English
2420
Dr. Chappell
May 24, 1994
Thesis and
Outline:
Thesis: In his picturesque short story, "The
Naked Nude", Bernard Malamud uses the female characters to develop, enact,
and resolve Fidelman's epiphany and to bring about the protagonist's final,
artistic self-understanding.
I.
Introductory paragraph--statement of thesis.
II. The
prostitutes
A.
in contrast to Fidelman's initial idea of the artistic nude
B.
"maybe too many naked women around made it impossible to
draw a nude"--establish basis
of conflict within Fidelman
III. Teresa
A.
flat, static character--functions totally as a touchstone for
Fidelman
B.
provides Fidelman's first turn towards artistic epiphany
IV.
Bessie, his sister
A.
childhood memory brings about full epiphany
V.
Venus of Urbino
A.
aesthetic constant--she, as a painting, remains static
B.
Fidelman's method of viewing her evolves, providing his
epiphany
VI.
Relationship of female characters
VII. Conclusion and restatement of thesis.
McBee 1
The Elusive
Form:
Female Characters
in "Naked Nude"
Bernard Malamud, a leading contemporary Jewish
author, skirts between fantasy and reality in his almost allegorical short
fiction, teaching the reader a lesson through coinciding elements of beauty and
comedy. Venturing away from his usual,
inner-city Jewish element, Malamud tackles new challenges of subject and
setting in his novelistic collection of short stories, Pictures of Fidelman
. Malamud develops his protagonist
through a series of six, interrelated short works, each of which may function
entirely independent from the others. In
"The Naked Nude," for instance, Fidelman comes to a new, artistic
maturity through his attempt to copy the famous painting "Venus of
Urbino" by Titian Tiziano.
Malamud's recurring theme of self-knowledge through suffering permeates
this short work. Scarpio and Angelo, as
primary antagonists, provide the bulk of this suffering for Fidelman. It is his own mental captivity concerning the
female nude, however, that gives cause for Fidelman's eventual epiphany as an
artist and as an individual. His
relationship to the women in the work shapes his ability to capture the
form of the "Venus" and to
come to grips with his own self-worth.
In "The Naked Nude," Bernard Malamud uses the female characters
to develop, enact, and resolve Fidelman's epiphany and to bring about the
protagonist's final, artistic self understanding.
At the story's outset, Fidelman is forced to
act as janitor and manservant to a group of ill mannered prostitutes under the
employment of the padrone, Angelo. These
offensive characters establish the first of a series of mental obstacles in the
imprisoned protagonist's attempt to copy Titian's nude. They
torment Fidelman with cynical laughter and exploit his demeaning position. His sexual insecurity is established at the
beginning of the story when he ponders his violent guillotine sketch, asking
"A man's head or his sex?...either case a terrible wound" (Malamud
McBee 2
318). The limited omniscient narrator, revealing
Fidelman's thoughts and feelings, also suggests that he could gain "no
inspiration from whores," and that
"maybe too many naked women around made it impossible to draw a nude"
(Malamud 325). This illustrates Fidelman's early
accreditation of his artistic impotency to desensitization. He soon recognizes, however, that the way in
which he views the "Venus" also interrupts his progress. In his effort to dissociate the portrayed
goddess from the distasteful prostitutes, Fidelman doesn't see the true nature
of her physical beauty. He sees only her
"extraordinary flesh that can turn body into spirit" (Malamud 323).
Any natural physical beauty present in the prostitutes escapes the
copyist, as he embraces form over fact and the inherent spirit over the actual
body.
Teresa, the "asthmatic, hairy-legged
chambermaid" (Malamud 319),
provides Fidelman's first turn towards artistic self-awareness and towards
capturing the elusive "Venus of Urbino." She is a flat, static character, functioning
solely as a touchstone for Fidelman to compare the naked and the nude. After fudging his first attempt to enhance
her form, he "consider(s) her with half open eyes" (Malamud 326).
After having her don one of the prostitute's slips, "Fidelman, with
a lump in his throat, (gets) her to lie down with him on a dusty mattress in
the room" (326). Her blatant
nakedness hidden, Fidelman finds a conceptual beauty in the dull
chambermaid. This leads to an
uncontrollable lust. Instead of viewing
her physical body to embrace a pure, aesthetic form, he covers her, viewing his
imagination's pure feminine form and embracing her physical body. At this point in the story the protagonist
and the reader get an idea of his previous artistic misconception.
It is the erotic memory of his sister Bessie,
however, that brings Fidelman's epiphany full circle. He relieves a childhood memory in a dream in
which he watches her bathe, and the next day he is able to assimilate all of
the nudes he has
McBee 3
ever seen to
recreate "Venus" in actual flesh-and-bone. He is faced with the realization that
"love is often most real when it is most perverse" (Helterman,
84).
He had caught the figure of the Venus but when
it came to her flesh
he never thought he would make it. As he painted he seemed to
remember every nude he had ever done...in every
conceivable shape
or position...at the same time choked by
remembered lust for all the
women he had ever desired, from Bessie to
Annamaria Oliovino, and
for their garters, underpants, slips, brassiers
and stockings. (Malamud
329)
This somewhat
perverse, revived lust for his sister opens a new door for Fidelman. He is able to deal with his guilt. The nude form is realized rather than
idealized. He uses the total sum of his
past lust to create, abandoning his former idealistic, Platonic approach.
In the beginning of the story, Titian's
"Venus of Urbino" is elusively enigmatic for the distraught
protagonist. He falls in love with her
in the Isola Bella castello:
The golden brown-haired Venus, a woman of the
real world, lay on
her couch..., her nude body her truest
accomplishment. 'I would
have painted somebody in bed with her,' Scarpio
said. 'Shut up,'
said Fidelman.
Scarpio, hurt, left the gallery.
Fidelman, alone with
Venus, worshiped the painting. (Malamud
322)
This scene offers
some interesting hints. Her position on
a couch, for instance, marks Titian's "Venus" as an obvious departure
from the wispy, spiritual Venus floating in on her pink shell in Botticelli's
"Birth of Venus." Titian's is
an earth-bound Venus: natural, fleshy,
and almost plump. Scarpio's crude
comment becomes a kind of foreshadowing irony, suggesting a physical
recognition of the
feminine form
presented. Fidelman cannot give in to
his aesthetic love of the "Venus" until he recognizes her on this
natural plain and abandons his childhood guilt.
McBee 4
His completion of the copy, many critics argue,
marks the protagonist's assimilation of both love and lust, filling a void in his life. Edward A. Abramson explains that
"copying Titian's masterpiece becomes not so much a quasi-artistic
exercise as an attempt to fill a gap in his love starved life" (Abramson 83).
In turn, Fidelman recognizes himself as an artist through the work. Christof Wegelin suggests this notion:
The nude he paints is "naked," as the
title of the story proclaims,
because it represents his own life,
himself: 'The Venus of Urbino,
c'est moi!'
The liberation of the creative flow initiates the liberation
of the man.... For by choosing his own creation
he has chosen him-
self.
(Wegelin 144-5)
Fidelman
experiences a fulfilling epiphany through his Venus, and it results in a
fulfilled love.
Notably, some critics have emphasized the negative
aspects of Fidelman's "epiphany." Robert Ducharme, for instance,
insists that "it should be remembered that Fidelman's theft of his own
work has been motivated by self-love as much as anything" (Ducharme, 174). It is true that Fidelman assumes a sort-of
selfish arrogance at the work's conclusion.
This view, however, is derived from the story's position within the
larger collection, Pictures of Fidelman .
The other stories seem to gravitate around a contrasting set of
themes. In its own context, however,
"Naked Nude" suggests that self-love is a
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