|
Janet K. Brenan’s Healing Power
An Interpretation of her novel A Dance in the Woods
Janet
K. Brennan’s novel A
Dance in the Woods describes the
Benton
’s family psychological adjustment to the sad death of
their eldest daughter Beth. The sufferings of innocent
Beth and her unfortunate death is not the dying of an
ordinary girl, but the vanishing of a beautiful dream as
revealed by Brennan in her amazing autobiographical novel,
which is not a day-dreaming but based on true events in
the author’s own life. The great and unique contribution
of Brennan is that she
has infused into A
Dance in the Woods her emotions with a dramatic
intensity. After reading the novel, we feel that Beth has
not died, since she lives in the heart of her mother Anna.
The immortality of Beth resides in the memory of the
living .Brennan has written a highly accomplished novel,
conceived in a full blood of creative activity .The inner
heart of the author, the deepest secrets of her mind
keeping an eye on the external world to find hints and
signs of her daughter Beth’s reincarnation after her
death, her constant brooding on Beth, her ways, her words,
her life and death-all these we find in A
Dance in the Woods. Wherever Anna went, she went ,
through the memory of Beth Anna hears her daughter
Beth’s voice forbidding mourning in her mind. The mother
cries that she needs to mourn:
I need to do
this. You need to let me cry.
You need to let
me mourn. Please, Beth, it is important that you
understand … (103).
Brennan
has created the most remarkable
work of art, the wonder-work of a genius. It is a complete
revelation of an intensely individual apprehension of
death. A Dance in
the Woods , in essence, is the author Brennan herself,
as she tries to find a way to recover from the trauma of
her daughter Beth’s death, and her burning passion
searches some sign of her resurrection so that she might
be at peace of mind.:
I’m going to ask God
for a sign. I don’t know what it will be. I will have to
give some thought, but I know that’s what I need. I want
a definite sign showing and telling me that Beth is with
Him and that she is being well-taken care of. I know this
sounds really immature and crazy, but that that’s what
I’m going to do. Maybe a white dove. I have never seen
one, but I think that would be a good thing to ask for.
Another
destabilizing incident occurs in the life of highly
dejected Anna. Her husband William Benton with his family
will have to leave their home and shift to the small
village of northern
Italy
. Will Anna be able to regain her equipoise against the
adverse forces? She tells her husband that she could not
have survived if she hadn’t come to
Italy
. She tries to gather manna in the wilderness of the
village. Doctor Paolo had advised her to dance through the
woods:
On an impulse
and a quick burst of adrenaline, I leapt from my tree
stump and began twirling and dancing up the path in front
of me. For a brief moment, I thought I might look very
foolish. But it felt wonderful. I felt that my soul might
actually slip away and soar high above the tree tops.
Her
imagination lends a sense of joy as she sees white and
beautiful Doves flying over her and William. At least
fifty white doves were around William and Anna:
“All but one
had flown away. I almost missed seeing it. A single dove
remained, hopping about in the tall grass, content in the
journey. I lunged for it and landed on my belly.”
The
fundamental feature of Anna’s character is a passionate
quest to find some sign of Beth even after her tragic
death, and she strives for it at any cost. She attains
peace and joy “at our cabin in the woods, dancing with
my two beautiful children”. Her dancing in the woods
becomes a ‘priestlike task of pure ablution’ round the
world of nature, and this helps her to get rid of her pain
for ever. After her daughter Beth’s death, Anna seems to
have lost faith in every thing. All that remained was
Nature with its dark woods, and she therefore would
worship it kicking her feet “in a mock Tarantella”,
with deepest reverence, as the only solace for her. This
is Anna’s new vision of herself. She now experiences
Nature’s healing power like Wordsworth in his Tintern Abbey
that
serene and blessed mood,
In which the
affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath
of this corporeal frame
Almost
suspended, we are laid asleep in body, and become a living
soul
Anna’s
act of dancing
in the woods is ‘the ancient rapture’ lost by the
postmodern sensibility fond of
surrealism, Freudism and Kafka’s novels where the
characters live alone in “no-man’s-land”. Anna fuses
her mind with nature to create a living paradise where she
would transmute her energies to leave sad memories behind.
Brennan’s method is that of a poet not a novelist. The
doves and the dark woods become the source of aesthetic
experience for her. She loves the sound of the leaves of
‘the aging trees’ rustling gently:
On
an impulse and a quick burst of adrenaline, I leapt from
my tree stump and began twirling and dancing up the path
in front of me. For a brief moment, I thought I might look
very foolish. But it felt wonderful. I felt that my soul
might actually slip away and soar high above the tree tops
(374).
Anna
has experienced the rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth
symphony, and recovered from the intense pain of her
adorable daughter’s death,
‘the heavy and weary weight’ of the tyranny of
intellect by absorbing it in the larger world of Nature.
She asks her husband:
“Come
dance with me, William. Come on.” And I ran back to
where he was sitting, and pulled him up off his gnarled
stump. He obviously had no choice but to accompany me in
my insane dance (374).
By
dancing in the woods, Anna has attained the truth. This
poetic experience makes Brennan’s
novel A Dance in the Woods her greatest achievement. Pater
points out that tragic crises in Feuillet’s
novels, inherent in the general conditions of human nature
itself, become subordinate, as it is their tendency to do
in real life, to the characters they help to form
(Pater:228-29). This is true about Anna’s tragic crisis
subordinated by her dance in the woods.
What
Brennan seems to be doing in discovering the dove as a
sign of her daughter’s resurrection is ‘cheering’
herself up at moments of
tragic intensity. There is a clear evidence in
Shakespeare’s tragedies of
the characters trying to find solace against tragic
reality. T. S. Eliot aptly comments in his “Shakespeare
and the Stoicism of Seneca” that stoicism is the refuge
for Othello and Hamlet in a hostile world; “it is the
permanent substratum of a number of versions of cheering
oneself up” (ELIOT: 215). Brennan in most admirable last
pages of her novel by becoming one with nature has
conquered the world like Shakespeare.
Works
Cited
Brennan,
Janet K. A Dance in
the Woods.
USA
: Casa de Snapdragon, 2007
Eliot,
T.S. “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca”. Shakespeare
Criticism 1919-35, Ed.
Anne
Ridler.
London
:
Oxford
University
press, 1956. 209-225.
Pater,
Walter. “Feuillet’s La morte”. Appreciations.
Edinburgh
: R & R Clark, 1931, 228-252.
__________________________________________________________________________
Santosh
Kumar (b. 1946) is a poet, short-story writer and an
editor from UP India; DPhil in English; Editor of Taj
Mahal Review and Harvests of New Millennium
Journals; several awards; member of World Poets
Society (W.P.S.); member of World Haiku Association,
Japan; presented papers in the seminar, interviews as
special guest at international literary festival WORDS –
one path to peace and understanding Oslo, Norway in
September 2008; published poetry in Indian Verse by
Young Poets (1980), World Poetry (1995 & 1996),
The Fabric of A Vision (2001), The Still Horizon (2002),
The Golden Wings (2002), Voyages (2003),
Symphonies (2003), New Pegasus (2004),
Explorers (2004), Dwan (USA), Promise
(Purple Rose Publications, USA), Taj Mahal Review (2002,
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008). He has also
edited sixteen World Poetry Anthologies, and four books of
World’s Great Short Stories. He is also the author of a
collection of poems entitled Helicon (
Cyberwit
,
India
, ISBN 81-901366-8-2), Haiku collection New Utopia
(
Rochak Publishing
,
India
ISBN 978-81-903812-0-8), and Critical Essays in
collaboration with Adam Donaldson Powell (
Cyberwit
,
India
, 978-81-8253-110-9).
|
