The Turning of Wonder

Alicyn Murphy

In A Question of Class author Dorothy Allison describes her experience

growing up in perpetual poverty. She describes the sensation and meaning of entitlement,
which she describes first and foremost as a matter of feeling like we rather than they.
She says that she has always felt like they, without rights to thingsand much more
importantlyto respect. She identifies her lack of a sense of entitlement to a childhood
spent in poverty with a sexually abusive step-father as well as her queer identity and her
femme/butch sadomasochistic sexuality. A second distinct issue she addresses is her
decade-long attempt to hide her past so that she could fit into a middle-class lesbian
community that already had its problems with her.
This essay is especially valuable because of the way Allison approaches her
outsider status. She does not focus on the cultural value or fragility of masculinity, nor
her lack of representation within contemporary and historical languageshe instead has
experienced her struggles most profoundly via the vehicle of her class. But instead of
mounting well-worded tirades (which, Im sure, shed be quite capable of doing) against
capitalist systems, the media, or religion, she carries us into her world as observers. The
following principle is one that inspires both resistance and assent: Everything in our
culturebooks, television, movies, school, fashionis presented as if it is being seen by
one pair of eyes, shaped by one set of hands, heard by one pair of ears. Even if you know
you are not part of that imaginary creatureyou are still shaped by that hegemony, or
your resistance to it. To contend this point is to make oneself vulnerable on many
sidesseveral different social theories support that this normative and coercive practice
is how media is wielded against people who experience fear and materialism (a.k.a.
everyone). To accept this principle is to accept the pervasive reality of cultural
conditioning, the hive-mind that we actually arethis thought makes many Westerners,
raised on the ideal and morality of the individualvery uncomfortable. The next
principle I want to introduce is the myth of the noble poor. The content of fairy-tales
informs our interaction with our world to a much great degree than knowledge of

empirical data. The emotional drive found in all fairy-tales and present in the myth of the
noble poor is hard to acknowledge, let alone escape. Allison herself struggles against it,
which for me was probably the most remarkable part of the whole essay. It also speaks
volumes about the connection between the two principlesone is a product of another,
and both are a constant presence and challenge. However, unlike the overall conditioning
we face from the media, the myth of the noble poor is most hurtful to a certain group
the poor. The poor are damaged not only by witnessing the myth but also by being hated
for not fulfilling the myth.
I thought perhaps I would write about the problems of and necessity for
compartmentalization. However, as Allison moves past this word at the end of her essay
I too feel that more explicit language can be used. Allison cites that the horror of
prejudice is the fact that for some people, or perhaps many, it seems to be absolutely
necessary. These people come to believe that the security of their families and
communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there
must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal. For my own part I see a dead-end
herepeople absolutely must believe this. If we didnt, we wouldnt eat. Killing and
harvesting and cooking are violent acts, however, eating is an act of love. But would
eating another person be an act of love? Sexuallysure. Literally or financially, not so
much. When I suggest a sexual revolution as a balm for this problem I am only halfjoking. Sexuality that is not a function of powerconsider the valorization of
heterosexual marriage over homosexual marriage (in most states), the monetary benefits
that follow, or the social shame that young adults face for being inexperienced or too
experiencedbut is rather a wildly-diverse social expression or a valuable service whose
servers were protected by law (proper protection and organization for sex-workers) is
sexuality in a totally different context from the one we know. If respect and the
celebration that respect inspires were not restricted to those who behave a certain way,
normative discourses would not exist. But then, neither would the law, and those who
violate others humanities in the most obvious ways would go unpunished. On the other
hand, we know today that the law is ignored, that the law doesnt help everyone, and that
capitalism is a system that can swallow anything thrown its way. To bring this back
around to me, I was raised in a loving middle-class home and I have no history of abuse.

However, I feel irreparably damaged by the way sexuality has been talked about, or,
more often than not, not talked about in my life, in conjunction with the ugly images
conjured up by the various media I have inadvertently consumed over the years of my
life. I feel limited, I feel truncated, in every way.
Allison experiences an inability to share her history with her middle-class
girlfriend that manifests with all the uncompromising might of a brick wall. I felt very
critical of her when I read this. There is a lot to be said for trying. I have listened to
stories that I could not relate to directlyhave sought them out and dissolved myself in
them, simply letting them be. This is the worldessentially full of barriers. Only by
acknowledging and talking about those barriers can we even begin to conceive of a time
and place where information will be easier to pass, to share, and it might be possible to
relate to such loaded experiences. It seemed to me that Allison had trouble
communicating probably because she was so deeply entrenched in her own silence and
feeling of otherness.
Though I have already touched upon and quoted part of this passage, I feel
compelled to return to it:
The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people
begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends
on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be
others whose lives are truncated and brutal. It is a belief that dominates this
culture. It is what makes the poor whites of the South so determinedly racist
and the middle class so contemptuous of the poor. It is a myth that allows
some to imagine that they build their lives on the ruin of others, a secret core
of shame for the middle class, a goad and a spur to the marginal working
class, and cause enough for the homeless and poor to feel no constraints on
hatred or violence. The power of the myth is made even more apparent when
we examine how, within the lesbian and feminist communities where we have
addressed considerable attention to the politics of marginalization, there is still
so much exclusion and fear, so many of us who do not feel safe.
I find her use of the word horror very intriguing. I believe that horror and wonder are
dichotomoustwo sides of the same coin and at once the same thing completely. Horror
and wonder are two human responses to a new experience (in this case, a revelation about
classism). Sometimes we vacillate between the two, sometimes we start at one and end
up at the other. While horror and wonder seem to have the same surface-level physical
characterizesan opening of the senses, a quickening of the hearttheir psychological

consequences are very different. Horror inspires hallucinations, wonder inspires the
experiencer to new levels of receptivity. Horror is about preserving individual life;
wonder is about abandoning it. But what does this have to do with class?
Horror is a regulating power whereas wonder would seem to incite chaos,
abandon. Horror is the best way of containing wonder. To inspire horror (especially in a
clever way) is to ensurefor the most partcontrol. Horror effects both paralysis and
orderthese are necessary to maintaining a healthy community where everyone sleeps
soundly at night and gets up to go to work in the morning and goes out to spend money in
the evening. Exclusion and fear are not byproducts of a functioning community and
economy. They are integral parts of it. Likewise, fairy-tales repeated to us night after
night inform our emotional response and high-brow moralityhow we interact with the
world. And yet how many times have we been scoffed at with remarks like Things like
that only happen in fairy-tales? The mechanism that elicits real-life acts that hurt reallife people is hidden, submerged, invisible as privilege.