Hard to believe, but I wrote the following for an English class November 2000. If anyone reads it, you’ll quickly realize the foolishness of higher education when it comes to the taking of required courses. I was 53 years old & hadn’t taken a class in 26 years and it shows.
Vanity vs. Common Sense
A Deconstructionist’s Peek at
“The Emperor’s New Clothes”
According to Barry, there are “three stages of the deconstructive process. The verbal, the, textual, and the linguistic” (74). This paper attempts to apply his theory of deconstruction to Hans Christian Andersen’s rather humorous tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Briefly, Andersen paints a picture of a vain emperor whose only concern is his wardrobe, and he shows us the foolishness that may result from such vanity. I hope to show my understanding, as I understand it, of the deconstructionist theory, and I sincerely hope I neither humiliate nor alienate the deconstructionist community as a result of my efforts.
To begin at the beginning is to examine the verbal stage “for paradoxes and contradictions” Barry (74) within the text. “Many years ago there was an Emperor who was so excessively fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on them” (Andersen 199). First of all, how many years constitute “many?” Many years to one person might mean ten, to another they might mean twenty, and to another, hundreds. Perhaps we should
agree on how many years are many and establish a timeframe upon which to hang our story. It might be helpful, therefore, to pinpoint location and through location establish a viable timeframe. Where does this emperor live? We know that he “cared nothing about his soldiers, nor for the theater, nor for driving in the woods” (Andersen, 201) so we can safely say that “many years ago” probably encompass a lot of time, for soldiers and theaters and woods have existed for thousands of years, but paradoxically, the emperor liked “driving in the woods” to show off his new clothes. For the sake of argument, if Andersen meant the emperor liked “driving” an automobile, “many years ago” jumps from antiquity in Europe to fairly recent times in Detroit. Thus, we can no more establish a true timeframe than we can a location because of the verbal paradox.
Secondly, in the question of paradox and contradiction, what does “excessively fond” mean? If we agree that “fond” means to care for something or someone, when does this emotion become “excessive” and develop a negative connotation? And who defines the terms? Would the emperor say he is “excessively fond” of new clothes, or would he merely say he is “fond” of them? Would he take offense at having his emotions viewed as “excessive?” Obviously, there is a contradiction between “fond” and “excessive.” If “fond” means something good, then putting “excessive” in front of it should make “fond” doubly good yet the reader is given the impression that “excessively fond” denotes something unsavory.
And finally, what does Andersen mean by “new?” He could mean that once the emperor wore a “new” costume it then became “old” and he was no longer fond of it. Or he could mean that the emperor was fond of “new” clothes until he purchased another set of them, thus making the former “new” clothes old and unappealing. How long does it take “new” clothes to become “old” and is this process based upon the physical wearing of them or merely upon their hanging in a particular place for an unspecified length of time? Perhaps “new” is a foreshadowing of “knew” meaning he “knew” the “new” clothes were not only not “new” clothes, they were no clothes at all. Fourteen words into the text we discover these unanswerable questions. I am convinced that if I continue a course of close reading, not only will this paper exceed the required four pages, in all probability, it will exceed 400.
The text says the emperor “spent all his money” (Andersen 199) on clothes. This is an example of contradiction for when one is emperor one gets “his money” from the people, thus spending his subject’s money, not his own, but assuming he has “spent all his money” how can he afford to pay “the two swindlers a lot of money in advance” if the first statement is true and he has already “spent all his money?” We cannot have it both ways. If one statement is true, it follows that the other is false. “For the deconstructionist, again, such moments are symptomatic of the way language doesn’t reflect or convey our world but constitutes a world of its own kind, a kind of virtual reality” (Barry 74).
When Andersen tells us the emperor prefers to “address problems of state” (Andersen 202) in his dressing room, he implies the emperor is unlike other rulers who conduct business in council chambers. We must inquire if the emperor’s brain ceases to function anywhere other than his dressing room. And what is a dressing room? If it is a room where one “undresses” or “dresses” then the emperor could be addressing problems of state as if they were of no consequence. He has no knowledge or awareness of the seriousness of state issues and believes they can be solved as easily as the ritual of being clothed or naked.
Paradoxes and contradictions abound in the verbal stage in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I have pointed out only a few examples from the first paragraph. In an effort to condense this assignment to less than 400 pages, I will now shift to the second or textual stage of deconstruction. According to Barry, “The ‘textual’ stage of the method moves beyond individual phrases and takes a more overall view….and the critic is looking for shifts or breaks in continuity….and omissions are important” (75).
In the second paragraph of the tale, we are told life was very gay in the great town where he lived. We are presented with an idyllic picture of life in this town with an emperor who has no greater problem than clothing. Then we’re introduced to two swindlers. Here we experience a shift in attitude. Instead of seeing the emperor as a harmless, albeit, a childish ruler, we now see him as a fool. His subjects force us to see him as a tyrant as well, to wit, “…I shall discover which men in my kingdom are unfitted for their posts. I shall distinguish the wise men from the fools” (Andersen 200). He becomes the greatest fool of all, for he puts his faith in the swindlers and believes their idea of cloth so beautiful it becomes “invisible to every person who was not fit for the office he held or who was impossibly dull” (200). What we’re not told is why these swindlers are not recognized as such and why nothing is done to remove them from the town. If it is as great as we’re supposed to believe, wouldn’t someone have questioned them? The mood shifts from carefree to sinister.
Barry tells us there may “…be shifts in focus…time, or tone, or point of view, or attitude, or pace, or vocabulary” (75). The focus shifts from the emperor to his new clothes. With the arrival of the two swindlers, the pace picks up, and the attitude changes from benevolence to distrust. The emperor’s faithful old minister resorts to lying when he cannot see the cloth for fear of being thought a fool. Common sense flees as each staff member and the entire populace desire not to appear foolish before the emperor or each other. The greatest shift occurs when the naked emperor parades down the street and a child insists the emperor has no clothes. The youngster is quickly hushed by his father who fears his son will appear a fool thereby making him one through parentage. Reality is thrust upon us by an innocent child who speaks the truth no one wants to hear.
Barry says, “The ‘linguistic’ stage involves looking for moments…when the adequacy of language itself as a medium of communication is called into question” (75). As already stated, an example of this appears in paragraph one when we are told the emperor spent all his money on clothes. If this is true, then it invalidates the remainder of the text for there are no funds with which to pay the swindlers and without pay there are no new clothes and without new clothes there is no story. In other words, there is no story beyond the first paragraph for Andersen killed it by saying the emperor spent all his money. The tale is deconstructed shortly after it’s begun. What remains is a meaningless jumble of words, of signifiers at war with the signified as Barry would say, explaining in the linguistic stage “…saying that something is unsayable; or saying that it is impossible to utter or describe something and then doing so” (76) is an example of calling the language into question which, ultimately, destroys the work because it “…cannot long survive the deconstructive pressures brought to bear upon it, and reveals itself as fractured, contradictory, and symptomatic of a cultural and linguistic malaise” (76-7).
When the swindlers say the cloth will become invisible to dull or unfit people, they breathe life into something that never existed, then immediately give an excuse for its non-existence while, simultaneously, arguing for its existence. We are caught in a web of deceit, a virtual maze of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages of contradiction. “…feelings professed…can be at odds with those expressed” Barry (77). The professed feelings, i.e., not wanting to appear a fool, are at odds with the expressed feelings exhibited by the emperor. Andersen forces the emperor to say, “The procession must go on now” (204), and, although he realizes the absurdity of his position, he continues with the charade, forcing his chamberlains to continue holding up the invisible train of the invisible clothes.
We have now come full circle. “…the text says the opposite of what it appeared to say initially” (Kneale 185). We arrive at aporia. We have an emperor whose “new clothes” have been with him since birth and who, too late, realizes they are the only set of clothes he needs for with the exposing of them in public he forever cancels his privilege or right to another costume, showing no remorse or shame for his foolish vanity but only his pride as he makes his way through town showing off his new clothes for all to envy and admire.
