. Spinning .

I’m determined to finish this novel today and then maybe take a break from reading.

It seems that there is much that Abbott gives the reader to consider though the symbolism in his written world can mostly relate rather obviously.  There are a few questions in this reader’s mind however that point to less evident trails and this is where I always wonder whether the author was clever enough to consider them or whether indeed, a student of Barthes just steamrolls his own way through.

As our two-dimensional Square first comes upon Lineland, his confusion is clear:

It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch–as he called himself–was persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom, and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of his world, and indeed the whole of Space. (p. 45)

The people here are all lines, standing in a straight line end to end with the Monarch at its center, therefore, even with an eye at each end, he sees only a point in each direction.  Also, these folks don’t move–except for sex and that’s another oddity (I’m sure that’s one thought that most readers have wondered about even in dual dimensionality from page 1:  how do they, you know, do it?).

What then does this limited view of the world represent?  And yet they seem to know each other well–if no one and nothing outside of this line.  They depend upon voice, which would make sense, since if they cannot move out of formation (there being in their minds no existence of space left or right).  To procreate, once a week they shimmy in place and raise their voices until a male finds two females in harmony and the trio consummates the marriage in the sound.

So what is the importance of sound in this land?  The humming or Peace Cry was something Flatland females were required to make as a means of protecting other forms (male) by warning them of their proximity.  That, together with a wavering of their needle-sharp rear ends kept the world safe–unless a devious Woman felt particularly nasty, being loaded with emotion and little sense.

The forms take on a question of their own.  My first thought would have been that the straight line represented the male and the circle the female.  But then, I live in a seventeen-dimensional world. 

This concept may be very familiar to mathematicians but to me it was a flash:

Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemd a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large number of small sides.  As the number of sides increases, a Polygon approximates to a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three to four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. (p. 35)

I love it.  As each generation gains an angle (or more) more than their father–since mom is a needle-ended line only–the additional sides, now shortened and of higher degrees, would eventually round out to a circle, the highest form of Flatlander.  What I see here as well is the hidden true nature of the ones in power, appearance being not only false, but very alike each other without close inspection.

This I don’t love so much, but understand that it was a comment on not the women so much as the patronizing mindset of the men of the Victorian era:

About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but Abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education.  (p. 39)

Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their sex and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devotedly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken of–by all except the very young–as being little better than "mindless organisms." (p. 40)

By the way, the improper use of punctuation is as it appears in my book–not of my own doing.

I do wonder how this book was taken at the time of its printing.  Did men recognize themselves as the pompous pricks referred to in the novel?  Did women, many of whom did recognize their state as demeaning yet saw the trade-off in being taken care of and full measure of control over their households, see this as satire?

Did they wish to have the Flatland woman’s ass of a deadly needle?

If a man with a Triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life?  (p. 24)

None but the perfect need be.  Survival of the fittest.  Genocide.

The concept of this story is phenomenal because it is based upon a simple premise of figures and angles, the whole being personfied into Flatland and its inhabitants.  I would of course love most to know how this idea came to Abbott, and how he approached it in to come up with the narrative structure here.

Another thing: the detail, the foreshadowing of conflict, the world that Abbott has created is well carried out and yet…I’m not involved.  The writing is fine.  There is humor and there is social statement and it is well presented.

There’s some great stuff here but why has nothing hit me aside from the concept?

Gender, sure, but what’s the difference when the physical difference is so surely the reason in Flatland:

To my readers in Spaceland, the condition of our Women may seem truly deplorable, and so indeed it is.  A Male of the lowest type of the Isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste; but no Woman can entertain such hopes for her sex.  "Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem suspended in her disfavor.  Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland.  (p. 14)

Abbott is of course hyperbolizing the condition of women’s status in society at his time of the late 1800s and yet there seems to be a poke at religion here as well.  What is the real reference for "wise Prearrangement" when seen as a plan to keep women in their place?  Does the "necessity of their existence" refer to bearing the mark of original sin? 

There’s more than human rights at the core of story here.  Even as one reads this over a century later there is a twinge in this woman’s non-feminist mind of rebellion and so I must wonder what the women–if they’d read it–of Abbott’s time would think?  Did they, as I, swallow back the gall of memory and laugh?  A polite titter perhaps?

I doubt it.