A close reading of Henry Lefebvre and Truman Capote
In his essay ‘The Everyday and Everydayness’, Lefebvre argues that in the modern era (i.e. through modernity) our relationship to objects has become instrumental “functional” and materialistic. Through a close reading of Truman Capote's short story ‘A Christmas Memory’, I would like to discuss how Capote’s work challenges Lefebvre’s assessment of our relationship to objects and things in the modern era.
Truman Capote’s short story A Christmas Memory, challenges Henri Lefebvre’s argument that in the contemporary age, human relationships to objects are bounded by functionality. A Christmas Memory depicts a young narrator named Buddy and his older cousin celebrating Christmas through a variety of activities, such as baking fruitcakes, making a Christmas tree, and offering gifts. As a literary piece, it represents a rather different interpretation of human relationship to objects because other human traits such as emotion, happiness, passion, and spirituality are demonstrated throughout the story, which affects the characters’ relationship to objects not to be merely functional. Thus, the story challenges the assessment made under the paradigm of social science by Lefebvre.
In his essay The Everyday and Everydayness, Lefebvre states that before the modern era “living presented a prodigious diversity” (7) because it was connected to some various systems of belief, so objects “possessed a symbolic value linking them to meaning” (8). He argues that the rationality in modern time has not only destroyed that historical diversity but transformed the everyday into a hidden product that “imposes its monotony” (10). Therefore, in the view of Lefebvre, the everyday is “a set of functions which connect and join together systems that might appear to be distinct” (9). Lefebvre explains his definition that through “forms, functions, and structures,” (9) the everyday has established the “controlled consumerism” (9), upon which, in the modern era, our relationship to objects has become functional.
Unlike Lefebvre’s argument about the functional relation, Capote in his story, suggests that our relationship to objects is not entirely materialistic and instrumental. In A Christmas Memory, the characters invest their happiness and emotions in the objects they send as gifts to other people as well as the exchange between themselves. The seven-year-old protagonist and his much older cousin bake thirty fruitcakes to send as gifts to the other people. The decision which is made by the elder cousin is fully enriched with sentiment because she announces it with a strong emotion: “"Oh my," she exclaims, […] "it's fruitcake weather!"” (148). This wildly enthusiastic and exciting scene at the outset of the story, with the emphatic significance on countryside cyclical time rather than standard linear clock time, implies that the subsequent performances throughout the story, to a large extent, disregard rationality. The story illustrates that the characters’ relationship to the objects affected by the sentiment rather than materialistic views. While materialism may also be considered a human quality, the objects convey a value which is not materialistic but emotional. In the scene following exchanging gifts with each other, the woman says “her favourite gift is the kite” (159), made by her little cousin. The relationship to the cakes and kites are not limited to their function as a food to be eaten or as a toy to be played with; rather they convey the qualities of gentleness, kindness, esteem, and admiration. The values attached to these gifts underpin a broader relationship to objects upon which the story challenges the merely functional relationship emphasised by Lefebvre.
A Christmas Memory shows that our relationship to objects is not completely mundane but also spiritual and extra-terrestrial. Capote employs the metaphor of the kites which symbolises the death of the old cousin “loose like a kite” (161). To present ideas of human loss, the author employs symbolism and explores that language qualities constitutes a platform upon which our relationship to objects manifest supernatural conception. The two cousins used to fly kites on every Christmas Day while they were still together. Following their separation, in the scene where the boy is far away in a military school, he became aware of his cousin’s death as he sees in the sky “a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven” (161). According to Fahy, the kites are the “images for childhood and innocence” (153). The kites emerge to the young cousin, upon which Capote symbolise the virtue of the woman, and depicts her passing away as an extraordinary moment through employing the very ordinary relationship to an object which is the kite. Furthermore, the story repeatedly mentions the ‘Baptist window’ to articulate the idea that in the modern era our relationship to such a religious object has not come to an end. The narrator observes that his old cousin retains a strong sense of relationship to that particular religious object. The older cousin clearly states her desire to witness the Rise of Jesus Christ: "when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through” (160). Although a religious association to an object is, in fact, a historical value but the author situates that ancient background into a contemporary context. Consequently, for the elder cousin, her religious belief and the elegance of the colourful glasses exposed to sunlight are equally involved in her relationship to the Baptist window. The story emphasises that spirituality is an integral element which is effective on our relationship to objects and in this way challenges Lefebvre’s materialistic argument regarding our relationship to objects.
A Christmas Memory challenges Lefebvre’s idea of homogeneity. The story states that things are utterly distinctive and subsequently suggests the possibility of a various relationship to objects. On the contrary, Lefebvre in his essay notes that in the modern era, everyday life has become more homogenous because rationality and its materialistic implications have directed the overall systems of everyday life toward sameness, “[t]oday we see a worldwide tendency to uniformity,” (7). Lefebvre explains it further and asserts that this uniformity is being imposed through a “fatuousness”, and an “only apparent diversity” (8). In contrast, there is a strong indication in Capote’s story that suggests every individual object is essentially unique: In the scene where transferring the Christmas tree to their home, a woman offers them a price for the tree, saying you can cut another tree in the forest, but the response of the elder cousin not only signifies the uniqueness of that particular tree but it also implies the infinite distinctiveness to all other objects. She says “[t]here's never two of anything," (157). Additionally, the story examines a range of dissimilar usage of the same object. The buggy is used in various ways and for different purposes as a baby carriage, flowers mover, a “truck for hauling firewood”, and as a “warm bed for Queenie [dog]” (149). These instances signify a long lasting relationship with the objects regardless of its particular designation to have specific purpose and functioning. One way or another, the story contradicts Lefebvre’s idea of uniformity and suggests that distinctiveness requires a variety of relationships to objects.
Human qualities such as emotion, happiness, and spirituality are considered by Capote to be effective for shaping our relationship to objects. The story suggests that objects are not entirely standardised and the same, but utterly distinctive, and things are not fully mundane but partly spiritual. Therefore, Capote’s short story outlines different ways of relationship to objects and challenges Lefebvre’s argument that in the modern era, our relationship to objects has become functional.
References
Capote, Truman. A Christmas Memory. New York: Random House, 1963. 148-161. Print.
Fahy, Thomas. Understanding Truman Capote. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwsau/detail.action?docID=20548 53.
Lefebvre, Henri, and Christine Levich. "The Everyday and Everydayness." Yale French Studies (1987): 7-11. Web.