraw and Hackworth came up with the primer. If everyone is acting the same and doing the same things, then no one is unique or has unique experiences. Both Hackworth and Finkle-McGraw want their girls to grow up having experiences that will change them into something great, non-conforming because they realize the Victorians do not give them this opportunity. Miss Matheson says this when she is talking to the girls on page 321 when she talks about the differnet phyles and being clever. She states, "Whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost...unless you are doing it with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward." So, my thought is that she is telling them it is okay to be clever but you must be clever with people like you and together, collectively, your ideas will be carried by many. One is many. Then, later on page 353, Miss Matheson tells Nell, "You can try to act the same-we have tried to make you the same..." Part of the curriculum of Miss Matheson's school is to prepare young ladies to take the Oath, to be a Victorian, to be the same as all other Victorians. One is many.
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I agree with what you are saying completely. You have to completely conform and lose your individuality. Nell just does not fit in with the Victorians no matter how hard they try. She did not start out being raised by Victorians and she is use to being an individual and doing things on her own accord. And one is many especially with a whole mouse army behind her :). She makes a phyle of her own and I can only imagine (since the book does not continue or go into detail about it) what her phyle will be like and what they will do.
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ReplyDeleteI’m also intrigued by the idea of the collective. As you mentioned, people in phyles are raised to have the same ideas, follow the same social guidelines, and generally live comfortable, unremarkable lives. What I think is really interesting is that this Primer is made to mold young girls into unique and exceptional people – which it seems to in Nell’s case – while encouraging many others to rebel against their upbringings or circumstances, and subsequently join other people just like them.
ReplyDeleteTherefore Elizabeth and Fiona do seem to succeed in breaking away and following their own paths. But, as Miss Matheson said they must, the girls join like-minded people lest their contributions be lost because their voices carry less importance as individuals. Similarly, if not for the mouse army, Nell and her contributions would almost certainly be forgotten. In the same respect, I think it’s interesting that the Primer teaches subversion to those three girls, yet the Chinese girls are essentially taught to be followers. They’re very powerful and promising young girls, but they’re almost blindly devoted to Nell, which seems to go against everything the Primer teachers.
I know that just reiterated a lot of what both of you said, but this idea of joining like-minded people to realize goals seemed to contradict and simultaneously concur with the teachings of the Primer was a little baffling to me; they are taught to act outside this collective, but later still become part of a collective.
I really think this is a great point. Although it really nails the reason for me why I did not care for the Victorians in the first place in the begining of the novel!! It drove me crazy when Nell who does nothing but study the primer and think out of the box gets whacked by the damn teacher because she is twisting her hair. This girl has not had an easy time with life. It is obvious that Nell comes from a very different class structure than the Victorians. It is also very interesting that even though Nell is Different she ends up having the it factor. The hitting incident screamed loud and clear to me that the Victorians have absolutely no room for even the slightest piece of individuality.
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