“Pray, oblige me, by removing to this other bench, and I venture to assure you the proper light and shadow will transform the spectacle into quite another thing.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
from “Main Street” (1849)
While on my first journey, years ago, through Hawthorne’s Main Street, the words in the epigraph above jumped out at me, and has been a rune[1] for me ever since. The story of Main Street explores the nearly 200-year history of Salem Massachusetts, from the time of the old forests to a point nearing the current day of the narrative; with often acute criticism of the ‘progress’ represented and the atrocities (e.g., the persecution of people accused of witchcraft and the decimation of the original native inhabitants of the area) attendant on it. The ‘history’ is being presented by a showman who has invited an audience to a picture show accompanied by puppetry. The pictures seem to be being projected by a machine, onto some kind of backdrop, the machine finally breaking down, ending the presentation prematurely.
The epigraph above comes in response to a taunt by a critic who is heckling the showman, refusing to accept his presentation of Salem’s history. The showman attempts to draw the critic’s attention away from his more-narrow focus; which can be seen as a kind of strict empiricism linked to pragmatism—for, as he himself declares, “I make it a point to see things precisely as they are.”[2] This critic sees only the props; to which he also objects because they are not finely crafted pieces of art, saying of them “Here is a pasteboard figure, such as a child would cut out of a card, with a pair of very dull scissors.” He scoffs at the presentation as well, as being ‘unhistorical’ as well as offensive to the senses.
The critic does not see further than the material props before him. This illustrates what he means by seeing “things precisely as they are.” Hawthorne is here engaged with a person of limited imaginative powers, who is thus unable to enter into the story via the very simple physical props. Such props could be the stepping-stones into an imaginative engagement with Salem’s story, but this critic cannot seem to transcend the limitations of what he empirically experiences.
“Pray, oblige me,” the showman says. This is an invitation. He is not commanding the heckler to do as he asks, but simply presenting an opportunity. What does he invite the critic to do? Simply to move to “this other bench;” which presents a different vantage-point from which to see the projected series of images. What will be the result? He will have “the proper light and shadow” that will “transform the spectacle into quite another thing.” The “spectacle” here is the picture-and-puppet show, which is supposed to inspire the audience to recollect their town’s history as focused through attention to Salem’s main street; from the earliest intimations of its future existence – as a path through dense primal forest – to its current state as the primary thoroughfare through the burgeoning town.
What caught me, when I first read this text, was the broader application of this invitation, as it has hermeneutic depth. What Hawthorne is saying, here, by this invitation in the voice of the showman, is that there are other ways of seeing things than the way in which we habitually see them. It implies, given the character to whom the rune is addressed in the story, that this lack of clear vision can be overcome simply by moving to another position – another vantage point – in relation to whatever is being experienced. Changing the ‘angle’ of our interpretive gaze implies broadening our ability to take-in more of life’s vast diversity as it actually is. This critic cannot ‘see’ the vision of Salem’s history that the showman is creatively manifesting in his sequence of pictures and puppetry, as he does not have a wide-enough vantage-point from which to understand it, much less appreciate it. He is stuck looking directly at the props without being able to jump up to the second level of seeing – what William Blake would have called “Two-fold Vision”[3] – much less to the higher levels of seeing that are opened-up through employment of one’s Creative Imagination.[4]
To the showman’s rune, the critic exclaims “I want no other light and shade. I have already told you that it is my business to see things just as they are.” Note that the critic uses the word “shade” as opposed to “shadow.” Shade is something that one might seek out when under bright sunlight. Shadow is something a little more subtle. Shadow can be created by light other than sunlight; by Moonlight, by the light of a fire in a hearth, by a candle lit in a darkened room and in many other ways. His use of “shade” suggests that this critic is a person of the sun-lit world, and as such does not appreciate the nuance and subtlety of shadows in relation to different light sources.
How revealing of the limitations of the all-too-practical, empiricist mind; which is, in effect, a blindered mind. To not see beyond the merely physical icons intimating ‘Something More’ is to be trapped in the material world with its narrow(ing) boundaries to our understanding set by the Five Senses. It can constrict a person’s understanding to the level of literalism. The showman’s invitation is encouraging the hearer toward the breaking-open of the familiar. Herein lies the critic’s problem at a basic level. He has become so used to the familiar world he inhabits that it has solidified into a reality that is accepted without question. It can be accepted literally. ‘A cardboard cut-out is not an historical person.’ ‘Pictures are not the thing they picture.’ He knows he knows what is real, and the showman’s presentation doesn’t fit the pragmatic-empirical model that he has accepted.
Unreflected upon, and therefore unthought of, the familiar becomes invisible, and then is impervious to our innate ability to see it as well as having the power to move beyond it; seeing into it, rediscovering why those familiar things were once – and may still be – attractive and even important to us. The familiar version of life and the world risks becoming an idol. The familiar, grounded in the Five Senses, and gauged by a practical standard, has here blinded this critic. He cannot – will not! – see beyond it to be able to take-in the showman’s presentation of the very town in which he lives; and – may we assume? – has lived all his life.
We are often so immersed in a common, ordinary perspective – rendered ‘true’ out of habit, sustained by its practical efficiency and reinforced by our failure to remain waeccan (i.e, awake; spiritually as well as consciously) in the course of everyday life – that to remove ourselves to ‘another bench’ may seem ‘unnecessary’ and even ‘disturbing’ to us. Yet the ‘other bench’ – which metaphors a broader, broadening ability to see the world around us and the phenomena and beings in it – carries revelatory potential, and once we take advantage of it, the experience from ‘another bench’ may contribute to a fuller understanding, a deeper compassion and the various fruits – cognitive and emotional, poetic and spiritual – which flow from such an experience.
Gaining a different perspective allows us to see the world and ourselves more fully, from a wider range of angles. It is a valuable experience, one that should be indulged in whenever possible, as many of our problems might well begin to dissipate if we could but ‘remove ourselves to that other bench’ and see things in a different cast of light and shadow.
What is it that the critic is missing-out-on by being limited to this practical and empirical way of interacting with the presentation? The “proper light and shadow.” This phrase is a potent touchstone in Hawthorne’s poetics and in Romanticism more broadly. To what does Hawthorne refer by it?
Light and shadow are themes woven into the textual fabric Hawthorne’s many works. In The Scarlet Letter, for instance, the town where Hester Pryne and Roger Chillingworth live is often said to be in shadows; a dreary place of repression and oppression. The forest, on the other hand, is a place of light; of liberation and freedom. However, the idea that in Hawthorne light is ‘good’ and shadow ‘evil’ is too simplistic, though there are such usages. Richard Harter Fogle argued in his wonderful study, Hawthorne's Imagery: The "Proper Light and Shadow" in the Major Romances (1969), that, for Hawthorne:
“… light needs to be modified, or, as the case may be, accentuated, by shadow; heat, tempered with coolness; reality, relieved by a Something Else that will vary according to the reality opposed.” (p 4, Chapter 1)[5]
Thus the “proper light and shadow” may be understood as a mixture of the two; perhaps an in-between kind of ‘light.’ For Hawthorne, as for many Romanticists, moonlight exemplifies that strange mixture; a quality of light experienced as ‘between’ sunlight and darkness. They often connected Imagination, symbolically and mythically, to Moonlight and its effect. Being in the Moon’s light is a ‘place’ of potential inspiration and creative activity. Objects, seen in Moonlight, he says in “The Custom House” (the prefacing story in The Scarlet Letter) – take on a mysterious strangeness. They are like the very familiar objects in our day-lit worlds and yet unlike them in such a way as gives them a fairy appearance. He describes the objects around him in the room, and can see and discern each one in the Moon’s illumination; yet they are qualitatively ‘different’ from what they are in the bright, clear light of day or the dark of night.
Here we have suggested a blending rather than an opposition between phenomena. There is no dualism here. Certainly, Hawthorne at times uses the Sun as a positive symbol associated with light; metaphorical of the good in life as well as being our planet’s primary light source—and he also uses shadow sometimes with negative associations and attributes, but in the blending of light and shadow; the ‘proper’ balance will come to be experienced as revelatory. It opens our minds to Imagined Worlds.
As moonlight is perhaps a key symbol of this blending in Hawthorne’s stories, what is the showman here suggesting to the critic? That he needs a perhaps less constrained view of reality; that he is dominated too much by the light of a degree of brightness that in effect ‘blinds’ him—preventing him from seeing things which are not clearly seen in sunlight alone; things that are not apparent to their daytime vision and thus to their understanding. There is here an implied critique of the ideals of the Enlightenment.
Creativity has its impetus in our immersion in that in-between kind of light signified by and associated with the Moon. This is a Romanticist idea; a deep theme intrinsic to Romantic epistemology and phenomenology. From William Wordsworth to the Brontës to the early Yeats, the Moon is often said to be present to the writer and to their characters, functioning as the source of inspiration and inspiring the mode of creativity. The Moon sometimes even guides characters through their stories, being almost a mentor and at times portrayed as a divine being; often as a goddess. Here, in this story, Hawthorne is suggesting that if the critic could just turn a little-ways away from the blinding light of the Sun, he might better be able to understand the picture-show of Salem’s history that he is watching.
Such a move – to “this other bench” – would release him from being shackled to the merely-ordinary; the simply practical and the reasonably obvious. Such an empirical-pragmatic grasp of reality often becomes simply boring, though we may not notice it, once it comes to be unquestionably ‘accepted,’ merely ‘known,’ and then cliched into a trite ‘common understanding;’ made even into what is called ‘common sense.’ An implication of Hawthorne’s story is that, when we step into the “proper light and shadow” there is a greater potential to see things in their fuller reality; their broader and deeper presencing as phenomena, revealing to us, once again, the mysterious nature of being and of our own being-in-becoming. This is not to devalue or dismiss the practical way of experiencing and evaluating our lived-in worlds, nor to deny the value of empirical observation, but to assert that to limit oneself to such a praxis is too narrow; to use another Blakean term—it constricts one’s perception to the natural “Single Vision” with which we are born.
Simply moving to another ‘bench’ and then looking at ‘some thing’ ‘over there’ or ‘here,’ from that different vantage-point presents us with a possible window into the things we experience in our worded worldings – our lived-in space and time; our ordinary reality – as they are in their deep fullness; touching upon the original fascination that they once held for us. How dull things can become once we have ‘possessed’ them; put them on a shelf or in a frame on a wall and then – slowly but surely – ceased noticing them; stopped looking at them until they are for all intents and purposes, forgotten; though they are still ‘there.’
This movement to another ‘bench’ in order to gain a different ‘angle’ – i.e., see other dimensions of reality; to see things and beings differently and more deeply—is what a good story often does for us. It is a primary mark of literature; those texts to which we can return over and over and once again, seeing things anew, in different ways – from different vantage points in our own lives as we grow and get older – becoming re-awakened, once again, to the worlds in which we dwell.
As the presentation in the story proceeds, however, instead of availing himself of the showman’s invitation, the critic becomes more and more frustrated with the pictures and puppets, the names invoked, the scenarios painted in the showman’s words, condemning him, saying_
“The fellow … has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom
he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter, without
caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all by the ears
together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence? To hear his running
commentary, you would suppose that these miserable slips of painted pasteboard,
with hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure, had all the character
and expression of Michael Angelo’s pictures. Well! go on, sir!”
The critic here seems to be expecting what can be called ‘empirical history;’ an account of what actually happened at such and such a place in a particular time or over time. While this is quite valuable, what the showman is engaged in is story; which is equally valuable—and while reflecting empirically verifiable history, may also ‘take liberties’ in order to body-forth truths about the past that a mere recounting of the past may not be able to access, much less express.
A similar kind of distinction becomes apparent when the showman then asserts that the critic has “broken the illusion,” to which the critic acridly replies that he has seen no illusion. And that is quite true; he seems incapable of seeing it! The crux here involves the meaning of the word “illusion.” The showman and the critic are using different senses of the word. The showman means by “illusion” that very participation in an Imagined Worlding, whereas the critic is using the word in the sense of false or failed vision, avowing that the presentation is nonsense; all he sees are miserably made props and pictures and puppets! He therefore rejects the narrative that is developed out of the play with the props and pictures.
At one point earlier in the narrative, the showman suggests that the critic might move and sit beside a young woman who seems engaged with his play of images and puppets in a more Imaginatively open way. To that the critic baldly refuses and continues to bicker with the showman, saying “as for my own pleasure, I shall best consult it by remaining precisely where I am.” He refuses the possibility of any wider, deeper seeing. He does not remove to another bench and has no intention of allowing this, to him, farcical presentation, to affect how he sees things; which he continually affirms is “precisely as they are.”
In the end, the showman’s ‘machine’ breaks down, and the critic asks for his money back. He exclaims, “I said that your exhibition would prove a humbug, and so it has turned out. So, hand over my quarter!” In this way he affirms and validates his own limited perception, and leaves. He has missed seeing what might have been revealed in the showman’s presentation, having been unable to employ a Creative Imagination. What he might have seen had he removed to that other bench, he will never know.
Such is his loss.
finis
[1] I use the word ‘rune’ in the sense of a mysterious saying with potential wisdom encoded within it.
[2] All quotes from “Main Street” are from Project Gutenberg Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9236] Most recently updated: May 18, 2022. I cannot give page numbers, as the file is not broken down into pages.
[3] William Blake (1757–1827) – English painter, printer, mystic and poet; writer of the “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” among many other texts. His idea of Four-fold Vision recurs throughout his works. In a letter to Thomas Butts (2 November 1802) he wrote:
“Now I a fourfold vision see, and a fourfold vision is given to me: Tis fourfold in my supreme delight and three fold in soft Beulahs night, and twofold Always. May God keep us from Single vision & Newtons sleep!”
