"What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean?" - Tison Pugh
Apr 29, 2009 11:53:08 GMT -5
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What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean? Hermaphroditic Gender, Predatory Sexuality, and Promiscuous Allusion in Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Critical essay on Project MUSE by Tison Pugh, Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida.
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What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean? Hermaphroditic Gender, Predatory Sexuality, and Promiscuous Allusion in Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Tison Pugh. Children's Literature. Storrs: 2008. Vol. 36 pg. 162, 24 pgs
Abstract (Summary)
Possibilities of gender play, what Butler outlines as "a mode of passage between genders, an interstitial and transitional figure of gender that is not reducible to the normative insistence on one or two" (43), inform the depiction of the Baudelaire children and their liberation from the ideological import of femininity and masculinity.\n Snicket introduces the story of Adam and Eve with a skewed representation of his source: "For instance, if you ever find yourself reading a book entitled The Bible, you would find the story of Adam and Eve, whose daring life of impulsive passion led to them putting on clothing for the first time in their lives, in order to leave the snake-infested garden where they had been living" (SS 148). Gender roles infuse human relationships with expectations that can never be realized, and despite the overarching freedom from stereotypical constructions of gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events, predatory male sexuality and the gendered contours of the literary canon present formidable challenges for women to assert their autonomy.
Full Text (9944 words)
Copyright Children's literature Assembly 2008
In many ways, Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket depicts a setting amenable to female agency and empowerment throughout his A Series of Unfortunate Events.1 The chief protagonist, Violet Baudelaire, moves freely in traditionally masculine fields, and other characters-both male and female-appear remarkably unhampered by stereotypical gender roles and expectations. Roberta Seelinger Trites defines a feminist children's novel as one "in which the main character is empowered regardless of gender. A key concept here is 'regardless': in a feminist children's novel, the child's sex does not provide a permanent obstacle to her development" (4).2 From Trites's perspective, Violet's freedom from traditional gender roles enables the entire series to take on a feminist cast because such a paradigm of gendered equality is taken as the normative structure of the society depicted in the thirteen novels of the series.
At the same time, in constructing women as objects of desire, some men curtail female agency; thus the gendered freedoms of the series are at least partially undone by the countervailing force of predatory forms of male sexuality. This dialectic between freedom from gender roles and predatory male desire is further complicated by the ways in which Handler deploys literary allusions to both reify and subvert the literary canon and women's place in it. A Series of Unfortunate Events wallows in the history of literature and its many masterpieces, making numerous (and often seemingly random) references to classic works, and the retrograde shadow cast by the patriarchal canon in some ways undermines the depiction of women as agents in their own right. However, particularly through the enigmatic figure of Snicket's lost Beatrice, allusions become so overwrought with connotation that they bear the potential to subvert gendered paradigms encoded in literary history.
The following analysis highlights the varying depictions of gender and sexuality in A Series of Unfortunate Events through an exegetical triptych: in the first section, I examine how, on the surface level of the texts, Handler's treatment of gender reverses longstanding stereotypes. In the second, I turn to the ways in which male sexuality, in creating females as objects of desire, nonetheless constrains their agency. Finally, I explore both how literary history reinforces traditional depictions of female characters, and how this trope is undermined through the promiscuous deployment of allusions. By alluding so frequently to various works of literature, Handler both brings to the surface the sexual subtext of his novels and provides female characters a means of asserting agency against men with sexually predatory desires. Handler re-imagines how women communicate allusively and elusively throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events, and this deployment of promiscuous allusion creates an intriguing space for female agency.
Hermaphroditic Gender and Ambiguous Heroism
Readers of children's literature have long noted the stereotypical gender roles delineated in classic texts of the genre, but A Series of Unfortunate Events dismantles traditional expectations of gendered behaviors for boys and girls. In these books, retrograde constructions of gender are tossed aside, and girls and boys engage in activities historically gendered for the other sex. For example, Violet hates the color pink (VV 161) and rejects feminine toys such as dolls (WW 20).3 Indeed, if playing with dolls represents a gendered act within the series, it appears that boys enjoy dolls more than girls, as Snicket hypothetically describes a fair exchange: "If you were bored with playing with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal" (MM 53). Klaus recalls the time when the Baudelaire family engaged in gender play, at least for the males: "'Remember that time,' Klaus said wistfully, 'when we were bored one rainy afternoon, and all of us painted our toenails bright red?'" (RR 38). Likewise, when Mr. Poe admonishes Violet for picking a lock, telling her that "Nice girls shouldn't know how to do such things," Klaus defends his sister and argues for a more expansive view of female activities: "'My sister is a nice girl,' Klaus said, 'and she knows how to do all sorts of things'" (RR 168). These scenes-and ones similar to them throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events-liberate the Baudelaire children from constraining constructions of masculinity and femininity.
Gender roles in the series are additionally undermined through the reversals of gendered norms that have already been reversed. Violet may be coded as somewhat masculine due to her inventing skills, and Klaus may be coded as somewhat feminine due to his inveterate reading, but their respective tendencies in regard to gendered activities do not limit their potential to act in new ways. At the conclusion of The Miserable Mill, the reader sees that Violet and Klaus can succeed in each other's accustomed domains:
"It was lucky," Violet admitted quietly, "that Klaus invented something so quickly, even though he's not an inventor."
"It was lucky," Klaus admitted quietly, "that Violet figured out how to end my hypnosis, even though she's not a researcher." (MM 194)
Gendered categories are rendered meaningless for the Baudelaire children, who express the freedom and agency to strip themselves of the prescriptive cast of gender's historical enactments.
As these brief examples make clear, the Baudelaire children can be seen as hermaphroditic figures in the most liberating sense of the term. Many gender theorists see an inhibiting force in social constructions of masculinity and femininity: Judith Butler describes gender as an "apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative" elements of an embodied individual (42). Hermaphroditism, in contrast, envisions the possibility of engendered wholeness, in which masculinity and femininity need not define an individual. Possibilities of gender play, what Butler outlines as "a mode of passage between genders, an interstitial and transitional figure of gender that is not reducible to the normative insistence on one or two" (43), inform the depiction of the Baudelaire children and their liberation from the ideological import of femininity and masculinity. Gender cannot constrain them, and they are free to enact roles typically considered male or female as circumstances-and their own interests-warrant.
But as much as such gender play is appreciated throughout the novels, it is also used to mark the evil characters, most notably Olaf's hermaphroditic henchman. The initial description of this character is fairly objective: "There was a person who was extremely fat, and who looked like neither a man nor a woman" (BB 47-48); however, Olaf's companion is subsequently marginalized through dehumanizing references to the character as "it," as when the "enormous creature looked at Violet with its blank white eyes and shook its head" (BB 114). The Baudelaire children at times use pronouns for both sexes to refer to the hermaphrodite ("'Did he or she see you?' Klaus asked. 'No,' Violet said. 'He or she is asleep'" [WW 136]), but such attempts at politically correct language are forgotten when they confront imminent danger: "'She's awake!' Violet shrieked. 'He's awake! It's awake!'" (WW 139). As one of Olaf's henchmen, the hermaphrodite is, of course, an evil character, but when Klaus describes the hermaphrodite as "the scariest" of Olaf's cohorts (WW 136) and when Snicket refers to the character as a "despicable creature" (WW 143), moral judgments of the hermaphrodite's actions appear to merge with discomfort about the character's body of indeterminate sex. Of course, the Baudelaire children represent hermaphroditism figuratively, while this character incarnates hermaphroditism literally, but the overlap between these two models of hermaphroditism enacts one of Handler's central themes, which is that heroes and villains are often virtually indistinguishable from each other. In this example, it is apparent that gender play is valorized for protagonists yet denigrated for antagonists, but the foundational act of gender play is thus rendered ethically neutral because both protagonists and antagonists enact it.
Cross-dressing also depicts the ways in which gender play is coded as positive for good characters but as evil for bad ones. Klaus dresses as a woman to rescue Violet from an impending "cranioectomy" (HH 178-81), and Violet and Klaus costume themselves as a two-headed freak to deceive the villains of the Caligari Carnival (CC 42-50). Their gender play is thus lauded as part of their heroic and quick-witted characters. As Victoria Flanagan observes, cross-dressing in children's literature is typically "constructed as a harmless act of childish experimentation" because, in most instances, it is "nonsexual and temporary"; due to the fleeting nature of its enactment, its "connections with the adult world of transgender" are mitigated, if not altogether eliminated (59). In The Miserable Mill, however, Olaf adopts the persona of a receptionist named Shirley, and his gender play highlights the nefarious depths to which he will go to capture the Baudelaire children:
A nameplate on the desk read "Shirley," but this was no Shirley, even though the receptionist was wearing a pale-brown dress and sensible beige shoes. For above the pale lipstick on Shirley's face, and below the blond wig on Shirley's head, was a pair of shiny, shiny eyes that the two children recognized at once. . . . And Count Olaf, sitting at the receptionist's desk with an evil smile, had caught them at last. (MM 114)
Olaf again cross-dresses in The End, when he pretends to be a pregnant woman, and here again his transvestitism is coded as part of his evil nature (especially in that his "pregnancy" disguises a "diving helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium" [TE 249], which threatens the inhabitants of the island with their imminent death). Even the odious Carmelita Spats displays her desire to cross-dress when she denies a feminine identity and clamors for a five-fold masculinity, one which would necessitate a range of male attire: "'I'm not an adorable little girl! . . . I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate!'" (PP 82). Similar to hermaphroditism, cross-dressing can thus be deployed by either the good or the bad characters, and their status as protagonists or antagonists concomitantly marks transvestitism as good or bad. Indeed, the primary difference between the transvestitism of the protagonists and that of the antagonists lies in the former's efficacy: Klaus's cross-dressing is more effective than Olaf's, in that his costumes deceive Olaf's henchmen in The Hostile Hospital and The Carnivorous Carnival, yet Olaf's disguises repeatedly fail to deceive the Baudelaire children. The Baudelaires continually outwit Olaf, but throughout the series, their successes depend more and more upon emulating his treacherous acts.
Gender play-as represented in gendered acts, hermaphroditism, and transvestitism-is thus inherently neither positive nor negative in A Series of Unfortunate Events; it is an amoral action that is devoid of meaning in itself and only assumes a meaning in light of a wider range of cultural conditions and the motivations of the person who engages in it. The books frequently depict the Baudelaire children pondering whether their actions truly bespeak their good intentions, notably when they burn down the Hotel Dénoument at the end of The Penultimate Peril. In the opening pages of The End, Snicket outlines how much their moral compass has shifted, and how much it might continue to do so in the future:
In any case, a moral compass appears to be a delicate device, and as people grow older and venture out into the world, it often becomes more and more difficult to figure out which direction one's moral compass is pointing, so it is harder and harder to figure out the proper thing to do. When the Baudelaires first encountered Count Olaf, their moral compasses never would have told them to get rid of this terrible man, whether by pushing him out of his mysterious tower room or running him over with his long, black automobile. But now, standing on the Carmelita, the Baudelaire orphans were not sure what they should do with this villain who was leaning so far over the boat that one small push would have sent him to his watery grave. (TE 18-19)
The question developing throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events is whether the Baudelaires embody heroic and morally superior values or whether they are equally as villainous as Olaf and his gang. Therefore, although one might view hermaphroditic and transvestic gender play as a marker of the Baudelaires' progressive politics and rejection of stifling gender norms, the fact that their gender play is balanced by that of the villains undoes its relevance in assessing their characters. Even the villains recognize that their culture is primarily feminist in its orientation: for example, Olaf might be seen as the patriarchal enforcer of his criminal underworld, yet no woman need accept his authority unless she chooses to do so (as evidenced when the two white-faced women leave his gang despite Olaf's threat that they "Obey my orders this instant!" [SS 304]). This is not to say that no gender stereotypes creep into A Series of Unfortunate Events-Esmé Squalor's excessive fashion sensibility serves as one example-but overarchingly, the Baudelaires circulate in a feminist world of gendered equality in which heroism is a quality as ambiguous as the act of cross-dressing.
That Handler renders gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events into a neutral and amoral marker of his characters radically departs from much of children's literature. One need only think of the numerous gendered stereotypes that code characters as good or evil throughout many classic texts of the genre-heroic boy heroes, charming female protagonists (who grow into proper young ladies), wise wizards, foppish male villains, ugly old hags-to see that the erasure of gendered stereotypes and the instantiation of gender neutrality to the point of amorality signals a noteworthy shift. Feminism has triumphed within this fictional world, but it is a hollow victory if freedom from gender roles creates merely moral ambiguity.
Predatory Sexuality and Objectified Women
If gender roles and gender play in A Series of Unfortunate Events are mostly progressive yet amoral in relation to assessing a character's ethical orientation, Handler nonetheless showcases how predatory enactments of male sexuality circumscribe female agency. As the potential objects of heterosexual male desire, women face the continual threat of losing their agency and becoming the beloved rather than the lover, the object rather than the subject. This theme is most evident in Snicket's mourning over his lost Beatrice (as will be discussed in the following section), but it is also apparent in regard to Violet and her persistent "suitor," Olaf.
On the surface level of the tales, Olaf's greed motivates his desire to marry Violet so that he can steal the Baudelaire fortune, and he frequently threatens to kill the children as soon as this objective is accomplished: "'I'll get my hands on your fortune if it's the last thing I do,' [Olaf] hissed. 'And when I have it, I'll kill you and your siblings with my own two hands'" (BB 158). Olaf's greed, however, cannot fully eclipse the sexual subtext to his nuptial plans. He candidly confesses to Klaus his attraction to Violet: "It is true that [Violet] is very pretty" (BB 98). Olaf's bald henchman likewise comments on her attractiveness, while inappropriately handling her face: "'You're a pretty one,' he said, taking her face in his rough hands. 'If I were you I would try not to anger Count Olaf, or he might wreck that pretty little face of yours'" (BB 49). Violet's face is frequently stroked and caressed, albeit in a menacing fashion, as when Olaf compels her to participate in his production of The Marvelous Marriage: "Count Olaf reached out one of his spidery hands and stroked Violet on the chin, looking deep in her eyes. 'You will,' he said, 'participate in this theatrical performance'" (BB 78). This combination of the minatory and the amatory reveals the threat submerged in masculine desire, as Violet's desirability as a sexual object holds out a key for her possible survival:
"Come now," Count Olaf said, his voice faking-a word which here means "feigning"-kindness. He reached out a hand and stroked Violet's hair. "Would it be so terrible to be my bride, to live in my house for the rest of your life? You're such a lovely girl, after the marriage I wouldn't dispose of you like your brother and sister." (BB 109)4
When Olaf and his henchmen discuss which of the Baudelaire children should be kept alive, Olaf indicates his preference for Violet because of her physical attractiveness: "'I myself hope it's Violet,' Olaf said. 'She's the prettiest'" (CC 10). The repeated emphasis on Violet's beauty establishes her as an object of male desire to be manipulated in response to predatory forms of sexuality that do not recognize her agency. Of course, one should not lose sight of the parodic excesses of Olaf's passion, which leaven his vile behavior with an undercurrent of sly humor; nevertheless, the overarching threat of his ardor continually menaces Violet as the narrative unfolds.
Would Olaf consummate his marriage with Violet? Certainly, she contemplates the likelihood of sexual intercourse after the marriage is performed: "Violet imagined sleeping beside Count Olaf, and waking up each morning to look at this terrible man" (BB 109). Olaf confirms that he would indeed sleep with her, even though she is only fourteen years old at the beginning of the series (BB 2). When he believes that he has succeeded in marrying her, he bluntly tells the shocked audience of The Marvelous Marriage of his amatory plans: "if all of you will excuse me, my bride and I need to go home for our wedding night" (BB 148). This statement euphemistically but nonetheless clearly states his sexual intentions. Olaf's conversations with his hook-handed henchman repeatedly focus on the possibility of sexual intercourse with Violet. The henchman refers to her as a "blushing bride" (BB 125), a phrase that connotes the sexual apprehension young women are expected to feel prior to losing their virginity on their wedding nights, and in a somewhat oblique conversation between the two men, the hookhanded henchman asserts, "I don't know, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss, of course I understand she's yours. Yes, boss" (BB 126; italics in original). The henchman's words indicate that Olaf warns him not to take any sexual interest in Violet, since he has claimed her as his own. Olaf later attempts to break himself free of Violet's spell: "His eyes shone brightly, as if he were telling a joke as nasty as his unbrushed teeth. 'You can't try that trick again,' he sneered. 'I'm not going to bargain with an orphan, no matter how pretty she may be'" (GG 198). Realizing that he loses control of himself and his plans when confronted with Violet's attractiveness, Olaf attempts to reassert himself in a dominant position vis-à-vis the comely orphan. Despite the pedophilic overtones of his passion, Olaf continually faces the possibility of succumbing to his desire for Violet, as she likewise faces the possibility of being forced to marry and sleep with him.
Given the predatory nature of Olaf's desires, Violet faces real difficulty in asserting control over herself and her burgeoning sexuality. Although the sexual development of the Baudelaire children does not dominate the pages of A Series of Unfortunate Events, it serves as a notable subtheme and keeps their maturation before the reader's eyes. For example, when Violet and Klaus attempt to determine why Olaf (disguised as Coach Genghis) has ordered them to paint a wide circle on a field, Klaus dismisses his sister's reproductive capacities as a motivating factor for Olaf's scheme: "'I don't know,' Klaus said. 'I've only read three or four books on paint. I know that paint can sometimes be poisonous or cause birth defects. But Genghis isn't making us eat the circle, and you're not pregnant, of course, so I can't imagine'" (AA 115). Klaus's certainty that Violet is not pregnant is well founded, since nothing in the texts depicts her engaging in intercourse. But the texts nonetheless frequently address the maturing sexuality of Violet and Klaus, as when they engage in innocent handholding with their new friends at the Prufrock Prepatory School, Isadora and Duncan Quagmire. First, the reader sees that "Isadora . . . patted Klaus on the hand," and soon after "it was Violet's turn to look down, and Duncan's turn to reach across the table and take her hand" (AA 46-47; cf. 80-81). Violet denies any type of romantic affection with Duncan ("Duncan Quagmire is not my boyfriend" [AA 90]), and, indeed, nothing of a romantic nature evolves between the two friends.
Nonetheless, these scenes establish the foundation for teen sexuality to develop, and subsequent scenes with the third Quagmire triplet, Quigley, are more certain in their depiction of a blossoming romance, as when Quigley compliments her inventing skills and Violet blushes (SS 192), and when Snicket discreetly offers Violet and Quigley a moment of privacy:
So, as Violet and Quigley rest for a few minutes more on a ledge halfway up the frozen waterfall, I will take this opportunity to give them a bit of privacy, by not writing down anything more of what happened between these two friends on that chilly afternoon. Certainly there are aspects of my own personal life that I will never write down, however precious they are to me, and I will offer the eldest Baudelaire the same courtesy. (SS 212)
The delicate occlusion of the reader's voyeurism reveals what is ostensibly concealed, as it is difficult to imagine any reason beyond the amatory for Snicket's refusal to describe the scene in detail. In contrast to Olaf's determined-and depicted-pursuit of Violet, Violet's relationship with Quigley allows her autonomy of choice and action in her romantic pursuits. Later, Snicket reiterates the burgeoning desire between Violet and Quigley, describing Quigley as "a young man of whom the eldest Baudelaire was particularly fond" (PP 14) and defining "cartographer," in reference to Quigley, as "a word which here means 'someone who is very good with maps, and of whom Violet Baudelaire was particularly fond'" (GG 5).
Violet and Quigley's relationship offers her agency in her amatory affairs, yet in an enigmatic scene late in the series, it appears that a schism between Quigley and his brother Duncan might arise over her. Here an erotic triangle forms around Quigley, Duncan, and Violet, with the possibility that Violet will be constructed as the desired object over whom two men fight. As is well known, an erotic triangle serves as a plot device that typically focuses on two men competing for the affections of a woman; permutations of this basic structure abound, and two women may likewise compete for the affections of one man.5 Within A Series of Unfortunate Events, erotic triangles typically spark such impassioned competition that schisms appear unavoidable. In The Carnivorous Carnival, Lulu's and Esmé's jealousy over each other's respective position as Olaf's girlfriend leads to conflict. Lulu's displeasure with Olaf on this issue-"You did not tell me, my Olaf, that Esmé was the girlfriend of you. Perhaps Madame Lulu will not let you and troupe stay at the carnival of mine" (CC 31-32)-underscores the tensions inherent in two women vying for the affections of one man. But it is noteworthy that Olaf is not constructed solely as the object of two women's affections, as Lulu appears to expect him to choose her over Esmé. Olaf retains agency as a lover, even when women fight over him.
Much like the gender play discussed in the first section of this essay, erotic triangles are not the exclusive provenance of the good or the bad characters, and the Quagmire boys will possibly part ways over their mutual affection for Violet. When Klaus asks Kit Snicket about the fate of the Quagmire triplets, her ambiguous reply opens the possibility of an internecine struggle for Violet's affections:
"You don't know what happened to them?" Klaus asked.
Kit shook her head. "All I heard," she said, "was one of the Quagmires calling Violet's name."
Sunny looked into the face of the distraught woman. "Quigley," the youngest Baudelaire could not help asking "or Duncan?"
"I don't know," Kit said again. (TE 305)
One of Violet's potential boyfriends calls her name, but which one? Duncan virtually disappears from A Series of Unfortunate Events after The Vile Village, yet he is mentioned in this key scene to introduce possible fraternal friction. Handler consistently reiterates his theme that schisms among friends and families are virtually inescapable, as the VFD itself was originally a volunteer organization wholly dedicated to good; in this scene, a new schism is hinted at if Quigley and Duncan treat Violet as the object of their competing desires, rather than as the subject of her own. It is also notable that Sunny does not consider the possibility that Isadora Quagmire might have called Violet's name, which further suggests that Sunny saw the possibility of a romantic attachment in Violet's handholding with Duncan.
Violet's experiences with Olaf, Quigley, and Duncan establish a key theme throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events in terms of the struggle of a desired woman to be a desiring woman, for her to move from object of male affection to the subject of her own life and amatory affairs. In sum, Violet seeks to take advantage of the feminist potential highlighted throughout the series in the characters' overarching freedom from traditional gender roles and to act in accordance with her own desires rather than in reaction to a male character's. In the story of Violet and Olaf, we see that male sexual desire fails to inculcate within women the presumably appropriate response of their corresponding desire for the man who wants them. The depiction of male desire throughout the series focuses on its frustrations rather than its successes, and the highly allusive story of Beatrice and Lemony Snicket underscores the ways in which this trope creates meaning in this series of books and in the literary canon itself.6 The depiction of Beatrice in the novels casts her as the object of an undesired love, but Handler allusively frees her from the force of male desire.
Promiscuous Allusions and the Prefeminist Canon
In dedicating each book of A Series of Unfortunate Events to his beloved but deceased Beatrice, Lemony Snicket sets in motion a chain of signifiers in literary history. The allusion to Dante's Beatrice, similarly beloved and similarly dead, is but one of numerous references to esteemed authors and literary classics, spanning the gamut from masterpieces such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick (TE 55) to genre fiction such as Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (RR 126); from the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (EE 39) to the science fiction of Jules Verne (EE 38); from the names of Sunny and Klaus (taken from the real-life case of Claus von Bülow's alleged attempted murder of his wife Sunny) to that of Esmé Squalor (taken from J. D. Salinger's "For Esmé with Love and Squalor"); from the theme of moral virtue trumping reckless passion in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (SS 146) to that of the explosive repercussions of seemingly innocuous social conditions in Richard Wright's Native Son (PP 352). In a world peppered with literary allusions, Beatrice nonetheless stands pre-eminent-every novel is dedicated to her, and Snicket's continual mourning over her death haunts the pages of the series.
With the image of Dante's Beatrice serving as a thematic touchstone for the series, writing and literature are implicated within a heteronormative system of gender and sexuality, in which men and women fulfill rather narrow roles of the pursuer and the pursued. This tradition is also encapsulated in the portrayal of men writing stories about their beloveds, a paradigm in which men and women, respectively, serve in the roles of the writer and the written (or the speaker and the spoken). Such a trope occurs frequently in canonical literature, with Dante's lamentations over Beatrice providing a defining exemplar of the tradition in the Middle Ages. From the Victorian era, Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" puts a sinister spin on this trope, with its arrogant narrator calmly describing his deceased wife as he negotiates for a new bride; this poem is alluded to when the Baudelaire children use it to solve the secret code known as Verse Fluctuation Declaration (GG 157). Edgar Allan Poe states this theme in his argument that "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world-and especially is it beyond doubt that the lips suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover" (158). Of course, Poe himself is most obviously alluded to in the character of Mr. Poe, the Baudelaire children's ineffective and perpetually coughing guardian; as this quotation makes clear, Snicket (as mourning narrator) also incarnates Poe's bereaved elegist. From this perspective, he is better suited to tell the story of Beatrice than even Beatrice herself would be. These allusions showcase dead women as objects of male desire and control, and provide a striking counterview to the feminist world of the series.
As much as the figure of Beatrice inspires Dante's Divine Comedy and propels the narrative forward, so too does Snicket's Beatrice provide the impetus and inspiration for A Series of Unfortunate Events.7 Her identity is a mystery throughout the series until the final pages of the thirteenth book, The End, when she is revealed to be the Baudelaire orphans' deceased mother. Revealing Beatrice's identity, however, does not resolve the mysteries of A Series of Unfortunate Events: many questions remain at the end of The End, including whether Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire killed Olaf's parents, whether Olaf then murdered Beatrice and Bertrand to avenge his loss, and whether the Baudelaire children successfully return to society after leaving Ishmael's island. Like the answers to these questions, Beatrice's identity remains intriguingly out of view even after she is identified, as the web of allusions in which she moves creates a polyphonic and ultimately indecipherable enigma. Handler's refusal to resolve these questions with pat answers establishes a central theme to the novels: all stories are interconnected, and it thus becomes impossible to untangle all of the world's diverse narratives. His allusions both connect his texts to the literary canon from whence they came and undermine ways in which the canon depicts a prefeminist worldview. In referring to Handler's allusions as "promiscuous," I would like to highlight how the literary canon is both reified and subverted through textual references that revise the meaning of their source texts in light of gendered freedoms.
At its simplest, an allusion is a "passing reference, without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage" (Abrams 9). For an allusion to function, the reader must realize its import, and Joseph Pucci accords the reader a primary role in imbuing allusions with meaning: "the most important feature of [allusion] is a powerful reader, possessed of discrete and unique competencies"; he also declares "that a sensitivity to this reader and her competencies is fundamental to an understanding of allusion historically in the Western literary tradition" (xv).8 In addition to the reader, who brings meaning to the text by detecting and deciphering allusions, the author is also implicated in the signifying chain of allusion, as Christopher Ricks notes: "Literary allusion is a way of dealing with the predicaments and responsibilities of 'the poet as heir'" (9; see also Bloom). Authors writing today must situate themselves vis-à-vis the past, and allusions allow them a subtle tool to situate their artistic accomplishments within the vast cultural field of yesteryear. In the numerous literary allusions of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the canon is celebrated yet simultaneously pilloried, as when the moral of Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled" is resignified to suggest that one's distressed cries will not be heard on a lonely road, and Snicket concludes ominously (and comically) regarding Frost: "Sure enough, that poet is now dead" (SS 1).
Allusions can be made to any cultural artifact that an author believes a reader will recognize-from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf to the Big Bad Wolf-and many allusions refer to the literary canon, which ostensibly represents the finest expressions of the human mind via the written word. For many, the canon celebrates the acme of art and aesthetics and provides cultural nourishment to all who seek to elevate themselves into a refined sensibility. Italo Calvino rhapsodizes, "The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture . . . through which they have passed" (5). At the same time, the canon cannot be divorced from its ideological import, as these texts participate in the construction of ideal members of society. Arnold Krupat proclaims, "the canon, like all cultural production, is never an innocent selection of the best that has been thought and said; rather, it is the institutionalization of those particular verbal artifacts that appear best to convey and sustain the dominant social order" (310; qtd. in Kaplan and Rose 86).9 The critical observation that literary and artistic canons bear a masculinist bent is a hallmark of feminist inquiry. Griselda Pollack, noting the connections among discourses, men, and ideology, defines the canon as "both a discursive structure and a structure of masculine narcissism within the exercise of cultural hegemony" (xiv).10 Canons codify genders and ideologies, and in its many allusions to literary classics, A Series of Unfortunate Events cannot wholly emancipate itself from this gendered chain of signification; by referring to these texts because they are classics, their status as classics and their cultural cachet are reinforced.
Although one may see the deployment of allusion as a way for an author to valorize the notion of a literary canon-in that by the very act of referring to classic texts, he or she tacitly reinforces their standing as foundational works that every educated reader should know-Handler's allusions are so diverse, so wide-ranging, indeed, so promiscuous, that they subvert the very literary canon from whence they arise.11 These allusions are at least somewhat problematic for the child reader of A Series of Unfortunate Events, who cannot possibly be expected to recognize many of them. John Stephens notes that, because such intertextual techniques as allusion serve as a "strategy whereby a text relates to existing discourses and achieves intelligibility," such allusions then "often play . . . a major part in attempting to produce determinable meaning and to acculturate the audience" (85-86).12
Handler confesses, however, that many of his allusions are not meant to add meaning to his novels as much as they are intended to honor his favorite works of fiction: "When asked about the function of such scattershot allusions in A Series, he admits he is both just giving a shout-out to books he loves and hoping to create a more sustained relation with them" (Langbauer 508; cf. Handler's interview with Dave Shulman). Handler, however, cannot divorce his allusions from the meanings that they inevitably connote, especially when these allusions take on a sexual subtext. For example, when the Baudelaire children learn that Isadora Quagmire writes poetry, Sunny responds allusively, hilariously, and provocatively:
"You write poetry?" Klaus asked. He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine."
"Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!" (AA 45)
Sunny's allusion to Sappho introduces homoerotic desire into the text, as Sappho is known for her passionate verses directed toward the other female inhabitants of Lesbos. Clearly, Handler alludes to Sappho in Sunny's exclamation, but for what purpose? Is Sunny revealing her lesbian desire for Isadora, or is she subtly suggesting that Isadora, like Sappho, is a lesbian poet? Sunny's babblings are often incomprehensible-I will not attempt to interpret her cries of "Nelnu" (MM 42) or "Aronec" (HH 48)-but her mention of Sappho bears more meaning than the text supports. Certainly, Handler repeatedly plays with Sunny's sexual allusions, as also evidenced when she shouts "Orlando" (HH 76), and thus refers both to Olaf's hermaphroditic henchman and to Virginia Woolf's eponymous gender-bending hero(ine). In the following exchange with Kit Snicket, Sunny again adumbrates adult sexuality:
"Baudelaires?" Kit repeated faintly. "Is it really you?"
"Anais," Sunny said, which meant "In the flesh." (TE 166)
The witty slippage between "Anais" and "in the flesh" calls to mind Anaïs Nin and her provocative diaries, and we again see Sunny hinting at adult sexuality in her response. Why is Sunny thus linked to three female authors known for their sexually informed writings? Foremost, one should not forget that these allusions are funny, in that they are voiced by an infant who is ostensibly uttering nonsense yet simultaneously offering a sly inside joke to adult readers of children's literature. At the same time, Handler uses promiscuous allusions to sneak sexuality into the series. One might consider Scuba Steve an inappropriate topic for children's books, but when Snicket defines "déjà vu," he addresses two additional terms to set the context for a lesson in French idioms: "'ennui,' which is a fancy term for severe boredom, or 'la petite mort,' which describes a feeling that part of you has died" (CC 103). "La petite mort" is used idiomatically to refer to Scuba Steve in that the headphones "dies" upon ejaculating; this reference keeps the thematic focus on sexuality within the series as its occluded subtext. Likewise, Violet blushes when Klaus mentions a naked performance of Macbeth, but he finds this information "pretty interesting to read about" (BB 80-81). As young characters depicted in children's literature, the Baudelaires inhabit a narrative space of presumed innocence, yet allusions allow Handler to ratchet up the sexual subtext of the series while simultaneously maintaining the "innocence" of his protagonists.
These promiscuous allusions, then, subtextually upset the naive assumption that most children's literature features asexual characters. Through Olaf's pedophilic desire for Violet, the ostensible innocence of the series is dashed, and these allusions to adult sexuality in the mouths of babes, as it were, as well as in the mouth of their narrator Snicket, demand that readers recognize the limitations of a binary relationship between innocence and experience. We see here another fundamental revisioning of children's literature. In her classic reading of Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose analyzes how disruptive sexuality is contained, if not tamed, within fairy tales and other forms of children's literature: "even when a troubling of sexuality is recognised in the fairy tale, it is something contained by the cohesion of the narrative, transcended on the path to reality, and resolved in the name of a psychological and sexual identity, which ensures in the end that we can master not only the world, but also ourselves" (64). A Series of Unfortunate Events, on the other hand, troubles categories of sexuality and exposes the limitations of binary thinking. The Baudelaires grapple with sexualized situations that many readers might find inappropriate for children's literature, and thus the categories of innocence and experience are rendered meaningless in appraising these children, since Sunny's exclamations are provocatively adult yet innocently delivered.
Against this backdrop of promiscuous allusions, references to Beatrice encode another sexual subtheme in the series. The first allusion to Dante's Beatrice appears before The Bad Beginning even begins, in Snicket's dedication to his own deceased Beatrice: "To Beatrice-darling, dearest, dead" (BB Dedication). Lest children now read Dante and other classics of medieval Italian literature in elementary school, this reference likely passes over the heads of most young readers, even more so in that this dedication does not adhere to the traditional parameters of the device. Most dedications are, of course, not actually part of the novels to which they are attached; they refer to real people-the family, friends, and loved ones of the real-life author-and so even the most experienced of young readers would thus expect the dedication to bear no real relevance to the subsequent story. Each of the dedications of the thirteen novels in A Series of Unfortunate Events praises Beatrice as the inspiration for writing, and Snicket's words in The Grim Grotto-"For Beatrice, Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down" (GG Dedication)-alludes to a repeated literary trope of men mourning lost loves.13 Women are not envisioned as writers within such a view of narrative: a woman inspires, and a man pens the tale. Then, if the woman dies, the man mourns and writes some more.
The vision of a stable and masculinist canon is deconstructed through Handler's allusions, which decenter the narratives from their ostensible focus of mourning man (Snicket) writing about his dead beloved (Beatrice). The canon is not altogether a static artifact of yesteryear, but a changing, vibrant, and oscillating body of texts. Carolyn Heilbrun describes the transcendent shift as women reformulate(d) the genders of writing and literature: "What we discover is that women who have been the objects circulated wish now to become themselves subjects, themselves enabled to use circulation rather than be circulated" (221). This tension between woman as writing subject and as written object undulates throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket's writing attempts to reify Beatrice as a lost object whom he can control, while her own writing catalyzes his melancholic resignation that her personal choices precluded the possibility of her loving him. In the backstory of Beatrice-elusive and continually alluded to-we see the ways in which Handler casts her story in the light of the literary canon, a collection of texts historically uninterested in women's agency in love.14
Thus, in the early moments when readers see Beatrice in her role as the Baudelaire children's mother, every detail of her life magnifies our understanding of her relationship with Snicket and his attempts to reify her as the object of his affections. The first vision of Beatrice-when Snicket describes "the scorched cushion of the windowseat where [the Baudelaires'] mother liked to sit and read" (BB 13)-ties her to the literary world from whence she arose. Beatrice is continually associated with reading and libraries, as well as with protecting the artifacts therein. One of the Baudelaire children's few memories of their mother becoming angry with them concerns their inadvertent mistreatment of books:
"Our mother would get mad, too," Klaus said. "Remember, Violet, when we left the window of the library open, and that night it rained?"
"She really flew off the handle," Violet said, using a phrase which here means "became extremely angry." "We spoiled an atlas that she said was irreplaceable." (GG 147)
As a woman steeped in literary and bibliophilic pursuits, Beatrice asserts female agency in the historically masculine arena of writing and literature. She stands as the guardian and protector of the written word, rather than solely as the deceased inspiration of a male pen.
Beatrice is a reader of the canon, yet she reconfigures the meaning of literature in that she does not merely passively accept the gendered meaning traditionally accorded it. First, she understands that reading entails work and research, as evidenced by her "secret pocket, [in which] she often kept a small pocket dictionary, which she would take out whenever she encountered a word she did not know" (HH 112). Her reading generates resistant strategies against the vast conspiracy surrounding her:
Every summer, the Baudelaires' mother would read a very long book, joking that lifting a large novel was the only exercise she liked to get during the hot months. Mrs. Baudelaire chose Anna Karenina for her summer reading, and Klaus would sit on his mother's lap for hours at a time while she read. The middle Baudelaire had not been reading very long, but their mother helped him with the big words and would occasionally stop reading to explain what had happened in the story, and in this way Klaus and his mother read the story of Ms. Karenina, whose boyfriend treats her so poorly that she throws herself under a train. Violet had spent most of that summer studying the laws of thermodynamics and building a miniature helicopter out of an eggbeater and some old copper wiring, but she knew that Klaus must remember the central theme of the book he read on his mother's lap. (SS 145-46)
Violet is correct, in that Beatrice trained Klaus to decode the Vernacularly Fastened Door while teaching him to read, and the children are thus able to move to the next stage of their journey after successfully opening the door. Their success is predicated upon dead women: as their mother Beatrice alludes to Dante's Beatrice, we see her as the inspiring figure leading them in their own attempted journey from the "inferno" of their many predicaments to the longed-for "paradise" of (momentary) safety. One dead literary woman, however, is insufficient for this task, and Anna Karenina is likewise conscripted-through allusion and theme-to help the Baudelaires in their quest.
More than a reader, Beatrice is also a writer, and here Handler reverses the gendered positioning of a male author capturing his deceased beloved in writing. Snicket documents that, when Beatrice informed him that she would not marry him, she wrote "a two-hundred-page book, explaining every single detail of the bad news at great length" (MM 16). Rather than inhabiting the narrative space of woman as written object in contrast to man as writing subject, Beatrice enjoys the agency necessary to write her own life, and her literary efforts leave Snicket languishing in a melancholic torpor: "I stayed up all night reading it, and I read it still, over and over, and it is as if my darling Beatrice is bringing me bad news every day and every night of my life" (MM 16). Beatrice's writing inverts the dynamic between Dante and his Beatrice, in which his writing was a means to continually readdress his deceased love and find inspiration from her. This observation does not efface the fact that Snicket himself is also cast as quite a prolific writer as he recounts the Baudelaires' experiences throughout the thirteen novels of the series. However, he cannot assert control over Beatrice and capture her within an aestheticized vision of the past, because she controlled her decisions in love in that past. Because history is irrevocable, Snicket is mired in a love that can never progress: "I toss and turn each night, images of Beatrice and her legacy filling my weary, grieving brain no matter where in the world I travel" (EE 57). Despite his prolixity, Snicket's writing is secondary to his mourning, which dominates the pages of the series, because his mourning motivates his writing; it is, quite simply, the work he must perform. As Jacques Derrida notes, "Mourning always follows a trauma. . . . [T]he work of mourning is not one kind of work among others. It is work itself, work in general, the trait by means of which one ought perhaps to reconsider the very concept of production" (97). In this revisioning of Beatrice and her allusive role in literature, Handler casts Snicket not as a writer who mourns but as a mourner who writes due to his inability to rewrite Beatrice's story: he cannot tell the story as he wishes it were, but as it tragically is.
In overturning the gendered foundations of Western narrative through allusions that range too wildly to be circumscribed into a single meaning and that invert traditional gendered paradigms, Handler showcases the elusiveness of allusion in building gendered meaning into a text. Additionally, he rewrites not only the story of Dante and Beatrice, but also that of human sexuality in Western culture when he tackles the foundational myth of Adam and Eve, who are punished for heeding the seductive snake in the Garden of Eden and thereby learning of good, evil, and sexuality.
Snicket introduces the story of Adam and Eve with a skewed representation of his source: "For instance, if you ever find yourself reading a book entitled The Bible, you would find the story of Adam and Eve, whose daring life of impulsive passion led to them putting on clothing for the first time in their lives, in order to leave the snake-infested garden where they had been living" (SS 148). As difficult as it is to imagine Adam and Eve being properly characterized as leading a "daring life of impulsive passion" in the Garden of Eden, it is no less startling for this story to be reimagined with a snake saving poisoned children-as when the Incredibly Deadly Viper rescues Violet, Klaus, and Sunny from imminent death by giving them horseradish apples to negate the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. In Genesis, the serpent causes humanity's downfall by corrupting innocence with sexual and phallic knowledge, but in Handler's novel the Incredibly Deadly Viper represents innocence and the healing power of the natural world. Within literary history, a salvific snake, similar to a Beatrice who writes rather than is written, upends dichotomies of male and female, good and evil. The story of the Incredibly Deadly Viper is also intertwined with Beatrice's story, as the Baudelaire children read the history of their parents and the schism in a book that Ishmael admits is written in their mother's hand (TE 210). Learning about their past merges with the snake's salvific power, imbuing the Baudelaire children with knowledge as their lives are saved due to a woman and a snake enacting radically reformulated roles from the literary canon.
What, then, does Beatrice mean? Gender roles infuse human relationships with expectations that can never be realized, and despite the overarching freedom from stereotypical constructions of gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events, predatory male sexuality and the gendered contours of the literary canon present formidable challenges for women to assert their autonomy. But with a Beatrice who writes rather than is merely written, with a salvific snake that rescues rather than deceives, Handler exposes the traps of the past while highlighting the pleasures of gender freedoms and promiscuous allusions. In her analysis of the ethical tensions throughout the novels, Laurie Langbauer declares, "By setting its orphans adrift in a world bereft of stable guidelines, Snicket's series also recasts ethics-from fixed code to something more fluid, knowable ultimately only in action" (503). Langbauer's perceptive account of Handler's ethics finds a parallel in his treatment of gender and sexuality, in which fluid gender roles do not define the good characters versus the bad ones but highlight the difficult task of evaluating all acts on an individual basis. In the end, Beatrice's agency unleashes an unredeemable melancholia upon Lemony Snicket-but within the landscape of children's literature, in which gender roles historically have been rather rigidly demarcated, such a new perspective is refreshing indeed.
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Critical essay on Project MUSE by Tison Pugh, Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida.
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What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean? Hermaphroditic Gender, Predatory Sexuality, and Promiscuous Allusion in Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Tison Pugh. Children's Literature. Storrs: 2008. Vol. 36 pg. 162, 24 pgs
Abstract (Summary)
Possibilities of gender play, what Butler outlines as "a mode of passage between genders, an interstitial and transitional figure of gender that is not reducible to the normative insistence on one or two" (43), inform the depiction of the Baudelaire children and their liberation from the ideological import of femininity and masculinity.\n Snicket introduces the story of Adam and Eve with a skewed representation of his source: "For instance, if you ever find yourself reading a book entitled The Bible, you would find the story of Adam and Eve, whose daring life of impulsive passion led to them putting on clothing for the first time in their lives, in order to leave the snake-infested garden where they had been living" (SS 148). Gender roles infuse human relationships with expectations that can never be realized, and despite the overarching freedom from stereotypical constructions of gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events, predatory male sexuality and the gendered contours of the literary canon present formidable challenges for women to assert their autonomy.
Full Text (9944 words)
Copyright Children's literature Assembly 2008
In many ways, Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket depicts a setting amenable to female agency and empowerment throughout his A Series of Unfortunate Events.1 The chief protagonist, Violet Baudelaire, moves freely in traditionally masculine fields, and other characters-both male and female-appear remarkably unhampered by stereotypical gender roles and expectations. Roberta Seelinger Trites defines a feminist children's novel as one "in which the main character is empowered regardless of gender. A key concept here is 'regardless': in a feminist children's novel, the child's sex does not provide a permanent obstacle to her development" (4).2 From Trites's perspective, Violet's freedom from traditional gender roles enables the entire series to take on a feminist cast because such a paradigm of gendered equality is taken as the normative structure of the society depicted in the thirteen novels of the series.
At the same time, in constructing women as objects of desire, some men curtail female agency; thus the gendered freedoms of the series are at least partially undone by the countervailing force of predatory forms of male sexuality. This dialectic between freedom from gender roles and predatory male desire is further complicated by the ways in which Handler deploys literary allusions to both reify and subvert the literary canon and women's place in it. A Series of Unfortunate Events wallows in the history of literature and its many masterpieces, making numerous (and often seemingly random) references to classic works, and the retrograde shadow cast by the patriarchal canon in some ways undermines the depiction of women as agents in their own right. However, particularly through the enigmatic figure of Snicket's lost Beatrice, allusions become so overwrought with connotation that they bear the potential to subvert gendered paradigms encoded in literary history.
The following analysis highlights the varying depictions of gender and sexuality in A Series of Unfortunate Events through an exegetical triptych: in the first section, I examine how, on the surface level of the texts, Handler's treatment of gender reverses longstanding stereotypes. In the second, I turn to the ways in which male sexuality, in creating females as objects of desire, nonetheless constrains their agency. Finally, I explore both how literary history reinforces traditional depictions of female characters, and how this trope is undermined through the promiscuous deployment of allusions. By alluding so frequently to various works of literature, Handler both brings to the surface the sexual subtext of his novels and provides female characters a means of asserting agency against men with sexually predatory desires. Handler re-imagines how women communicate allusively and elusively throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events, and this deployment of promiscuous allusion creates an intriguing space for female agency.
Hermaphroditic Gender and Ambiguous Heroism
Readers of children's literature have long noted the stereotypical gender roles delineated in classic texts of the genre, but A Series of Unfortunate Events dismantles traditional expectations of gendered behaviors for boys and girls. In these books, retrograde constructions of gender are tossed aside, and girls and boys engage in activities historically gendered for the other sex. For example, Violet hates the color pink (VV 161) and rejects feminine toys such as dolls (WW 20).3 Indeed, if playing with dolls represents a gendered act within the series, it appears that boys enjoy dolls more than girls, as Snicket hypothetically describes a fair exchange: "If you were bored with playing with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal" (MM 53). Klaus recalls the time when the Baudelaire family engaged in gender play, at least for the males: "'Remember that time,' Klaus said wistfully, 'when we were bored one rainy afternoon, and all of us painted our toenails bright red?'" (RR 38). Likewise, when Mr. Poe admonishes Violet for picking a lock, telling her that "Nice girls shouldn't know how to do such things," Klaus defends his sister and argues for a more expansive view of female activities: "'My sister is a nice girl,' Klaus said, 'and she knows how to do all sorts of things'" (RR 168). These scenes-and ones similar to them throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events-liberate the Baudelaire children from constraining constructions of masculinity and femininity.
Gender roles in the series are additionally undermined through the reversals of gendered norms that have already been reversed. Violet may be coded as somewhat masculine due to her inventing skills, and Klaus may be coded as somewhat feminine due to his inveterate reading, but their respective tendencies in regard to gendered activities do not limit their potential to act in new ways. At the conclusion of The Miserable Mill, the reader sees that Violet and Klaus can succeed in each other's accustomed domains:
"It was lucky," Violet admitted quietly, "that Klaus invented something so quickly, even though he's not an inventor."
"It was lucky," Klaus admitted quietly, "that Violet figured out how to end my hypnosis, even though she's not a researcher." (MM 194)
Gendered categories are rendered meaningless for the Baudelaire children, who express the freedom and agency to strip themselves of the prescriptive cast of gender's historical enactments.
As these brief examples make clear, the Baudelaire children can be seen as hermaphroditic figures in the most liberating sense of the term. Many gender theorists see an inhibiting force in social constructions of masculinity and femininity: Judith Butler describes gender as an "apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative" elements of an embodied individual (42). Hermaphroditism, in contrast, envisions the possibility of engendered wholeness, in which masculinity and femininity need not define an individual. Possibilities of gender play, what Butler outlines as "a mode of passage between genders, an interstitial and transitional figure of gender that is not reducible to the normative insistence on one or two" (43), inform the depiction of the Baudelaire children and their liberation from the ideological import of femininity and masculinity. Gender cannot constrain them, and they are free to enact roles typically considered male or female as circumstances-and their own interests-warrant.
But as much as such gender play is appreciated throughout the novels, it is also used to mark the evil characters, most notably Olaf's hermaphroditic henchman. The initial description of this character is fairly objective: "There was a person who was extremely fat, and who looked like neither a man nor a woman" (BB 47-48); however, Olaf's companion is subsequently marginalized through dehumanizing references to the character as "it," as when the "enormous creature looked at Violet with its blank white eyes and shook its head" (BB 114). The Baudelaire children at times use pronouns for both sexes to refer to the hermaphrodite ("'Did he or she see you?' Klaus asked. 'No,' Violet said. 'He or she is asleep'" [WW 136]), but such attempts at politically correct language are forgotten when they confront imminent danger: "'She's awake!' Violet shrieked. 'He's awake! It's awake!'" (WW 139). As one of Olaf's henchmen, the hermaphrodite is, of course, an evil character, but when Klaus describes the hermaphrodite as "the scariest" of Olaf's cohorts (WW 136) and when Snicket refers to the character as a "despicable creature" (WW 143), moral judgments of the hermaphrodite's actions appear to merge with discomfort about the character's body of indeterminate sex. Of course, the Baudelaire children represent hermaphroditism figuratively, while this character incarnates hermaphroditism literally, but the overlap between these two models of hermaphroditism enacts one of Handler's central themes, which is that heroes and villains are often virtually indistinguishable from each other. In this example, it is apparent that gender play is valorized for protagonists yet denigrated for antagonists, but the foundational act of gender play is thus rendered ethically neutral because both protagonists and antagonists enact it.
Cross-dressing also depicts the ways in which gender play is coded as positive for good characters but as evil for bad ones. Klaus dresses as a woman to rescue Violet from an impending "cranioectomy" (HH 178-81), and Violet and Klaus costume themselves as a two-headed freak to deceive the villains of the Caligari Carnival (CC 42-50). Their gender play is thus lauded as part of their heroic and quick-witted characters. As Victoria Flanagan observes, cross-dressing in children's literature is typically "constructed as a harmless act of childish experimentation" because, in most instances, it is "nonsexual and temporary"; due to the fleeting nature of its enactment, its "connections with the adult world of transgender" are mitigated, if not altogether eliminated (59). In The Miserable Mill, however, Olaf adopts the persona of a receptionist named Shirley, and his gender play highlights the nefarious depths to which he will go to capture the Baudelaire children:
A nameplate on the desk read "Shirley," but this was no Shirley, even though the receptionist was wearing a pale-brown dress and sensible beige shoes. For above the pale lipstick on Shirley's face, and below the blond wig on Shirley's head, was a pair of shiny, shiny eyes that the two children recognized at once. . . . And Count Olaf, sitting at the receptionist's desk with an evil smile, had caught them at last. (MM 114)
Olaf again cross-dresses in The End, when he pretends to be a pregnant woman, and here again his transvestitism is coded as part of his evil nature (especially in that his "pregnancy" disguises a "diving helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium" [TE 249], which threatens the inhabitants of the island with their imminent death). Even the odious Carmelita Spats displays her desire to cross-dress when she denies a feminine identity and clamors for a five-fold masculinity, one which would necessitate a range of male attire: "'I'm not an adorable little girl! . . . I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate!'" (PP 82). Similar to hermaphroditism, cross-dressing can thus be deployed by either the good or the bad characters, and their status as protagonists or antagonists concomitantly marks transvestitism as good or bad. Indeed, the primary difference between the transvestitism of the protagonists and that of the antagonists lies in the former's efficacy: Klaus's cross-dressing is more effective than Olaf's, in that his costumes deceive Olaf's henchmen in The Hostile Hospital and The Carnivorous Carnival, yet Olaf's disguises repeatedly fail to deceive the Baudelaire children. The Baudelaires continually outwit Olaf, but throughout the series, their successes depend more and more upon emulating his treacherous acts.
Gender play-as represented in gendered acts, hermaphroditism, and transvestitism-is thus inherently neither positive nor negative in A Series of Unfortunate Events; it is an amoral action that is devoid of meaning in itself and only assumes a meaning in light of a wider range of cultural conditions and the motivations of the person who engages in it. The books frequently depict the Baudelaire children pondering whether their actions truly bespeak their good intentions, notably when they burn down the Hotel Dénoument at the end of The Penultimate Peril. In the opening pages of The End, Snicket outlines how much their moral compass has shifted, and how much it might continue to do so in the future:
In any case, a moral compass appears to be a delicate device, and as people grow older and venture out into the world, it often becomes more and more difficult to figure out which direction one's moral compass is pointing, so it is harder and harder to figure out the proper thing to do. When the Baudelaires first encountered Count Olaf, their moral compasses never would have told them to get rid of this terrible man, whether by pushing him out of his mysterious tower room or running him over with his long, black automobile. But now, standing on the Carmelita, the Baudelaire orphans were not sure what they should do with this villain who was leaning so far over the boat that one small push would have sent him to his watery grave. (TE 18-19)
The question developing throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events is whether the Baudelaires embody heroic and morally superior values or whether they are equally as villainous as Olaf and his gang. Therefore, although one might view hermaphroditic and transvestic gender play as a marker of the Baudelaires' progressive politics and rejection of stifling gender norms, the fact that their gender play is balanced by that of the villains undoes its relevance in assessing their characters. Even the villains recognize that their culture is primarily feminist in its orientation: for example, Olaf might be seen as the patriarchal enforcer of his criminal underworld, yet no woman need accept his authority unless she chooses to do so (as evidenced when the two white-faced women leave his gang despite Olaf's threat that they "Obey my orders this instant!" [SS 304]). This is not to say that no gender stereotypes creep into A Series of Unfortunate Events-Esmé Squalor's excessive fashion sensibility serves as one example-but overarchingly, the Baudelaires circulate in a feminist world of gendered equality in which heroism is a quality as ambiguous as the act of cross-dressing.
That Handler renders gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events into a neutral and amoral marker of his characters radically departs from much of children's literature. One need only think of the numerous gendered stereotypes that code characters as good or evil throughout many classic texts of the genre-heroic boy heroes, charming female protagonists (who grow into proper young ladies), wise wizards, foppish male villains, ugly old hags-to see that the erasure of gendered stereotypes and the instantiation of gender neutrality to the point of amorality signals a noteworthy shift. Feminism has triumphed within this fictional world, but it is a hollow victory if freedom from gender roles creates merely moral ambiguity.
Predatory Sexuality and Objectified Women
If gender roles and gender play in A Series of Unfortunate Events are mostly progressive yet amoral in relation to assessing a character's ethical orientation, Handler nonetheless showcases how predatory enactments of male sexuality circumscribe female agency. As the potential objects of heterosexual male desire, women face the continual threat of losing their agency and becoming the beloved rather than the lover, the object rather than the subject. This theme is most evident in Snicket's mourning over his lost Beatrice (as will be discussed in the following section), but it is also apparent in regard to Violet and her persistent "suitor," Olaf.
On the surface level of the tales, Olaf's greed motivates his desire to marry Violet so that he can steal the Baudelaire fortune, and he frequently threatens to kill the children as soon as this objective is accomplished: "'I'll get my hands on your fortune if it's the last thing I do,' [Olaf] hissed. 'And when I have it, I'll kill you and your siblings with my own two hands'" (BB 158). Olaf's greed, however, cannot fully eclipse the sexual subtext to his nuptial plans. He candidly confesses to Klaus his attraction to Violet: "It is true that [Violet] is very pretty" (BB 98). Olaf's bald henchman likewise comments on her attractiveness, while inappropriately handling her face: "'You're a pretty one,' he said, taking her face in his rough hands. 'If I were you I would try not to anger Count Olaf, or he might wreck that pretty little face of yours'" (BB 49). Violet's face is frequently stroked and caressed, albeit in a menacing fashion, as when Olaf compels her to participate in his production of The Marvelous Marriage: "Count Olaf reached out one of his spidery hands and stroked Violet on the chin, looking deep in her eyes. 'You will,' he said, 'participate in this theatrical performance'" (BB 78). This combination of the minatory and the amatory reveals the threat submerged in masculine desire, as Violet's desirability as a sexual object holds out a key for her possible survival:
"Come now," Count Olaf said, his voice faking-a word which here means "feigning"-kindness. He reached out a hand and stroked Violet's hair. "Would it be so terrible to be my bride, to live in my house for the rest of your life? You're such a lovely girl, after the marriage I wouldn't dispose of you like your brother and sister." (BB 109)4
When Olaf and his henchmen discuss which of the Baudelaire children should be kept alive, Olaf indicates his preference for Violet because of her physical attractiveness: "'I myself hope it's Violet,' Olaf said. 'She's the prettiest'" (CC 10). The repeated emphasis on Violet's beauty establishes her as an object of male desire to be manipulated in response to predatory forms of sexuality that do not recognize her agency. Of course, one should not lose sight of the parodic excesses of Olaf's passion, which leaven his vile behavior with an undercurrent of sly humor; nevertheless, the overarching threat of his ardor continually menaces Violet as the narrative unfolds.
Would Olaf consummate his marriage with Violet? Certainly, she contemplates the likelihood of sexual intercourse after the marriage is performed: "Violet imagined sleeping beside Count Olaf, and waking up each morning to look at this terrible man" (BB 109). Olaf confirms that he would indeed sleep with her, even though she is only fourteen years old at the beginning of the series (BB 2). When he believes that he has succeeded in marrying her, he bluntly tells the shocked audience of The Marvelous Marriage of his amatory plans: "if all of you will excuse me, my bride and I need to go home for our wedding night" (BB 148). This statement euphemistically but nonetheless clearly states his sexual intentions. Olaf's conversations with his hook-handed henchman repeatedly focus on the possibility of sexual intercourse with Violet. The henchman refers to her as a "blushing bride" (BB 125), a phrase that connotes the sexual apprehension young women are expected to feel prior to losing their virginity on their wedding nights, and in a somewhat oblique conversation between the two men, the hookhanded henchman asserts, "I don't know, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss, of course I understand she's yours. Yes, boss" (BB 126; italics in original). The henchman's words indicate that Olaf warns him not to take any sexual interest in Violet, since he has claimed her as his own. Olaf later attempts to break himself free of Violet's spell: "His eyes shone brightly, as if he were telling a joke as nasty as his unbrushed teeth. 'You can't try that trick again,' he sneered. 'I'm not going to bargain with an orphan, no matter how pretty she may be'" (GG 198). Realizing that he loses control of himself and his plans when confronted with Violet's attractiveness, Olaf attempts to reassert himself in a dominant position vis-à-vis the comely orphan. Despite the pedophilic overtones of his passion, Olaf continually faces the possibility of succumbing to his desire for Violet, as she likewise faces the possibility of being forced to marry and sleep with him.
Given the predatory nature of Olaf's desires, Violet faces real difficulty in asserting control over herself and her burgeoning sexuality. Although the sexual development of the Baudelaire children does not dominate the pages of A Series of Unfortunate Events, it serves as a notable subtheme and keeps their maturation before the reader's eyes. For example, when Violet and Klaus attempt to determine why Olaf (disguised as Coach Genghis) has ordered them to paint a wide circle on a field, Klaus dismisses his sister's reproductive capacities as a motivating factor for Olaf's scheme: "'I don't know,' Klaus said. 'I've only read three or four books on paint. I know that paint can sometimes be poisonous or cause birth defects. But Genghis isn't making us eat the circle, and you're not pregnant, of course, so I can't imagine'" (AA 115). Klaus's certainty that Violet is not pregnant is well founded, since nothing in the texts depicts her engaging in intercourse. But the texts nonetheless frequently address the maturing sexuality of Violet and Klaus, as when they engage in innocent handholding with their new friends at the Prufrock Prepatory School, Isadora and Duncan Quagmire. First, the reader sees that "Isadora . . . patted Klaus on the hand," and soon after "it was Violet's turn to look down, and Duncan's turn to reach across the table and take her hand" (AA 46-47; cf. 80-81). Violet denies any type of romantic affection with Duncan ("Duncan Quagmire is not my boyfriend" [AA 90]), and, indeed, nothing of a romantic nature evolves between the two friends.
Nonetheless, these scenes establish the foundation for teen sexuality to develop, and subsequent scenes with the third Quagmire triplet, Quigley, are more certain in their depiction of a blossoming romance, as when Quigley compliments her inventing skills and Violet blushes (SS 192), and when Snicket discreetly offers Violet and Quigley a moment of privacy:
So, as Violet and Quigley rest for a few minutes more on a ledge halfway up the frozen waterfall, I will take this opportunity to give them a bit of privacy, by not writing down anything more of what happened between these two friends on that chilly afternoon. Certainly there are aspects of my own personal life that I will never write down, however precious they are to me, and I will offer the eldest Baudelaire the same courtesy. (SS 212)
The delicate occlusion of the reader's voyeurism reveals what is ostensibly concealed, as it is difficult to imagine any reason beyond the amatory for Snicket's refusal to describe the scene in detail. In contrast to Olaf's determined-and depicted-pursuit of Violet, Violet's relationship with Quigley allows her autonomy of choice and action in her romantic pursuits. Later, Snicket reiterates the burgeoning desire between Violet and Quigley, describing Quigley as "a young man of whom the eldest Baudelaire was particularly fond" (PP 14) and defining "cartographer," in reference to Quigley, as "a word which here means 'someone who is very good with maps, and of whom Violet Baudelaire was particularly fond'" (GG 5).
Violet and Quigley's relationship offers her agency in her amatory affairs, yet in an enigmatic scene late in the series, it appears that a schism between Quigley and his brother Duncan might arise over her. Here an erotic triangle forms around Quigley, Duncan, and Violet, with the possibility that Violet will be constructed as the desired object over whom two men fight. As is well known, an erotic triangle serves as a plot device that typically focuses on two men competing for the affections of a woman; permutations of this basic structure abound, and two women may likewise compete for the affections of one man.5 Within A Series of Unfortunate Events, erotic triangles typically spark such impassioned competition that schisms appear unavoidable. In The Carnivorous Carnival, Lulu's and Esmé's jealousy over each other's respective position as Olaf's girlfriend leads to conflict. Lulu's displeasure with Olaf on this issue-"You did not tell me, my Olaf, that Esmé was the girlfriend of you. Perhaps Madame Lulu will not let you and troupe stay at the carnival of mine" (CC 31-32)-underscores the tensions inherent in two women vying for the affections of one man. But it is noteworthy that Olaf is not constructed solely as the object of two women's affections, as Lulu appears to expect him to choose her over Esmé. Olaf retains agency as a lover, even when women fight over him.
Much like the gender play discussed in the first section of this essay, erotic triangles are not the exclusive provenance of the good or the bad characters, and the Quagmire boys will possibly part ways over their mutual affection for Violet. When Klaus asks Kit Snicket about the fate of the Quagmire triplets, her ambiguous reply opens the possibility of an internecine struggle for Violet's affections:
"You don't know what happened to them?" Klaus asked.
Kit shook her head. "All I heard," she said, "was one of the Quagmires calling Violet's name."
Sunny looked into the face of the distraught woman. "Quigley," the youngest Baudelaire could not help asking "or Duncan?"
"I don't know," Kit said again. (TE 305)
One of Violet's potential boyfriends calls her name, but which one? Duncan virtually disappears from A Series of Unfortunate Events after The Vile Village, yet he is mentioned in this key scene to introduce possible fraternal friction. Handler consistently reiterates his theme that schisms among friends and families are virtually inescapable, as the VFD itself was originally a volunteer organization wholly dedicated to good; in this scene, a new schism is hinted at if Quigley and Duncan treat Violet as the object of their competing desires, rather than as the subject of her own. It is also notable that Sunny does not consider the possibility that Isadora Quagmire might have called Violet's name, which further suggests that Sunny saw the possibility of a romantic attachment in Violet's handholding with Duncan.
Violet's experiences with Olaf, Quigley, and Duncan establish a key theme throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events in terms of the struggle of a desired woman to be a desiring woman, for her to move from object of male affection to the subject of her own life and amatory affairs. In sum, Violet seeks to take advantage of the feminist potential highlighted throughout the series in the characters' overarching freedom from traditional gender roles and to act in accordance with her own desires rather than in reaction to a male character's. In the story of Violet and Olaf, we see that male sexual desire fails to inculcate within women the presumably appropriate response of their corresponding desire for the man who wants them. The depiction of male desire throughout the series focuses on its frustrations rather than its successes, and the highly allusive story of Beatrice and Lemony Snicket underscores the ways in which this trope creates meaning in this series of books and in the literary canon itself.6 The depiction of Beatrice in the novels casts her as the object of an undesired love, but Handler allusively frees her from the force of male desire.
Promiscuous Allusions and the Prefeminist Canon
In dedicating each book of A Series of Unfortunate Events to his beloved but deceased Beatrice, Lemony Snicket sets in motion a chain of signifiers in literary history. The allusion to Dante's Beatrice, similarly beloved and similarly dead, is but one of numerous references to esteemed authors and literary classics, spanning the gamut from masterpieces such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick (TE 55) to genre fiction such as Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (RR 126); from the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (EE 39) to the science fiction of Jules Verne (EE 38); from the names of Sunny and Klaus (taken from the real-life case of Claus von Bülow's alleged attempted murder of his wife Sunny) to that of Esmé Squalor (taken from J. D. Salinger's "For Esmé with Love and Squalor"); from the theme of moral virtue trumping reckless passion in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (SS 146) to that of the explosive repercussions of seemingly innocuous social conditions in Richard Wright's Native Son (PP 352). In a world peppered with literary allusions, Beatrice nonetheless stands pre-eminent-every novel is dedicated to her, and Snicket's continual mourning over her death haunts the pages of the series.
With the image of Dante's Beatrice serving as a thematic touchstone for the series, writing and literature are implicated within a heteronormative system of gender and sexuality, in which men and women fulfill rather narrow roles of the pursuer and the pursued. This tradition is also encapsulated in the portrayal of men writing stories about their beloveds, a paradigm in which men and women, respectively, serve in the roles of the writer and the written (or the speaker and the spoken). Such a trope occurs frequently in canonical literature, with Dante's lamentations over Beatrice providing a defining exemplar of the tradition in the Middle Ages. From the Victorian era, Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" puts a sinister spin on this trope, with its arrogant narrator calmly describing his deceased wife as he negotiates for a new bride; this poem is alluded to when the Baudelaire children use it to solve the secret code known as Verse Fluctuation Declaration (GG 157). Edgar Allan Poe states this theme in his argument that "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world-and especially is it beyond doubt that the lips suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover" (158). Of course, Poe himself is most obviously alluded to in the character of Mr. Poe, the Baudelaire children's ineffective and perpetually coughing guardian; as this quotation makes clear, Snicket (as mourning narrator) also incarnates Poe's bereaved elegist. From this perspective, he is better suited to tell the story of Beatrice than even Beatrice herself would be. These allusions showcase dead women as objects of male desire and control, and provide a striking counterview to the feminist world of the series.
As much as the figure of Beatrice inspires Dante's Divine Comedy and propels the narrative forward, so too does Snicket's Beatrice provide the impetus and inspiration for A Series of Unfortunate Events.7 Her identity is a mystery throughout the series until the final pages of the thirteenth book, The End, when she is revealed to be the Baudelaire orphans' deceased mother. Revealing Beatrice's identity, however, does not resolve the mysteries of A Series of Unfortunate Events: many questions remain at the end of The End, including whether Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire killed Olaf's parents, whether Olaf then murdered Beatrice and Bertrand to avenge his loss, and whether the Baudelaire children successfully return to society after leaving Ishmael's island. Like the answers to these questions, Beatrice's identity remains intriguingly out of view even after she is identified, as the web of allusions in which she moves creates a polyphonic and ultimately indecipherable enigma. Handler's refusal to resolve these questions with pat answers establishes a central theme to the novels: all stories are interconnected, and it thus becomes impossible to untangle all of the world's diverse narratives. His allusions both connect his texts to the literary canon from whence they came and undermine ways in which the canon depicts a prefeminist worldview. In referring to Handler's allusions as "promiscuous," I would like to highlight how the literary canon is both reified and subverted through textual references that revise the meaning of their source texts in light of gendered freedoms.
At its simplest, an allusion is a "passing reference, without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage" (Abrams 9). For an allusion to function, the reader must realize its import, and Joseph Pucci accords the reader a primary role in imbuing allusions with meaning: "the most important feature of [allusion] is a powerful reader, possessed of discrete and unique competencies"; he also declares "that a sensitivity to this reader and her competencies is fundamental to an understanding of allusion historically in the Western literary tradition" (xv).8 In addition to the reader, who brings meaning to the text by detecting and deciphering allusions, the author is also implicated in the signifying chain of allusion, as Christopher Ricks notes: "Literary allusion is a way of dealing with the predicaments and responsibilities of 'the poet as heir'" (9; see also Bloom). Authors writing today must situate themselves vis-à-vis the past, and allusions allow them a subtle tool to situate their artistic accomplishments within the vast cultural field of yesteryear. In the numerous literary allusions of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the canon is celebrated yet simultaneously pilloried, as when the moral of Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled" is resignified to suggest that one's distressed cries will not be heard on a lonely road, and Snicket concludes ominously (and comically) regarding Frost: "Sure enough, that poet is now dead" (SS 1).
Allusions can be made to any cultural artifact that an author believes a reader will recognize-from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf to the Big Bad Wolf-and many allusions refer to the literary canon, which ostensibly represents the finest expressions of the human mind via the written word. For many, the canon celebrates the acme of art and aesthetics and provides cultural nourishment to all who seek to elevate themselves into a refined sensibility. Italo Calvino rhapsodizes, "The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture . . . through which they have passed" (5). At the same time, the canon cannot be divorced from its ideological import, as these texts participate in the construction of ideal members of society. Arnold Krupat proclaims, "the canon, like all cultural production, is never an innocent selection of the best that has been thought and said; rather, it is the institutionalization of those particular verbal artifacts that appear best to convey and sustain the dominant social order" (310; qtd. in Kaplan and Rose 86).9 The critical observation that literary and artistic canons bear a masculinist bent is a hallmark of feminist inquiry. Griselda Pollack, noting the connections among discourses, men, and ideology, defines the canon as "both a discursive structure and a structure of masculine narcissism within the exercise of cultural hegemony" (xiv).10 Canons codify genders and ideologies, and in its many allusions to literary classics, A Series of Unfortunate Events cannot wholly emancipate itself from this gendered chain of signification; by referring to these texts because they are classics, their status as classics and their cultural cachet are reinforced.
Although one may see the deployment of allusion as a way for an author to valorize the notion of a literary canon-in that by the very act of referring to classic texts, he or she tacitly reinforces their standing as foundational works that every educated reader should know-Handler's allusions are so diverse, so wide-ranging, indeed, so promiscuous, that they subvert the very literary canon from whence they arise.11 These allusions are at least somewhat problematic for the child reader of A Series of Unfortunate Events, who cannot possibly be expected to recognize many of them. John Stephens notes that, because such intertextual techniques as allusion serve as a "strategy whereby a text relates to existing discourses and achieves intelligibility," such allusions then "often play . . . a major part in attempting to produce determinable meaning and to acculturate the audience" (85-86).12
Handler confesses, however, that many of his allusions are not meant to add meaning to his novels as much as they are intended to honor his favorite works of fiction: "When asked about the function of such scattershot allusions in A Series, he admits he is both just giving a shout-out to books he loves and hoping to create a more sustained relation with them" (Langbauer 508; cf. Handler's interview with Dave Shulman). Handler, however, cannot divorce his allusions from the meanings that they inevitably connote, especially when these allusions take on a sexual subtext. For example, when the Baudelaire children learn that Isadora Quagmire writes poetry, Sunny responds allusively, hilariously, and provocatively:
"You write poetry?" Klaus asked. He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine."
"Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!" (AA 45)
Sunny's allusion to Sappho introduces homoerotic desire into the text, as Sappho is known for her passionate verses directed toward the other female inhabitants of Lesbos. Clearly, Handler alludes to Sappho in Sunny's exclamation, but for what purpose? Is Sunny revealing her lesbian desire for Isadora, or is she subtly suggesting that Isadora, like Sappho, is a lesbian poet? Sunny's babblings are often incomprehensible-I will not attempt to interpret her cries of "Nelnu" (MM 42) or "Aronec" (HH 48)-but her mention of Sappho bears more meaning than the text supports. Certainly, Handler repeatedly plays with Sunny's sexual allusions, as also evidenced when she shouts "Orlando" (HH 76), and thus refers both to Olaf's hermaphroditic henchman and to Virginia Woolf's eponymous gender-bending hero(ine). In the following exchange with Kit Snicket, Sunny again adumbrates adult sexuality:
"Baudelaires?" Kit repeated faintly. "Is it really you?"
"Anais," Sunny said, which meant "In the flesh." (TE 166)
The witty slippage between "Anais" and "in the flesh" calls to mind Anaïs Nin and her provocative diaries, and we again see Sunny hinting at adult sexuality in her response. Why is Sunny thus linked to three female authors known for their sexually informed writings? Foremost, one should not forget that these allusions are funny, in that they are voiced by an infant who is ostensibly uttering nonsense yet simultaneously offering a sly inside joke to adult readers of children's literature. At the same time, Handler uses promiscuous allusions to sneak sexuality into the series. One might consider Scuba Steve an inappropriate topic for children's books, but when Snicket defines "déjà vu," he addresses two additional terms to set the context for a lesson in French idioms: "'ennui,' which is a fancy term for severe boredom, or 'la petite mort,' which describes a feeling that part of you has died" (CC 103). "La petite mort" is used idiomatically to refer to Scuba Steve in that the headphones "dies" upon ejaculating; this reference keeps the thematic focus on sexuality within the series as its occluded subtext. Likewise, Violet blushes when Klaus mentions a naked performance of Macbeth, but he finds this information "pretty interesting to read about" (BB 80-81). As young characters depicted in children's literature, the Baudelaires inhabit a narrative space of presumed innocence, yet allusions allow Handler to ratchet up the sexual subtext of the series while simultaneously maintaining the "innocence" of his protagonists.
These promiscuous allusions, then, subtextually upset the naive assumption that most children's literature features asexual characters. Through Olaf's pedophilic desire for Violet, the ostensible innocence of the series is dashed, and these allusions to adult sexuality in the mouths of babes, as it were, as well as in the mouth of their narrator Snicket, demand that readers recognize the limitations of a binary relationship between innocence and experience. We see here another fundamental revisioning of children's literature. In her classic reading of Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose analyzes how disruptive sexuality is contained, if not tamed, within fairy tales and other forms of children's literature: "even when a troubling of sexuality is recognised in the fairy tale, it is something contained by the cohesion of the narrative, transcended on the path to reality, and resolved in the name of a psychological and sexual identity, which ensures in the end that we can master not only the world, but also ourselves" (64). A Series of Unfortunate Events, on the other hand, troubles categories of sexuality and exposes the limitations of binary thinking. The Baudelaires grapple with sexualized situations that many readers might find inappropriate for children's literature, and thus the categories of innocence and experience are rendered meaningless in appraising these children, since Sunny's exclamations are provocatively adult yet innocently delivered.
Against this backdrop of promiscuous allusions, references to Beatrice encode another sexual subtheme in the series. The first allusion to Dante's Beatrice appears before The Bad Beginning even begins, in Snicket's dedication to his own deceased Beatrice: "To Beatrice-darling, dearest, dead" (BB Dedication). Lest children now read Dante and other classics of medieval Italian literature in elementary school, this reference likely passes over the heads of most young readers, even more so in that this dedication does not adhere to the traditional parameters of the device. Most dedications are, of course, not actually part of the novels to which they are attached; they refer to real people-the family, friends, and loved ones of the real-life author-and so even the most experienced of young readers would thus expect the dedication to bear no real relevance to the subsequent story. Each of the dedications of the thirteen novels in A Series of Unfortunate Events praises Beatrice as the inspiration for writing, and Snicket's words in The Grim Grotto-"For Beatrice, Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down" (GG Dedication)-alludes to a repeated literary trope of men mourning lost loves.13 Women are not envisioned as writers within such a view of narrative: a woman inspires, and a man pens the tale. Then, if the woman dies, the man mourns and writes some more.
The vision of a stable and masculinist canon is deconstructed through Handler's allusions, which decenter the narratives from their ostensible focus of mourning man (Snicket) writing about his dead beloved (Beatrice). The canon is not altogether a static artifact of yesteryear, but a changing, vibrant, and oscillating body of texts. Carolyn Heilbrun describes the transcendent shift as women reformulate(d) the genders of writing and literature: "What we discover is that women who have been the objects circulated wish now to become themselves subjects, themselves enabled to use circulation rather than be circulated" (221). This tension between woman as writing subject and as written object undulates throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket's writing attempts to reify Beatrice as a lost object whom he can control, while her own writing catalyzes his melancholic resignation that her personal choices precluded the possibility of her loving him. In the backstory of Beatrice-elusive and continually alluded to-we see the ways in which Handler casts her story in the light of the literary canon, a collection of texts historically uninterested in women's agency in love.14
Thus, in the early moments when readers see Beatrice in her role as the Baudelaire children's mother, every detail of her life magnifies our understanding of her relationship with Snicket and his attempts to reify her as the object of his affections. The first vision of Beatrice-when Snicket describes "the scorched cushion of the windowseat where [the Baudelaires'] mother liked to sit and read" (BB 13)-ties her to the literary world from whence she arose. Beatrice is continually associated with reading and libraries, as well as with protecting the artifacts therein. One of the Baudelaire children's few memories of their mother becoming angry with them concerns their inadvertent mistreatment of books:
"Our mother would get mad, too," Klaus said. "Remember, Violet, when we left the window of the library open, and that night it rained?"
"She really flew off the handle," Violet said, using a phrase which here means "became extremely angry." "We spoiled an atlas that she said was irreplaceable." (GG 147)
As a woman steeped in literary and bibliophilic pursuits, Beatrice asserts female agency in the historically masculine arena of writing and literature. She stands as the guardian and protector of the written word, rather than solely as the deceased inspiration of a male pen.
Beatrice is a reader of the canon, yet she reconfigures the meaning of literature in that she does not merely passively accept the gendered meaning traditionally accorded it. First, she understands that reading entails work and research, as evidenced by her "secret pocket, [in which] she often kept a small pocket dictionary, which she would take out whenever she encountered a word she did not know" (HH 112). Her reading generates resistant strategies against the vast conspiracy surrounding her:
Every summer, the Baudelaires' mother would read a very long book, joking that lifting a large novel was the only exercise she liked to get during the hot months. Mrs. Baudelaire chose Anna Karenina for her summer reading, and Klaus would sit on his mother's lap for hours at a time while she read. The middle Baudelaire had not been reading very long, but their mother helped him with the big words and would occasionally stop reading to explain what had happened in the story, and in this way Klaus and his mother read the story of Ms. Karenina, whose boyfriend treats her so poorly that she throws herself under a train. Violet had spent most of that summer studying the laws of thermodynamics and building a miniature helicopter out of an eggbeater and some old copper wiring, but she knew that Klaus must remember the central theme of the book he read on his mother's lap. (SS 145-46)
Violet is correct, in that Beatrice trained Klaus to decode the Vernacularly Fastened Door while teaching him to read, and the children are thus able to move to the next stage of their journey after successfully opening the door. Their success is predicated upon dead women: as their mother Beatrice alludes to Dante's Beatrice, we see her as the inspiring figure leading them in their own attempted journey from the "inferno" of their many predicaments to the longed-for "paradise" of (momentary) safety. One dead literary woman, however, is insufficient for this task, and Anna Karenina is likewise conscripted-through allusion and theme-to help the Baudelaires in their quest.
More than a reader, Beatrice is also a writer, and here Handler reverses the gendered positioning of a male author capturing his deceased beloved in writing. Snicket documents that, when Beatrice informed him that she would not marry him, she wrote "a two-hundred-page book, explaining every single detail of the bad news at great length" (MM 16). Rather than inhabiting the narrative space of woman as written object in contrast to man as writing subject, Beatrice enjoys the agency necessary to write her own life, and her literary efforts leave Snicket languishing in a melancholic torpor: "I stayed up all night reading it, and I read it still, over and over, and it is as if my darling Beatrice is bringing me bad news every day and every night of my life" (MM 16). Beatrice's writing inverts the dynamic between Dante and his Beatrice, in which his writing was a means to continually readdress his deceased love and find inspiration from her. This observation does not efface the fact that Snicket himself is also cast as quite a prolific writer as he recounts the Baudelaires' experiences throughout the thirteen novels of the series. However, he cannot assert control over Beatrice and capture her within an aestheticized vision of the past, because she controlled her decisions in love in that past. Because history is irrevocable, Snicket is mired in a love that can never progress: "I toss and turn each night, images of Beatrice and her legacy filling my weary, grieving brain no matter where in the world I travel" (EE 57). Despite his prolixity, Snicket's writing is secondary to his mourning, which dominates the pages of the series, because his mourning motivates his writing; it is, quite simply, the work he must perform. As Jacques Derrida notes, "Mourning always follows a trauma. . . . [T]he work of mourning is not one kind of work among others. It is work itself, work in general, the trait by means of which one ought perhaps to reconsider the very concept of production" (97). In this revisioning of Beatrice and her allusive role in literature, Handler casts Snicket not as a writer who mourns but as a mourner who writes due to his inability to rewrite Beatrice's story: he cannot tell the story as he wishes it were, but as it tragically is.
In overturning the gendered foundations of Western narrative through allusions that range too wildly to be circumscribed into a single meaning and that invert traditional gendered paradigms, Handler showcases the elusiveness of allusion in building gendered meaning into a text. Additionally, he rewrites not only the story of Dante and Beatrice, but also that of human sexuality in Western culture when he tackles the foundational myth of Adam and Eve, who are punished for heeding the seductive snake in the Garden of Eden and thereby learning of good, evil, and sexuality.
Snicket introduces the story of Adam and Eve with a skewed representation of his source: "For instance, if you ever find yourself reading a book entitled The Bible, you would find the story of Adam and Eve, whose daring life of impulsive passion led to them putting on clothing for the first time in their lives, in order to leave the snake-infested garden where they had been living" (SS 148). As difficult as it is to imagine Adam and Eve being properly characterized as leading a "daring life of impulsive passion" in the Garden of Eden, it is no less startling for this story to be reimagined with a snake saving poisoned children-as when the Incredibly Deadly Viper rescues Violet, Klaus, and Sunny from imminent death by giving them horseradish apples to negate the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. In Genesis, the serpent causes humanity's downfall by corrupting innocence with sexual and phallic knowledge, but in Handler's novel the Incredibly Deadly Viper represents innocence and the healing power of the natural world. Within literary history, a salvific snake, similar to a Beatrice who writes rather than is written, upends dichotomies of male and female, good and evil. The story of the Incredibly Deadly Viper is also intertwined with Beatrice's story, as the Baudelaire children read the history of their parents and the schism in a book that Ishmael admits is written in their mother's hand (TE 210). Learning about their past merges with the snake's salvific power, imbuing the Baudelaire children with knowledge as their lives are saved due to a woman and a snake enacting radically reformulated roles from the literary canon.
What, then, does Beatrice mean? Gender roles infuse human relationships with expectations that can never be realized, and despite the overarching freedom from stereotypical constructions of gender in A Series of Unfortunate Events, predatory male sexuality and the gendered contours of the literary canon present formidable challenges for women to assert their autonomy. But with a Beatrice who writes rather than is merely written, with a salvific snake that rescues rather than deceives, Handler exposes the traps of the past while highlighting the pleasures of gender freedoms and promiscuous allusions. In her analysis of the ethical tensions throughout the novels, Laurie Langbauer declares, "By setting its orphans adrift in a world bereft of stable guidelines, Snicket's series also recasts ethics-from fixed code to something more fluid, knowable ultimately only in action" (503). Langbauer's perceptive account of Handler's ethics finds a parallel in his treatment of gender and sexuality, in which fluid gender roles do not define the good characters versus the bad ones but highlight the difficult task of evaluating all acts on an individual basis. In the end, Beatrice's agency unleashes an unredeemable melancholia upon Lemony Snicket-but within the landscape of children's literature, in which gender roles historically have been rather rigidly demarcated, such a new perspective is refreshing indeed.
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