Jennie?
11 04 2007I have to say that I didn’t particularly like Portrait of Jennie. The book itself wasn’t especially well-written or captivating, and certain parts were even a little dull. I’m even a little skeptical when people call this book ‘romantic’ because it’s not really about romance at all. On the simplest level, it’s about being lost (and loss itself). Every character is lost, in one way or another, and most try to recover through Eben. So it’s about being lost, it’s about Eben, and it’s certainly not about his romance with Jennie.
Having said that, the concept is wonderful! And I’m willing to forgive quite a bit for a story idea as creative as this one. The idea that Jennie is slipping through time, through points in Eben’s life, at an entirely different pace than we expect, is great. This redefines the way we think about time and its linear progression. The fact that Eben is an artist was also especially appealing to me, though I do wish he’d laid off of the landscapes. Strangely enough, I feel like every character except for Eben was developed extremely well. The personalities of his friends are so spectacular that I wish I could meet them in real life.
As for Carmen’s idea that Jennie is just a figment of Eben’s imagination, although I immediately dismissed it at the time, I think we should give it a little more thought. Not because I believe its true, but because it’s interesting to look at in conjunction with the fact that Eben is the least developed character in the novel. Each other character is fully drawn in for us, while the only things we learn about Eben are what he chooses to tell us. Even his dialogue seems guarded, in a sense, in comparison to everyone else’s. Why aren’t we shown more about Eben? He is, after all, the main character. It could just be a product of the first-person narration, but if the author truly wanted to develop Eben further, it wouldn’t have been that difficult.
So I guess my final question, for now, is: “What aspect of Eben or his life does Jennie represent, regardless of whether she’s real or not?”
Maybe this is totally off the mark, but Jennie might represent God for Eben. A central theme in the novel seems to be that “sooner or later God asks His question: are you for me, or against me? And the artist must have some answer, or feel his heart break for what he cannot say”(2). Eben never really answers the question of his belief in God. But he does believe in Jennie. He says that “One must sometimes believe what one cannot understand” (60). Eben has faith in Jennie, even though he doesn’t know why, and has no proof of her existence. That sounds too much like God to me to be coincidence.
I think it’s interesting to note that Eben is almost Eden.
Jennie’s a muse, bemuses Eben. I think this story is more about art than anything else- she’s inspiration. Someone in class said that Jennie might be some sort of eternal feminine muse, and that’s my opinion too. She comes into Eben’s life, energizes it, then leaves it but she’s not really dead. Never was really alive.