In Joanna Newsom's Monkey & Bear, Ursala (or 'Bear'), a dancing bear, and Monkey, an organ grinder's monkey, flee the farm on which they live during a disturbance created by the escape of the farm's horses. The relationship between Monkey, Bear and the farmer and other human characters in the song constitutes a metaphor for the class struggle in which various ideologies are examined and criticised.
The song begins on a seemingly cautionary note which sows the seeds of Monkey's attitude towards their escape, analogous to the attitude of liberal reformists towards revolutionary socialism.
Down in the green hay,
where monkey and bear usually lay,
they woke from the stable-boy's cry.
He said: "Someone come quick—
the horses got loose, got grass-sick—
they'll founder! Fain, they'll die."
What is now known by the sorrel and roan?
By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey?
It is: Stay by the gate you are given.
Remain in your place, for your season.
O, had the overfed dead but listened
to that high-fence, horse-sense wisdom...
We are led to suppose that the horses' escape ends in disaster: without the order imposed by the farmer, they overfeed themselves and perish. The stable-boy alerts the farm to the escape, warns of its dangers, and the remaining horses learn the lesson that it is safer to be content with their pasture.
The identity of the narrator is ambiguous. The narrator seems to be omniscient; nonetheless, we are not given reason to suppose that their interpretaton of events is the correct one. The narrator's response here may be ironic, or merely a reflection of the way the narrative built around the horses' escape by the stable-boy (and presumably the farmer) is accepted by the other horses.
That taken into consideration, we see in these verses the awakening of class consciousness in Monkey and Ursala in response to a political event, and the use of the event's consequences by the bourgeoisie to bolster a reactionary ideology. The language used in the horses' lesson is Biblical, a paraphrasing of Solomon's words in Ecclesiastes 3:1:
"To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven"
Significance can be read into the use of religious language. Karl Marx famously wrote in his Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" ("religion is the opiate of the masses"), referring to the use of religious ideology by the bourgeoisie to suppress class consciousness in the working class by instilling in them a false belief in an happiness that awaits them in the afterlife, making their suffering in the present tolerable. Marx continues,
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions."
Thus, the horses' lesson can be interpreted as a bourgeois ideological response to the revolution to which the horses' escape is analogous. Having abandoned a both the illusion of "a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven", and the condition that required that illusion, the horses who escaped defied the ideological manipulation that keeps the farmer—analogous to the bourgeoisie—in power, and escaped his control.
In the first verses, therefore, we see that class struggle is ignited by the awakening of class consciousness by the challenging of bourgeois ideology and cultural hegemony. The stable-boy's cry becomes a re-assertion of the bourgeois ideology and cultural hegemony challenged by the escaped horses, and the awakening of Ursala and Monkey by this re-assertion is a political awakening, the birth of a class consciousness and the beginning of their own class struggle.
Monkey and Ursala, prior to this point, are implied to have worked for an organ grinder; now that they are free, Monkey becomes the organ grinder and Ursala works for him.
"So, my bride,
"Here is my hand. Where is your paw?
Try and understand my plan, Ursala.
My heart is a furnace,
full of love that's just and earnest.
Now.
We know that we must unlearn this
allegiance to a life of service,
and no longer answer to that heartless
hay-monger nor be his accomplice—
(that charlatan, with artless hustling!)—
But Ursala, we've got to eat something,
and earn our keep, while still within
the borders of the land that man has girded,
(all double-bolted and tightfisted!),
until we reach the open country,
a-steeped in milk and honey.
Will you keep your fancy clothes on, for me?
Can you bear a little longer to wear that leash?
My love, I swear by the air I breathe:
Sooner or later, you'll bare your teeth."
Monkey's professions of love strike the reader as insincere. While being somewhat overstated, they are at the same time fairly cursory: the transition from his declaration of his "earnest" love to his efforts to convince Ursala that she must still labour as she did on the farm—the word "now", isolated as a sentence fragment—is somewhat abrupt. Monkey goes on to distance himself from the farmer, calling the farmer "charlatan", "tightfisted", "heartless hay-monger", creating a contrast to the new regime: Monkey is "full of love that's just and earnest" rather than heartless and tightfisted. He appeals to necessity to convince Ursala that she must still dance ("we've got to eat something") and suggests that because she dances for him, now, it is not so odious. He promises that their situation is temporary, and that one day Ursala will "bare her teeth" and no longer have to dance.
Unpacking the metaphor, Monkey, in seizing control of the means of production for himself, rather than as communal property, becomes the new bourgeoisie. The new regime he constitutes makes a cursory effort to associate itself with the working class, criticising and distancing itself from the old regime. The new regime refuses to dismantle the capitalist mode of production, and nothing changes for the rest of the working class (Ursala). Monkey's appeal to necessity is reminiscent of the neoliberal "TINA" ("There Is No Alternative") defense of capitalism and wage labour—in the same way that liberals point to the failure of past socialist revolutions to create a utopia in their defense of capitalist modes of production, Monkey appeals to the fear that he and Ursala will share the horses' fate if they follow in their footsteps, rather than maintaining the "borders that man has girded", the same order-giving structures as prevailed on the farm. Because the new regime professes to operate in the interests of the working class, the workers should be content to continue to go on as they did previously, trusting in the promise that the new regime will build a world for them where they do not have to toil.
Thus we see that a revolution does not improve the lot of the working class if capitalism is maintained, even if that revolution overthrows a corrupt ruling class. By maintaining capitalist modes of production in accordance with his liberal reformist ideology, Monkey is able to set himself up as a new corrupt bourgeoisie, and life does not improve for Ursala.
It soon becomes clear that Monkey does not intend to consult Ursala about their new life, nor does he intend to keep his promise to her, and Bear begins to catch on to his dishonesty.
the space they gained
grew much father than
the stone that bear threw,
to mark where they'd stop for tea.
Evidently, Monkey has permitted Ursala a means to decide when they will stop, but ignores the results, continuing past the place she marks. He consults Ursala no more than the farmer, though he maintains an illusion of consultation. Thus, Monkey, the bourgeoisie, has told Ursala, the working class, that she will have a way of deciding what happens under the new regime. The casting of the stone can be interpreted as the casting of a ballot: the working class are permitted to vote in the supposedly democratic new regime, but the bourgeoisie act in their own interests regardless of the result, ignoring the will of the working class as much as the old regime.
He makes his excuses:
But,
"Walk a little faster,
don't look backwards—
your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture.
"When the blackbirds hear tea whistling, they rise and clap.
Their applause caws the kettle black.
And we can't have none of that!
Move along, Bear; there, there; that's that."
Again, Monkey's manipulation of Ursala is based on the vague promise that tolerable conditions lie just beyond the horizon, and a spurious claim to necessity. Thus we see that as the new regime progresses, the promises of a better future seem increasingly vague and far-off, and reforms are put off for reasons of supposed economic necessity: reform now would be disastrous, as it would be disastrous to stop for tea at the place Bear chose. Monkey hushes Bear patronisingly and tells her to keep going: the new bourgeoisie is just as dismissive of the concerns of the working class as the old, as Monkey uses the very same response as that of the farmer and the stable-boy in telling the horses to be content with their pasture lest they suffer the inevitably tragic result of defying the prevailing order.
Bear is not oblivious to the fact that she is being manipulated:
(Though cast in plaster,
our Ursala's heart beat faster
than monkey's ever will.)
Her heart, cast in plaster, is broken when she perceives Monkey's deceit: she feels betrayed, and her realisation reminds her of the suffering she endures in service to Monkey while he enjoys relative comfort.
This can be seen as a second awakening of class consciousness in Ursala, i.e. the working class's loss of confidence in the new, supposedly democratic regime and the realisation that its leaders belong to a separate class of exploiters: Monkey will never suffer and toil as Ursala does, she realises; he merely means to live parasitically on the products of her labour.
Monkey's actions in these verses, therefore, are a criticism of the politics of bourgeois democracy and the ideology of reformism: elected on the trust that he will keep to certain promises for the benefit of the working class—parliamentary reforms to improve their conditions—he ignores these promises and the mechanism by which the working class can supposedly oust him from power. The treachery of the new bourgeoisie, who had claimed to serve working class interests, causes the working class recognise their exploitation at the hands of their new masters and the fact that they will never deliver an improvement in conditions, and the class struggle is re-ignited.
Ursala's suffering and indignity in her new life, and the causes thereof, are made clear, and her doubts are hinted at:
But still,
they had got to pay the bills.
Hadn't they?
That is what the monkey would say.
The suggestion of Ursala's doubt is subtle. The first two lines assert a fact, that the bills must be paid, but the next two seem to undermine it: though the narrator is speaking, the voice seems to reflect Ursala's thoughts as she asks a rhetorical question ("Hadn't they?") which leads her to realise that Monkey, who she has begun to see as dishonest, is the one who told her that the bills must be paid.
Nonetheless, she continues, and we see her dance for the first time in the song.
So, with the courage of a clown, or a cur,
or a kite, jerking tight at its tether,
in her dun-brown gown of fur,
and her jerkin of
swansdown and leather,
Bear would sway on her hind legs;
the organ would grind dregs of song,
for the pleasure
of the children, who'd shriek,
throwing coins at her feet,
then recoiling in terror.
It must be remembered that Ursala is a bear, a large and dangerous animal, which point is reinforced in the last line of this verse: the children recognise her strength despite her humiliation, "recoiling in terror" and swiftly retreating when they come within range of her tether. Her actions, however, are not those of a bear: she "sways", clumsily, on two legs, rather than walking on four, forced to abandon her natural stance for the amusement of children; she wears a jerkin of swansdown and leather over her own fur. Though she is described as courageous, it seems to be a false kind of courage: ridiculous, like a clown, or pathetic, like a cur, and though it leads her to strive, she does not get anywhere, like a kite jerking at its tether. She is bound to her indignity by her acceptance of Monkey's excuses.
Effectively, Ursala is a wage slave: she must dance, though it humiliates and degrades her and forces her not to be the bear that she is, because she accepts Monkey's argument that she will starve if she does not. She cannot object to her conditions because she depends on Monkey, who owns the organ, to be productive, and so she is left with seemingly no alternative but to debase herself for a pittance, the coins—again, not a thing of bears—thrown at her feet for her performance, of which, we are to understand, she will only be permitted a meagre fraction, forced to split her earnings with Monkey, who, since it is implied he is the one who "pay[s] the bills", we can assume will take the lion's share.
There is a criticism, also, of the attitude that it is courageous to face such adverse conditions. Ursala's courage is treated as pitiful, as she is forced to adopt the trappings of humanity to dance: standing on her hind legs, wearing clothing and using currency, and not baring her teeth as Monkey promised she would. Ursala has been 'de-bear-ised' as workers labouring under capitalist modes of production are dehumanised by being alienated from the products of their labour and consequently forced to sell their labour as a product, effectively commoditising their wills and selves, just as Ursala sells her will and labour to Monkey because she fails to recognise that she would not require the organ, the jerkin or the currency if she were to use her teeth and thereby cease to be alienated from the products of her labour. Ursala's "courage" in tolerating her suffering due to Monkey's insistence that private property is necessary leads her to tolerate her 'de-bear-isation' unnecessarily, as the working class, by accepting their suffering and concept of private property, become unnecessarily dehumanised. As Ursala could be a bear if she rejected private property, the working class can be human if we reject private property.
In this way, Ursala's dancing due to her reluctant acceptance of Monkey's economic doctrine results in her 'de-bear-isation' and suffering in the same way as the working class's acceptance of the economic doctrine of capitalism leads to our dehumanisation and suffering.
As Ursala begins to have doubts, tension becomes evident in her relationship with Monkey, and Monkey shows his true colours.
"Darling, there's a place for us;
can we go before I turn to dust?"
...
"O darling...dear...mine...if you dance,
darling: I will love you still."
Monkey seems increasingly impatient and frustrated with Ursala. It is evident that he now has to command Ursala to pursue the promise of future happiness for which she once followed him willingly, suggesting that she has lost faith in it: she no longer desires what he has to offer, recognising that he will never deliver it, and so Monkey must drag her along with him.
As if he knows the facade is crumbling, Monkey begins to seem less committed to maintaining it. The ellipsis in the third line quoted above suggests a listless delivery, far removed from the fiery rhetoric he delivers earlier in the song. He can no longer be bothered to fake the zeal that inspired Ursala to follow him. Instead, he delivers an ultimatum, placing a condition on his love: Ursala must dance, or he will withdraw it.
As monkey is analogous to the ruling class in a bourgeois democracy, we can understand his loss of commitment as complacency. Though he may be aware of Ursala's doubts and concerns, by now he is convinced that there is nothing she can do about it: his power is entrenched. He no longer requires the illusion of a better future to lead Ursala, and instead half-heartedly convinces her into following him to his own better future; his ideological jusitification for exploiting Ursala is crumbling, and he resorts to threats to keep her in line. In the same way, the power of the capitalist bourgeoisie in a representative democracy becomes entrenched as their wealth grows; the ruling class becomes complacent and maintains only a weak facade of service to the working class, now capable of ruling by threats and ultimata.
While these lines hint at the nature of Monkey's private thoughts, we are given a direct insight into them in the next verse.
Deep in the night
shone a weak and miserly light,
where the monkey shouldered his lamp.
Someone had told him the
bear'd been wandering a fair piece away
from where they were camped.
Someone had told him
the bear had been sneaking away,
to the seaside caverns, to bathe;
and the thought troubled the monkey,
for he was afraid of spelunking
down in those caves.
The true depth of Monkey's exploitative nature begins to be revealed: he, like the light cast by his lamp, is "weak and miserly"; he is afraid, and he monitors Ursala's behaviour. In these lines, the weak and miserly bourgeoisie becomes aware of revolutionary sentiment in the working class, and seeks to put an end to it before it can amount to anything; while Ursala is brave enough to venture into the caves, however, Monkey lacks her strength and is afraid to follow. Ursala, the working class, is stronger than Monkey, the bourgeoisie; his efforts to thwart her are compromised by his fear of her strength.
And also afraid what the
village people would say,
if they saw the bear in that state—
lolling and splashing obscenely—
well it seemed irrational, really,
washing that face;
washing that matted and flea-bit pelt
in some sea-spit-shine—
old kelp dripping with brine.
But monkey just laughed, and he muttered,
"When she comes back, Ursala will be bursting with pride—
till I jump up!
Saying, 'You've been rolling in muck!'
Saying, 'You smell of garbage and grime!'"
Monkey's contempt for and cruelty towards Ursala are clear in these lines. He acknowledges the sorry condition of her pelt, but is unmoved and dismissive of her efforts to repair it; anticipating that her pride will be restored, he plans to put her down.
The caves and Ursala's cleaning can be seen to represent that which lies beyond the capacity of Monkey's philosophy to comprehend: the dignity and 'bear-ness' Ursala seeks through her ritual purification are beyond his understanding, appearing "irrational" to him: he does not understand why she would wash her pelt, matted as it is, particularly using sea foam and seaweed.
Ursala's pelt, however, is a part of her: a symbol of her 'bear-ness', where the jerkin she wears to hide its poor condition is a symbol of her 'de-bear-isation'. The sea foam and kelp with which she cleans herself are products of her labour from which she is not alienated: she wishes to cleanse herself of the marks of her 'de-bear-isation', she achieves this on her own initiative, exercising her will and her labour to produce the result she desires for herself. Effectively, she is metaphorically de-commoditising herself, washing away capitalism, private property and wage slavery to reveal the bear beneath.
Thus, Ursala's ritual cleansing is a political action which does not fit in to Monkey's political philosophy: a threat to his power, a revolutionary action. Monkey seeks to crush the pride Ursala has found in herself by rejecting the life he created for her, mocking her efforts to improve her condition on her own.
As Ursala liberates herself by rejecting private property and alienated labour, ending her 'de-bear-isation' and realising her true 'bear-ness', so do the working class, by rejecting capitalism, end our dehumanisation and realise our true humanity. As Monkey recognises Ursala's pride and confidence in her own 'bear-ness' as a threat to his parasitic existence and seeks to crush them, so does the bourgeoisie recognise the threat to its parasitic existence of a conscious working class aware of its strength, and seeks to crush our belief in the power of our class to realise our own vision of a future free of capitalism and to create our own world through revolution.
Thus, Ursala's doubts about Monkey's sincerity blossom into class consciousness and the tension in their relationship proceeds to class war, with Monkey seeking to stop Ursala's revolutionary rejection of capitalism before he can lose the worker on whose exploitation he depends.
Ursala's liberation is further explored as she swims out to sea following her ritual purification.
But far out,
far out,
by now,
by now—
far out, by now, Bear ploughed.
Because she would
not drown
Monkey is unable to thwart Ursala's rejection of the 'de-bear-isation' he imposed on her, as she is almost literally swept away from him on the tides of her revolutionary defiance. It is clear, though, that she is not passive in this: she "ploughed", and "would not drown", swimming forcefully away from Monkey and all that he represents and towards the future he always promised her, which she will now create for herself as a bear rather than as a wage slave. Monkey does not appear in the song again: Ursala's revolution is, effectively, complete; she has liberated herself from his control and is free to construct her own world.
Ursala, the embodiment of the working class, has thus used direct action in the form of her revolutionary rejection of capitalism and the concept of private property to incite a successful uprising against Monkey, removing him from power and forging ahead unstoppably to create a world free of exploitation. The revolution is not complete, however, and as Ursala swims, the symbols of Monkey's regime fall away from her:
First the outside-legs of the bear
up and fell down in the water, like
knobby garters.
Then the outside arms of the bear
fell off, as easy as if sloughed
from boiled tomatoes.
Low'red in a genteel curtsy,
bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders;
and, with a sigh,
she allowed the burden of belly to drop,
like an apronfull of boulders.
Ursala does not repeat Monkey's betrayal and seize control of the capital—the dancing clothes—used to hold her in wage slavery. Instead, she rejects them: alienated parts of herself, the self she sold as a commodity, are shed as she swims, leaving only the core: a bear, not a commodity. The burden she sheds is that of the "garters" and "mantle" she wore to dance, whether they are literal or metaphorical for the indignity of the literal clothing, the demeaning role they forced her to adopt when she "sway[ed] on her hind legs", in contrast to her "genteel curtsy" now.
The choice of the word "genteel" bridges the gap between Ursala's metaphorical shedding of alienated body parts and what symbolises: having cleansed herself of capitalism and private property, she is shedding class, inequality, exploitation and the scars they left. These alienated parts are symbols of alienation itself, of the dehumanisation of the working class and the end of the hierarchy that defines its existence. Ursala's curtsy is genteel as she makes the transition to classlessness, class identity blurring and becoming meaningless. This shedding of identity is also symbolised in the loss of Ursala's name: henceforth, she is only "bear", "Bear", or "the bear": Ursala, the name under which she danced, no doubt given to her by humans, defined her social role. As the form of society has changed and the role of wage slave has been eliminated, she has rejected her slave name.
Thus, Bear's abandonment of these last trappings of her time at the farm and with Monkey represent the completion of the revolution and the transition to socialist society. The social divisions and hierarchies of capitalism are broken down, the scars it left healed, the suffering it caused put behind as the working class realises its humanity and we cast off everything that was previously used to dehumanise us, including the roles and social identities imposed on us by our exploiters.
If you could hold up her
threadbare coat to the light,
where it's worn translucent in places,
you'd see spots where,
almost every night of the year,
Bear had been mending,
suspending that baseness.
Bear's pre-revolutionary complicity in her own exploitation is again referred to. She has eroded herself by suffering under capitalism: for capitalism to function, the working class must be convinced or coerced to oppress itself by being being cowed by threats or chasing the false visions of a better future offered by the bourgeoisie.
Now her coat drags through the water,
bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger,
limitless minnows
in the magnetic embrace,
balletic and glacial,
of bear's insatiable shadow
Free of Monkey (and the capitalism he represents), Bear's labour is not alienated: she produces without 'de-bear-ising' herself, using her coat—her own body used in labour performed of her own will, rather than sold as a commodity for subsistence—to sate the hunger that has built up over a lifetime of exploitation by two different ruling classes, just as the working class in a classless society, free from property and parasites, can ammend social injustices inflicted by capitalism.
Left there!
Left there!
When bear
left bear;
Left there,
Left there,
When bear
stepped clear of bear.
With Bear's liberation, she can not only reach an adequate level of subsitence, she can go beyond it: Bear leaves her coat, the means of her subsistence, behind, symbolising a transition beyond subsistence and into prosperity and the realisation of the full potential of 'bear-ness'. In the same way, workers in a classless society can move beyond merely trying to subsist and realise the full potential of humanity, improving the human condition.
(Sooner or later you'll bury your teeth)
This final line refers back to Monkey's promise that Bear would bare her teeth: she would be allowed to be a bear, rather than a dancing bear, if she followed him and did what he said. She has defeated her 'de-bear-isation' on her own, having realised that Monkey, like the farmer before him, was responsible for it; now that she has bared her teeth and the class war is over, she may bury them—as they are no longer required to overcome Monkey's exploitation—and she has buried them in Monkey, metaphorically biting him in her liberation from him. Bear, as society, can be at peace once class is eliminated through revolution, burying its teeth in the flesh of capitalism and and burying them now that they are no longer required.
Thus Ursala, by the end of the song, has symbolised the working class's liberation, overthrowing two consequent oppressive social orders and becoming Bear, her fully realised and free self.
In Monkey & Bear, Ursala's fight for freedom and eventual achievement of peace and prosperity through her struggle with Monkey serves as a metaphor for revolution and class war, demonstrating the exploitative nature of capitalism in all its forms, the hostility of representative democracy to the working class and the inevitable failure of liberal reformism to achieve any improvement in the conditions of workers, showing that reformists succeed only in serving as tools of the exploitative bourgeoisie by entrenching their power through ideological justification. Bear, as a symbol of the working class, liberates herself from private property, wage slavery and the other social injustices of capitalism and creates a world in which she can realise her full potential. Ursala's becoming Bear through realising that she does not need Monkey and that he seeks only to use her to his own benefit symbolises that the working class does not need the bourgeoisie to deliver it a utopia: instead, the working class can overcome and break the power of the bourgeoisie and, free of the limitations imposed by them, build a society in which humanity's full potential can be realised.