Considering the nineteenth century parenting techniques used in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the story focuses on the creator’s poor "parenting" of his “child” leading him to an unjust life. The fatherhood in the novel is dually examined through Victor’s father Alphonse and through Victor himself. In both cases the reader becomes a witness of the failure of the paternal function. Regarding the motherhood, the loss of the mother in the beginning of the novel leads to consequences that will destroy later the whole family. All these unfortunate events voice the idea of the importance of these two significant factors, whose absence in different aspects creates a world full of sorrow and redemption.
The motif of motherhood has a very important role in the rising of the children and unites the dwellers of the house. The mother’s death shakes the foundations of the family and put in Victor’s mind the idea of creating artificial life. This explains the sorrow of the son about the death of his mother for which he blames his father. He has the desire to become better than his father because of who he led a life that was burdened with high expectations that he set for him. The failure of the father Victor and the failure of the father Alphonse are different in the novel. But their incapability of satisfying the expectations of being fathers leads to their punishment.
There is a reference in the story of Shelley’s mother, who has died due to complications from her birth. She first hands the experience of the loss of the parent, because she was raised without her mother. So the female, and especially, the mother, is seen as the wellspring of compassion even today not only in the 19th century. The role of the father is not as important as the role of the mother. She is the one who raises the child and teaches them the morality and goodness. This is expressed vividly in the screenplay of Kenneth Branagh’s film when the father brings the orphan Elizabeth in their home: “MOTHER: You must think of her as your own sister. You must look after her. And be kind to her.” (Lady S. & Hart V. J.) She teaches Victor to be compassioned and polite, thus putting the foundations of his moral behavior. The colors before her death in the film are bright, there is much more lights and everybody is happy. In the night of her death the atmosphere changes rapidly with the bad weather. There is a storm which somehow predicts for something bad to happen. The destroying of the tree by the lightning is very symbolical: “VICTOR: As a boy, I stood at this window and watched God destroy our tree.” (Lady S. & Hart V. J.) In this scene the tree of the family is annihilated and probably the mother dies at the same time. It is a very strong moment in the film. After the mother’s death Victor builds a monument for her, in honor of her. The future absence of the mother is a strife that Victor experiences in his development.
The failure in the “fatherhood” of Victor is his creation and his refusal to take responsibility for the life he has created. Like Prometheus he rebels against the laws of nature and as a result is punished by his creation. They both are punished for their actions, when Victor, in a way, steals the secret of creation from God and the Titan steals fire from heaven to give to the man. The fire is equivalent to the Revolution and the French Revolution – the great utopian promises of the 18th century, but nobody including Victor didn’t think of the consequences. In both cases the creation rebels against the creator. Shelley expresses the view that the creator is at fault, not the creation .That is how the book can be seen as a criticism not only of scientists who are unconcerned by the potential consequences of their work, but also of fathers who don’t take responsibility for their children. Victor rejects the creation when it seeks him out and he abandons it, which directly leads to his personal downfall. The absence of parenting and guidance until Frankenstein encountered society which add that moral failings that are also due to the lack of a parent's love. Victor fears the creature’s desire to destroy him by killing everyone most dear to him, which is a part of his punishment. There is an irony in the name of Victor, his name suggests victory, but his creation of new life brings only defeat and death. The failure of the father of Victor is his incapability to save his wife, even though he is the best recognized doctor and respected by all who knew him for his integrity. His punishment is the murder of his little son, killed by Frankenstein, for which Alphonse dies from grief. He is not directly punished by his son, but it is a result of Victor’s deeds.
The role of the mother and the father as creators and teachers is very important to Shelley's creature. The failing of Victor to parent his “son” creates a "monster” that later revenges for his abandonment, and his punishment is not only for his creator but also for his whole family. And the reason for all this comes from the death of the mother, whose absence provokes some actions of his son that for good or bad destroy are being punished by God and destroy the whole family. Here Shelley gives utterance to the importance and the role of the motherhood and the fatherhood. The story implies an idea that Margaret Mead states very well, but namely that "Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention."
WORK CITED
Type of Entry:
Film Screenplay. Two authors.
In-Text Citation Form:
(Lady S. & Hart V. J.)
Works Cited Form:
Frankenstein (1994) by Steph Lady & James V. Hart.
Revised draft by Frank Darabont.
From the novel by Mary W. Shelley.
2nd revised draft, February 8, 1993 http://sfy.ru/?script=frankenstein_1994
четвъртък, 30 януари 2014 г.
USA and Great Britain Literature Reading Notes
KURT VONNEGUT
Slaughterhouse Five
Comments on Chapter Two
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the 20th century's great American pacifists. His work Slaughterhouse Five is the semi-autobiographical account of the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany by the British and American air forces in the February of 1945. It is the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has become "unstuck in time". His life is given to the reader out of order as he travels back and forth in time. He can see his birth and death and he can jump from one moment to another with no pattern to predict what will come next. The novel is an earnest anti-war novel. It isabout the war experiences of the main hero who are actually of the author itself, who appears in Chapter One and Chapter Ten, putting the frame of the novel. He himself has experienced these horrible events and exposes his trauma from the War through the life of Billy Pilgrim. The novel is known for its dark humor and use of science fiction which are typical for the other Vonnegut’s works. Slaughterhouse Five is highly moral story that derives from the effects of Dresden’s events that has marked Vonnegut’s life. It’s a novel about overwhelming this trauma from the war events, a novel about death and time.”So it goes.”
The section of the novel that I am going to comment on is Chapter Two and more precisely some passages from this section of the novel. After the appearance of Vonnegut in Chapter One, aiming to announce that he controls the hero of the story Chapter Two begins with the appearance of Billy and the well known sentence “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. Here the reader is introduced to the main character, Billy Pilgrim.We become witnesses to the first time when Billy gets unstuck in time. He wanders from moment to moment in his life, experiencing chronologically disparate events right after one another. There is plenty of analepses and prolepses that have a dramatic function in the story. Billy travels in time and some kind of complexity appears and confuses the reader.. The introduction “Listen” leads in the fiction within the fiction, which makes the work metafiction or so-called mise en abyme (a french literary term used to name metafiction). Billy is a chronotope, because of his symbolic journey to Tralfamadore.
There are many figures of speech in Chapter Two, like symbols and metaphors. Let’s take Billy's hometown Ilium, which is another name for the city of Troy, which is the doomed city under siege in the Iliad of Homer. Billy’s hometown is named after a city that was destroyed by war, a city that has lost the battle. Here we can see the contrast between the non-heroic Billy and a glorious war hero. His appearance on the battlefield is like a chaplain’s assistant. He is not ready for this war. He is weak and pathetic boy in the middle of the battleground. Even his name is a symbol of innocence. He is called “Billy” rather than “William” because he is more like a naïve traveler than a warrior. His last name of Pilgrim also has symbolic significance. Billy is on a journey to different periods of his own life. Vonnegut gives the reader exactly a non-heroic Billy because he doesn’t want to glorify the war. The moment with the pool in his childhood kept my attention. It is very symbolic flashback. It can be found reference to the War in the essence of this situation.
“It was like an execution. Billy was numb as his father carried him from the shower room to the pool. His eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music went on. He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. “
First the reader can reveal the symbolic use of the water. Water is often used in literature as origin of life. It is a symbol of the beginning, of birth. The reader can see the hidden parallel situation behind this one with the pool. Being thrown in the pool is equal to being thrown on the battlefield of the War. He had no choice to choose if he wants or not. The situation in the pool is compared to “an execution”. Here this could be considered as a hint for the reader to refer this happening to the War. Billy is a little boy who cannot swim it is the same when he is sent to take part in the War. He is unskilled and he is not able to discharge his duties as a soldier. On his first appearing on the battleground of the War he feels as numb as when his father throws him in the pool. We can also understand by his eyes which were closed that he was scared. The bottom of the pool refers to the battlefield-the worst place where anybody could be. His father tries to teach him how to swim by the sink-or-swim method. If he does not swim-he sinks, he will die. He has no choice. It is the same with the War. He cannot give up and if he dares to do –he will be killed, he will die. You have to fight for dear life. The “free will” does not exist.
Death is mentioned many times in Chapter Two. The narrator announces the death of Billy’s father two times. Another meet with the death is the mentioned dead of Billy’s wife and the dead body of the famous runner in the nursing home. Each of these deaths is mentioned without much tact. There is never any emotional response elaborated, though the people around him grieve. After each death he says the phrase “So it goes.” This is the Tralfamadorian response to death. Billy exposes their perception for death in his second letter.
'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.'
Here is an explanation of the conception of death and time in which believe the Tralfamadorians and Billy. According to them all time happens simultaneously, so a man who dies is actually still alive, since all moments exist at all times. People only appear to die. But he is alive in the past. All moments of past present and future are always alive. So Billy doesn’t take death for a big deal. It is something normal and at that moment the person is only in a “bad shape”. On the background of all the crucial events connected with the War this conception for the death is quite positive. And if the reader really understands what is this idea for the unavoidable end of every human being it could influence his/her life very positively. At least this could make the reader think about dead not so dramatically and to expect it like a physical stage of the body separated from the soul. But actually Vonnegut’s conception and attitude toward death is very personal as he himself would attempt suicide by pills and alcohol after the death of his mother who committed suicide. The zoo on Tralfamadore where are held Billy and the famous actress Montana Wildhack can be read as a symbol of the worldview that helps Billy to assimilate his experience into his post-war life and his meets with death. This assimilation can be considered as an assimilation of the author himself caring the burden of the war trauma.
Even though Vonnegut put in the novel science fiction it reminds me a lot of the book of Ian McEwan, Atonement. Like in Slaughterhouse Five there is no chronology of the events. There are a lot of analepses and prolepses in the book, shifting back and forth so the reader cannot understand which of these moments are current. And just like Vonnegut who moves and controls his protagonist, at the end of the book appear the one who has controlled all the time the protagonists of the story. The movie Slaughterhouse Five begins in the same way like Atonement –with the typing of the type-writer. It put the fictional element within the novel which is fiction as a whole and predicts its power which will influence the heroes and the reader. There is War issue in Atonement too. And its moments in the novel are as powerfully and crucially described as in Slaughterhouse Five. In both novels the goal of this fictionally invented world, where everybody is happy is to deal with the trauma from the war, even though the past cannot be touched and changed. Concerning the skipping from one moment to another and the traveling in the future the novel and the movie Slaughterhouse Five is similar to Donnie Darko Book of Richard Kelly. The Donnie Darko like Billy is moving back and forth in his life. He knows the time of his death and what will happen to him. The protagonist Donnie Darko dies in his room hit by an engine of a crashed falling plane and he knows this before it happens. This strongly remind me of the scene with the plane in Slaughterhouse Five, when Billy says that they are going to die.
Published at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969, Slaughterhouse Five is considered by many critics to be Vonnegut’s greatest work. He combines science fiction, autobiography, historical fiction, and modern satire in the depiction of the life of his hero Billy Pilgrim, which are typical characteristics for postmodern literature. According to me the autobiographical participation makes the novel great and unique anti-war work, because Vonnegut exhibits his own life experience from the firebombing in “the land of Oz”. The novel is classic in any time, but its publication during the ongoing Vietnam War made it extremely successful.
Nancy Willard
Comments on “How to Stuff a Pepper”
And on “Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him”
From her poetry collection “Carpenter of the Sun”
Nancy Willard is an American poet and short story writer. Nancy Willard was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was educated at the University of Michigan and Stanford University. Willard is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Water Walker, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also written two novels, and four books of stories and essays. In 1982, she received the Newbery Medal for A Visit to William Blake's Inn. Nancy Willard has an unerring ear for authentic speech, a sensitive, almost delicate feeling for tender childhood relationships, and real skill in shaping and bringing off a story. Her poems point to genuine talent. Her works are filled with wit, charm, elegance, and magic. Nancy Willard's best poems—and her best are as good as they come—illuminate local, humble subjects: flowers, moss, children, the patterns of domestic life. Nancy Willard is a teacher, a storyteller whose “ broken speech of wizards” appear as real magic in the recent trends in American Poetry.
One of the poems I choose to comment on is How to Stuff a Pepper. It is from her poetry collection Carpenter of the Sun, which includes some of her best poems from Masks for a Naked Poet. The collection is about flowers, vegetables, animals and her son. There are also some darker things, but there are not many of them. Her poems do not put the reader on a test, which is not wrong because for the reader it is her duty to suffer more so that she might entertain the reader with her sorrows.
Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside
In contrast to Adrienne Rich’s ideology, Nancy Willard reveals no overtly feminist positions in this poem. She speculates on the shyness of her green peeper. This part of the poem is filled with shy wonderment, with a tenderness toward Creation that is rare in contemporary poetry.
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light
She represents the things of nature as marvelous and more marvelous are the things of man. She spiritualize the glaciers with their “conversation”. She uses similies comparing the moon to a melon. She sets down things in a proper order. The poem has diction of cookbook and at the same time of fairytale. Willard uses language of fancy and of directions.
You say I have not yet taught you
to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.
Nancy Willard tells us not to be so hard on ourselves. Even thought the poem sounds poised and calm it is active and its stillness of rapt gets the attention of the reader. It is like an exquisite miniature, filled with luminosity. Her domestic is not merely cozy, and she's not merely domestic.
The other poem I choose from this compilation is Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him. It is about her son and the difficulty of being poet and a mother at the same time.
2) Do butterflies make noise?
The wire in the butterfly’s tongue hums gold.
Some men hear butterflies even in winter.
The animals and the kids are typical for her poems. The artist is enthralled and trapped by superstitious and various magic like birthdays of gorillas, hearing of the butterflies in the winter, earlobes pierced by a tooth of steel. The kid is attracted to magic, the reader also becomes attracted to this magic of the creative artist.
God made the thread: O man, live forever!
The poem evokes the pathos in life. The child plays and amuses us while the truth of life comes from the adult people. This is ultimately incomprehensible world. There is no fatigue over the weirdness of absurdity of life. The poem is closer to blessing and benediction. The author speaks to the child in us, the student, the wonderer.
I find opposition to this poem in the work of my favorite poet Charles Bukowski “My Old Man”. In contrast to Willard’s poem which conveys affection between a parent and a child the poem of Bukowski conveys the damaged relation of a father and a son. Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him exposes involvement and acceptance between a parent and a child, while the father in My Old Man does not accept his son. Willard’s poem expresses a deeper meaning of time through life.
Nancy Willard displays a lovely wit in her poems which is rare among poets these days. Through her magical poems she speaks to the child in us. She is also a convincing teacher and we wait impatiently for new lessons. There is abundance of good humor in her stories and there is no self-pity in them. In her poems life is sad, wonderful and magical. She produces sad songs in difference to the Spirit of the Age.
Henry James
Daisy Miller
Chapter Four
(comments on Daisy Miller’s ostracism)
Daisy Miller, is one of Henry James's most popular works. It first appeared in England in Cornhill Magazine in 1878. In it James presents an early version of his "international theme" by juxtaposing the manners and culture of American tourists in Europe with those of Americans who have lived abroad for a long time. It represents the behavior, customs and values typical of a particular social class in a given time and place. The novella contrasts the rigid social laws of Europe and the independent, unconventional spirit of this young American woman, Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller is is an examination of late nineteenth-century morality and manners.
The story begins with the meet of the young American expatriate Winterbourne and the attractive and naive American Daisy Miller in In Vevey, Switzerland. Winterbourne escorts her to the Castle of Chillon. Daisy appears dangerous to the established social code there. She runs her reputation by associating with the handsome Italian Giovanelli. After a harsh exchange of words with Winterbourne, Daisy pays a rash evening visit to the Colosseum. As a result, she falls ill with fever and dies a week later. After her death Winterbourne realizes his love for the dead American girl, his premature judgment of her, and his own blindness in the face of European convention.
After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her; and they intimated that they desired to express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her behavior was not representative--was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class.
Daisy is the prototype of "the American girl" of the post Civil War period. She is oblivious to the social codes of the Old World. Daisy is direct, independent and somewhat presumptuous. For the “shrewd people” she was going too far. This shrewd people are the society that reject her and like this society Winterbourne harshly judges Daisy's alleged social transgressions.The unknown narrator only has access to the main character Winterbourne’s thoughts. The passage is framed around Daisy Miller and her “abnormal behavior” as a subject of Winterbourne’s study. Because of her “not representative” behavior many saw her as a shocking example of the type of American that was infiltrating upper-class society, both in the New World and the Old. Winterbourne’s wonder about how she feels show that he is concerned about her. In the passage there is a well made description of Daisy Miller but from Winterbourne perception. The phrase “he asked himself” means that he is doubting about what Daisy really is. But he is blinded by the society. So he cannot understand that she is only flirting and he offends her. Winterbourne is the pivotal character of the story. According to these critics, by presenting Winterbourne's disapproval of Daisy's essentially innocent activities, James subtly admonished the narrow attitudes adopted by many Americans abroad. So the impression appears to be very powerful argument for the attitude of the society.
I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?
Firstly the attention of the reader is caught by the first sentence. There is an alliteration created by the words fearful, frightful and flirt. Daisy, in her way, is explaining to Winterbourne that her intentions are completely innocent and that she is living by the morals of American youth that is something normal for her. She is quite aware of what she is doing. She has the free will and she wanted to live now, for the moment.
Winterbourne realizes that Giovanelli and Daisy are in love and he expands and distorts their relation.
mentally that little American flirts were the queerest creatures in the world
By saying this he employs types. This saying categorizes Daisy again. The conflict expresses the understanding of the tension between old and new, conventionality and individuality, Europe and America, and appearance and reality in the novella. Henry James depict the generic “American girl” but there are evidences to think that Winterbourne is the pivotal character. By presenting Winterbourne's disapproval of Daisy's essentially innocent activities, James subtly admonishes the narrow attitudes adopted by many Americans abroad. There are debates about Daisy’s death if Daisy deserves her fate or Winterbourne causes her downfall.
Henry James uses the “American girl” in many of his works. Her extended depiction James refined in Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady (1881) . The work reminds me a lot of the conflict in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. In this work we examine the prevailing modes of conduct peculiar to a specific time and place that control the characters’ perceptions and behavior. The relationships between the two protagonists are almost the same. The man hides his affection with the girl and he considers her for a simple girl from the lower classes. The appropriate norms of the society and the prejudices are the obstacles in their path. Henry James admires Jane Austin. She is best represented in America by Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence (1920).
Henry James is regarded as a subtle craftsman who skillfully reflected the late nineteenth-century concern with morality and social behavior. Daisy Miller's originality, stylistic distinction, and psychologically complex characters have proved his professionalism. His work is an evidence of his embarrassment over the lack of manners of many of his countrymen who toured Europe. James let Daisy dies rather than making her a heroine. This is an ambiguous ending which is James’ intent for writing the novella. Instead of being an illustration of the moral code of the middle and upper classes, Daisy Miller was meant to be a warning to American travelers of the period. . To this day the story continues to be widely anthologized and discussed for its complex and interesting characters and its examination of late nineteenth-century morality and manners.
Gretel Ehrlich
The Solace of Open Spaces
About Men
Gretel Ehrlich is a writer of essays, short stories and poems which are included in many anthologies including Best Essays of the Century, Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, Best Travel Writing, and The Nature Reader. She is the author of The Solace of Open Spaces, Yellowstone, Drinking Dry Clouds, To Touch the Body and many others. The themes of her writings are United States or Americans, Gender roles, Nature, Women, Rodeos, Animals or Frontier or pioneer life. In The Solace of Open Spaces she challenges serious myths concerning gender and its relationship to the American West. The book consists of twelve essays which represent the West not as usually as a man’s world, but as a world of capable women who work along with the men. This is a book of essays which introduces her life experience and a sort of lessons to what it is like living in Wyoming. But most of all Gretel Ehrlich represents in this essay collection the healing power of nature on a place where you can “lose yourselves”.
I decided to comment on one of the twelve essays of The Solace of Open Spaces, called About Men which originally appeared in Time magazine. Ehrlich’s aim in the essay is to reconsider the basic stereotype about western man and “cowboys”. She tries to reveal their complex nature by giving examples, descriptions and details of their life. Along with the debunking of cowboys’ stereotype she impresses also the natural world that affects them.
The only place in the city where can be seen cowboys is on the Marlboro advertisements in the subway. Gretel Ehrlich introduces the hidden features of the character of the western man. For most of the people, especially in the big cities, there is a fixed stereotype about the cowboys. They are seen as “strong and silent”, but nobody can see that their silence is evoked by their loneliness, because there is no one to talk to in the wilderness. Everybody knows this romantic picture of a cowboy who “rides away into the sunset”, but nobody knows that he is riding the horse since early morning, working all day long and now sixteen hours later he is coming back home. Ehrlich debunks the stereotype of the “macho” giving several characteristics of the cowboy. She says that he is “convivial, quirky and softhearted”, which is deeply admired by her but nobody can see this. The cowboy is compared with “a pile of rocks”, possessing an instinct for survival. All this iconic myth about the cowboys is built on the American notion of heroism. But the heroism is not important here, it is all about “acting spontaneously” in the face of the danger. On this wild place there is no need to demonstrate any heroism. The westerner’s courage is “selfless” and it is a form of confession. They take care about their animals and it is not about being macho, but human, because the world they live in is dangerous and they need to be survivors and they never make a complaint. Debunking the stereotypes about the cowboys, Ehrlich encourages readers to consider how manliness is a quality which, for cowboys, also requires a balancing of more conventionally typical feminine qualities, such as caring and compassion. The cowboys, as Ehrlich writes, are "androgynous at the core."
The cowboy seems cold, but his emotion is hidden behind his rough behavior. Gretel Ehrlich proves this with a sentence of a westerner, talking about a little lamb- "Ain't this little rat good-lookin'?" He is using “rat” instead of “lamb”, because lamb is diminutive and for him it is probably unusual to say this word with his harsh speech. Inside the cowboys are tender, but they just cannot express themselves because of lack of vocabulary. Their behavior is the same with the women. They are evasive with them. They don’t know how to behave with them and how to express their tenderness. When they meet a woman they tip their hats and say “Howdy ma’am?” instead of shaking their hands.
The cause for the emotional devolution of the westerners is probably their social isolation and the geographical vastness. But there is a certain contradiction and if we have to escape from the logical thinking we can find an opposite statement. The cowboys are vulnerable and fragile. They live outside in landscapes within the beauty of nature, taking care about animals and calves die in their arms. This is enough to make somebody vulnerable and emotionally unprotected. The power of nature turns their trip to the mountain into a holy pilgrimage. So the wild nature that affects on them causes their emotional evolution, not devolution. Their social isolation is not a relevant reason to think that the western men are not fragile and it appears that their strength is also softness and their toughness is a “rare delicacy”.
About Men is an essay that leads the reader to the inner emotional world of the men from the West. It can be compared with Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain which is adapted for the film of the same name with the help of the screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The story is about two young cowboys who meet in Wyoming in 1963 and who forge a sudden emotional and sexual attachment. The similarity between the essay and this short story is the depiction of the inner world of the cowboys, which is different from the iconic myth of their stereotype. The young westerners in Brokeback Mountain are silent and cold-looking boys who meet in the Brokeback Mountain for a common work. Being alone in the nature they show their strong emotions and tenderness and fall in love with each other. In this story the author like Gretel Ehrlich shows how a cowboy can be softhearted and vulnerable, but only in the presence of nature. The mountain gives freedom to their emotions. The open spaces make the men forget the prejudices and throw away the mask which hides his passion and emotion. The anti-type of The Solace of Open Spaces is Pete Fromm’s Indian Creek Chronicles
The solitude of natural environments enables people to discover and explore their social and personal identities. In the dozen essays that constitute The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich reflects on the toughness it takes to live in the harsh solitude. She finds the balance between the comfort and the emptiness of the open spaces. She debunks the stereotype about the westerners, showing their hidden, tender nature. Yet as the title of her book indicates, she found “solace” in the wind-swept landscape where Ehrlich balances her attention between this landscape and the people she meets in Wyoming.
McCullers, Carson
The Ballad of the Sad Café
Carson McCullers (full name Lula Carson Smith McCullers) is an American novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and poet. McCullers published only eight books for her short life. Her best known novels are The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which she wrote at the age of twenty-two, and Reflections in a Golden Eye, set in a military base. Although McCullers's oeuvre is often described as "Southern Gothic," she produced her famous works after leaving the South. In her works she examines the psychology of lonely, isolated people. Her eccentric characters suffer from loneliness that is interpreted with deep empathy.
The Ballad of the Sad Café is one of McCullers's best works of fiction and her most successful exploration of her signature themes: loneliness and the effects of unrequited love. Briefly, the story of the novella tells of a strong woman, Miss Amelia Evans, who falls in love with a hunchback, Cousin Lymon. At the end he destroys Miss Amelia's cafe with his lover who is her former husband. According to McCullers, the basic condition of human existence is the loneliness and the isolation, which are very well embodied in the characters of her novella. Other themes of her work are the failure of communication, the gender roles, which are very important for the relations between the characters, the love and the marriage and the theme about the outcast. The Ballad of the Sad Café reflects McCullers's interest in freaks, social misfits, and grotesques and mainly the paradox of shared isolation.
Love can be considered to be the central theme of the novella as The Ballad of the Sad Café is an enigmatic story of love and loss. Regarding this theme I was impressed by the author’s definition of love. It strikes me because it sounds so simple but at the same time it depicts the complex nature of love. It is the only clear definition of love as in the novella it is hard for the reader to understand what kind of love is this of the characters and what are their feelings that lead them to such circumstances.
First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries.
This is an excerpt from the author’s definition of love. The conception of these lines is based on the “circle” or the triangle of love in the novella. All of the characters have got the experience of being the lover and the beloved, but there is an impossibility of reciprocal love. The love of every character is frustrated and confused and this frustration gives them the knowledge that the isolation is a basic existence of the human. The tragedy of the story comes just from this fact that after all no one actually succeeds at loving or being loved in return. McCullers is trying to explain that the differences in feeling and thinking of everybody are the main obstacles for a reciprocal love. These two “different countries” may be also referred to the gender role in the novella, which stands in the way of their mutual affection. The gender roles of Amelia and Cousin Lymon are reversed as Amelia has more masculine traits and Cousin is more feminine. By means of this change of roles McCullers questions the masculinity and femininity that helps the reader to understand the theme of love whose deadly triangle is destined for doom.
The love of Amelia to Cousin Lymon is called “phenomenon”. What is a phenomenon? The definition of this word is a circumstance or fact that is perceptible by the senses, a significant occurrence and a marvel. The love is a circumstance for Amelia. It is something that does not happen every day. Here comes the theme of loneliness and isolation. Miss Amelia is a classic outcast and she is on the other site of society, so her meet with the love is rather unusual for her. The arrival of Cousin Lymon opens her heart, it is like a miracle for her, the “phenomenon” of her life. Breaking her heart and trashing her café with her ex-husband he pulls down her life. He also destroys her sociability whose symbol is the café, which is already trashed by him. From now on Amelia loses forever her connection with the people. The only positive thing in the story is the open ending which makes the reader think what happens.
A similar theme about strong women and isolation can be found in the works of Gretel Ehrlich. The depiction of masculinity traits in women is a common method of writing for both authors. They are writing about capable women who are working outside the home. Most women, including Ehrlich herself, work along with the men and pull their own weight, even in the midst of personal tragedy, by adopting typically masculine qualities. The place where they live plays a crucial role in human’s life setting the mood of the scenes. But the reader can also find a difference in presenting the loneliness and the isolation. McCullers presents the place of living negatively as a cause for human misfortune and loneliness. While about Gretel Ehrlich the emptiness of the place may be also comfort for the human spirit, which means that she is thinking more positively about the isolation of the man, finding peace in the loneliness. But as McCullers says they are from two “different countries”.
In The Ballad of the Sad Café Lula Carson Smith McCullers gives the reader a story of misfits doomed to loneliness caused by a failure of communication and unrequited love. The themes about the loneliness and the misfortune of love, embodied in the story are repercussion of McCullers own life. There are contradictions among the critics about the originality of her works, but for sure the “Ballad” is considered to be her most remarkable work.
SOURCES
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five- book source (Chapter Two) (p.20,13) http://literature2.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/slaughterhouse-five.pdf
Kurt Vonnegut’s biography:
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/kurt-vonnegut/
Postmodern literature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
Information about the book: teacher’s guide http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385333849&view=printtg
Nancy Willard
“How to Stuff a Pepper” – poem
http://www.blogster.com/anacoana/how-to-stuff-a-pepper-by-nancy-willard
“Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him”
From the Passages for Discussion and Textual Analysis
Nancy Willard’s biography
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/nancy_willard/biography.
Henry James
Book source-Daisy Miller, Chapter 4
http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathawar/daisy2b.html
Information about the book
http://www.enotes.com/daisy-miller/social-concerns-themes
Gretel Ehrlich
Information about the author: http://www.enotes.com/solace-open-spaces-salem/solace-open-spaces
Quotations from the essay:
http://howlandpowpak.neomin.org/powpak/data/thomas.williams/articles/document_ar27.PDF
Carson McCullers
Quotations from the book: http://www.4shared.com/office/1GhEgfdi/carson-mccullers-the-ballad-of.html
Information about the author: http://kirjasto.sci.fi/carsonmc.htm
Slaughterhouse Five
Comments on Chapter Two
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the 20th century's great American pacifists. His work Slaughterhouse Five is the semi-autobiographical account of the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany by the British and American air forces in the February of 1945. It is the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has become "unstuck in time". His life is given to the reader out of order as he travels back and forth in time. He can see his birth and death and he can jump from one moment to another with no pattern to predict what will come next. The novel is an earnest anti-war novel. It isabout the war experiences of the main hero who are actually of the author itself, who appears in Chapter One and Chapter Ten, putting the frame of the novel. He himself has experienced these horrible events and exposes his trauma from the War through the life of Billy Pilgrim. The novel is known for its dark humor and use of science fiction which are typical for the other Vonnegut’s works. Slaughterhouse Five is highly moral story that derives from the effects of Dresden’s events that has marked Vonnegut’s life. It’s a novel about overwhelming this trauma from the war events, a novel about death and time.”So it goes.”
The section of the novel that I am going to comment on is Chapter Two and more precisely some passages from this section of the novel. After the appearance of Vonnegut in Chapter One, aiming to announce that he controls the hero of the story Chapter Two begins with the appearance of Billy and the well known sentence “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. Here the reader is introduced to the main character, Billy Pilgrim.We become witnesses to the first time when Billy gets unstuck in time. He wanders from moment to moment in his life, experiencing chronologically disparate events right after one another. There is plenty of analepses and prolepses that have a dramatic function in the story. Billy travels in time and some kind of complexity appears and confuses the reader.. The introduction “Listen” leads in the fiction within the fiction, which makes the work metafiction or so-called mise en abyme (a french literary term used to name metafiction). Billy is a chronotope, because of his symbolic journey to Tralfamadore.
There are many figures of speech in Chapter Two, like symbols and metaphors. Let’s take Billy's hometown Ilium, which is another name for the city of Troy, which is the doomed city under siege in the Iliad of Homer. Billy’s hometown is named after a city that was destroyed by war, a city that has lost the battle. Here we can see the contrast between the non-heroic Billy and a glorious war hero. His appearance on the battlefield is like a chaplain’s assistant. He is not ready for this war. He is weak and pathetic boy in the middle of the battleground. Even his name is a symbol of innocence. He is called “Billy” rather than “William” because he is more like a naïve traveler than a warrior. His last name of Pilgrim also has symbolic significance. Billy is on a journey to different periods of his own life. Vonnegut gives the reader exactly a non-heroic Billy because he doesn’t want to glorify the war. The moment with the pool in his childhood kept my attention. It is very symbolic flashback. It can be found reference to the War in the essence of this situation.
“It was like an execution. Billy was numb as his father carried him from the shower room to the pool. His eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music went on. He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. “
First the reader can reveal the symbolic use of the water. Water is often used in literature as origin of life. It is a symbol of the beginning, of birth. The reader can see the hidden parallel situation behind this one with the pool. Being thrown in the pool is equal to being thrown on the battlefield of the War. He had no choice to choose if he wants or not. The situation in the pool is compared to “an execution”. Here this could be considered as a hint for the reader to refer this happening to the War. Billy is a little boy who cannot swim it is the same when he is sent to take part in the War. He is unskilled and he is not able to discharge his duties as a soldier. On his first appearing on the battleground of the War he feels as numb as when his father throws him in the pool. We can also understand by his eyes which were closed that he was scared. The bottom of the pool refers to the battlefield-the worst place where anybody could be. His father tries to teach him how to swim by the sink-or-swim method. If he does not swim-he sinks, he will die. He has no choice. It is the same with the War. He cannot give up and if he dares to do –he will be killed, he will die. You have to fight for dear life. The “free will” does not exist.
Death is mentioned many times in Chapter Two. The narrator announces the death of Billy’s father two times. Another meet with the death is the mentioned dead of Billy’s wife and the dead body of the famous runner in the nursing home. Each of these deaths is mentioned without much tact. There is never any emotional response elaborated, though the people around him grieve. After each death he says the phrase “So it goes.” This is the Tralfamadorian response to death. Billy exposes their perception for death in his second letter.
'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.'
Here is an explanation of the conception of death and time in which believe the Tralfamadorians and Billy. According to them all time happens simultaneously, so a man who dies is actually still alive, since all moments exist at all times. People only appear to die. But he is alive in the past. All moments of past present and future are always alive. So Billy doesn’t take death for a big deal. It is something normal and at that moment the person is only in a “bad shape”. On the background of all the crucial events connected with the War this conception for the death is quite positive. And if the reader really understands what is this idea for the unavoidable end of every human being it could influence his/her life very positively. At least this could make the reader think about dead not so dramatically and to expect it like a physical stage of the body separated from the soul. But actually Vonnegut’s conception and attitude toward death is very personal as he himself would attempt suicide by pills and alcohol after the death of his mother who committed suicide. The zoo on Tralfamadore where are held Billy and the famous actress Montana Wildhack can be read as a symbol of the worldview that helps Billy to assimilate his experience into his post-war life and his meets with death. This assimilation can be considered as an assimilation of the author himself caring the burden of the war trauma.
Even though Vonnegut put in the novel science fiction it reminds me a lot of the book of Ian McEwan, Atonement. Like in Slaughterhouse Five there is no chronology of the events. There are a lot of analepses and prolepses in the book, shifting back and forth so the reader cannot understand which of these moments are current. And just like Vonnegut who moves and controls his protagonist, at the end of the book appear the one who has controlled all the time the protagonists of the story. The movie Slaughterhouse Five begins in the same way like Atonement –with the typing of the type-writer. It put the fictional element within the novel which is fiction as a whole and predicts its power which will influence the heroes and the reader. There is War issue in Atonement too. And its moments in the novel are as powerfully and crucially described as in Slaughterhouse Five. In both novels the goal of this fictionally invented world, where everybody is happy is to deal with the trauma from the war, even though the past cannot be touched and changed. Concerning the skipping from one moment to another and the traveling in the future the novel and the movie Slaughterhouse Five is similar to Donnie Darko Book of Richard Kelly. The Donnie Darko like Billy is moving back and forth in his life. He knows the time of his death and what will happen to him. The protagonist Donnie Darko dies in his room hit by an engine of a crashed falling plane and he knows this before it happens. This strongly remind me of the scene with the plane in Slaughterhouse Five, when Billy says that they are going to die.
Published at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969, Slaughterhouse Five is considered by many critics to be Vonnegut’s greatest work. He combines science fiction, autobiography, historical fiction, and modern satire in the depiction of the life of his hero Billy Pilgrim, which are typical characteristics for postmodern literature. According to me the autobiographical participation makes the novel great and unique anti-war work, because Vonnegut exhibits his own life experience from the firebombing in “the land of Oz”. The novel is classic in any time, but its publication during the ongoing Vietnam War made it extremely successful.
Nancy Willard
Comments on “How to Stuff a Pepper”
And on “Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him”
From her poetry collection “Carpenter of the Sun”
Nancy Willard is an American poet and short story writer. Nancy Willard was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was educated at the University of Michigan and Stanford University. Willard is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Water Walker, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also written two novels, and four books of stories and essays. In 1982, she received the Newbery Medal for A Visit to William Blake's Inn. Nancy Willard has an unerring ear for authentic speech, a sensitive, almost delicate feeling for tender childhood relationships, and real skill in shaping and bringing off a story. Her poems point to genuine talent. Her works are filled with wit, charm, elegance, and magic. Nancy Willard's best poems—and her best are as good as they come—illuminate local, humble subjects: flowers, moss, children, the patterns of domestic life. Nancy Willard is a teacher, a storyteller whose “ broken speech of wizards” appear as real magic in the recent trends in American Poetry.
One of the poems I choose to comment on is How to Stuff a Pepper. It is from her poetry collection Carpenter of the Sun, which includes some of her best poems from Masks for a Naked Poet. The collection is about flowers, vegetables, animals and her son. There are also some darker things, but there are not many of them. Her poems do not put the reader on a test, which is not wrong because for the reader it is her duty to suffer more so that she might entertain the reader with her sorrows.
Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside
In contrast to Adrienne Rich’s ideology, Nancy Willard reveals no overtly feminist positions in this poem. She speculates on the shyness of her green peeper. This part of the poem is filled with shy wonderment, with a tenderness toward Creation that is rare in contemporary poetry.
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light
She represents the things of nature as marvelous and more marvelous are the things of man. She spiritualize the glaciers with their “conversation”. She uses similies comparing the moon to a melon. She sets down things in a proper order. The poem has diction of cookbook and at the same time of fairytale. Willard uses language of fancy and of directions.
You say I have not yet taught you
to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.
Nancy Willard tells us not to be so hard on ourselves. Even thought the poem sounds poised and calm it is active and its stillness of rapt gets the attention of the reader. It is like an exquisite miniature, filled with luminosity. Her domestic is not merely cozy, and she's not merely domestic.
The other poem I choose from this compilation is Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him. It is about her son and the difficulty of being poet and a mother at the same time.
2) Do butterflies make noise?
The wire in the butterfly’s tongue hums gold.
Some men hear butterflies even in winter.
The animals and the kids are typical for her poems. The artist is enthralled and trapped by superstitious and various magic like birthdays of gorillas, hearing of the butterflies in the winter, earlobes pierced by a tooth of steel. The kid is attracted to magic, the reader also becomes attracted to this magic of the creative artist.
God made the thread: O man, live forever!
The poem evokes the pathos in life. The child plays and amuses us while the truth of life comes from the adult people. This is ultimately incomprehensible world. There is no fatigue over the weirdness of absurdity of life. The poem is closer to blessing and benediction. The author speaks to the child in us, the student, the wonderer.
I find opposition to this poem in the work of my favorite poet Charles Bukowski “My Old Man”. In contrast to Willard’s poem which conveys affection between a parent and a child the poem of Bukowski conveys the damaged relation of a father and a son. Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him exposes involvement and acceptance between a parent and a child, while the father in My Old Man does not accept his son. Willard’s poem expresses a deeper meaning of time through life.
Nancy Willard displays a lovely wit in her poems which is rare among poets these days. Through her magical poems she speaks to the child in us. She is also a convincing teacher and we wait impatiently for new lessons. There is abundance of good humor in her stories and there is no self-pity in them. In her poems life is sad, wonderful and magical. She produces sad songs in difference to the Spirit of the Age.
Henry James
Daisy Miller
Chapter Four
(comments on Daisy Miller’s ostracism)
Daisy Miller, is one of Henry James's most popular works. It first appeared in England in Cornhill Magazine in 1878. In it James presents an early version of his "international theme" by juxtaposing the manners and culture of American tourists in Europe with those of Americans who have lived abroad for a long time. It represents the behavior, customs and values typical of a particular social class in a given time and place. The novella contrasts the rigid social laws of Europe and the independent, unconventional spirit of this young American woman, Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller is is an examination of late nineteenth-century morality and manners.
The story begins with the meet of the young American expatriate Winterbourne and the attractive and naive American Daisy Miller in In Vevey, Switzerland. Winterbourne escorts her to the Castle of Chillon. Daisy appears dangerous to the established social code there. She runs her reputation by associating with the handsome Italian Giovanelli. After a harsh exchange of words with Winterbourne, Daisy pays a rash evening visit to the Colosseum. As a result, she falls ill with fever and dies a week later. After her death Winterbourne realizes his love for the dead American girl, his premature judgment of her, and his own blindness in the face of European convention.
After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her; and they intimated that they desired to express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her behavior was not representative--was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class.
Daisy is the prototype of "the American girl" of the post Civil War period. She is oblivious to the social codes of the Old World. Daisy is direct, independent and somewhat presumptuous. For the “shrewd people” she was going too far. This shrewd people are the society that reject her and like this society Winterbourne harshly judges Daisy's alleged social transgressions.The unknown narrator only has access to the main character Winterbourne’s thoughts. The passage is framed around Daisy Miller and her “abnormal behavior” as a subject of Winterbourne’s study. Because of her “not representative” behavior many saw her as a shocking example of the type of American that was infiltrating upper-class society, both in the New World and the Old. Winterbourne’s wonder about how she feels show that he is concerned about her. In the passage there is a well made description of Daisy Miller but from Winterbourne perception. The phrase “he asked himself” means that he is doubting about what Daisy really is. But he is blinded by the society. So he cannot understand that she is only flirting and he offends her. Winterbourne is the pivotal character of the story. According to these critics, by presenting Winterbourne's disapproval of Daisy's essentially innocent activities, James subtly admonished the narrow attitudes adopted by many Americans abroad. So the impression appears to be very powerful argument for the attitude of the society.
I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?
Firstly the attention of the reader is caught by the first sentence. There is an alliteration created by the words fearful, frightful and flirt. Daisy, in her way, is explaining to Winterbourne that her intentions are completely innocent and that she is living by the morals of American youth that is something normal for her. She is quite aware of what she is doing. She has the free will and she wanted to live now, for the moment.
Winterbourne realizes that Giovanelli and Daisy are in love and he expands and distorts their relation.
mentally that little American flirts were the queerest creatures in the world
By saying this he employs types. This saying categorizes Daisy again. The conflict expresses the understanding of the tension between old and new, conventionality and individuality, Europe and America, and appearance and reality in the novella. Henry James depict the generic “American girl” but there are evidences to think that Winterbourne is the pivotal character. By presenting Winterbourne's disapproval of Daisy's essentially innocent activities, James subtly admonishes the narrow attitudes adopted by many Americans abroad. There are debates about Daisy’s death if Daisy deserves her fate or Winterbourne causes her downfall.
Henry James uses the “American girl” in many of his works. Her extended depiction James refined in Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady (1881) . The work reminds me a lot of the conflict in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. In this work we examine the prevailing modes of conduct peculiar to a specific time and place that control the characters’ perceptions and behavior. The relationships between the two protagonists are almost the same. The man hides his affection with the girl and he considers her for a simple girl from the lower classes. The appropriate norms of the society and the prejudices are the obstacles in their path. Henry James admires Jane Austin. She is best represented in America by Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence (1920).
Henry James is regarded as a subtle craftsman who skillfully reflected the late nineteenth-century concern with morality and social behavior. Daisy Miller's originality, stylistic distinction, and psychologically complex characters have proved his professionalism. His work is an evidence of his embarrassment over the lack of manners of many of his countrymen who toured Europe. James let Daisy dies rather than making her a heroine. This is an ambiguous ending which is James’ intent for writing the novella. Instead of being an illustration of the moral code of the middle and upper classes, Daisy Miller was meant to be a warning to American travelers of the period. . To this day the story continues to be widely anthologized and discussed for its complex and interesting characters and its examination of late nineteenth-century morality and manners.
Gretel Ehrlich
The Solace of Open Spaces
About Men
Gretel Ehrlich is a writer of essays, short stories and poems which are included in many anthologies including Best Essays of the Century, Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, Best Travel Writing, and The Nature Reader. She is the author of The Solace of Open Spaces, Yellowstone, Drinking Dry Clouds, To Touch the Body and many others. The themes of her writings are United States or Americans, Gender roles, Nature, Women, Rodeos, Animals or Frontier or pioneer life. In The Solace of Open Spaces she challenges serious myths concerning gender and its relationship to the American West. The book consists of twelve essays which represent the West not as usually as a man’s world, but as a world of capable women who work along with the men. This is a book of essays which introduces her life experience and a sort of lessons to what it is like living in Wyoming. But most of all Gretel Ehrlich represents in this essay collection the healing power of nature on a place where you can “lose yourselves”.
I decided to comment on one of the twelve essays of The Solace of Open Spaces, called About Men which originally appeared in Time magazine. Ehrlich’s aim in the essay is to reconsider the basic stereotype about western man and “cowboys”. She tries to reveal their complex nature by giving examples, descriptions and details of their life. Along with the debunking of cowboys’ stereotype she impresses also the natural world that affects them.
The only place in the city where can be seen cowboys is on the Marlboro advertisements in the subway. Gretel Ehrlich introduces the hidden features of the character of the western man. For most of the people, especially in the big cities, there is a fixed stereotype about the cowboys. They are seen as “strong and silent”, but nobody can see that their silence is evoked by their loneliness, because there is no one to talk to in the wilderness. Everybody knows this romantic picture of a cowboy who “rides away into the sunset”, but nobody knows that he is riding the horse since early morning, working all day long and now sixteen hours later he is coming back home. Ehrlich debunks the stereotype of the “macho” giving several characteristics of the cowboy. She says that he is “convivial, quirky and softhearted”, which is deeply admired by her but nobody can see this. The cowboy is compared with “a pile of rocks”, possessing an instinct for survival. All this iconic myth about the cowboys is built on the American notion of heroism. But the heroism is not important here, it is all about “acting spontaneously” in the face of the danger. On this wild place there is no need to demonstrate any heroism. The westerner’s courage is “selfless” and it is a form of confession. They take care about their animals and it is not about being macho, but human, because the world they live in is dangerous and they need to be survivors and they never make a complaint. Debunking the stereotypes about the cowboys, Ehrlich encourages readers to consider how manliness is a quality which, for cowboys, also requires a balancing of more conventionally typical feminine qualities, such as caring and compassion. The cowboys, as Ehrlich writes, are "androgynous at the core."
The cowboy seems cold, but his emotion is hidden behind his rough behavior. Gretel Ehrlich proves this with a sentence of a westerner, talking about a little lamb- "Ain't this little rat good-lookin'?" He is using “rat” instead of “lamb”, because lamb is diminutive and for him it is probably unusual to say this word with his harsh speech. Inside the cowboys are tender, but they just cannot express themselves because of lack of vocabulary. Their behavior is the same with the women. They are evasive with them. They don’t know how to behave with them and how to express their tenderness. When they meet a woman they tip their hats and say “Howdy ma’am?” instead of shaking their hands.
The cause for the emotional devolution of the westerners is probably their social isolation and the geographical vastness. But there is a certain contradiction and if we have to escape from the logical thinking we can find an opposite statement. The cowboys are vulnerable and fragile. They live outside in landscapes within the beauty of nature, taking care about animals and calves die in their arms. This is enough to make somebody vulnerable and emotionally unprotected. The power of nature turns their trip to the mountain into a holy pilgrimage. So the wild nature that affects on them causes their emotional evolution, not devolution. Their social isolation is not a relevant reason to think that the western men are not fragile and it appears that their strength is also softness and their toughness is a “rare delicacy”.
About Men is an essay that leads the reader to the inner emotional world of the men from the West. It can be compared with Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain which is adapted for the film of the same name with the help of the screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The story is about two young cowboys who meet in Wyoming in 1963 and who forge a sudden emotional and sexual attachment. The similarity between the essay and this short story is the depiction of the inner world of the cowboys, which is different from the iconic myth of their stereotype. The young westerners in Brokeback Mountain are silent and cold-looking boys who meet in the Brokeback Mountain for a common work. Being alone in the nature they show their strong emotions and tenderness and fall in love with each other. In this story the author like Gretel Ehrlich shows how a cowboy can be softhearted and vulnerable, but only in the presence of nature. The mountain gives freedom to their emotions. The open spaces make the men forget the prejudices and throw away the mask which hides his passion and emotion. The anti-type of The Solace of Open Spaces is Pete Fromm’s Indian Creek Chronicles
The solitude of natural environments enables people to discover and explore their social and personal identities. In the dozen essays that constitute The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich reflects on the toughness it takes to live in the harsh solitude. She finds the balance between the comfort and the emptiness of the open spaces. She debunks the stereotype about the westerners, showing their hidden, tender nature. Yet as the title of her book indicates, she found “solace” in the wind-swept landscape where Ehrlich balances her attention between this landscape and the people she meets in Wyoming.
McCullers, Carson
The Ballad of the Sad Café
Carson McCullers (full name Lula Carson Smith McCullers) is an American novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and poet. McCullers published only eight books for her short life. Her best known novels are The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which she wrote at the age of twenty-two, and Reflections in a Golden Eye, set in a military base. Although McCullers's oeuvre is often described as "Southern Gothic," she produced her famous works after leaving the South. In her works she examines the psychology of lonely, isolated people. Her eccentric characters suffer from loneliness that is interpreted with deep empathy.
The Ballad of the Sad Café is one of McCullers's best works of fiction and her most successful exploration of her signature themes: loneliness and the effects of unrequited love. Briefly, the story of the novella tells of a strong woman, Miss Amelia Evans, who falls in love with a hunchback, Cousin Lymon. At the end he destroys Miss Amelia's cafe with his lover who is her former husband. According to McCullers, the basic condition of human existence is the loneliness and the isolation, which are very well embodied in the characters of her novella. Other themes of her work are the failure of communication, the gender roles, which are very important for the relations between the characters, the love and the marriage and the theme about the outcast. The Ballad of the Sad Café reflects McCullers's interest in freaks, social misfits, and grotesques and mainly the paradox of shared isolation.
Love can be considered to be the central theme of the novella as The Ballad of the Sad Café is an enigmatic story of love and loss. Regarding this theme I was impressed by the author’s definition of love. It strikes me because it sounds so simple but at the same time it depicts the complex nature of love. It is the only clear definition of love as in the novella it is hard for the reader to understand what kind of love is this of the characters and what are their feelings that lead them to such circumstances.
First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries.
This is an excerpt from the author’s definition of love. The conception of these lines is based on the “circle” or the triangle of love in the novella. All of the characters have got the experience of being the lover and the beloved, but there is an impossibility of reciprocal love. The love of every character is frustrated and confused and this frustration gives them the knowledge that the isolation is a basic existence of the human. The tragedy of the story comes just from this fact that after all no one actually succeeds at loving or being loved in return. McCullers is trying to explain that the differences in feeling and thinking of everybody are the main obstacles for a reciprocal love. These two “different countries” may be also referred to the gender role in the novella, which stands in the way of their mutual affection. The gender roles of Amelia and Cousin Lymon are reversed as Amelia has more masculine traits and Cousin is more feminine. By means of this change of roles McCullers questions the masculinity and femininity that helps the reader to understand the theme of love whose deadly triangle is destined for doom.
The love of Amelia to Cousin Lymon is called “phenomenon”. What is a phenomenon? The definition of this word is a circumstance or fact that is perceptible by the senses, a significant occurrence and a marvel. The love is a circumstance for Amelia. It is something that does not happen every day. Here comes the theme of loneliness and isolation. Miss Amelia is a classic outcast and she is on the other site of society, so her meet with the love is rather unusual for her. The arrival of Cousin Lymon opens her heart, it is like a miracle for her, the “phenomenon” of her life. Breaking her heart and trashing her café with her ex-husband he pulls down her life. He also destroys her sociability whose symbol is the café, which is already trashed by him. From now on Amelia loses forever her connection with the people. The only positive thing in the story is the open ending which makes the reader think what happens.
A similar theme about strong women and isolation can be found in the works of Gretel Ehrlich. The depiction of masculinity traits in women is a common method of writing for both authors. They are writing about capable women who are working outside the home. Most women, including Ehrlich herself, work along with the men and pull their own weight, even in the midst of personal tragedy, by adopting typically masculine qualities. The place where they live plays a crucial role in human’s life setting the mood of the scenes. But the reader can also find a difference in presenting the loneliness and the isolation. McCullers presents the place of living negatively as a cause for human misfortune and loneliness. While about Gretel Ehrlich the emptiness of the place may be also comfort for the human spirit, which means that she is thinking more positively about the isolation of the man, finding peace in the loneliness. But as McCullers says they are from two “different countries”.
In The Ballad of the Sad Café Lula Carson Smith McCullers gives the reader a story of misfits doomed to loneliness caused by a failure of communication and unrequited love. The themes about the loneliness and the misfortune of love, embodied in the story are repercussion of McCullers own life. There are contradictions among the critics about the originality of her works, but for sure the “Ballad” is considered to be her most remarkable work.
SOURCES
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five- book source (Chapter Two) (p.20,13) http://literature2.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/slaughterhouse-five.pdf
Kurt Vonnegut’s biography:
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/kurt-vonnegut/
Postmodern literature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
Information about the book: teacher’s guide http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385333849&view=printtg
Nancy Willard
“How to Stuff a Pepper” – poem
http://www.blogster.com/anacoana/how-to-stuff-a-pepper-by-nancy-willard
“Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him”
From the Passages for Discussion and Textual Analysis
Nancy Willard’s biography
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/nancy_willard/biography.
Henry James
Book source-Daisy Miller, Chapter 4
http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathawar/daisy2b.html
Information about the book
http://www.enotes.com/daisy-miller/social-concerns-themes
Gretel Ehrlich
Information about the author: http://www.enotes.com/solace-open-spaces-salem/solace-open-spaces
Quotations from the essay:
http://howlandpowpak.neomin.org/powpak/data/thomas.williams/articles/document_ar27.PDF
Carson McCullers
Quotations from the book: http://www.4shared.com/office/1GhEgfdi/carson-mccullers-the-ballad-of.html
Information about the author: http://kirjasto.sci.fi/carsonmc.htm
The function of intertextuality in D.M Thomas' novel The White Hotel
D. M. Thomas’s novel The White Hotel is one of the most controversial intellectual projects of the post- WWII period. It contains the distinctive traits of a postmodern work. The White Hotel is remarkable for its blend of history, fantasy, poetry, clairvoyancy and psychoanalysis. But what makes the text unique, is the multiple intertextuality. D. M. Thomas uses other authors’ works in his novel which can be considered as plagiarism but this fact manages to hide the border between history and fiction and portrays the violence of this era.
The text offers the reader borrowings from the libretto of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard, Anatoli Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar and D. M. Thomas’s poems, and excerpts from Freudian letters and books.” This “sharing” illustrates the intertextual condition of all literary texts and, indeed, of the entire cultural domain. “ ( Kostova, L. ) . The role of the letters is very important because they introduce the constant merging of historical and fictional text. D. M. Thomas includes in his work a letter of Ferenczi in the prologue because he is convinces that he ought to commence the way back first of all and not with Freud or even with Jung, but with Ferenczi on the journey of the analysts to America. Regarding Babi Yar, D. M. Thomas bought Kuznetsov’s historical-documentary novel only because it was a fat book and he was going on a journey but later he finds a metaphorical connection between Babi Yar and the poem that opens The White Hotel. In the novel can be also found intertextuality with Dora’s case, through which Freud imposes his general theories on individual subjects regardless of their particular histories and symptoms. Using the Freudian texts D. M. Thomas acquires a Freudian style of writing. It can be observed even in the way that he brings in cultural allusions, quotations from poetry, which is very Freudian and which according to D. M. Thomas is a sign of humanism of this analyst, which is admired deeply by D. M. Thomas.
The aim of the letter of Ferenczi in the prologue is to reveal the relationship between Freud and Jung. Ferenczi writes to Gisela that “there has been a little tension between Jung and Freud....” (Freud and “The white Hotel”, 1959) This discloses the contradictions between the two psychoanalysts. The talking of Jung about the "peat bog corpses" that have been found in northern Germany can be considered as extraordinary coincidence when one thought of the other kind of peat bog corpses which later in the century the Germans were desperately trying to dig up to try and cover their traces of Babi Yar.
The other letters in the epistolary prologue discuss a specific case and its patient’s writings which describe actual historical characters and circumstances. This intertextuality set the stage not only for the central role of psychoanalysis and its emphasis of eros and thanatos, but it also introduce the constant line between historical and fictional text. There are themes that come out later in The White Hotel from D. M. Thomas’s poem Viennia, Ziirich, Constance. One of the themes is this of the paranormal knife blade snapping or the knife which snaps in Emma Jung's kitchen drawer. “In Emma's kitchen-drawer a knife blade quietly snapped.” ( Freud and “The white Hotel”, 1957). This is not directly inserted in The White Hotel but it is implied in the section where Freud and Jung are arguing for the paranormal and the telepathy and they hear this bang in the cabinet. This scene is another proof of their contradictory relations because Freud claims that there will be another bang, they hear the bang again and the reader is told that Freud did not quite trust Jung after that.
Concerning the intertextuality with Dora’s case, Freud’s diagnosis and the corrective footnotes suggest that Lisa’s case must be read as a commentary on Dora’s case. Dora was never permitted to speak, but D. M. Thomas allows Lisa to speak on her own behalf. This intertextuality and the approach of the author question Freud’s abilities and become a symbol of psychoanalysis’ limitation. This freedom of Lisa to speak undermines psychoanalysis’ authority, supported by the quote of Heraclid that the soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored.With the repetition of the quote D. M. Thomas emphasize on the connection with the massacre at Babi Yar.
The texts that D. M. Thomas introduces in The White Hotel are intermixed with his own discourse, so he should not be considered to be a plagiarist. The texts taken from the Freudian letters and books aim to make the reader acquainted with the subject of the psychoanalysis. On the other hand the fictional extension of this subject aims to challenge the psychoanalysts and to display the limitation of their abilities. The strong influence of The White Hotel upon the novel of John Kerr A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein cannot be missed. The book obtains most of its themes from D. M. Thomas’s novel and its poems. This is another proof that The White Hotel is one of the most remarkable novels of the British literature and an inspiration for contemporary directors and writers.
Work Cited:
Type of Entry In-Text Citation Form Works Cited Form
Electronic source:
Article form a Journal (Freud and “The
white Hotel”, 1959)
(Freud and “The
white Hotel”, 1957) BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 287 24-31 DECEMBER 1983
Medicine and Books
Freud and the "White Hotel"
D M THOMAS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC1550192/
pdf/bmjcred00586-0057.pdf
Article (Kostova, L.) SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WHITE HOTEL
Ludmilla Kostova,
University of Veliko
Turnovo,Bulgaria
The text offers the reader borrowings from the libretto of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard, Anatoli Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar and D. M. Thomas’s poems, and excerpts from Freudian letters and books.” This “sharing” illustrates the intertextual condition of all literary texts and, indeed, of the entire cultural domain. “ ( Kostova, L. ) . The role of the letters is very important because they introduce the constant merging of historical and fictional text. D. M. Thomas includes in his work a letter of Ferenczi in the prologue because he is convinces that he ought to commence the way back first of all and not with Freud or even with Jung, but with Ferenczi on the journey of the analysts to America. Regarding Babi Yar, D. M. Thomas bought Kuznetsov’s historical-documentary novel only because it was a fat book and he was going on a journey but later he finds a metaphorical connection between Babi Yar and the poem that opens The White Hotel. In the novel can be also found intertextuality with Dora’s case, through which Freud imposes his general theories on individual subjects regardless of their particular histories and symptoms. Using the Freudian texts D. M. Thomas acquires a Freudian style of writing. It can be observed even in the way that he brings in cultural allusions, quotations from poetry, which is very Freudian and which according to D. M. Thomas is a sign of humanism of this analyst, which is admired deeply by D. M. Thomas.
The aim of the letter of Ferenczi in the prologue is to reveal the relationship between Freud and Jung. Ferenczi writes to Gisela that “there has been a little tension between Jung and Freud....” (Freud and “The white Hotel”, 1959) This discloses the contradictions between the two psychoanalysts. The talking of Jung about the "peat bog corpses" that have been found in northern Germany can be considered as extraordinary coincidence when one thought of the other kind of peat bog corpses which later in the century the Germans were desperately trying to dig up to try and cover their traces of Babi Yar.
The other letters in the epistolary prologue discuss a specific case and its patient’s writings which describe actual historical characters and circumstances. This intertextuality set the stage not only for the central role of psychoanalysis and its emphasis of eros and thanatos, but it also introduce the constant line between historical and fictional text. There are themes that come out later in The White Hotel from D. M. Thomas’s poem Viennia, Ziirich, Constance. One of the themes is this of the paranormal knife blade snapping or the knife which snaps in Emma Jung's kitchen drawer. “In Emma's kitchen-drawer a knife blade quietly snapped.” ( Freud and “The white Hotel”, 1957). This is not directly inserted in The White Hotel but it is implied in the section where Freud and Jung are arguing for the paranormal and the telepathy and they hear this bang in the cabinet. This scene is another proof of their contradictory relations because Freud claims that there will be another bang, they hear the bang again and the reader is told that Freud did not quite trust Jung after that.
Concerning the intertextuality with Dora’s case, Freud’s diagnosis and the corrective footnotes suggest that Lisa’s case must be read as a commentary on Dora’s case. Dora was never permitted to speak, but D. M. Thomas allows Lisa to speak on her own behalf. This intertextuality and the approach of the author question Freud’s abilities and become a symbol of psychoanalysis’ limitation. This freedom of Lisa to speak undermines psychoanalysis’ authority, supported by the quote of Heraclid that the soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored.With the repetition of the quote D. M. Thomas emphasize on the connection with the massacre at Babi Yar.
The texts that D. M. Thomas introduces in The White Hotel are intermixed with his own discourse, so he should not be considered to be a plagiarist. The texts taken from the Freudian letters and books aim to make the reader acquainted with the subject of the psychoanalysis. On the other hand the fictional extension of this subject aims to challenge the psychoanalysts and to display the limitation of their abilities. The strong influence of The White Hotel upon the novel of John Kerr A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein cannot be missed. The book obtains most of its themes from D. M. Thomas’s novel and its poems. This is another proof that The White Hotel is one of the most remarkable novels of the British literature and an inspiration for contemporary directors and writers.
Work Cited:
Type of Entry In-Text Citation Form Works Cited Form
Electronic source:
Article form a Journal (Freud and “The
white Hotel”, 1959)
(Freud and “The
white Hotel”, 1957) BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 287 24-31 DECEMBER 1983
Medicine and Books
Freud and the "White Hotel"
D M THOMAS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC1550192/
pdf/bmjcred00586-0057.pdf
Article (Kostova, L.) SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WHITE HOTEL
Ludmilla Kostova,
University of Veliko
Turnovo,Bulgaria
Comment on the character of Sarah Woodruff in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.To what extent is she a victim of circumstances?
The nineteenth century John Fowles’ romantic novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman successfully reproduces the typical Victorian woman and society, skillfully illustrated in situations and dialogues. The novel is stereotyped in Victorian fashion - romance, misunderstanding, intrigue forbidden love, betrayal, carnal desire and a classic "triangle" between two women attracted to the same man. It is touched with typical twentieth-century irony. The characters in the story can be seen as typical Victorians in their attitudes and behaviour, but not the main protagonist Sarah Woodruff. She is known by her un Victorian directness and ability to see through people. And these are some of the differences that turn her into a victim of the prejudices of the Victorian society.
Sarah Woodruff is the protagonist of the novel, called "the French Lieutenant's Woman" or "Tragedy" or the "French lieutenant's whore" because it is believed that she had an affair with a shipwrecked French sailor. She is a figure of intrigue due to rumors that circulate around her. Sarah is portrayed as a mysterious and ambiguous character throughout the novel. Her affair with this French sailor changes her into an outcast dismissed by the society. She is the tragedy and the trouble in the novel. Her strong sexuality turns her into a rival among the women. She falls a pray to to the notions of gender in upper middle-class Victorian society. But her mysterious personality gives rise to a lot of questions like: Is she a sly, manipulative character, is she a product of the French Lieutenant's lust or is she really a victim and if yes, to what extent?
The mysterious or evil woman character of Sarah often and commonly found in a Victorian novel, makes the reader suspect that some assumptions about Sarah’s nature and motives might be false, like the story about the French Lieutenant which turns out to be a lie, passively perpetuated by Sarah. There is always a sense that she is not saying everything and that she might be deceiving the reader about her true nature,which makes her an unreliable narrator. The reader learns of her history and character only through what she says with a face she lets the world see, but later we find that much of what people believe about her is untrue. Only Charles’ understanding and misunderstanding of Sarah forms the readers’ perceptions of her. She is also independent and is willing to lie to preserve her position. So it is difficult for the reader to create her entire image, because it can be seen only through the subjective perspective of the other characters and mainly of this of Charles.The protagonist of a story is the main character who traditionally undergoes some sort of change. Often the one who dares to change the principles and the habits of a society is being dismissed by this society. Here in the novel, the outcast is Sarah, who is rejected by Victorian society. This is the thing from which Charles is attracted the most. And this attraction for Sarah stems mainly from the aura of strangeness that the local rumors have built around her, and this stands as a symbol of the forbidden through which she presents a picture of dark intrigue and mystery. Sarah’s “strangeness” makes her different from her Victorian counterparts in dress, behavior and attitude.
Sarah is established from the beginning as the “poor Tragedy”. She is a certainty of the innocence of her identity of her being unfairly outcast. Tragedy has been linked to the novel as a literary genre being used to train moral nature by sympathy with noble characters. According to Zuzana Vránová in her essay :“this arousal of sympathy does not limit itself to influencing the readers only, but functions within the story as well – Sarah is seen as a person to pity and help.” (Vránová Z.) The appearance of Sarah is provided with a well modeled face, dark eyes that “could not conceal an intelligence, an independence of spirit”, strong eyebrows and a wide mouth, indicating “suppressed sensuality”, tanned complexion and hair with red tints. These tints add Sarah a sort of divine, saint odor, because n medieval paintings, hair of Virgin Mary and the robes of Angels were depicted red. Concerning her sexuality it is the biggest weapon given to her which she does not only use in an unconscious way. That’s why she is considered exceptional in the opposite direction as in the Victorian period the situation was quite different. The Lieutenant’s Woman is described as a definitive study of the sexual repression of the Victorian age. The characters react as they do largely because of the sexual mores of the time through which the reader can see the embodied sexual and sensual elements in the story.
The ambiguity of Sarah’s character is well portrayed throughout the story, but he reader can assume that she is merely a victim to the notions of gender in upper middle-class Victorian society. The different perceptions through which her character is seen question the reader if he/she should pity her or despise her and is she a victim as the others are victims. Fowles quotes in the beginning of Chapter 2 E. Royston Pike Pike’s “Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age” which comments on the population of women being higher than that of men. The idea that is implied in these statistics is that the role of Victorian women is that of a wife and mother, but not all women can fulfill their role as wives and mothers, because there are more women than men. So the quote becomes ironic in the context of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Sarah is free of the conventional role society attempts to impose on her and because of this last reputation she is in disgrace with the Victorian-era town.
The thematic of The French Lieutenant’s Woman concerns range from the relationship between life and art and the artist and his creation to the isolation that results from an individual struggling for selfhood. The novel contains 20th century sensibilities and perspectives, despite it is firmly set in the mid-Victorian period, when the poor, innocent and harshly treated woman Sarah Woodruff is spurned by those who are better off socially, if not morally. The novel examines the link between the Victorian society and an outcast, a victim of the epoch, because of its difference. In the process of this examination John Fowles reveal the romantic part of being an exile.
Sarah Woodruff is the protagonist of the novel, called "the French Lieutenant's Woman" or "Tragedy" or the "French lieutenant's whore" because it is believed that she had an affair with a shipwrecked French sailor. She is a figure of intrigue due to rumors that circulate around her. Sarah is portrayed as a mysterious and ambiguous character throughout the novel. Her affair with this French sailor changes her into an outcast dismissed by the society. She is the tragedy and the trouble in the novel. Her strong sexuality turns her into a rival among the women. She falls a pray to to the notions of gender in upper middle-class Victorian society. But her mysterious personality gives rise to a lot of questions like: Is she a sly, manipulative character, is she a product of the French Lieutenant's lust or is she really a victim and if yes, to what extent?
The mysterious or evil woman character of Sarah often and commonly found in a Victorian novel, makes the reader suspect that some assumptions about Sarah’s nature and motives might be false, like the story about the French Lieutenant which turns out to be a lie, passively perpetuated by Sarah. There is always a sense that she is not saying everything and that she might be deceiving the reader about her true nature,which makes her an unreliable narrator. The reader learns of her history and character only through what she says with a face she lets the world see, but later we find that much of what people believe about her is untrue. Only Charles’ understanding and misunderstanding of Sarah forms the readers’ perceptions of her. She is also independent and is willing to lie to preserve her position. So it is difficult for the reader to create her entire image, because it can be seen only through the subjective perspective of the other characters and mainly of this of Charles.The protagonist of a story is the main character who traditionally undergoes some sort of change. Often the one who dares to change the principles and the habits of a society is being dismissed by this society. Here in the novel, the outcast is Sarah, who is rejected by Victorian society. This is the thing from which Charles is attracted the most. And this attraction for Sarah stems mainly from the aura of strangeness that the local rumors have built around her, and this stands as a symbol of the forbidden through which she presents a picture of dark intrigue and mystery. Sarah’s “strangeness” makes her different from her Victorian counterparts in dress, behavior and attitude.
Sarah is established from the beginning as the “poor Tragedy”. She is a certainty of the innocence of her identity of her being unfairly outcast. Tragedy has been linked to the novel as a literary genre being used to train moral nature by sympathy with noble characters. According to Zuzana Vránová in her essay :“this arousal of sympathy does not limit itself to influencing the readers only, but functions within the story as well – Sarah is seen as a person to pity and help.” (Vránová Z.) The appearance of Sarah is provided with a well modeled face, dark eyes that “could not conceal an intelligence, an independence of spirit”, strong eyebrows and a wide mouth, indicating “suppressed sensuality”, tanned complexion and hair with red tints. These tints add Sarah a sort of divine, saint odor, because n medieval paintings, hair of Virgin Mary and the robes of Angels were depicted red. Concerning her sexuality it is the biggest weapon given to her which she does not only use in an unconscious way. That’s why she is considered exceptional in the opposite direction as in the Victorian period the situation was quite different. The Lieutenant’s Woman is described as a definitive study of the sexual repression of the Victorian age. The characters react as they do largely because of the sexual mores of the time through which the reader can see the embodied sexual and sensual elements in the story.
The ambiguity of Sarah’s character is well portrayed throughout the story, but he reader can assume that she is merely a victim to the notions of gender in upper middle-class Victorian society. The different perceptions through which her character is seen question the reader if he/she should pity her or despise her and is she a victim as the others are victims. Fowles quotes in the beginning of Chapter 2 E. Royston Pike Pike’s “Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age” which comments on the population of women being higher than that of men. The idea that is implied in these statistics is that the role of Victorian women is that of a wife and mother, but not all women can fulfill their role as wives and mothers, because there are more women than men. So the quote becomes ironic in the context of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Sarah is free of the conventional role society attempts to impose on her and because of this last reputation she is in disgrace with the Victorian-era town.
The thematic of The French Lieutenant’s Woman concerns range from the relationship between life and art and the artist and his creation to the isolation that results from an individual struggling for selfhood. The novel contains 20th century sensibilities and perspectives, despite it is firmly set in the mid-Victorian period, when the poor, innocent and harshly treated woman Sarah Woodruff is spurned by those who are better off socially, if not morally. The novel examines the link between the Victorian society and an outcast, a victim of the epoch, because of its difference. In the process of this examination John Fowles reveal the romantic part of being an exile.
Critical analysis of Henry Fielding’s novel Joseph Andrews. Fielding’s Preface to the book. How does he define his own text in it? What is the main target of his social criticism?
Henry Fielding is one of the fathers of the modernist movement. His novel Joseph Andrews embodies in realistic prose a panoramic survey of the contemporary society. It owes much of its humour, digression and lower-class characters to the genre of writing known as picaresque. His famous work advocates an easygoing Protestantism in which charitable works are the signs of goodness and sociability, where providence is the reliable guardian of the virtuous. Joseph Andrews is an astounding representation of the 18th century English social life and manners which gives utterance to Fielding's comic moral vision throughout this period. It is rich in philosophical digressions, classical erudition and social purpose. The social life portrayed by Fielding is scrutinized in every facets of this society in which the writer studies different characters which enables him to explore all the unpleasant aspects of life of his time. These characters are depicted in the novel as human beings camouflaged in various shades of vanity, hypocrisy and narcissism, which are some of the main targets of Fielding’s social criticism.
Despite Fielding’s undoubtedly comic outlook, his comic writing in the Preface has a serious point. The target of his criticism expressed by irony is not the classical principle itself but the modern works that fail to live up to that principle. Fielding rejects burlesque and caricature, inspiring laughter with humor used as a vehicle of moral commentary. He confines himself strictly to Nature. He is performing a corrective function for the moral of the age, exposing the true Ridiculous that takes part in everyday life. In his work he criticizes the amoral side of this period. According to Tanvir Shameem, “Fielding’s exploration begins with his survey on the nature and temperament of women of his time.” In his essay “Joseph Andrews as a Social Satire” (Shameem,T.) he considers that “women of all classes were snobbish and amorous to some extent.”; Shameem suggests that “the sensuality of women is reflected at its best through the representatives like Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop and Betty. Lady Booby feels greatly attracted by Joseph’s manliness and personality and seeks in vain to evoke his sexual response to gratify her sensual appetite. Mrs. Slipslop also follows her mistress’ path and tries to win Joseph as a lover. Even Betty, the sympathetic maid also falls in love with Joseph and seeks in vain to have sexual gratification from him. All these amorous intentions show a fair picture of the amoral side of the 18th century society.”
The promise of happy outcome, the careful definition of terms and most of all the existence of the Preface indicate the extent to which Fielding is in control of his novel. The reader becomes a witness of characters who have a life of their own, but it is the essence of humanity, distilled through Fielding’s own vision. It is presented to us through the lines: “I describe not men, but manners, not an individual, but species” (Book III, Chapter1). This is one of the ways he defines his own text. There are vices for which he apologizes in the Preface, but they are more than balanced by the character of Adams and by the fact that they are “accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible.” Apart from the central moral preoccupations that can be argued, there is a good deal of incidental social satire throughout the novel. One of the targets of his satire is the ridiculous, but in particular Fielding offers a number of ironic insights into two worlds that he knew well: the law courts and the playhouses. These criticized worlds strike in some parts of the novel modern readers as a grotesque piece of satiric exaggeration, accurately indicate the savagery of English law, regarding the theft or damage of property, in the period. David Nokes writes in his “Joseph Andrews Critical Studies Notes” (Nokes,D.) that “in the novel Fielding has great fun ridiculing legalistic jargon and casuistry but often the pattern of argument and debate suggests the adversarial structure of legal proceedings.” Nokes considers that “in all these ways the atmosphere of the law court permeates the book, and enforces a permanent sense of judgement and arbitrament.” According to him “usually the terms of that judgement are concerned with the balance, or conflict, between social and moral values, as the reader is required to contrast the standards of the world with the ideals of Christianity. But if the reader is the jury in this court, Fielding’s irony insures that he is well vetted, and retains full control of both the evidence and the sentence. However, if Fielding’s novel is partly a court of justice, it is also in part a theatre. Theatrical similes abound. In order to impress upon the reader the sudden pallor in Lady Booby’s face at Joseph’s mention of his virtue, Fielding offers this analogy:
You have seen the faces, in the eighteen-penny gallery, when the trap-door, to soft or no music, Mr. Bridgewater, Mr. William Mills, or some other of ghostly appearance, hath ascended with a face all pale with powder, and a shirt all bloody with ribbons.“ (Book I, Chapter8)
Fielding’s definition of good nature is exhibited by some of his characters, like Parson Adams. He preaches against the vanity and pretension of his own age. The distinguished Teaching Professor of English, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Homer Goldberg writes in one of his essays that “Fielding goes on to characterize his society as:
a vast masquerade, where the greatest part appear
disguised under false visions and habits; a very few
only showing their own faces, who become, by so doing
the astonishment and ridicule of all the rest”
("On the..." 322).
According to Stephen Conway in his essay “Narrative and Narrator: An analysis of Joseph Andrews” (Conway, S.) “with good nature comes a responsibility to humankind.” He considers that “with this in mind Fielding believed there was hope that the ills of society, including the hypocrisy, the affectation, the corruption and the vanity of his own age, could be overcome and perhaps his writing was his contribution to this ongoing struggle.”
Many critics recently explored Fielding's complex value system, like Martin Price who suggests that Fielding's low characters contribute to his definition of virtue. Another critic Martin Battestin makes a study of the character of Sophia Western, using her as an example of Fielding's nuanced moral code. In brief, Fielding’s satire in Joseph Andrews refers to not only particular individuals but also to an entire 18the century English community. The novel is infused with compassion, comedy, and a heightened sense of realism, which together turn into a vivid manifestation of the cankers of the society.
Despite Fielding’s undoubtedly comic outlook, his comic writing in the Preface has a serious point. The target of his criticism expressed by irony is not the classical principle itself but the modern works that fail to live up to that principle. Fielding rejects burlesque and caricature, inspiring laughter with humor used as a vehicle of moral commentary. He confines himself strictly to Nature. He is performing a corrective function for the moral of the age, exposing the true Ridiculous that takes part in everyday life. In his work he criticizes the amoral side of this period. According to Tanvir Shameem, “Fielding’s exploration begins with his survey on the nature and temperament of women of his time.” In his essay “Joseph Andrews as a Social Satire” (Shameem,T.) he considers that “women of all classes were snobbish and amorous to some extent.”; Shameem suggests that “the sensuality of women is reflected at its best through the representatives like Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop and Betty. Lady Booby feels greatly attracted by Joseph’s manliness and personality and seeks in vain to evoke his sexual response to gratify her sensual appetite. Mrs. Slipslop also follows her mistress’ path and tries to win Joseph as a lover. Even Betty, the sympathetic maid also falls in love with Joseph and seeks in vain to have sexual gratification from him. All these amorous intentions show a fair picture of the amoral side of the 18th century society.”
The promise of happy outcome, the careful definition of terms and most of all the existence of the Preface indicate the extent to which Fielding is in control of his novel. The reader becomes a witness of characters who have a life of their own, but it is the essence of humanity, distilled through Fielding’s own vision. It is presented to us through the lines: “I describe not men, but manners, not an individual, but species” (Book III, Chapter1). This is one of the ways he defines his own text. There are vices for which he apologizes in the Preface, but they are more than balanced by the character of Adams and by the fact that they are “accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible.” Apart from the central moral preoccupations that can be argued, there is a good deal of incidental social satire throughout the novel. One of the targets of his satire is the ridiculous, but in particular Fielding offers a number of ironic insights into two worlds that he knew well: the law courts and the playhouses. These criticized worlds strike in some parts of the novel modern readers as a grotesque piece of satiric exaggeration, accurately indicate the savagery of English law, regarding the theft or damage of property, in the period. David Nokes writes in his “Joseph Andrews Critical Studies Notes” (Nokes,D.) that “in the novel Fielding has great fun ridiculing legalistic jargon and casuistry but often the pattern of argument and debate suggests the adversarial structure of legal proceedings.” Nokes considers that “in all these ways the atmosphere of the law court permeates the book, and enforces a permanent sense of judgement and arbitrament.” According to him “usually the terms of that judgement are concerned with the balance, or conflict, between social and moral values, as the reader is required to contrast the standards of the world with the ideals of Christianity. But if the reader is the jury in this court, Fielding’s irony insures that he is well vetted, and retains full control of both the evidence and the sentence. However, if Fielding’s novel is partly a court of justice, it is also in part a theatre. Theatrical similes abound. In order to impress upon the reader the sudden pallor in Lady Booby’s face at Joseph’s mention of his virtue, Fielding offers this analogy:
You have seen the faces, in the eighteen-penny gallery, when the trap-door, to soft or no music, Mr. Bridgewater, Mr. William Mills, or some other of ghostly appearance, hath ascended with a face all pale with powder, and a shirt all bloody with ribbons.“ (Book I, Chapter8)
Fielding’s definition of good nature is exhibited by some of his characters, like Parson Adams. He preaches against the vanity and pretension of his own age. The distinguished Teaching Professor of English, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Homer Goldberg writes in one of his essays that “Fielding goes on to characterize his society as:
a vast masquerade, where the greatest part appear
disguised under false visions and habits; a very few
only showing their own faces, who become, by so doing
the astonishment and ridicule of all the rest”
("On the..." 322).
According to Stephen Conway in his essay “Narrative and Narrator: An analysis of Joseph Andrews” (Conway, S.) “with good nature comes a responsibility to humankind.” He considers that “with this in mind Fielding believed there was hope that the ills of society, including the hypocrisy, the affectation, the corruption and the vanity of his own age, could be overcome and perhaps his writing was his contribution to this ongoing struggle.”
Many critics recently explored Fielding's complex value system, like Martin Price who suggests that Fielding's low characters contribute to his definition of virtue. Another critic Martin Battestin makes a study of the character of Sophia Western, using her as an example of Fielding's nuanced moral code. In brief, Fielding’s satire in Joseph Andrews refers to not only particular individuals but also to an entire 18the century English community. The novel is infused with compassion, comedy, and a heightened sense of realism, which together turn into a vivid manifestation of the cankers of the society.
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