Escapism In The Secret Life Of Niel

Additionally, over the course of the novel, Niel slowly watches Marian grow old and change, but he consistently suppresses the realization. “He had the feeling, which he never used to have, that her lightness cost her something” (Cather 83). This “lightness” foreshadows the pivotal point, the grimy, true behaviors of Marian. Yet, Niel cannot help but keep his escapism intact: “Was he afraid of his womenfolk? Or was it another kind of cowardice, the fear of losing a pleasant memory, of finding her changed and marred, a dread of something that would throw a disenchanting light upon the past?” (130). Niel never moves on from this image he has put onto Marian. Once Marian, herself, moves on, Niel does, too. Nevertheless, as we see in the end of
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So, it just got more complicated. Niel’s image of Marian, in his mind, is similar to an art-object, which is idealized in order for it to become real. This brings up a stylistic question: does aesthetic appeal become idealized as well? Rosowski remarks that “Cather vividly develops tension in Mrs. Forrester. In interpreting this tension, the reader must distinguish Niel’s criteria for her from those that emerge from Cather’s characterization of her. Niel interprets Mrs. Forrester by his abstract aesthetic ideal versus common reality” (55). Aesthetic appeal connects with the idealization of Marian because Niel does not want her to change. Cather writes,
Long, long afterward, when Niel did not know whether Mrs. Forrester were living or dead, if her image flashed into his mind, it came with a brightness of dark eyes, her pale triangular cheeks with long earrings, and her many-coloured laugh. When he was dull, dull and tired of everything, he used to think that if he could hear that long-lost lady laugh again, he could be gay.
He does not realize it for he is merely aware of what he fantasizes. It is no longer the past nor experience which is idealized, but the aesthetical appeal itself. Trevitte continues:
Niel’s image of Marian also remains dehumanizing in its own right, insofar as it projects her beauty in symbolic terms that fail to acknowledge her agency. Notwithstanding his sense of her distinctive charms, his perception of her is fundamentally static, disembodied, carefully confined within the realm of his passive contemplation. Thus Niel’s aesthetic sensibility hollows out the beauty that it seeks to protect: for the more rigorously he conceives of her beauty as a self-contained essence, the more he transforms it into an abstract form that lacks any substantial content in Marian’s person. (196)
Niel renders the reality of Marian to fit his aesthetic and nostalgic ideal. Meaning, a person idealized as an art-object comes down to the issue of subjectivity—the final feature of this