Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759)
Chapter Structure
- 1-16: the Happy Valley and leaving it
- 17-32: the characters observe life (ch 23-29: Rasselas and
Nekayah examine public and private life; marriage)
- 33-48: after the abduction of Pekuah, the characters become more
personally involved in life. The tone darkens. (32): wall vs. pyramid.
Nekayah (48): “the choice of life is become less important; I hope
hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity”—but life goes on...
The various “choices of life”:
(chapters 17-22)
- hedonism (young men of spirit and gaiety) (17)
- stoicism (wise and happy man) (18)
- pastoral life (19)
- rural isolation (20)
- hermit life (21)
- living according to nature (22)
- family, parents/children, young/old (26)
- single vs. marriage life (26) [the princess finally gets to
speak!]
- early vs. late marriage (29) [general folly of mankind, prudence,
benevolence; reason]
- man of learning (astronomer) (40-44) (crazy is a matter of
degree, not kind)
- wise old man (unhappy but learned) (45)
- use of this phrase “choice of life” begins in ch 12 (Imlac uses
the phrase two times, then the prince picks it up), then, ch 16:
“enable yourself at leisure to make your choice of life”—used a bunch
more times after that
- premise is that we must choose our whole life’s path at once and
absolutely: “Before you make your final choice, you ought to examine
its hazards...” (Imlac ch 40) You need to pursue perfect choice
but you will never find it p. 115: “commit yourself
again to the current of the world”
- lesson to be learned? “Those that lie here stretched before us,
the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the
shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while
they were busy, like us, in the choice of life. ‘To me, said the
princess, the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter
to think only on the choice of eternity.’ They then hastened out of the
caverns, and, under the protection of their guard, returned to Cairo.”
(end ch 48—p. 149)
Utopia, morality and happiness:
- Begins with idea of falsely high expectations: “Ye who listen
with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the
phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of
youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by
the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia.”
- This first line also invokes ideas of the present learning from
past; history and traditions as containing models which we seem
incapable of learning from; what the Norton calls the ‘folly of all of
us who stubbornly cling to our illusions despite the evidence of
experience’
- Define happiness—see ch. 3 —if you want nothing, how can you be
unhappy?
- The prince longs for the fortunate fall (end of ch 3)—thinks
knowledge of misery will bring happiness (see para. 2 of ch 6—welcome
ALL knowledge; and ch 11—knowledge = happiness)
- Is complete “happiness” possible? (see last line of ch 11)
- Not as matters of simple alternatives, but as impossible ones.
world cannot ever make us entirely happy
- Life is not a series of rational choices where one gets better or
happier or more mature (i.e. the hermit in ch. 21)
- and imagination: we all live in a world of imagination because no
one is happy. (i.e.: the astronomer) (see also ch 22: “imagination
paints it as desirable...”)
- You have to be actively engaged in something to approach
happiness—we are social animals
- Life is a struggle, with few lasting rewards; you must persist,
although it is often futile, counter-productive or repetitive.
humanity’s “restless” disposition (16)
- “That nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the
left” (Nekayah, ch 29)— can’t have it all
- p. 97: “All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a
steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure
calamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose pain”
(ch 27-p. 97).
Johnson’s preference for the
“general/universal” over the “particular”:
- What is the “universal good”? (ch 9)
- True experience, nature, shown in reverence for the ancients
(chapter 10—2685); “truth” in ch 11
- Common fund of experience in human mind (ch 16)
- “The good of the whole is the same with the good of all its
parts” (ch 29)—marriage as good for indiv vs good for society
- “Nothing is more common than to call our own condition the
condition of life” (ch 45)
Johnson on art/18th century aesthetic:
- “The business of a poet … is to examine, not the individual, but
the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he
does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different
shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his
portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the
original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations,
which one may have remarked…for those characteristicks which are alike
obvious to vigilance and carelessness” (ch 10-p. 62).
- “He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country;
he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable
state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general
and transcendental truths, which will always be the same” (ch 10-p. 62).
- Poetry the highest learning (ch 10-p. 60)
- In his writing about Shakespeare (vol 1C), Johnson lays forth the
idea that Shakespeare’s “comprehensive genius” lies in his breaking of
“dramatic rules”: art needs to differentiate between good and
evil (2786), and that it needs to “observe the unities of time and
place” in a faithful manner. Is Johnson himself experimenting
with these possibilities in Rasselas?
- In Rambler No 4 “On Fiction” Johnson critiques fiction:
“all the fictions of the last age will vanish, if you deprive them of a
hermit and a wood, a battle and a shipwreck” (2733). Fiction is
unstudied, produced without “toil of study, without knowledge of
nature, or acquaintance with life” (2733). Written for the
young and the ignorant – romances. “It is justly considered as
the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary
to distinguish those parts of nature, which are most proper for
imitation” (etc. p. 2734). Art-responsible for moral
edification…
- IE Imlac, building a flying machine that does not work?
Female sexual imagery:
- abounds in the happy valley, whose only entrance is by “a cavern
that passed under a rock,” the outlet of which "was concealed by a
thick wood" and the mouth closed with iron gates “so massy that no man
could, without the help of engines, open or shut them,” and whose lake
discharges “its superfluities by a stream which entered a dark cleft of
the mountains.” Think of this in terms of psycho-sexual
development--according to Rasselas, “none that once had passed [the
gate] were ever able to return,” yet his father, the mighty "emperour,"
consummates an eight-day visit annually.
- In his first action, the prince fixes “his eyes upon the goats
that were browsing among the rocks” and begins “to compare their
condition with his own....” The object of his comparison, Johnson’s Dictionary attests, traditionally
evokes “a lecherous animal,” known for its “rankness” and “lust,” and a
dictionary of slang fifty years later defines “goat” simply as a
“lascivious person”
- with the “young men of spirit and gaiety” he finds “their
pleasures were gross and sensual” and he is “ashamed” (17)
- The princess will found a college of learned women and study
science (ch49-p. 149) A relief from the society of unlearned and
uneducated women (ch 25-p. 91)
- Pekuah captivity narrative
- and yet “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures”
(ch 26-p. 95)
Is the ending inconclusive or
satisfying? (Or dissatisfying?)
- Inconclusive?: in the last chapter, 3 of the characters seem to
have plans, and these plans will engage them in life (good) but they
haven’t learned the impossibility of human happiness (bad)
- Inconclusive?: Rasselas is not dogmatic—the choice of life is not
made for us
- Inconclusive?: divided ending to a divided book: one can wish and
simultaneously know that that wish is impossible
- Satisfying?: Johnson never lacks compassion
- Satisfying? Some decision has been reached and their wandering is
over
- Satisfying?: the old man of ch 45 : the “better state, that
happiness which here I could not find”
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