Proust’s Structural Control of Perception: Memory and the Madeleine

One of the fundamental rules of biology can be expressed as follows: structure equals function. This is the case from tiny protein molecules all the way to the muscles in an elephant’s trunk, and the relationship holds true for language as well. In literature, elements of structure include the placement of words, the conjugation and voice of verbs, the transition of ideas, and so on. These elements have the functional power to alter the experience of a reader at both the conscious and subconscious levels. In the episode of the madeleine from his novel In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust arranges structural elements to illustrate the experience of his narrator struggling to recall an unexpected memory. Proust’s deft navigation of verb tense shifts, his rendering of subjective qualia, and his inclusion of linguistic priming all function as controlling elements in his depiction of the elusive and intricate processes of recollection.

Through his unconventional use of verb tense, Proust carefully structures the episode to follow a specific trajectory, allowing it to best evoke its core sensations and emotions.

Proust also reaches out through his depiction of qualia, rendering with great specificity an experience that can yet be considered universal.

In the scene with the madeleine, Proust appears concerned with conscious and subconscious mental activity, and in his prose, he sews important linguistic cues that attract subconscious attention.

The role of priming and manipulation of structure to induce a conscious or unconscious response has important implications that may be extended beyond the aesthetic or the emotional, to the behavioral.

In his depiction of memory and the madeleine, Proust not only touches on an intensely real element of human existence, but through his exploitation of language and structure, also controls the way in which the phenomenon is experienced. His use of tense shifts constructs a temporal framework that parallels the narrator’s conscious movements, and his linguistic priming encodes inherent expectations into the prose that, when fulfilled, invite a sense of recollection. Proust focuses his prose on a vivid qualium, which embodies both subjectivity and universality. Due to the confluence of these carefully placed literary tools, Proust achieves a powerful result. His fiction summons a moment that cannot be experienced with mere language, but only through the fusion of distinctly human responses set into motion by the letters he has arranged on the page.

Imaginative Perception and Horror in Edgar Huntly

"The counterfictional [impulse of the imagination is] the aspiration of imagining to bring about a mimesis of perceiving. Rather than wishing to turn away from the world and create a new one, or to supplement the existing world with features it does not yet have, the imagination longs instead to be able to bring about things sensorially present in perception.” – Scarry, “Imagining Flowers” from Dreaming by the Book (p. 43)

“Disastrous and humiliating is the state of man! By his own hands, is constructed the mass of misery and error in which his steps are forever involved.” – Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (p. 268)

     Brown’s Edgar Huntly is built on misperceptions, both figurative and literal. Its narrator suffers countless trials and hardships, and at several key moments, his emotional state and expectations color his perceptions. It goes beyond bias: his actual sensations appear to be altered, as Brown’s language insists that his senses sight and hearing betray Edgar Huntly, rather than accusing him of twisting true perceptions into false interpretations. “My fancy instantly figured to itself an armed man,” Huntly says at one moment (221), but he identifies the perception as “fancy” only after the fact. When Clithero enters Mrs. Lorimer’s chamber with intentions of murder, he recounts: “I…beheld her tranquilly slumbering” (77). Brown does not permit the ambiguity of his character describing that the figure, actually her daughter Clarice, appeared to be Mrs. Lorimer. For Clithero, at that moment, she is Mrs. Lorimer. His imagination has changed his sensory perception. As Scarry notes, the imagination has the capacity for recreating elements present in perception, and in Edgar Huntly, Brown employs this quality to great effect.

     Having thus offered a brief analysis of Brown’s mining of the human imaginative capacity and its inherent dangers, I feel the need to approach the novel from a more subjective angle. I will say that, for a variety of reasons, Edgar Huntly has been one of the most profoundly affecting reads I’ve ever experienced. It broached topics that have long been of deep interest to me, and raised questions that I have not only wondered, but explored myself.

     Last fall, I took an independent study course in creative writing, and one of the short stories I worked on was fueled by a curiosity about the way we can misunderstand each other, and the circumstances that arise which can easily place us in a dangerous cage, from which there is no safe escape. A friend had given me an unrelated prompt to write about: it was the opening to a story that I had to finish, and it described a romantic scene with a young couple in an empty ballroom after a concluded wedding reception. As I thought about marriage and relationships and the delicate balance of the game in which we rely on implicit understanding but rarely say what we are really thinking, I saw an opportunity for delving into the consequences of misinterpretation. What I also realized (and what is the point of me introducing this tangent) was that this needed to be a horror story. I kept the romantic setting, the wedding reception, the beautiful empty ballroom—but the word “horror” pulsed in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing.

     Reading Edgar Huntly, I felt the same horror—though, of course, much more expertly rendered. I could not put this novel down, and I was amazed at how chillingly Brown manages not only to weave a set of circumstances founded on unavoidable misunderstandings—Edgar frequently insists that no other options are open, that no other interpretation could be imagined, or asks series of unanswered questions in the vein of “What else could I have done?”—but also to withhold judgment of his characters and deny the reader any easy answers. So many of the protagonist’s actions are revealed in the end to be folly, but, just as Edgar himself asks, what else could he have done? How can one overcome a falsehood perceived as truth? The power of imagination to alter perception renders this a near-impossible question, one that Brown refuses to answer, and one that applies just as potently today as it did for his late 18^th Century American audience.

The Priming Power of Literature

“The power of example is so great, as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will… The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, tho’ not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employ’d.” – Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 4

“The joint conspiracy of letters, words, and context suffices to confer an extraordinary robustness on our mental reading apparatus. Alberto Manguel was right: it is the reader who confers meaning to the written page.” – Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (p. 48)

     Dehaene’s wording here needs unpacking: when he says “the reader confers meaning to the written page,” how exactly does this conferring occur? Is it conscious or unconscious? A function of the reading process or a decision made by the reader? These questions have important implications for an understanding of the way we read and the ways in which reading affects us.

     Johnson seems to assert in The Rambler that the process is unconscious on the part of the reader. The story forces its way into the memory and draws forth effects “almost without the intervention of the will.” This “almost” allows for some readerly control, which must be recognized. We make conscious observations while we read, ask ourselves questions, draw conclusions. However, Johnson speaks to a much more powerful connection with the text. It has the power to influence us beyond our conscious control; it directs our attention in ways we may not be aware of.

     This direction lies in the hands of the author. Unlike the reader, the writer is fully conscious at all times of his or her ability to manipulate the reader’s mind with a carefully crafted story. Johnson comments later in The Rambler that this places a certain moral responsibility on the author’s shoulders. The fact that he brings this up should underline his confidence in the writer’s power over the reader, which is strong enough to alter moral perceptions and introduce new ideas.

     How does this happen? Much of a story’s influence may be due to priming, the process of mentally rehearsing an action prior to performing it in reality. This method has been examined in countless contexts, from dieting (one imagines oneself eating a bowl of M&M’s piece by piece and thereby reduces a craving) to athletics (a diver may run through a complex dive in his head before climbing to the platform). Dehaene also discusses the role of priming in linguistics: reading a word with a similar spelling will increase the response time for reading a related word. On a larger scale, this concept may be applied to literature and behavior. By steeping our consciousness in the thoughts and actions of a fictional character, we may be engaging our brain on a level that primes us for future modes of thinking or action. In Johnson’s case, reading about a character making an important moral decision could impact one’s response to a similar situation in real life.

     It would be interesting if one could examine this correlation on a large scale. It’s easy to visualize the M&M experiment, which ought to have fairly simple, measurable results. Asking groups of divers to mentally rehearse (or not rehearse) before making a dive could be more complicated. As for giving subjects a book to read and then examining their behavior afterwards, this seems highly complicated. But if the experimental design were reduced—perhaps giving groups a similar literary passage, one in which a character makes a certain decision A, and the other in which the situation is the same but a character makes the decision B, and then placing the subjects in a similar decision-making environment and observing their choices—this may give a glimpse into the unconscious power of literature on the human mind.