Becoming Gwendolyn’s Confidant

Before I began reading The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao, I was made aware that I would be writing a blog post that would attempt to define who the narrators and addressees are in the text and the relationship between them. My goal during reading this book was to figure out who the narrator is addressing, and if I was becoming a submissive reader of the narrative. What role did the text ask me to play? Was I meant to be a confidant? A lover? A priest the narrator confesses her sins to? 

Making the Unconscious Conscious: Submission and Resistance

In “A rhetoric of reading,” James Seitz claims that reading is similar to a social interaction: a conversation taking place between the author and the reader. As a reader, I bring to the text my experiences and my biases, which influence how I’ll interpret the text. In order to fully grasp the intended meaning of the book, I must submit. Now this doesn’t mean I will submit throughout the whole text of course. There are bound to be moments where my experiences don’t line up with what the narrator is asking of me, but it’s up to me to recognize these moments of resistance and attempt to understand them.

On the very first page of The Majesties we’re presented with Gwendolyn’s situation. Her sister has poisoned three hundred people, including herself, and Gwendolyn was an intended victim who is now in a comatose state. The first sentence concludes with Gwendolyn stating that she forgives her sister for this intense betrayal. Immediately I had a moment of resistance, and then submission. My initial thought was “how could you possibly forgive her for killing so many people, and attempting to kill you?” In a way, this may have actually been a moment of submission to the narrative because I’m sure the author anticipated our shock. Gwendolyn even goes so far as to say “I do forgive her, if you can believe it.” 

After my initial reaction, I then found myself sympathetic to Gwendolyn. I began to assume that Estella deserved forgiveness for her crime. I said to myself “she must’ve had a reason,” and began wondering about the possibilities. By even considering that someone who murdered three hundred people may have been justified in doing so, I was puddy in the hands of the novel. 

Over the course of the novel, Gwendolyn recalls her memories with Estella and their family. She paints a picture of a wealthy, calculating, and cold family that would do anything to hold onto their luxurious lifestyle. Secrets surround each and every one of the family members, but are never brought up. We’re told all about Estella’s rocky marriage to Leonard, and over time it’s revealed how Leonard died. One of the moments of submission that I noticed was my feelings towards Leonard. Gwendolyn’s descriptions of her brother-in-law are extremely unflattering, and I could sense in myself that I too hated Leonard. 

Our first real glimpse of Leonard’s personality is on page 81, where it’s revealed that he is not only a cheater, but may also be abusive. When Estella calls out Leonard for ogling a waitress, asking if two women aren’t enough for him, he responds “Don’t be stupid. Anyway, how do you know it’s just the two of you?” Estella proceeds to slap him and then he “had simply taken her wrist in his hand and squeezed.” From this scene I easily submitted to the text, I thought Leonard was the scum of the Earth, and deserved whatever was coming to him. Several times throughout the book he’s described in a animalistic/inhuman fashion: “Leonard had grown as hulking as a healthy water buffalo” (78), “How all his veins protruded and throbbed, in time, it seemed, to the beating of an enormous horse’s heart” (79), “like a dog with good survival instincts, it refused to come at all” (87), “his name caught in my throat like a fish bone” (99), “squabbling over whether the doggie was a friendly doggie, not whether its breath would strip the flesh from our bones” (100), “like a monstrous houseplant spilling out of its pot” (104). This series of semic codes surrounding instances of Leonard in the narrative helped make it easier for the reader to hate Leonard, to the degree he became dehumanized and monstrous. 

Several times throughout the text I was able to resist the narrative. One of those times was when we learn that Leonard was killed by Estella and the families. It was one of the first moments that I really struggled to sympathize with Estella and Gwendolyn. On page 205, Gwendolyn admits motives for helping to persuade Estella to kill Leonard, “I also remembered how much energy I had put into persuading her to poison the man who had been the bane of her existence, and mine. Vengeance. I’d thirsted for it all those years, and at long last the opportunity to carry it out was being extended to me, handle first.” I no longer was on their side at this point. I realized that they acted just as selfishly as the very people they were trying to save. Later on Gwendolyn reiterates this point on pages 238 and 239 “Even now, I knew I would have murdered Leonard again, to save her once and for all, to avenge what he had done to her and me.” In these moments that I found myself critiquing the families moral choices rather than sympathizing with the pain they had previously endured, I was resisting the narrative. 

Donning the Mask: Narrators and Addressees

While reading The Majesties, I wanted to figure out what role I was being asked to play. When I submitted to the narrative, who was I becoming? According to Peter J. Rabinowitz in “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences,” there are four basic audiences at play in any given narrative: the actual audience, the authorial audience, the narrative audience and the ideal narrative audience. The actual audience “consists of the flesh-and-blood people who read the book,” and the author has no control over them, but the other three are much more complicated.

“The author of a novel designs his work rhetorically for a specific hypothetical audience… we must, as we read, come to share, in some measure, the characteristics of this audience if we are to understand the text” (Rabinowitz 126). The author assumes that we have prior knowledge, or at least enough to understand the text. In The Majesties I believe the authorial audience is someone who understands the Chinese-Indonesian culture to some extent. Throughout the book there are many words that I did not understand, until I either looked them up or deduced their meaning based on the context they were used in. Chignon, cheongsam, opa, oma, and tante are a few of the words I had no prior knowledge of. I can now tell you that Opa means grandfather, Oma means grandmother, and Tante means aunt. The narrator uses these terms without explaining them, which leads me to believe that the authorial audience was supposed to already know, or at least be smart enough to understand what they likely meant. (I didn’t need google’s help for that one!) I think the author also assumed that we the authorial audience would be compassionate, and identify with the plight that Estella goes through. The entire book operates as a way to make Estella seem more human, in spite of the atrocious mass murder she committed. 

Next is the narrative audience, which the reader becomes by pretending to be who the narrator is addressing. The narrator Gwendolyn, is speaking to someone throughout the book; that someone is the narrative audience. In The Majesties, I believe that the narrative audience is a non-family member confidant, or even just another aspect of Gwendolyn’s consciousness that she bounces ideas off of. The narrator is in a coma throughout the entirety of the book, and she is combing through her memories to discover why her sister would’ve done something so horrible. If the narrative audience was a family member, we wouldn’t have needed to hear all the stories about the evil deeds they’ve committed, we would have been there. I also believe the narrative audience is as wealthy as the family. Several moments throughout the book, Gwendolyn makes statements that to me personally, seem outrageous. But these statements are only outrageous to me because I do not come from such an exuberantly wealthy family. “We helped Nanny slip the metal teaspoons into her purse. (She said they were perfect for stirring tea and coffee. The teaspoons we and our parents used at home were the same size, but naturally, she wasn’t allowed to use those)” (Tsao, 70). Throughout this scene we see how the rules of lower class society do not pertain to Gwendolyn and Estella, and we’re meant to just breeze past it as if it isn’t insane that they could behave so horribly on a plane with no consequences. 

Luckily for me, the narrative audience was fairly easy to figure out because Gwendolyn directly addresses them several times throughout the book. “The events I’ve recounted so far—that brunch with Estella and our visit to Opa’s house—paint a certain portrait of me…” (Tsao, 29). In this moment she admits she’s recounting events, but who is she recounting them to? To the narrative audience! “But you can imagine their fury when…” (Tsao, 31). She says we can imagine, so clearly we are not expected to have been  there, but she is telling us now. Later on this page she even assumes what we’re thinking. “You imagine their cold multilegged bodies creepy-crawling all over you, gnawing at you or piercing your skin, dripping whatever fluids they excrete. And you shudder.” On page 33 she answers a question she assumed we’d ask: “What had I been thinking, ceasing communication so entirely like that, at a time when my sister needed me the most? I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I really don’t know.” Gwendolyn assumed we’d be stunned that she abandoned her sister in her time of need. 

All of these passages led me to believe that the narrative audience is meant to be a close friend, someone as close to Gwendolyn as she is to Estella, someone who she can share all her secrets with, someone who can help her figure out why Estella did what she did, a confidant and a fellow detective. 

Lastly is the ideal narrative audience, which simply accepts uncritically whatever the narrator has to say. Unlike the authorial audience or the narrative audience, the ideal narrative audience would not be shocked by Gwendolyn’s claim that she forgives her sister, and would remain stone-faced when confronted with the truth behind Leonard’s death, and Tante Sandra’s past. As a member of the narrative audience, I’m meant to take on the role of confidant, but still critique the decisions that Gwendolyn and Estella made. 

Pulling the Plug

By reading The Majesties with these different terms in mind, I was able to recognize the moments that I was drawn into the book, completely enthralled by the story, and the moments that I was taken out of the book, confused or disgusted by the character’s decisions. I really enjoyed trying to figure out who the narrator was addressing throughout the book and this experience was very interesting. I don’t think I’ll be able to read books going forward without wondering who the narrator is addressing and whether I’m playing the role the text assigned me.