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Stephen Fry’s autobiography Moab Is My Washpot was published in 1997. It covers approximately the first twenty years of the author’s life and focuses on his school years, development into a juvenile delinquent and redemption from that life through a period of incarceration and subsequent admittance to Cambridge.
One of the most striking features of the autobiography is Fry’s use of language and his self-professed self-awareness. Recounting a passage of his semi-autobiographical novel The Liar, Fry writes: “…I felt a twinge of guilt that I could be so cavalier, so casually sophisticated and so knowing about my former self and the acuteness of my feeling and the depth of my confusion” (p. 285). A mixture of simultaneous involvement and detachment characterises the whole of Moab. Fry’s harshness towards his narrated I, his overwhelming verbosity and his emotional investment result in the narrated I becoming very much Fry-of-1997’s construction rather than a period depiction of Fry’s former self.
Taking into account the names of the main sections of the book – ‘Joining In’; ‘Falling In’; ‘Breaking Out’ – Fry’s approach to his early life can be examined orientationally through an in–out directionality. This view on his life can reasonably be argued to have been constructed with the advantage of hindsight. To borrow a typical conceptualisation from cognitive metaphor theory, if we assume that life is metaphorically a type of container as the ‘falling in’ and ‘breaking out’ of something seem to suggest, only a person’s life experiences can have given form to the boundaries of that container. Determining the borders of his life in this manner gives Fry the possibility to “fill” the container with appropriate meaning. This manifests itself in how the life story is written, what choices and possibilities Fry understands as being relevant to his life.
In the following, Fry’s orientational outlook will be taken into consideration as his relationship with his former self is explored: the interpretational possibilities of the sections of the book will be examined with regard to the narrator and his relation to the narrated I. Analysing the autobiography in this manner will help to understand how the author makes sense of his life and what meaning he gives to different passages of his childhood and youth. After the analysis of the main sections of the book, some conclusions will be drawn from the material presented.
2 Position and orientation – examining direction in life
2.1 Joining In
The first part of Fry’s book deals with his early days in preparatory school. At first glance, ‘joining in’ simply refers to the event of the author starting school and interacting with his peers, but closer examination also reveals other possible interpretations.
Born in 1957 into a family that bordered on the “upper” class, Fry joins in on the life dictated by the social status of his family. As Fry puts it, in his youth the “demand for private education [was] so high that children [had to] be put down for admission not at birth but in utero, ideally before the first cells [had] divided” (p. 14). This notion of predetermined ‘joining in’ is not the experience of the young schoolboy, but the idea of the narrator born out of his experiences and put to paper as an adult. Fry claims that “a child of seven does not question such a circumstance: it is the way of the world” (p. 17).
Although the participation in society through the preparatory school system is seen as an imposition, the starting point of Fry’s education also becomes the starting point of his agency, and only passing remarks are made about any events dating back to years prior to those in preparatory school. However, Fry does not consider the emergence of his agency a success. Even though Fry joins in, he often feels that he does not fit in: his biology assignments do not get the recognition he thinks they deserve; witnessing the evanescent nature of life creates in him the “urge not to be” (p. 53); he does not learn to swim like his school friends, his physical awkwardness deters him from sport; and trying to avoid a well-deserved punishment, he lies and plays upon the admiration of his friend. For Fry, joining in does not equal belonging.
Agency and joining in on the life that has been decided for him also bring with them the seeds of Fry’s later dishonour in the form of stealing and lying. The reasons for this development are never really explained. If anything, Fry-the-author only blames his young for his actions, although between the lines one can read about a troubled relationship with the parents that might have influenced some of Fry’s behaviour. With the advantage of hindsight, in Fry’s life, ‘joining in’ becomes to mean adhering to a deterministic course in life, with the events of early school years projecting their influence on the future.
2.2 Falling In
‘Falling in’ assumes a double meaning in the second section of the autobiography. It refers to the Fry’s obvious falling in love with “Matthew”, the little brother of one of his schoolmates, but also to the collapse of his previously secure life in his school in Uppingham.
In the text, Fry’s homosexuality never emerges as a big issue or, rather, its minor importance is spelled out so fervently that the reader actually thinks it to be a bigger issue than Fry leads one to believe. It is presented more or less as a given to young Fry, who lives his life in an all-male environment, where homosexual acts are commonplace. Fry’s attitude towards his sexuality becomes problematic only when he falls in love and realises the difference between the accepted physical attraction prevalent in Uppingham and his own romantic feelings, the emotional turmoil, he experiences towards Matthew. In Fry’s words, “knowing I was homosexual was one thing, disentangling its meaning (both its perceived cultural meaning and the real meaning it was to have to me) was very difficult” (p. 257). Although Fry acknowledges the sexual dimension of his “queerness”, to him homosexuality is first and foremost an emotional experience. ‘Falling in’ happens body and soul and marks an important period in Fry’s life, one that he at the time documented in his poems and one that he afterwards returned to in his novel, The Liar.
At the end of “Falling in”, fifteen-year-old Fry and his friend decide to spend four days in various London cinemas watching Cabaret, The Clockwork Orange and The Godfather over and over again instead of going to a meeting of the Sherlock Holmes Society like they are supposed to. This insolence results in Fry being expelled from Uppingham and begins Fry’s downward spiral. Fry sees in this act, in its medium and the selection of films, a subconscious cry for help: films about decadence, ruin and undoing are combined with an escapist vehicle. Interestingly, the figure of Fry’s father is also mentioned in connection with this episode. Fry wonders how his father “saw the urge to self-destruct, but […] did not choose to examine the weapon” (p. 355) his son had selected and how he failed to address the incident on a personal level, repressedly dubbing it a “sorry business”.
2.3 Breaking Out
The last longer section of the book concentrates on Fry’s escape from his set ways and his realisation of his condition through a dramatic turning points in his life: his attempted suicide, fraud and his eventual imprisonment. The ‘falling in’ of the previous section leads Fry to make an false attempt at turning his life round, to become heterosexual and to study and work his way out of ‘that phase’ in his life. Fry confines himself in a prison of his own making in trying to deny who he is and also what he will be. He is distressed about the fact that the passion he feels as a young man will eventually die out and be replaced by adulthood, which he sees as filled with falsities and hypocrisy. Because of this attitude combined with the problematic relationship with his father Fry is driven to attempt suicide, which fails but leaves the young man in search of himself, to ‘break out’ of the situation he has created for himself.
The heading of the section is ironic with regard to its content. The section combines the idea of freedom and success with the depiction of Fry’s personal low points and subsequent incarceration. However, from where Fry is standing as a narrator, the particular passage in his life becomes to signify his redemption and the beginning of his success story, a chance to separate his old self from his renewed self.
Judging by the way Fry tells the story of his capture after a series of thefts and frauds which follow his suicide attempt, the principal feeling of getting caught by the police is relief: “I was so happy, so blissfully, radiantly, wildly happy that if I could have sung I would have sung. If I could have danced I would have danced. I was free. […] I was going on a journey now where every decision would be taken for me […] I was going back to school” (p. 401). Interestingly, what this passage reveals is not at all a figure of full agency. Fry’s idea of prison connects with the concept of school, both of them being institutions where directions come from above and external authority dictates his life. Despite all the rebellion Fry has shown during his school years, at this stage, he finds school a place of happy complaisance and conformity, a place where the burden of responsibility cannot touch him. Fry breaks out of his self-made cage by getting caught and becoming a convicted criminal in a real prison. This event also becomes to mark another kind of breakout, a great success story following the disappointments he has faced before, for his experiences in prison encourage him to finish his A levels and take Cambridge Entrance with the result of being admitted to the course.
3 Conclusion
Moab Is My Washpot presents a grown-up and mature account of young Fry’s life. The verbal acrobatics the author practises alone go to show that Fry has given his life a lot of thought and that the text is supposed to present the reader with a more considered and contemplated life story than that freshly experienced by the narrated I. Although the autobiography describes the development in the life of young Fry, the author’s view of himself is also markedly discontinuous.
In his teenage furore, fifteen-year-old Fry writes a letter to his future self saying “What I am now is me, what I will be is a lie.”(p. 361). Young Fry is also painfully aware of the changes of adulthood: “I knew that the past was a foreign country, and knew too that is followed logically that the future must be abroad; in other words I knew that it was my destiny to become a foreigner, a stranger to myself” (ibid.). According to the embarrassed and sometimes condescending comments of the writer, this is exactly what happened, “precisely what [his] fifteen-year-old self dreaded and predicted would become of [him]” (p. 368). In many passages, the two Frys seem to be strangers to one another. Younger Fry detests his future self for his presumed failure to maintain the passion the youth feels, and older Fry seldom sees little more than a “self-righteous little prig” (p. 377) when looking back on his former self. Nevertheless, the picture that the author conveys of his former self is a strong one. It may well be that the relationship of Fry older to Fry younger is still too intimate to be examined closely.
The relationship is also often apologetic. When writing about his sexuality Fry is aware that he may be “protesting too much”, trying convey a message about love’s triumph over sex. The same contrite voice is heard with regard to his parents, and especially his father: Fry makes his father out to be a model parent even though there is obvious friction in their relationship.
The topmost feeling the author has towards his past is mortification: “[…] I am weeping as I write this. I am weeping for the shame, for the loss, the cruelty, the madness and again for the shame, and the shame, and the shame” (p. 397). To Fry, the medium of autobiography is a means of cleansing, a washpot for his past Moabite sins of pride and arrogance. Throughout the book, the emphasis remains on the wrongfulness of young Fry’s actions, but little attention is ever paid to the reasons behind them. Therefore, it can be argued that the book lacks certain honesty, or that it conveys a partial truth of someone who is highly ashamed of his past. Rather than trying to understand his younger self and explaining his actions, Fry-the-author often condemns the actions of Fry-the-child and Fry-the-youth as same childishness, rudeness and insolence, plays them down with his adult, redeemed authority.
The manner in which Fry presents his early years still shows a clear developmental arch in his life, from the pickpocketting as a little schoolboy up to the credit card fraud of his late teens, which makes one want to look for instigative factors in Fry’s life. The problem is that the question of where this development stems from is never addressed. Fry’s position becomes god-like in how he deals judgment on his former self without any conception of relatively, his views are based on seemingly absolute notions of good and bad. This attitude is fitting considering the biblical reference in the title of the autobiography, although the author may not have intended it to be read that way. In the Bible, God brings low the nation of Moab due to her arrogance and haughtiness but also promises to restore her glory in the future. This promise rings true for Fry considering his later life as one of Britain’s most famous actors and personalities.
In the end – despite Fry’s rambling writing style, vast knowledge and delightful humour – the autobiography renders a rather one-sided picture of Fry’s early years. The in-and-out, there-and-back-again story line is something of an over-simplification when talking about a complex character, whose later years have included fighting a bi-polar disorder, a condition that must have manifested itself already both in the “exuberance” noted by Fry’s teachers as well as his early depressive tendencies. Then again, for Fry, the autobiography probably does exactly what it is supposed to: it captures the guilt and the shame the author feels about his childhood and youth and purges him of them.
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