Jas, the ultimate faker.

To put it mildly, Jas is undergoing a severe identity crisis. Although we do not know it until later in the book, he is a white boy trying to fit in with a bunch of immigrants trying to fit in in a new country. That is pretty weak. I really can find no way to explain why a white and, I assume, non foreigner who does well in school and seems to have a bright future ahead of him would throw everything away to try to fit in with a bunch of good for nothing troublesome thugs with no hopes for a future anywhere other than jail.

To me, this question is so hard to explain that I almost wonder if Malkani, in an attempt to finish the book once it started to drag on, went back in the book and edited out some of the parts about him being of Indian descent so as to allow for the "shocking twist at end." I know that sounds ridiculous, but to be perfectly honest I just don't see how Jas being white can fit into the story. It was a little out there to begin with, but I still was able to justify most of what he was doing. A story about immigrant children trying fit in is one thing, but with the turn of Jas being white, everything he had convinced me of just went out the window. I do not know his intents, but whatever they were they ruined the book for me.

Girly man Flory

For some reason, Flory really irks me. I am not sure why, but he seems to just seems to some think he so much bigger than he is. For example, he imagines that he "saves" Elizabeth from the water buffalo, even though it was just drinking water from a pond. Similarly, he seems to somehow pride himself as the man in the relationship, but when he takes Elizabeth hunting, she scores on her first try, even after he explains to her how difficult it is, as if he were some sort of master. Because of this, she makes him look kind of silly when she, a woman, hits on the first try. Flory just seems to be a rather weak man who imagines himself somehow superior to everyone else.

While I am thinking about people I hate, I strongly dislike Mrs. Lakersteen as well. I certainly do not like Elizabeth, but I don't really hate her. Rather, I view her as the object of Mrs. Lakersteen and therefore can only consider her guilty by association. Mrs. Lakersteen is the most scheming and selfish person I have seen in the book. She tells Elizabeth who she has to pretend to love, simply based on that person social status, or even a title. I don't like anyone in this book, but she might be the worst...

So why did we all hate Christopher so much?

During class discussion, many of us, myself included, didn't really like Christopher's dad that much. He killed Wellington, he hid Christopher's mom's letters, and he loses his temper at poor Christopher. On top of that, Christopher always talks about how scared he is of his father. No wonder why I didn't like him. But when you really think about it, his father is actually a pretty good guy. In fact, his mother left Christopher with his father because she knew he would take better care of him than she could. Christopher's dad takes care of him, makes him food, and obviously cares deeply about him. I find it easy to forgive him because to be perfectly honest, Christopher is a total pain in the butt. He constantly whines and complains, he runs away, and he has an entire page of his "behavioral problems," and he is a constant worry.

Christpher's dad isn't perfect, but I really don't see any way to justify considering him a terrible person. Rather, Christopher is a very difficult problem to deal with and would make anyone's life a living hell. On account of this, I hold his father excused...

Lyndall's fire and ice

Lyndall has to be one of the most extreme characters in the book. While everyone in A Story of an African is an extreme in some way, Lyndall could be the most out there. As a young girl, she passionately expounds her theories on feminism and takes a viscous attitude toward any dissenters, or anyone who is different for that matter.

We later find a partial explanation for her behavior. When she tells her real boyfriend that she intends to marry Gregory Rose, she refuses his offer of marriage because she says that she fears losing herself to a stronger man. Instead, she is marrying Gregory Rose because she needs to marry someone and he is weak, and, in effect, will basically be her servant. However, she has to marry someone because is pregnant and does not want to be alone. Naturally, Gregory Rose fits her requirements.

Personally, I find Lyndall to be a strange character. For all of her stuff about independence, I somehow find it interesting that she "needs" to marry a man, although I will give her that she is marrying one of the weakest men alive. In any case, she, as well as many other characters in the book, seem rather unhappy and, quite frankly, unlikeable. No wonder why everybody dies.

Waldo's World

Waldo is an interesting character. Of all the characters in this book, I find him to be the most interesting. While i got the feeling in the beginning of the book that most of the characters had too many drastic flaws to make it through without dying, Waldo seemed like he was going to die for a different reason. He seems to be the dreamy sort of character, a man of the mind so to speak. However, somehow he seems to be too morbid of a person. What i find most interesting, however, is the progression of his religious beliefs. As the story sets out, he is highly religious and seems to willingly accept all of his struggles, even the abuse of Bonaparte. However, as he matures, he begins to lost faith in the bible, becoming more of a realist, but he still remains he remains a rather morbid and mysterious character.

Considering this dark and gloomy feeling that I get from Waldo, his end seems very appropriate. Just as he never lost his temper or had any other explosions, he doesn't go down in flames or become a serial killer or go out in any flamboyant way. Rather, he simply goes to sleep under a tree and never wakes up. In the same way that he never really seemed to exist, he never really seems to die. Instead, he remains this sort of foggy character and fades away through the end of the book.

Tipping the velvet...

Just had to get that into a title somewhere here. But on a more serious note, the book as a whole really does render itself well to the whole gender issue in several ways. To me, the most interesting thing to think about is way Nan changes over the course of the book with regard to how she perceives herself. In the beginning, she seems to be pretty much an innocent girl who just happens to have a thing for Kitty. However, as the story progresses we see her experimenting and gradually developing her own persona based on what she learns. After she catches kitty cheating on her, the dreamy fairytale-like feel quickly disappears. When we see her under the strict rule of Diana, she is going through a transitional phase. As a pretend male prostitute, she does seem to reach some satisfaction through her ability to pass as a male. However, she soon moves on and as she progresses, she begins to achieve a certain level of self confidence that allows her to finally become an independent woman as opposed to a kind of subject. I guess if I had to point out what about this process interests me most I would have to point to the section where she poses as a male prostitute. It just seems interesting to see how she plays the role of a man in such a nonchalant manner, almost as if she just decided to see what it would be like to be a man. This book, more so than any of the others we have read this semester, gives an interesting incite into the issue of gender relations, performance, etc...

Regarding the issue of outsiders...

While it seems natural that outsider would play a heavy role in novels as well as most other literature, at times I have to stop and think, "so what?" Of course outsiders are prominently featured in novels, because most people would not be terribly interested in reading a book about an everyday life that he or she witnesses on an every day basis. But here is where my reasoning reveals the misconception. We tend to view outsider as people who are different. However, when you think about it many people have some particular trait that makes them very different from others, yet we rarely classify them as outsiders: even though they may have different or religions, colors, or behavior, these people usually live basically the same live that "we" do. This is where the problem lies: we frequently are too generous about granting outsider status to anyone in a novel, thus cheapening the idea of an outsider and making the answer to the "so what?" question an equally useless "dunno."

I do not have the one single solution to the problem of classifying the outsider, but I would think it should require something severe, something that actually forces a character to be severely disconnected from everyone else in the world or at a minimum, his or her surroundings within the book. Someone who just speaks more slowly than others, or has a receding hair line, or has 7 freckles on their body is not an outsider because of it.

Damn outsider impersonators...

Londonstani/The shocking twist

So what exactly happened to Malkani. He starts the book off leading the reader down a intricately drawn path with subtle hints and clues built into the pavement. His descriptions of Jas & co. are coherent and reasonable. Even though the story is a little bit out of the ordinary, we never really expect the ordinary, especially in contemporary fiction. As the story progresses, we see Jas and his friends in a painfully slow coming of age process. Through the first and second sections, the story is relatively consistent and the reader begins to become accustomed to the style of both the book and the characters in it.

For some reason, once the third section opens the fireworks start to fly. We suddenly see suicides, unexpected deaths, absurd relationships with post college age people, Jas breaking into his fathers warehouse, getting beat up, and burning it down, Jas becoming an outcast from his group of friends, and of course the "shocking twist," Jas is actually white. It seems as though Malkani either got tired and used this ridiculous type of storyline to speed up the book to finish it or because he was too lazy to continue with the intricate and detailed writing he just tried to throw in tons of action so he could cover up the lower quality of writing. In either case, while I felt that something drastic need to happen in the life of Jas, the ending to Londonstani not only exceeded my expectaitions but went so far past them that I find myself unable to take the book seriously.

Malkani ruined his book in the last section, as he threw away so many of the details and aspects of the book that made the first two sections so good...

Immigrant Son

Londonstani deals a lot with the seemingly irreconcilable differences between first and second-generation immigrants. My personal experience is nowhere near as extreme as that of the rudeboys, but I think some of that probably has to do with being part-white. My parents both immigrated to the States, and they brought with them pretty solid beliefs and ideas about how to live. Of course, anyone who immigrates to a new home has the desire to change and make things better, so they can't be all passive. That's what I think the desis don't understand about the first-generationers. They have an incompletely-inherited culture and a poorly-acquired one as well, but the two are always at odds because they can't comprehend that their parents came to London for a reason - the act of doing so should be grounds for understanding. The parents were probably pretty rebellious in their own way as well.
And then there's the whiteness thing. Jas makes himself the outsider because his identity is also fractured. He finds himself in the white minority, with no recognition of what the previous generation experienced. So he, lost in London society, identifies with the adolescent search for tough cool, and because white is the status quo, the favoured majority, he is able to "drop" to the ethnic level and put himself at the foot of the desi ladder instead. Worship the Bang-Bang youngblood ideal instead of the struggle-less white one.

The London Abroad Experience

Last fall, I studied abroad in London. I stayed at Edgeware Road and studied in Regents Park - near the Lebanese Quarter and Camden Town, and made it a point to spend time in a number of other districts. A student filming project I did with some NYU kids actually took me to a Bollywood-esque Arts neighbourhood near Brick Lane, where we borrowed a studio from an Asian (Indian) talk-show company and I received the Brick Lane Curry Tour after we finished filming. A number of our novels have taken us through the mythic town of London, but I felt a resonance with the feeling of alienation in Londonstani. In a city with such ancient history, it still feels like everyone's a stranger of sorts. The Bangla-town section (where the Bangladeshi Muslim Indians live) became so after having been the emigrant Jewish silver-smithing quarter. T.S. Eliot lived on the same block as I did, along with his American expats. Everyone's from somewhere else except for the English folks - but even there, things get fuzzy. London leaks out from the Loop, from its centre, and where exactly it ends or begins, what's a suburb and what's an unwanted neighbouring burrough can get hazy and extremely subjective. My London relatives actually live in Croydon and commute in to the city... and they've only been English citizenry for a couple of generations (Irish before that). I often felt kind of isolated in London, but other times I felt like we were all alone together... of sorts.

In class, we talked about whether Tipping the Velvet was more of a coming of age novel or a coming out novel. One thing that I thought was interesting about this question when it was posed was that it seemed to assume that the two were necessarily mutually exclusive for Nan, which I didn’t feel was the case. For Nan, I felt like her coming out and coming of age were inextricably bound together, and much of her journey toward discovering herself and growing up was tied to her becoming comfortable with and understanding her own sexuality. In the beginning of the novel, it almost didn’t seem like Nan thought of herself as a lesbian – she seemed to just think that she had fallen in love with Kitty. She didn’t love women, she just happened to love a person who happened to be a woman. Part of this, I’m sure, is due to the fact that Kitty seemed so vehemently against the idea that anyone might perceive them to be “toms”, but there still didn’t seem to be any sense from Nan that she understood herself to be a lesbian. However, as the novel progresses, through her interactions with Diana and Florence, I think we see Nan come to the realization that she is a lesbian, and start to embrace this. I think that along with Nan’s playing with gender representation, experimenting with her presentation of herself and somewhat blurring those gender lines, Nan’s entering into these relationships and sort of discovering that she is a lesbian are really the driving forces behind her development as a character and a person in the novel. Throughout the novel, we see her negotiate her ideas about her own gender presentation and sexuality, and I think that this is a big part of her growing up, and I think this is what forms the basis of her coming of age tale.

This is going a few weeks back, but I thought it was really interesting discussing the essay on queer narration in Tipping the Velvet. One thing that I found particularly interesting in this essay was the distinction between third person omniscient narratives as being inherently male, while first person narratives are supposedly inherently female. I can see, as we discussed in class, how some might think a third person omniscient narrator may seem more male because those types of narratives are somewhat “God-like”, which can carry with it connotations of maleness, while the first person narrative may seem like journal entries (which might be seen as gendered female). However, I don’t think that I have ever had these reactions to novels that I have read. I tend to associate the gender of the narrator (third person omniscient or not) with the gender of the main character of the novel. Talking about the gendered narrators, however, made me think about how the gender of the author plays into this. I took a gender studies class last year, and in it we talked about whether there is an inherently masculine or feminine way to write, and if you would be able to discern the gender of a writer based purely on his or her prose. For instance, in the case of novels with a third person omniscient narrator, does the gender of the writer color what gender we think of the narrator as being? Can male writers accurately depict a female voice, and vice versa? I’m not sure that I actively think about how the gender of the author affects how we view the narrator or the overall tone or voice of the novel, but I think it’s interesting regardless and I do wonder if these things subconsciously affect how we read novels.

Allusion in Tipping the Velvet

Through Diana and Florence, Sara Waters reveals differences in class through different preferences in literature. Diana is the rich and vicious widow bitch who rescues Nan from the streets. Diana keeps her collection of erotic pamphlets and novels hidden away in a trunk in her bedroom, which seems to be the approach of the wealthy. Not wanting to be associated with the 'Tom's' (Kitty's word for openly gay women), the wealthy hide their risque books and magazines. Admirably, the snobbish Diana helps produce a magazine on Suffrage, but considers Nan, the oyster-shop girl, too low class to gain anything from reading it.

Florence's taste in literature are quite different. Being the socialist activist who gives Nan a home after Diana throws her out, we come to understand her as being sensitive, intelligent and romantic through what she chooses to read. Florence spends much of her time working for Women’s Cooperative Guild and the union. Each night, Florence labored for the cause by writing, reading, comparing pages, and addressing envelopes. Through Florence, Nan discovers Elenanor Marx and Walt Whitman. For Florence, the intellectual writers were more of a source of stimulation than pornography. Sharing her preferences with Nan (they read out loud to each other) added the intimacy that solidified their relationship.

Lesbian Audiences

Something that struck me from the reading we did for Tipping the Velvet was the idea that Waters was quoted as targeting the book "primarily towards lesbians." It was a curious quote that came up during the Tipping presentation - the idea that a book can have a targeted aesthetic audience, as opposed to a target market audience. It seemed to me to be kind of a strange statement at first - why would the book need to "appeal" to lesbians more than any other demographic? Surely it could appeal to a rather broad spectrum of readers? But that got me thinking about the reasons one writes a novel. If one wants to make money, universal appeal (or as close as you can approximate) is certainly the way to go. But if one wants to talk about gender analysis and deconstruction, and has the focus of being read by a sympathetic or at least content-literate audience, then certain other ideas become easier to make work. Once you have the lesbian audience in mind, you can highlight certain elements of female or lesbian literature. That first-person vs. third-person argument, for instance. The movement of time and the structure of the plot, focusing on character development over external action. The attention to details associated with the feminine eye or perception. It's interesting to think about how the choice to appeal to lesbians influenced the style of Tipping the Velvet.

In Part Two of the novel, Nan has become very self centered. My annoyance with her started with how she treated Mrs. Milne and Gracie when she left to live with Diana. She knowingly makes promises to them she will not keep and only has very fleeting regrets about leaving them. She has somewhat if a one-track mind that is again seen in her willingness to drop everything in order to start a new life with her partner. When Nan left her family for Kitty, she seemed more upset about leaving even though she was quickly consoled by the prospect of being with Kitty. Unlike Diana, Nan was driven by her love and adoration of Kitty and by Kitty’s love of her. (At the time one does not know if this love is romantic but it is clear that Kitty genuinely cares for Nan.) With Diana, Nan just seems driven by the “500 days of pleasure” since she knowingly goes just to be Diana’s “tart” instead of wanting a real relationship.

Throughout her time at Felicity Place, Nan becomes more enamored with herself (Diana’s house is aptly named with felicity meaning happiness, delight, pleasure, which seems to be all Diana and Nan are concerned with). She spends all day primping and admiring herself as Diana dresses her up in fine clothing and gives her every luxury imaginable. Diana then dresses her up for her friends and Nan comments, “being admired by tasteful ladies—well I knew it wasn’t being loved. But it was something. And I was good at it.” She becomes more impressed by herself and her performances as she spends different paragraphs describing her looks and calls herself “almost unsettlingly attractive.”

Nan’s also begins to emphasize more material things as she only thinks of all her luxurious possessions when she is kicked out of Felicity place and later begs to collect them. As her and Zena wander the streets she keeps talking of Diana and is incredulous that she kicked her out. Even her proposal, in a desperate sort of way, seems half-hearted and selfish. Nan asks, “It won’t be so bad, Zena—will it? You’re the only tom I know in London, now; and since you’re all alone, I thought—we might make a go of it, mightn’t we?” Though in her desperateness I felt sympathy for Nan, I was somewhat glad that Zena left her.

Conveniently Vague

Once again, I want to talk about how the Outsider status of many of our protagonists is influenced by the necessary absence of familial obligations/limitations. Tipping the Velvet is a special case - unlike some of our other protagonists, Nan is neither orphan nor runaway nor grieving daughter, but rather a girl given fairly free rein which she eventually uses to simply leave. Nothing terribly climactic, she just starts living her own life and moving from relationship to relationship, situation to situation. Perhaps the closest example of such easy, passive independence is Lolly Willowes, another feminist read, which got me wondering if that's one of the motivations. Is it a male construction to introduce conflict or tragedy in order to fulfill the orphan fantasy? Perhaps it's a conscious decision on Waters' part to downplay the domestic drama in order to focus on the more important issues of Nan's life. Coming out to your family is supposed to be one of the biggest steps in the path of realized homosexuality, but I think that for feminism's sake, Waters deliberately moves past that to make it about the more nuanced post-adolescent development period.

While reading Tipping the Velvet, I kept thinking how a writing a Victorian novel from a modern perspective influences the text. I thought Fin made an interesting point about how Waters tells the story in a more approachable way than Dickens. She sets up a historical context without the implied understanding of the setting that Dickens uses to address his London audience. Waters creates a setting and language for the reader without assuming that the reader knows about the subject but also without spoon-feeding the information. She uses Nan as a narrator that tells the story as if she is talking with a person, starting the novel by directly addressing the reader with the second person. She then establishes the setting and vocabulary through context clues and carefully chosen details. Waters uses the word queer several times to create a double meaning between the definition at the time the novel is set (Strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious) and the connotations it carries now (of or pertaining to homosexuality). She mostly uses queer when all three meanings can be attached. As Danielle said, it makes the most sense meaning peculiar or of questionable character. However, it is also usually related to Nan’s feelings for Kitty or to dressing in man’s clothing. The modern reader can connect these things homosexuality and therefore to what many people considered (and sadly still consider) “of questionable character.” I was trying to figure out what this double meaning accomplished because it seems to reinforce homosexuality in a negative light. I think Walters must have used this to show the origin of the word queer and emphasize society’s opposition to homosexuality.

Sensitivity in Tipping the Velvet

What is certainly exceptional in Waters' novel is the care she uses in depicting the lesbian relationship. By creating a innocent, honest and open-minded central character in Nan, the reader is able to nearly take this provocative journey of self-discovery along with the main character instead of viewing it from the standpoint of an outsider. With sensitivity and an intimate perspective of the relationship through Nan's viewpoint, Waters is able to take some of the sting out of a relationship that might be difficult to understand by some. Nan is paralleled with Kitty, the character who questions her true identity.

Lavish detailed descriptions evoke a realistic quality, such as describing the warm of her love interest's clothing and the sensuality in her manner. Comparisons between the societal difficulties of homosexual relationship during the Victorian era and present day immediately and effortlessly spring to mind. One questions if a relationship of this nature would be so simplistic in the 1890's?

Water chose a most erotic, yet almost common topic for the opening of the novel-- oysters. The satirical plot of a person of low social class attempting to survive in a corrupt society has been seen in other bildungsromans we have read this semester. We have no overtly evil characters yet. It seems that our characters are forced to deal with their inner demons as a motivation to develop in this work.

Nan seems to be experiencing infatuation with Kitty during the first part of the novel. We are learning to understand her almost completely through her relationships with others. It will be interesting to see the other types of loves she experiences as the novel progresses.

While I found Esty’s argument somewhat compelling, and I do think he drew some interesting claims that could, possibly, be substantiated, I could help but feel like much of his paper had the air of someone grasping at straws. From my reading of The Story of an African Farm, I didn’t feel like there was much of a focus on colonialism. As we discussed in class, I think that a feminist reading of the novel is much more supported by the actual novel itself. Sure, Esty could (and did) find some things that he could make fit into a reading on colonialism, but reading his paper kind of made me wonder how much license we, as readers, have when interpreting a novel. Where do we draw the line between looking beyond the literal and exploring underlying meanings, and reading too much into something? Just because you can find bits and pieces of a story that you can make fit into some hypothesis or idea doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily valid to do so, and while the literary acrobatics can no doubt be impressive, are they worthwhile? I think that I would be more accepting of Esty’s argument if I felt that there was more of an overtone concerning colonialism in the story, but I just didn’t feel that there was. I feel like we would have had to see more of colonialism at play, and we really didn’t. It goes beyond Schreiner being racist in the typically nineteenth century way – there wasn’t much evidence of the native Africans, period. And to me, colonialism isn’t colonialism if the native population isn’t figured into the picture somehow. Even if Schreiner was focusing on the effects of colonialism on the transplanted Europeans, there still has to be some sense of their interactions with the community and people around them. I don’t feel like there is in Story of an African Farm. I’m pretty sure Schreiner could have taken this farm and plopped it down in Louisiana, Ireland, Germany – any place you can think of – and the story would have turned out much the same.

Going back to what we were discussing in regards to Bonaparte being a necessary archetypal character... I do feel that every story needs someone like him in order to advance the plot. Especially in such a static location, where the characters are virtually isolated and the farm itself is the sum of the current setting. I don’t think anything would have changed on the farm without some kind of catalyst; roles were too well-established, and those with power (the adults) were too comfortable in their positions. Change is impossible without enough incentive, just like necessity is the mother of invention: without something to respond to and against, Lyndall would not have had a reason to become such a reactionary character. Also, the plot would not have developed at all and the potential for a rather boring story would actually turn into a rather boring story.

 I mean, even with Bonaparte around to shake things up, the characters themselves remain fairly static; Lyndall never really accomplishes much despite all her big ideals, and Em just stays this passive character built solely to react to the things that Lyndall does. This is one of those books where you can guess from the beginning that certain characters are going to die, and it really didn’t let me down. Since they lived in a world where the degree of change necessary to actually break the mold was impossible to achieve, there was only one way to end the story: by ending the characters.

Cross-Genre Christopher

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time offers us an interesting example of the cross-genre novel - it is, I believe significant for having been released simultaneously in the children's fiction and adult novel markets. It's not hard to see why the formula works - it's the story of a child character dealing with adult issues in a certainly adult-dominated world. Certainly, bereft of any "normal" children, or at any rate a school environment populated by younger characters, the world of Christopher Boone revolves mostly around the adults that influence him, and his stoic actions and reactions against. To the young, it's a beginner's detective novel and a convincing portrait of the confusion and newness of youth. To the older set, it's an examination of how the traditions of 'The Detective Novel' and typical translators can be twisted to serve new purposes and tell new stories, stories that give a different message and are more about the human condition than they are about the deviant criminal mind. The book certainly serves as an important bridge between the genres and is a fine example of a book that has a specific focus with a huge appeal.

Religion in Story of an African Farm

It has been interesting to see how various characters’ relationships with religion unfold in Story of an African Farm. On the one hand, Otto (as we talked about in class) seems to be the consummate Christian – he believes so wholly and completely in everything that he has been taught by his religion, and this unyielding belief doesn’t serve him well. He puts his trust in people he shouldn’t, and his naïveté results in his being taken advantage of by Bonaparte. We see a little bit of Tant Sannie’s religious views as well, in her fear that Em’s father’s ghost is watching her. The thought of his ghost lingering is the only thing that keeps her from beating Em and Lyndall, because she fears the wrath of the ghost. Like Otto, her religious beliefs seem to be somewhat black and white – she accepts without question the idea that there are otherwordly or ethereal forces watching her movements, and she acts as she expects those forces want her to act. Waldo’s religious views, on the other hand, are much more difficult to tease apart and pin down than either Tant Sannie’s or Otto’s (at least, in my mind). At one point, we have Otto saying that he loves Jesus but hates God, but later he reverses on this view. His religious ideas seem to swing from one extreme to another, and there is little consistency about his views throughout the portion of the novel that we have read so far. While there is certainly a level of instability in his religious beliefs, it seems as if he really does want to believe something – which could be why his ideas seem to gravitate toward one extreme or another. Unlike the rest of the characters, whose ideologies seem somewhat static, Waldo’s seem to be constantly in flux, because unlike the others, I think he is truly thinking about religion and trying to work through some pretty complex concepts in his head, instead of simply taking religious teachings at their word. The effort to piece through everything and make it fit into a ideological framework proves to be difficult for Waldo, and I think that’s why we see such a change in his views. I think it seems like he’s simply trying out a lot of different ideas and theories and seeing what works, what offers the best explanation. Since Schreiner spends so much time depicting her characters’ religious views and Waldo’s struggle with his own, it makes me wonder if she does think (as Waldo seems to), that if you try hard enough, you can find a theory that’s the “best” one. If I had to guess, I would say that Schreiner probably thinks that finding the “best” ideology is of secondary importance to the actual process of sifting through different ideologies and critically thinking about them (as opposed to simply accepting what you have been taught without question).

Feminism on the Farm

Lyndall returns from boarding school as a feminist. She pities Em because she has chosen to marry Gregory. She seems to have much to say to Waldo, following him around the farm, telling to him about school and complaining about how difficult society has made it for women.

Depicting this novel as a feminist work is rather difficult for me, since all the feminist beliefs are displayed so late in the novel. Lyndall becomes educated, but returns to the farm pregnant, but she doesn't want to get married because she believes she will lose her freedom. She leaves the farm again, comes back sick and Gregory (dressed as a woman) takes care of her until she dies.

While the idea's of education and freedom for a woman are central to the feminist movement, by giving the character so many hardships after these decisions, it is difficult to say the Schreiner is a proponent of these beliefs. The novel nominally explores a woman's position in marriage and in the world as a whole, but only at the very end.

I understand that this is Schreiner's first novel, but it lacks balance. The most important themes are lightly touched, while she spends a great deal of the book on a person with no redeeming qualities. The most admirable aspect of this novel, with respect to feminism, is that Lyndall, who at first appears to have the fewest choices, is the most determined.

Waldo's Transformation

I have being thinking about Bonaparte's treatment to the children and the impact. We talked in class about every novel needs a bastard to add conflict and to give the characters something to rise about. I agreed with that...the idea that Bonaparte is the first major struggle they all encounter in their young lives.

Bonaparte also puts an ends to Waldo's mystical view of the world. Before Bonaparte, Waldo believes there is love and fairness in the world, as long as he is faithful. The believer dies with Bonaparte's departure and Waldo has a different view of the world.

Lyndall is so independent that Bonaparte is unsure of her. She challenges him by exposing his lies and punishes Em, because is is afraid of Lyndall. Lyndall shows no interest in religion. She believes that she must rely on herself to survive and rewarded by escaping Bonaparte unscathed.

Bonaparte is a sadistic liar. His character is the opposite of Waldo's, who appears more God-fearing. By the end of Bonaparte's visit, Waldo seems calm and at peace with himself. He has no fear of Bonaparte because of his mew view on the world. This is an important phase in his maturity. I agree with Christine, that he is the most interesting character in the novel.

I think Waldo is by far the most interesting character in the novel up to this point. Although his relationship with religion is taken to the extremes, I think it is still very plausible. Like most people, he turns to religion as his “center” that will explain unknowns and show him how to live. However, he cannot reconcile the inconsistencies in the Church. At the beginning of chapter five, he questions the Bible stories and if there can be an absolute truth. He asks, “Could a story be told in opposite ways and both ways be true? Could it? Could it? Then again:--Is there nothing always right, and nothing always wrong?” (33). . At this point it has been two years since his confessed his hatred for God and he has somehow revived his religious fervor. I think his repetition of “could it?” shows his sense of desperation in trying to reconcile the inconsistencies and stay close to God. Throughout the novel he seems to be forcing religion upon himself as an answer to the unknown. Waldo even consoles himself by repeating that although he doesn’t understand, God does and that is all that matters. In the chapter entitled Times and Seasons, we see more of Waldo’s own explanations for his strong vacillations. As someone who was raised Catholic, I could identify to a point with the stages Waldo explains. I think most of us view him as extreme because religion in general was more extreme in the time of the novel. There is not so much emphasis on hellfire and death in modern religion so Waldo seems somewhat morbid when he focuses them. Although this is hard to identify with, I think his need for truth is very universal.

Jumping off of what Jack wrote…

I know we were divided in class about how blameworthy Christopher’s dad was, but I actually thought that his dad was my favorite character in the book. Sure, I loved Christopher (I think it’s a little hard not to love and sympathize with Christopher), but I felt like Christopher’s dad was the most “real” character in the book. He was doing his best to hold it together, and I think his efforts were admirable – especially when you think about what he was dealing with. He had an autistic child, and although he clearly loved Christopher, life with Christopher couldn’t have been easy. His wife decided that she would rather be with the next-door neighbor in London than with her son – and she didn’t deal well with Christopher even when she was there. The wife of the aforementioned next-door neighbor spends a lot of time with Christopher’s dad after their spouses take off together, and then companionship helps him through his wife’s departure. But Mrs. Shears isn’t interested in being a part of his life in the long run, and she leaves too, which means that Christopher’s dad is once again left completely alone to care for Christopher, with no person there to offer him support or be an outlet when things get difficult. That’s a lot to deal with, and while he may have snapped and made a few mistakes (lying to Christopher about his mom, killing Wellington), I think his reaction is very human. He tries his hardest to pick up the pieces of those mistakes, and I think one of the saddest moments in the book (in my mind, at least) comes when he goes to see Christopher in London, and starts to cry when Christopher won’t put his hand on his father’s. Christopher’s dad may have been flawed, but he was trying so hard to be a good father to Christopher and I think that these internal conflicts made him easily the most compelling character in the story.

Curious Ending

The ending of the Curious Incident has two parts, the first of which resolves the traditional story arc Christopher creates concerning his mysteries. The second part of the ending deals with Christopher’s family relationships. None of the problems raised in the novel are resolved and are only scarcely addressed by Christopher. This is because for Christopher his book is about finding out who killed Wellington and finding his mother. With these mysteries solved, he views the book as a success and ends on a note of hope for his future since he has accomplished all of his goals.

However, for the reader, the book’s focus and interest becomes Christopher’s relationships with other people. Haddon offers social commentary through how the world interacts with Christopher and how Christopher interacts with the world. His relationships with his parents are especially important because he cannot relate emotionally to them and we see the strain this puts on them. This is especially seen through their hand motion that substitutes as a hug and means they love him. Christopher can only define loving someone as “helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth” (87). When Christopher’s father shatters these rules and lies to him (along with killing a dog, one of Christopher’s favorite animals because they are so straightforward) he cannot reconcile these discrepancies.

Christopher’s inability to forgive, or to perhaps understand forgiveness and mistakes, then becomes a main focus in the text. This creates an interesting question of how he can perhaps “forgive” his mother for leaving. It seems that he is not even really upset by this, but it could just be overshadowed by his father’s betrayal. His relationship with his father is never fully resolved as Christopher mentions him briefly and detachedly. This is effective since it does not give a neat, unrealistic ending but instead allows a continuation of the story where the reader can envision the progression that may or may not happen.

I thought one of the most interesting things about our discussions on The Curious Incident was the very clear division between those who thought Christopher's father was a complete asshole and those who thought he was a man dealing with a terrible situation the best way he could. Apparently, according to various reviews of the book (my totally legit source: amazon.com), this conflicting reaction can be found among every group of people who reads it. I am in the camp of "everyone's only human", which is a bit more forgiving, and even though I read the same book those who disagree did, I still can't quite see it from the opposing perspective. No one is purely good or purely bad, and I have never met a single person who hasn't done something they regret or who hasn't handled a situation in a way that, looking back, was possibly the worst option they could have taken. One of the things I like about The Curious Incident is the emotional connection the reader develops with the characters, despite Christopher's issues regarding feeling; I found it extremely easy to empathize with Christopher's father. Imagining being in his situation is a little unbearable; the bond between a parent and a child is supposed to be one of the strongest, and not only is his son incapable of returning that bond in a "normal" fashion, he has absolutely no support system. He's floundering, trying to do what's best for his son, trying to avoid causing more problems, and once he begins the lie about Christopher's mother there really is no way that he can rewind and try again. Even after Christopher's trip to London and the disruption of whatever fragile status quo had been established, the only thing his father is concerned about is regaining Christopher's trust. So yes, he makes mistakes... but he's no monster.

Throughout this semester, we’ve been reading novels in which the main characters, in some way, are portrayed as being outsiders. Pip, Lolly, and Flory all didn’t quite seem to fit in, though the reasons for their outsider-ness varied. However, it seems to me that of these characters, Christopher seems to be the biggest outsider. Pip, born common, didn’t fit in with the high-class people he lived with in London, Lolly seemed to prefer to be on her own, and Flory was a transplant from England living in a foreign land, but Christopher’s entire world seems to be different from the world of the people around him. I found it interesting that throughout the novel, he seems to be constantly translating his thoughts or rationale to us, the readers. He writes the book as if he is anticipating that it will be read by people who are like his dad, his mom, and Siohban – not autistic. When he talks about why the color pattern of cars that he sees while on the bus will determine whether it will be a good day or a bad day for him, he compares this to when we (the people outside his world) feel cheerful or down because of what the weather is like. What I found interesting while I was reading is that while Christopher tries to explain his thoughts in terms of things that will make sense to us, you can still tell that there is a fundamental lack of understanding for him about certain aspects of the thought processes of other people. For instance, Christopher can tell you that people don’t like to think of themselves as being like computers because they think that our ability to feel emotion separates us from computers, but he doesn’t really understand this belief or why people feel this way – all he can do is tell us that people do believe this, and why he thinks that this belief is wrong. His relationship to people outside of his world or his understanding is a little bit like someone who studies a foreign language from a book and learns solely from a book how to speak a perfectly grammatical version of that language. If this person goes to that foreign country and starts talking with native speakers, he will be able to define the words that are being spoken to him, but the idioms and subtle meanings and nuances that make up that language will be lost to him, and he will be constantly having to translate in his head in order to understand what is going on around him. Because of this, a huge portion of what is being said to him will simply be lost in translation.

Ever since our discussion on Thursday, I've been thinking about the different ways that we react emotionally to literature. More specifically, I've been wondering if the strength of our reactions is more a factor of the novel itself, or if literary empathy is a personal trait of the reader.  It's obvious that different readers get different things out of a narrative, but is the place we get to emotionally when reading somewhere that the novel takes us or somewhere we go ourselves?

Christopher's story seems to spark strong and distinct emotional reactions in many of us, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the way that I feel about Christopher is exactly the way I feel about Zach. Zach, an autistic young man and member of one of the synagogs I attended back in DC, is one of the sweetest and most difficult people I've ever met. I attended his Bar Mitzvah a few years back, and the way his smile after he got off the bimah made me feel is the same way Christopher's declaration that now he can do anything at the end of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time did.

Does the fact that this novel is dragging up emotions that I've experienced before rather than causing a brand new emotional reaction make it less valid, somehow? A novel can't speak to everyone, but the thought that a story could only speak to those with a specific experience doesn't seem quite right. For a novel to be powerful in its own right, it would seem that its emotional content would have to be somewhat independent from the reader's past experience, if not necessarily completely detached. Throughout The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I wonder who is doing more of the emotional heavy lifting: the novel or my own past?

Christopher's Appeal

Christopher's dad, Ed, seemed so freaked out over the investigation of the dog murder that I should have known that he killed Wellington. Ed's disposition gradually grows more terse has the story progresses. At first I had a great deal of sympathy for him, raising an autistic child alone. It was when he was violent with Chris over the book that I finally began to suspect him of somehow being involved with the dog's death.

Chris is primarily in search of a way to bring order to his world. This makes his father's deception seem ever more sinister, since the caregiver of an autistic person's main responsibility should be to keep that person's world as ordered as possible. Christopher compares his thinking to photographs, that are all real and in the order in which the events occurred. Christopher also compares his thinking to a slicing machine in a bakery. He shows how his mind processes information at a different rate than other people. He also uses the colors on vehicles that he sees on the way to school to determine what kind of day he will have.

He can be supremely logical in one instance and completely irrational in the next. Not knowing how Christopher will react to any given situation adds suspense to the novel. These qualities, such as his lack of emotion, alternating between being over-analytical and not so rational, and his inability to deal with being touched, would be entirely unappealing in a normal, adult character. By telling this story through Christopher's lens, the audience can accept what would normally be viewed as serious character flaws, because we learn to intimately understand his disability.

Knowing/Understanding

We have talked about whether or not Christopher understands abstract concepts. I think he comprehends abstract things as long as he can reason them out. Christopher demonstrates this with most of the math equations he explains and his knowledge of things like time and relativity. His teacher thinks he likes math because it is concrete and straight forward but Christopher explains how he likes the more complicated problems that take more reasoning out. Christopher breaks the problems down into logical steps in order to understand them.

He also understands the world by using his “Search” in his VCR-like memory. All the similes he uses are related to things he already knows and understands. He does a “Search” to compare new information with what he has already seen, like a feature on a person or whether or not someone is having an epileptic fit. He can realize the connections between actual things involving his senses (like sight and smell mostly) but has trouble understanding metaphors which often connect things less directly. More than metaphors, he seems to hate expressions because they are not logical (like apple of my eye).

Our discussions have also focused on what Christopher knows and what he understands. His mother realized this discrepancy and tells him that she wasn’t to explain why he left so he’ll “know” even if he may not “understand.” He doesn’t understand what her leaving means and can only comprehend that his father lied to him. He is upset because his truth and certainty has been shattered but can only connect his emotional pain to his physical injury scarping his knee. He can also only connect other people’s emotions with little emoticon pictures, but gets confused when they move past basic ones like happy and sad. These are also the only two feelings he acknowledges when he explains feelings. He can the effects feelings have on people but only sees the two extremes.

Everyone's an outsider...

Throughout the various books we've read in class, there has been one significant theme that I've noticed: in one way or another, everyone seems to be an outsider. In Great Expectations, for instance, we had the obvious outsiderness of Pip and Miss Havisham, but after discussion, it became clear that Estella didn't really fit in, either. She was of questionable background, and had been groomed into an emotionally deadened doll by Miss Havisham. Joe and co. didn't fit in the city or into Pip's ideal world, and even among themselves didn't tend to form close relationships. Then, in Lolly Willowes, the entire town of Great Mop ostracized itself from the rest of the world, and when Lolly chose not to fall in with them (although still submitting to the Devil) she became an outsider among outsiders. In Burmese Days, one of the main themes of the novel itself was that no one fit, not the English among the Burmese nor the Burmese among the English nor the English among themselves. And now, when we follow Christopher through Swindon and London, once again, every character we meet is in some way an outsider. Christopher's disability makes his alienation more evident, but his father has no support system either. The people he meets at school all have their own problems, and those he meets outside of school are all alone: Mrs. Shears, Ms. Alexander. 

Although it is certainly true that some characters are more clearly or completely outsiders than others, I think one of the most important things to take away from this course is the fact that truly fitting in in every way is next to impossible, and that everyone suffers from or chooses (or, in some cases, both) some form of separation from the fold.

An Upbeat Ending

The central character in Burmese, Flory, is given a physical sign that he is doomed from the start of the story. It is the ugly birthmark, that Orwell describes so vividly, that runs across his cheek. Flory has been in Burma for years. He has lived in the relentless heat, the cloistered expatriate community, working closely with the ‘maneuverable’ natives…nearly rotting away.

Suddenly this lovely young, British blossom arrives and Flory believes that she is the cure to all of his illnesses and defective self-esteem. First a few petals wither on the flower, when the audience learns how Elizabeth feels about art and education. The bitter tone of the book increases as we see that Elizabeth has a few thorns in her revulsion and racism towards the natives. Then we discover that the flower is actually a weed when Elizabeth dumps Flory for a man with a title, but blames the breakup on the fact that Flory had a Burmese lover (something that appeared to be quite common among the British).

Flory is able to take up with Elizabeth again when Verrall leaves for another assignment. Condemned from the start, we know that things will get worse for Flory again. No sooner than the courtship recommences does Ma Hla May, the puppet native, appear and create a spectacle by noisily demanding that Flory pay her. Elizabeth Lackersteen turns from Flory when he offers to explain, and Flory, in the utmost dejection, returns to his house, shoots his faithful dog, and then turns his pistol on himself.

The surprise in all of this is that the last chapter is a bit more upbeat after all the desolation. U Po Kyin is admitted to the British Club and decorated by the Indian government for putting down the rebellion. He is a grossly obese ‘crocodile’ and soon after his rewards, he dies of apoplexy. The biggest e surprise is that Macgregor proposes marriage to Elizabeth Lackersteen, who accepts and remains in Burma.

Women in Burmese Days

In class, we talked about the role of the women in Burmese Days. While Jayasena definitely had some out-there theories that I don’t necessarily buy into, I do agree with his statement that the English woman’s job in Burma was to keep the English men in check and remind them of how they should be behaving (as proper English men). Mrs. Lackersteen is a good example of this – she tries her hardest to keep Mr. Lackersteen from drinking too heavily or sleeping with Burmese women (both of which he jumps at the chance to do), and much of her movement seems to be dictated by him – she rarely goes anywhere without him or allows him to go anywhere without her, because she would then be unable to keep an eye on him. In her case, “wife” is just a glorified term for babysitter. Both Mrs. Lackersteen and Elizabeth (the only two English women we meet in this novel) are depicted as sharing a rigid opinion of the “proper” behavior of white men, and both display an intense dislike and distrust of the Burmese people. Orwell seems to use these two women to show how the British government’s idealized vision of the colonization of Burma. In this vision, British men would uphold the traditions and values of Victorian England while exerting their control over the Burmese people. The men in the novel, on the other hand, seem to be Orwell’s vehicles for depicting the adverse effects of colonization – a harsh landscape and pseudo-outsider status seem to drive many of them (particularly Flory) to a pretty miserable existence. While I was reading, I found myself thinking that Orwell did not seem very sympathetic to the plight of the English women, but I couldn’t think of why I got this feeling – after all, Orwell describes the men as being, on the whole, pretty nasty too. So why did it seem like he was less forgiving of the women? Thinking about it now, I’m still not sure why Orwell was harder on the women, but I do think that there is evidence that he was less sympathetic for the women. It was mentioned in class that while Orwell had respect for the British men who worked in Burma, he disagreed with the government and their reasons for being there. Given that Orwell chose to use the women to represent the wishes of the British government, while the men represented the adverse effects of colonization on the English (in addition to the Burmese), I think it seems plausible that Orwell did show the British women in a much more negative light.

Ending

We talked in class about how Flory had to die. Not only did he have no other options, but he had to be destroyed in order to show the corruptive system of colonialism. This made me consider how some of the other characters end up, and how they connect to Orwell’s themes.

First is Veraswami, who seems to show how the non-whites’ passivity and racism against themselves perpetuate their inferior status. Veraswami is “ruined” when he loses the prestige of being a white man’s friend. He is also demoted and sent to Mandalay where he joins a mixed-race club with one drunken white man. Orwell writes, “The doctor, who will never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost every night to engage him in what he still calls ‘cultured conversation’; but the results are very unsatisfying.” Veraswami still idolizes white men and accepts his inferior position just like he accepts his inferior post in Mandalay.

U Po Kyin is different in that he expected to be elevated to the same status as white men by joining the European Club. He is a “bearable addition” but is soon transferred therefore excluding him once again. Although U Po Kyin’s scheming seems to have worked, Orwell offers a bit of karma for the “bad character” by having him die before he can build his pagodas and be redeemed.

Ko S’la and Ma Hla May are grouped together in one paragraph basically saying how both characters squander the money Flory leaves them and end up loving rather horribly. I thought that this showed how the English made the natives become dependent on them. By colonizing and taking over, they stunted the development of the natives and ensured their dependency on the British. Earlier in the novel, Flory comments on how they use to be self-sufficient producers but now are only trained to be clerks so they must rely on British companies.

The novel ends with Elizabeth and Macgregor having a “very happy” marriage. Macgregor becomes “more human and likable” while Elizabeth becomes what “Nature had designed her from the first, that of the burra memsahib.” This could then be connected to Jayasena’s theory of the white woman’s burden since Elizabeth seems to better Macgregor and establish more English values.

Government Corruption in Burmese Days

Thinking about Burmese Days since our last class meeting, I could find no motivation for the atrocities that U Po Kyin commits. After re-examining chapter 1, I found this passage:

"U Po Kyin's earliest memory, back in the eighties, was of standing, a naked pot-bellied child, watching the British troops march victorious into Mandalay. He remembered the terror he had felt of those columns of great beef-fed men, red-faced and red-coated; and the long rifles over their shoulders, and the heavy, rhythmic tramp of their boots. He had taken to his heels after watching them for a few minutes. In his childish way he had grasped that his own people were no match for this race of giants. To fight on the side of the British, to become a parasite upon them, had been his ruling ambition, even as a child." (Orwell, 5)

The range of motivations people have for becoming involved in corruption are many and its characteristics are well documented by Orwell. At the start of the book, Kyin thought that he was equal to or better than some British. Kyin saw the British for their true nature and imitated it. Governmental characteristics of corruption mentioned in the novel are low economic and political competition, as well as no enacted punitive measures for dealing with corruption. U Po Kyin could take brides from both sides in a legal case that he oversaw, while still being able to try the case fairly. He had no fear of being caught if his cases are reviewed and the litigants in the cases had no one to complain to regarding the bribes they were forced to pay. Other schemes includes thefts in which he received kick-backs and required payments in the form of a "ceaseless toll...from all the villages under his jurisdiction."

Orwell does an excellent job of explaining that colonialism is inherently corrupting through Kyin. Kyin explains that the bribes he accepts are a form of patronage and he is preventing social unrest by collecting them. Inherently, Kyin fears that at some point he may lose his position (if the British leave or somehow relinquish power), so the brides are a form of personal employment insurance.

Other attributes that Orwell depicts which support this corrupt society include the lack of transparency in the local government, no free press, no formal accounting procedures, a ruling society of individuals largely concerned with profiteering, a strong belief of entitlement among the ruling class, moral qualities (such as integrity and honesty) that are not deemed as desirable as wealth, an illiterate or largely uneducated Burmese population, acceptance of nepotism, discrimination and xenophobia, societal benefits which exclude the Burmese (the Club), and suppression of power among the female population (both British and indigenous).

In U Po Kyin's case, his primary reasons for being corrupt were that he felt that he would never truly be punished if he performed good works in the form of building pagodas and that he personally enjoyed having power over others.

Monkey-bum

Orwell uses Flory’s birthmark as motif that continues throughout the novel and is almost always referenced to when Flory is in the text. We are introduced to his birthmark with strong imagery of its unusual shape and size that covers one side of his face. We learn how it stings him when he feels ashamed and how he turns away from people in order to hide that side of his face. His birthmark is mentioned anytime Flory feels inadequate, ashamed, or is seeking approval. As he continues to reject the “pukka sahib code” inwardly and follow it outwardly, Flory is usually in a general state of all three emotions. He feels ashamed for trying to fit in with the men at the Club but does not want to stand up to them and “start a row.” Flory even explicitly even blames his lack of courage on his birthmark when he explains how he was taunted as a child.

The imagery surrounding his birthmark makes it a symbol for whenever Flory feels self-conscious. Generally he feels self-conscious because he is trying to be accepted by the Europeans though he is not a true pukka sahib, or he is ashamed that he is acting like a pukka sahib. Flory’s overwhelming desire to fit in and not cause any complications is seen whenever he is at the club or with Elizabeth. He thinks she is “cultured” and shares his viewpoints so he keeps introducing her to native events and customs that she is always disgusted with. After anytime she is upset, Flory is described as turning his head from her to conceal his birthmark. He hides his face whenever he is ashamed and he can feel his birthmark on his cheek. His explanation of how he can feel it when he is ashamed was most memorable during his interactions with Ma Hla May. His shame shows the reader that Flory has a good moral compass though he does not act on it. The question is then if it matters: is thinking “good” and doing “bad” any better than just doing “bad”?

Death in Lolly Willowes

"The word dropped into her mind like a pebble thrown into a pond. She had heard it so often, and now she heard in once more. The same waves of thought circled outwards, waves of startled thought spreading out on all sides, rocking the shadows of familiar things, blurring the steadfast pictures of trees and clouds, circling outward one after the other, each wave more listless, more imperceptible than the last, until the pond was still again. (219)

From this passage, occurring immediately after Satan says 'death' to Lolly, we can envision Lolly's mind being the pond and the pebble representing death. Satan wants to hunt Lolly and protect her. This puts her in the same position as all the women she met in London who have accepted the value system she has been trying to escape.

Death has been symbolized throughout the novel in the form of a stuffed bird and the leaves in autumn. It is seen as a cycle with the pond becoming still after the ripples and spring arriving after winter. The death of Lolly's freedom came when her father died. The finality of death is represented also by Sybil and Caroline. By leaving London, Lolly feels that she is again awake after sleeping for 20 years. Leaving London is the feminist equivalent of running from death. By choosing to behave neither aggressively or passively, Lolly can achieve her goals. One of the most important lessons from her encounters with death is that she learns to open herself up to nature by understanding it. Through this openness, she allows herself to be changed in order to live with nature. Lolly also finds autonomy and learns that she must be assertive to survive. She becomes still after the ripples...and she lives.

Questions of Sexuality in Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner's personal life and lifelong relationship with Valentine Ackland leads critics and Amazon.com shoppers to classify Lolly Willowes as a lesbian novel. I found this curious because, in my own reading of Lolly Willowes, nothing lead me to believe that either Laura or the novel by itself were lesbian in nature. 

It is true that Laura rejects marriage and the typical female role of the time, but she doesn't turn towards any other, more radical lifestyles. The unmarried "forward thinkers" of her time were creating art and making names for themselves, but joining them never even occurs to Lolly. She feels oppressed by masculine energy equates getting married to her death. Even so, the way that Laura rejects the few men that try to win her hand appears to be because she can't think of a single reason to get married, not because she has an overwhelming objection.

In Great Mop, Laura is presented with a view of open-ended, freewheeling sexuality. Dancing half naked with an entire village makes her feel exactly the same way that attending one of society's formal balls: awkward and out of place. She turns away from the sabbath just as she turns away from married life.

Laura Willowes shows no desire either for men or women throughout her life. Why, then, is this considered a lesbian novel? 

She's a WITCH!

Although the cover explicitly shows large outlines of witches on broomsticks, I was never really sold on the idea that Laura was going to be supernatural. I figured that Warner wanted to play off of the idea of the Salem Witch Trials persecuting women who did not follow societal norms. Even when she states she is now a witch after the kitten, obviously sent by the Devil, scratches her I still thought it was just Laura’s imagination running wild (similar to the werewolf story). I saw it as a more tangible way to show Laura’s growing independence and how society has hindered her thinking, giving it a negative connotation of witchery. I was unsure whether Laura seriously thought she was a witch or was somewhat parodying the idea as Warner presumably meant to.

After reading father and seeing how the whole town was involved in witchcraft and there was an actual Devil in charge of them, I realized I was imposing too many of my own thoughts on the text. Just as many of us wanted a larger feminist stand that the beginning of the book prefaced with Caroline, I expected more subversive tones of witchcraft and the supernatural after seeing such blatantly stereotypical figures on the cover (I suppose I thought they were going for irony). While just reading it at face-value, I found it hard to discover the meaning of the novel after our original idea of feminism is somewhat shattered by Laura’s liberation coming from her subservience to a male Devil.

The Devil however is “chill” as Danielle said. He is “undesiring” and has “indifferent ownership” of her creating a striking contrast with how Titus viewed his ownership of the land (symbolizing men’s ownership and “way of loving” in general). He wants to control and create it through his illustrations while the Devil allows Laura to make her own decisions. Titus also shows his desire for it when he mentions “I should like to stroke it” while the Devil is truly indifferent and leaves Laura to collect more souls. Although Laura’s “escape” from the expectations of femininity is through a traditional male rescuing female dynamic, it is still rather effective since they do not have a traditional relationship.

Passivity in Lolly Willowes

The problem with Lolly Willowes is that I was never able to reach beneath the surface of the novel. The writing is very sparse, as we discussed, but I feel like there is also very little character development. Lolly herself remains very static, from her life in the city to that in Great Mop; even as exciting and interesting things happen in her life, that is all they do: happen in her life. She barely reacts, and when she does, it is with almost unfailingly simple acceptance. Even when she considers taking a more active role, such as when she is trying to find a way to remove Titus from her life, it is from a very removed standpoint. She assumes the Devil will do the job for her, and even if he does not, her thoughts on Titus are not those of a relation or even an acquaintance. She simply thinks he should be gone, and in a very distant way wonders how that might come about. 

I had a hard time actually liking Laura. It wasn't that she did anything I disliked, or that she bored me, exactly, it was just that there never seemed to be anything there to like. Following her life was interesting, and I was fascinated by the character of Satan (who strikes me as the only one really worth looking closely at, considering how different he is from the stereotypical Milton-esque Satan we see everywhere in literature), but Laura herself just came off like a tour guide, there only to be our way around a novel that does not really need her. Everything happens to Laura, except for her move to Great Mop, which is the only real initiative she takes.

Feminism in Lolly Willowes (or lack thereof?)

Jumping off of the discussion we had about how Lolly Willowes fits into a feminist framework, during the first section of the book, I thought that the novel seemed to have a bit of a feminist theme running through it. The most salient piece of evidence that I can point to in support of that idea is the total ambivalence that Lolly shows toward the idea of marriage. She is not eager to marry, though her family may be eager to see her married, and she continually rebuffs any potential husband candidates that her family sends her way. Still, she was largely passive, letting herself be shuttled around from family member to family member, and when she made the decision to move to Great Mop, I thought that the development of the novel was going to show Lolly moving from passivity to activity, from allowing things to happen to her to making things happen (which fit in with my idea of a contemporary feminist theme). However, that is not what happened at the novel’s end. Instead, Lolly is finally free from her familial obligations, but she has been freed by a man (Satan).

At first, when I read the ending, I was a little frustrated. I had wanted Lolly to take on a more active role, instead of passively letting things happen to her. I wanted, in short, a story with a contemporary feministic bent. But when I thought about it more, I realized that I had pushed my own, contemporary reading on a book written over 80 years ago, and that probably wasn’t totally fair. In 2009, our ideas are very different from the prevailing ideas of the 1920s, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that. In fact, looking back at some of the things that Lolly says at the end of the book, it does seem somewhat progressive for the time period. When Lolly is talking to Satan, she says that she (and others) want to be witches not because they want to do trivial things like black magic or fly on brooms, but because they want to have a life to themselves, separate from everything else. She says that they want to be able to have their own thoughts, and do whatever they feel like doing day in and day out. Essentially, they want to have their own identity, not an identity that ties them to someone else (so-and-so’s aunt, so-and-so’s mother, so-and-so’s wife). I’m not too well-versed on the state of women’s rights in the 1920s, but to my understanding, women during that time were largely defined by their relationship to others, so in that respect, Lolly Willowes could be seen as possessing some feminist ideals (at least, for the time). Of course, the idea that women had to sell their soul to Satan to get this separate identity doesn’t lend as much support to a feministic reading of the novel.

Lollygagging Pipsqueak

The differences writing style and character develpment in Great Expectations are obviously quite numerous. This is my attempt to pinpoint some of them.

The most mentioned difference has been the way in which Dickens and Miller describe the events and circumstances of the story. This distinction is commonly made in the form of observation that Dickens delves in great depth into careful depiction of a scene while Miller minimizes the words she uses for the purposes of just description and focuses instead on moving the story forward.

However, what has not really been mentioned is that both authors use their techniques not to make the novels "easier reads", but rather to hide information from the reader until they choose to have it revealed. In Great Expectations for instance, Dickens will often introduce a questionable situation to the reader, yet because he effectively distracts the reader from questioning what is going on by providing a mountain of lengthy descriptive language. For instance, Miss Havisham is introduced for the first time in page after page of description about the yellowness of her room, the broken clocks, the cake, the cobwebs on the walls, the dust covering everything, and so on. It is not until (what feels like) two hundred pages later that we actually learn why the house is the way it is; before Herbert explains the story, the reader merely takes the state of the house and its inhabitant at face value, assuming they had always been as they are. In another example that was pointed out in class, when Pip receives news in London that his sister has died, our reaction was to realize that we had forgotten she was alive, even though she had been of pivotal importance in the first twenty chapters of the book.

In Lolly Willowes, on the other hand, Miller uses the opposite approach. Although she uses only one word where Dickens might use a hundred, it is still incredibly easy for the reader to forget information, even while they are reading it. For example, when we were asked in class what was laid down for Lolly at her birth, and how it was different from what was laid down for her brothers, we had to look back in the book just to remember that the information was given. The same was true for the question of what exactly Lolly had said to Mr. Arbuthnot in conversation with him, and what Caroline and Henry's reaction had been.

Whether it is Dickens burying the reader with pages of description to hide the lack or existance of one sentence of vital information, or Millers using only a single word from which the reader must draw an entire scene, the effect is the same, and the resulting mastery of control that each writer has over their readers is truly astonishing.

The Folly of Being Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner shows her skill in the deep understanding of human nature in the creation of Lolly. In the first third of the book, the reader understands that Lolly will have to overcome her family's expectations and those of society to find her true self. Warner's knowledge of human nature and their behaviors reveal that a woman raised in such extraordinary circumstances would turn out to be nothing less that extraordinary, which isn't desired by society during this period in history. Warner clearly details why someone like Lolly would have difficulty fitting into society and would not be marriage material.

Until her father dies, Laura had leads a relatively unsupervised existence. Neither of her parents or caregivers insured that she was educated. Her mother being 'invalidish' and generally unavailable, could not have posed has a suitable role model for Lolly. "Everard was a lover of womankind: he greatly desire a daughter, and when he got one she was all the dearer for coming when he had almost given up hope of her." (Warner, 15) Being so prized by her father permitted her the privilege of experiencing certain freedoms that not many other women of that period enjoyed, but some of those privileges were detrimental.

Laura was not raised in the typical fashion for wealthy women born in the late 1800's, in rural England. Laura was taught to throw and catch by her much older brothers. She was often included in their role-playing games, although she generally played the damsel-in-distress role. Laura learned early that there were different options in life for men, than women. Laura lived in relative freedom on the grounds of her family home until her father's death. What she didn't not learn were the much needed social graces of the privileged class.

The conversations at the tea parties and balls in which Lolly had little to contribute had given others the impression that she was not very bright. Her tendency to remain quiet at gatherings and a physical appearance that made her look older than she was also contributed to her spinster status. At a time where very fair-skinned women were valued, Laura coloring was not so agreeable. "Laura was of a middle height, thin, and rather pointed. Her skin was brown, inclining to sallowness; it seemed browner still by contrast with her eyes, which were that shade of gray...(that) seems only a much diluted black." (Warner, 25) Only Lolly's father and her brothers would have considered her pretty. She was never taught to feign interest in subjects that truly did not matter or how to catch the attention of a young man. Unskilled in such social graces in a very proper and antiquated England would have been social annihilation.

Lollipops

After three weeks of reading and analyzing Dickens, moving to Lolly Willows is a relief. The dark, depressing voice of death that is omnipresent in Great Expectations is now replaced by a more playful and colorful tone in Lolly Willows. It seems as though we have made the transition from gloomy graveyards to happy ones.

Despite the obvious differences between Lolly Willows and Great Expectations, there are many deep set similarities. So far, one of the most prominent is the way that the main character stands out from his/her surroundings. Both Pip and Laura lose parents, both are either unable or unwilling to marry, and both have significantly lacking social lives. In a similar manner, they seem incapable of living in the world as “normal” people.

That said, Pip in Great Expectations makes himself an outsider because of his ambitions to become a member of the upper class, mainly so that he could marry Estella. In stark contrast, one of the strongest causes of Laura's outsider status so far is her refusal to marry or to be "trained" to be a proper wife. Instead, she chooses to place her joy in the peaceful, unaltered world. She is more than content with the relationships she is given, at least as long as her father is alive. While Pip needs to distance himself from Joe and Mrs. Joe in order to reach his goal, in Laura's ideal world she would need no one other than her family.

It will be interesting to see how Lolly Willows develops-whether Laura is able to find a way to fit into the world as Pip seemed to do, or if she will become progressively more outside as she pursues her own path.

Organic and Steel in London

One thing that struck me about Lolly Willowes was the form that her defiance of London and her family takes in the first few pages of the second part of the book and the way that Lolly realizes the extent of her displacement. Everything in London rattles and clashes, and the city is harsh and cold and sharp. The mechancal nature of London is emphasized in the "iron noises" of the household and the "demolition" at the end of the day. Even the life in London in mechanized- the lawyers have mousetrap mouths and the flowers are prepared in exactly the same way every day with tools that are laid out in an unwavering and organized manner. She realizes that she will never be as efficient as Caroline or as at home as she is in this harsh city environment even as she settles in. London even physically harms Lolly: the water makes her hands raw and red and she becomes susceptible to chilblains.

Lolly rebells against this cold, impersonal efficiency with her floral extravagances. Her personal space riots with flowers in winter that she collects from around the world. She brings chaotic life into her own space to ward off the environment of the city.

It isn't until she walks in on a slice of nature in the middle of the city that she realizes just how much pain she is in. The greengrocer's shop, with its casual arrangement and vegetable heaps, speaks to Lolly of human hands and changing seasons. Lolly was used to the wild organic nature of the county and the cold steel of the city enjoying the separation of travel, and the shock of juxtaposition sends Lolly's mind freewheeling into the possibility of a different life.

Language and Outsider Status

The first striking difference between the two novels is the use of language. In Great Expectations, Dickens uses Pip’s voice to give long explanations of his feelings that often explicitly show the reader the meaning he interprets. In Lolly Willows, Warner uses a third person omniscient narrator that employs short, terse sentences. Even the large type enhances this “choppy” (as Paul said) structure while the spacing highlights the sparse language. This forces the reader to look carefully into each word that is chosen in order to grasp the meaning of the text. Therefore, if one is just surface reading, it may seem very dry compared to Dickens’ more flowery language. Danielle explained Warner’s writing as “economical” since although not many words are used, her vocabulary seems very precise and each word seems to serve a distinct purpose.

These different styles influence how the reader views the character’s outsider status. We see Pip’s inner feelings of loneliness (like his first night of his “bright fortunes” alone in his room) and of how he responds to other people isolating him (rumpling his hair, being stared at, etc). Since we are not getting the other novel through Laura’s perspective we must rely on the few thoughts the omniscient narrator gives us and the reactions of those around her. Warner’s style then calls for the reader to become more involved.

At Lady Place, Laura is very content with her life managing the house, reading at her leisure, and exploring the land for interesting herbs and plants to brew home remedies with. Though she does not consider herself an outsider, the reader can see that others do. Her differences as a female are first addressed by her father’s special treatment of her and the duties later imposed on her by the townswomen’s insistence that she go to school to become a lady and find a husband. This does not really affect Laura because she still has the freedom to do what she enjoys.

This freedom is first threatened when Sybil comes in as the matriarch if the house and is later destroyed when she is sent to London to live with Henry and Caroline. In London, we see Laura start to identify as an outsider since she cannot maintain the identity she had at Lady Place. She cannot adequately help around the house since she is in Caroline’s domain, cannot peruse her own hobbies since she is always with Caroline doing “useful” needlework and embroidery, and cannot even maintain her name as she becomes simply “Aunt Lolly.” The addition of Aunt seems to emphasize that she is only a relation to Henry and not her own person. Lolly is a nickname that only accounts for only a portion of the name. It could then be seen that “Aunt Lolly” becomes a character that is only a portion of Laura.

Laura's (Lolly's) Outsider Status

I’m not sure if we have a blog post due today, but I figured I would write one just in case. While I was reading Lolly Willowes, I began thinking about how Laura is presented as an outsider in the book, and I found myself comparing her outsider status to Pip’s in Great Expectations. To me, the crucial, defining difference between the two was that while Pip’s outsider status was largely due to factors of circumstance, Laura seems to create her station as an outsider. Pip aspires to fit in – the bulk of his concerns seem to focus on societal perception of him. Laura, on the other hand, seems to have a more internal focus. She ignores the prevailing public notion that a woman of a certain age should get married, even when there are many around her (including family) who try to urge her to do so. She wants to continue living with her father in Lady Place, and I get the sense that had her father not died, she would have continued to do so until her own death, because she does not seem very connected to Caroline and Henry nor overly eager about living with them. I found it interesting when she talked about returning to Lady Place to visit James after her father’s death, saying that being back at the place she used to call home was like having a “clear sheet of glass” between herself and her surroundings. This, I think, really highlights the idea that with her father gone, she is more of an outsider than ever before – living with people she doesn’t really relate to, and being told to do things she doesn’t really want to do.

Judgement of Pip and Havisham

I believe that it is very easy to be unfairly critical of the characters in Great Expectations in general. We often hold these characters up to how we think an ideal character should be, and we forget that Dickens has intentionally written common human faults and emotions into these characters.

It is easy, for instance, to write off Miss Havisham as a stereotypical crazy old woman, serving the same "purpose" as the Bronte mad wife in the attic. In reality, I believe Dickens' character to be posessing so much more realism than this soap opera stereotype. The main feeling the reader receives about Miss Havisham is not one of madness, but of bitterness. Miss Havisham is a direct victim of the evils and cruelty of the upper class, a cruelty that we see portrayed in so many ways in Great Expectations. Each of us as readers have expressed our dislike of the London characters, who have corrupted Pip and who treat the lower class Joe with disgust and distain. Miss Havisham is driven by feelings similar to our own. Her way of dealing with it may appear extreme, but her treatment and betrayal by the upper class is just as extreme. What we see as her madness is merely a more intense version of the similar reaction that which we ourselves feel towards the Londoners.

Similarly, it is easy for the reader to harshly judge Pip for his shame of Joe and the lower class in general, which some may call a betrayal. Once again, however, I view Pip as a victim. Throughout his entire life pip has been treated with disgust by those around him. As a child, his own sister and her friends called him a menace and said he was not worthy of their bringing him up as well as they did. Obviously he holds a bitterness towards those who have treated him so badly, and he seeks a way to overcome their cruelty. In meeting Miss Havisham, he notices that Pumblechook and his sister bow down to her very name, because of her wealth and standing. Finally, then, he sees a way to ascend above those who have done him so much wrong in his life, and his dream is to become a member of the upper class. However, when he finally attains his dream, his problems are not solved. He is not accepted by the upper class because of his "commonness". Once again he seeks to rise to their level by driving out all remaining connection to his previous life, namely Joe and Biddy. No matter what he does, however, he is not fully accepted into the Londoners' group. Worse, when he visits his old town, he discovers that in him absense, Pumblechook has been using Pip's advance for personal gain. Thus have all of Pip's attempts to escape the cruelty of others been used against him, and he has alienated the only characters who have always treated him with kindness, Joe and Biddy.

A Sense Of Belonging

Finding a place where you feel a sense of belonging is the most important concern in every story involving an orphan. Pip strives to end his outsider status through improved social standing and education. In Great Expectations, the prevailing culture values people based on the attainment of a certain social status, not for any enduring moralistic attributes. This rigid, arbitrary evaluation permits the wealthier characters to completely ignore personal growth by resolving some of their mental defects. The characters of lower social standing thereby appear more balanced and sympathetic.

Pip attempts to change his outsider status by spending a great deal of time with Herbert Pocket, learning to become a gentleman. Pip and Herbert go to the theater and attend church at West Minister Abbey. Pip engages Matthew Pocket to further educate him. He ends up spending time with people who really don't like him (Bentley Drummle, Mrs. Camilla and Georgianna), who only indulge his presence because they believe he has money. It seems that Pip mainly attempts to change his outsider status by spending time with the 'right' people, perhaps because he isn't quite ready to admit that he misses Joe and Biddy.

London should have been a wonderful place for Pip, being a young, wealthy gentleman, especially since he was now free from his uninspiring apprenticeship, his abusive sister, and other repressive people like Pumblechook. While in London, Pip finds his trus self by finally learning to place virtues like kindness and loyalty above any immature desires for social advancement.

Limbo

The fundamental cause for Pip’s outsider status is his dissatisfaction with his current state in life. While it certainly does not help that his entire family is dead and he has few living biological connections, even if they were alive Pip would be equally lost. In his efforts to become part of the upper class Victorian society, Pip finds it necessary to strip himself of everything not upper class which, unfortunately, is everything he knows.

Pip is an outsider because he refuses to accept his social status. He is unable to reconcile himself with the fact that that he really is a member of the lower class society. Instead, he is insulted by comments to that effect and tries even harder to leave all traces of his background behind. We even see Joe, Pip’s moral role model, being shunned by Pip when he is around people, such as Drummle, who might look down on his connection to people of such low social standing. Pip finds himself losing connections to his lower class background but never really gains entrance into the upper class life he seeks.

Pip never makes it into the upper class, but removes himself from the lower class. As a result, he is left in some limbo state between the two. In his efforts to become a member of the upper class, he fails not only in joining that class but also in maintaining any ties to society. Ironically, Pip’s own social ambitions are the cause of his status.

Jack of Two Worlds, Master of None

While in London, Pip strives to become more like the upper class, but his previous life haunts him and prevents him from fully integrating himself into society. No matter how much he changes his mannerisms, style of dress, or spending habits, he still has, at his core, a large bit of the corse and common Pip he once was. He has emotionally invested himself in two completely dissimilar worlds, and this make it that much harder for him to fit in in either.

Because of his jump in station, Pip finds himself an outsider in his own hometown, no longer able to simply exist. He cannot stop constantly checking himself and making sure that everyone around him recognizes his newfound status. His efforts to ensconce himself in London upper crust both fail to make him part of his new world and remove him yet further from his original home.

One thing that struck me as an excellent example of Pip's double outsider status was his fear of the Avenger speaking to Trabb's boy in town. Though only a brief part of chapter 28, Pip's debate about the young man in his employ stands out because of the absurdity of it all. Pip has a theoretically useful servant, but his qualms about perception prevent him from taking advantage of a resource that he possesses. He's afraid both of Miss Havisham seeing his London excesses and of the Avenger, a part of his life in London, finding too much about his previous life. His unwillingness to cross pollinate what he treats as two separate lives or to completely divide them, as Wemmick does, means that he will never be able to be relaxed and at home in either. His constant fear of being found out about one thing or another and his inability to commit fully to either life both hamper his efforts to advance himself in society and contribute to his outsider nature.