Guiding and Enabling Reader Agency in Literature

J. Hillis Miller’s essay, “Narrative,” and Stephen Greenblatt’s essay, “Culture,” convey ideas that because of literature’s repetition of narratives and the cultural power the narratives hold in society, it greatly influences the master narrative that people believe in and gravitate towards. In the 21st century, people are born into a world where literature, culture, and what defines those things, already exist and have existed and been molded over centuries. Literature and culture are out of the control of any one individual because they exist on a social and cultural level which can only be changed by a society or a culture as a whole. It is in this way that literature acts as a repressive force. However, Miller and Greenblatt also speak about the ability to question ideology without consequence within a narrative, and the idea of mobility within culture, which could allow for some change to be enacted within a society or culture. The points they make illustrate that literature not only acts as a repressive force, but it also enables a reader’s agency.

In his essay Greenblatt writes, “The ensemble of beliefs and practices that form a given culture function as pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behavior must be contained, a repertoire of models to which individuals must conform” (225). By limiting and defining what is acceptable and unacceptable social behavior, culture plays a hefty role in shaping human identity. The values of the culture, the social practices, the beliefs, and organizations that people are born into seem to be intrinsic to their way of living because these aspects of human life were instilled in them from the moment they had a conscious mind. The human capacity to be something other than what is already defined is constrained by culture that has been set into motion centuries ago.

The acceptable cultural values and norms have been spread through time by the repetition of allegorical narratives. Miller writes, “The human capacity to tell stories is one way men and women collectively build a significant and orderly world around themselves. With fictions we investigate, perhaps invent, the meaning of human life” (69). Stories are how people learn and make sense of the world around them. Today, the meaning of human life has already been invented and rediscovered more times than one could count over centuries of time. The meaning of human life exists within the boundaries of cultural ideologies and it is difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the self to be something that has never existed before and is not affected by social, cultural, and literary external forces.

Stories are saturated with cultural codes and moral lessons and they are repeated over and over. The narrative may appear different, but the structural lessons are the same. Miller later writes, “We need the ‘same’ stories over and over, then, as one of the most powerful, perhaps the most powerful, of ways to assert the basic ideology of our culture” (72). This repetition of stories is the major way cultural ideologies are engrained so deeply within people’s minds. According to Althusser, ideologies are not a reflection of the real world, but representations of the imaginary relationship individuals share with their real conditions of existence. The ideas conveyed in narratives may not necessarily be true or real, but because of the constant reiteration of them, the ideas feel true. Delivering these ideas in the form of stories can cause an ignorance to the fact that people are mindlessly following along in the grand scheme of things, or the master narrative, further repressing a reader’s agency. For example, if a reader is unaware of how literature functions in this way and receives the ideas without questioning them, this reader becomes nothing more than a vessel to further transport these ideas throughout society. In this sense, readers can act not of their own agency, but of the author’s volition.

In the manner of asserting cultural ideologies, narratives also act to “police” readers. Stories are designed to keep order and peace in society. The conditions of this order have been decided prior to one’s birth, meaning one’s identity and agency is confined, or constrained by the preexisting literary and cultural codes. The policing function of literature places limitations on who people can be without being seen as an outcast in society. Miller examines, “We need fictions in order to experiment with possible selves and to learn to take our places in the real world, to play our parts there” (69). Readers experience the consequences of acting against a societal and cultural norm within the fictional world of a narrative, which allows them to learn a lesson without having to be punished in the real world. By providing readers with a code of acceptable conduct and morality within given culture, narratives work to guide readers on the desired path, or the path that is best suited and most beneficial for society not for the individual self. Narratives do this by creating antagonists within a story. The antagonist acts against the protagonist or society, and they face consequences and some form of social exile. The classic superhero narrative is an example of this function. The superhero is often romanticized being portrayed as a handsome strong man, loved by all, while the quirky villain is cast out from society.

John Barth’s novel, Lost in the Funhouse focuses on the idea that no story can ever be made truly new because they have all been repeated for centuries. Throughout the novel, he uses different narratives to teach the same lessons of these repeated stories, and in doing so he proves his own point, and Miller’s point, that people need and use the same stories over and over. His most notable chapter in the novel for making this point is “Echo.” In this chapter, he tells the story of the mythological nymph, Echo, who is forever doomed to only repeat what others say to her. He writes, “Though her voice remains her own, she can’t speak for herself thenceforth, only give back others’ delight regardless of hers” (Barth 100). Though readers’ voices remain their own, and their narratives may be unique in terms of the time period, literature of the past will always have an effect on how literature of the present and future is shaped. It is in this way that literature represses a reader’s agency.

All agency is not lost in literature. It is guided as much as it is enabled. Reading is a fairly subjective task, whether it be done for studies or for pleasure. Though authors have certain messages they want received, everyone reads differently and takes away unique interpretations of a narrative and their own idea of what the author intended the moral lesson to be. These unique ideas they take away from a text may be influenced by the cultural biases they have formed from other readings and influences within society, but they are still exercising agency in interpreting a narrative in their individual style and, if in an academic setting, by debating these interpretations with their peers. Opening a discussion about literature is one way readers can share and form new ideas of their own.

Both literature and culture provide a space for movement within their constraints. Greenblatt writes, “If culture functions as a structure of limits, it also functions as the regulator and guarantor of movement […] limits are virtually meaningless without movement; it is only through improvisation, experiment, and exchange that cultural boundaries can be established” (228). Culture is not completely infallible and it can be subjected to change through the mobility it provides. Though an impossible task for an individual to take on, culture as a whole does have the power to question constructs and even enact a sort of change. This is the reason there are revolutions and movements in the world. The world is not stuck in one stagnant state of being. Cultural mobility allows for change, growth, and agency. A literature student can begin a movement simply by opening a discussion about outdated ideas and principles within a work. For example, a student may petition a university to retract history texts that do not portray the truth about colonization in America accurately. This can later grow into the larger national issue of whether or not Columbus day should be a holiday. Even raising this question is an example of cultural mobility.

Narratives create mobility and agency because they provide a safe place to experiment with possible identities and scenarios, they also provide the perfect place to question cultural and political norms. Miller writes, “Narratives are a relatively safe innocuous place in which the reigning assumptions of a given culture can be criticized” (69). Because the fictitious world is free of consequence, there can be no consequence for going against or questioning the cultural norm. This is a way in which readers’ agency can be enabled. They are free to work their own ideas of their culture into a text allowing these ideas to be spread to other readers. In this sense, narratives can act as a conduit for free thought and expression.

John Barth also uses Lost in the Funhouse as tool to expose and question master narratives. He completely goes against the cultural norm of what a novel should be and creates something fragmented, confusing, and sporadic in form. Prior to Barth creating this form a writing, there was a specific form a novel was expected to be composed in. When Barth first published his work, many did not consider it a novel and considered it a work of individual stories strung along together. Barth created it as a novel and because of its differences from typical novels, he enacted a change within the limitations placed on what could and could not be considered a novel. He exerts his agency by doing this because he has created something unlike anything he has every read before that is unique to his own ideas. However, the literature of his past still serves as the foundation of his creation, further proving that literature both guides or constrains readers’ agency, while also enabling it.

In Barth’s chapter that is previously mention, he drops several references to Oedipus, which is a popular allegorical story told to instill the moral code of familial relations. Barth does this to expose this structured lesson to readers and have them question the amount of times they have heard the story of Oedipus retold in a different narrative. Miller also mentions the story of Oedipus, explaining that it is because of this narrative and the use of language within the narrative that the taboo of incest exists. He writes, “The story enacted with matchless power in Oedipus the King ‘solves’ this apparently insoluble problem by presenting a narrative in which both incest and the taboo against incest are seen as simultaneously natural and cultural and in which Oedipus is both guilty and not guilty” (Miller 72). This narrative manages to both question and uphold cultural and social codes and norms. This narrative causes readers to question whether or not they feel Oedipus is guilty and if that feeling is based on their internal moral compass or if it is based on the cultural ideologies that surround them in different stories with the same narrative. Oedipus’s ignorance of his crimes grants readers a space for agency to decide if they themselves feel he is guilty. He is guilty in cultural terms, but readers may feel within themselves that his ignorance begs the question of innocence.

While Greenblatt and Miller prove that there is no doubt that literature acts as a repressive force in guiding people’s actions and behaviors, they also prove that literature can also act as an enabler to agency. It may have been possible to be a complete individual at one point in time, free of any type of influence or constraint from literature and culture, but this could only have been possible when the first conscious mind developed. From that moment on, people were and always will be born into a world where cultural constraints and literary confinements are preexisting. However, readers can always take comfort in the fact that cultural constraints cannot exist without mobility, and evolving literature cannot exist without agency.

Works Cited

Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. First Anchor Books Edition ed., Anchor Books, 1988.

Miller, J. Hillis. “Narrative,” Thomas McLaughlin and Frank Lentricchia. Critical Terms for Literary Study. University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Culture,” Thomas McLaughlin and Frank Lentricchia. Critical Terms for Literary Study. University of Chicago Press, 1995.