These readings have been some of my favorites throughout the semester (though I've certainly enjoyed almost all of the work we've studied - a rare thing, even for a literature nerd like me).
Pater asks how we might define beauty. One of the most interesting questions he asks is "What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me?" (1507). I think this accurately sums up the theme of his discussion. I mentioned in class that I think this question is along the same lines as asking yourself or someone else, "Well, why do you like [book, music, movie, etc.]?" There really isn't any definite answer for either question. I could say, "Oh, this song reminds me of [random event in my life]," but that doesn't mean anything to anyone else. Beauty is relative to the individual. In Pater's "'La Gioconda,'" he suggests that da Vinci's paiting of Mona Lisa is the epitome of the artist's work, and also that the feelings it evokes represent the combination of the absolute id (the basest human pleasures) and the absolute superego (the most intense form of self-control). In "Conclusion," Pater suggests that art is "the race of the midstream, a drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought" (1511). This is sort of how I feel about writing (or how anyone might feel about creative expressions) - they're about sight, passion, and thought. A final interesting idea that Pater expounds is that we also need to have the sciences in order to put the arts into perspective.
The excerpt we read from T. Clifford Allbutt's "Nervous Diseases and Modern Life" discusses neuroses - the breakdown of the human psyche when the observation of too much creativity overloads the senses. Neurotics, according to Allbutt, have a distinct lack of innocence and imagination, a lack of faith, and a healthy sense of cynicism. The performance of lives and the decay of abject morality leads to insanity. However, Allbutt admits that going crazy isn't a death sentence. Once overextended aesthetes get their lives in order, once things are put in perspective for them, they may recover. The article makes perfect sense; those who spend their lives putting on a performance for the sake of other people lose their own identities. If they change who they are to fit burgeoning trends every few weeks or months, these aesthetes might be likely to go crazy. It's no surprise that disorders like schizophrenia could develop.
Arthur Symons' excerpt from his article, "The Decadent Movement in Literature," reiterates Allbutt's theories that those who participate in the Decadent movement put on false airs for show. They are concerned with colors and patterns, showy and distinct outward appearance modifiers. What I wonder is if there can be a return to nature once one experiences Decadence, or if the neurotic breakdown is the fate of all who play into this lifestyle.
The example of Decadence we studied is Oscar Wilde's play, "The Importance of Being Earnest." The play, according to the small introduction, was meant to depict the "deconstruction of Victorian moral and social values," which it does perfectly and succinctly. The characters in the play reserve sentiment for art, and science for life (in other words, emotion is for creativity, and formulas are for life). Throughout the play there are many pointless interruptions - this is art for art's sake. Wilde portrays Victorian views on family, marriage, parenting, and relationships between relatives and lovers. I really enjoyed reading the play, as I never had before. I appreciated the social commentary - the Victorian era is slowly becoming one of my favorites in terms of literature.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Reading #9 - Thomas, Bronte, Kipling, Chamberlain, Haggard, Conrad
It feels as though most of the readings from my classes this semester have involved colonialism or post/neo-colonialism. Having read many texts that discuss the causes and effects of international imperialism prepared me well for the readings for two weeks ago.
J.J. Thomas's text, an excerpt from Froudacity, was relatively short but provided an introduction that could be taken as a theme to the colonial readings found after. Thomas suggests that the most important undertaking that minority ethnicities could involve themselves in is assimilation. He writes that there is hardly any other way to survive.
Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre provides minimal actual discussion of colonialism, except in regard to Mr. Rochester. Jane, an eighteen-year-old girl who has suffered under the impression that no one, not her adoptive family, not her boarding schools, and not Rochester, wants her, discovers that the man she is in love with has been married before. Rochester's first wife is a woman from the Caribbean. He claims she is crazy and still desires to marry Jane. Rochester represents the quintessential colonial Englishman; he is educated and wealthy, and in taking multiple women to be his, he seems to parallel the imperialistic point of view. Rochester's women are to him as multiple nations are to England (and to a lesser degree, France, Spain, and the Netherlands).
Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" confused me until we discussed it in class. I genuinely believed it to be a satyrical take on imperialism, but I suppose I will have to read Kipling's other work in order to put it into context. If the poem is taken as Kipling wrote it, very seriously, then he is truly a man writing for his times.
Joseph Chamberlain expands on Kipling's themes in the excerpt from The True Conception of Empire. He believes the white man must undo centuries of barbaric practices (in other words, those cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples). Those who are fortunate (i.e., white and wealthy) have a duty to help those who are less so - again, reiterating Kipling's idea that men who are endowed by God (white men) have a personal responsibility to save poor savages. I did not very much like Chamberlain's text, most likely because I took him more seriously than Kipling, initially.
In the excerpts from Haggard's She, we see nature personified as a terrifying force. The white men throughout the story cannot imagine why anyone would want to live in the conditions that are made real and live by nature, by the Queen. I have to agree quite vehemently. Putting the outbursts from nature into a personal context, I feel like we are quite lucky to experience none of the more major natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanos) living on the eastern seaboard. If I had to experience these violent renderings of Mother Earth regularly, I can assure you that I would not purposely seek them out simply for the goal of conquering a native people who live within these conditions and know how to handle them.
My favorite excerpt assigned to us was of course Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Although Conrad gets quite superfluous many times throughout the fictionalized account, his minutely detailed descriptions of the wilderness of Africa are incredibly passionate and intense. The madness of the wild, as portrayed to the white man who tries to conquer Africa, is depicted in one man - Mr. Kurtz. Here is a man who went almost entirely alone on an expedition to Africa with the intention of "normalizing" its natives. In the end, he goes completely mad and in his notes, he writes "Exterminate all the brutes." I think this excerpt was a perfect note to end our imperialism unit on, simply because we have studied now a trajectory of the mindset of the English in terms of their plans for conquering savage nations. We have seen how the white man believes it is his duty, personally and professionally, to travel to these foreign places and train their native peoples to become more like the English. From there the white man finally realizes (as Mr. Kurtz does) that this task is impossible, and that the only way to get out alive is to kill everyone.
J.J. Thomas's text, an excerpt from Froudacity, was relatively short but provided an introduction that could be taken as a theme to the colonial readings found after. Thomas suggests that the most important undertaking that minority ethnicities could involve themselves in is assimilation. He writes that there is hardly any other way to survive.
Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre provides minimal actual discussion of colonialism, except in regard to Mr. Rochester. Jane, an eighteen-year-old girl who has suffered under the impression that no one, not her adoptive family, not her boarding schools, and not Rochester, wants her, discovers that the man she is in love with has been married before. Rochester's first wife is a woman from the Caribbean. He claims she is crazy and still desires to marry Jane. Rochester represents the quintessential colonial Englishman; he is educated and wealthy, and in taking multiple women to be his, he seems to parallel the imperialistic point of view. Rochester's women are to him as multiple nations are to England (and to a lesser degree, France, Spain, and the Netherlands).
Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" confused me until we discussed it in class. I genuinely believed it to be a satyrical take on imperialism, but I suppose I will have to read Kipling's other work in order to put it into context. If the poem is taken as Kipling wrote it, very seriously, then he is truly a man writing for his times.
Joseph Chamberlain expands on Kipling's themes in the excerpt from The True Conception of Empire. He believes the white man must undo centuries of barbaric practices (in other words, those cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples). Those who are fortunate (i.e., white and wealthy) have a duty to help those who are less so - again, reiterating Kipling's idea that men who are endowed by God (white men) have a personal responsibility to save poor savages. I did not very much like Chamberlain's text, most likely because I took him more seriously than Kipling, initially.
In the excerpts from Haggard's She, we see nature personified as a terrifying force. The white men throughout the story cannot imagine why anyone would want to live in the conditions that are made real and live by nature, by the Queen. I have to agree quite vehemently. Putting the outbursts from nature into a personal context, I feel like we are quite lucky to experience none of the more major natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanos) living on the eastern seaboard. If I had to experience these violent renderings of Mother Earth regularly, I can assure you that I would not purposely seek them out simply for the goal of conquering a native people who live within these conditions and know how to handle them.
My favorite excerpt assigned to us was of course Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Although Conrad gets quite superfluous many times throughout the fictionalized account, his minutely detailed descriptions of the wilderness of Africa are incredibly passionate and intense. The madness of the wild, as portrayed to the white man who tries to conquer Africa, is depicted in one man - Mr. Kurtz. Here is a man who went almost entirely alone on an expedition to Africa with the intention of "normalizing" its natives. In the end, he goes completely mad and in his notes, he writes "Exterminate all the brutes." I think this excerpt was a perfect note to end our imperialism unit on, simply because we have studied now a trajectory of the mindset of the English in terms of their plans for conquering savage nations. We have seen how the white man believes it is his duty, personally and professionally, to travel to these foreign places and train their native peoples to become more like the English. From there the white man finally realizes (as Mr. Kurtz does) that this task is impossible, and that the only way to get out alive is to kill everyone.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Reading #8 - Braddon, Eliot, Doyle
What I found most interesting about the excerpts we read for Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret was not the suspense or elements of sensation fiction, but rather that the story is a commentary on the destruction of Victorian society. Lucy Audley is supposed to be a model woman, beautiful, innocent, eager to please the men in her life, and absolutely incapable of murder. The story has the same sort of draw that trashy reality television shows or Dateline specials on women who kill have: the idea that women who act in ways outside of the prescribed notions of femininity are completely fascinating. Lucy is the epitome of what a woman should not be. She abandons her marriage and her child, enters into a bigamous relationship, and attempts murder on her first husband's life. One can understand why this story may have been so shocking to readers in the Victorian era.
Unfortunately, although I am usually very interested in stories about people who possess extrasensory abilities, I did not find Eliot's The Lifted Veil a very captivating read. It has the potential to be a good story, but I think Eliot should have stuck with her realistic fiction instead of venturing into the world of the super- and preternatural.
But thankfully Eliot was positioned between two intriguing stories. The last, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League," a short Sherlock Holmes story, was of course the center of my presentation for this past week. Holmes enters into a business arrangement with Mr. Wilson, who is paying him to find out why Wilson was terminated from his work as a very important member of the Red-Headed League. In taking on this ridiculous case, Holmes discovers a con artist hard at work deceiving redheads with stolen money. The culprit is captured and Holmes is hero once again. I'm a big fan of Holmes and Doyle, but I don't pretend to know everything about the opium-addicted detective. I definitely want to look a little more closely at the 56 stories and 4 books that involve Holmes' life to see if there are other obvious elements of sensation and detective fiction (besides the ones that are already clear).
Unfortunately, although I am usually very interested in stories about people who possess extrasensory abilities, I did not find Eliot's The Lifted Veil a very captivating read. It has the potential to be a good story, but I think Eliot should have stuck with her realistic fiction instead of venturing into the world of the super- and preternatural.
But thankfully Eliot was positioned between two intriguing stories. The last, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League," a short Sherlock Holmes story, was of course the center of my presentation for this past week. Holmes enters into a business arrangement with Mr. Wilson, who is paying him to find out why Wilson was terminated from his work as a very important member of the Red-Headed League. In taking on this ridiculous case, Holmes discovers a con artist hard at work deceiving redheads with stolen money. The culprit is captured and Holmes is hero once again. I'm a big fan of Holmes and Doyle, but I don't pretend to know everything about the opium-addicted detective. I definitely want to look a little more closely at the 56 stories and 4 books that involve Holmes' life to see if there are other obvious elements of sensation and detective fiction (besides the ones that are already clear).
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Reading #7 - Gaskell, Collins, Dickens
In the collection of stories The Haunted House, readers are exposed to many elements of sensation fiction, including misdirected letters, drugs, potions, and poisons, characters who adopt disguises, trained coincidences, and heightened suspense detail. Each story reveals the details of an alleged haunting, but none are truly about ghosts. Three stories by Gaskell, Collins, and Dickens explicate the experiences of different narrators who are haunted most prominently by their own minds.
"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room," written by Collins, contains the elements of sensation fiction that include trained coincidences and heightened suspense detail. The narrator explains that he was once a young man who worked on a ship, and ever since then has been terrified of a candle that he claims is haunting him. On the ship, a mutiny occurred and the young man was tied up and left for dead. All the while a candle continued to burn, and supposedly when it was nearly burnt out it would have ignited the ship's cargo (gunpowder) and killed him. However, the candle conveniently did not burn out. Instead of being a true haunting, the narrator is most likely affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.
In "The Ghost in the Garden Room," written by Gaskell, the narrator is haunted by a judge, who may or may not be the dead Benjamin, the son of poor farmer parents who cheated them out of all their money. Benjamin is an aristocratic villian (another element of sensation fiction), and also causes the heightened suspense detail toward the end of the tale. Readers cannot be sure if he is truly dead, especially because a letter sent to his parents may have been misdirected. If Benjamin is dead, then a haunting in the garden room may be very possible, but it is highly unlikely.
Dickens authored "The Ghost in Master B.'s Room," which is, in my opinion, the most interesting of the three tales. It tells of a true psychological haunting; the man who owns the haunted house is staying in the master bedroom which once belonged to a man whose full name is unknown. He only goes by the initial "B." In a particularly late-Victorian/early Modern style of writing, Dickens' narrator explicates his stream of consciousness, a literary element rarely seen before this time. The anonymity surrounding the former occupant of the room drives the narrator to an obsession about who the man may have been. The narrator claims he is haunted by the ghosts of his childhood; perhaps it is truly only regret or a mid-life crisis he is having. This story contains what may be considered the only true haunting - it is completely psychologically-based, and the narrator acknowledges this.
Overall I was expecting something more along the lines of a true ghost story, but the hauntings based on psychological conditions is interesting as well.
"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room," written by Collins, contains the elements of sensation fiction that include trained coincidences and heightened suspense detail. The narrator explains that he was once a young man who worked on a ship, and ever since then has been terrified of a candle that he claims is haunting him. On the ship, a mutiny occurred and the young man was tied up and left for dead. All the while a candle continued to burn, and supposedly when it was nearly burnt out it would have ignited the ship's cargo (gunpowder) and killed him. However, the candle conveniently did not burn out. Instead of being a true haunting, the narrator is most likely affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.
In "The Ghost in the Garden Room," written by Gaskell, the narrator is haunted by a judge, who may or may not be the dead Benjamin, the son of poor farmer parents who cheated them out of all their money. Benjamin is an aristocratic villian (another element of sensation fiction), and also causes the heightened suspense detail toward the end of the tale. Readers cannot be sure if he is truly dead, especially because a letter sent to his parents may have been misdirected. If Benjamin is dead, then a haunting in the garden room may be very possible, but it is highly unlikely.
Dickens authored "The Ghost in Master B.'s Room," which is, in my opinion, the most interesting of the three tales. It tells of a true psychological haunting; the man who owns the haunted house is staying in the master bedroom which once belonged to a man whose full name is unknown. He only goes by the initial "B." In a particularly late-Victorian/early Modern style of writing, Dickens' narrator explicates his stream of consciousness, a literary element rarely seen before this time. The anonymity surrounding the former occupant of the room drives the narrator to an obsession about who the man may have been. The narrator claims he is haunted by the ghosts of his childhood; perhaps it is truly only regret or a mid-life crisis he is having. This story contains what may be considered the only true haunting - it is completely psychologically-based, and the narrator acknowledges this.
Overall I was expecting something more along the lines of a true ghost story, but the hauntings based on psychological conditions is interesting as well.
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