Identity in Thomas De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

 

Throughout the novel Confessions of an English Opium- Eater, by Thomas De Quincy, the speaker tries to “essentialize” (Lowe 1040) his identity by using negative relations of difference to what a “proper” Englishman should be and also to what an Englishman is not. Proper Englishmen are not opium eaters, and he tries to justify himself as a proper Englishman through his confessions. His attempts are problematic on many levels as the articles by Ian Lopez, Lisa Lowe, and Shelley Fishkin make clear that identity in terms of race and social class is constantly fluctuating and can never be fixed. Primarily, the fact that he is an English opium eater shows that he is a hybrid or heterogeneous Englishman (Lowe 1035). Thus, the speaker is inherently not a proper Englishman. Even though he tries to prove how his opium use is better than the Malay’s he is inherently a fragmented Englishman who practices an improper act of opium consumption. Secondly, his attempts to “essentialize” his identity fails because he has a fluctuating and fluid identity based on negative relations of difference with proper Englishness, Ann and the Malay. These negative relations of difference show that his identity is changing in relation to each new signifier he is associated with, the Malay or Ann or proper Englishmen. Crucially, these negative relations of difference change in themselves as well because they are all based on “socially constructed” fluid identities: social class and race (Lopez 968). Even while attempting to show how he is a better Englishman because he helps Ann, the prostitute, and how his use of opium is better than the Malay’s he is still different and heterogeneous from other proper Englishman. Finally, while redefining his identity through his own relations with Ann and the Malay and English society he shows that his ideal identity of a proper Englishness is a socially constructed and fabricated identity. He was after all a proper Englishman who has now added and subtracted many things to this identity to create a new proper Englishness. The text exemplifies how identity can never be fixed in the Lacanian symbolic order, where signifiers change in relation to other signifiers and also shows the dialectic between Englishness, what is not Englishness, and the speaker as a subject that incorporates non Englishness to create new Englishness.  He never becomes the “proper Englishness” he idealized because it does not exist and it is fiction (Fishkin 981) and he instead becomes a new hybrid Englishman.

            The speaker’s attempt to “essentialize” his identity is one of the single most important problems in his confessional showing that he has no fixed identity at all, and that no one else does either. “Essentialize” is a key term here from Lisa Lowe’s article: “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” In the article, Lowe discusses how there is a “struggle between the desire to essentialize ethnic identity and the fundamental condition of heterogeneous difference against which such a desire is spoken” (Lowe 1040). There is a struggle between a fixed ethnic, or class/gender identity and the real conditions of varieties which actually exist. In the speaker’s struggle to make an identity for himself as a proper Englishman he actually shows how he is that exact “heterogeneous difference” which he is fighting against in order to “essentialize” himself. In addition, to essentialize oneself or another fixes an exact and unchangeable identity on the subject which is not the case for the speaker. At the beginning of the novel, the speaker describes himself as an intelligent and well educated young man. He could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment and also says that he has not met anyone with his superior talent for Greek (De Quincy 56). His gift was so great that one of his masters said that he “could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one” (De Quincy 56). He adds this description of his earlier days to establish his superiority of Greek as well as to fix him as a superior Western Englishman, which we as the reader should remember when reading about his opium habits and remember that he was “proper” at one point. However, he knew Greek so well that he had to escape the school and his masters because he knew it better than they did (De Quincy 57). Thus, even here while establishing himself as an extremely cultured Greek speaking Englishman, he is a hybrid, or a “heterogeneous difference.” He is a “hybrid” here because as an Englishman he knows Greek just as well as English, if not better, and thus this difference within him, which is concealed under his ethnic identity, is what makes him a “hybrid” Englishman from the outset (Lowe 1045). He sees that he does not belong in the school and is wasting his time being taught by his inadequate masters.

And so begins the speaker’s adventures outside the school as a transient living on the streets of London. This transient lifestyle is also not in accord with a proper Englishman.  Those who do not live on the street are what “is normal and proper,” yet this status is also a construct because it needs a negative relation of difference to people who do live in the street, like the speaker now does. Therefore, again here he becomes an “other” type of Englishman which in itself shows that there are a limitless amount of possibilities to what an Englishman can be, which is what Ian F. Haney Lopez addresses in his article: “Social Construction of Race.” His main argument is that race is plastic, inconstant and also to some degree volitional and that race definitions change through time (Lopez 967). This describes the speaker’s identity at this point in the novel as he makes a choice to become a transient rather than stay in school under his masters and shows how the identity of an Englishman is not fixed and constant but changeable. It is also shows that identity is definitely not “essential” because here it changes drastically as he becomes an Englishman of lower economic class, a drastic change from before.               

By living on the streets, the speaker also “deconstructs and rearticulates whiteness” which is what Shelley Fishkin addresses in her article “Interrogating Whiteness.” Here, “whiteness” would correlate to the ideal proper Englishman that the speaker tries to live up to, as “whiteness” is used in her article as the identity from which otherness is fabricated for non whites in America. As a transient, he becomes the “other” and is not a “proper Englishman” anymore. However, that is not what the speaker thinks. Regardless of his social standing, he still believes he is a “proper Englishman” and tries all along to prove that he is this ideal image. Primarily, when he stays at a high class lady’s home connected to the Bishop, he is stunned and offended when there are rumors that he is a “swindler” (De Quincy 63). The speaker, although not a swindler, is living on the streets on the hospitality of good men and yet wants to prove his Englishness by wishing to show off his knowledge of Greek to the Bishop and to show the Bishop that at least he is “a far better Grecian” (De Quincy 64). This scene is significant because it shows on many levels how no identity in the symbolic order can be fixed and how power may be passed back and forth. He is not as proper as the Bishop, yet he is superior in some way as a different kind of Englishman. The speaker here “disrupts the hegemonic relationships” (Lowe 1035) between what a proper and improper Englishman is while also “rearticulating” what Englishness is and deconstructing the hierarchy between the ideal proper Englishness and his Englishness which the speaker feels is still superior in some way.

He further “rearticulates” Englishness in his relationship with Ann. He admits that while living on the streets he met many women who were not proper and that he had no “shame” in liking them (De Quincy 70). One woman he grows to love is Ann, and he says that he is “also a street walker” like her so he is not afraid of having a relationship with her (De Quincy 71). He rearticulates while at the same time constructs an identity for Ann, in order to show that he is a proper Englishman; that he does in fact measure up. First, he explains that ever since his childhood he talked with everybody no matter what shape or station they had in life (De Quincy 70). Thus, his good nature strikes a blow to what proper Englishness would not allow, in the interaction between people of higher class and lower class, especially with prostitutes like Ann. Secondly, he constructs Ann herself to be more than just a lowly prostitute. He likes Ann so much that he says: “let me not class thee, oh noble minded Ann” (De Quincy 71) showing that even among the lowest class, there is a hybridity in identity. Ann is so noble that she even saves the speaker’s life as he becomes ill from malnourishment (De Quincy 72). And she does so without wanting anything in return. Thus, the speaker paints a varying picture of what proper Englishness actually is, where benevolence can be found even in the lowest of social classes. He also describes London as a whole as a “cruel, harsh and repulsive” society that lets the poverty stricken like Ann, and now him, die in the street (De Quincy 71). This description serves to both question how proper those in high society can be if they accept and do nothing to stop the poverty around them while also reminding the readers how the speaker is proper because he is helping Ann and not taking advantage of her. To further show that the speaker is part of a higher society we can also consider the letters he kept which show his acquaintance with Earls, Lords, and the Marquis (De Quincy 75). He is in fact “confidential” friends with the Earl and even friends with the Marquis who “retained an affection for classical studies, and for youthful scholars” like the speaker (De Quincy, 76).Thus, he rearticulates what a proper Englishman is because he himself is of a higher class than Ann but now finds himself equal to her. The speaker is also “re-centering the ‘others’ upon whose existence the notion of whiteness depends,” “whiteness” here meaning proper Englishness (Fishkin 982). While trying to justify how he is a proper Englishman, he instead shows how he is not a typical proper Englishman, but a hybrid, and thus changes Ann’s position as well. If proper Englishness is a fabrication that the speaker shows can change, then Ann as a “noble minded” and “benevolent” prostitute can also be a proper Englishwoman who saved his life. The differences begin to fall apart in this negative relation of difference when it becomes clear that race, as well as gender and class relations, is socially fabricated (Lopez 969) and there is no stable and fixed proper Englishness.

Race, other than Englishness (“whiteness”), also comes into focus with the introduction of the Asian man, the Malay. Here, the distinction of his opium use is also made clear, besides when explained earlier in the novel that he used it to exalt his experience at the Opera, to intensify his discussions with the poor, and also to combat his stomach pains. In this section the speaker is older and long graduated from university and living in the mountains, eating opium. So it is interesting that as an older English man who lives in the mountains and eats opium he still distinguishes himself as better than the Malay and still holds himself up to the ideal of a proper Englishman even though by this point that ideal is shown to be entirely unstable, inconstant, and fabricated. Nonetheless, he gives the Malay a large portion of opium because he believes that as a Malay, from the Orient, he should be used to such large quantities and he says: “I became convinced that he was used to opium” (De Quincy108). The speaker here is again constructing an identity and showing how it is supposedly normal for the Malay’s culture to consume large portions of opium. At the same time, he uses the negative relation of difference to this Malay to show how his opium use is more proper because he does not take such large quantities. However, he is fighting against a fabrication that assumes an authority by which otherness is based yet he already showed that there is no such thing as proper Englishness except as a social construction.

Furthermore, he grows anxious over the Malay “but as [he] never heard of any Malay being found dead” (De Quincy 108) he relaxes. However, this anxiety never went away as the speaker sees frightful images of the Malay and multiplications of many Malays in his dreams (De Quincy 109). These images in his dreams are based off of what the speaker says is the “anxiety” that the speaker connected with the image of the Malay for days (De Quincy 109). His dreams also show Malays “running a-muck” and creating frantic scenes of excess and havoc because they have taken opium. These descriptions are significant because the speaker creates huge dichotomies between himself, an Englishman, and the Malay. He contrasts his opium use against the crazy opium use of the Malay, which is how Lopez says that ethnic identity is created: it is “constructed against one another rather than in isolation” (Lopez 969). The speaker uses the Malay to construct his opium use as more proper and to justify himself as an “English opium eater” rather than just an opium eater. However, it was also the speaker’s own volition to give the Malay opium out of “compassion for his solitary life” (De Quincy 108). It is significant that the speaker feels compassion for the Malay’s solitary life. “Compassion” in the OED denotes a feeling of profound understanding usually produced from knowing the suffering of another, or participation within that same suffering. Therefore, how dichotomous are the speaker and the Malay when he gives him the opium out of compassion. It was the speaker’s initial compassion, similar to his initial compassion with Ann, which rearticulates proper Englishness and Englishness versus otherness. Understanding the Malay’s “solitary life”, because he too was a transient on the road, the speaker shows that there are qualities of otherness within Englishness and therefore there are limitless amounts of hybrid identities which exist under labels of race or ethnicity. Culture here is worked out between the Malay and the speaker, showing how identity is actively constructed and always fluctuating.

The speaker himself, perhaps without knowing, hits upon the error of fixing and essentializing identity early in his youth when he says: “So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expressions of men’s natures, that to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded-the vast and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to meager outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds” (De Quincy 78). The speaker explains the exact hybridity and multiplicity of identity which actually exists in people, in this case Englishmen, and the constructs of class (race) and “manner” which hide those infinite varieties. Without knowing it he is also talking about himself. And although he struggles throughout the novel to prove that he is a proper Englishmen, the speaker shows how it is impossible to fix an identity within a symbolic order like society which tries to pin people down by race and class. Race and class are ultimately fluid signifiers and constructed fabrications which claim to be “proper” yet need otherness to define them. The speaker further deconstructs this otherness by himself becoming an “other” Englishman which shows that there is more than a binary of proper English and not English. He can be an “English Opium Eater” which is a hybrid of both Englishness and opium eaters.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

 

            De Quincy, Thomas. Confessions of An English Opium Eater. Ed. Faflak, Joel. Canada:                            Broadview Editions, 2009. 50-131. Print.

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. “Interrogating Whiteness.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.                             Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.                              975-987. Print.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud.”

Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 447-461. Print.

Lopez, Ian F. Haney. “The Social Construction of Race.” Literary Theory: An Anthology.              Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing,    2004. 964-975. Print.

Lowe, Lisa. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American       Differences.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Michael                       Ryan. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1031-1051. Print.