Carrington Turns Culture Inside Out

Conley writes that Leonora Carrington "rebels against accepted social norms by turning them not only upside down... but literally inside out" (Conley 53). Having recently finished Carrington's Surrealist novel, The Hearing Trumpet, Conley's statement surely resonates as I sit back and reflect. Marian Leatherby's 92-year-old voice in the novel turns something inside out. Reading Carrington's novel feels more like an experience I may have had myself, or that I wanted to have, or that I dreamed up as a child. To endeavor Conley's approach to reading Carrington, I'd first take Conley's words very literally. She uses the turning of upside down and inside out to speak of social norms, as if the social normative is a thing with weight and that takes up space-- not just an abstract academic concept. Carrington, too, uses a thing--a whole planet-- to speak of a an abstract concept or a normative. And it does in fact get turned. The novel culminates when the earth turns on its axis. The north and south poles become the equator and vise versa, leading to a quasi apocalyptic ice-age or "cataclysm" (p. 182). After the earth gets turned, we really do see society turned inside out. Woman, having been the domestic figure or the inside people, are now going to thrive in this strange new place. "This is how the Goddess reclaimed her Holy Cup with an army of bees, wolves, seven old women, a postman, a Chinaman, a poet, an atom-driven Ark, and a warewoman. The Strangest army, perhaps, ever seen on this planet" (p. 198).

We also discover that the thriving capitalists and wealthy property owners (the Man being the early adopter of these particular perspectives) have actually maladapted up until the cataclysm due to having learn to be almost completely disconnected with the natural world. This seems to be the most obvious turning of inside out.

Another turning of inside out that Carrington achieves would be a new understanding of aging. Society's ergonomics tend to favor the young bodied. An older bodied person cannot conform to this discriminatory society, for and by the young-ish and strong (or will be once they get around to using their gym membership). Aged citizens are thus marginalized and considered inept. Society may then justify naming the aging-process as a deterioration of the body and conscience. The un-trustable, over-seven-and-under-seventy-people blame the elderly for being victims of the system, tucking them away in homes which only further marginalizes them. However, Carrington puts the insides of the elderly on the out side. Rather than hiding her diminished hearing with an ugly discrete hearing aid, Marian carries an enormous and beautiful "hearing trumpet" that serves the purpose of a modern hearing aid. Her hearing trumpet is a prized gift from her deep friendship with Carmella. "encrusted with silver and mother o'pearl motifs" (p. 3), the hearing trumpet is truly striking--not an aid by any means, because the narrator is not at all weak or vulnerable. Why should she take an aid if she was never hindered to begin with?

As for the conscience of the elderly, Carrington revisits and revises the relevance of an aged mind. Marian's personally is undeniably likable. By no means is her conscience deteriorating. She is imaginative and hilarious. She has deep friendships with Carmella and with animals. As a reader, Marian's description of life as an aged person sounds vaguely familiar to us, but her diction is totally shocking. She's not at all senile, as her family perceives and as we might expect of a 92-year old. Quite the contrary--she makes being old sound like a hell of a time. In addition to free-thinking and total quirkiness, Marian's life demands plenty of experience and wisdom. She must make the ultimate choice, to go up to meet the figure trapped in the tower or to venture into the unknown dark depths below. She choses the depths out of pure curiosity and without fear. She faces her destiny where she chooses to literally swallow her past. She achieves absolute liberation of self or ego after cooking and eating her former self in a pot of soup--an ironic inversion of a typical female activity. "If the old woman can't go to Lapland, then Lapland must come to the Old Woman" (p. 199). Marian obtains an ultimate state of mind where peace is innate, like a lotus flower turning inside out; once blooms, the light coming from its center--the light having always been there, hidden inside a little bud that eventually turns color and becomes petals of experience. The petals open, letting light through little by little until they wither, dry to their frail brown, and fall back into the earth, leaving only light. While happiness, with its transitory character, is something one must experiment with and beholds here and there throughout a lifetime; it's the feeling of peace which becomes the necessary goal of the heart when having to reconcile anxiety with joy. For Carrington, old age becomes the crucial requisite for the attainment of enlightenment and true, sustainable peace.