The Professor and Other Writings

by Terry Castle

  The professor who taught the class, a man I hadn’t encountered before, pursued these difficult themes quietly but profoundly. He was learned and intense and suffered, or so one sensed, from a sort of melancholia akin to one’s own. Some long-term acquaintance with the baleful. In day-to-day life he was as shy, introverted, and conversationally awkward as the Professor had been smooth-tongued, outgoing, and flamboyant. Yet I found his reticence immensely calming. We were alike, I felt, in our unease—our inability to cheerlead. We were both stuttering through life. Yet halting though our conversations could sometimes be, they also hummed with a quirky and unpredictable intellectual excitement. Caught up in the moment, the stutterers forgot to stutter. (In this way I owe him everything.) He became my thesis adviser and I ended up writing my dissertation on Richardson’s Clarissa (1749)—a massive, morally ambiguous, relentlessly tragic epistolary novel about an intelligent young woman who is tricked, seduced, and harried to death by a charming amoral rake. Gosh, I wonder what made me choose that for a subject.

  It took longer for me to acknowledge the more amusing and playful aspects of my chosen period—though in the long run these were more significant, psychologically speaking, than anything else. However morbid my fixation on magnificent monster-works like Clarissa, a kind of basic Enlightenment optimism—not to mention some tiny motes of Johnsonian common sense—were also starting to take hold in me. For one thing, like a sort of baby-philosophe, I was on the way to making my own radical break with Credulity and Superstition: all the spells and symbols and matriarchal gobbledygook that I’d been in love with—well, since my barmy Phoebe days. (Not really that long before.) The little incense box filled with yarrow stalks—crucial for consulting the I Ching—somehow found its way into the trash pile one morning. The Great Mother, once so alluring, took early retirement and moved back to California. I stopped yammering on in seminars about Hermes Trismegistus and the Fairies Under the Hill. I liked the clear-cut sound—still do—of an Age of Reason. It was time to start thinking straight. And with the access of at least a little more mental clarity, a certain Voltairean gaiety kept threatening to break in, too. That Cock Lane Ghost? Just a very funny hoax.

  Above all, reading the classic works of satire, lampoon, and burlesque was a tonic. Consoling indeed the realization that some illusions were meant to be shattered; that a clear comic light might be cast on the chaotic devil-murk of human emotions. Pathos could be turned to Bathos, and enlightenment unfold through wit, send-up, insouciance. Nothing was sacred, one found; even the grandest and most imposing monuments might be defaced. We were all rolling around in the muck like the Dunces anyway; one might as well get used to it. The way of the world demanded laughter as well as tears. One had to stoop to conquer. And in its highest form, I surmised, such rococo lightness and drollery could in fact be a pathway into something more profound. In the loveliest, most philosophical examples of eighteenth-century wit—Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Watteau’s paintings, Samuel Johnson’s burnished utterances, Mozart’s operas, and indeed, at century’s end, six modest and miraculous novels by Jane Austen—one felt it: a deep moral seriousness humming away at the core, along with the steady flow of beauty, intelligence, delight.

  No: I didn’t realize it at the time, but along with friendly counsel, such studies would eventually help me begin to exorcize that unholy mixture of conceit and insecurity—glum legacy of childhood convulsions—which had made me so susceptible to the Professor. Instead of merely confirming—like some of my intellectual fads of yore—a sense of isolation, my new interest in comedy suggested a way out of danger: an escape, of sorts, from the lonely and damaging egotism of adolescence. For master-satirists like Pope and Johnson and Austen, I realized, did not simply ridicule pretension and folly in others, even if that was what people hostile to such burlesque sometimes said. That if you lampooned something you must be setting yourself up as superior to it. That you were arrogant, epicene. Pretending to some higher authority. Yet the very greatest satire, I came to think—the kind that lives forever—ultimately grew out of a debunking attitude toward the self. To see the world mock-heroically was necessarily to engage in a sort of preliminary self-burlesque. You couldn’t take yourself that seriously. You were part of it. All the Lilliputian preening and pomposity was, at bottom, one’s own.

  Obviously, even with such private revelations, a person like the Professor would hardly remain exempt from criticism—her behavior had been far from impeccable. But one definitely had to look a bit askance at oneself, too. At one’s juvenile delusions of grandeur. At that painful, buffoonish susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion. The shocking neediness. (How indeed had this last gotten so bad? Little did I know I would spend the next thirty years in search of that particular Loch Ness Monster.) And once begun, the self-debunking process—otherwise known as self-examination—would have to go on…well…pretty much for the duration. Now, in my fifties, I’m at a point where I know (okay,…sort of know) that I’m far from perfect. I’m willing to accept that in the love-and-kindness department in particular, I may be—at best—only five or six inches high. Gulliver in the land of the Brobdingnagians. I’ll cop to it: in order to play the harpsichord I have to run back and forth on the keys. Madly. Panting with the effort. If a giant decided to micturate upon me I would be swept away at once, like a tsunami victim, or a daddy-long-legs that gets sucked down the drain when you start running the bathwater. I’ve been shrunk down so many times in the moral Rinsomatic I’ve gotten very tiny indeed. Homunculus-sized. Yet even so, I still feel impelled to wonder: Is there some very, very, very embarrassing self-knowledge stuff I’m still missing? Maybe other people can see it, glaringly: I’m really only two inches high. Or worse: only an eighth of an inch high. A measly sixteenth. Maybe I am even—eeek—microscopic.

  Draconian judgments about other people can as a result be difficult to make. (Though not always, of course.) One gets waylaid by second thoughts, an unhappy consciousness of one’s own follies and failings. In the early 1980s, just before I left Harvard for my new university job in California (I’d spent three years on a Harvard post-doc after finishing my Ph.D.) I visited my shrink of the time, the one who had taken up after Malka, for what I thought would be a poignant farewell. Said shrink was European, in her late seventies—Old World, reserved, and intellectually formidable. She had been a colleague of Anna Freud, and though now tiny, arthritic, and white-haired, remained a distinguished and imposing figure. All except, that is, for a bizarre, rainbow-colored set of plastic pop beads she always wore, somewhat incongruously, around her neck. I thought her an excellent psychiatrist despite her disinclination to smile or be nice to me. Once I asked her, fairly plaintively, if she thought I would ever escape from whatever Slough of Despond I was then currently wallowing in. She responded with a too-long stare; then stared a bit more; then said she didn’t know. I got so mad at her for being honest I started to feel better at once.

  And no doubt some of her mental associations were peculiar, notably regarding female homosexuality. I spent two years in therapy with her and yet something about the idiosyncrasies of my case repeatedly reminded her, it seemed, of a woman she had once analyzed whose preferred sex act involved being diapered and suckled by her female lover. I would object strenuously whenever my shrink mentioned this infantile lady: surely she didn’t think I was like that. Yet again and again—each time forgetting that she’d ever mentioned her before, or indeed that I had ever complained—my psychiatrist would roll out Diaper Lady and playmate for our joint contemplation. Hard to forget the comical look of consternation that would appear on her face whenever she did so; or her oft-repeated expressions of wonderment—all the more memorable for being delivered in her weirdly-accented English: Dey vore dia-peuhs! Dia-peuhs! Dey akchually vore dia-peuhs!

  Anyhoo, it’s malignant. At our last session I was speculating on what my new life in California would be like—how I was leaving the nest, growing up, etc. etc. Partly by way of valedictory flattery, I su
ppose, I’d also said something about how far I thought I’d come in my conversations with her. You have been so helpful; I will never forget. Now, this psychiatrist had heard the story of the Professor numerous times—indeed, had once responded to some gory retelling of it, musingly, with one of her most pitiless pieces of moral commentary: Vat a lot uff kvooked people dere are…. Yet even so, I didn’t see what was coming. I had made the mistake of asking her, rather too blithely, I’m afraid, what sort of person she thought I might become in my new role of college professor. As usual, she gazed at me for several seconds in silence, then replied, in a weary tone, Vell, you know dat Pwuffessor who vas your luffer, den she abuse you? Vell, I tink you vill be a Pwuffessor and you vill meet a girl and do just da same.

  Now not everyone may find this comment amusing. But to me it’s as droll as the business about the diapers, though I know the joke’s on me. Was this prophecy correct? Well…[discreet throat-clearing]:

  Yes and No. Yes and/or No. Yes but No. Erm. Not really.

  Yes, one was the Professor; she was the Student. Which is to say such indeed was the off-kilter nature of one’s first relationship in the new place. But other things were not the same. D. and I were almost the same age (just shading into our thirties); she had an advanced degree in another field when she entered the English program. We met during my very first teaching term. She was in my first graduate seminar that fall; we would get together about six months later. I played no role, ever again, in her academic work. We did not conceal our connection and colleagues and friends seemed to accept it, most very warmly. There were several parallel situations in the department at that time involving both gay and heterosexual couples. The social atmosphere was so much lighter. (It being a new day and the West Coast, the department had, among things, six “out” gay male professors.) Our relationship lasted for five years; D. and I lived together for four of them. I got tenure in the meantime; she finished her Ph.D. shortly after we broke up.

  I leave it to the reader to judge whether by getting thus involved, I did just da same as the Pwuffessor. At the time I joined the faculty, my new university (like my old one) had no explicit policy regulating professor-student sexual relationships. True, certain attitudes prevailed. Pretty much everybody seemed to think that sexual relationships between instructors and undergraduates were a Terrible Idea. (Whether actual behavior reflected this virtuous sentiment, of course, was another matter.) While no doubt awkward and to be discouraged, romantic relationships with graduate students were felt to be intrinsically more ambiguous. Impossible—if at times just barely—to impugn outright. More likely to be “consensual.” Age difference often not so extreme. Even with age difference (the gay guys particularly liked this one)—think of the Platonic conception of erotic pedagogy. Beautiful epigones, etc. Propriety still demanded, obviously, that certain hygienic protocols be maintained: whenever such a couple formed, it was considered the professor’s ethical obligation to inform the department chair and exempt himself or herself from any supervisory role over the student in question.

  Nowadays, of course, everything has been codified—more rigidly at some places than others. On the issue of “consensual” relationships between teachers and students, the sexual harassment policy currently in effect at my own university has this to say:

  At a university, the role of the teacher is multifaceted, including serving as intellectual guide, counselor, mentor and advisor: the teacher’s influence and authority extend far beyond the classroom. Consequently and as a general proposition, the University believes that a sexual or romantic relationship between a teacher and a student, even where consensual and whether or not the student would otherwise be subject to supervision or evaluation by the teacher, is inconsistent with the proper role of the teacher, and should be avoided. The University therefore very strongly discourages such relationships.

  As “a general proposition” this strikes me as eloquent, sensible, and true. But I’m also stuck with an autobiographical paradox: had I punctiliously “avoided” my relationship with D. in the early eighties, as per such a guideline, it is fair to say I would have missed out on the first seriously good relationship I’d ever had, at precisely the time I needed it most. For D. turned out to be a kinder and more generous person than I had previously encountered, a sort of female Bob Cratchit to my twisty Mr. Scrooge. Emotionally speaking, she undid a great deal of the Professor’s devilish handiwork and fixed a number of problems. (Her corny but unimpeachable motto: never lose an opportunity to be thoughtful.) I learned a great deal from her about trust. I can’t speak for my influence on her, of course, but it couldn’t have been too bloody awful. Though not close in any day-to-day sense, we still stop and smile and hug when we see each other on campus: she’s a gifted administrator at my university, much loved and admired by many, including me.

  All that can be said in the end, perhaps, is that a confusing sense of my own insufficiencies makes it hard for me to cast some final moral judgment on the Professor. I find it difficult to lay an eternal curse on her. There were parts of her then that I see all too well in myself. Not long ago, in fact, it even struck me—for the first time in thirty years—that the alacrity with which she cut me loose might be favorably construed. She knew, long before I did, that eternal bliss was not to be ours and that the sooner she left, the better. Yes, she administered the poison, but she also provided the antidote—distasteful as it was—with (arguably) a beneficial dispatch and aplomb.

  And for better or for worse I had my chance for outrage—sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s—and never took it up. It was the beginning of the Era of High Political Correctness and a lawyer from my old university called me. Some sort of sexual harassment charge had been lodged by a young female graduate student against the Professor. (I also got a pathetic e-mail, at some point, from the student herself.) As I recall, the complaint had somehow raised the possibility of a class-action suit—the legal office was, in any case, contacting former students, some from fifteen years or so earlier, believed to have had untoward romantic dealings with the Professor. Jo—still going strong, like a tugboat—had some part in the business, had taken the aggrieved student under her wing. Did I wish to make a statement?

  I said no: it had all happened—I remember sighing—such an unutterably long time ago. But I also recall telling the lawyer that I wouldn’t have felt entirely right doing so: I thought I had had my share in the imbroglio. Twenty-two years old might be young; but still, one had nonetheless been an adult. Yes, it had been a misfortune—but more like a car accident, I’d come to think, than being mugged. I may even have made some gay, Cole Porter–ish aside; that it was Just One of Those Things. The lawyer thanked me but said that she, for one, was sorry I felt that way. I never learned the upshot of it all.

  My decision not to squawk was no doubt due in some part to the fact that not long before the call from the lawyer, I had had a genuine comic catharsis—an altogether unexpected meeting with the Professor herself. I was attending a professional conference on the East Coast—a huge mind-numbing academic affair mounted every year after Christmas by a large scholarly organization to which I belonged. It was all the usual palaver: a bulbous cluster of convention hotels; doormen, taxis, and slush; plastic name tags, metastasizing panel discussions in so-called ballrooms, pompous “delegate” assemblies, alcohol-fueled crushes in various lobbies and elevators. Barf City: I was not enjoying myself. Trolling along one morning, however, through a drifting throng of rabbity academics—I was on the garish mezzanine level of one of the hotels—I was suddenly assailed, over all the hubbub, by the ear-shredding peal of a whistle. The whistle was one of those heavy-duty ones—the kind they give you if you are a Super Bowl referee—and someone was blowing on it forcefully, at regular screechy intervals. Alternating with every blast came a boomy cry, only slightly less loud: WHEELCHAIR! WHEELCHAIR! WHEELCHAIR!

  The crowd ahead of me then parted like the Red Sea—if one can imagine a Red Sea, that is, made up of hundr
eds of mostly unprepossessing individuals wearing tweedy jackets, sensible shoes, and carrying book bags from Barnes and Noble. And suddenly the Professor loomed up before me—wheelchair-bound indeed, barreling forward in my direction, and yelling and blasting on the whistle as she did so. People on both sides had to jump out of her path; some were getting their feet run over. A red-haired, somewhat sallow-looking lady in her fifties trailed along behind her—a bit half-heartedly, it seemed, as if to push, or at least guide, the chair. But the Professor was moving ahead under her own steam; in fact sported some fairly grubby white fingerless leather gloves—the sort worn by paraplegic marathoners—and every now and then would give a firm and masterful spin with her hand to one of the wheels.

  This juggernaut-like progress lurched to a halt, however, as soon as the Professor espied me. With a gasp and a clap and a deep shout of delight, she called out, Terry! Wow! What are you doing here? What a surprise! The woman with her, an unfriendly Slavic-looking lady who had once had a harelip, glowered at me suspiciously. She seemed to be some sort of lady’s companion; she was carrying the Professor’s briefcase and plastic bags full of what looked like Kentucky Fried Chicken leftovers. Perhaps they were boinking? The Professor, I noticed with a shock, no longer had her braid. (Damn it! That missing piece has gone missing again!) She now had a sort of bizarre, all-white, Barbara Bush-style flip. She looked happier, though, than I’d ever seen her before. What with the gloves and the whistle and all, life in the wheelchair obviously agreed with her.