History or Herstory?

From the very beginning, history has been written by men. They were the ones who first had access to study in universities, to have a relationship with literature based on the reading or on the writing as well, and to think beyond the books. Then, the opposite happened to women. Since they had to devote their time only to raise their children, be a good wife and care about the house chores; their cognitive skills and intellectual capacity were left aside because these were not useful for the role they had to play in society. Men did not even realize how thoughtful and revolutionary their ideas could be. After this background of almost a century ago up to the present, there is still a current question, which is, how different could the understanding of the western world would be if men and women had started writing their thought both at the same time?

While the time passed by, women started feeling the need of expressing their inner thoughts and ideas as well as men did. Only the bravest ones dared to take a step forward and put in paper what they felt about her selves and the sad society they were living in. Virginia Woolf was one these. She was one of the most representative feminists who contributed to support the British literary world with the willing of including women’s writing in a trend that used to be completely male. She started exploring the books, not to be superior to them but to enrich readers’ minds and thoughts with both writing styles.

Virginia Woolf was an ahead of time critical thinker. In her essay “A room of one’s own” written in 1929, she claims that the main needs for a woman who writes are money and a room for herself. As stated in the essay: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. This was due to the situation that the female gender was in because of the rejection from men, and the little importance that their intelligence and potential were given. She struggled for this in order to write in good conditions. She dared to say that women were able to write as brilliantly as men, and create transcendent pieces of writing, like the ones by Shakespeare.

The main topic of this essay is “Women and Fiction”; theme which represents the most inner thoughts and dreams of a generation of women after war times (First World War 1914 – 1918). Period which was very useful for women in order to think about their right to express themselves and speak out loud for what was fair and right for them, as mentioned above. Later on, women strove for their opportunity to study at universities and take advantage of their intellectual capacities and skills.

When Virginia Woolf wrote this essay, she made it with the purpose of making women aware of their own needs if they were to write. Due to the fact that men were the only ones who wrote up to then, gender equality was an issue that they had to struggle for if they wanted to be into literature as authors. Both, women and men’s minds have different qualities and should work together as a natural complement. Woolf calls it “The Unity of the Mind”, in the sixth chapter of the essay she states: “... it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest satisfaction, the most complete happiness” (p.p. 74) Based on this then, how objective would history had been if it had been written by men only? It would be totally questionable. Women needed to be acknowledged as authors, therefore to have a history written by both men and women, and not only by the male representatives.

Certainly, Virginia Woolf’s thoughts were an important basis for a transforming social change. Although she belonged to the upper class, she stood up for what was right, even when she stood alone at the beginning and supported women from all social backgrounds; educated and uneducated. She invited them to speak up for change and freedom, and challenge prejudices and the fear of being discriminated just because they were women. After all, this would benefit not only them but literature as such and the readers with the rich mixture of thoughts and writing styles from male and female writers.

rough draft

History or Herstory?

From the very beginning, history has been written by men. They were the ones who first had access to study in universities, to have a relationship with literature based on the reading or on the writing as well, and to think beyond the books. Then, the opposite happened to women. Since they had to devote their time only to raise their children, be a good wife and care about the house chores; their cognitive skills and intellectual capacity were left aside because these were not useful for the role they had to play in the society. Men did not even realize how thoughtful and revolutionary their ideas could be. After this background of more than a century before up to the present, there is still a current question, which is, how different could the understanding of the western world have been if men and women had started writing their thought both at the same time?

While the time passed by, women started feeling the need of expressing their inner thoughts and ideas as well as men did. Only the bravest ones dared to take a step forward and started putting in paper what they felt about herselves and the sad society they were living in. Virginia Woolf was one these. She was one of the most representative feminists who went against this male trend. She started exploring the books, not to be superior to them but to enrich readers’ minds and thoughts with both writing styles.

Virginia Woolf was an ahead of time critical thinker. In her essay “A room of one’s own” written in 1929, she claims that the main needs for a woman who writes are money and a room for herself. As stated in the essay: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. This was due to the situation that the female gender was in because of the rejection from men, and the little importance that their intelligence and potential were given. She struggled for this in order to write in good conditions. She dared to say that women were able to write as brilliantly as men, and create transcendent pieces of writing, like Shakespeare’s…



Conclusion: Certainly, Virginia Woolf’s thoughts were an important basis for a transforming social change. She stood up for what was right, even when she started standing alone.

(to be continued)

Auden - Spender

Everytime we read poetry, we feel invited by the author to get to know his/her way of thinking in a certain moment of his/her life. How the inner thoughts and feelings are depicted, etc. However, reading either Steven Spender or W. H. Auden means aquiring elements, within a kind of poetry, which are mainly based on what happens outside their minds. In the poems we have read up to now, both authors tell about devastating issues such as a city in desolation, the feeling of being buried, the postwar situation of a nation, etc.
They nourish their intellectual capacity with elements from the outside; therefore it becomes easier for people to feel touched by their ideas because these are based on events that might be happening to them as well. On one hand, in the poem “September 1, 1939” by Auden we can appreciate how the “developed nations” happen to go to pieces in a war context, caused by corruption, power abuse, etc which turns out with people immersed in a feeling of hopelessness, but also with a sense of rebelion brought up by the fact of rejecting what politicians, as powerful people claim.
On the other hand, in “In no man’s land” by Spender we, as readers can plunge into the author’s mind when refering to a corpse’s state after being buried, how it “feels like” as lond as the time is going by. Both authors give us mirrors for ourseleves and for the society we live in by the poems we have been presented. Why is it that hard to struggle against suffering?

A present given by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was certainly a woman whose thoughts and position to face life were ahead of time. Due to the fact that in the 1920’s women were only devoted to raise their children, therefore to be a good mother and wife, they could hardly read or spend time on activities of their own interest, this is why were not thought as good writers or as good thinkers, either. In the essay “A room on one’s own” it was easy to realize about her inner thoughts about descrimination towars women’s capacities and her struggle for women’s rights to express their ideas through writing, as it had always been for men. However, what she wanted to reach, indeed, was a complement between women and men’s contributions to lead human being’s minds to go beyond the scope of their conceptions.

While the time went by, several changes started to happen. The need to put in paper their thoughts since the time they were allowed to vote, therefore to think on their own, was current than ever. They no longer felt themselves as simple housekeepers. Then, they showed their hidden talents in the different fields of study, demonstrating a chauvinist society that they could be as good as men, or even better.

In my personal opinion, women who started writing, ran up the flag of change and freedom for their silent minds, they challenged prejudices and the fear of being discriminated just because they were women. From those days up to now, I think it has been a great pleasure (and for me it is) to feel identified with books about women written by a woman.

Post Correction 2 ("The accidents that damage society")

So far, it has been almost impossible not to relate and to complement what we have learned in both of our courses of Literature. How much can we get to know an author from his/her work? Is it really necessary to read their biographical background first in order to get the main points of their writing, in this case? According to our experience up to now, it seems that yes, it is necessary. That is how we’ve had the approach to Mary Shelley, and Poe as well.As long as I read “The Signalman” by Dickens, I could picture a very lonely Dickens immersed in that kind of job, in which the train and its atmosphere represented nothing but his life; but also his lacks, fears, pains, etc all what he wanted to appear as a hollow, or invinsible. This is why all what was harmful for his feelings, became ghosts. Isn’t it that simmilar to real life? Even though those things that the Signal Man saw were ghosts, indeed, we’d wished our problems and frights were ghosts as well.I believe that it was easy to relate this Dickens’ piece of writing to a social issue, as it was with Oliver Twist, however, both show how decadent society might turn into, which was mainly depicted in the accidents that the Signal man frequently saw.

Post Correction ("I don't care if he is good, I care if he is lucky")

After reading this story by DH Lawrence, I immediately related it to the movie "Match Point" by Woody Allen (the title of the post is taken form there, by the way), where the characters, especially the protagonist puts so much emphasis on the luck issue, actually, that is one of the topics beyond the movie. All members of the family were so concerned about not having money, and not being able to keep up with the lifestyle they used to have, either, which was a consequence of not being lucky people. This was such a big issue for this family because it made them feel tremendously unhappy, especially when it is about the relationship between mother and children. How can someone pretend to make a living by taking for granted that luck will be in favor, instead of hard work and effort?

Despite the fact that it seems a clear short story, I think it is not easy reading at all. It has many interpretations; for me, the parents' behaviour towards their children depicted lack of awareness, and love, of course. It is unbelievable that two grown up people had raised their children with those kinds of values and way of thinking. As the case of the mother, it becomes really hard for me to picture myself as a future mother unable to love my children. What this family was invloved in was a very deep psychological trouble...

How powerful an image can be

The name of the fifth part of the poem called: "What the thunder said" best reflects the meaning of this poem by T.S.Eliot, in my point of view. "What the thunder said" can be interpreted as a prediction of the consequences of a catastrophe. Although this poem tells about nature mainly, this catastrophe might not only be a physical one, but an emotional one based on how decadent our society has turned into. That is why, as soon as we see the picture, we can involve feelings such as: desolation, hopeless, loneliness, fear, destruction, suffering, etc.

Nevertheless, whenever any kind of catastrophe passes by, there are still hopeful feelings or thoughts like love, because love is what really moves and touches people for different several things, like loving among each other, the willing for doing things, for reconstructing, for accepting, etc.

A simmilar impression I had when I first saw the picture related to the poem. At first sight , it was full of dull colours and a very grey surrounding with nothing but garbage around, but then I saw those two people very close to each other with all that paper around in that free area which was maybe needed to reconstruct something or just to think with no distractions.

Tough, emotionally speaking

According to what we have been learning in our course of "Northamerican Literature" about the different literary approaches to analize a piece of writing, mixed up with the texts we have read in English literature, I've realized that both Biographical and Psychological approaches as well, have been the most remarkable ones in order to get to know and understand better the main topics of some authors, especially DH Lawrence...what about his real inner thoughts which lead him write all this?

In my point of view, in the last two short stories we have read there are plenty of facts which tell us that DH Lawrence' writing has a lot of drama in terms of psychological issues. There are simmilar topics such as lack of love, but in different ways, or because of different causes, and also the death issue is present as well. However, in The Rocking Horse Winner, death is interpreted as a consequence of dissapointment, frustration, obsesion, even madness, and in the "Odour of Chrysanthemums" it represents kind of a rebirth for the sense of love of this woman after all the bad time she had had before, it was certainly more hopeful in this story.
As an idea that springs to my mind right now, why is it that this author doesn't kill women in his stories, but does make them suffer?

"I don't care if he is good, I care if he is lucky"*

After reading this story by DH Lawrence, I immediately related it to the movie "Match Point" by Woody Allen (the title of the post is taken form there, by the way), where the characters, especially the protagonist gave so much importance to the luck issue. The same happened in this story. All members of the family were so concerned about not having money, and not being able to keep up with the lifestyle they used to have, either, which was a consequence of not being lucky people. This was such a big issue for this family because it made them tremendously unhappy, especially when it is about the relationship between mother and children. How can someone pretend to make a living by taking for granted that luck will be in favor, instead of hard work and effort?

Despite the fact that it seems a clear story, I think it is not an easy reading at all. It has many interpretations; for me, the parents' behaviour towards their children depicted lack of awareness, and love, of course. It is unbelievable that two grown up people have raised their children with those kinds of values and way of thinking. As the case of the mother, it becomes really hard for me to picture myself as a future mother unable to love my children. What this family was invloved in was in a very deep psuchological trouble...

An unseen world in front of

This short story takes place in a restaurant called Bentley’s, where the following characters (who are the main characters in the story) are having dinner; a young and very pretty woman, with blond hair and an oval and pretty face. She is a writer and is about marrying her fiancé, who seems to be a good man because he always cared about not saying anything unpropper to her. There was also a group of eight Japanese gentlemen at the restaurant, who spoke an illegible language; however, they had very peculiar manners to smile and bow to each other.
The narrator is omniscient, he knows everything about the story and is always expecting about the comments that the characters will make, this is one of the observations that influenced my reading, especially when it was about the fiancé’s behaviour towards the woman, which is also told by the way she had to speak. It tells us many things about the cuople, how they get along, the kind of communication, their concerns; which were mainly hers, I mean, about her job. Although I know the narrator is omniscient, sometimes; it seems to me that some of the comments made by the narrator are made by the girl’s fiancé, for example when it says: “The Japanese gentlemen had finished50 their fish and with very little English but with elaborate courtesy they were ordering from themiddle-aged waitress a fresh fruit salad. The girl looked at them, and then she looked at me, but I think she saw only the future. I wanted very much to warn her against any future basedon a first novel called The Chelsea Set....”
The Japanese men are the key to understand the woman’s personality and her behaviour. As long as the story is read, I realized she was a very selfish person, whose goals in life were her books, its publications, and the money she would earned. Even though she seems be toa very good intellectual at the beginning of the story, she hardly paid attention to details indeed, such as the group of Japanese gentlemen, she had only given a “passing glance” which tells us that she wasn’t a good writer at all. Her life and relationships with others were very superficial that she wasn’t able to observe, and appreciate what surrounded her.
Finally, the title of the book reminds me what is called in psychology “false audience”, which is when people, especially teenagers feel that everybody is staring at them all the time, but actually it’s is just a feeling. However, in this story the opposite happens, The Japanese men are the ones who observe the couple, especially the woman, all the time, but she is the one who did not realize this. For her, it was all about her, her books, and only the opinion that her fiancé had according to her job and the way she was handling it. It is really interesting because The Japenese men focused on her and gave the readers all the information about her through the omniscient narrator.

How beyond a story can go?

How different might the feeling of loneliness be between the women from the 18th century, and the ones from the current society? The consequences of a dull and unhappy life should be very simmilar if not the same for themselves and for the rest of the people who surround them. How do they handle life, deal with care, and face love being in that condition? This is one of the interpretations that it is possible to take out from Frankenstein, especially when reading about its author’s life, Mary Shelley since lots “this monster’s” words are the reflection of his creator’s life.

Love is the main feeling, theme, even the issue that rules each one of people’s life. It can be felt and expressed as freely as wished. Most of the time there are not much reason, but experience, dreams, authenticity, and the willing to say or do what our inner thoughts ask to. So, according to Mary Shelly’s life, what could have been the personal love pattern that she followed when writing Frankenstein? What can be deducted from one of the essays written by Kim A. Woodbridge, devoted to M. Shelley’s different aspects of her life, including as a writer, is that she was very pasionate, and really went into the pursuit of her happiness. “At the age of sixteen Mary ran away to live with the twenty-one year old Percy Shelley, the unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy. To Mary, Shelley personified the genius and dedication to human betterment that she had admired her entire life. Although she was cast out of society, even by her father, this inspirational liaison produced her masterpiece, Frankenstein”.
What she did, was an impressive act of bravery in those days. Going away from home to be with a man to get married but everybody who does something like that, it is only because of love. In the case of Mary Shelly, it was love for the man she loved, and love for herself. By this I mean that while being away from home she had the liberty to write and give birth to all of her masterpieces. However, little did she know about the emotional weight that she had to carry, then. Suicides, the trauma that the deaths of her two beloved children produced on her, and finally the fact that Mr. Shelley left her totally moneyless and hopeless. Accoding to the way a woman deals with her feelings, it is undoubtedly that these were the facts which disturbed her and led her to create Frankensktein.
This last point tells us about how she faced the idea of feeling herself helpless. Maybe she never thought about finding herself in those conditions, which finally were her main base to start being the creator of a monster. She started expressing her love in the way it had been expressed to her up until then, which means that, as it happened to her, she gave life to a creature, but then she took out all what could have made him feel happy, such as company and education.

M. Shelley’s experience is very simmilar to what happens nowadays. Although mortality rate in under two year old children were much higher in those times than now because of hygenical and technological reasons , current lost and sometimes unloved women have managed other ways to “kill” their children. These are the mothers of children who, as long as they grow up, they have trouble at school, reject studdying, and very unfortunatelly go into drugs; there is no support for them, most of the time, not because they want their children to be like that, but because they are not that different. If we relate Frankenstein story, we can realize that he did not want to have trouble with people, he didn’t want to threat, either to fright; he wanted to be loved; however, he was made that way. It was not his fault.

Hopefully, this issue’s overview has been changing little by little. There are children who are really loved by their mothers. Even if they have to live against suficient life conditions, and carry out their daily activities within a drowned world, there are mothers who do find what is good enough for their children to emerge and have all the necessary skills such as social, learning, etc in order to face up the world that they want to.

References:
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/life.shtml
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/birth.shtml

Essay on Frankenstein.

Outline

“How the lack of love can bring up a monster”

 Overview to Mary Shelly’s lonely and unhappy life. Leave open questions about how similar it is nowadays.
 How different her times were in terms of treatment to new born babies. Frankenstein’s first approach to society and people.
 How he started realizing his lack of love. Comparison to what happens “today”
 Consequences on his behaviour and life perspective.

The "accidents" that damage society

So far, it has been almost impossible not to relate and to complement what we have learned in our both courses of literature. How much can we get to know an author since his/her work? Is it really necessary to read their biographical background first in order to get the main points of their writing, in this case? According to our experience up to now, it seems that yes, it is necessary. That is how we’ve had the approach to Mary Shelley, and Poe as well.
As long as I read “The Signalman” by Dickens, I could see a very lonely Dickens in that kind of job, in which the train and its atmosphere represented nothing but his life; but also his lacks, fears, pains, etc all what he wanted to be dissapeared. This is why all what was harmful for his feelings, became ghosts. Isn’t it that simmilar to real life? Even though those things that the Signal Man saw were ghosts, indeed, we’d wished our problems and frights were ghosts as well.
I hoped that it was easy to relate this Dickens’ piece of writing to a social issue, as it was with Oliver Twist, however, both show how decadent society might turn into, which was mainly depicted in the accidents that the Signal man frequently saw.

Who is the monster, then?

What are the feelings that pregnant women have when they are about giving birth? We all know that they feel nervous, scared, and worried. The situation is more or less as similar to a surgery, so it really is a matter of insecurities and fright. They just want their babies to be born healthy, without any complication, etc. But what would happen to a mother whose most of her births have failed? A mother whose most of her children are dead? What are the feelings that she should have?
After reading the article based on the creation of Frankenstein, I realized that his birth was the result of what happened to Mary Shelley. She was so frustrated about all her failed previous births, that she transferred all her dull feelings to her literary creation, and definitely didn’t love him. The fact that she created him as a monster was enough for people to reject him. Of course! Everybody would feel scared and threatened by the presence of a monster.
Even though she (as the author) didn’t really have the control of what she had created, didn’t even the power of love worked for her. She (as Victor) left him alone; he didn’t have anyone to get love, either company from. Can’t we think therefore that this is a current issue which still happens in our society? How many times have we heard, watched or read in the news that newborn babies have been thrown away by their own mothers? So, where are the limits there? Are there any limits to set for human beings? Where does “the power of love” can get to?

Pleasure And Pain

As a characteristic of Romanticism, both sonnets show images of nature and depict the expression of feelings as well. These pieces have represented the dull inner feeling that Keats kept. The fact of enjoiyng himself with nature, comparing has to do with the state that Keats was living in that moment.
Why is it that Keats remains the constant fight between life and death? That makes me wonder and think about how complex he had been as a person; locating himself (his thoughts) in a pinnacle, and then feeling dizzy, weak, not powerful at all.
One of the verses that most called my attention from the sonnet:"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time" was: "Like a sick eagle looking at the sky". It's hard for me to imagine such a big animal as an eagle, which look so imposing when they are flying and even looking at the ski, weak as a tiny bird.
It's really interesting for me to face a writing style that touches me so much with they way in which feelings, especially the dull ones are depicted, as the case of Keats.

About Keats....and his tombstone.

By reading the article, I was introduced a writter whose this life-work review has made me feel he had been absolutely destroyed by the quality of his writing, not even having read any of his masterpieces before getting to know him more. This rejection was mainly due to the themes of his pieces of work, which all of them were related to dull feelings, states and situations, such as Melancholy, Death, Autumn, Psyche, etc.
However, this opinion that people had against him, has invited us, at least me to read his work and try to find out more about his life in order to understand his writing. As the article says: "To understand why Keats meditated so constantly on death, it is not necessary to look to his biography one need only to listen to his writing"...I don't really know if I should agree with that...
One of Keats' wished was his tombstone to be engraved with the statement: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”. Why not his name? In my opinion I think it was because since he worked in a hospital, and had to look after and take care of his mother being very little, he always dealt with death. As the article says: "...his life was a long preparation to death". A name writ (ten) in water is a name that will dissapear sooner than later. But surprise!...it's 2008 and we're studying him.

Thoughts on Kubla kahn

According to my interpretation of the poem Kubla Kahn from Coleridge, it makes a lot of sense with its other title, which is "Vision in a Dream", by what I read, I could tell that the extracts belong to the main subject of the poem which is nature and death.

In my opinion, the first extract is attached to parts of the poem, such as: "...By a woman wailing for her demos-lover!. By this verse, I mean that the woman was suffering, was feeling something really strong for someone she loved. She was really showing her affections for a man, but at the same time, the reader is able to realize how affected she was. Another example that I found really interesting and touching was: "...the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea". According to my point of view, this part shows how strongly influential nature can be for Human Beings to show and depict their feelings....How a man may feel if he is immersed into caverns, take by a measureless river to a sunless sea? I could tell that he felt opressed, drawn, and then freed.

About the second extract, this poem might seem simple, because of the situation that the persona is in. Using elements of nature helps a lot to compare oneself to different states of nature. For example, the sorrow of someone can be simmilar to a weeping willow in Autumn, or the sun which has come out after the storm represents relief and quietness after a difficult moment; in the poem Kubla Kahn, it is shown where it says: "Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:..."

Finally, the third extract makes reference to Coleridge' s supernatural state in his poetry. The fact that he focuses so much in nature and compares his feelings to elements of nature in their natural state, makes the reader go beyond the normal expectrum of simmiles, situations, and comparisons, it certainly tranports the reader to a broader and deeper imagination.