The Object Rules
Source
Nussbaum,
Martha C. “Objectification.” in Sex and
Social Justice. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 213-239.
We tend to objectify other people. The ways in which we
objectify others creates an ethics system unique to each of us. Some manners of
objectification are definable as better than others on the scale of right and
wrong. This is the thesis of Martha C. Nussbaum. In addition, Nussbaum, a
proponent of Aristotle, likens ethical considerations to aesthetic principles
in that both involve human value judgements. Therefore, when she sets out to
give us rules of how we objectify others, she does so with examples from
literature. She melds ethics with aesthetics and affectations. This type of
“ethics of literature” becomes important to the individual’s sense of what is
right and what is wrong, and the reading of literature becomes an important
part of the individual’s life. The ethics is not so much a definition of what
makes good literature and bad literature but shows how literature can exemplify
what is right and wrong in the human condition as well as showing what is
beautiful or emotionally affective.
Nussbaum gives us seven ways in which we make others into
objects. These are presented in a hierarchical system, some presented as better
than others. Nussbaum gives each method of objectivity an example from
literature, linking the ethics involved with the affectations we experience
while reading. My purpose in this short note is not to outline all seven.
Rather, I wish to comment on one of Nusbaum’s examples as a brief introduction
to my way of thinking about “ethics and literature” and the importance held in
the discipline of the concept of “object.” This comment circles back to my comments on
Henry James’ The Golden Bowl.
The Nussbaum “rules” show how progression occurs from the
semiotics of postmodernism, the signs, and symbols of popular culture, to the
definition of how literature shows human objects in the light of what is good and
what is not good. We begin with Roland Barthes concepts of objects as
“Mythologies,” reflective of cultural attitudes. Susan Sontag shows how a
reliance on such popular culture icons can help us to free ourselves from
overarching culture theories; we no longer must interpret according to strict
rules because we can experience the world through what is immediately in front
of us. Nussbaum now shows us how we use the experiences of immediacy when we
read literature to enlighten us on how we objectify others, whether for good or
bad.
The Nussbaum system of “objectification” uses the situations
of The Golden Bowl to exemplify the most horrific of her classifications
of objectivity. Hierarchically, The Golden Bowl shows us the worst way n which
humans can objectify each other, by trying to “own” other people by turning
them into “possessions.” This does not have to be in the form of economics
wherein human beings are slaves to their “owners.” But certain individuals,
usually wealthy, can trap others into situations wherein these others become
objects ensnared by the attitudes of those who trap them. Thus, the wealthy
Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie marry the beautiful Charlotte, a friend of
Maggie’s, and the Italian ”Prince” Amerigo, unaware that the two, Charlotte and
Amerigo, were once lovers and still hold feelings for each other. The wealthy
man and his daughter capture the former lovers by marrying them and separating
them. Even though Henry James, in apparent sympathy to the wealthy class of
Americans living in Europe in 1904, presents the lovers as schemers, Charlotte
and Amerigo become objects owned by Adam and Maggie.
