Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [136]
There are different kinds of courage in James. Can you think of an example? Yes, Nassrin? The most obvious example is Daisy, Nassrin said. She pushed herself forward with an effort, tried to brush an imaginary strand of hair from her forehead and continued. Daisy tells Winterbourne at the very start not to be afraid. She means not to be afraid of conventions and traditions—that is one kind of courage.
Yes, I said encouragingly. Daisy is a good example, and then there are other characters, others whom we never credit with courage, because we never think of their kind as courageous; we think of them as meek. Mahshid’s face lit up, and before she had bolstered the courage to raise her hand, I turned to her and said, Yes? The light withdrew from her face and she hesitated. Tell us, Mahshid, I insisted. Well, when you said “meek,” I suddenly thought of Catherine. She is shy and retreating, not like Daisy, yet she stands up to all these characters, who are much more outgoing than her, and she faces up to them at a great cost. She has a different kind of courage from Daisy, but it is still courage. I . . .
It was at this point that we heard a commotion in the hall. I paid no attention to it. Over the years I had come to see such interference from outside the class as part of the class itself. One day, two janitors had walked in with two chairs and placed them in one corner. They left without a word and a few minutes later came back with two more chairs. Another time, a janitor with a crooked neck came in with a broom and started sweeping the floor while I continued to talk about Tom Jones and pretended not to notice him.
And then there is The Ambassadors, I continued, where we find several different kinds of courage, but the most courageous characters here are those with imagination, those who, through their imaginative faculty, can empathize with others. When you lack this kind of courage, you remain ignorant of others’ feelings and needs.
Maria, the soul mate Strether finds in Paris, has “courage,” while Mrs. Newsome has only “exultation.” Madame de Vionnet, the beautiful Parisian whom Mrs. Newsome is determined to expel from her son’s life, demonstrates courage when she risks all the known quantities of her life for the unknown quantity of her love for Chad. But Mrs. Newsome chooses to play it safe. Having imagined what everyone is like, having imagined their function and role, she refuses to change her formulations. She is a tyrant much in the way of a bad novelist, who shapes his characters according to his own ideology or desires and never allows them the space to become themselves. It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
I could tell by the restless movements of my students and their glances towards the door that they could not wholly concentrate on this most intriguing point, but I was determined to be undisturbed for as long as possible, so I continued. The most dictatorial character in the novel is the invisible Mrs. Newsome. If we want to learn about the essence of a dictatorial mind, we would do well to study her. Nima, could you please read the passage where Strether describes her—” ‘That is just her difficulty—’ ”
“ ‘That is just her difficulty—, that she doesn’t admit surprises. It’s a fact that, I think, describes and represents her . . . she’s all, as I’ve called it, fine cold thought. She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for herself. Wherever she has done that, you see, there’s no room left; no margin, as it were, for any alteration. She’s filled as full, packed as tight, as she’ll hold. . . . I haven’t touched her. She won’t be touched. I see it now as I’ve never done; and she hangs together with a perfection of her own . . . that does suggest a kind of wrong in any change of her composition.’ ”
By this time the disturbance outside had grown louder. There were sounds of feet running and people shouting. Miss Ruhi and