We Are Only Ourselves

I remain intrigued by the woman in section II of "Audubon," and the statement that she "is what she is," in contrast with Audubon, who seems to be never content with himself as himself in the poem. In section IV, he begins to come to terms with the idea that "he was,/ In the end, himself and not what/ He had known he ought to be." And yet he is always aware of this "ought to be," this self he is trying to achieve, or perhaps "hunt down," throughout the poem. Again, in section IV, we get an image of the self as "the self that was, the self that is, and there,/ Far off but in range, completing that alignment, your fate" (and this self-in-process is seen "as though down a rifle barrel").

The woman in section II, on the other hand, is described from the start in terms that foreshadow her end. Her face "hangs," and her hands also "hang," from the moment Audubon enters the cabin. Later the woman's whole body "sways like a willow," much like it will sway from the trees after she is hanged.

As we noted in class, the woman also has a different relationship with time than does Audubon. She is denied the watch and its "magic," for reasons locked in the "secret order of the world." Whatever the reason, for her there is no time, and no God, it seems either. At least, God for her is not a promise of hope for any kind of redemption, but a seemingly malevolent cause for "folks" who are so often causes of suffering.

These strange qualities of this woman, which in the poem become strangely arousing to Audubon, seem to be reflected also in the source story for this section of the poem, "The Prairie." Audubon does not give much in the way of describing the woman in the cabin, but at the end of the story he alludes to her (and, presumably, her sons) as exceptional in two ways. The "inhabitants of the cabin," Audubon assures us, "were not Americans." Clearly, this is important for those Europeans considering a trip to America, or for proud Americans themselves to know about the quality of Americans - they are not the kind of people who would scheme to kill a tired traveller stopping by who happens to also have a nice watch. But, perhaps more importantly, Audubon seems to suggest that these cabin-dwellers were not truly human, either. "During upwards of twenty-five years," he writes, "this was the only time at which my life was in danger from my fellow creatures." These cabin-dwellers are not only un-American, but they are exceptional among humans, to the point of being, perhaps, inhuman. Perhaps they are animals.

This marking of the woman and her sons in "The Prairie" and the woman especially in "Audubon" as other than human does at least two things: it maintains the sense that humans are moral creatures, who do not kill (or scheme to kill) each other for their watches, and it excuses the act of killing done by Audubon and the two or three men ("The Prairie" and "Audubon" differ on this) who help save Audubon and the Indian in the cabin from the woman and her sons. Because the woman "is what she is," when she is hanged there is no question of morality. She was always already hanging. For her, for reasons unknown to any but the "secret order," time is not real, God is not real, and neither is any notion of "ought," of a self she is not now but is striving to be in the future. Her humanity, for whatever reason, is already gone, and thus her hanging is not an act of murder.

This is the overt argument of the two stories, at least. One might find in Audubon's insistence on these cabin "inhabitants" as un-American and even inhuman a little too much protesting. And reading "The Prairie" carefully, it is not clear that Audubon ever has a definite threat on his life -- he merely suspects that the woman and her sons are preparing to kill him. In the poem, the extended narration of the hanging in part K and Audubon's reflections and "tears" in part L lead one to question the justice of what has been done.

One might continue to ask why her humanity is gone (has something been done to her in the past?), or whether society's preoccupations with time, God, and self-perfection are essential indicators of "humanity." But it does seem that both "The Prairie" and "Audubon" work around, and perhaps also challenge (we do not have to accept the hangings in either version as justified, and there is cause for suspicion in both) these differences between human and animal, which excuse the hangings as just another case of humans destroying a non-human, monstrous threat. "Audubon" may in fact be critical of this human/animal distinction, as the title of the section immediately following the hanging emphasizes, in bold letters, "we are only ourselves."