Who/What does Eben love, exactly?
Posted by robyngiannini on April 16th, 2007
Before I get into the title of this blog, I want to just say that I do own one Thomas Kinkade painting that I received for my conformation, and I thought it was rather uncanny that Dr. Campbell mentioned that even Kinkade’s paintings express a certain “yearning;” because the quote below the painting that I have in my room at home says;
“As the deer yearns for the river, so yearns my soul for thee, oh Lord.”
Anyway. What we talked about in class today about Jennie being one and the same as the portrait of her and the fuzzy line between the representation of Jennie and the actual Jennie reminded me distinctly of The Oval Portrait by Poe. As an artist paints a young woman in this story, the clearer the painting gets, the less alive the girl appears, until when the artist finally produces the perfect painting representation of the girl–she is dead. Jennie is certainly hazy enough to begin with–and after the painting of her is complete she basically vanishes from Eben’s life. Her existence as a painting is more important to Eben then her existence as a person.
Does Eben love Jennie as a person, or as a subject for his painting? At first glace, one might think that Eben loves Jennie herself. However, all Eben ever thinks about is Jennie in relation to art. The first thing Eben does after meeting Jennie is to sketch her. Then he waits around for her to come back so he can do a portrait of her. When she arrives in his apartment, he cuts the small talk to an absolute minimum, saying, ”well–I’ve been waiting for you. We’d better begin” (61). Jennie is excited and bouncing around and having a grand old time and Eben doesn’t care at all. When she is trying to talk to him during their lunch break, he gets grumpy at her and says, “But we’ve got work to do, and if you’ve finished with that last bit of milk, we might begin” (64). He hurts her feelings and cuts her down to the point where she just concludes, “I won’t talk any more” (65). Eben was “too busy to try to explain; and besides, it did the picture good” (65).
When Eben is finished with the painting, Jennie does not respond to him and seems to be asleep. Instead of being concerned, Eben goes down the hall to “freshen up.” When he returns, of course Jennie is gone.
And who can blame her? Is that the treatment one is supposed to expect from a “soul mate” that everyone seems so convinced that they are? It sounds horrible to me. Eben cares about his art–not Jennie. Jennie is a tool, an inspiration for his own artwork. He uses her and then he’s finished with her. He is left to worship a painting, a mere representation of Jennie. Or maybe the painting is Jennie, maybe that’s all Jennie ever was. I hope for Jennie’s sake that she is a mere creation of Eben’s imagination, because if she’s really his soul mate, it would really suck to have such a self-absorbed cold indifferent soul mate like Eben.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
“It would be a long time until Jennie came back to me. Not until we could be together always, she had said. A long summer…Hurry, I said to her, in my heart.” - pg. 96
If he loves her only in his art, why does he plead for her return, since he has already finished painting her? I would argue that he loves her BECAUSE she has ignited his love for art, not that he loves one & not the other. It seems to me they are interconnected. I wouldn’t take this relationship for being parasitic in the least, seems too easy.
April 16th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
That is uncanny, Robyn. I think that yearning is a basic human right.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Dang, in 2 sentences Dr. Campbell managed to sound way more insightful than I did with twice that many.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Perhaps I was initially too harsh on Eben, Brad. I know that his art and their love are connected…but it seems to me that during his painting of her portrait, in Chapter 10 (starting on p 60) Eben cares much more about the painting than he does Jennie. It just bothered me–I thought it caused Eben to lose the credibility of his love. I want Jennie to come first for him.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
And sorry, I forgot to put in page numbers. That must have been annoying.
April 17th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
@Brad: Naah, don’t believe it.
@Robyn: Art vs. life vs. love vs. time. That’s a four-way struggle worth thinking about–just as you are.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Can I get a “vs. God” in there? I still say God’s got a bigger part in this than anyone’s willing to talk a lot about. I guess my own blog’s the best place for that…
April 17th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Robyn, it sounds like you’re saying that Eben sucks the life out of Jennie. He uses her to be inspired and create his masterpiece. Sounds like a selfish artist to me. And Brad, as for the God thing, I believe he plays a huge part in the story. If you believe in God then you have to believe that he knew what was best for them. He must have had a plan for them to be together later. However, I believe that they were not soulmates or God would have kept them together. I’m not entirely sure that Jennie ever existed. Oh, how I hate circling back around to that.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
God kept them apart because they WERE soulmates. God tests Man in life.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Carmen and Brad–okay, you both keep making references to how God is part of the story. But you’re not specifying how, exactly. And God kept them apart because they were soulmates? But that’s not testing man–testing man is keeping soul mates on different continents so they have to struggle to find each other. You’re saying God put them in another time? Elaborate. I’m curious/dubious.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
But don’t you see?
God IS keeping them apart from each other, only they can only find each other after they die…these are soulmates, tied together by love for eternity. That includes the afterlife, perhaps the most important part of eternity anyway. Time is only an instrument of God in the story; its importance is only relevant to the will of God. The Divine Plan of the soulmate…the power of true love, willed by God, struggled by Man.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I…don’t buy it. Any of it. But I don’t know how to argue speculation, because we can argue whether or not soul mates The Divine Plan forever and we have no proof of whether or not that’s what Nathan meant, and that’s what’s happening in the story. But, for the record–I think you’re looking for an easy answer to a much more complicated situation.
April 18th, 2007 at 6:26 am
I think my answer complicates the situation more, personally, because once you start putting God into the mix you throw in all sorts of religious implications & you start automatically looking for Christ imagery (of which I can find none…maybe when Eben is revived in the end? That’s lame, tho, I won’t take that bait). When I can get my head straight on the issue, I’ll blog about it myself. As for now, I’m pretty confused about why this book matters at all.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:33 am
When you believe in God you take some things on faith. That’s the part you have to ‘buy’. Faith is God’s divine commodity. Even Eben’s (Eden) name is suggestive of God’s work. Jennie and Eben aren’t together because their not meant to be. If they were then they would have been together. They acted as God intended them to. That is, Eben painted his masterpiece and found his art. We don’t know what happened to Jennie after. Heck, we don’t know what happened to Eben after that. I think what troubles mankind is that we do not know everything. We are not in control. The ego is sacrificed for the unknown.
As I think about these issues I find myself going deeper and deeper into my faith in ways I hadn’t intended. I do not mean to sound preachy, but it’s really hard to separate my faith and beliefs from what I perceive is going on in this book. I’m really struggling with all of this.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
[...] I think that those two posts go hand in hand with what Robyn had to say about Jennie. Robyn boldly states that Jennie’s “existence as a painting is more important to Eben then her existence as a person.” This leads us to ask the question, which consequently is also the title of the blog post, who/what does Eben love exactly? Although I have extensively discussed this, I don’t feel anywhere near ready to pass judgment definitively for either Scotty or Eben. I’m not sure exactly what or who it is they love. Perhaps they do love the person they obsess over, but then again it could be an aspect of that person, or something that person embodies, or what they have created from that person, or the past… the list goes on and on. [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 11:11 am
[...] I think that those two posts go hand in hand with what Robyn had to say about Jennie. Robyn boldly states that Jennie’s “existence as a painting is more important to Eben then her existence as a person.” This leads us to ask the question, which consequently is also the title of the blog post, who/what does Eben love exactly? Although I have extensively discussed this, I don’t feel anywhere near ready to pass judgment definitively for either Scotty or Eben. I’m not sure exactly what or who it is they love. Perhaps they do love the person they obsess over, but then again it could be an aspect of that person, or something that person embodies, or what they have created from that person, or the past… the list goes on and on. [...]