Williams and Sarah Cole

"Moreover, when this is realized, those 'products' which are not ideas or theories, but which are the very different works we call 'art' and 'literature', and which are normal elements of the very general processes we call 'culture' and 'language', can be approached in ways other than reduction, abstraction, or assimilation."

Williams speaks about the varying meanings of the word "ideology" in Marxist thinking. In Marx and Engel's writing, three different and sometimes contradictory definitions emerge from ambiguities in meaning. Williams' final point, however, is that the Marxist redefinition of "ideology" is the first to include cultural and lingual norms such as art and literature. From this Marxist perspective, culture stems from rotten ideologies invented to control the proletariat (sounds a little like Gramsci, just without the title of hegemony). Williams quotes the German Ideology, "the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationship, the dominant mater relationships grasped as ideas." So what does any of this have to do with literature? Williams makes the case that literature is an ideological tool, and the various Marxist definitions of "ideology" give a different perspective on analyzing literature than the previously conventional approaches.

I think that Russel Banks' "Sarah Cole" gives a few good examples of what we've discussed in class so far. Some hints of Gramsci's idea of hegemony are clear in the characters' bar preferences. Sarah Cole herself rebells against the spontaneous acceptance of going to the working class bars, and instead takes her friends to Osgood's Lounge. The socially accepted norm is that Osgood's is a bar for "lawyers and insurance men. It had been Sarah who asked the others why that should keep them away," and despite their inability to answer, the answer was and understood one, they were the working class in a middle-class bar. A Marxist reading of "Sarah Cole" would certainly focus on the differences between Sarah, the TV Guide packing, cowboy boots and jeans wearing, and homeliest example of the proletariat, and Ronald, the lawyer who drives a Datsun fastback coupe, and is the prettiest and best dressed example of bourgeois possible. Additionally, class conflict comes into play in their relationship. Ron is ashamed to be seen with his lower class lover, and Sarah wants to show off her uptown boy to all her friends. His dress and sociability at working class parties further distinguishes him, as he's wearing a blazer and khakis, whereas everyone else is "dressed appropriately, dressed, that is, live everyone else." Ron also has a hard time talking and relating to his working class environs, and Sarah does most of the talking for him. When Ron discovers Sarah returned to her ex-husband, her friend's reasoning is "water seeking its own level," pointing out that her husband (a carpenter) was short and ugly, and so was Sarah, she didn't have to feel self-conscious or out of place with him.