Blogging the reef: "cisgender"

(To read all posts about The Reef click here.)

Trust me, this post really does have something to do with Edith Wharton It will take a few paragraphs to get to the point.

I was reading some quite painful to read stuff yesterday and came upon a guy who identified himself as a "cisgender male". New to me.

Wikipedia quotes two people I've never heard of named Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook who say it means "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity".

In the same article I first saw "cisgender" I also saw the question "What do you think of when you think of gender?" Honest answer: French grammar. I never think of sexuality when I hear the word "gender" and I never will. Which is why I will never use the word "cisgender". But you can see why people who really care about such things had to come up with a word. They wouldn't want to use "normal" would they?

But the thing that jumps out at me is how a tragic world view comes along with it. Here is the definition again with some added emphasis:

... individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity.

And the obvious question is: Assigned by whom? "The gods" is the only plausible answer. "The gods" here might mean "random genetic fluke" rather than "Hera and Zeus had an argument and I got punished for it" but either way it means FATE!  Primitivism is always and everywhere a crucial part of modernism.

So who do you think is the primitive modernist in The Reef? Our first temptation is probably to say Sophy Viner but I think that is wrong but there certainly seems to be evidence for it at first glance. Here is how she responds to having seen Oedipus on stage (Chapter 6):

When at length the fateful march of the cothurns was stayed by the single pause in the play, and Darrow had led Miss Viner out on the balcony overhanging the square before the theatre, he turned to see if she shared his feelings. But the rapturous look she gave him checked the depreciation on his lips.

"Oh, why did you bring me out here? One ought to creep away and sit in the dark till it begins again!"

"Is that the way they made you feel?"

"Didn't they you?...As if the gods were there all the while, just behind them, pulling the strings?" Her hands were pressed against the railing, her face shining and darkening under the wing-beats of successive impressions.

"As if the gods were behind them all the while, just behind them, pulling the strings." But do note that everything we learn of Sophy here comes through George. All we can say for certain is that here is that George sees this primitive fatalism in her and that it affects him powerfully. That could be because it really is in Sophy or it could be that it's something about George that responds so powerfully to her because he is driven by a primitive fatalism himself.

Either way, the great illusion of modernism is that you can reintroduce fate to human self understanding and somehow not have all the other stuff that went with it in the ancient world come along for the ride.

By the way, in comparing The Reef with The Wings of the Dove, one interesting data point is the unopened letter. In The Wings of the Dove (at the end of chapter 37) Merton hands Kate Croy a letter that Millie had written to him before her death for delivery to him after her death. Kate throws the letter into the fire unopened. In (chapter 8) The Reef, Sophy brings the letter that has finally arrived from Anna Leath to George Darrow and he throws it into the fire unopened. In both cases, the action signals an acceptance of fate by the person who does it. And both James and Wharton are absolutely correct to recognize this as a key element of modern morality.