Sensibility, Virginity, Possession and the Polity of Power: A Postcolonial Reading of Fleda’s Quest of Aesthetic and Ethical Autonomy in The Spoils of Poynton

Abstract

I argue that Fleda Vetch’s more and more assuredly disinterested appreciation of beauty endows her with an aesthetic-ethical freedom lacking in Mona and Mrs. Brigstock and Owen and Mrs. Gereth, all prisoners of their own self-interest, from which Fleda manages finally to wrest only Owen. Immanuel Kant’s opposition of interest to disinterest illuminates the disparate subjectivity of these characters just as Edward W. Said’s idea of interest illuminates their clashing possessive and hegemonic agendas, accounting for their aesthetic and ethical judgments in relation to every dimension of human experience, sexual, social, political, economic, historical, and cultural. Fleda’s final freedom is undiminished by the destruction of Poynton’s treasures and her renunciation of Poynton’s owner, Owen. Whereas Tina burns Aspern’s archive herself, Fleda has to rely on chance, if chance it is, to burn Poynton’s artefacts. Fleda’s sexual stasis helps her discover disinterestedness while Mona fails to achieve satisfaction of pleasure due to her predetermined interests for the possession of Poynton through her marriage with Owen.

Keywords

• feminism
• virginity/chastity
• postcolonial
• aesthetic/ ethical
• sense/sensibility
• autonomy