zoak's English 3622 blog

Change of address

2005-06-01T23:42:00.000-03:00

My Margaret Atwood reference site is now located at:

http://www.geocities.com/ladyoracle_atwood.

See you there.

Handmaid

2005-03-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

I read this book for the first time in high school, and for the second time about a month ago. I tried to take my time with it this time, but the story kept pulling me forward, and I'm afraid I didn't give the writing the full attention it deserves. Oh well.

What struck me about this book the second time around was the visual imagery. I see such vivid pictures of the city where Offred lives. It's clean & homogenous, all in primary colours & straight lines. The way Atwood describes, for example, the lines of Handmaids walking dutifully, two-by-two, to go shopping, or the careful seating arrangement (Wives, Handmaids, Aunts...) at the Women's Salvaging, or even the clean white plainness of Offred's own room-- It's all so precise and geometrical. I picture all these scenes in blinding sunlight, the people's uniforms glaring & unmistakable. The night-time scenes are brightly lit, by moonlight & searchlights. Offred is always exposed by all this light, and always watched by all these eyes.

The flashbacks to Offred's past, or even her glimpse of Gilead's seedy underbelly (at the Commander's club), provide such a contrast to the orderliness of her daily life. It's a relief, and yet these moments of respite always seem tainted. Offred feels oppressed by the constraints of her life, but she's been sheltered just long enough to start feeling nervous at the thought of the relative chaos of her old, free life. It's disturbing to think of a whole way of life and a whole way of thinking being stolen away so suddenly and so completely.

The Handmaid's Tale was written just over 20 years ago, and interestingly enough, the "near future" in which Atwood set her book has already come & gone. I know 20 years is the blink of an eye in the history of literature, but generally I think science (or speculative) fiction may have a shorter shelf life than other genres, if only because it is usually so clearly the product of a specific time & place.

Just as with other classics, like 1984 and Brave New World, people seem constantly surprised by this book's prescience and continued importance. Many readers see a chilling parallel between The Handmaid's Tale and the new conservatism of the United States. Read the amazon.com customer reviews and you'll see many references to its supposedly increasing relevance. Did Margaret Atwood foresee the rise of American Christian fundamentalism, the growing intimacy of church & state, or the rationalization of the erosion of civil liberties of a terrified populace? In fact, the kernel of inspiration for Atwood was the oppression of women in totalitarian Islamic states. Regardless, however, I don't think it's a matter of prescience so much as it is one of a good author uncovering and dealing with near-universal fears of oppression & regression. Even decades or centuries from now there will probably always be, somewhere in the world, something sinister going on to which people will be able to draw parallels from the classics of speculative fiction. The (sad) truth is, books like Atwood's and Orwell's will probably always seem shockingly clairvoyant and unfortunately still relevant.

Finally, some updates

2005-03-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

So I finally made some updates on my Margaret Atwood site. For anyone who's in the process of reading The Handmaid's Tale for the first (or second, or third...) time, I have some trivia & ideas in that section of the site that might (hopefully) be interesting.

The play's the thing

2005-03-08T11:24:00.000-04:00

Okay guys, here's a list of things I think we can manage to get together to help add some visual interest to our play. In addition to a few set props, Dr. Jones suggested that each character have at least one identifying prop or costume piece (a hat or something) so that we can tell them apart (especially for actors who are playing more than one part). So here's a list of characters along with the props they should probably have. Please reply to this post, or to my email, if you have any of these things at home and want to volunteer to bring them:

Characters
Horace Cole
prop: book* to lend to Gerald on p.188

Ethel
prop: bell*, to ring for Martha p.186, teacups or something for table

Winifred
costume: "the colours of the NWSPU" (anybody know what they are?)
prop: sandwich board* ("This way to the workhouse"), which she dons on p.189

Agatha
costume: "the National Union colours"
prop: "a big box" p.190 <--never mind

Molly
props: golf clubs & books p.192 <--never mind

Madame Christine
costume: "dressed smartly and tastefully"
props: a legal document* to read on p.193

Maudie Spark
costume: "a hat of huge size" p.194

Aunt Lizzie Wilkins
props: newspapers* (to hand out on p.196), a spaniel (maybe a stuffed animal?)

Lily
costume: "a very cheap and very smart hat"
props: dinner things to give to Ethel, p.187 (kettle, frying pan, etc.)

Gerald Williams
props: (for second entrance only, p.199) suffragette ribbons & badges, a banner ("The men of Brixton demand votes for women this evening")

*Things marked with an asterisk, I can easily bring myself.

Set
What we actually need as part of our stage:
table
chairs
a "window" to look out of
an entrance

If I'm missing anything, please tell me. If you have any ideas for other things, or see things we can probably do without, please tell me.

Also, if we have a rehearsal on Wednesday, hopefully the cast list will be finalized so that I can pass it on to the people who are working on the program.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some suffragette-related pictures:

I wish I could actually read everything this says, but it's funny anyway:

The National Women's Social & Political Union:

I'm not sure what this is a reference to, but the fine print at the bottom says it was published by the NWSPU:

Who's afraid?

2005-03-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own

So I read A Room of One's Own a couple of weeks ago. I alternated between it and Adam Bede for variety. I rewarded myself-- for every 100 or so pages of the latter I let myself read one chapter from the former.

I was surprised, actually. I didn't know what to expect. Fiction? Non-fiction? Some kind of polemic? I just cracked 'er open and started reading and genuinely found myself drawn in. Although the format, obviously, is unique, it seemed to me like a long debate with a good friend. As carefully constructed as her argument is, the tone of the book is so conversational that (regardless of one's dis/agreement), one gets carried along, unresisting. At the end, I looked back and could so clearly see the point without really knowing how she lead me there.

Woolf's tone throughout is disingenuous. Her "narrator" is always saying one thing while clearly leading us to think another. Her message is so serious, but her tone is generally so charming & polite. I think it's brilliant, and so much more effective than the rant it could have been.

Right at the beginning, when she's first chased off the grass by the Beadle, the narrator says: "no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars [...] was that in protection of their turf [...] they had sent my little [idea] into hiding" (9). With this understatement, Woolf sets the tone for most of the rest of the work. She doesn't (usually) spell things out for us. Some of her most cutting observations are thus disguised.

It's not that I think someone writing a persuasive essay needs to be so coy, I just find it's a very good fit in this case. It reminds of something I once read about detective stories-- about how the narrator should always be slightly less intelligent than the average reader, so that we may congratulate ourselves on solving the case before he or she does. It's the same in Room-- we think we see things more clearly, and arrive at conclusions more quickly, than the sometimes clueless narrator, but are usually reminded within a page that that's exactly how Woolf has orchestrated it. No one is a better example than the narrator herself of the idea of "a mind which was slightly pulled from the straight, and made to alter its clear vision in deference to external authority" (88). Woolf slips in and out of "character," at times, but I think this is appropriate-- we get both her own, (presumably) unfiltered opinions in some sections, while in others we are privy to Mary Beton/Seton/Carmichael's confusion and growing indignation at the injustice of her situation.

What I'd like to do is re-read the whole thing through again, and try to remember all the things I was thinking the first time through. No time for that, though. Essays to write, etc. Happy reading, everyone else.

PS: I never saw The Hours (I did read the book, though). Even with the fake nose, does anybody really think Nicole Kidman looks anything like Virginia Woolf?

Food for thought

2005-02-23T20:25:00.000-04:00

Decided to write about A Room of One's Own for my essay. Specifically, I think I'll focus on Woolf's criticism of Charlotte Bronte, because I think it ties in nicely with her whole "theory" of Women & Fiction, and because, having just read Jane Eyre for the first time, I found Woolf's comments very interesting. Don't want to make a fool of myself by writing anything about this before it's had time to percolate a bit, but to pass the time you can read:
"Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights" from The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf.

More Adam

2005-02-20T11:25:00.000-04:00

George Eliot: Adam Bede

I have been thinking some more about Adam Bede, inspired in part by a couple of my classmates. Rachel posted a link to an essay on Eliot by Virginia Woolf. And LoriAnne talked about Dinah in her post this weekend.

Dinah is probably my least favourite character from this book. We're not expected to like Hetty (although we may come to pity her), but I think Dinah is supposed to be admirable. Personally, though, I found her frustrating. Her selflessness was too... simple (i.e. not realistic). I could not understand her insistence that she couldn't move away from Snowfield to live with her family, because the people there needed her. This seemed like egotism in the guise of sacrifice: "No, I'm far too important to these people. They need me to enlighten their poor, ignorant souls." So she won't leave her (unnecessary) poverty for her family, or for poor, devoted, Methodist, Seth, but she will leave it for Adam, because he makes her heart race and her cheeks flush when he's near.

Woolf has some interesting things to say about Eliot's heroines' religion:

"They cannot live without religion [...] Each has the deep feminine passion for goodness, which makes the place where she stands in aspiration and agony the heart of the book - still and cloistered like a place of worship, but that she no longer knows to whom to pray. In learning they seek their goal; in the ordinary tasks of womanhood; in the wider service of their kind. They do not find what they seek, and we cannot wonder. The ancient consciousness of woman, charged with suffering and sensibility, and for so many ages dumb, seems in them to have brimmed and overflowed and uttered a demand for something - they scarcely know what..."

So is Dinah a Methodist preacher because, as a woman, she has no other means through which to do anything with her life? The Methodist movement, in its early years anyway, seems to have granted more freedom and privilege to women than other churches.

Woolf says that "the only romance that George Eliot allowed herself [was] the romance of the past." Eliot definitely seems to thrive on nostalgia-- nostalgia, apparently, for her "simple," provincial past. According to Woolf's essay, though, Eliot's relationship to the past was not so simple. She rose "with groans and struggles from the intolerable boredom of petty provincial society"-- she tore herself free from the shackles of what was expected from someone of her sex-- and did it all in order to write books about a simpler, more conventional, idealized, time and place. One in which, needless to say, Mary Ann Evans would most likely not have been allowed to become George Eliot.

(Not so) guilty pleasures

2005-02-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

A while back, in class, several of us admitted to a fondness for mysteries. I, in particular, love the Sherlock Holmes stories. I'm just waiting a few more years until I have forgotten all the plots so that I can read them all again.

Good news for me, then: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, which I got for my birthday. First of all, I love this author, and probably would've read whatever he came up with after The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which won him a Pulitzer (and which, FYI, carries a surprisingly stingy cash award).

The Final Solution is a Sherlock Holmes story-- albeit an unconventional one. It's 1944, and the great detective (never referred to by name in the book) is in retirement in Sussex, relatively content to wile away the few remaining years of his life with beekeeping. The plot, which involves a mute little boy and an enigmatic talking parrot, is in itself nothing special-- it would not have been among Arthur Conan Doyle's better puzzles, anyway. But: what it lacks in mystery, it makes up for with heart. It's a detective story, yes, but underneath that it's also a poignant portrait of old age. The elderly sleuth is now a crotchety misanthrope-- the result of despair over the indignities of his aging body and, especially, of his increasingly confused mind. It's silly to think of Holmes as a real person, of course. Especially in the original stories, he's deliberately opaque--more logical machine than man. In Chabon's story, though, he's all-too human, and I personally found it heart-breaking. There's one scene I'm thinking of in particular, wherein Holmes returns to his beloved London after an absence of more than two decades. His alarm over its changed façade has more to do with all the new construction than with its decimated (remember: 1944) skyline.

Anyway. I thought it was a terrific and touching little book (hooray for books with fewer than 150 pages!). Bonus: in the spirit of the originals, it's illustrated with whimsical, captioned drawings (hooray for books with pictures!).

Michael Chabon goodies:

michaelchabon.com: an as-yet unexplored (by me) collection of "essays, fragments, characteristic failures, occasional pieces, random bits of prose, and a small amount of useful information."

Summerland: a kids' book that, unlike Harry Potter, adults should not be ashamed of enjoying.

Wonder Boys: a nice movie adaptation of Chabon's book by the same name, with a star-studded cast: Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes, and Rip Torn.

Spider-Man 2: Why is this here? Because, oddly enough (that is, if you haven't read Kavalier & Clay), Chabon co-wrote the story. Also, much better than the first one.

Oh, Adam

2005-02-13T19:05:00.000-04:00

Weekend in Halifax. I think I read Adam Bede the whole way there and back, and even so had 100 pages to go when I got home this afternoon. Although I didn't instinctively like this one as much as Jane Eyre, its major advantage is that it gets more exciting toward the end.

For those of you who haven't reached Book Fifth yet, I advise to skip ahead. That's where all the action starts. I mean, just look at the chapter titles: "The Journey in Despair," "The Eve of the Trial," "In the Prison"...

George Eliot: Adam Bede

I literally just finished reading, and overall am not yet sure what exactly to think. I read Silas Marner last year, and remember feeling similarly ambivalent.

First of all, I really enjoy Eliot's perspectives on human nature. In the chapter "In Which the Story Pauses a Little," she takes some time to defend the realism of her characters. She claims she's "obliged to creep servilely after nature and fact," a self-deprecating way of saying it, no doubt (177). She's compelled to give us characters with real human strengths, and especially flaws. In even the briefest of character sketches she provides realistic details (see "The Preaching," wherein she introduces many of the minor characters). And yet, despite her understanding of the imperfections in people, she maintains such charitable and optimistic opinions on human nature in general. I guess this would be the "defective mirror" through which she admits her realism is filtered.

How can a book about infanticide be so optimistic? Throughout Adam Bede we are introduced to so many complex characters-- it's fascinating how they can make such human mistakes, with such dire consequences, and yet overall the reader does not become entirely jaded about people's capacity for decency.

I'm still marvelling at the character of Hetty. For the first 300 pages or so, our "heroine" is a vain, silly, and even heartless young woman. Why did Eliot create her thus? Mightn't it have been easier to tell the story of a beautiful, virtuous young woman fallen prey to a womanizing gentleman? Eliot is adept, too, at showing how Hetty's personality is imagined in men's minds through the deceiving lens of her beauty. Adam, ordinarily no fool, thinks: "The dear young, round, soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just as free from angles, her character just as pliant" (151). Arthur, for his part "felt sure she was a dear, affectionate, good little thing" (152). Hetty's vanity is never fully exposed for the moral blemish it is. Arthur never figures out just how much of her love for him relied upon visions of fancy dresses and carriages, and Adam is spared the hard lesson of learning just how many "angles" her temper has.

I found the descriptions of Hetty's beauty kind of funny, actually. There's a part where Adam is thinking about how beautiful she is: "Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for Hetty [...] He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him" (354). Well, we modern-day readers have a "fine word" for that-- LUST! We have no problem recognizing the difference between (alleged) romantic love and plain old lust, and as far as I can tell, neither Arthur nor Adam ever got to know Hetty very well beyond her charming dimples and curls.

Hetty's (d)evolution from vain & foolish to desperate & alone is swift. Arthur, who clearly holds all the power in their relationship, however much he may feel bewitched by her beauty, abandons her. He can run away from the little consequence of their relationship due to two great advantages: he's rich, and he's a man. To be fair, he doesn't know in what state he left Hetty, and he thinks he's doing the right thing. Would be interesting to know how things would've gone down if he'd been in town when Hetty realized she was pregnant. How to reconcile his morals & "good nature," with his obsession with maintaining the appearance of these? Caring what others think is a double-edged sword for Arthur. For example, when Adam sees him K-I-S-S-I-N-G under a tree with Hetty, it seems as though Arthur's mostly concerned that people will find out and think less of him. But more significantly, "he was dominated, as one who feels himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares for" (299). Eliot seems to condemn the extreme importance Arthur places on his image, but understands that it comes from a good place-- Arthur genuinely cannot feel comfortable in his conscience if he loses the respect of those whom he respects.

As for the conclusion, I guess I could see a happy (or at least bittersweet) ending from a mile off. I have a bad habit of looking at the table of contents before I start reading, and when the last chapter is called "Marriage Bells," the only mystery is: whose? That Adam's poor brother Seth would just roll over for his big brother, and give up his puppy-dog love for Dinah, didn't sit very well with me. There's so much jealousy elsewhere in this book that it's hard to believe Eliot could have Seth just be genuinely happy for Adam. But: oh well, the book was getting long enough-- we needed some way of settling all these poor people back into their simple, happy little lives. Everyone knows Seth isn't half the man Adam is (even Lisbeth says so, on p.47), so naturally he's used to Adam winning all the glory-- why not the (second choice) girl, too?

Ciao

2005-02-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

Just to assure you all that I have started reading Adam Bede, but will probably be relatively silent online this weekend because I'm going out of town. Here's hoping reading in the car doesn't make me carsick the way it used to.

Right at the beginning of this book, there are a couple of lines that hit close to home:

"If Gyp had had a tail he would doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear more phlegmatic than nature had made him" (13-14).

My poor, tailless, fat, phlegmatic, Farley:

Jane, continued

2005-02-07T13:16:00.001-04:00

Well, the last part of this dragged a bit for me, but that may be just because I am unused to reading against a deadlines. I have had a bit more time to ponder on some of the things I mentioned yesterday, though.

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre

Despite, as I said, finding the concluding volume a bit long, there were definitely some interesting bits in there. I'm thinking, specifically, of St. John. What a character! Jane is very careful & generous in her feelings toward him-- she's always looking for the good side of people, and is quick to compliment them on their strengths. That he expected Jane to marry him was (I guess) not unreasonable. He did have a point, that she ought not waste her life playing house with his sisters. Besides, they were first cousins, and we all know that first cousins are pretty much destined to hook up in these types of books. But he goes way too far, of course, when she refuses him. Threatening her with eternal damnation-- now that's a classy way for a parson to use his education: "if you reject [my offer], it is not me you deny, but God. [...] you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity" & "'the fearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death'" (508, 517). Yeah, he'd make a great husband.

Back to Rochester. We do gain a bit more perspective on his relationship with Bertha when the story of the fire is recounted. He does try to save her life-- which redeems him somewhat for previous comments about her "pigmy intellect," "gross, impure, depraved" nature, his own embarrassment, etc. As Heather pointed out, back then they had not so enlightened a perspective on mental illness as we do now (Or do we yet? Sometimes, I wonder...) Rochester's treatment of Bertha is not supposed to seem as disgusting as I instinctively find it. We are told, now, that we must separate the illness from the individual. Her illness made her horrible-- I guess Rochester had had no opportunity to see any other side of her character. And of course, had Brontë been writing 150 years later, she wouldn't've dared so un-PC a portrayal of mental illness: burning people in their beds, stabbing, howling, laughing maniacally, biting-- it's such a 19th century idea of insanity.

It's just so convenient that Bertha dies. And just so convenient that when Jane & Rochester are reunited, fate has so altered their relative positions in the world. Before, thinking of him trying to force useless jewellery & dresses & society on Jane, I cringed. It's easy to fall in love regardless of class or wealth, but probably less easy to build a marriage across such a divide. Witness Jane's discomfort at the prospect of him "keeping" her. But once her status in the world has been raised (by 5000 pounds), and his lowered (you know, the blindness, the amputation), they are free to realize that these things don't matter, and they can finally be happy together. How sweet.

Two more points:

1) Why do so many books from this era rely on remarkable coincidences in order to tie up their plots? Jane: "OMG, these strangers who took me in are actually my cousins!" I'm thinking also of Frankenstein (how, in all of Switzerland, did the creature just happen to kill Victor's little brother?), and of Dickens, in general.

2) What's with the abrupt changes of tense in this book? We're happily reading along, and then suddenly our narrator switches from straightforward past tense to present. I noticed maybe half a dozen instances: pages 251, 328, 333, 414, 454... Is this supposed to draw us in? To lend a sense of immediacy? She usually does it either when Jane is pretty near swooning at Rochester's presence, or when she's particularly enfeebled for some reason. It's not an unusual (maybe even clichéd?) trick in 20th century fiction, but I was surprised to find it here.

Some incomplete thoughts on Jane

2005-02-06T18:39:00.000-04:00

I'd never read Jane Eyre before, and to be honest I'm still not quite finished. I have about 100 or so pages left, which I should have no trouble finishing before tomorrow's class discussion (but after my 9:30 a.m. midterm).

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre

I wasn't sure what to make of it at the beginning. Books about children (Jane is only, what? 9 or so when it starts) can be too juvenile, as if the author is so focussed on being realistic, that they forget their audience is adult. Jane's childhood is interesting enough to read about, since it is related through the voice of the grown-up narrator, who has gained some perspective on her childhood emotions, but can still recount them with appropriate immediacy. Jane's stories about her horrible aunt & cousins were kind of boring, and I could've done with a little less complaining about Lowood school. Jane was a weird kid-- she considers herself shy and scared, but she has quite a temper at times. Didn't really understand Jane's fascination with the saintly Helen-- I admired her, too, for her stiff upper lip, but couldn't figure out why she was too 'lazy' to keep her things in order. A nice contrast to Jane, who sometimes verged on the whiny, but I found it a bit difficult to believe that a young child would be so taken with Helen's relatively mature and extremely religious virtue.

The Jane who sets off for Thornfield from Lowood is much changed from her childhood self. She seems to have acquired, somewhere, a great deal of common sense and a remarkable self-possession. Yes, she's still nervous at times, but she's always so composed on the outside. I admire her for that.

As a governess to Adèle, she is much more pleasant to read about than the nurse in Gaskell's The Old Nurse's Story. Jane enjoys her charge, but doesn't seem unduly infatuated with her. At one point she says of the little girl: "She had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood" (177). She's fair, and sometimes even critical (I think she makes fun of Adèle's vanity on a couple of occasions).

Enter Mr. Rochester. What am I supposed to make of him? First of all, I'm glad he's not handsome-- like Jane, I'm always kind of suspicious of good-looking people. I'm also impressed with Jane's handling of her massive crush on him. Unlike so many foolish heroines, she at least tries to resist her infatuation. None of this "I'm so helplessly in love with him, I think I'll die"-- at least, not at first. On 237 she gives herself a stern talking-to: "You [...] a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! Your folly sickens me." She's not demeaning herself, she's just trying to avoid giving in to feelings that she sees are bound to bring nothing but heartache. What do you think someone who falls in love with her older, richer, boss should do? Jane is right not to throw herself at him, and to make an effort to get over it.

(Aside: at this point, when Jane starts seeing and hearing weird things in the house, I was a little disappointed at her cluelessness. Why did she fixate on Grace Poole? Of course there was a madwoman on the third floor!)

As soon as Mr. Rochester proposed to Jane, my interest in their romanace was doused. All the tension disappears. All we get is (decidedly unsexy) awkwardness. She keeps calling him "sir" and "Mr. Rochester" and (ewwww) "my master," and he starts calling her "my little elf" and "my Mustard-Seed" and "salamander" (?) (345, 347). Jane cools off quite a bit too-- she's aware that her role has changed, and she's damn sure to set some things straight before they get hitched. At this point, too, the reader (well, I, anyway) starts to seriously question whether this marriage is a good thing for her. Rochester's conception of who (and what) Jane is is way off-- she's no fairy, or princess, or lady. She's plain Jane from Lowood, and even a gentleman's love isn't going to change who she is. Hopefully.

Then the whole story of Rochester's past comes out. Are we really surprised? We knew he was hiding something scandalous from Jane, and I was just annoyed she didn't demand to know, say, before they literally got to the altar.

Now, as to the nature of the scandal: It's hard for me to give a flying fig about Rochester's supposed attempted bigamy. I had already decided that it was a bad idea for Jane to marry him, but fear of committing a mortal sin in the eyes of the (Anglican?) Church seems an irrelevant reason. If Jane really loved him, she shouldn't care about that. Virtue and morals are admirable, for sure, but as 21st century readers, we are used to the concept of a difference between what's "right" and what's right. (By the way, don't Anglicans allow divorce?)

What made me uneasy about the situation was his treatment of his first wife. Granted, he never really loved her, and she (apparently) was pretty weird from the time they were married. From a modern perspective, though, this is not the way the mentally ill should be treated-- hidden away, locked up (in a room without windows!). Rochester pities her, but he also hates her. Why? Hopefully we'll get more backstory in the last 100 pages. Why did she go mad? Why does he hate her so much? Does Jane see Rochester again?

Right now, Jane's staying at Moor House with the three Rivers siblings. This part is boring. I want to know what happens to her.

I feel a sudden kinship...

2005-02-05T11:57:00.000-04:00

...with Dorothy Wordsworth.
I have a toothache.
Should probably just take some laudanum and sleep for the rest of the day, but must finish Jane Eyre.

It's go time

2005-02-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

My Margaret Atwood webpage is, as my Intro to Computers prof would say, "live." Here's hoping that you all will enjoy Lady Oracle: Margaret Atwood References. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to come up with that (rather lame) title. I'm so bad at titles and names (hence the wildly original "zoak's ENGL 3622 blog").
I'm proud to say that I wrote the HTML for the entire thing from scratch. I probably used a lot of so-called 'deprecated' tags, but I'm not really up-to-date on what's trendy vs. obsolete in the realm of web design. If anyone notices any problems or mistakes on it, please tell me.
Everyone else's that I've seen so far looks great. How come writing essays isn't this fun?

At least they were short...

2005-01-30T18:11:00.000-04:00

No, I'm kidding. I actually had fun reading these stories this week. It was refreshing after Dorothy Wordsworth (yawn) and Frankenstein, which loses a bit of shock value after three times.
I wish I'd thought to make some notes on these stories as I was reading them. Can't remember why exactly I liked/hated some of them.
Well, here goes:

Louisa May Alcott: A Whisper in the Dark

The only other thing I have read by Alcott was Little Women, which was more than a decade ago. I probably hated it.
As I admitted elsewhere, I was so annoyed by this one that I gave up and saved it 'til last, instead, so it's fresh in my mind right now.
Okay, I know I can't expect Alcott or her heroine to have any kind of enlightened, feminist perspective, but I still found Sybil to be incredibly unlikeable. I just can't understand if there was any purpose at all in making her so conniving. Sybil's flirtations and inanities go beyond girlish naivety. Thinking about it now, I'm not so sure that she didn't, indeed, have a screw loose somewhere. Inspired by Heather's entry, here are some choice lines:
"quite beside myself, I had suddenly stooped and bitten the shapely white hand that held both my own" (25)
"'I'm glad I'm pretty!' [...] I had unconsciously spoken aloud" (27)
"I mentally resolved to charm my cousin slowly, and enjoy the romance of a genuine wooing, without which no woman's life seems complete, -- in her own eyes, at least." (35)
And, my personal favourite:
"I could not understand it, and felt like a puppet in the grasp of some power I could not resist" (44)
This last, she says just as her little plan to make Guy love her is falling apart, but before they lock her up. I think it's priceless-- here's one of the most spoiled and manipulative people I've ever met in fiction or out, lamenting that she's feeling jerked around.
The story gets more interesting and compelling in the second half. As much as I wanted to slap some sense into this girl, the punishment inflicted upon her is harsh beyond all reason, and for sure her uncle is the real villain in the story. It bothered me, though, that the heroine had to be degraded so horribly before her humanity became apparent-- before it was possible for me to care in the slightest what happened to her. Her situation at the beginning of the story is unfortunate-- there have been enough stories about poor girls being promised into marriages against their will-- but not necessarily problematic. She's the one who decided to play games, and even though the crime didn't warrant so terrible a punishment, I still can't figure out what the author wanted us to feel about her clueless, spoiled, unfortunate heroine.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Good Lady Ducayne

Now this story was a bit more fun. A little less melodramatic, a little more convincingly creepy. At least here we've got an exotic locale and a plucky heroine. Of course, we all laugh at Bella's cluelessness: "Oh, that's just a little mosquito bite..." And we cringe at the fact that it is the good (almost-)doctor who saves her-- and then won't even condescend to tell her what was up! But I must admit I was kind of rooting for him to fall in love with her-- a guy who says, "'if ever I love a woman well enough to think of marrying her, riches or rank will count for nothing with me'" (90) can't be all bad. So he's enlightened enough to be able to see past Bella's poverty-- unfortunately, he can't also see past her "fresh complexion" to the (admittedly, somewhat simple) person underneath.
My skin crawled at the thought of the old lady feasting upon the blood of her strapping young companions, and I only wish Braddon had played a bit more with this horrific image.
The atmosphere was vivid-- Italy's sunny warmth turns into oppressive heat, and all the while this once "ridiculously healthy" (her words) girl is wasting away... It would make a good movie.

Elizabeth Gaskell: The Old Nurse's Story

This, as far as I could tell, was a pretty standard ghost story. I really only have one thing to say about it. Allow me to pursue a tangent:
I just started reading Jane Eyre for the first time, in preparation for next week's class, and had recently left off at the point where Jane meets Mr. Rochester for the first time. So far, and much to my surprise, I am really enjoying it (I hated Wuthering Heights in high school, and was afraid this one was similar. I should know better-- I have a sister who's nothing like me, too!).
So then I read this story. The nurse goes with the little girl to live at the country manor of some gentleman guardian. The house is mainly inhabited by kindly servants, since the man himself rarely visits anymore. They settle in, but then spooky things start to happen...
Seriously, I am having to skim back through this one, because I can't stop getting the characters confused with Jane Eyre's. With the two stories both foremost in my mind, comparisons are inevitable. This is mainly where Gaskell's story fails, I think. Jane is level-headed and relatively unemotional. She's skeptical and sensible. Hester, on the other hand, is excitable, superstitious, and sickeningly in love with her "pretty young mistress": "I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world" (285). The child, Rosamond, is creepy and inhuman in the way child actors in all horror movies are. I can just see Dakota Fanning (à la "Hide & Seek" trailers) pleading: "'She won't let me open the door for my little girl to come in; and she'll die if she is out on the Fell all night. Cruel, naughty Hester'" (299).
Overall scariness: 2/10. If this story is offering anything else, I missed it.

Vernon Lee: Dionea

I thought the masculine narration really worked for this story. The doctor (does he have a name?) is a respectable and respectful benefactor and narrator. He doesn't impose himself too much upon the story, and I liked his detached amusement w.r.t. Dionea's eccentricity. I don't quite believe him when he says "I am sorry to say she shows no natural piety" (353). He, too, is an outsider in their community, and while he couldn't be more different from the girl from the sea, he at least knows that she needs to be given the freedom to go about her strange way unimpeded.
This story is interesting, too, because of the way Lee decided to tackle the whole ideal of feminine beauty. It's a complicated subject, and I think Lee treats it as such. Waldemar is absolutely obsessed with Dionea's beauty, and yet cares not one iota about her as a person: "No love of mere woman was ever so violent as this love of woman's mere shape" (370). Is it possible to fetishize and worship the body without degrading the person? Would it have been possible for Waldemar to reconcile his admiration for her perfect beauty with respect for her mind? The doctor seems simply to find her beauty a pleasant accessory on a fascinating character, but as Waldemar becomes more entranced, the doctor gets distracted, too, by the pedestal on which she has been put: "when I meet her I cast down my eyes after the first glimpse of her loveliness [...] with a sort of religious awe" (371).
This begs the questions: Can I even talk about respecting Dionea as a person? Is she a person? I was confused and unsettled by the violent ending, but I thought it was appropriately ambiguous.

Mary Shelley: The Parvenue

I'm running out of steam, here. Will add to this later.
Let me just say I was disappointed: I was expecting a monster or at least some gore or scariness. Instead we get some kind of morality lesson.

Frankenstein + October Crisis = Black Bird by Michel Basilières

2005-01-23T14:44:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Black Bird by Michel Basilières, which I got for Christmas & didn't get around to until after classes had started. The reviews say it much better than I could, but I thought it was a pretty cool book.
Anyway, coincidentally (& extremely surreally), there is a Frankenstein-type subplot, featuring a fictional Montreal doctor modelled loosely on the real-life Dr. Wilder Penfield. We all know Penfield from the "Burnt toast" Heritage minute, but in Black Bird Basilières recasts him as Dr. Christopher Hyde, a world-famous brain surgeon whose last goal in life is to either "prove or disprove the existence of the soul" by successfully reanimating a body. The poor corpse in question is (among others) Hubert, an FLQ activist accidentally killed by the Quebec premier (long story). Upon reanimation, and after a bit of badgering from Dr. Hyde ("Do you feel yourself? Do you feel your soul?"), Hubert, pissed off & hungry, kills the good doctor and wanders off into the streets of Montreal. It is, of course, Halloween night, so his patchwork body and gaping head wound don't attract much attention. It turns out Hubert doesn't have a soul, but it hardly matters since all this happens just as the book is hurlting toward its explosive conclusion, and Hubert soon ends up dead (again) anyway.
If this sounds improbable, let me just inform you that the above is just one of many subplots, and that the real action involves grave robbing, bad poets, murderous fowl, and the unwitting instigation, by a misguided and angry young girl, of 1970's October Crisis, during which the Canadian government briefly declared martial law in Montreal. It's a very dark and funny read.

Cage match: Frankenstein versus The Vampyre

2005-01-23T13:48:00.000-04:00

A lazy weekend. Was looking for things to do in lieu of either a superfun Statistics project or a pile of truly horrible first-year Chemistry assignments to mark. So I browsed through some of the links on the course blog. (Aside: my brother spilled Coke all over our computer's keyboard, so now I am using a 10-year old French one, which is hindering me significantly. All the punctuation keys are mislabelled, so please forgive any typos.) Some thoughts on John Polidori:

John Polidori: The Vampyre

I found The Vampyre by John Polidori very entertaining. Obviously much less developed than Frankenstein, but brevity does have its advantages.
The protagonist, Aubrey, is approximately as clueless as Victor Frankenstein at times, but (I thought) more sympathetic. Aubrey is almost perversely drawn to Lord Ruthven's eccentricity, but is not so blind to common sense that he can't be convinced to give up on their friendship once warned of his vicious character. The reader, of course, knows exactly what's in store for Aubrey's innocent peasant girl, but Aubrey can't really be blamed for remaining unsuspecting. Consider this in contrast to Victor Frankenstein's maddening obtuseness w.r.t. the creature's threat about his wedding night: "I'd better just leave Elizabeth alone & totally unprotected so she doesn't have to witness our gory fight to the death..." (Note: not Victor's actual words.) Aubrey harbours uneasy suspicions about Ruthven's role in Ianthe's murder, but his reluctance to jump to conclusions makes more sense to me than Victor's immediate & irrational (& only coincidentally correct) assumption of the creature's guilt in William's murder. I also sympathise more with the captive Aubrey's forced inaction during his sister's wedding than with Victor's procrastination & naivete.
Conclusion: Despite this being a pretty silly story, I found Aubrey to be a more sympathetic character than our friend Victor the mad scientist.

Franken-frustrating!

2005-01-17T13:20:00.000-04:00

I admit I kind of raced through Frankenstein, since it's been less than a year since I last read it. I forced myself to slow down at the end-- I have a bad habit of reading the last 50 pages of a book without stopping to think. Maybe this is why I can never remember how anything ends...

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

As usual, I encountered the problem of lacking context for this book. I am not an English major, and have not studied any history, so I find it hard to imagine the world in which this book was written and first read. (I guess that's why I'm taking this class, eh?)
Let me get this straight: Mary Shelley ran away from home at the age of 16, to live (in sin!) with Percy Bysshe Shelley, who apparently "personified the genius and dedication to human betterment that she had admired her entire life." Entire life? She was 16! Okay, I know she was probably wise beyond her years, but forgive me for raising an eyebrow at the idea of an "unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy" taking up with a 16-year old, no matter how mature.
She wrote Frankenstein when she was only 19. This is humbling. What did the rest of us do by the time we were 19? I graduated from high school. Whoop-de-doo.
Ultimately, I find Frankenstein frustrating. This may be no more than the modern bias against the Romantics that Dr. Jones admitted to last week in class. I know I get annoyed with the hyperbolic emotions & the all-consuming passions. Victor spends an awful lot of time confined to bed, delirious and feverish with remorse/anguish/horror/etc. I understand that Shelley is hardly condoning this exaggerated kind of self-absorbed passion, but it nevertheless gets tiresome to read about. How many times does someone "gnash" their teeth in this book? It sounds scary & painful.
It's also easy to be frustrated with the stereotyped supporting roles Shelley has given her female characters. I find Elizabeth's one-dimensionality mind-numbing, and the cursory descriptions of Agatha, Justine, Victor's mother and Safie similarly featureless. I bear no prejudice against books about men & their problems-- many (most?) of my favourite books are by and about men. But Shelley's antagonists-- Victor & the creature-- are vengeful, self-absorbed, foolish & selfish. I remember a heated discussion in Dr. Creelman's class re: the reader's sympathy (or lack thereof) for either Victor or the creature. I still feel none for either of them. If they had only killed each other earlier on, they needn't have caused anyone else any trouble...

Check this out!

2005-01-13T19:30:00.000-04:00

Check out dagonbytes.com! This "wicked, evil, nasty, gore ridden site of sweet lovely death" just happens to offer a complete (and probably inaccurate) full text Frankenstein. You can also take a look at "flashed [sic] animations of a gothic nature," "a guide to graveyards in your area with over 10,000 listings," and DagonTV: "Swordfighting, fire-breathing, extreme ninja pro-wrestleing, and more."

Vive la difference!

2005-01-13T19:06:00.000-04:00

Started Frankenstein. Fortunately, I found a copy of the 1818 edition lying around my house. I had already read the other (1831) version a couple of times. The first version is quite different, isn't it? I might have to give in and buy the Broadview one from the bookstore, since it seems to be very extensively annotated re: 1831 revisions. Much of what I think is different may in fact just not have been very memorable.
I am sure, though, that a lot of the quotations I used in my essay (for Intro to Fiction), on the role of women in Frankenstein, were from revised sections. It seems as though I would've found much less to support my thesis in the 1818 edition. Is there a significant difference in how Shelley portrayed women in the two versions?
I hope to be able to finish reading it this weekend, so that I can devote all my time next week to the mountain of other assignments that have been piling up.

Tout fini

2005-01-09T15:35:00.000-04:00

Have finished reading Dorothy's journals. I'll admit, my eyes glazed over & my mind wandered more than a couple of times, but I made it.

Dorothy Grasmere: The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals

My overall impressions of Dorothy herself aren't much changed. I think she spent a lot more time sick in bed during the last half of Grasmere, though.
1802 was a big year for the Wordsworths. William and Dorothy took a long trip, via London, to Calais, France. As if that weren't exciting enough, they stopped long enough on the way home for William to get married to Mary Hutchinson. Did not see that one coming. Dorothy's entry on the day of the wedding (p. 126) was a bit weird. On the one hand, she seemed genuinely happy for William & Mary, but did not go to the ceremony, instead lying in bed in some kind of mood. Here more than ever, I wanted to know what she was thinking. Dorothy's journal is a record of what she does and sees, but she never admits to any emotions other than cheerfulness or sometimes worry. I guess the idea of diary as confessional or diary as conversation is a recent one.
I was thinking about Dr. Jones's questions: Are these journals literary? Is Dorothy an artist? I'm going to say no on both counts. Dorothy's writing is nothing like her brother's laborious process of creation. Many of her entries are little more than lists of things she did, letters she wrote, people she saw. She is capable of describing a scene or a person quite elegantly when she takes the time to, but this is probably to be expected of someone whose life is so filled with words & literature. On p. 81 Dorothy confesses she attempted to write some verses but gave up. Her main ambition in life seems to have been supporting her brother's career, and not trying to start her own. The Alfoxden journal is often more creative in style, but this maybe because Dorothy seems to have been less busy & distracted at this time of her life.
I wonder why the journals are printed out of chronological order in this edition. Alfoxden is shorter and apparently much less reliable (the original having been lost), but overall more pleasant to read, I thought.
I read Jesse's post about the journals and agree with most of what he says, although overall my impression is less negative than his.

How is this supposed to go?

2005-01-06T18:21:00.000-04:00

I've begun reading Dorothy Wordsworth's journals and decided to take the plunge and begin my reading journal. In the absence of any experience with either reading journals or blogs, I am uncertain how to proceed with this, but I checked out some of the reading blogs from Dr. Jones's past courses and these things seem to be fairly informal.
I'm only about halfway into the book, and so cannot even pretend to have anything insightful to say about it, but thought I might make this the place to at least record (before I forget) some initial thoughts and especially questions about Dorothy Wordsworth.

Dorothy Wordsworth: The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals

Dorothy Wordsworth was apparently the sister of the William Wordsworth. Here is where I confess that I have not studied any poetry at all since high school, and cannot even dredge up a single line of his poetry. Found a Complete Works online, though, and have randomly sampled.
She kept this journal for herself and for him; it was never meant to be published. I wonder how it might've differed if she'd planned on others reading it. Dorothy doesn't bother explaining, describing, or introducing, which sometimes gets confusing-- I'm having trouble keeping track of her many friends, neighbours, and penpals.
As trying as it sometimes is to read page after page of brief entries about Dorothy's chores, acquaintances, and walks, I find myself actually liking her. She seems so busy, so enterprising, and so "chearful" that it's hard not to. Be it sunny & warm, pouring rain, or snowing, she usually finds the weather pleasant and spends hours most days walking outside. Conversely, she gets frequent headaches and some days barely gets out of bed. Her brother the poet and Coleridge are also chronically ill.
Dorothy's daily routine and entertainments are so far removed from the 21st century that even the drier entries can be interesting. What modern woman in her situation would read Chaucer, make homemade shoes, work in her garden, take a long contemplative walk, chat with beggars and dine with poets all in the same day?
My favourite parts of this journal are Dorothy's quick character sketches of the people she meets. She relates meetings with beggars and describes their clothes, their looks and their histories so vividly that I kind of wish she'd take the time to do the same for her closer friends and family, too. What would she say about her brothers or about Coleridge himself?

One of them

2005-01-03T18:05:00.000-04:00

Never thought I would join the ranks of the bloggers. Have thus far avoided (on principle) the oh-so-trendy livejournal.com.
This is an experiment for Dr. Jones's English 3622: Women's Writing II. I am not sure, by the way, that I should even be taking this class. Just trying to squeeze in these 30 ch (!) of upper level electives required for a science degree. I took Dr. Creelman's Canadian Fiction class last semester, and that was fun, although it was sometimes difficult to get all the reading done on top of my other courses.
Cannot actually start my reading journal yet, as have not yet purchased any texts for this class. Line-ups at bookstore today too long (I should know, I was working behind the counter!).

First post

2005-01-03T15:06:00.000-04:00

This is easy.