While we’ve discussed Gregor and his family a lot in class, we haven’t discussed the charwoman very much so I would like to explore her character a bit.
I didn’t know what a charwoman is so I looked it up. According to the OED a charwoman is “a woman hired by the day to do odd jobs of household work.”
The thing that stood out the most to me about the charwoman was the fact that she routinely directly addressed Gregor. From page 99: “At first she used to call him over to her as well, with words that were probably meant to be friendly, such as: ‘Come along, then, my old dung-beetle!’ or ‘Look at our old dung-beetle, now!’” The only other times anyone directly addresses Gregor in the book are before anybody knows that he’s transformed and when when his sister curses him with “You! Gregor!” It seemed weird to me that the charwoman, who may not have even been told that the insect Gregor used to be a human Gregor, treats Gregor more humanly than his family.
I don’t think that the charwoman talking to Gregor means she realizes that he has a human consciousness. People talk to all sorts of things that aren’t human like pets or even inanimate objects, but in doing so they’re still humanizing the object to some extent. The charwoman is more comfortable giving Gregor human qualities (the ability to understand speech) even if only in her imagination than Gregor’s family. Even though they have more reason to believe Gregor has human qualities since they know he was once human, they are not even open to the possibility.
I think the charwoman’s openness to Gregor’s possible consciousness is related to her class.
The charwoman is the Samsas’ servant and was hired specifically “to do the roughest work,” so she is lower class than them. Kafka repeatedly emphasizes that she is lower class than the Samsas. An example of this when she first sees Gregor: “This elderly widow, whose strong bony frame had no doubt helped her through the worst trials in the course of her long life, was not really repelled by Gregor.” (99). This description seems pretty superfluous since she was already introduced as “a huge bony charwoman with a mop of white hair” (96). The repeated emphasis on her boniness suggests that (unlike Gregor’s dad) she hasn’t been able to eat a lot of breakfast. The adjectives “strong” and “big” emphasize the fact that she does manual labor. The repeated mentions of her age suggest that she doesn’t have enough money to stop working and the mention of the “worst trials” of her life reminds readers that this woman has had a lot of trials. The fact that Kafka notes all of this right before saying she “was not really repelled by Gregor” suggests causality.
I’m not really sure why Kafka wanted to introduce a character who is pretty cool with a giant bug because she’s lower class. Maybe he wanted to emphasize the snobbiness of Gregor’s family’s reaction? What do you guys think?
I want to know what was so hilarious about the way she disposed of Gregor's corpse, which she's so eager to share with the family. (And when she's laughing, does she even *realize* it's their son she's talking about? We get no indication she does--as far as we know, they've just told her they have this giant insect living in their storage room.)
ReplyDeleteThere may well be a class dynamic at work here, though--just as she is hired to do "dirty work," there's the sense that the family can't deal with the "mess" that Gregor represents, and needs to hire someone to do the loathsome task (along with cleaning the toilets, etc.).
I really like this idea you've brought up! I've never really given any thought to the fact that the charwoman reacts to Gregor the bug differently than his family. I do think that class differences have something to do with the reactions the characters have on bug Gregor. Since the charwoman probably grew up in an environment where people had a different relationship with bugs, she could have a different attitude towards bugs in general. It's also interesting that since she didn't know Gregor as a human, her reaction to him was a lot more calm than the rest of his family.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you wrote a post about the charwoman because we really didn't get to talk about her in class that much. I like the point you brought up about her lower class leading to her treating Gregor more humanly. If she has been looked down upon because of her class, she might be less likely than the Samsas (who seem to be upper-middle class ish) to treat Gregor kindly.
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