privilege, as the cast is set at the lowest level of the house and not amongst the upper floors. It is a cast of commons, one which may mark the others but one which stands alone. Thus, the marker is representative of all others, appearing as they do in their station neither questioning their position nor asking about their place. In fact, never looking at one another (remember, not one cast casts a gaze upon the other).
In this setting, their only representative position, their identity formed if you will, comes in contrast to those individuals, the family, who would reside in Houghton Hall – individuals who also knew their place, a place of common identity, forged amidst blood and privilege and wealth. They would be the people who saw and interacted with one another – talking, dancing, eating with one another – as well as with others as the many portraits on the walls attest. The only ones who would not be “seen,” seen as who they were, were the servants who remained below the stairs, not fully possessed of the birth rights of those upstairs. Their position would not be static nor leveling but based upon their relative position in society. Their cast, unlike Gormley’s, would be caste.
It is against this historical framework that we – individuals living in the here and now who walk amongst players cast in different roles – can
see what others at the time may not have chosen to see, and why Houghton Hall makes a perfect setting within which to comment upon the proper nature of things. Though a place not of a king but of a prime minister, democracy had not yet arrived for the players upon the stage. Even now, owned by yet another person of class and caste, who was open enough to offer the cast players a stage of house and acreage to play with our minds, the question of when might democracy and equality be realized still eludes us even though at this time it sits starkly before us.
Whether Gormley consciously or unconsciously sought to speak to the claim that men are but bit players on the world stage, it has become clear across the day that at the end of the day men of cast and caste will never be truly free until the stage may be understood as not imaginary but real. Only at that moment, when the curtains open and the light shines brightly, might we understand the stage is that upon which we walk every day, and the players are those with whom we interact. It is only by looking each other in the eye and seeing social conventions and people for what they truly are that it becomes possible to wonder how we might not just imagine things differently but act as free and equal men.
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