Essay Questions

How does the intertextuality of Hamlet contribute to Lionel Trilling‘s thesis of Sincerity and Authenticity?

Trilling reports, “There is a moment in Hamlet which has a unique and touching charm. Polonius is speeding Laertes on his way to Paris with paternal advice that has scarcely the hope of being heard, let alone heeded. The old man's maxims compete with one another in prudence and dullness and we take them to be precisely characteristic of a spirit that is not only senile but small. But then we are startled to hear: This above all: to thine own self be true/ And it doth follow, as the night the day, /Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

The citation of Hamlet accentuates the quintessence of conforming to one’s innate instinct. Being ‘true to oneself’ is unqualified sincerity that should be intuitive. For the sincerity to be venerable and authentic, it should come certainly without intimidating one’s willpower. Circumventing falsehoods and self-deception is a prime ingredient of ‘sincerity and authenticity.’

How does Jane Austen endorse ‘ Sincerity and Authenticity”?

Trilling reports explicates “Mansfield Park is notoriously an exception among Jane Austen's novels in the sternness, even the harshness, with which it judges the tendencies that threaten the 'noble' mode of life and the 'honest soul'. The once common view was that, although her characters are rooted in social actuality, Jane Austen does not conceive of society as being in any sense problematical, as making issues by reason of the changes it was undergoing in her time.”

Jane Austen is in favor of openness to change, for it contributes to the flourishing of nobility and ‘honest souls.’ Accordingly, for individual’s to be ‘sincere and authentic’ they must be cognizant of the fluctuations that are manifesting in their environments since individuals who discount such changes cannot be unconditionally ‘sincere and authentic.’

Compare and contrast Marx and Hegel’s stances on alienation.

Trilling elucidates, “It will readily be seen that alienation does not mean to Marx what it meant to Hegel. It is not the estrangement of the self from the self, which Hegel sees as a painful but necessary step in development. Rather, it is the transformation of the self into what is not human. Marx's concept of alienation is not wholly contained in what he says about money; but certainly money is central to it and provides the most dramatic way of representing it. In the Manuscripts, as later in Capital, Marx speaks of money as imbued with a life of its own, a devilish autonomous energy. In him, and in Engels too, there is a strong nostalgic streak which makes them always a little tender of archaic societies in which money is not dominant, and the anti-Semitism of both men has its source in the Jewish connection with money and banking. They are likely to be as anxious as any medieval or Renaissance man about the workings of the money-devil.”

Hegel does not overtly quote money to emphasize his ideology of alienation. However, Marx regards money as the foundation of immortality from which humans should learn to estrange themselves. Both Marx and Hegel’s illuminations of alienation may be problematical when it comes to factual estrangement because they necessitate astonishing forte for the separation to emerge.