Chloe's Reviews > Chasm

Something that struck me while reading this book was that it was absolutely feminine in its choices. In a broad sense, it’s really a neo-Gothic novel, with frightful mansions and mysterious figures, all sorts of archetypal imagery. I think that, judging by the templates laid in the past, we could create what this would be like as a man’s work. I think Meridian would be an anti-hero, and he would have a romance with Nadine. His end would be tragic. The novel would probably be written in his voice. Albert would probably end up with the youngest Destina, and most likely this would be seen as very progressive. Or, at least, these are my speculations based on the way the genre often goes. This is not the novel Dorothea Tanning wrote, however.
Before going into the work itself, it’s important to note that Tanning was a surrealist artist. I would highly suggest looking up her work, as I think it's important for those wishing to understand her writing. She was deeply involved in the art world. In fact, she married part of it. But, much attention has been paid to her status as wife and little to her status as autonomous person, so I’ll leave that information to her biographers. The important part is to note the background this gives her work, in particular the emphasis on Jungian archetype and the unconscious. The characters are less fully-human and more the impressions of portions of humanity, in ways barely communicable outside of the realms of the fantastic. Destina herself is Destiny, from a long line of women named Destina. These women did meet with the destinies allotted to many women throughout the ages: witch hunts, marriages of convenience, and various forms of abuse. Yet, they are also loved and adored, the way little Destina’s presence proves overpowering for Albert.
The novel also focuses on society, and one may take a very ecological view of how this works. The characters are living at odds with themselves and with each other, and must spend a weekend in this monstrous house that itself is at odds with its surroundings. In the end, everyone is at odds with the desert, except Destina and the old woman, also Destina. Nadine wants to have a union with some ideal, romantic notion of “nature” and “the wilds”, although she really has no experience with nature or wilderness at all. Meridian, as he is at odds with human feeling and at odds with womankind, is at odds with the desert. His presence contradicts it, and one can only assume that he must be destroyed by such a great force. For, while Destina is a destiny, and a power-point for the story, the most active player is the desert. It is a character in itself, wild, mysterious, mystical, and passing indiscriminate judgment on those who wish to be near it. Meridian is afraid to be too much in it. The older Destina prophesies from it. Albert wishes to be enlightened by it. Nadine wants to be a part of it. And the youngest Destina is friends with it, in the form of a magical lion, which brings her eyes.
The eyes are another important element for understanding the story. The characters are blinded by different aspects of their lives, by situation, like the orphaned housemaid. They are blinded by presumption (Nadine), a life of apathy (Albert), grotesque desires (Meridian), by looks, fame, and quests for power, as all the guests fail to truly see. They are twice blinded, by their belief in Meridian’s genius and by their own costumes, which only fool themselves. Only Destina, with her gift of eyes, may see the world with any measure of openness. She doesn’t have a particular philosophy to guide her –she’s only seven, after all. But, she is open; she is able to look and desires to know. The older Destina, too can see, with her connection to the desert. In the end, everyone is united to the desert in some way, through life or death.
The female surrealists are not as well known as their flamboyant male counterparts, and were not always over-loved by the male-dominant art world. This is terribly unfortunate, because not only is her visual work sensitive, mysterious, and extremely well executed, but her writing is clear, intriguing, and delves into themes from her unique perspective as a woman artist in the surrealist school. Her views of power, sexuality, impotence, desire, beauty, honor, and destiny are exquisitely defamiliarized, reducing expectations to the question of Why? This, then, challenges us, as readers, each with our own moral spheres, to ask ourselves why we hold certain ideas and expectations. Who gave us these expectations, and what does it say about us as individuals and as a society?