Covered Over

Aldminster is a fictional cathedral in England created by Joanna Trollope in her novel The Choir. Here is a telling description of the dean’s wife:

When he [the dean] had wooed her and won her—no very arduous task, for she was thirty-two, very eager, yet very exacting as to the breeding and calling of her suitors—he discovered that she thought God was a part of mammon, a kind of high moral gloss available to put upon the good things of the world. He also discovered that she was not teachable, that she lacked not only any kind of self-awareness but, even more dangerously, the smallest atom of humility.

Joanna Trollope is a top-ranked writer and worthy descendant of Anthony Trollope—and, sure enough, one hears the voice of the genuine author as she looks down upon the world and dispassionately notes what she observes.

But questions do arise. Can observers like Joanna Trollop or like me really be sure that such descriptions are correct? If yes then people like the dean’s wife precisely match the modern description of what a human being is, thus a pure mechanism driven entirely by instinct and habits formed by her environment. If the modern description is correct, what do we make of people who can consciously process such a description? That takes self-awareness. But how can self-awareness be the product of mechanism?

The dean’s wife is a healthy, vital, energetic sort, busy, active, and very active in the social round, although quite manipulatively. She’s intelligent enough, indeed quite smart in reading the clues of her environment—and it’s a complex one. I loved this description when I read it the other day. It concentrates quite a few problems in living pattern usually absent from abstract discussions. Here are the problems. If she is really devoid of self-awareness (as her behavior indicates, but it’s typical behavior) and if she is nonetheless intelligent, is intelligence per se part of consciousness?

The traditional view is that intelligence is in the soul, not in the circuits of the brain. The dean’s wife is not a machine. She too has a soul. But then why does she behave in such a way as to seem an automaton—very complex but still one. My take is that she illustrates the human condition—and my favorite thematic, the fall. Her intelligence is too a function of her soul, but she is so covered over by the dust of some very ancient volcanic explosion that she is totally shielded from the higher currents that could bring her awake.

Now what the dean’s wife needs, in order to awaken, is hardship at a high enough degree (which need not be monetary or physical) so that, experiencing the pain, she will find herself. And then her escape from this dimension will begin. Paradoxical situation. The better things are, the less awareness. And those who are aware quite early in youth already should at least in thought be on their knees daily thanking the Lord for the gift of self-awareness. When it’s not a gift and you have to buy it, as it were, you have to pay with suffering.