The Power To Change Us: Stendhal

Literary schools and movements come and go. And while critics, philosophers, writers, and theorists will go on debating what 'literature' is, I will simply assume that it exists and that is has many functions.

For this article I am concerning myself with literature not as a science, nor an art, much less a discipline, but as a transformative force in human affairs—the power to change people.

To narrow the discussion, I hold that literature must own the power to bring about change. That doesn't mean that it must force people into specific ideologies or set behaviors. Not at all. Neither force nor coercion must enter the equation. When you think about it, change in our lives comes about because we become aware that something needs to be changed.

Once we present to our consciousness an 'it' that needs change—we change! And that is the force of literature: it presents themes, topics, events, and situations to a reader's consciousness.

Literary authors choose the material to present not because that material will entertain the reader for a while, but because such theme is a crucial lesson to the characters' lives and indirectly to the reader. And therein rests the redemptive and transformative value of the work of literary artists--master writers.

Not only from the fountain of daily life do readers draw lessons, but also from fiction.

While politicians, kings, philosophers, and military leaders influence people directly, literary writers do it indirectly; yet they 'writers—cast even a wider net. How many readers are today attracted to Napoleon's Memoirs? Yet, like waves that ceaselessly visit a beach, generations upon generations will go on visiting and revisiting the Stendhal's The Black and the Red--not Napoleon's Memoirs. What possible lessons, some may ask, have novels such as Ana Karenina, Madame Bovary, and the Scarlet Letter? Why would Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Hawthorne bother to the present readers with the age-old problem of adultery?

Tolerance is the answer. By making readers aware of the depths of passion that the human heart harbors, such violence of emotions will linger in our consciousness and see that while some humans are weak in spirit others are strong, yet weak in forgiveness.

By immersing ourselves in the range of passions that we find in the novels mentioned, we learn, we learn tolerance, we learn to be compassionate—we change.

Turmoil, suffering, shock, social ostracism, and much more we learn from Ana Karenina. Who can deny that we --readers-- find vicarious wicked pleasure in the sufferings of other poor souls, in the conflicting passions that engulf the characters. We learn about the intimacy of a conjugal showdown: "I listen to you and think about him. I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot stay you, I am afraid of you, I hate you ... Do what you like with me."

From Emma Bovary we learn of the unquenchable thirst that even an absurd romanticism and sordid affairs cannot placate: "But who was it that made her so unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that overwhelmed her?"

And Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter we learn of the darkness and light, love and hatred, revenge and redemption that move us in our daily lives. Hester Prynne: "will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone."

By presenting the theme of adultery, the authors simply advance it for the reader to digest it. And this is the transformative power of literature. Readers will bring their own experiences to the novel and will present it to their consciousness where it will linger and perhaps make them change for the good.