tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92182262709197859972024-03-05T15:36:58.499-08:00literatimoma motherhood-centered literary blog by Andrea Powell Wolfe, PhDliteratimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-44417036950032821122022-07-24T06:41:00.006-07:002022-07-24T06:41:41.309-07:00Motherhood, Race, and the Leadership of Young Women in Two Recent Works of Climate Fiction<p>Climate change occupies my mind more and more, as I wonder what the future holds for my two not-so-little ones. Thus, this post<span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> will focus on two recent works of cli-fi,
Louise Erdrich’s 2017 </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home of the
Living God</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and Lydia Millet’s 2020 </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">A
Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, both of which feature young women in dystopian geographic
and social landscapes caused by climate change. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">I’ve chosen to pair these two novels not only
because both are interested in women’s plights and roles in the climate crisis
but also because of striking parallels in their depiction of an emerging
spirituality suited to the challenges of the environmental disaster. Despite
heavy use of Christian allusions, evident even in the titles of the two texts,
in both, the anthropocentricism and patriarchy of traditional Christianity ultimately
give way to respect for the Earth and a feminist ethics of care. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Motherhood, in particular, becomes a spiritual
practice, representing the possibility of environmental regeneration and enacting
the nurturance necessary to sustain humanity in uncertain times.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">It’s no coincidence that
the narrators of these novels are named for two of the most sacred mothers in the
Christian tradition—Mary and Eve. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">,
Mary is revealed as the birth name of the narrator, who otherwise goes by Cedar,
when Cedar meets her birth mother. She is pregnant and seeking understanding of
her origins to someday share with her child. In fact, the novel itself is a
record of Cedar’s experiences throughout her pregnancy, addressed to her unborn
baby. Beyond meeting her Native American birth family and visiting the
reservation for the first time, Cedar describes the dystopian circumstances of
the world around her. Homo sapiens is experiencing devolution, as babies are
born with characteristics of more primitive hominid species. Soon, authoritarian
religious fundamentalists take over the government and imprison pregnant women
in order to oversee all human births. When Cedar and other black and brown
women are found to be able to produce fully evolved homo sapiens infants, they
are forced into surrogacy for the continuation of the species.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The narrator of </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s
Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is a white teenaged girl named Evie who is vacationing with her
family and several other middle-class families near the coast. When a catastrophic
hurricane and an outbreak of dengue fever destroy any semblance of normality,
the unnamed parents—referred to in the text only as “the mothers and
fathers”—are unable to cope. The children find food and shelter on a nearby
farm, where they are soon invaded by a group of gun-toting bullies.
Negotiations with the invading group eventually run aground, but the owner of
the farm arrives, deus ex machina-style, to expel them from her property. Evie
and the other children join up with their parents again and settle more
permanently at another property. Ultimately, the teens’ competency with the
harsh conditions of a post-apocalyptic world renders the parents unnecessary
and the adults simply disappear, leaving the teens to raise their younger
siblings.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">As with other works of cli-fi that feature people of
color or women,</span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> the gender and ethnic identities of the
protagonists in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> reflect the fact that women
and the indigenous are disproportionately affected by climate change. Cedar and
Evie also represent the rising number of women and people of color who are
stepping forward to lead in the battle against climate crisis. Indeed, the
teens in Millet’s novel echo the voice of 19-year-old Greta Thunberg, who has
expressed anger toward older generations for not acting quickly enough to stop
climate change. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">At one point after the hurricane, one of the mothers
in the novel says, “But what could we have done?” In response, Evie’s friend,
Jenn, demands, “Did you ever fight or did you just do exactly what you wanted?
. . . Always.” </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, it is the
Native community that is depicted as most resilient to climate change. Cedar’s
birth family’s tribe deliberately uses the upheaval of the times to seize land
that had been lost over time through incremental treaties and the Dawes Act of
1862, which removed land from communal ownership. The tribe’s intention is to “gain
back many of our urban brothers and sisters and enjoy the benefits of more
teachers, . . ., doctors, lawyers, artists,. . .” as the social systems off the
reservation are deteriorating. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Eddie, Cedar’s birth mother’s husband, explains,
“Indians have been adapting since before 1492 so I guess we’ll keep adapting.” The
narrative seems to suggest that Native communities, experienced with adapting
to undesirable environmental conditions and social challenges, may be well positioned
to lead in the coming waves of climate crisis.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">While the characterization in the two novels of
young women and Native Americans as especially implicated within and also best equipped
to handle the climate crisis reflects the real-life plights and roles of women and
Natives already experiencing and fighting climate change, other aspects of the two
novels seem less plausible. Critics</span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> of
<i>Children’s Bible</i> have noted that it sometimes forces its biblical
allegory beyond the bounds of narrative believability. Indeed, the plot
includes a flood (complete with a saving-of-the-animals side story), a plague,
a covenant, and commandments—all lifted directly from the lore of Genesis. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Perhaps most contrived is
the Garden of Eden subplot that plays out within the recounting of the
children’s brief stay at the farmstead. The farm is a safe haven that Evie and
the others, like the original Eve and Adam who are expelled from Eden, have to
leave after the invading gang of men break the one rule that the owner,
representative of God, has stipulated. The point of this episode is expressed
even more explicitly in the following scene, with an allusion to yet another
biblical story, that of the Hebrews wandering in the desert until God gives
them a land of their own. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">As the group approaches
the site of their next settlement, Evie jokes, “Look! See? The promised land!”,
to which another of the other children responds, “We already <i>had</i> the
promised land, Evie.” Heavy-handed, yes, but the biblical allegory is effective
overall in conveying the idea that human actions have led to a squandering of
the habitable environment that we once had. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Reviews of <i>Future Home </i>have been similarly critical as those of <i>Children’s Bible,</i> particularly in
calling out the murky and unlikely science that undergirds the devolution plot.
But the idea that human reproduction
is affected by climate change doesn’t seem too far-fetched, and state control
of women’s reproductive rights is a recognizable theme in mainstream cli-fi, not to mention contemporary US news.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In fact, the social
conditions depicted in both novels align with those depicted in the works of
one of our most influential grandmothers of cli-fi, Margaret Atwood, author of The
</span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Handmaid’s Tale</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, among other dystopian novels. In various interviews,
Atwood has explained that authoritarianism grows out of fear, an emotion that many
of us will experience as the climate crisis continues to escalate.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Atwood also notes that repression of women,
and particularly the steamrolling of women’s reproductive rights, which we see
in both </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home </i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">and </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Handmaid’s Tale</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, is almost always a
component of authoritarian governance. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Authoritarianism also eschews
collaboration or cooperation, instead depending entirely on strongman tactics,
like those exhibited by the men who invade the farm in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.
A defector from the invading group tells Evie that the men had previously captured
the McDonald’s where he worked. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">When Evie asks him why he
went along with the takeover, he says, “Because they had the keys.” In
authoritarianism, those in power, oftentimes men, call the shots.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Atwood also explains that
authoritarianism uses conservative religious ideology to achieve political
ends. A fearful public is likely to flock to conservatism, as turning back to
the norms of the past during times of stress might feel safer than forging ahead
into new territory. In </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, extremist authorities rename streets
for bible verses, attempting to impose order by figuratively reclaiming a
landscape that otherwise eludes human control. The community accepts these
changes just as it accepts the charge to turn pregnant women over to the
authorities. In </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, it is one of the mothers, a member of
the older generation that has long ignored the climate crisis, who presents
Evie’s little brother, Jack, with the text for which the novel is named. The
simplistic rendering of what are actually complicated stories in a children’s bible
reflects the childlike willingness of the older generation to go along with crude
depictions of religious ideas.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Instead of reading the biblical stories literally, though,
eight-year-old Jack explains to Evie that the characters of God, Jesus, and the
Holy Ghost are representative of nature, science, and art, respectively. And
here is where we get into how the novels bridge from the authoritarian
Christianity that we see in the likes of </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Handmaid’s
Tale</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, for instance, to a planet-centered and feminist form of spirituality
that the texts suggest might enable the continuation of human life on earth. Many
aspects of the plot in Millet’s novel bear out the comparisons that Jack makes
between biblical figures and forces in the real world. The weather conditions
that the group experiences are caused by nature, just as the flood in the bible
is caused by God. When the teens set up an educational system for the younger
children, Evie tells us that all of them become “disciples” of science, just as
New Testament figures become disciples of Christ. Readers are called to imagine
the potential of science to mitigate the effects of climate change, just as
Jesus mediates between the fury of the Old Testament god and humanity in the
Christian New Testament. Art also becomes a part of the group’s everyday
existence, as they connect and draw strength from each other through campfire
songs, similar to how people are inspired and connected through the Holy Spirit
in the Christian tradition.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Music is an especially important aspect of
spirituality in both novels, in fact. In particular, characters enact
connection, support, and solidarity through humming, especially in times of
mourning. In</span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, the
group of teens join in to a collective low hum at the makeshift funeral of a
mother who has died in childbirth due to hemorrhaging that likely would have
been stopped if medical intervention had been available. Contained in the
humming is the teens’ acknowledgement that this death marks just the beginning
of their trials in a post-apocalyptic world. At the same time, the humming also
gives them the strength to face the future together. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Humming enacts solidarity
between characters in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> as
well. In the surrogacy home where Cedar ends up, the women hum whenever one of
them goes into labor. Their humming enacts recognition that birthing a child in
their present circumstances, like in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s
Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, often ends in the death of the mother or, because of the eagerness
of the state to claim healthy homo sapiens offspring, the theft of a baby from
its mother. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">About the humming, Cedar tells us, “It is a
beautiful, powerful, all-knowing sound. . . . It is a wordless melody that only
women sing.” Like in ancient times, the dirges in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> vocalize the grief of women, particularly mothers of
lost children, but they also express resistance to state-sponsored violence and
the control that men and governing bodies of men exert over women’s lives and
bodies. The humming also reminds us of the wordless singing of the women in
Toni Morrison’s </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Beloved</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> who gather to
drive the ghost of Sethe’s baby from her house. In that case, too, humming
bears witness to and resists the forces that cause the particular grief of
mothers. Later, Cedar remembers that she hears the humming again as she gives
birth. She calls it “the woman’s song” and, addressing the child that is taken
from her, “your baby song.” </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Belonging to
mother and child, the song arises from the realm of the semiotic, a
developmental stage in which language—structured according to the assumptions of
patriarchy—is unnecessary in the perfect communion between mother and newborn
infant. The wordlessness of this form of human expression also suggests its
connection to a time before language, when hominids such as those being born in
</span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> walked the earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Despite the dystopian circumstances of her life at
the end of the novel, Cedar seems to embrace the idea of reverting the
conditions of an earlier era. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In a conversation with her adoptive mother, Cedar
reframes devolution as “[t]urning around to the beginning,” which she
postulates is “not the same as going backward.” Evie, named for the first woman
to live on earth, according to the Christian tradition, is perhaps better
positioned to realize the new beginning that Cedar imagines. Soon after the
hurricane, she and the other teens marvel at how easy it was to abandon their
electronics and focus, instead, on matters of survival. In pursuit of
sustainable food sourcing, they set up a hydroponics system and plant
fruit-bearing trees. They ensure shared responsibility for the maintenance of
the household by rotating assigned tasks. This is a clear reversal of the
division of labor that the parents enforced early in the novel, when the boys
were asked to help board up windows to prepare for the storm and the girls to make
snacks. Indeed, the disappearance of the mothers and fathers at the end of the
novel mark the collapse of social hierarchy—and, specifically, the patriarchy
of the traditional family. Even as Cedar remains in subjugation to
authoritarian rule, Evie helps to found a community on the feminist ideals of
cooperation and collaboration. The title of the novel becomes ironic, as it is
children, not adults, who rewrite the story of human existence. No longer tied
to anthropocentrism and patriarchy, this new story establishes sustainability.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The community that the teens develop also abides by
an ethics of care that is best exemplified in their nurturance of their younger
siblings. Three of the teens take on full-time mothering roles as the mothers
and fathers slip into depression following the storm. In particular, Sukey
takes responsibility for an infant sister who survives the childbirth that
kills their mother. Sukey’s
reluctance to accept help from the mothers in caring for her sister is
justified when, the one time that Sukey gives in to their petition for “cute
baby time” with her sister, they return her to Sukey with “a dumb-looking pink
bow on her head.” </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">This incident confirms what the teens had already
decided, that the parents “couldn’t be trusted with child-rearing.” </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
corollary to Sukey’s baby sister in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future
Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is Cedar’s baby boy, taken from her arms after his birth. If Sukey’s
sister will grow into a future free of gender roles, Cedar’s son represents
hope for the future more generally. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“He is the light of the world!”, Cedar exclaims at
one point, and his birth on December 25</span><sup style="text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> seems to cement the
infant’s role as a Christ figure, perhaps representative of the sacredness of
human life. It’s possible, even, that this baby is the “living God” referenced
in the novel’s title, the one who will manage to build a “future home” on earth
through methods like those employed by the teens in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. In both texts, the next generation is nurtured
and loved in order to preserve humankind and protect humanity. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Just as Cedar sees her infant as a symbol of hope
and salvation, she comes to see herself as a Mary-figure, connected to and
exerting spiritual power through maternity. In her life before the
complications of devolution, Cedar was the editor of a Catholic magazine, and she
spends much of the novel contemplating the theme of the magazine’s final issue,
incarnation. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Even in her dread of the physical pain and death
that may await her in birthing her child, Cedar writes in her last letter to
subscribers, “I can’t help wishing for an epidural, but this is why I’m
writing. This is Incarnation. . . . We’re only meat bundles, otherwise.” She
sees childbirthing as an enactment of sacred love and power, indeed as the one
act that defines us as human. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Even after her infant is stolen, Cedar maintains her
belief in the power of motherhood: “I know the Word. It is the oldest word in
any language, first utterance. Ma, . . . mama. Mother. Not the word uttered by
God to make life, but spoken by the baby who recognizes the being on whom life
depends.” Ultimately, in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">,
human relationships—particularly between mother and child—replace God as the
source for maintaining human life in a climate crisis. Language is also
reclaimed from the tradition of patriarchy here, as Cedar repurposes the divine
“Word” to share a feminist message.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Looking to the mother instead of a patriarchal God
for nurture and sustenance suggests the importance of an Earth-centered
spirituality, as the planet is commonly understood as the greatest and most
powerful mother of all, Mother Nature. This belief in nature as supremely
powerful is spelled out in the most obvious of terms in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Children’s Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> when, as I’ve already mentioned, Jack interprets
God as nature. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">We get a similar correlation between nature and
divine power in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> when
Eddie tells Cedar, “We’re being flushed down the tubes. The fallopian tubes,
that is.” This is the novel’s indication of Mother Nature’s power to destroy
human life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In both novels, recognition of the power of nature
is represented in the positioning of mothers and mother-figures as central to
human existence. Indeed, in </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Future Home
of the Living God</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and </span><i style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">A Children’s
Bible</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, motherhood is equally sustaining spiritual practice and symbol of a
new relationship between humans and the earth, one in which humans conserve and
replenish the resources that will allow for future life on this planet. This is
an approach that runs counter to the authoritarianism in both novels and in
cli-fi more generally and that builds on the work of real-life women and people
of color in the climate movement.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-72496667995657663782019-08-13T07:05:00.000-07:002019-08-13T07:10:39.495-07:00The “Lessons” of the Moths in Gene Stratton-Porter’s The Girl of the Limberlost<br />
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My husband was in charge of planning family time a few
Saturday afternoons ago, and he decided to take our ten-year-old son and me to
the Limberlost State Historic Site in Geneva, Indiana, about an hour from where
we live. This was a carefully considered choice: he thought that I would like touring
the home of Gene Stratton-Porter, an early 20<sup>th</sup>-century author most famous
for her best-selling fiction set in the nearby Limberlost Swamp and that he
would enjoy observing and photographing the wildlife in the recently
revitalized wetlands area. In all, the site was a hit. Even Wes liked it—since
he was the only kid on the Stratton-Porter home tour and, therefore, got a lot
of special attention from our guide. We started in the visitor’s center, where
we were quickly drawn to a butterfly habitat cage, in which we observed several
huge moths. One of the staff told us that these were Polyphemus moths, a
species that Stratton-Porter particularly enjoyed collecting and studying. They
had hatched in the last couple of days and would only live for about 7-10 days
more, with the sole purpose of mating and laying eggs in that time. (They don’t
even have mouths; they can’t eat!) Next, during the home tour, the guide led us
through period rooms, as well as many engaging anecdotes, to paint a compelling
picture of Stratton-Porter as a talented naturalist, writer, photographer, artist,
musician, and film producer who often refused to fulfill conventional gender
roles and focused her critically and commercially successful career on
educating the public about the flora and fauna of the swamp as well as sharing
the culture of the people residing in and near the Midwestern wetlands. The
most well-known of her books, we were told, is <i>The Girl of the Limberlost</i>,
the story of Elnora Comstock, a girl who sells moths and other specimens and
artifacts from the swamp to pay for her high school education, earning intense
admiration from everyone in the community, including her initially neglectful
mother and a wealthy man visiting from Chicago, whom she eventually agrees to
marry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I took up the novel in the following week, I was
pleasantly surprised by its complexity. Despite Stratton-Porter’s personal
history of bucking gender norms and the clear focus on nature in her writing, <i>The
Girl of the Limberlost</i> is not straightforwardly feminist or
environmentalist. Contemporary scholarship on Stratton-Porter’s body of work
reflects her conflicted representation of women and nature. In keeping with the
popular conception of Stratton-Porter’s oeuvre, Cheryl Birkelo calls her an
“early ecofeminist” (8). Robert Mellin notes, however, that her writing engages
with the difficulties of maintaining environmental ideals in a cultural
landscape of technological “progress”: her characters often unquestioningly accept
the “easy money” that they find is “available by compromising the ecological
integrity of the Limberlost region” (31). And Lawrence Jay Dessner says that Stratton-Porter’s
writing “dramatizes assumptions about class, gender, and sexual identity that
are at best ambiguous, at worst retrograde” (140). <o:p></o:p></div>
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In a more thorough discussion of Stratton-Porter’s depiction
of women in <i>The Girl of the Limberlos</i>t in particular, Elizabeth Ford
details the disappointing trajectory of both Elnora and her mother toward
“convention.” Ford notes that Katherine Comstock, Elnora’s mother, gives up her
self-reliance—as well as her dedication to protecting her land from loggers and
oil rigs, incidentally—in order to become the ideal mother to Elnora. And, although
Elnora is originally intent on pursuing college and is consistently depicted as
intelligent, strong, and resourceful at the beginning of the novel, she ultimately
retreats, like the caterpillar that spins itself into a cocoon, to conventional
wife and motherhood: “Before Elnora has had a chance to spread her wings, she
prepares to enter the cocoon of convention, an enclosure not known for
nurturing the individual pursuits of its inmates, no matter how feisty the
heroine” (152). I would like to extend this discussion of women as like the moths
that Elnora collects by countering aspects of Ford’s assertion. Elnora does
spread her wings; it’s just that—on the surface at least—the book suggests that
the way that women become beautiful moths is by taking on the responsibilities
of the ideal wife and mother. Like the Polyphemus moth, and others with similar
life cycles, women in this novel live for the purpose of reproduction. However,
I would also suggest that the framework of “the female swerve”—Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar’s notion that female authors have sometimes written female characters
who adhere to conventional gender norms to conceal feminist agendas—<i>might</i>
be helpful in understanding Elnora’s significantly narrowed life path at the
end of the novel. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’d like to start with a supporting character in <i>The Girl
of the Limberlost</i>—Edith Carr. Edith is Phillip Ammon’s betrothed. Phillip
is the man who visits the Limberlost area from Chicago and, while there, develops
an intense appreciation for moths—and for Elnora, the girl who collects them.
Edith is frivolous, petty, and self-interested while Elnora is industrious,
honest, and nurturing. (There is certainly something here about rural, Midwestern
identity vs. “big city” identity, but that is beyond the scope of this post.) Despite
Edith’s obvious shortcomings, Phillip tries to honor his engagement after he returns
to Chicago. When he throws a ball in Edith’s honor—and clearly still thinking
back to what he left in the Limberlost—he has a dressmaker create a gown for Edith
in imitation of the Imperial moth, complete with wings. Emphasizing Edith’s unwillingness
to subordinate herself to Phillip, the narrative conveys her understanding of the
gown: “She was the Empress—yes, Phillip was but a mere man, to devise
entertainments, to provide luxuries, to humour whims, to kiss hands!” (310). It
is later in the novel when Edith comes to understand what readers can infer is
the true significance of Imperial moth costume—that she, like Katherine and
Elnora, is most beautiful and in greatest alignment with the designs of nature
when she accepts her subservience to men and her intended role of wife and
mother. In a conversation with Hart Henderson, her new love interest after Phillip
has broken their engagement and returned to Elnora, Edith promises to become
more like Elnora: “You find out what you want to do, and be, that is a man's
work in the world, and I will plan our home, with no thought save your comfort.
I'll be the other kind of a girl, as fast as I can learn. I can't correct all
my faults in one day, but I'll change as rapidly as I can” (409). Edith’s
acceptance of her new role (and “nature” in general) is solidified when she
captures an Imperial moth—despite her past feelings of repulsion for all insects—and
presents it to Elnora as a peace offering. Symbolically, here Edith offers herself,
in the figure of the moth that she previously outfitted herself as, to the ideal
of womanhood. She has finally taken on the natural responsibilities of women represented
in the moth. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Just as Edith turns her attention to the Imperial moth in
the moment of her acceptance of convention, soon after Katherine’s transformation
to loving mother, she becomes fascinated with a just-hatched Royal moth. Katherine
exults the moth’s life cycle as “a miracle” : “. . . it takes the wisdom of the
Almighty God to devise the wing of a moth. . . . this creature is going to keep
on spreading those wings, until they grow to size and harden to strength sufficient
to bear its body. Then it flies away, mates with its kind, lays its eggs . . .
. [The moths] don't eat, they don't see distinctly, they live but a few days .
. . ; then they drop off easy, but the process goes on” (259-60). (Eating here
could certainly represent bodily appetites in general, which would suggest that
the moth is, symbolically, as asexual as the ideal mother that Katherine
becomes. Eating is represented in complex ways in the novel and could certainly
bear more discussion in another context.) Inspired by the moth’s purposeful
design for the work of reproduction, Katherine goes on to beseech God, “Help me
to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to
unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders” (260).
Of course, Katherine is in need of the “lessons” of nature at this point
because she was not always “the other kind of girl” that Elnora is and that Edith
later aspires to be. Until after Elnora’s graduation from high school,
Katherine treats Elnora with neglect bordering on cruelty and blames her
daughter for the death of Elnora’s father, Katherine’s husband, Robert Comstock.
Katherine returns again and again to the site of Robert’s death, “the oozy green
hole” (207) in the swamp, where she was unable to save her husband years ago
because of being in childbirth labor with Elnora. Ford calls Stratton-Porter’s
representation of the sinkhole Freudian, rightly indicating its likeness to the
conception of a vagina as a man trap (152). I would add that Katherine’s early
attachment to this site and to the fateful moment of giving birth suggest her
association with the wrong kind of womanhood—the sexually desirous and the corporeal.
But, in the chapters following her study of the Royal moth, Katherine takes on
a new identity as a self-sacrificing and spiritual woman by showering attention
and adoration on Elnora. (Katherine’s transformation also necessitates the
purchase of all sort of beauty products and stylish clothing at the shops in nearby
Onabasha and the rental of a beautifully furnished home in town. Consumerism is
at the heart of <i>The Girl of the Limberlost</i>, but this is also outside the
scope of this blog post.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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While both Edith and Katherine transform into conventional
women based on the instruction of moths, Elnora is associated with moths
throughout the narrative, as she collects them to pay for schooling, and seems
to have already learned the “lessons” of ideal womanhood even at the beginning
of the book. But it is only at the end of the novel when Elnora fully accepts the
conventional role of wife to Phillip and mother to his children. Perhaps the moment
that seems to change Elnora’s life trajectory most significantly is when
Phillip convinces her to give up her dream of attending college, a goal that
she has consciously worked toward from the first day of high school, according
to the narrative. The moment is precipitated by Elnora’s admission that the
trees in the swamp talk to her: they tell her "[t]o be patient, to be
unselfish, to do unto others as I would have them do to me" and “to be
true, live a clean life, send your soul up here and the winds of the world will
teach it what honour achieves” (274). Of course, the values that Elnora
articulates here are many of those associated with the domesticity, chastity,
and self-sacrifice of the ideal woman. And, apparently convinced that Elnora’s possession
of these values makes her education complete, Phillip tells Elnora, “What you
have to give is taught in no college, and I am not sure but you would spoil
yourself if you tried to run your mind through a set groove with hundreds of
others. I never thought I should say such a thing to any one, but . . . I
honestly believe it; give up the college idea. . . . Stick close to your work
in the woods. You are becoming so infinitely greater on it, than the best
college girl I ever knew, that there is no comparison” (276). In keeping with the
novel’s suggestion that ideal women nurture men and children, it is clear that
Phillip is most interested here in what Elnora “[has] to give.” Possibly even
more gratingly to the contemporary reader aware of the history of women’s
financial reliance on men in patriarchal cultures, Phillip goes on to wield his
own financial security against Elnora, who he positions as financially dependent,
at least in the hypothetical: “If I now held the money in my hands to send you,
and could give it to you in some way you would accept I would not” (277). Even
when Katherine later discovers that she has enough money in the bank to send to
Elnora to college, Elnora refuses, choosing instead to share the “lessons” of the
Limberlost with the younger generation through the traditionally women’s role
of teacher in Onabasha. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Later, when Elnora is trying to make a final decision about
whether or not to marry Phillip despite what she perceives as Edith’s still
justified claim to him, Elnora visits Freckles, the titular character of a
previously published Stratton-Porter novel, and his wife, only identified as “the
Angel,” at their lake house in Michigan. It is hard to believe that Stratton-Porter
would not have been aware of the literary allusion in the name “the Angel” to Virginia
Woolf’s wholly self-sacrificing mother, wife, and household manager, “the Angel
in the House,” who Woolf proposes that all women need to kill in order to pursue
fulfilling lives. (As I was reviewing Woolf’s discussion of “the Angel in the
House,” I realized that she also wrote an essay entitled “The Death of the
Moth.” There is definitely more to say about this; I hope I can get back to it
soon!) It is certainly possible, given the allusion to “the Angel in the House,”
that readers are to take the Angel’s ideal womanhood ironically—representative
of exactly that which Elnora should kill in order to pursue college and a
career but that ends up ensnaring her instead. On the surface, however, the Angel
is sincere in her unwavering adoration of her four children, only a “start” to
the large family she and Freckles want (372), and her desire to provide
Freckles with a home that serves as a cozy retreat from his work in the city of
Grand Rapids. This portion of the novel also clarifies Elnora’s ambitions to follow
in the Angel’s footsteps. Upon arrival at the lake house late at night, Elnora
is so excited to see the sleeping children that she asks the Angel for “a peep
at the babies” before going to bed, a move that earns her the exclamation “Now
you are perfect!” from the Angel (372). From there, Elnora becomes heavily
involved in the care of the children and household. When she finally realizes
that Edith has fully surrendered her hold on Phillip, Elnora “see[s] angels” (395)
in a moment that perhaps signifies her full incorporation into the ranks of
women like Freckle’s wife. Also significantly, it is in the next few paragraphs
that Elnora accepts Edith’s offering of the Imperial moth, still the central symbol
of ideal womanhood in the novel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the surface, the trajectories of the women in <i>The Girl
of the Limberlost</i> suggest that conventional womanhood is the ideal that is
taught in the “lessons” of the moths. Just as the moths are most beautiful in the
phase of their lives dedicated to reproduction, these female characters are at
their best as self-sacrificial wives, dedicated mothers, and efficient housekeepers.
But readers cannot ignore that the ultimate fate of the moths in the Limberlost
is death after only a few short days dedicated to mating and laying eggs. If
women are like moths, then they are almost certainly headed toward demise—symbolic
death, and, given the maternal mortality rate of this era, perhaps literal
death. It is also significant that almost all the moths that appear in this narrative
suffer insult beyond that of having short lives. Through descriptions of the
spreading of moths’ wings as they die and the pinning of dead moths to boards, both
of which contain phallic symbolism, Stratton-Porter might be leading us to
consider the humiliation and violence represented in the permanent affixing of intelligent
and spirited women, like Edith, Katherine, and Elnora, into roles of self-sacrifice
and domesticity. The pin used to hold a specimen to a board for observation may
also be interpreted in an ecofeminist view as similar to the oil rig—another phallic
symbol—that penetrates the land for extraction of natural resources for human
use. It is perhaps not coincidental that, as Katherine accepts her role as
ideal mother, she also entertains the idea of allowing oil mining on her land,
something that she had previously resisted. The placement of the oil rig is
like the pin in that both represent the violence of men against nature—and women,
who are here closely associated with both the wetlands itself and the moths
that live there. Indeed, then, while Stratton-Porter seems to use moth symbolism
to indicate the natural path for women as leading toward wife and motherhood, another
possibility exists—that the moth symbolism in this novel works as a “female
swerve,” through which Stratton-Porter points to the death that awaits women in
domesticity. That this duality in the moth imagery in <i>The Girl of the Limberlost</i>
exists—in conjunction with Stratton-Porter’s unconventional personal history
and the ethos of conservatism in her nature writing—earns this author her contemporary
reputation as an ecofeminist and deserves further study among literary
scholars. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Works Cited<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Birkelo, Cheryl. “Gene Stratton-Porter: Scholar of the
Natural World in A Girl of the Limberlost.” <i>Midwestern Miscellany</i>,
vol. 40, 2012, pp. 7–29. <i>EBSCOhost</i>,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2015384103&site=ehost-live&scope=site.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dessner, Lawrence Jay. “Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Gene
Stratton-Porter’s Freckles.” <i>Papers on Language and Literature: A
Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature</i>, vol. 36, no.
2, 2000, pp. 139–57. <i>EBSCOhost</i>,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2000058323&site=ehost-live&scope=site.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ford, Elizabeth. “How to Cocoon a Butterfly: Mother and
Daughter in A Girl of the Limberlost.” <i>Children’s Literature
Association Quarterly</i>, vol. 18, no. 4, 1993, pp. 148–53. <i>EBSCOhost</i>,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=1994060348&site=ehost-live&scope=site.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. <i>The Madwoman in the
Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.</i> 2<sup>nd</sup>
ed. Yale UP, 2000. Print.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mellin, Robert. “The ‘Talking Trees’ of the Limberlost:
Negotiating a Class-Informed Ecofeminism.” <i>Midwestern Miscellany</i>,
vol. 40, 2012, pp. 30–36. <i>EBSCOhost</i>,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2015384104&site=ehost-live&scope=site.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stratton-Porter, Gene. <i>A Girl of the Limberlost.</i> Dell
Publishing Company, 1986. Print.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women.” <i>The Death of
the Moth and Other Essays</i>. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1942. 235-43.
Print.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-27871031385963050082018-08-14T08:47:00.000-07:002019-08-13T07:08:57.429-07:00Dust to Dust: From the Promise of Young Womanhood to Resignation to Patriarchal Marriage in Reading the Ceiling<br />
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Earlier this month, I received an email from a colleague
personally asking if my family and I would be willing to host a high school
student from Africa for two weeks. She had been recruiting hosts for several
weeks and still needed a few willing families in order to place all of the
students who would be staying in Muncie for a portion of their time with the
Pan African Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP). PAYLP is funded by the US
Department of State, and participants in the program do some orientation in Atlanta
and culminating activities in DC but spend the majority of their time in the US
in training and lectures at various universities across the country. Three
cohorts come to Ball State University every year. We had considered hosting
PAYLP students in the past and felt that the time might be right this summer. I
was particularly interested in the cultural exchange that my 15-year-old
daughter might gain from hosting an African student. She is infinitely
interested in travel outside of the US. This would give her the opportunity to
learn a little bit about the world without leaving home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were assigned a student a couple of days before her
arrival in Muncie. She would be coming from The Republic of Gambia. I quickly
read the historical information about The Gambia that my colleague provided,
and, then, I thought maybe I should read a novel or two written by a Gambian
author in order to learn more about the culture of this small country on the
west side of Africa. I didn’t find many options, but Dayo Forster’s 2007 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading the Ceiling</i> was available as an
ebook for $1. I used one of the many credits I have with Amazon, earned by
checking the box next to “No Rush” on orders that I don’t need immediately, and
got the book for free!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading the Ceiling</i>
starts on Ayodele’s 18<sup>th</sup> birthday, the day she has planned for what
she sees as the beginning of the rest of her life, which she thinks will be
triggered by having sex for the first time. She makes a list of a few possible
partners for this important rite of passage. The rest of the book is divided
into three parts, each following the chain of events that occur after sex with
one of the choices on her list. The first choice is Rueben, a traditional
Gambian boy who Ayodele finds annoying but who would definitely agree to the
task. This choice ultimately leads her to study at a university in England,
return to Gambia for a job in the government, and marry a womanizing widower in
her middle age. Ayodele is much more attracted to her second choice, Yuan, who
is the son of Chinese immigrants and plans to study in England after high
school graduation. This option leads her into a fulfilling, long-term
relationship with Yuan in Europe until Yuan dies suddenly in a motorcycle
accident. Heartbroken, she ultimately gains a career in international trade and
travels around the world but later returns to Gambia to care for her elderly mother,
and finally, agrees to marry a widower with teenaged children who resent her. Last,
the novel explores the possibility of Ayodele choosing Frederick, the father of
her best friend who has a reputation of carrying on affairs outside of his
marriage. Although she spends a semester abroad after her sexual encounter with
Frederick, this option ultimately leads her to pregnancy and the difficulties
of single motherhood, working her way up in the ranks of a Gambian car
dealership, and a marriage as a second wife to the owner of the company, who is
willing to help support her and her son. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The novel is well-written. You can see Forster’s careful implementation
of craft in almost every line. And it evokes vivid imagery of West Africa
through compelling—but wonderfully succinct—descriptions of food preparation,
clothing, and scenery. Most of all, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading
the Ceiling</i> conveys the difficulty that one young Gambian woman faces in
her attempt to claim agency over her own body and life in her home country. It
portrays the culture of The Gambia as doggedly patriarchal—even
misogynistic—despite progress toward the liberal ideal of equality, as
evidenced in the efforts of most families of Ayodele’s class to educate their
daughters abroad. Though she is able to find some measure of happiness in each
scenario, West Africa is inhospitable to Ayodele’s dreams of freedom and joie
de vivre, a concept she discusses in one of her college classes. In fact, in
each of the three situations presented in the novel, Ayodele ultimately
capitulates to the patriarchal politics and demands of marriage and
childrearing in The Gambia, settling for relationships with men she does not love,
cooking and cleaning for husbands and children, and silencing her own opinions
and desires in exchange for the familiar traditions of patriarchal marriage.
Each scenario ends with resignation to death, as, after her mother’s funeral in
each case, Ayodele admits to herself that she will be next.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Forster uses dust and mud imagery throughout the novel to
indicate the dinginess of Ayodele’s life as a young woman, and then wife and
mother, in West Africa as well as the inescapability of this life. Even in the
opening passage, so reflective of Ayodele’s sense of her own sexuality and her
eagerness to use it to open the mysteries of her life outside of The Gambia,
imagery of dust foreshadows the inevitable power of her country to reign in the
power of her young, rebellious body: “In the slit between my bedroom curtains,
I see a long triangle of sky more grey than blue. The light changes with each
sweep of my eyelids. At this time of year, when the harmattan blows straight
off the Sahara, not even the wide expanse of the River Gambia can add enough
wet to stop it in its tracks. It has coated with dust the mosquito netting on
my window” (location 35). The slit between the curtains, representative of
Ayodele’s sexuality, of course, allows her to see some of the play of light
outside her window, or the possibilities of her future, but the dust, such an
integral part of life in The Gambia during the dry season, prevents her from
full enjoyment of the colors. Again, indicating her difficulty in leaving her
culture behind, in the Rueben section of the novel, Ayodele falls into the
muddy, “thickly brown” (location 446), and possibly crocodile-filled water of
the river and struggles to pull herself from the its depths back into the boat
carrying her high school friends. In a passage depicting Ayodele’s decision,
after Yuan’s death, to settle in Mali, another West African country with apparently
similar customs to The Gambia, she notes not only the muddiness of the river,
but the dustiness of the garden outside her new home, and “the brown-tinged
circles in the rice” left by the muddy tap water used to cook her food
(location 1810). Although Ayodele’s meal is interrupted by the delivery of a
letter from home, she ultimately returns to eating “the brown-speckled rice”
(location 1844), having made the decision to stay in West Africa. In the last
scenario, in which Ayodele becomes an unwed mother at the age of 18, she
perceives her pregnancy as a “ridge of mud” (location 2479) and lives in a
small house with a “mud wall . . . meant to keep the rainwater out” as she
struggles to support her young son (location 2590). I could cite numerous other
examples of mud imagery as representative of Ayodele’s inability to escape her
home culture, many of which also portray water as opposite to mud, a possibly
cleansing or freeing force—but one that never quite wins against the ubiquitous
dust of the harmattan.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading the Ceiling</i>
ends with Ayodele’s memory of a story that she and her sisters and friends were
often told in childhood—one that clearly echoes Ayodele’s perception of water
as life-giving and dust as stifling. A mermaid, skilled in magical incantations
and free to settle anywhere in the beautiful underwater regions of the sea, is
nevertheless curious about life on land and enjoys observing the activities of
fishermen on the surface. Like Ayodele’s story, the mermaid’s story is told in
the form of a traditional dilemma tale, presenting several possible outcomes
that listeners can judge as most or least desirable. In one ending, the mermaid
is almost caught by the fishermen but struggles and escapes back to her
beautiful home in the ocean. In another, she allows herself to be caught and
lives the rest of her unhappy life as a human, abused and disfigured by the
fishermen and their peers. The novel clearly outlines the moral of the story:
“[I]f you want something, don’t halfwant it. Either want it properly and go and
get it, or forget about it so you will not be drawn into someone else’s magic
and get the decision taken out of your hands” (location 3433). The reader is
obviously meant to judge Ayodele as failing to “properly” want life outside of
the rigid restraints of The Gambia, despite the kaleidoscope of opportunities
available to her as a young woman travelling abroad for her education. Instead,
in the scenarios presented in the book, Ayodele allows herself to take jobs in
West Africa because they are easy to secure after acquiring degrees in
international development in Europe and the US, to return to The Gambia to
please her sisters or mother, to acquiesce to marriage with men who will make
her life materially comfortable and acceptable to those in her country who
gossip about her European or American habits and aspirations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
A review of the fate of other characters in the novel reveals
that Ayodele is not the only woman who becomes trapped by the expectations for
women in The Gambia. The novel provides the reader with a panoply of young
women who each chooses her own fate—either abroad or at home. One of Ayodele’s
sisters, Taiwo, ends up marrying Rueben and living a traditional life in The
Gambia. Ayodele notices that the Biblical reading during their marriage
ceremony “was not from a raunchy part of the Song of Solomon . . . but instead
from the rib creation passage” (location 1926), meaning, of course, that Taiwo
has chosen domestic life as a helpmate to Rueben over the possibility of sexual
passion, a choice that Ayodele also makes in each of the scenarios presented in
the novel. Remi, Ayodele’s best friend, also chooses a traditional marriage in
The Gambia, and, like Ayodele in two of the novel’s scenarios, she ultimately
accepts that her husband will have intimate relationships other women. Moira
marries right out of high school, and her husband leaves her and their three
children a few years later. She struggles as a single mother, used and
abandoned by a man, just as Ayodele does after giving birth to her son, but
continues to enforce gender norms through unwanted advice and
self-righteousness. The women who leave The Gambia, however, fare much better
than those who marry Gambian men. Ayodele’s other sister, Kainde, lives
independently in Canada, and Amina marries a European and founds a happy existance
in Italy. Although both women tell Ayodele that their lives are not perfect, Amina
admits that her life is mostly in her own control, which contrasts sharply with
the experiences of Taiwo, who defers in every situation to Rueben; Remi, who decides
that peace at home is more important than her husband’s fidelity; Moira, who
accepts and promulgates the expectations for married women in The Gambia, and
Ayodele herself, of course, in each of the three situations portrayed in the
novel. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s important to note <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading
the Ceiling</i> is focused on the experiences of The Gambia’s middle class, urban
dwellers with money for education and who are mostly Christian. People like
this are in the minority in The Gambia, which is a very poor, largely rural,
and majority Muslim country. Regardless of its limited scope, the novel clearly
(and problematically for liberal Western readers—like me!—who are uncomfortable
with this stereotypical characterization of West Africa) depicts The Gambia as
a place where women are simply unable to successfully contend against
traditional patriarchal norms. You might wonder, does it provide any hope, any
glimmer of positive change for women? Maybe. The novel ends with Ayodele
helping a man walking his dog on the beach to move a fish run ashore back into
the sea. Afterwards: “My eyes catch what looks like the flick of a tail,
sprinkling splashes of water high above the surface, slicing cleanly back into
the ocean. Then it’s gone.” (location 3523). This transitory image suggests
either that some women, embodied in the fish, will escape West Africa to the
refreshing waters of other lands <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or</i>
that The Gambia, represented by the man, may learn from its female offspring,
like Ayodele, to allow women to live in the waters of freedom and fulfillment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-17721405602486051822017-08-16T05:22:00.000-07:002017-08-16T05:23:54.628-07:00The Reinforcement of Rape Culture in My Family’s Visit to a Bird Sanctuary this Summer<b style="font-weight: normal;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKF6Xy3QGGwpplbFQEEDTNilGPoBmbigzgHkMPIlsh0vl-G-2bNmqUq7Dgads-lWhu9QC39LkWVtf5LL05NtqOd8_QgIdOzefxjF-kOawXYXE_qzlHT19Vg1EdEjtDM31_9ol9Kqyk6c4/s1600/IMG_20170604_150041.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKF6Xy3QGGwpplbFQEEDTNilGPoBmbigzgHkMPIlsh0vl-G-2bNmqUq7Dgads-lWhu9QC39LkWVtf5LL05NtqOd8_QgIdOzefxjF-kOawXYXE_qzlHT19Vg1EdEjtDM31_9ol9Kqyk6c4/s200/IMG_20170604_150041.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div>
Wes and Taegan</div>
<div>
(Wes is positioning to match the bird.)</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b><br />
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-a174ad53-eaf0-1921-2409-16cc580cb661" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">During a short family trip earlier in the summer, my family of four visited a bird sanctuary, where trained professionals care for and, when possible, rehabilitate injured birds of all types and offer educational programming on the ecological importance of birds and other rescued animals to the public. The visit included a brief “show,” during which three employees brought out a number of animals and discussed the particular environmental challenges and ecological significances of their breeds. Despite the position of the amphitheatre seating in the full sun of the early afternoon, my two children and I took front-row seats, while my pale-skinned husband stayed in the back, under the shade of a nearby tree. The main speaker was a knowledgeable 30-something male, engaging enough and even funny at times. He easily commanded the small space of the stage, alerting unaware passersby at several points during the talk to the fact that he was doing a show right now and that they were welcome to join the audience but that they needed to use quiet voices if they chose not to join so that they wouldn’t disrupt the presentation. The other two participants were female and in their early 20s. In praising her handling of a tarantula, the man identified one of the women as the sanctuary's ”new intern.” </span></b></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Toward the end of the show, the new intern wheeled out a large cage. Both she and the man geared up, putting on long falconry gloves, and then he opened the cage and introduced a very large black bird with a featherless pink head and sharp, curved black beak. It was a turkey vulture, he said, and went on to discuss the function and importance of scavenger birds. As he was talking, the vulture flew up to the new intern’s forearm. It took a couple of quick steps in the direction of her body and, probably instinctively, she turned her head. The vulture then landed three strikes with his beak on her scalp in quick succession. The man, cheekily stating that, although everyone else at the sanctuary thought the intern was doing a good job, the turkey vulture just didn't seem to like her, moved to the woman's side and signaled for the bird to transfer from her arm to his. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The man went on to express frustration that the vulture didn't seem interested in demonstrating tricks this afternoon, saying, “C’mon, don't you want to fly?” The vulture eventually obliged, flying back to the intern’s arm and again moving quickly toward her head. Although clearly panicked, she was more prepared this time and, reaching into a pouch on her belt, grabbed a chunk of meat and threw it to the ground. The vulture hopped down and quickly ate the meat. It headed right back toward the intern, and, again, she deterred it with a bite of meat. This continued for a tense few minutes, the man persisting in his attempts to coax the bird to perform flying exercises for the crowd, until the intern, speaking for the first time, interrupted with, “I've only got a couple more pieces of meat!” </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Picking up with his monologue again, the man started throwing his meat to the ground, too, but not as quickly as the intern had. Unfed for a couple of seconds, the huge bird headed back to the intern’s head, this time striking her in the cheek and the back of the neck before the intern managed to distract him by tossing the last of her meat on the ground. The man continued to talk and toss his pieces down to the vulture. Seeing what lay ahead as he neared the end of his stash, the woman interrupted again, saying several times in quick succession, “I don't want to do this.”</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By this time, I was flinching every time the bird moved, and I had made worried eye contact with my 14-year-old daughter several times. I was saying under my breath, “I can't believe he's allowing this to continue,” when the vulture sauntered over to the intern and fiercely pecked her on her bare shin. The man, still talking to the audience, threw a chunk of meat to lure the bird toward him. The woman backed away from the bird, said, “I'm going inside,” and exited the stage into the adjacent nature center. Clearly perturbed, the man sighed and rolled his eyes. Finally, he gave up his efforts to make the animal perform and, using his last piece of meat, lured it back into its cage. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Numb, I watched as the man brought out the final act, a crow that was able to take dollar bills from kids’ hands. Trying to recover, I handed my eight-year-old a five and watched as the crow adeptly folded it and stuffed it into a donation box. Afterwards, we looked around the nature center, where I chanced upon overhearing a conversation between the intern and the man leading the show. She had an open wound on her check the size of a dime, and she told him that all of the bites had drawn blood. He expressed amazement, saying the bird had never acted this way with anyone else, and advised her to “clean them really well.”</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I started crying as I left the amphitheatre and nature center area. My husband and kids were stunned; I rarely cry, I’m not a “highly sensitive person.” Sure, I explicate in great detail our encounters with others and overanalyze nearly every exhibit that we attend, often with a wry wit and a sharp tongue and, yes, even in front of my children. But I don’t cry. I thought about the bird show frequently in the next several days, until I figured out what had really bothered me about the display we had witnessed. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The show was disturbing in three major ways. First of all, it was completely phallocentric. Neither woman spoke during the show; instead, they acted as a models, akin to the women I remember turning letters on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wheel of Fortune</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and demonstrating the functions of new vacuum cleaners and the like on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Price is Right</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> when I watched these shows as a child. Like Pat Sajak and Bob Barker, the man leading the bird show was significantly older than his models and exercised complete control over their onstage behavior--at least until the new intern ran from the stage. Ecofeminists might point out that, in a similar fashion to how he treated the women, the man leading the show also attempted to control the animals. The vulture’s unexpected unwillingness to perform angered him. In fact, his inability to control the bird caused him to ignore all reason, allowing the bird to continue to assault the intern as he tried, over and over, to bend the animal to his will. The man’s angry body language and sigh as he put the bird back in its cage, as well as his comments to the intern after the show, suggested his unwillingness to accept his lack of control over the animal and his blaming of the bird and/or the intern for the bird’s failure to engage in the pre-planned flying routine. The man exercised more complete control of the space of the amphitheatre, as evidenced by his comments to the sanctuary visitors who unwittingly happened upon the show. He was in charge of the pacing of the show as well, signalling to the two women assisting him when he wanted them to bring certain animals on stage or remove them to the adjacent nature center. Most of all, he dominated the narrative. From a place of total self-assurance, he shared facts about the animals in the show and offered tips as to how audience members could aid in conservation efforts. He easily asserted subjectivity by also discussing his personal experiences of working with the animals. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, the show symbolically enacted the very worse potentiality of a male-dominated culture--rape. Whether you read the bird or the man as the rapist is fairly irrelevant. It was the vulture that penetrated the woman’s body with his beak, a phallic part of its body used to attack prey and rip apart flesh, much as a penis is used against a victim during a rape. But it was the man who took advantage of his intern’s position of subservience, belittled her initial attack, overrode her attempts to resist her attacker, ignored her “no,” allowed her no other recourse than the humiliation of disrupting the show in order to escape, placed the onus for the attack on her after the event, and dismissed her injuries as just in need of a good washing. Certainly, then, the bird only enacted that which the man did on a psychic level--the stripping from a woman of her dignity and sense of worth. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Finally, my third point. Probably the most troubling part of this experience was my complicity in it. Around 10 other adults and I were silent as the intern was attacked--repeatedly--by a vulture, as she panicked in anticipation of the vulture’s next moves, as her efforts to resist continued attack were thwarted, as the man on stage allowed her injury and humiliation. Any one of us could have raised our hand or stood or just called out to ask the man to please put the bird away, but no one did. Also importantly, we visually consumed the assaulted woman and even contributed to the panoptic system of discipline that kept her from asserting herself more forcefully against the man leading the show. Almost certainly, viewers objectified both women in the show, perceiving them as little more than fixtures meant for the display of the animals, much as we perceived the models in 1980s game shows as accessories for contestant prizes. Worse yet, viewers may have even gained the kind of catharsis as they would from watching a sexual assault on an episode of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Law and Order: Special Victims Unit</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. I even ended up paying for the show, as I have surely paid to watch rape scenes before on TV and in movies! Regardless of how the incident affected audience members, the fact of the audience definitely affected the victim of the bird’s attack. The shape of the amphitheatre and the eyes of spectators reinforced the new intern’s subservience to the man in charge of the show and prohibited her from easily escaping him and his bird.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Months later, I really don’t think that it’s taking it too far to say that this incident at the bird sanctuary served as an affirmation of rape culture. I fear that it reinforced messages that my children likely receive from many other sources--that people in privileged positions are ultimately in charge, that the assault of the vulnerable is sometimes okay and/or deserved and/or even entertaining, and that there’s not much that we can do to change the system that we have. Instead, I’d like for my children to know that they have the right to exit any dangerous or uncomfortable situation at any time no matter how many people are watching as well as the responsibility to honor and assist others who express the desire to stop what they are doing or what is happening to them. </span></div>
</b><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-40253409843760613572016-08-10T11:03:00.003-07:002016-08-10T11:04:18.622-07:00Black Boys and Gorillas: The Cincinnati Zoo Incident and Alice Walker’s “Entertaining God”<div class="MsoNormal">
Earlier this summer, a three-year-old boy entered a gorilla
exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo and was violently and repeatedly dragged through
a moat by a 450-pound gorilla before zoo officials killed the gorilla and
rescued the boy, who sustained no serious injuries. News of the encounter
between boy and gorilla, only ten minutes in total, and the subsequent killing
of a western lowland silverback gorilla, one of a critically endangered
species, spurred a lot of response on the web. Outraged by the gorilla’s death,
news stories and independent commenters questioned the zoo officials’ haste in
killing the gorilla without trying other methods of rescuing the boy first, the
boy’s mother’s childrearing abilities, and even the jail record of the boy’s father
(not present at the time of the incident). These kinds of responses might seem
ridiculous at first glance. Yes, it is tragic that a gorilla was killed, but the
incident is not incomprehensible. Haven’t most of us momentarily looked away
from a child under our care only to turn back and find him or her doing
something dangerous? And, in any case when a child is the grasp of a wild
animal, wouldn’t most of us agree that he or she should be saved in the timeliest
way possible? As others have since pointed out, race is the underlying issue in
many of the comments that people have made regarding this little boy and his
parents, all of whom are black. The disparaging—and cruel—remarks that people
have made regarding these three are ultimately unsurprising, given the predominant
understanding in the US of black fathers as absent, black mothers as negligent,
and black boys as delinquent. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In interesting ways, the Cincinnati Zoo incident echoes the
plot of Alice Walker’s short story “Entertaining God” (1973). “Entertaining
God” contains three sections that seem to connect only loosely. In the first
section, a black teenager, named John, leads a gorilla away from the Bronx Zoo,
performs ritual sacrifice to the gorilla, and is killed by the animal; in the
second one, John’s father dies in a tornado; and, in the third, John’s mother
attempts, only somewhat successfully, to connect to her dead son by performing
poetry readings for college students. Stereotypes of black men, women, and boys
are in play in this story as well, as John’s father has left his son to pursue
a relationship with another woman, John’s mother is distant and clearly unaware
of her son’s plans for the gorilla, and John himself succeeds in stealing an
animal from the zoo. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In preparation for teaching “Entertaining God” next
semester, I poked around in the MLA Bibliography database to get a sense of the
critical conversation surrounding Walker’s work. It turns out that there isn’t
much written about her short stories at all, and some of what I found isn’t
flattering. In “Alice Walker: The Achievement of the Short Fiction,” for
instance, Alice Hall Petry discusses Walker’s “capacity to produce stories that
are sometimes extraordinarily good, sometimes startlingly weak” (12). Petry
seems to place “Entertaining God,” included in Walker’s first collection, <i>In Love & Trouble</i>, in the second
category, claiming that “the story comes across as a disjointed, fragmentary,
aborted novella” (21). According to Petry, the story “would make no sense to a
reader unfamiliar with Flannery O’Connor’s <i>Wise
Blood</i>” (21), a novel that also includes a series of episodes with a
teenaged boy—in this case white—and a gorilla. Although I agree with Petry that
Walker’s stories are hit or miss, I see “Entertaining God” as a better one. I
think that the story coheres thematically, despite the fact that each section
takes on a new main character and setting, and that it provides the details
needed to comprehend its meaning. And, although familiarity with <i>Wise Blood</i> might enhance a reader’s
appreciation for the inclusion of a gorilla, the Cincinnati Zoo incident
provides a new context for the story, placing it in conversation with those who
have questioned the parenting abilities of the mother and father in Cincinnati
and the value of their son’s life in comparison to that of a zoo animal as well
as in historical relationship to the shooting of a gorilla to save a black boy’s
life. I would argue that the three vignettes presented in the story portray the
struggle for and difficulty (impossibility?) of survival for black men, women,
and children in a white supremacist culture, both of which are still at issue
in the rhetoric surrounding the recent Cincinnati Zoo incident. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As the title indicates, “Entertaining God” is particularly
interested in religion in a way that the commenters on the Cincinnati Zoo
shooting have not been. The subheading for the first part of the story, “<i>John, the son. Loving the God given him</i>”
(99), suggests that what follows will depict an act of worship. And, indeed, John’s
two days with the gorilla, at first “drowsy from the medicine the zoo keepers
had given him” (99) and later “powerful and large and twitching with
impatience” (105), are depicted as a journey toward the spiritual ecstasy that
inhabits John’s final act of sacrifice to the idolized gorilla. To begin, John
and the gorilla hike to the top of a hill near the zoo, a vantage point from
which John is able to observe the activities of everyday human life below,
perceiving the “cars whiz[ing] to and fro” as insect-like nuisances, “wasps or
big flies,” to be “swatted” away in order to focus on his higher purpose with the
gorilla (100). When the gorilla passes out as an effect of the drugs he
received before John led him away from the zoo, John prepares a loaf of bread
and bottle of red wine, traditionally used to symbolize the sacrifice of
Christ’s body and blood in the Christian sacrament of communion, for giving the
gorilla “the homage he deserved from him” the next day (101). When he wakes up
the next morning, John is “exhilarated” (102) and begins to build a fire “with
slow ritualistic movements” (103). He positions the still-groggy gorilla above
him, on “a shallow rise overlooking the fire,” and proceeds to burn several
pieces of bread and repeatedly “[bow] all the way down to the ground in front
of the gorilla” (104). Finally, John pours the contents of the wine bottle into
the fire and lays “the burnt offering at the feet of his savage idol” (105). By
this time, the gorilla has reclaimed full consciousness and is frustrated by
John’s destruction of each item of food before him. Predictably, even to John,
who anticipates with some relish that, after the ritual, “everything [will] be
over” (101), the gorilla quickly dispatches with the boy and eats the burnt
bread. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In its depiction of John’s experiences with the gorilla, the
story reveals that the boy is simply “embrac[ing] the God that others—his
mother—had chosen for him” (100). Here, John’s mother is singled out as having
significantly contributed to the designation of the gorilla as John’s God. After
learning more about the mother’s character in the course of the story, however,
it becomes clear that she would never literally encourage the worship of a
gorilla. She is, however, at least before John’s death, fervently devoted to
assimilation to the dominant white culture, taking great pains to approximate whiteness
in both her appearance and behavior. In the last minutes of his life, John’s
father reflects on the changes that she underwent in the first years of their relationship.
He was initially attracted to her because she was “loose and fun and because she
had long red hair” (106). After they were married, though, she stopped dying
her hair and started wearing gray suits. Because he was a hairdresser, she had
him “conquer the kinks” to create an “unimaginative” hairstyle, and he found that
“the duller he could make [her] look the more respectable [she] felt” (106-107).
She acted as if she would have liked to change her husband’s appearance as
well, having their wedding pictures “touched up so that he did not resemble
himself,” replacing his “black and stubbly and rough” skin in the photographs
with “olive brown and smooth” skin (106). When John was born, his parents
discovered that the child possessed “all of the physical characteristics that
in the Western world are scorned,” that “[h]is nose was flat, his mouth too
wide” (108). John’s father recalls that “John’s mother was always fussing over
John but hated him because he looked like his father instead of her. She blamed
her husband for what he had ‘done to’ John” (108). In this passage, it is
unclear whether John’s mother “hated” her husband or her son because of either
of their characteristically African American features, but, either way, her son
ultimately internalizes her antipathy toward blackness, learning to view his
father “with an expression faintly contemptuous” (108) and destroying his own
black person through self-sacrifice to the gorilla. Fittingly, as she is the
one who chose John’s God, “[o]nly his mother had been able to piece together
the details of his death” (110). In response to her son’s death, John’s mother
seeks to “vindicate herself from former ways of error” (109) and, thus, begins
writing poetry lamenting her previous attempts at “incipient whiteness” (110). Although
John’s mother didn’t tell her son to worship the gorilla that he takes from the
zoo, she clearly feels responsible for his misguided act of self-sacrifice and
atones for her mistakes by reversing her position on assimilation. Through John’s
mother’s attitudes toward race before her son’s death and her drastic reversal
of these attitudes after his death, the story makes the symbology of the gorilla
very clear. It represents that which is most predominantly worshipped in the story’s
setting of the US in the 1960s and 70s—whiteness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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John’s father had rejected this worship of whiteness after
he left John and his mother, marrying “a sister in the Nation” and then
endeavoring with her “to preach the Word to those of their people who had
formerly floundered without it” (107). Instead of assimilating, as John’s
mother did, John’s father had followed the custom of many in the Nation of
Islam of taking the last name of X (107), a practice intended as a reminder that
the ancestors of many black individuals in the US were stripped of their surnames
and renamed by slaveholders. Unlike John’s mother, John’s father’s new wife “wore
his color and the construction of his features like a badge” (108). Still, in
the moments before his death, John’s father recalls that he had chosen “a new
religion more dangerous than the old” (108). The danger of his new beliefs is
perhaps most fully manifested in the tornado that takes his life. In the world
of this story, it seems that neither acceptance nor rejection of white supremacy
can ensure a black person’s survival. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Besides John’s mother, there are two others who do likely survive
in “Entertaining God,” however. When they realize that they are destined for
the belly of a tornado, John’s father and “the plain black girl who was his second
wife . . . . r[u]n toward the refrigerator, frantically pulling out the meager
dishes of food, flinging a half-empty carton of milk across the room, and
making a place where the vegetables and fruits should have been for the[ir] two
children to crouch” (105). John’s father imagines that the children will be
rescued after the storm and will mostly forget “in twenty years the plain black
girl and the man who was their father” (106). The implication is that the children
will live—knowing nothing of the gorilla that killed their brother and
remembering little of the tornado that took their parents. At the end of the
action relayed by the story, readers are then left with three characters: a “black
radical [poet]” (109) who inspires “new proud blackness and identification with
their beauty” among the students—about the same age as her son would have been
had he lived—who attend her readings (111) and two children who will grow to
adulthood among the rhetoric of “the Black revolution” (109) espoused by the
activists and poets of John’s mother’s elk. Instead of fulfilling the
stereotypes of black men and women that they seem to fit upon first glance, the
three adults in “Entertaining God” actively work to protect their children and to
create a changed world for future generations. The story leaves open the
possibility that the students who John’s mother inspires with her poetry and
the two children who John’s father and stepmother shelter from the tornado will
live fulfilling lives in a world changed by the difficult social projects
undertaken by those of the older generation introduced in the story. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This hope for the future, which is partially concealed within
the sad story of John’s death at the hand of a gorilla, is perhaps realized in
its contemporary corollary, the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo. Like “Entertaining
God,” the incident in Cincinnati began with a black boy’s violent encounter
with a gorilla. Unlike in the story, though, the Cincinnati Zoo incident ended
with the rescue of the boy. That the boy’s rescue has been challenged and his mother
and father’s willingness and ability to parent questioned does not change the
fact that the zoo officials very quickly chose the survival of a black boy over
the life of a gorilla. Read in tandem with “Entertaining God,” the Cincinnati
Zoo incident perhaps indicates some amount of social progress. In the case of
the Cincinnati Zoo, black life was protected, at least initially. It did not succumb
to the white supremacy that destroys it in Walker’s story. The public backlash
against the boy in Cincinnati and his parents are of a piece with other movements
in the contemporary US through which radical social conservatives are voicing
their desperation in opposing the unstoppable train of social progress that has
transported us from the revolutionary poetry and Black Nationalists of the
1960s and 70s to the Black Lives Matter movement in the present and that must—and
will—continue to move us, despite the protests of white supremacists, toward a
future of racial equality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Works Cited<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Petry, Alice Hall. “Alice Walker: The Achievement of the
Short Fiction.” <i>Modern Language Studies</i>
19.1 (1989): 12-27.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Walker, Alice. “Entertaining God.” <i>In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women</i>. Orlando: Harcourt,
1995. <o:p></o:p></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-4401795653471500232015-05-21T05:59:00.000-07:002015-05-21T06:01:19.144-07:00Christianity as Progress in Season 3 of Vikings?<div class="MsoNormal">
Big fans of television series available for binge-watching after
the kids go to sleep, my husband and I recently worked through the first three
seasons of the History Channel’s hit <i><a href="http://www.history.com/shows/vikings">Vikings</a></i>. So far, the series
has followed the rise of Scandinavian Ragnar Lothbrok from farmer to earl to
king and his growing interest in Western Europe and mostly successful exploits
in England and France. Although roundly criticized for its <a href="http://www.academieduello.com/news-blog/facts-foibles-history-channels-series-vikings/">historical
inaccuracies</a>, <i>Vikings</i> is loosely
based on Scandinavian figures and events passed down through the oral tradition
to writers who finally recorded them during the late Middle Ages. It includes the
infamous <a href="https://www.lindisfarne.org.uk/793/">Viking raid of the
monastery at Lindisfarne</a>, for instance, as well as the figure of <a href="http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/06/15/viking-is-forefather-to-british-royals/">Rollo</a>,
known in history as having founded the Scandinavian settlement of Normandy and
as the great-great-great grandfather of William the Conqueror. The character of
<a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/489597/Ragnar-Lothbrok">Ragnar</a>
himself is based on a legendary king and hero, said to have battled Charlemagne
and borne important warrior sons (the same sons whom he is shown to have
fathered in the show as well). The accuracy of the legends of Ragnar are
debated by historians, some saying that they are based in truth and others
perceiving them as mostly fictional. <i>Vikings</i>
admittedly plays fast and loose with history, combining legends from diverse regions
of Scandinavia (by, for instance, depicting Rollo as Ragnar’s brother) and often
flouting the chronology of historical occurrences (by placing Ragnar in the
time of Charles II’s rule instead of Charlemagne’s, to name one example).
Moreover, while many of the events depicted in the show might plausibly have
happened within the Scandinavian cultures of the early Middle Ages, others seem
unlikely. The intense (and often homoerotic) friendship that develops between
Ragnar and Athelstan, a monk who Ragnar captures in the Lindisfarne raid, is
one such fabrication, perhaps unrealistic but effectively used in the show to
heighten one of the central tensions of the series—between the paganism of the
Scandinavians and the Christianity of the Western Europeans.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Athelstan originally perceives the Vikings as heralds of
Satan, sent from God as punishment for the sins of man, but he comes to respect
and love Ragnar, teaching him the language of the English and sharing
information about the cities and cultures of Western Europe. When he is first taken
captive, Athelstan brings a religious text with him to Scandinavia, and he is shown
as reading it faithfully during his first few months as a slave to Ragnar and
his family. He also maintains his practice of tonsure, very painfully and
bloodily using a dull blade to shave the top of his head. But, as he becomes
more and more integrated into Ragnar’s family and community, Athelstan begins
to doubt the existence and power of Christ. He calls out to God, saying that,
for the first time in his life, he cannot feel His presence. Eventually,
Athelstan’s holy book disintegrates, and he begins wearing his hair in the
style of the Scandinavians. He accepts an arm ring from Ragnar when the latter
becomes earl, thus pledging his allegiance to Ragnar and the ways of the
Scandinavians. In Season 2, Athelstan returns to England to raid with Ragnar
and, through a series of extraordinary events, becomes the prisoner—and confidant—of
the intelligent but morally dubious King Ecbert of Wessex. At this point, Athelstan
eagerly returns to the kind of writing that he once did at the monastery, this
time transcribing Ecbert’s secret Roman scrolls. He is unable to resume
priesthood, however, professing that he has strayed too far from his Christian
beliefs. A dark beast—symbolic perhaps of his sin against God or maybe of the
duty that he now owes to Odin—haunts him in waking dreams, and he seems to
feel, at once, disloyal to Christ and to the belief system of the
Scandinavians. Athelstan even admits to Ecbert that Scandinavian customs are,
in some ways, superior to English customs. When given the opportunity, Athelstan
leaves England, to reside again in Scandinavia with Ragnar, who offers him affection
and protection—as well as a somewhat more consistent moral code than Ecbert’s. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In his interactions with both Ragnar and Ecbert, Athelstan
acts—sometimes unwittingly—as an agent of what either king, and certainly the
show’s viewers, might perceive as “progress.” As a former monk, he is a learned
man, and he affirms Ecbert’s appreciation for Roman architecture, art, and
literature. He agrees with Ecbert that the Christians have much to learn from
pagans—presumably both Roman and Scandinavian—and encourages Ecbert’s curiosity
in Scandinavian customs and his decision to allow the Scandinavians to settle
in Wessex. Athelstan shares information with Ragnar about England and France that
ultimately facilitates profitable Scandinavian raids, settlement in the fertile
regions of Western Europe, and adoption of important technological advances in
farming equipment (a plough in Season 2) and weaponry (a cross-bow in Season 3).
On many occasions, Athelstan acts as translator between the Scandinavians and
the Western Europeans, enabling that which we know to be the massive changes in
the cultures and languages of Western Europe that the Viking settlements
ultimately produced. Perhaps most importantly, Athelstan promotes the blending
of traditions, teaching Ragnar to recite the Lord’s Prayer, for example, before
taking up arms himself to fight in his now beloved friend’s battle for the
kingship of Scandinavia. Indeed, Athelstan seems to embody cultural exchange, which
both Ragnar and Ecbert value, at least in part, and certainly that many 21<sup>st</sup>-century
viewers imagine as progressive in our age of globalization. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(As another example of how <i>Vikings</i> plays with history, we might note that Ecbert, Athelstan,
and Athelstan’s son Alfred, borne of Athelstan’s affair with Ecbert’s daughter-in-law
and so far fiercely protected by Ecbert despite the infant’s well-known status
as a bastard, are all also based on historical figures. The historical <a href="http://www.britroyals.com/kings.asp?id=egbert">Ecbert</a> was a Christian
king of Wessex who battled regularly with the pagan Vikings. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/alfred_the_great.shtml">Alfred
the Great</a> was Ecbert’s grandson, and he made peace with the Scandinavians
after their king Gunthrum was baptized. Finally, the historical <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/athelstan.shtml">Athelstan</a>
was the grandson of Alfred, and he ousted the sitting Scandinavian ruler from
the Viking settlement of York. As with their counterparts in the show, the
lives and times of these three figures were very much influenced by the conflicts—and
blending—of English culture and Viking culture as well as Christianity and
paganism.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Late in Season 3, however, Athelstan’s symbology in the show
shifts. No longer does he seem to promote the blending of traditions but,
instead, advocates for a return to seeing Christianity as distinct from—and superior
to—paganism. He experiences a sign from God and returns with fervor to his Christian
faith. After a scene in which he seems to re-baptize himself in the waters off
the coast of Scandinavia, he tosses his arm ring out to sea. Athelstan then announces
to Ragnar that he has been born again and that he can no longer stay in
Ragnar’s kingdom. Ragnar refuses to allow him to go, saying that Athelstan is
the only person who he can truly trust, and the scene ends with Athelstan
reaffirming his dedication to Ragnar’s planned attack on Paris. In some ways,
this seems another example of Athelstan’s ability to blend belief systems: he
is renewed in his Christianity but willing to facilitate a Viking raid of an
important Christian city, indeed, the center of Western Christendom during much
of the Middle Ages. But, when Athelstan is killed by a member of Ragnar’s inner
circle who fears Athelstan’s growing Christian influence over the king, Ragnar
remembers him as a Christian, first and foremost. Ragnar carries Athelstan’s
dead body to the top of a tall hill and buries him there, intending to lay him
to rest as close to Athelstan’s god as he can get him. He then places Athelstan’s
cross necklace around his own neck and shaves his head in a bloody scene
reminiscent of Athelstan’s shaving episode at the beginning of the series. As <i>Vikings</i> creator Michael Hirst has
pointed out in an <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/26/vikings-shocker-michael-hirst-talks-death-spoiler">interview
with <i>Entertainment Weekly</i></a>, here, Ragnar
adopts a version of the Christian practice of tonsure to signal the significant
change that he has experienced as a result of his friend’s death. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like Athelstan during his time in Wessex, Ragnar seems
caught between Christianity and paganism at this point in the show. When he is
injured in the raid on Paris and fears that he is dying, he imagines two
competing visions of that which awaits him after death. One of these is the figure
of Odin, pictured throughout the series as a black silhouette with a raven on
his shoulder; the other is Athelstan, who seems to function, for Ragnar, as a
stand-in for the Christian God. Ragnar reaches toward Athelstan, but the latter
turns to walk away, and Ragnar is left with Odin. Fearing eternal separation
from his friend, Ragnar bargains with the Parisians, agreeing to send his
warriors back to Scandinavia in exchange for a large quantity of gold and, more
importantly, his own baptism and Christian burial. When he is baptized in front
of his shocked and angry kinsmen, Ragnar seems to have finally chosen, like
Athelstan, Christianity over paganism. After he is carried inside the Parisian
cathedral for his final rites, however, Ragnar jumps up from his casket and
brutally slays the Christian priest who had previously expressed revulsion at
the prospect of having to baptize him. Ragnar escapes the battle that ensues
and, then, in the final scene of the season, is shown aboard a Viking longship
bound for home in Scandinavia. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given Althelstan’s and Ragnar’s conflicted thoughts and
contradictory behaviors in Season 3, it is difficult to interpret the show’s
message regarding Christian conversion. Throughout Season 1 and Season 2, Athelstan
suffers with his conflicting feeling of duty toward Christ and his attraction
to the Vikings gods, but he lives with both and seems to work toward an ethic
of cultural exchange that perhaps most viewers in the 21<sup>st</sup>-century
can get behind. For his part, Ragnar is presented as a visionary, a leader who imagines
a better future for his people through raiding and settlement in Western
Europe. His attachment to Athelstan is used to highlight the conflicts between
Christianity and paganism in the Viking Age, but viewers are also able to see
it as indicative of Ragnar’s willingness to embrace the kind of progress
embodied in the priest-turned-Viking-warrior, the progress of economic and
financial advancement for the Scandinavians as well as of the cultural blending
that occurred between Scandinavians and Western Europeans during this
historical period. Given their characterization throughout the series, what are
we to make of Athelstan’s and Ragnar’s actions in Season 3? Is Athelstan still representative
of progress? Is Ragnar still dedicated to progress? Maybe most importantly, is
cultural blending still inherent to progress? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since Athelstan is gone from the show by the end of the season,
we are left to reckon most violently with Ragnar’s lingering dedication to his
dead friend and his resulting baptism, as well as his decision in the last
episode to kill the Christian priest and return to Scandinavia with his people.
I would argue that there are ways to read Ragnar’s actions in the last few
episodes as in keeping with his role as visionary. It is plausible, for
example, that Ragnar is baptized only to ensure that he rejoin Athelstan in the
afterlife but that he intends to remain loyal to Scandinavian traditions during
his remaining time on Earth and, thus, that the baptism signals only the
further blending of cultural systems that we have witnessed heretofore through
Athelstan. Ragnar’s baptism might also serve as simply one more move toward the
progress that he sees as essential for his people. Historically, of course, the
adoption—or partial, or even feigned, adoption—of Christianity eased the way
for Scandinavian groups’ acceptance in Western European trading and settlement.
Renowned Viking historian <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNiPz0xHzdM">Anders
Winroth</a> offers further clarification of the reasons for conversion, stating
that the Scandinavians came to perceive Christianity as prestigious by
associating it with the material wealth that they found in raiding monasteries
and, ironically, that Scandinavian leaders sometimes used the practice of
converting potential followers to Christianity as a way of convincing them to
dedicate themselves to these leaders’ future raids in Western Europe. Whether
to align their beliefs with those of new friends, to appease the Christian
rulers of Western Europe, or to gain Scandinavian followers, masses of Scandinavians
did eventually convert to Christianity throughout the Middle Ages. Ragnar’s
baptism, therefore, seems at least somewhat historically plausible and, in that
it foreshadows the future of conversion in store for his people, in keeping
with his characterization as adept at navigating the tides of change in order
advance the interests of his kinsmen. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nonetheless, it is difficult (and disappointing) to imagine
this show as depicting progress as simply a matter of conversion to
Christianity instead of a process of cultural blending. My hope is that Ragnar
and Ecbert, as well as other important figures in the show, will continue to
contend, in complex and convincing ways, with the clashes between their two
cultures and belief systems in <a href="http://when-will.net/tv-series/1023-will-there-be-vikings-season-4-release-date.html">Season
4</a>, scheduled for release in early 2016—despite the show’s loss of Athelstan
as a figurehead of cultural exchange. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-nj3zf5_dnJ3aTr5HXF9bsCTTuxAXS39TvuBE_f2ciUm5BHtuVZ-AAcZPIXGZaUhiHTkiObSVlFsYil0sr9InS8VjepjMWXp6e-7LtP7TNk-si44sjJVq_h9amvq80XyqFJ5G2Xq1yGhs/s1600/319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-nj3zf5_dnJ3aTr5HXF9bsCTTuxAXS39TvuBE_f2ciUm5BHtuVZ-AAcZPIXGZaUhiHTkiObSVlFsYil0sr9InS8VjepjMWXp6e-7LtP7TNk-si44sjJVq_h9amvq80XyqFJ5G2Xq1yGhs/s200/319.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-align: center;">Ready for a new show . . .</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Until then, my husband I will have to find a new series. Any
suggestions?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-82013878504251134802014-05-23T07:24:00.001-07:002014-05-23T07:24:23.202-07:00Hope in Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light<div class="MsoNormal">
Edwidge Danticat’s <i>Claire
of the Sea Light</i> (2013) is a collection of interconnected narratives set in
the fictional Ville Rose, an impoverished seaside village in Haiti. The title character’s story—conveyed most
directly in the first and last chapter of the text—frames and connects the
other narratives included in the volume.
We meet Limyé Lanmé Faustin, translated to Claire of the Sea Light, on
her seventh birthday, a day that is both celebratory and sorrowful for Claire
and her father, Nozias, as it marks the seventh anniversary of both Claire’s
birth and her mother’s death. In the
evening, Claire’s father, a fisherman, arranges to give his beloved daughter to
Gaëlle Cadet Lavaud, a middle-class widow who lost her own young daughter in an
automobile accident exactly three years ago, on Claire’s fourth birthday. Guilt-stricken from arranging for the murder
of her husband’s supposed killers and in mourning for her daughter, Gaëlle has
long resisted Nozias’s proposal that she take the girl and provide her with a
better life than he can, but, tonight, she has finally decided that she wants
to care for Claire. When Claire hears
that Nozias and Gaëlle have officially agreed that she will leave the seaside shack
where she and her father now reside, she runs away toward Món Initil, where the
villagers believe that the ghosts of their slave ancestors reside. Later, from her position on a hill above the
town, she sees Nozias and Gaëlle performing basic life support on a nearly
drowned man on the beach. After she
notices that Nozias is calling for more light, Claire rushes back to the seaside.
At the end of the book, we can assume that Claire will act as a “sea light,” or
lighthouse, aiding Nozias, Gaëlle, and other community members in their rescue
efforts. Indeed, in this scene, and
throughout the text, Claire represents a beacon of light in the darkness of
postcolonial Haiti: the possibility of perseverance in the face of oppression
and grief, the necessity of healing after trauma, the emergence of new life from
death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Significantly, Claire is a “revenan, a child who had entered
the world just as her mother was leaving it” (16). According to Ville Rose folklore, revenans are
inclined to “follow their mothers into the other world,” to “[chase] a shadow
they can never reach” (16). In some
ways, Claire does experience her dead mother as a shadow, sometimes feeling “another
presence around her” (235-36). Claire
also seems to be drawn to death. She “wonders
what people would have said if she and her mother had died on the same day”
(215). Claire’s favorite song for the wonn,
or the circle game that she plays with the other little girls in Ville Rose, is
the Lasirén song, including the lyrics, “Lasirén, The Whale / My hat fell into
the sea” (219). Reflecting on this song,
Claire notes its relevancy to the lives of Ville Rose citizens: “She was
surprised that the granmoun, the adults, were not singing this song all day
long. So much had fallen into the
sea. Hats fell into the sea. Hearts fell into the sea. So much had fallen into the sea” (220). Here, Claire alludes not only to her own loss
of her mother, whom she associates with the sea in other passages, but also to
the despair of an entire community, descended from slaves and now dependent on an
unreliable and dangerous fish trade to feed and shelter themselves. Even as a seven-year-old, Claire is astutely
aware of the oppression and grief that the community has undergone. Fittingly, when Claire runs away from Nozias
and Gaëlle, she heads for Món Initil, where, according to legend, masses of fugitive
slaves died in pursuit of their freedom.
Just as the townspeople predicted by naming her a revenan at birth,
Claire seems to pursue the shadows of her own past as well as a communal past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather than join her mother in death or the ghosts of escaped
slaves on Món Initil, however, Claire ultimately returns—running and gleeful—to
the land of the living, ready to help the people gathered around the man on the
beach and then to “becom[e] Madame Gaëlle’s daughter” (238). On her way home, she imagines that “this too
could make a good song for the wonn”: “She had to go home / To see the man /
Who’d crawled half dead / Out of the sea” (238). In this version of a wonn song, Claire
focuses on a man’s triumph over the sea instead of the sea’s power to take and
to kill. For the moment at least, she shifts
her attention from death to life and despair to hope. This shift is reflected in the Nozias and Gaëlle’s
efforts to save the man on the beach; despite the fact that their own “sorrows
could have nearly drowned them,” the two “take turns breathing into this man,
breathing him back to life” (238). At
this moment, they choose to contribute to life instead of wallow in death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Danticat has been quoted as saying that she structured <i>Claire of the Sea Light</i> after the
pattern of movement in a game of wonn: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Wonn is a children’s game
that is a lot like “Ring a Round the Rosie.” Kids, often little girls, get
together, hold hands, make a circle, and run clockwise, or counter clockwise
while singing. One child is in the middle while the others are singing and they
switch places during different moments in the song. This game mirrors the
structure of the book in that the book moves back and forth through time and
circles back to different characters.
(Dowling) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Just as the stories in the
text shift and connect with each other as the participants in a game of wonn,
the narrative that the text conveys overall resembles the narrative of a wonn
song, relaying the history and spirit of a community through fragmented
narrative and stories that repeat, with a difference, details previously conveyed. Indeed, it is possible to read the text as an
expansion of the wonn song that Claire invents as she runs back to her
beachside home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Tellingly, the narrative
conveyed in the text contrasts sharply with the stories that Claire recalls
being read to her at school: “In Madame Louise’s stories, everything was
organized in a certain way; everything was neat. Things would start out well, but would end up
being bad, then would be well again” (214).
Louise George works at a local radio station and volunteers at Claire’s
school. She also suffers from a rare and
untreatable condition that causes blood to stream from her mouth when she is menstruating. Louise structures episodes on her radio
program, <i>Di Mwen</i>, translated to <i>Tell Us</i>, much like the stories that she
shares with the Claire and her classmates.
On <i>Di Mwen</i>, Louise interviews
members of the community who have undergone some kind of hardship or
trauma. Instead of calling for social
action to address the oppression in people’s lives, she finds opportunities to
lighten the mood with “little remarks in the middle of a painful story” meant
to “[make] people in the listening audience laugh” (173-74). Louise also shapes each episode to produce “the
part where the horrible story began to take a positive turn” (178), shaping her
guests’ stories into narratives that follow a traditional story arch, to
conclude happiness, stasis, justice. Not
surprisingly, “Claire didn’t believe stories like [Madame Louise’s], even when
she felt like they were aimed at her, even when they were meant to defend her
or teach her a lesson” (214). In fact, Claire
distrusts language in general, saying that she wishes people were like trees
because “talking wasn’t everything” (213).
Some narratives are false, damaging, even violent, as symbolized by the
blood that flows from Louise’s mouth.
The story that Claire composes in her wonn song—and the narrative of <i>Claire of the Sea Light</i>—defies the
traditional story arch structure and, thus, challenges the narrative oppression
of stories meant to contain and sanitize the struggles of Haitians. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">In fact, <i>Claire of the Sea Light</i> is more in the vein of the stories that
Bernard Dorien wants to air on the radio, where he works with Louise before he
is falsely accused of killing Gaëlle’s husband and then murdered by the men
that Gaëlle hired to enact justice for her loss. From Cité Pendue, the part of town where
gangs run rampant, “Bernard imagined himself becoming the kind of radio
journalist who’d talk about what he preferred to call the ‘geto,’ from the
inside” (67). Specifically, Bernard is
interested in the young men of Cité Pendue who participate in gang activity,
men the townspeople of Ville Rose call “ghosts” (68). He believes that “[w]e can’t move forward as
a neighborhood, as a town, or as a country . . . unless we know what makes
these men cry” (68). In <i>Claire of the Sea Light</i>, stories of the
oppression and despair felt by Ville Rose citizens of all social strata are
aired, although not in the way that Bernard might have imagined. In the end, Claire turns from the ghosts of
the past and the present to begin a new life.
Danticat’s wonn song conveys
continued struggle, as the characters not only fight to save a man’s life on
the beach but also contend with personal trauma and communal oppression. But the story ends with hope, with Claire of
the Sea Light returning to the community to help with the rescue effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Works Cited<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Danticat, Edwidge.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </span><i style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Claire of
the Sea Light</i><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Knopf Doubleday,
2013.</span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Dowling, Brendan. "Maneuvering Myself Around a Scene: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat." </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Public Libraries Online. 21 Oct. 2013.
Web. 23 May 2014.</span></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-64086710910321491252014-01-24T07:07:00.000-08:002014-01-24T07:07:22.292-08:00Immersive-Learning Project on Sustainable Agriculture<div class="MsoNormal">
Below, I describe and reflect upon the recent immersive-learning project that I led. I wrote this for publication on the English Department Blog. Enjoy!</div>
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In the fall semester of 2013, I led a seminar on sustainable
agriculture at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry (VBC). The main product to emerge from the class was
a 25-minute film entitled <a href="file:///C:/Users/Andrea/Documents/VBC/downtoearthfarming.org"><i>Down to Earth: Small Farm Issues in a Big Farm World</i></a>. The students in the seminar also developed <a href="file:///C:/Users/Andrea/Documents/VBC/downtoearthfarming.org">a website</a> containing <a href="http://www.downtoearthfarming.org/recipes.html">recipes for foods that
are locally available</a> and <a href="http://www.downtoearthfarming.org/food-for-thought.html">more than 60
articles</a> meant to serve as supplementary to the film. In addition, they built a four-week
curriculum on sustainable agriculture and implemented it in an after-school
program for elementary students at the Roy C. Buley Center in Muncie. I see the seminar as a great success! The students and I were able to develop
informed opinions about the future of farming and food production. The course also allowed us the opportunity to
enter into the current social and political movement toward sustainable
agriculture by sharing important information about local foods with community
members—and the world—through the film, website and educational program. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Since I hail from the Department of English, many people
have asked me about my interest in sustainable agriculture and why I chose this
topic for a VBC seminar. Certainly, I’m
not an expert in agriculture or environmentalism. But I care about finding solutions to the
problems in our current food system, in order to build a healthier world
population and to mitigate the damage that humans have caused to the Earth over
time. Agriculture has always been a part
of my life, as I grew up in rural Indiana surrounded by soybean and corn
fields, many of which my family owned and leased to local farmers. I began to develop a real interest in farming
only a few years ago, however, after I changed my eating habits because of
health issues. In the process of
researching the impacts of food choices on human health, I also learned about
the economic, social and environmental issues that have arisen out of our
current methods of agriculture. I saw
the VBC seminar as an opportunity to produce a film that would advocate for
responsible production and consumption of food items and, on a personal level, as
a chance to learn more about farming, an endeavor that I may someday undertake
through ownership of my own family’s farm. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some of the students in the seminar knew more about farming
than I did at the start of the semester.
Those from scientific fields brought valuable background knowledge of
agricultural and environmental issues, such as soil science and climate change,
to the seminar group. One student had
grown up on a working farm, and another was currently interning at a farm in
the local area. Others in the class were
more like me, from disciplines and backgrounds removed from agriculture. But each of us felt passionately about some
aspect of sustainable agriculture or another, and, throughout the semester, we developed
shared knowledge of the field. The
students also learned to depend on each other’s individual academic strengths
and personal skills to complete the projects of the seminar. Students from Telecommunications and
Journalism contributed particular skill sets that were crucial for the success
of the film, for instance, while those who were talented in research and
writing focused on producing articles for the website. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We began the semester with a visit to Becker Farms, where we
witnessed the successful use of sustainable methods such as rotational grazing
and natural pest control. In addition to
leading a tour of his own farm, Kyle Becker took us to see additional
farms—ranging in size from small to very large—that he serves as a large animal
veterinarian. During this time, we also read
seminal texts in the area of sustainable agriculture, such as Michael Pollan’s <i>The Omnivore’s Dilemma</i> and Anna Lappé’s <i>Diet for a Hot Planet</i>, to name a
few. We interviewed regular people about
their eating and purchasing habits as well as leaders in the movement for
sustainability in farming. Finally, we visited
Washington, DC, to talk with important political figures, such as Indiana
Senator Joe Donnelly, and representatives from groups like the American Farm
Bureau Federation and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition about food
policy. By the sixth week in the
semester, we were overwhelmed by the complexity and depth of the problems in
our current food system and wondered how we would ever make a difference in the
area of sustainable agriculture through a student film and other related
projects. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After some floundering, the group decided to focus the film on
the first farm that we visited together, Becker Farms. The students believed that they could use
Kyle’s story to convince consumers to exercise the considerable power that they
possess to drive a national movement for a socially, economically and environmentally
sustainable local foods system. <a href="file:///C:/Users/Andrea/Documents/VBC/downtoearthfarming.org"><i>Down to
Earth: Small Farm Issues in a Big Farm World</i></a> follows Kyle through a
week of life on the farm, at the farmers market, and on veterinary calls. At the same time, it presents commentary from
leading figures in the local foods movement, such as Joel Salatin and Will
Allen, to explore the importance of growing and selling food locally. The film shows that farming methods like
those that Kyle employs are environmentally and socially advantageous, unlike
many that are used in conventional agriculture.
Ultimately, <a href="file:///C:/Users/Andrea/Documents/VBC/downtoearthfarming.org"><i>Down to Earth</i></a> asks consumers to buy their food locally in order
to advance the movement toward sustainable agriculture. Besides the importance of its message, the
film is worth watching because it is beautiful!
Its cinematography and color are truly stunning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As is the case for all students who participate in VBC
seminars, the students in my class received up to 15 credits in courses that
they needed for graduation. They also
gained a deep understanding of many issues related to sustainable agriculture, something
that matters to each of us since we all eat and we all live on this
planet. The students were also given the
opportunity to develop professional skills, through the completion of project-related
tasks suited to their individual career goals.
Finally, all of us learned about teamwork, as we worked together to create
a film and related products that far exceed our early expectations for this
project. <o:p></o:p></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-40207410306245771552014-01-24T07:02:00.003-08:002014-01-24T07:03:12.147-08:00Post on Emma Donoghue's RoomPlease check out my post on <a href="http://bsuenglish.wordpress.com/?s=room" target="_blank">Emma Donoghue's <i>Room</i></a> over at the Ball State English Department's blog!literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-40439582329886257242014-01-02T08:06:00.001-08:002014-01-02T08:07:29.550-08:00No Divergence from "Mama Bear" Stereotype in Veronica Roth's Divergent<div class="MsoNormal">
My almost 11-year-old daughter recently received <i>Divergent</i> (2011), by Veronica Roth, as an
early Christmas present. The gift came
from a family member who had taught English in a middle school for the past
several years, so, thinking that it was already vetted by an expert, I felt
pretty safe letting Taegan read the book.
Besides, Taegan reads at at least a 10<sup>th</sup>-grade level, and
she’s been choosing books from the Young Adult section in the library for a few
months now. Granted, I try to assess
each YA book for its levels of violence and sexual content before letting her
check it out, but, honestly, how much can you tell from a cover? I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the idea
that she will probably, at some point, read content that is somewhat
inappropriate for her, but I guess I’d rather her read that than not at all due
to boredom with the books that are classified as Juvenile. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, I picked up Taegan’s copy of <i>Divergent</i> one day last week, and we ended up reading it
together. The book upheld my expectation
of a YA novel in its inclusion of some violence and sexual content. It was titillating but not explicit; perhaps more
importantly, nobody got past first base.
Even so, Taegan said that it contained the most kissing that she has
ever encountered in a book. <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span> Going through it with Taegan actually gave me
the opportunity to talk to her a little bit about what she was reading, though,
which ended up being a good thing, I think.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Divergent</i> is frequently
compared to <i>The Hunger Games</i> and <i>The Maze Runner</i>, due to its similar
themes and target audience. It is a
bestseller, and Lionsgate Entertainment is currently producing a film version
of the story. The novel is the first in
a trilogy about a dystopian world where people are strictly organized, according
to their dominant personality traits, into five factions: Abnegation, Dauntless,
Erudite, Candor, and Amity. It is also a
coming-of-age story, portraying Beatrice—or Tris—Prior’s discovery that she is Divergent,
which means that she doesn’t fit neatly into one faction; her subsequent choice
to leave her home faction of Abnegation, because she is unwilling to live an
entire life in a state of self-denial; and her successful initiation into
Dauntless, where she struggles to hide her differences from the other initiates. In the ending chapters, the novel depicts the
beginnings of a war between Erudite and Abnegation. Erudite’s attack is fueled by the insertion
of computer chips into members of Dauntless and their use Tris’s Dauntless
peers as combatants. By the end of the
novel, Tris is uniquely positioned—because she is Divergent—to quell the
violence of the war and change the structure of her society for the
better. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Divergent</i> is
interesting in several ways, but I am most intrigued by its portrayal of Tris’s
mother, Natalie Prior. Although the
critics have said very little about her, Natalie plays a crucial role in the development
of the story’s narrative arc, as she ends up teaching Tris that which I would
argue is the primary lesson of the novel.
In the heat of battle, Natalie courageously sacrifices her life for her
daughter, an act that proves that self-denial and bravery are sometimes one and
the same—not opposite from each other, as the division between Dauntless and
Abnegation seems to suggest. By
extension, Tris begins to realize that no one is merely one thing or another,
that every personality combines elements of selflessness, courage, knowledge,
honesty, and kindness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Natalie is portrayed as foundational to Tris’s journey of
self-discovery and cultural awareness, even from the opening pages of the
novel. The story begins with Natalie and
Tris locking gazes in a mirror, a moment that might suggest, of course, that
the two see each other in their own reflections. According to Abnegation rules, members of the
faction may utilize mirrors only on the second day of every third month, and,
this time, Natalie is taking advantage of the opportunity to cut Tris’s hair (1). Tris needs to look her best for the upcoming
Choosing Ceremony, where she will elect the faction in which she will spend the
rest of her life. Tris perceives Natalie
as the perfect model of self-abnegation, “well-practiced in the art of losing
herself” (1). But, in this instance,
Natalie surprises Tris: “Her eyes catch mine in the mirror. It is too late to look away, but instead of
scolding me, she smiles at our reflection. . . . Why doesn’t she reprimand me
for staring at myself?” (2). Natalie
surprises Tris again at the Choosing Ceremony, defying the motto, “Faction
before family,” when she assures Tris that she will continue to love her no
matter her choice (41). Certainly,
Natalie’s words contribute to Tris’s election to enter into Dauntless, but Tris
continues to think of her home faction and her new one as stark opposites, telling
herself, “I am selfish. I am brave”
(47). <o:p></o:p></div>
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When Natalie visits Tris on Visiting Day, she complicates
her daughter’s perception of the division between the two factions. Tris learns that her mother wasn’t always as
selflessness as she appears to Tris: Natalie was a transfer to Abnegation and originated
in Dauntless (188). Even more
shockingly, Natalie displays traits that Tris never saw in her before. When the older woman tells Tris that her
father isn’t attending Visiting Day because he “has been selfish lately,” Tris
is stunned: “More startling than the label is the fact that she assigned it to
him” (179). Tris deduces that her mother
must be angry with her father to call him “selfish,” and she is shocked that
Natalie is capable of such an emotion. Natalie
is also easily able to shake hands with Tris’s Dauntless friends, even though
shaking hands is not acceptable in Abnegation, where the gesture indicates too
high of a level of self-possession (181).
<o:p></o:p></div>
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After Visiting Day, Tris begins to call on the image of her
mother as both an inspiration for moments of self-sacrifice and a source of
strength when she is faced with challenges.
After a fellow initiate is brutally attacked by a competitor, Tris
volunteers to clean up the blood, thinking, “Scrubbing the floor when no one
else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can’t be with her, the least I can do is
act like her sometimes” (209). In a
later scene, Tris dreams that her mother engages her in the process of cooking
crows, birds that have repeatedly swarmed Tris in the simulations that she has undergone
throughout initiation (301). In this dream,
Natalie is depicted as herself a force of power and, also, as a source of
encouragement as Tris is learning to overcome her fears.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would argue that the climax of the novel occurs at the
same point where Natalie most surprises her daughter by displaying bravery much
like that of Tris’s Dauntless peers.
When the war between Erudite and Abnegation breaks out, Tris is discovered
as Divergent and taken to become a test subject for Erudite officials, as they
attempt to learn how to control even the most irrepressible among them (437). Natalie rescues Tris from her confines and
then courageously runs into a crowd of soldiers, knowing that they will kill
her but that her daughter will escape (443).
Tris later announces to her remaining family that, since leaving
Abnegation, she has learned how to be both brave and selfless and that, “Often
they’re the same thing” (457).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some might read Natalie as a powerful mother figure and her depiction
in the novel an improvement from, say, the portrayal of Katniss’s mother—weak and
overcome by her circumstances—in <i>The
Hunger Games</i>. Surely, Natalie is strong
and wise; she lives and dies as a testament to the important overlap between fearlessness
and self-sacrifice. But, at the same
time, Natalie’s characterization is stereotypical. She fits the type of the “mama bear”—or the “mama
grizzly” so infamously celebrated in Sarah Palin’s campaign rhetoric in 2008. <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MamaBear/Literature">In literature
and film throughout the ages</a>, the “mama bear” is subservient until her
child is threatened, at which point she becomes fearless and ferociously powerful. Michelle Rodino-Colocina argues that the “mama
grizzly” ideology articulated by conservative female politicians such as Sarah
Palin and Michelle Bachman “st[ands] to further the interests of wealthy, white
patriarchs rather than working to end sexist oppression” (89). It characterizes women as motivated solely by
the wellbeing of their children and, in doing so, reduces their own claims to subjectivity. Although <i>Divergent</i>
gives us a strong female lead in Tris, its depiction of Natalie Prior as a “mama
bear” does little to challenge this harmful sort of ideology regarding the
place and interests of women. In
addition to kissing, the “mama bear” is another thing that I’ll need to talk to
Taegan about.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Works Cited<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rodino-Colocina, Michelle.
“Man Up, Woman Down: Mama Grizzlies and Anti-Feminist Feminism during
the Year of the (Conservative) Woman and Beyond.” <i>Women
and Language</i> 35.1 (2012), 79-96.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
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Roth, Veronica. <i>Divergent</i>.
New York: HarpersCollins, 2011.<o:p></o:p></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-85932140549815799042013-07-08T13:03:00.000-07:002013-07-08T13:05:40.755-07:00The Sexual Power of Mother Nature in Prodigal Summer<div class="MsoNormal">
Teeming with the imagery of natural fertility, Barbara
Kingsolver’s 2000 <i>Prodigal Summer </i>presents
the<i> </i>intertwined stories of three unlikely
romances: Deanna Wolfe, a ranger dedicated to protecting the ecosystems of
Zebulon Mountain, and Eddie Bondo, a bounty hunter in pursuit of pack of
coyotes; Nannie Rawley, the liberal owner of an organic orchard, and Garnett
Walker, a stodgy old-timer determined to repopulate the Zebulon forests with an
ancient breed of chestnut trees; and Lusa Maluf Landowski, a scientist-turned-farmer,
and Cole Widener, Lusa’s husband who is killed early in the narrative but whom she
comes to know better after his death than she had during their very brief marriage. Within each of these pairs, the woman comes
to represent “mother nature,” pitted—to varying degrees—against the forces of “man,”
enacted and symbolized by her partner. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The storyline closely associates these women with nature—especially
its nurturance and fertility. The two
who are still menstruating, Deanna and Lusa, note that they naturally cycle
with the moon, for instance. Deanna also
cares for the wild animals that live near her mountain cabin in a way that Eddie
declares can only be classified as “maternal” (190). And after a couple of months of passionate—even
animalistic—intercourse with Eddie, a man nearly 20 years her junior, she
realizes that she will have a child of her own (387). Despite being recently widowed, Lusa, too,
becomes a figure of maternal abundance, deciding to adopt a troubled niece and
nephew as her sister-in-law loses her battle with cancer (380). Finally, both Lusa and Nannie use flower pollination
as a way of talking about sex with their young charges, Lusa with her niece
Crystal (351) and Nannie with Deanna when she was a girl (200). In this way, they present sexuality as a
natural part of life—and, indeed, as necessary to the continuance of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The three women also seem to understand the interdependence
of living things more clearly than their male counterparts. Several times, Deanna explains to Eddie that
a predator—though villanized in American culture—is a critical link in the food
chain, finally managing to convince him to read her Master’s thesis on the
importance of the coyote to the health of the mountain ecosystem (179, 362). Nannie values predators as well. When Garnett refuses to stop spraying near
Nannie’s farm, she invites him to sit down and delivers a lesson on the different
insects that live on her orchard, detailing how the bigger insects naturally
take care of the “pests.” This natural form of pest control is disrupted,
though, when these predators are killed off by the drift of herbicide that Garnett
uses to keep his lawn looking tidy. The
pest population recovers more quickly than the predator population, Nannie
explains, and causes great damage to her crops until the bigger insects can
once again handle the pests (274).
Lastly, after Cole’s death, Lusa decides to try an alternative to
tobacco, previously the Widener cash crop, and raise goats for meat
instead. Quite intentionally, she
integrates the goats into the landscape of the farm, using them to keep the
briars and thistles from taking over her hayfields and, in turn, allowing the
animals to harvest some of the hay in order to round out their nutritional profiles
(also turning them into more quality products for market) (157). <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the end, each of the men seems to acquiesce to the women’s
greater wisdom of the natural world, at least temporarily. Eddie departs Zebulon Mountain (without
knowing about Deanna’s pregnancy), leaving behind a note that simply states, “It’s
hard for a man to admit he had met his match” (432). Deanna takes this one line as an indication
that Eddie is “offering his leaving as a gift,” that he is leaving both Deanna
and her beloved coyotes alone: “No harm would come to anything on this mountain
because of him” (433). On the Widener
farm, Lusa’s goat-raising scheme is successful, bringing more of a profit than
Cole’s tobacco ever had. More
importantly, Lusa comes to realize that Cole had disliked the conventional
agricultural methods that he felt that he had had to use; she begins to think
that Cole probably would have enjoyed seeing the farm reformulated into a
hormone- and pesticide-free operation, although he was not willing to implement
these kinds of changes himself. For his
part, Garnett accepts Nannie’s offer to use the genetics of the old chestnut
trees on her orchard to strengthen the strains that he is developing and, in
doing so, starts to accept the idea that she already takes for granted—that relationships
are more important than property lines.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What is interesting about these cases, taken together, is
that the men seem to submit to the women as much because they are each irresistibly
attracted to their female counterparts on a carnal level as because they are persuaded
on an intellectual level to see the women’s points of view. Both Lusa and Deanna speak with their mates, Cole
when he was living and Eddie during his time atop Zebulon Mountain, of the
power of women’s pheromones to attract men (37, 92). After Cole’s death, Lusa is finally able to
accept Cole’s sense of attachment to her, and, then, that he would have wanted her
to make the farm her own after his death.
Just as Lusa’s pheromones most certainly played a part in the
development of Cole’s love for her, it is likely that Deanna’s womanly scents
played a part in Eddie’s development of affection for her and his subsequent decision
to leave instead of to hunt Zebulon’s coyotes.
For his part, Garnett finally gives in to Nannie’s kindness toward him
when he can no longer resist the image of her picking fruit in her “short pants”
(427). Although each situation is
different, in each of all three relationships, the man finally succumbs to the
power of a distinctly female sexuality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2009/03/prodigal-summer-by-barbara-kingsolver.html" target="_blank">Tom Conoboy has pointed out</a> that the ending of this novel is
a little too neat, happy, ultimately “bloodless.” This is true in lots of ways; one of these is
that the men seem to lose very little of themselves in submitting to their
female mates. I would argue, though,
that Eddie, Cole, and Garnett may be willing to shift in their worldviews, if
only temporarily, because they benefit as much as the women in seeing the
interconnectedness of the natural world.
If Deanna, Lusa, and Nannie represent “mother nature” in this text and
their male counterparts represent “man,” then the novel seems to suggest that
we must allow ourselves to be seduced by the sensuous beauty of the Earth—as Eddie,
Cole, and Garnett allow themselves to be by the women in the story. We must submit to the power of nature’s fertility
and abundance in order to reap the benefits of these. <o:p></o:p></div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-38680979800143063942012-09-18T09:06:00.000-07:002012-09-18T09:06:29.125-07:00Post on the Animalistic Black (M)OtherThis week, my work the animalistic black mother will appear on <a href="http://performinghumanity.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Performing Humanity: Humans and Animals in the Early Modern World</a>. In my post, I compare the depiction of black women in Early Modern travel narratives to the rhetoric surrounding contemporary black mothers, and, specifically, the most prominent black mother in the US, Michelle Obama. Check it out!literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-61479025438920356112012-08-22T06:19:00.002-07:002012-08-22T06:20:07.612-07:00The N-Word Presentation<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I developed this sample presentation for a course on "othering." It is designed to both model how I'd like students to construct their own presentations throughout the semester and also to introduce them to some of the controversial issues that will arise as they read and discuss Mark Twain's <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em>. The presentation brings up some important issues for teachers to consider--what are the consequences of using this term in the classroom or of avoiding the term?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've posted the rough script below. Follow along with the visual part of the presentation at: <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/education/the-n-word-controversy-7764505"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/education/the-n-word-controversy-7764505</span></a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 1</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">N-Word Controversy—more apt title might be N-Word Controversies</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Used as my cover image a pic of Malcolm X, a man who gave a lot of thought to this word</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">According to a treatise that he wrote for the Organization of Afro-American Unity in his final years, decided that it must be rejected in all of its forms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So, going to turn it over to you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Will ask you to think about whether this word should ever be uttered in today’s world</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If so, who has the right to say it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When should it be said?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Should it be printed in classic literary texts?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Finally, how should we handle this issue as we encounter the term in our own classroom?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Disclaimer—I use term “n-word” when reading aloud, but I have printed the actual word in the text of the presentation</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 2</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Going to start by talking a little bit about the word's orgins, specifically how it came to be used in the US</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">N-word derived from the Latin “niger,” meaning “black,” according to an entry in the OED </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">More importantly, became derogatory in the US as African-Americans became quintessential others </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Read quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Remember our definition of othering—projecting negative traits onto another human or group of humans in order to imagine that you don’t possess those traits and then treating them as inferior to reinforce your own superiority</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This is exactly how white colonists used n-word—to show that they were superior to another group, to other and oppress</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 3</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Many ask, why is this one word so incredibly offensive, maybe more so than any other in the English language?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Let’s follow the flow chart here</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In American, at least, it all started with slavery</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here we have a poster, offering a monetary reward for the return of human property</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Read poster</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Evidence of people hunted like animals, forced to serve others in ways that we don’t want to even imagine, and regarded as little more than part of white people’s larger estate</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Next, after abolition, freed slaves were forced to continue to serve white people, despite their legal “freedom”—as cooks, caregivers, maids, farm-hands</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Disallowed opportunities for education, social advancement, political activism</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Any attempts at uplift were met with violence</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Were continued to be treated as others in order to reinforce superiority of white people</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here we have an example of segregation—a “colored” water fountain, where black people were forced to drink water separately from white people because white people could not bear the thought of putting their lips near a metal piece that black people might also put their touch with their mouths</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Finally, in the present day, we only have to look at incarceration statistics to know that racism continues</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There were more than five times as many black men in jail than white men in 2006 according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We know that this is partly due to the continued limited opportunities available to black men and partly due to the stricter penalties enacted on black men vs. white men</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So, why is this word so offensive?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Aha! I know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It has everything to do with othering</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is because this word represents how black men and women have been othered throughout American history, it has been used to reinforce the inferiority of black men and women for centuries</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A clip from YouTube shows this legacy of oppression well--<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdY04-xds3k"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdY04-xds3k</span></a></span>: show segments 0-53, 1:24-2:05, 2:50-4:56</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 4</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The history of othering and oppression that my flow chart and the video show are very convincing in suggesting that the word should just never be spoken</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">On the other hand, some insist that we should say the word in appropriate contexts, in order to diffuse its power over us</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Emily Bernard writes about a series of discussions that she had with her college-aged students about the word</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Most refused to say it, but some agreed with her that it should be spoken</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In <em>The N-Word</em>, a documentary produced by Andy Cohen, comedian Dick Gregory goes a step further, saying that we are actually allowing a white racist system to erase a history of oppression if we stop saying the word that represents that oppression.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Certainly, we don’t want our silence to amplify or erase a history of othering</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 5</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the past few decades, black men and women have attempted to rehabilitate the n-word, or the different forms of it that I’ve printed on this page</span><span style="font-size: small;">We know that lots of people today use it as a way of identifying fellowship or brotherhood among black people or even just close friends</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">OED even recognizes this positive form of the word’s usage</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We see this in the media with figures like Laurence Fishborne, film director, who admits to using the term within close circles of friends on the documentary <em>The N-Word</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Nicki Minaj uses the term a total of 35 times in just one song, entitled “N.I.G.G.A.S.,” which laments the current oppression of black men in this country</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And she actually references the problem that I talked about a few minutes ago—that many black men are given very little opportunity for social advancement and end up incarcerated in numbers that are not proportionate to the number of white men who are imprisoned for the same crimes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is as if she is using this word—which some would say carries with it a history of oppression—to unite the black community in continuing “hold on” and “keep tryin,'” as the lyrics to the song say</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Then we have Sean Combs and Ludacris who also use the word in their music as a way of indicating fellowship or closeness with other black men</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Samuel L. Jackson says on <em>The N-Word</em> that he insists that all who work with him know upfront that he is an n-word</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Using the word in slightly different way—to indicate that he is tough and not afraid to fight for what he believes in</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Then we have Katt Williams who uses the term liberally in stand-up</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Use of n-word by black people themselves started to gain national attention in the 1970s when Richard Pryor began to do it in his comedy routines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Used it in a positive way, as a way of showing affection between family members, brotherhood between men—much like all of these contemporary figures do</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Ironically, after pretty much single-handedly managing to take the use of this word mainstream, Pryor renounced his use of the term in the late 80s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">According to Hilton Als, Pryor came to the conclusion that “to call one's brother a 'nigger'" is to describe one's own "wretchedness’”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 6</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now going to turn to the use of the word in <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ranked #14 on the American Library Association’s list of Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for the decade of 2000-2009</span><span style="font-size: small;">Reason cited is racism</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Book actually uses word total of 219 times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Might have something to do with it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because of the history of oppression and othering that comes with this word, it can make the book very difficult to read, even at the college level</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Going to quote from an article that you are going to read for this class in a couple of weeks</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This section of the article is written from the perspective of a non-traditional student—African-American woman, on her experience of reading Huck Finn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Had just returned to college</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Excited to have opportunity to read this classic that she had never read</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Read quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Interesting that she refers to Malcolm X here, man who believed in procuring dignity of black men and women through eradication of n-word, in her lamentation of its use in this American classic</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If it is this painful for a grown woman to read this word, imagine effects on a child</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 7</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why, in 2011, publisher NewSouth introduced edited versions of <em>Tom Sawyer</em> and <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Replaced "n-word" with "slave"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here are some reasons that Professor Alan Gribben gave during NPR’s <em>Talk of the Nation</em> last January for agreeing to edit the two texts in this way</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Says that this edition is for young children who would not get to read the book otherwise because of the ways that the book has been censored</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Says that Twain might well have adapted to this change, since this author was particularly known for changing his opinions about matters throughout his life</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And, finally, says that this edition does not change the central concept of the book, only makes it more tolerable for those sensitive to a particular word</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It would appear that Professor Gribben should get a gold star, right? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 8</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well, except for the fact that the new edition has caused public and scholarly outrage</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">One commentator on NPR’s <em>Weekend Edition Saturday</em> compared the editing out of the n-word in Huck Finn to the covering of the bloody figures in Picasso’s “Guernica” with band-aids</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quote</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Picasso painted “Guernica” to protest the bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian warplanes during the Spanish Civil War</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Meant to show suffering that war causes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To put band-aids over the gashes in this scene would not only deface this classic, evocative work of art, but it would also cover over a history of suffering that we should remember</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Similarly, Simon is saying that to change "slave" for the n-word in Huck Finn is to tamper with a work of art and also to deny the oppression and othering that this word connotes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is both silly and unwise</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 9</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Time is ticking</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now is when you decide what you believe and how you will handle this issue</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We’ve looked at figures like Malcolm X and Richard Pryor, who insist that the use of this term is harmful</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">People like Nicki Minaj, who see it as a way of uniting black men and women and fighting oppression</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seen how it can be hurtful to people when read in classic texts like <em>Huck Finn</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Learned how others insist that we must keep it and talk about it in order to remember a history of oppression</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What do you think?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Maybe take three comments on one small part of this issue, most important to us, how we should handle this in the classroom</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Each extreme and in the middle</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Clearly a provocative topic</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My hope is that discussion of it can bring us together instead of divide us</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Page 10</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Works Cited</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span>literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-69643020665492817842012-08-16T07:57:00.001-07:002012-08-16T07:59:32.079-07:00Gestational Imagery in William Gay's Provinces of Night<br />
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Those who have followed this blog since its inception know
that I am particularly drawn to Appalachian literature (see my posts on <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_793748831"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bastard Out of Carolina</i></a>,
<a href="http://literatimom.blogspot.com/2010/07/kaye-gibbonss-virtuous-woman-as-guilty.html" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Virtuous Woman</i></a>,
and <a href="http://literatimom.blogspot.com/2010/06/appalachian-attitudes-toward-female.html" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fair and Tender Ladies</i></a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find the tenor and themes of Appalachian
stories compelling perhaps because I’m only a single generation removed from
the hills of Kentucky myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My father
was born into a stereotypically impoverished and under-educated Kentuckian family,
not unlike many of those depicted in contemporary Appalachian novels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it seems to me that he’s spent a good
portion of his life trying to break away from the oppressive confines of his roots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dad can tell you about the day that he
realized, as an elementary school student newly relocated to Indiana, that he
would have to change the way he talked in order to gain acceptance from the
other kids in school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he’s always
proud to talk about how he worked his way through college as a janitor, eventually
earning his Bachelor’s degree in elementary education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From there, my father went on to obtain a
Master’s degree and finally a Doctorate, and he currently works as an Assistant
Superintendent for a school district.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
believes in the power of education and sees his pursuit of learning as that
which has lifted him from the poverty that plagued his parents and the generations
before them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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William Gay’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Provinces
of Night</i>, an Appalachian novel about the aggrieved Bloodworth clan of
Tennessee in the 1950s, also posits education as a way out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interestingly, it depends on gestation and
birth imagery to carry this message, using the maternal body as a necessary metaphor
for the positive change that is possible through education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Like others of the Appalachian literary tradition that use
Southern Gothicism to both lament and satirize the dysfunctional lives of an oppressed
people, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Provinces of Night</i> is largely
about death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great patriarch of the
Bloodworth family, who abandoned his wife and three sons years ago, has
returned home to die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No longer a legendary
rabble-raiser or skirt-chaser, he is simply a proud old man who wants to live
out his days with a measure of dignity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the end, E.F. commits suicide rather than face the “chickens coming home to
roost,” the wife who is growing senile but vividly remembers the ways that E.F.
hurt her in their youth, the son who seeks vengeance by trying to have his father
committed to “a home,” and the stranger who wants revenge for having been taken
by one of E.F.’s schemes (264).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As <a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2012/07/provinces-of-night-by-william-gay.html%20" target="_blank">Tom Conoboy</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>points out in a post on the novel, “there
is something elegiac in the writing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, we feel as though we might tip our hats to those in the novel,
like E.F. Bloodworth, who do the best that they can in troubled circumstances—or,
at least, have complex reasons for making the decisions that they make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For E.F.’s seventeen-year-old grandson, Fleming Bloodworth, though,
E.F.’s death literalizes the living death that he sees as his future if he
follows in footsteps of the men in his family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He honors E.F.’s desire to live and die on his own terms by assisting his
grandfather in carrying out the suicide, but Fleming is transformed by
witnessing the once invincible E.F. Bloodworth choose to blow his own brains
out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/provinces-of-night%20" target="_blank">Stephanie Sorensen</a> says that the novel suggests that “jewels can emerge from the rough.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Fleming earlier finds himself
getting caught up in the often illegal and/or immoral schemes of his uncles and
his cousin Neal, by the end of the novel, he is ready to stand on his own—and to
move away from the way of life of the other Bloodworths, that which leads to
death and belongs to the provinces of night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the suicide, Fleming quickly takes action to change
the trajectory of his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a gesture
of closure, he burns the tumbledown cabin in which he has lived alone for
months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cabin has offered Fleming
little in the way of direction, as it is where he has simply existed, awaiting
the return of his father, who left to pursue and kill the peddler who ran away
with Fleming’s mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it is gone,
he continues with his newfound plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
registers for the Navy, intending to fulfill his military contract so that the government
will then fund his education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally,
Fleming looks up Raven Lee Halfacre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a result of a brief relationship before she met Fleming, Raven
Lee is pregnant with Neal Bloodworth’s child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Neal denies his paternity of the baby and has now left the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the episode with E.F., Fleming is no
longer unsure about how to handle this situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Raven Lee says, “I wish this was your
baby,” he replies, “I’ll take it then. . . . I want it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Neal doesn’t want it and he doesn’t want you. . . . I want you any way I
can get you and I’ll treat the baby the same as if it was mine” (285).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they make plans to marry and move away to
wherever Fleming is stationed, Raven Lee’s maternal body—previously degraded
and abandoned—is reclaimed as valuable and loved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More importantly, because it holds the
potential for new life, it becomes representative of Fleming and Raven Lee’s
hope for the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This innocent new
life, despite its being borne of generations of poverty and depravity on both
sides, will have a better existence than those of its forebears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No one knows better than Fleming, however, that there are “no
givens” in life (287).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, considering
what we know of their family histories, it seems like a long shot that Fleming
and Raven Lee will live out the rosy life that we’d like to imagine for
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, they love each other, but
the flashbacks in the novel show us that E.F. and his wife loved each other,
too; that didn’t stop them from tearing each other apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In an epilogue, the novel puts our doubts to rest (and, I
would argue, sort of wrecks the beautiful ambiguity of the more natural ending which
leaves us to wonder what will happen to Fleming, Raven Lee, and the baby).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This final section tells us that the dam
being built throughout the action of the novel is completed and that a rush of
water flushes and drowns the basin where Fleming’s cabin once stood: “Then the
waterway was cut from the river and the water poured down the slope toward the
creek, churning and moiling and talking to itself, and the basin began to fill
in earnest. There was no life here. It was a world creating itself, caught in
the caesura between the scraping away of the old order and the gestation of whatever
altered form might follow” (292).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
water imagery here connects this description to Raven Lee’s maternal body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Raven Lee’s womb, the basin is
transformed from a despised and barren place to a space of promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fleming’s old life is swept away by powerful
life forces, and his new life is gestating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We are left to imagine that, with another gush of water, this new life will
ultimately emerge from Raven Lee’s maternal body and triumph completely over
the old ways.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the triumph that is suggested as soon to come is
inextricably linked to the pursuit of education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fleming is set apart from the other
Bloodworths from the beginning, in that he reads anything that he can get his
hands on and has even already written one book (although the publishing company
won’t accept the manuscript because it is handwritten).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Raven Lee is different as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She buys cokes at a downtown store in order
to sit and read the magazines for sale there, and she spends hours at the
library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most significantly, of course,
the two will get their opportunity for real change by pursuing Fleming’s
education, provided by the military.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
Raven Lee’s maternal body is the symbol of positive change, Fleming is its
agent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they seem to figure out in the
final pages of the novel, they depend on each other to realize their dream for
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Raven Lee is tied to Fleming in
that he is the one who has the opportunity to earn an education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fleming needs Raven Lee because she
represents hope, now that she is pregnant more than ever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The emphasis on education as a pathway to change in this
text parallels the significant role that it is has played in my father’s
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Fleming seems to sense when he
admits that there are “no givens,” and as I’m sure my dad would agree, education
doesn’t solve all problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it often
provides a way out of poverty and, therefore, we like to believe, frequently improves
our quality of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly, an
educated E.F. Bloodworth might not have been forced to make the tough decisions
that he made throughout his life, perhaps would not have hurt the people he
loved so deeply by playing out his limited options, and may not have faced the grotesque
end depicted in the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note: <i>Provinces of Night</i> was released as a feature film entitled <i>Bloodworth</i> in 2010. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Works Cited</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gay, William. <i>Provinces of Night</i>. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. </div>
literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-90505923014721876942012-08-03T11:50:00.000-07:002012-08-03T12:06:02.975-07:00Sublimity and ChildbirthI recently composed a sample presentation on the Romantic conception of "The Sublime" for my Honors humanities sequence and thought I'd share. <br />
<br />
Some questions came up as I was working on this, mostly regarding the second kind of sublimity that I discuss in the presentation, the Gothic sublime. According to Vijay Mishra, in the gothic sublime, the subject takes pleasure in the fact that s/he has no power over the terrifying or grand and her/his complete subjugation within it. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around this idea. People might cite the example of the horror film--we enjoy the overwhelming feeling of terror when watching <i>Saw</i>, for example. But don't we know, in the end, that it is just a movie, that we can turn it off, that we DO have control over it in this way? On the other hand, once the ideas are in our heads, do we have control over them any longer? So, perhaps the horror film is an adequate example because we do give in to the terror of allowing ourselves to have horrifying ideas. Another example might be Goth culture. Do people wear particular kinds of clothing and get particular kinds of body modifications in order to submit to the grandness of terror? Not sure that I buy that one either.<br />
<br />
My final thought is that perhaps childbirth could sometimes be seen as an example of a sort of submission to the Gothic sublime. If a woman were to enjoy the experience of childbirth (and, inexplicably to me, I've heard women say that they do), she would certainly be taking pleasure in the terror of something larger and grander than herself, something bloody and gory and connected both to death and to a life force. What do you think?<br />
<br />
Okay, here's the script. Follow along with the presentation located at: <a href="http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/education/the-sublime-7736923" target="_blank">The Sublime</a><a href="http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/education/the-sublime-7736923"></a>.<br />
<br />
Page 1<br />
Today going to talk to you about the sublime<br />
Might see this title page and get excited--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTCyZvb2Uzw" target="_blank">"Santeria"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTCyZvb2Uzw"></a> <br />
Not what we’re doing here today<br />
The sublime is an artistic and philosophical concept derived during the European Romantic movement of the late 18th century<br />
<br />
Page 2<br />
Start by talking about definitions<br />
In typical usage, use sublime as adjective<br />
Going to talk about “the sublime” as a noun<br />
Definition that we’ll be using is taken from A Dictionary of Philosophy<br />
Don’t forget—terrifying yet awesome grandeur<br />
<br />
Page 3<br />
Most scholars see Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published in 1757, as the seminal text for the concept<br />
Burke distinguished between beauty and the sublime<br />
Quote from Arthur Krystal’s "Hello, beautiful: what we talk about when we talk about beauty," published in Harper's Magazine in 2005<br />
Remember the tenets of Neoclassicism that we discussed when we created our Monticellos—symmetry, balance, serenity, reflection of rationalism, goal of beauty<br />
Here’s Burke saying “Bye-Bye, Neoclassicism” <br />
<br />
Page 4<br />
Immanuel Kant expanded on the concept of the sublime in The Critique of Judgment, published in 1790, according to article by W. Walsh in Encyclopedia of Philosophy<br />
Believed that pleasure that we take from the sublime comes from our recognition of our own brain’s ability to comprehend the immensity of the object and thus exercise some kind of power over it<br />
Because I can see that you are terrifying and great, I must therefore be powerful<br />
Quote from Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy explains <br />
So, yeah, the brain is super awesome according to Kant<br />
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Page 5<br />
Romantics believed enlightenment possible through encounters with the sublime <br />
So, remember the definition? Terrifying yet awesome grandeur, would bring higher level of understanding of life<br />
Thought the sublime would help them to see the light, so to speak<br />
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Page 6<br />
Romantics believed that they could not only find the sublime in nature but also in art<br />
Kant pointed to St. Peter’s Basilica—or even the larger St. Peter’s Square—in Rome, Italy as an architectural example of the sublime<br />
Goal is not necessarily beauty—not the balance that we see in Monticello—but power and immensity, movement<br />
We see a lot of life here (with the flow of people) in contrast to serene setting of Monticello<br />
<br />
Page 7<br />
An example from the world of music is George Frideric Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, composed in 1741<br />
In Music and Monumentality, Alexander Rehding says that critics differ as to the characters that they consider indicative of the sublime in music<br />
Some say that a fugue, which is a special type of repeating theme, must be present in a piece for it to qualify as containing the sublime—this happens in the Hallelujah Chorus (34)<br />
Others say that the piece must have intensification and contrast, which we definitely hear in the Hallelujah Chorus (34)<br />
Rehding himself says that the sublime is present when our “sensuous capacity[ies] [are] overwhelmed” (104)<br />
I would argue that this also happens in this piece—let’s see what you think <br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fu8YIG8uyQ" target="_blank">"Hallelujah Chorus"</a><br />After listening to this, I think we can all agree that Handel is pretty much a rock star, hence the electric guitars<br />
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Page 8 <br />
In literature, scholars divide Romantic writers into those of first generation and those of second generation <br />
Early writers tended to focus on finding the sublime in nature<br />
Lines from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”<br />
Here we have an explanation of how this poet believed that the sublime worked<br />
Find terrifying yet awesome grandeur in nature, in this case the landscape surrounding the ruins of the Abbey<br />
Experiences a lightening of the load of this world because finds some understanding in that moment of being overwhelmed<br />
Transports new understanding back to daily life<br />
<br />
Page 9<br />
Second generation of Romantic writers tended to focus on the terrifying part of the definition of the sublime—terrifying yet awesome grandeur<br />
Felt that the best way to experience the immensity and power of the world was to experience the ecstasy of terror<br />
According to Vijay Mishra, this kind of sublime is very different from the Romantic sublime that we’ve talked about so far—that we saw in St. Peter’s Basilica, Handel’s Messiah, and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”<br />
Remember that Kant said that we get some pleasure out of the terror of the sublime because we enjoy our mind power, our ability to recognize the awesomeness of the grandeur<br />
With the gothic sublime, though, we embrace the fact that we have no power over the terror, we take pleasure in our complete subjugation within the sublime—how the terror of the sublime completely defeats us (Mishra 17)<br />
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Page 10<br />
Out of this arose the gothic novel, like we’ll be reading<br />
Some traits of gothic novels, according to an entry in the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia<br />
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Page 11<br />
Visual artists also worked toward capturing the gothic sublime in their work<br />
Here are a couple of notoriously terrifying paintings by the German artist Henry Fuseli <br />
First is The Nightmare, painted in 1782<br />
Mysterious horse head, dark colors, medieval look<br />
Also incubus (male demon who lies upon sleeping women in order to have sexual intercourse with them)<br />
We can see here what Mishra is talking about when he says that the gothic sublime was about embracing the subjugation that comes with terror, as this woman is completely under the control of the incubus<br />
Other is Horseman Attacked by a Snake (1800), similarly terrifying, as horseman is again completely overcome by the power of the devouring snake<br />
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Page 12<br />
To end, return definition of terrifying yet awesome grandeur, engagement with which might lead one to Enlightenment<br />
How has this carried through to today’s culture<br />
As mentioned in discussion of gothic, definitely allow ourselves to become terrified by watching mystery or horror films—do we expect these experiences to lead to enlightenment?<br />
Interesting question<br />
It is clear that we continue to seek the sublime in nature and to consider those experiences times of Enlightenment<br />
We go hiking, we visit the ocean, we climb Mount Everest--<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAC1rtzp53U&feature=fvwrel" target="_blank">Mount Everest</a><br />
From 8850 meters, the creators of this video clearly experienced the sublime, terrifying yet awesome grandeur, and as the soundtrack demonstrates, I think, this experience helped them to see themselves differently as human beings<br />
To reach a level of Enlightenment<br />
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Page 13<br />
Works citedliteratimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-1746210106507306862012-06-30T18:22:00.000-07:002012-06-30T18:31:24.895-07:00Oppression and True Womanhood in Ellen Glasgow's VirginiaHere're a couple of snippets of the paper that I wrote for ALA 2012. Enjoy! And offer feedback, as I'd like to turn this into a full-length article:<br />
<br />
In scholarship on Ellen Glasgow’s 1913 <i>Virginia</i>, surprisingly little has been said of the title character’s name. This is curious because, in its obvious allusion to her home state, the name that Glasgow bestows upon the protagonist of her eleventh book seems to position Virginia, the character, as representative of Virginia, the state in which the novel also takes place, and, by extension, of “the South” itself. It seems to me that, by considering the implications of Glasgow’s choice to name her central character after the state, we can start to delineate the ways that Virginia’s circumscription as a True Woman—which is an aspect of the novel that has been well-documented in the scholarship—reflects the oppressive functioning of the Southern body politic. I’m going to argue in this paper that the novel portrays the ideology of True Womanhood as not only leading women like Virginia to lives of sacrifice and ultimate abandonment but—and perhaps more importantly—as also working to maintain the functioning of the body politic that prevents social change within the South as a whole.<br />
<br />
And I will start, as I’ve already suggested, with the name that Glasgow gives her title character. Virginia’s name has a proud history, at least for the citizens of Dinwiddie, Virginia, where the story is set. In the first few pages of the novel, we are introduced to a group of townspeople, who even 19 years after “the war,” continue to show respect for the those who fought to preserve the antebellum way of life by addressing these men by their military titles, people who even “a quarter of a century after ‘The Origin of Species’ had changed the world’s thought,” have never seen the book (14). Despite the defeat of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the people of Dinwiddie carry on with “cheerful fortitude” (9), considering their home state to be all that matters: “Of the world beyond the borders of Virginia, Dinwiddians knew merely that it was either Yankee or foreign, and therefore to be pitied or condemned according the Evangelical or the Calvinistic convictions of the observer” (14). <br />
<br />
Like Virginia, the True Woman, Virginia, the state, is both cherished and carefully policed; she is idealized and protected from foreign infiltration. The etymology of the name “Virginia” augments this discussion of Virginia, the character, as representative of a body politic in need of border patrol. The first usage of the name “Virginia” appears on a 1587 map of the British colony in North America; the colony was named for Elizabeth I, “The Virgin Queen.” In this way, of course, Glasgow’s use of the designation “Virginia,” a name originally denotative of sexual chastity—particularly in a woman—reveals the author’s specific concern with the rhetoric surrounding the regulation of female sexuality. Indeed, through its depiction of Virginia’s cultivation as a virginal young girl, carefully controlled reproduction throughout her childrearing years, and ultimate abandonment once she has “outlived her usefulness” (445), the novel plots out the way that women of “leading families” (12) have been utilized similarly to the once ripe land of the colony, and then state, of Virginia—mostly for the benefit of middle-to-upper-class white men. <br />
<br />
. . .<br />
<br />
The one episode in <i>Virginia</i> that most fully reveals the connection between True Womanhood and the maintenance of the white male power hierarchy of the South is that of Virginia’s young son’s bout with diphtheria. Not insignificantly, Harry starts to show signs of illness immediately following Virginia’s decision to leave the children in her mother’s care—for the first time except for once when she thought that Oliver was sick and needed her in New York—and go with Oliver and a few friends to Atlantic City for a short getaway (329). In the middle of the night before Virginia and Oliver are set to go, Harry wakes up with a sore throat. His primary complaint, however, is that Virginia will be leaving him unprotected from “the black man” who frightens him in the hours between dusk and dawn: “But suppose the black man should come in the night while you are away, and I’d get scared and nobody would hear me” (331). In this way, sickness and blackness start to become confused, and, in Harry’s mind, at least, Virginia—possibly because, as his father had sensed years before, Virginia’s soul possesses a fierce “purity” capable of snuffing out “evil”—is the first line of defense to be employed against either or both of these threats. Of course, Virginia quickly decides that she must forego the trip to Atlantic City to stay home and protect her son. And when the illness sets in with more force, Doctor Fraser affirms Virginia’s belief that she alone can bring Harry back to health, telling her “sternly,” “[Y]ou must bear up; so much depends on you” (350). Obediently, Virginia not only nurses Harry day and night for three days, but also guards her son from the scary black man, making a point of telling him, even as he is delirious with fever, “Remember there is no black man, and mamma is close here beside you” (349). Throughout the diphtheria episode, then, Virginia plays the part of the perfect True Woman—providing round-the-clock care to her child, thinking nothing of her own safety or comfort but only of Harry’s wellbeing, praying unceasingly to God to take from her all worldly happiness in exchange for the sparing of her son’s life, and heeding the orders of the male authority Doctor Fraser. Ultimately, the diphtheria runs its course, and Harry pulls through—probably just as well as he would have had Virginia not completely abnegated herself during his sickness. <br />
<br />
Symbolically, though, the episode demonstrates the ideological function of True Womanhood to protect the empowered white male citizenry (or, in this case, the future of the white male citizenry) from the threat—real or imagined—of either blackness figured as illness or illness figured as blackness. For, as Virginia points out when she wonders “whether the fright makes [Harry] sick or the sickness brings on the fright” (333), the two are really one and the same; to allow black men and women to advance socially would be to allow for a type of “sickness” to infiltrate the social body, according to a Dinwiddian perspective. <br />
<br />
The diphtheria episode reveals, then, the faulty logic of the rhetoric surrounding lynching, showing that it is not white women who need protection from the sexual penetration of black men but, instead, white men who need defense against the social advancement of black men in order to preserve their own privileged status. In this way, the True Woman—as a representation of the Southern body politic—functions symbolically to protect the social and political interests of white men. <br />
<br />
. . .<br />
<br />
Works Cited<br />
<br />
Glasgow, Ellen. Virginia. New York: Double Day, Page & Company, 1913.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-26426956165007768082011-12-22T07:18:00.000-08:002011-12-22T07:34:42.856-08:00"The Golden Virgin" of Amiens CathedralI'm not quite sure how, but I survived my first semester of teaching two literature classes and two humanities classes. I finished up this week, submitting final grades on Monday. Since then, I've been fine-tuning my syllabi for next semester. I'll be teaching two sections of the literature course that I've been teaching for a year now and two sections of HONRS 202, the second course in the humanities sequence. This course will cover The Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment. In preparation for the HONRS 202, I've also designed a sample "Art Presentation." For this assignment, I'm going to ask student groups to design a presentation that analyzes a work of art from the period. The assignment is detailed; if you're interested, let me know, and I'll send you a copy. <br /><br />So, here is the rough script for my sample presentation entitled, "The Golden Virgin: A Tale of Lost Luster." Actually, it's a lot more like an essay at this point. I'll more it into a speech format at some point before I present it in January. The link to the slide show (which I made in Mixbook, so is more like a scrapbook than a slide show, really) is listed at the top. Enjoy, and give feedback!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/all/the-golden-virgin-a-tale-of-lost-luster-6421369">The Golden Virgin: A Tale of Lost Luster</a> <br /><br />1. Today I’ll be talking to you about a sculptural piece built into the Amiens Cathedral in France known as “The Golden Virgin.” “The Golden Virgin” is a full-length depiction of Mary, who, in the Christian tradition, conceived a child through an act of God and ultimately bore Jesus Christ the Savior. In this piece, a crowned Virgin is holding the baby Jesus with one arm against her hip and pointing toward him with the other hand. Surrounded by angelic figures, Mary is smiling down at her child. In its typical Gothic portrayal of the Virgin Mary as both a sort of divine queen and a very earthly mother, this piece resonates with the larger tension of our Middle Ages unit between the spiritual and the secular. Because of this conflicted depiction of such an iconic female figure, “The Golden Virgin” also raises questions about the roles and treatment of women—and especially mothers—during this historical period. This presentation will show that the changing representations of the Virgin during the Middle Ages empowered women in some ways but mostly worked to contain them within the oppressive rhetoric of a male-centered church and culture in general. My subtitle, therefore, is meant to connote a double meaning; just as the Virgin’s original gold paint finally faded away, so, too, did the initial appeal of the “Cult of the Virgin” ultimately lose its luster for the women of the Western world.<br /><br />2. In fact, I would argue that the rhetoric of the “Cult of the Virgin,” which we will examine in this presentation, has left us with a legacy that continues to work to oppress women. In order to move toward this point, I would like to start with a look at a couple of relatively contemporary depictions of mothers. As we are watching these clips, in fact, I’d like for you to watch for the tension between a spiritual form of mothering and a worldly form of mothering, the sort of tension that is depicted in “The Golden Virgin” of the early 13th century. So, now I present you with June Cleaver vs. Claire Dunphy. The first clip that I’d like to show you is from an episode of Leave It to Beaver, a popular sitcom that ran from 1957-1963. In this clip, the stereotypical 1950s suburban housewife June Cleaver is talking to her son about God. (Play <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkSc9RXs0IA">June Cleaver clip</a>.) Let’s take a look at a mother who plays her more earthly counterpart, Claire Dunphy of the currently popular Modern Family. (Play <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl5mKdVdrHM">Claire Dunphy clip</a>.) We will return to these two clips at the end of the presentation, but just keep these in the back of your mind as contemporary representations of the two sides of the tension between divine and earthly motherhood depicted in “The Golden Virgin.”<br /><br />3. To return to Amiens Cathedral, let’s begin with some history suited to the Gothic style of the church. A cathedral at Amiens was originally built in 1137, and it always attracted its fair share of pilgrims because of its reputation for housing relics of local saints. But, when the head of St. John of Baptist was purportedly brought back from Constantinople by Crusaders in 1206, the cathedral became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations of Europe. So, when a fire destroyed the original Romanesque structure in 1218, church leaders used the money collected from pilgrims to fund a new Gothic construction. According to A Dictionary of Architecture of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the current Amiens Cathedral was planned and begun under the leadership of Robert de Luzarches in 1220. Thomas de Cormont and then his son, Regnault de Cormont, later took over the project, finishing around 1288.<br /><br />4. Amiens Cathedral is a typical Gothic cathedral. The term “Gothic,” according an entry in Grove Art Online, refers to the architecture and visual arts of Europe during a period from about 1120 to as late as the 16th century. This style “overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished after the onset of Renaissance art in Italy and elsewhere.” Gothic Cathedrals tended to use a “Latin Cross” or Cruciform floor plan, as is shown here to ideologically resemble a Christian cross. They are characterized by pointed arches. They give the impression of great height, and they emphasize light through expansive windows and less weighty walls than those used in the Romanesque style. They often contain multiple and richly decorated portals. They include stone sculpture depicting biblical figures. The Virgin Mary was a common choice for representation in this type of sculpture. To move on to talk a little bit about Gothic sculpture in particular, the characteristics of this art form include ornamentation with jewels and gold, attachments such as crowns, swords, etc., rounded features and draped clothing, and realistic stance and expression.<br /><br />5. As we can see in these close-ups, “The Golden Virgin” fits many of these criteria. She clearly has a rounded nose and mouth and chin. Anyone who has ever held a baby would recognize her stance of propping the baby on one hip as highly realistic. She is also wearing draped clothing and, overall, her realistic posture is of that which art experts have labeled “Gothic sway.” And yet, to point to something that is less realistic and more heavenly, she is wearing an ornate crown. In this way, of course, “The Golden Virgin” represents a joining of the earthly and the divine.<br /><br />6. The Virgin Mary was not always portrayed in sacred art as both queenly and tender, as she is in “The Golden Virgin.” Indeed, numerous scholars have shown that “the cult of the Virgin”—which is, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, “the external recognition of [the Virgin Mary’s] excellence and of the superior way that she is joined to God”—was manipulated throughout the ages by church officials in order to meet the various needs of the developing church; her portrayal in art, therefore, changed significantly over time. Mary Thurlkill points out, for instance, that Mary was confirmed as the mother of Christ in 431 BCE in the first place only in order to settle a dispute between “two important church leaders” and to “prove,” for once and for all, “that Christ was God and man simultaneously” (13). In this way, stories about the Virgin Mary—who in this 5th century fresco proves that Christ is human by breastfeeding him—served to justify the ideological basis of Catholicism. During the Romanesque period, an expressionless Mary, like this second one, was often pictured as holding the Christ child in her lap and therefore served as a sort of throne for him herself. In this way, as Penny Schine Gold points out, Mary was literally used to “[present] her son to the world” (10). Through the end of this period, she was not necessarily a figure that women perceived as a model for their personal lives but instead as divine queen, an impersonal figure who served as a backdrop for Christ’s power and grace. And, finally, as in this final depiction, Gothicism was the first movement to present the Virgin as an earthly mother with feelings in her own right. For the first time, then, with the emergence of Gothicism, Mary became at least somewhat relatable, a model for real life women to emulate.<br /><br />7. The new, more earthly representations of Mary affected women in both positive and negative ways. As Georges Duby explains, the most widely available model of womanhood during this time was of the type attributed to Eve: the treacherous sinner who just could not control “the raging sensuality that [people of the Middle Ages] believed naturally consumed [women]” (7). The Gothic Mary offered women a new ideal. Instead of sinful, women could reinvent themselves as the moral leaders of their homes. Instead of always suspect, they could imagine and portray themselves as valuable and sacred to the community. On the flipside, though, women were limited in some significant ways by the iconography surrounding this new Gothic Virgin. First and foremost, the Virgin is . . . well, a virgin. This required women who wanted to fit this model to reign in expression of their sexuality, to, in a word, turn ownership of their own bodies over to their husbands and the patriarchs of the community and the church. Also, the Virgin is a largely silent and sacrificial figure. In this way, of course, women who wanted to live up to this standard learned to care for their children and husbands and churches and not for themselves. With tongue-in-cheek, Thurlkill says that Mary provided “the right gender model for women to emulate: active within the domestic sphere as virgin, mother, and bride, yet yielding to masculine, public authority as holy [handmaid]” (98). In other words, because the Virgin is always portrayed in the rhetoric of the Church as submitting to and serving men, she is a problematic model for women in the real world to emulate.<br /><br />8. At this point, I’d like to return to the two clips that we viewed at the opening of my presentation—of June Cleaver and Claire Dunphy. Even though we might now consider June’s model of motherhood outdated and Claire’s model of motherhood perhaps more realistic, I’d be willing to bet that many of us would still use words like “perfect” and “imperfect” or “moral” and “amoral” to discuss the differences between these two women. In this way, of course, I’d suggest that we still consider June Cleaver the ideal mother and Claire the “fallen” version of motherhood. And what is interesting to me about our continued respect for June Cleaver over women like Claire Dunphy is how it resonates with the rhetoric surrounding “the cult of the Virgin.” June Cleaver is more like a Mary figure than Claire Dunphy will ever be. If you recall, in the first clip, June is talking to her son about God’s ability to see all of his actions; in this way, she certainly acts as a conduit to God, a “holy handmaid,” happily going about the task of teaching God’s children to submit to his ultimate authority and discipline. When her son goes on to ask about his father’s morally questionable behavior, June is careful to maintain an attitude of the utmost of respect for her husband at the same time that she continues in her role as ethical guide to her son. In all ways, June takes on the posture of self-sacrifice and submission to the needs of her male relatives and God. In return, she is clearly venerated in this clip as the perfect spiritual mother, much like Mary herself. In the second clip, Claire Dunphy contrasts sharply with this image of June as a Mary figure. Instead of acting as a spiritual or moral guide for her children, Claire gives in to temptation and joins her daughter’s in talking negatively about the members of another family. Instead of bringing glory to a male God or patriarchal figure, Claire literally assaults a man because she is so wrapped up in her “sin” of gossip. While the Beaver perhaps ends up closer to God after his mother’s intervention, Claire’s daughters end up cracking jokes about being “felt up” by their mom and with lipstick all over their faces. Claire’s behavior—while perhaps more realistic than June’s—is not presented as suitable for emulation but instead laughable. So, although we perhaps acknowledge our imperfections as mothers and women more freely than 60 years ago, we still look to Mary-types as ideal mothers in many ways. This is one result of the introduction of the more realistic, relatable Virgin in the Gothic period. “The Golden Virgin” typifies the tension of the “cult of the Virgin” at this point in history between a queenly divinity and an earthly tenderness, a tension that ultimately led to less than lustrous results for the women of the Western world.<br /><br />9. And here is my Works Cited page. Thank you.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-9247437502125969662011-07-19T16:16:00.000-07:002011-07-19T16:21:31.046-07:00The Threat of the Monstrous Mother in Beowulf and The Tempest, and, By Extension, the Western HumanitiesIn planning for the Honors Western Humanities Sequence that I will begin teaching in the fall, I’ve now made it all the way through to Shakespeare. Mind you, that’s around 4000 years of Western humanities in less than three months! I’ve been a busy (and, admittedly, a very selective) reader. The first course in the sequence—which I’ve discussed in several previous blog posts—is currently plotted out in detail and pretty much ready to go, while the second course is really only starting to take shape. <br /><br />Part two of the sequence picks up with the collapse of the Roman Empire in around 476 and continues through the 18th century. The first literary text that I have slated as required reading for this course is <em>Beowulf</em>, an epic tale of a Geatish warrior written in Old English between 700-1000. In sum, Beowulf battles three antagonists in the course of the text: a monster named Grendel, who has terrorized a neighboring community of Danes for several years; Grendel’s mother, who seeks revenge for her son’s brutal death; and a dragon, who meets his demise as he causes Beowulf’s own heroic death. As you might well guess, it is this second battle—the one with Grendel’s mother—that most captures my fancy and that works as a point of comparison with the depiction of Sycorax the witch in <em>The Tempest</em>. <br /> <br />After <em>Beowulf</em>, students in my course will move through some Chaucer, Machiavelli, and others before we get to Shakespeare in the latter part of the semester. I’ve selected a couple of Shakespeare plays for the course, including <em>The Tempest </em>(ca. 1610), a play that depicts the mystical events that occur on an island inhabited by a deposed Italian duke, Prospero and his daughter, Miranda. In the play, Prospero manages to conjure up a tropical storm that ultimately brings about Miranda’s marriage to the prince of Naples and both Miranda’s and Prospero’s safe return to Italy. Like in <em>Beowulf</em>, however, the threat of a monstrous mother looms near throughout much of the action in <em>The Tempest</em>, as we are repeatedly reminded that the island was previously ruled by an evil witch, Sycorax, who, luckily, died before Prospero and Miranda arrived. Sycorax’s legacy survives in her deformed and degraded son Caliban, who challenges Prospero’s claim to the island but whom the exiled duke ultimately enslaves, and the airy spirit Ariel, whom Prospero saves from Sycorax’s curse only to subject him to servitude as well. These characters and their histories with the witch keep the threat of Sycorax alive for Prospero and Miranda throughout their years on the island.<br /><br />Grendel’s mother and Sycorax, although conceived in the English imagination nearly 1000 years apart, seem to serve similar functions in these two stories. Both are presented as abject monstrosities who wield considerable (maternal) power over our two protagonists; both are depicted as obstacles to the construction of these protagonists’ male subjectivity; and both are ultimately defeated in order to protect boundaries of the patriarchal state and masculine selfhood. That said, Grendel’s mother and Sycorax are different in some also important ways. Perhaps most significantly, the witch Sycorax is particularly figured as originating from Africa, and, in this way, blackness enters into the equation in this latter text. Instead of a clearly fictional monster, the threat and other in <em>The Tempest </em>takes the shape of an empowered black woman.<br /><br />The similarities between these two characters speak, of course, to the seemingly age-old Kristevan struggle against the maternal (a struggle that continues to be depicted in literature and popular culture even today, as I show in <a href="http://literatimom.blogspot.com/2010/05/resisting-trip-in-pink-floyd-wall.html">my post on Pink Floyd’s <em>The Wall</em></a>). Both Beowulf and Prospero must separate themselves from identification with the (m)other in order to establish subjectivity as men. After slaying Grendel’s mother, Beowulf emerges from her terrifying underwater lair—surely a sort of representation of that which Kristeva calls the semiotic—a hero of men. He has proven that despite the fact that Grendel’s mother reacts with recognizably human emotion to her son’s death and then acts on the same social codes as he does by engaging in a blood feud with her son’s killer, he is separate from this monstrous mother. Likely preserved in oral form for over 400 years before it was recorded, the story of Beowulf’s battle with Grendel’s mother seems foundational in the maintenance of the cultural identity depicted in this early English text. In the symbolic realm of a culture built on the heroic deeds of men and the exchange of women to secure political ties, Beowulf’s killing of Grendel’s mother reinstates the binaries that underwrite Beowulf’s identity and that of his Geatish community: self/other, good/evil, order/chaos, male/female, etc. <br /><br />Prospero, too, constructs and destroys a (m)other in order to claim personal subjectivity and also to regain entry into Italy. Although he and Sycorax share the experience of exile, a seeming proclivity for enslaving or entrapping mystical beings, and even an expertise in magic, Prospero defines his goodness in opposition to his own articulation of Sycorax’s evil. A lover of the written and spoken word, Prospero uses language to overwrite the history of Sycorax’s seemingly semiotic island space, reminding Ariel that while Sycorax entrapped him in a tree, he “freed” the spirit from this prison and dismissing Caliban’s claim to his mother’s island by repeatedly enumerating Sycorax’s perceived evil. Already pregnant when she arrived on the island’s shores, Sycorax represents an unleashed maternal power, a threat to the same cultural binaries that figure so prominently in <em>Beowulf</em>.<br /><br />Considering the historical context of an increased Western colonization of faraway lands and the development of slavery as a dominant mode of ensuring Western profit during Shakespeare’s time, I would argue that Sycorax threatens in The Tempest to blur the boundaries of more emergent binaries as well, such as home/away, center/periphery, colonizer/colonized, and white/black. To reclaim his right to return to the civilized world, Prospero must demonstrate that he does indeed belong to the categorizations of home, center, colonized, and white. Acting on his own perceived paternal benevolence, he therefore conquers a bewitched island, abolishes its established maternal order, and brings to rights a social hierarchy that for a while seemed to privilege female over male and chaos over order as well as away over home and black over white. <br /><br />As a woman and an African, Sycorax becomes the ultimate (m)other for Shakespeare’s audiences—and remains so for generations of Westerners to come. Her maternal power threatens white and male privilege, and the suppression of her order ensures the continuance of a very foundational construction of Western-ness, something that I ironically hope to dismantle in my teaching of “the Western humanities.”<br /><br />Note: I’m aware that this post is lacking in textual support, critical engagement, and perhaps even analytical nuance, but I received news today that a press is interested in my book, so I must immediately set to revising my chapters so that I can submit the project in its entirety and get the ball rolling. Yay!literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-65426149804641573502011-06-21T16:51:00.000-07:002011-06-21T16:55:02.982-07:00Genesis: More and Less, Or, What I Didn’t Learn in Sunday SchoolAs I am preparing to teach the “Christianity and Judaism” segment of my upcoming Humanities course, I’ve returned to some of the Biblical stories that I haven’t thought about for many years. With adult eyes, training in literary and feminist theory, and quite a bit of distance from my evangelical Christian upbringing, I am discovering that many of these stories are quite different than I remember. Indeed, they are both more and less than how they were presented to me in Sunday School: more in that together they demonstrate the beautifully complex human construction of a religious tradition, a way of making sense of and being in an unpredictable and often brutal world, and less because, by way of uncompromising misogyny and an assumption of “racial” superiority, they exclude most of humanity from the chosen people. For me, these stories represent a certain literary greatness, but I don’t find them particularly helpful in guiding my own spiritual growth. In this post, I point out some discrepancies between the ways that these stories are typically taught in Christian settings to children in their spiritually formative years and how they are actually presented in Biblical verse. <br /> <br />For the sake of brevity, I’ll just stick with one book, the foundational book of Genesis. And, as a disclaimer, I am no theologian, so my claims may not bear out against those of Biblical experts. All the same, my interpretations represent the careful, reasoned responses of a layperson to the incidents recounted in Genesis.<br /><br />Here are some things about Genesis mythology that in my day were—and likely still are—glossed over, misrepresented, or simply ignored in Christian Sunday School: <br /><br />1. Genesis is clearly not a linear, singularly-composed narrative, and nor even are its individual “stories.” There are in fact two renditions of human creation, for example, and, what’s more, they contradict each other. In the first one, God creates man and woman at the same time. In the second one, God creates man and then woman out of man’s rib. It is this second story which also includes the legend of “the fall.” Indeed, there is no indication that “the fall” portion of the tale is connected in any way to the first story of human creation, which comes to a full stop before the second one is introduced with the concluding statement: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created” (Gen. 2:4). One could easily read these two versions of the story—one in which men and women are created as equals and God sees them as “very good” (Gen. 1:31) and the other in which God positions man as superior to a female being who ultimately brings about the onset of human suffering—as indicative of the changing status of women as ancient cultures moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture and, therefore, became more male-centered and militaristic over time. In any case, these are two different stories of creation, probably circulated orally in different eras and/or among different Hebrew sub-sets and likely recorded at a much later date as alternative versions of the same mythology. Other stories also repeat or overlap, such as the conception and birth of Seth, in Gen. 4:25 and again in Gen. 5:3. These repetitions of stories, of course, calls into question the belief, so relied upon in contemporary Christian churches, that the Bible is more than a book of stories, that it is in fact a divinely inspired narrative of the development of the one true religion.<br /><br />2. In contrast to this belief in the singular “truth” of the Christian doctrine, Genesis presents the God of the Hebrews as not all that different from other gods of the ancient world. Indeed, the mythology surrounding this God is fairly unexceptional compared to that surrounding the gods of Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Although most historians and theologians understand a monotheistic belief system as unique to the Hebrews, the assumed monotheism of this group is at least questionable. In one place in Genesis, for instance, God calls himself “us” (Gen. 3:22). Most Biblical scholars argue that he is here referring to himself and his host of heavenly beings, namely the angels. This is problematic because it implies that he does indeed share power with other superior beings. Certainly, the angels interact physically with the characters of these Biblical stories, not unlike Athena in The Odyssey or Cupid in The Aeneid. Furthermore, in a couple of scenes at least, the narrator(s) refer(s) to an angel as “Lord,” the same name that he also calls God (Gen. 16:11-12 and Gen. 19:2). Is it not likely that the angels are Hebraic representations of Zeus’s or Jupiter’s host of less powerful gods? It seems also significant that the narrator(s) implicitly compare(s) God to other higher beings by repeatedly referring to him as the “Most High” (Gen. 14:17-20). Clearly, God is the supreme protector and ruler of the Hebrews, but this doesn’t foreclose the possibility that the people depicted in the Biblical stories believe in other opposing gods of surrounding peoples, just as the people of Uruk, for example, saw Inanna as their protectress from the powers of other Mesopotamian deities. It is certainly possible that the Hebrews perceived monotheism in very different terms than we perceive it now, in terms that allowed for the presence of “lords” in heaven and gods of other lands.<br /><br />3. The mention of temple prostitution in Genesis also seems to imply a tolerance for other gods. In one scene, Judah has intercourse with a woman whom he assumes is a temple prostitute (Gen. 38). This scene is of course interesting in many ways. In that Judah is a married man, this story’s inclusion in the book of Genesis might imply an early acceptance that male “needs” sometimes exceed legitimate female accessibility. Even more shocking, this anecdote might also indicate that the Hebrews did indeed worship gods other than God. Temple prostitutes were revered in ancient Mesopotamian culture as physical conduits to fertility gods and goddesses. Was Judah’s casual copulation with a woman he thought was a temple prostitute simply his way of getting the action he is denied at home, or is it an act of worship? <br /><br />4. Whether or not he is the only god whom the Hebrews worshiped or believed in, the God of Genesis certainly behaves in ways similar to the polytheistic gods mentioned above. He engages in very human activities and acts upon very human emotions, for instance. In a seeming assertion of his superiority over man, for example, he wrestles with Jacob and, after much struggle, manages to land a final injurious blow to Jacob’s thigh (an incident that inexplicably leads to the declaration that Hebrews should consequently refuse thigh meat) (Gen. 33:22-32). God is also fickle, “opening and closing the wombs” of Jacob’s wives with seeming caprice, for instance, transferring allegiance from Leah to Rachel and then back again as the two wives vie for the title of giving Jacob the most sons (Gen. 30). Finally, like other polytheistic gods, God requires sacrifice as a way of giving thanks and ensuring his continued good favor. I think that we can all agree that, as an institution, sacrifice makes no logical sense. Why would God need human food? Why would he require his people to give up their precious sustenance? Like all of the gods of the ancient world, though, God wants his choice cuts of meat. (In Exodus, in fact, it appears that his choice cuts of meat include first born sons [Ex. 22:29], but that is a topic for another day.) God’s similarities to other gods clearly points to the development of the Judeo-Christian tradition out of the religious beliefs of other ancient cultures.<br /><br />5. Again like other religious groups of the ancient world, the Hebrews of Genesis had no conception of hell, and instead seem to have believed in a shadowy underworld, a place that they called “Sheol.” Pretty much everyone in Genesis goes to Sheol when they die, except for a few named exceptions in Gen. 5, who are chosen by God to join him in heaven. The fact that hell becomes part and parcel of Christian doctrine but does not exist in Genesis shows, of course, the fine-tuning of the Judeo-Christian belief system over time.<br /><br />6. It is also important to note that, in Genesis, deceit is acceptable under certain circumstances. Both Abraham and Isaac, during times of famine or journey, lie in order to earn the favor of rulers in surrounding areas (Gen. 12, Gen. 20, and Gen. 26). Both, in fact, present their wives as sisters in order to allow the inclusion of these women into the royal harems of Egypt and then Gerar and to secure the aid of those in power. (In this way, of course, arranged prostitution seems also acceptable under certain circumstances; more on that later.) To name another example, Rachel’s theft of her father’s “household gods” (the existence of which also call into question the monotheism of the Hebrews) and her false insistence on being in “the way of women” in order to disallow the search of her person for these items also show that it is okay to lie (Gen. 31). Whether Rachel took the idols because she wanted to deny her father access to their power or because she wanted to worship them herself, the implication seems to be that her quick thinking here aids in her husband’s successful escape of his overbearing father-in-law, and, more importantly, Isaac’s return to his people and fulfilling of his important in God’s plan for the Hebrews.<br /><br />7. This brings me to a crucial point, perhaps especially for all of those female Sunday School teachers out there: with the possible exception of the woman in the first creation story, women in the book of Genesis exist only as tools through which men fulfill God’s plan for the Hebrew nation. Women bear sons and, in this way, further the lineage of God’s chosen people (read: chosen men). Now, this fact can become obscured by the rhetoric of the portions of Genesis that name both mothers and fathers as ancestors of important Hebrew figures. It would appear that, in this way, female lineage is as important as male lineage. Just as in other ancient cultures, though, it seems most likely that female lineage is presented as significant in this way only because it represents the joining of two male-headed households. Isaac, for instance, enjoins his son to find a wife among the daughters of Laban, his wife’s brother (Gen. 28:1-4). Decrying other possible wives of the “Canaanite women,” Isaac thus works to ensure the pure Hebrew lineage of God’s chosen people, Jacob’s sons who later become the heads of the tribes of Israel. Because women are important only in helping men to fulfill their covenants with God, it makes sense that they should be sacrificed sexually for the Hebrew cause when necessary. If Sarah or Rebekah must be prostituted for the patriarchs to avoid starvation or death, as I mentioned above, the stories in Genesis imply, then so be it. <br /><br />8. Indeed, female sexuality is quite frequently presented as an invaluable bartering chip. To name another instance of male trading of women’s sexuality, Lot is willing to hand over two likely adolescent daughters to a band of angry “sodomites” in order to preserve the purity of his male guests, saying, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof” (Gen. 19:7-8). As in The Odyssey, then, hospitality it tied to male honor, and women are sacrificed to preserve the ties between men. <br /><br />9. As outrageous as it seems, the narrator(s) of Genesis present(s) women as taking pride in their purposes as embodied representations of the ties between men and as reproductive units. In order to ensure the continuation of their father’s male lineage, for instance, Lot’s daughters are, in a later scene, willing to deceive him into copulating with them—presumably multiple times—until both are pregnant with male heirs (Gen. 19:32-36). These nameless women are then venerated as the mothers of the male ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites (Gen. 19:37-38). When Sarah, Rachel, and Leah experience periods of barrenness (due to God’s inexplicable “closing of their wombs”), they are ashamed and, in seeming atonement, offer their slave women to their husbands for the procurement of male children (Gen. 16 and Gen. 30). These incidents clearly show that women in Genesis are in fact rendered heroically when they prostitute themselves and other women for the future of Israel!<br /><br />10. Now for a word about slavery: simply put, the early Hebrews were for it, and God never disallows it. (Even after their captivity in Egypt, not incidentally, the Hebrews functioned under codes and laws, passed directly from God to Moses, regarding the proper treatment of slaves, but that gets into Exodus.) What I am most interested in, though, is not slavery in and of itself—because obviously it was a bad thing—but the relationships between wifehood, concubinage, prostitution, and female slavery. All of these are mentioned in Genesis, and they seem to overlap in significant ways. As I have already demonstrated, wives and daughters are sometimes nearly prostituted (in each of the cases that I’ve mentioned, the “foreign” men who are offered the Hebrew women in trade reject these offers), and slaves seem to be routinely prostituted. Also, it appears that many of the patriarchs of Genesis held multiple wives, concubines, and female slaves and seemed to use them somewhat interchangeably. There is a definite slippage between these classes of women, and one passage demonstrates this point most succinctly. It picks up after Abraham has already had Ishmael by Hagar, Sarah’s slave, and Isaac by Sarah. After Sarah’s death, “Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him [six sons who went on to sire a total of ten more sons]. All of these were the children of Keturah. Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country” (Gen. 25:1-6). In this passage, Keturah is given the title of “wife,” but she is clearly classed with Abraham’s other “concubines” when Abraham sends all of his sons away except for Isaac, whom God has chosen as a leader of the Hebrew people. Hagar is presumably also considered a “concubine” in this instance, as Ishmael is grouped in with all of the other sons who are sent away. In sum, it seems that there is little difference for a man of God in Genesis between a wife, a prostitute, a concubine, and a female slave. They each exist for the sole purpose of producing male heirs in the Hebrew line and aiding in male endeavors to fulfill pacts with God.<br /><br />Culturally, historically, and literarily, the Biblical stories in Genesis are extraordinary. But their being taught to children in Christian settings as morality tales and as evidence of a coherent religious tradition is perplexing to me. The morality here is shady at best, and the tradition is almost certainly both composite and constructed to promote the solidarity and empowerment of an exclusive class of Hebrew men.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-52393697135691414722011-06-14T06:39:00.001-07:002011-06-14T06:45:33.190-07:00Dido at the Extremes: Vergil's Tragic Heroine as Victim of and Threat to RomeIn the scholarship of Vergil’s <em>The Aen</em>eid, Dido is a bit of a divisive character. Scholars are all over the map in their interpretations of this first queen of Carthage, a woman whose intimate relationship with the Trojan hero Aeneas delays, for a full year, his journey to Italy and the inevitable founding of Rome. Some understand Dido as a Vergilian Cleopatra, a vagina détente of sorts that must be fought off in order for Aeneas to successfully fulfill his destiny. Others see her as a representation of Epicureanism, a mode of thought that Aeneas has to reject in favor of the popular Roman ideology of Stoicism. Still others perceive Dido as a tragic figure, a woman who falls deeply in love with a man who genuinely loves her in return and pursues a relationship with him despite both of their knowledge that he is destined for another fate. I argue that Dido is a victim caught in the crossfire of two goddesses: Juno, who has it out for Aeneas and would like for the queen to refuse him help when he lands on the shores of Carthage, and Venus, Aeneas’s mother, who ensures that Dido will aid in Aeneas’s mission by causing her to fall for the Trojan hero. In the end, Dido is collateral damage, sadly—but necessarily—destroyed in order to ensure the success of Aeneas’s imperialistic charge.<br /><br />There are lots of ways that Vergil demonstrates his sympathy for Dido’s plight and thus paints her as a victim. The author portrays Dido as wise and cautious, but also generous and fair, in her initial dealings with Aeneas and his men: “’Ease your hearts, Trojans, put away your fears. / The threats to my new kingdom here have forced me / To carefully place guards on all the borders. / Who hasn’t heard about Aeneas’s family, / Or Troy—those brave men and the flames of war? / . . . / I’ll send you off secure and well-supplied” (17). Vergil also allows us insight into Dido’s heartbroken and humiliated consciousness when Aeneas prepares to leave Carthage a year later, in over 10 pages of the queen’s cursing herself for her foolishness to believe in Aeneas’s love and her shame in abandoning the memory of her first husband before she finally takes her own life. Most of all, Vergil depicts Dido as an ideal potential wife—at least within the context of first-century Roman culture that valued familial devotion and a patriarchal family structure.<br /><br />My most persuasive bit of evidence for this claim is that Dido comes to love Aeneas through his child, Ascanius, and is therefore positioned, first and foremost, as a good potential mother. Venus gains access to Dido’s emotions by sending Cupid in the form of Ascanius to a banquet given in Aeneas’s honor soon after he lands in Carthage. Disguised as Aeneas’s son, Cupid crawls into Dido’s lap and easily captures her heart; Dido looks on Ascanius “with hunger in her heart” and is “enchanted” by the little boy (21). As was Venus’s plan all along, “unlucky Dido” then transfers her love for Ascanius to Aeneas himself (22). Had Venus hired one, a modern-day efficiency consultant would certainly have here pointed out that she could have skipped a whole step if only she had only charged Cupid to take the form of Aeneas instead of Ascanius. Or, she could have just given Aeneas a divine glow, as Athena grants to Odysseus before he meets Nausicaa (a scene that is frequently compared to Aeneas’s initial encounter with Dido, not incidentally). Desperate to protect her own child, though, Venus seems to recognize Dido’s maternal instinct as her biggest vulnerability and plans her course of action accordingly. In this way, of course, Dido is an ideal potential Roman matron, devoted to her would-be child as well as his father.<br /><br />Besides loving Aeneas’s small son, Dido proves her worth as an ideal Roman wife in other ways. First of all, as any proper wife should, she expresses reluctance to abandon the memory of her dead first husband instead of carelessly entering into a relationship with Aeneas right away; as she considers a future with Aeneas, Dido suffers “an unseen flame [that] gnawed at her hour on hour” (71). Once Dido gives in to her passion for Aeneas, though, she centers her world on this would-be second husband, even neglecting her professional duties as a queen to act as a wife to Aeneas. Indeed, it seems that Dido desires for Aeneas to serve as a co-ruler of Carthage, to perhaps take over the projects that she formerly headed up, as she presents him with a visible symbol of Punic royalty, “a purple cloak with think gold stripes” (78) so like her own “purple robe,” “edged with rich embroidery” (74). Dido is clearly willing to allow Aeneas a kingship and to take her traditionally female place as second-in-command.<br /><br />Portraying Dido as a potentially ideal wife who is victimized by the gods and by fate heightens the tragedy of this story, an epic which details the sacrifices and death required for the founding of an Empire and, indeed, seems in parts to question the overall worth of this venture. In this way, all of the various scholarly perceptions of Dido carry some validity. She is both a tragic figure and representative of a sort of Epicureanism, a self-indulgence unbecoming of and impractical for a man as politically important as Aeneas. And, in some ways, Dido is also a figure of the castrating bitch type, a stand-in for Cleopatra who perhaps nearly caused the downfall of Rome. Although Vergil characterizes Dido as a potentially loving and devoted mother and wife, she is also a sexually attractive and aggressive woman, and, as such, she is also a potential trap, a danger to Aeneas and, by extension, to Rome. Indeed, Aeneas must pry open the vagina détente and abandon Dido’s hold on his heart in order to reach his full potential as a true man of Rome.<br /><br />Works Cited<br /><br />Vergil. The Aeneid. Trans. Sarah Ruden. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-17324156533762762812011-06-06T08:13:00.000-07:002011-06-06T08:15:08.276-07:00The Good Woman of A Few Good MenThis weekend, I revisited Rob Reiner’s <span style="font-style:italic;">A Few Good Men</span> (I was 12 when it first came out and probably viewed it once a few years later as a teenager). I am planning to use the film to spur discussion on the contemporary treatment of themes like justice, law, truth, leadership, etc. that my Honors humanities students will also discover in Sophocles’s tragedies from the fifth century BCE. It will work just fine to do that, I think, and, as an added bonus, it will help us to discuss the role of women in contemporary “tragedy” in comparison to the female figures, such as the title characters of Antigone and Electra, that we find in Greek drama. Indeed, this film casts women—in a military setting and in the 1980s, at least—similarly to how Sophocles casts them in these two plays, in static roles that function to support the development of male leaders and benefit the state at large. <br /><br />I was surprised to find in LCDR Joanne (not insignificantly nicknamed Jo) Galloway, the only lead female character in the film, a stereotypically female lack of self-confidence and an equally stereotypical willingness to “nurture” her male colleague, LTJG Daniel Kaffee, as well as his scapegoated young clients, Pfc. Louden Downey and LCpl. Harold Dawson, from behind the scenes. As Galloway, Demi Moore disappoints. This is certainly not the Demi Moore of G.I. Jane or even Disclosure. She is first introduced muttering to herself as she prepares to request that her male superiors give her the Downey and Dawson case. She botches the request despite her preparation and is then ordered from the room so that the two men present can “talk behind [her] back.” When they call her back in, they of course announce that Downey and Dawson will be appointed alternative counsel. The defense of the two young Marines ultimately lands in the lap of the goof-off Kaffee, who is more interested in winning inter-unit baseball and basketball scrimmages than of pursuing the truth in the military investigation.<br /><br />Galloway accepts Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) as lead counsel on the case, but as an officer in Internal Affairs, she is able to keep a close eye on him. She ends up joining his defense team and helping him to win the case and, thereby, develop into the lawyer he was meant to be, a man who finally decides to fulfill the patrilineal legacy left by his attorney father and who ultimately proves his worth as an officer in the Navy. Indeed, despite her constant spurring on of Kaffee and her invaluable work on the case, it is not Galloway who is recognized by a salute at the end of the movie—and thus fully indoctrinated as one of “a few good men”—but Kaffee. Galloway stands behind the male lawyer, happy to have helped.<br /><br />Sure, this film does at least partially admit to the discrimination that Galloway faces in the military, as Kaffee implies at one point that she has had to prove herself at every turn because she is a woman and, more obviously, in the scene in which Col. Nathan Jessep (played by a crotchety Jack Nicholson) crudely suggests that the only value that women—and especially high-ranking women—bring to the military is their ability to sexually arouse and satisfy their male colleagues. In the face of Jessep’s sexual harassment, Galloway stands her ground, refusing to let the corporal off the hook simply because he has succeeded in debasing her in front of a circle of other men. But Jessep is the bad guy anyway; his abuse of Galloway is easy to write off as just another demonstration of his tyrannical personality. And when she helps to finally put him away, the implication is that not only is the military now freer of the abuse of power but also of sexual discrimination—the later part of which is simply not borne out in that ending salute.<br /><br />Like Antigone, who is executed in order to help define the legal rights of (male) individuals within a state, and Electra, who temporarily steps outside of the bounds of femininity to help restore a rightful (male) leader, Jo Galloway quietly makes the world a better place from a position of clear social inferiority.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-47930080501627548132011-05-24T18:24:00.000-07:002011-05-24T18:29:58.032-07:00Penelope as (M)Other: Telemachus’s Coming of Age in The Odyssey<em>The Odyssey</em>—familiar to most of us although likely read by few—is widely known as an epic love story: Odysseus beats the odds of multiple sea storms, encounters with murderous gods and monsters, and even death itself to reunite with his ever-faithful Penelope. Our cultural memory of this text is curious given that, in keeping with what we know about the historical treatment of women in Homer’s Greece, the story consistently portrays women as mere possessions to be traded among men, symbolic of bonds between upper-class households. Pierre Brulѐ writes of marriage during the period: <br /><br />Matrimonial transactions set in motion a ‘transhumance’ of wealth—the flocks brought by the suitor, the ‘dazzling gifts’ of the future husband, garments and jewelry (theoretically for the bride, but as she will live with her husband, these riches are merely for ostentation, hardly have they come out of the coffers than they are put back in them), the ‘dazzling gifts’ of the father, which form the true ‘payback’ of the transaction. They legitimize the marriage and the children-to-come, and are the basis of the alliance between the ‘houses.’ (68) <br /><br />In <em>The Odyssey</em>, much of the action of the plot is actually spurred by the intricacies of this system of exchange between men. Odysseus and Penelope’s son, Telemachus, is fearful that his mother will soon settle on a suitor, which would result in Telemachus’s inheritance transferring to the possession of a step-father and later probably half-brothers. Penelope is allowed to make a decision regarding her fate instead of a male caretaker only because of her very unusual circumstances: she is assumed to be widowed and has no male children of a legal age. Nearing the age of rightful ownership over his mother in the absence of her husband, Telemachus is convinced by the goddess Athene (who reminds him that mothers are apt to forget about sons of a previous marriage when they bear sons for a new husband) to put Penelope in her place, to usurp her tenuous claim to decision rights over her future and to bring his father back in order to ensure a return to the rightful patriarchal order of the household. In this way, <em>The Odyssey </em>is less a love story than a French Feminist nightmare, a bildungsroman in which Telemachus comes of age by learning to recognize Penelope as (m)other.<br /><br />This claim is demonstrated perhaps most persuasively in the text’s continual upholding of a matricidal model of manhood. Indeed, less than seven pages into the more than 250-page text, we are introduced to perhaps the single most important contextual frame of this story: the widespread celebration of Orestes’s killing of his mother and her lover, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, in revenge for the murder of his father, Agamemnon. Athene—a motherless goddess, borne of Zeus alone, we must remember—scolds Telemachus for his apparently tardy development of manhood, saying, “You are too old to plead infancy any longer; have you not heard how people are singing Orestes’ praises for having killed his father’s murderer, Aegisthus? You are a fine, smart-looking fellow; show your mettle, then, and make yourself a name in story” (7). Athene here references the story of Orestes’s matricide in the larger context of suggesting that Telemachus kill off his mother’s suitors, who are leaching off of the (now dwindling) wealth of his household. The goddess insinuates, then, that in both Orestes’s and Telemachus’s cases, murder is justified in order to protect the rightful assets of the young sons of politically powerful war heroes. Whether the victims are mothers or lecherous men in pursuit of Odysseus’s wife and fortunes is of little consequence. In fact, Athene does not even mention Clytemnestra by name, which, again, points to her interpretation of Orestes’s matricide as less important than his reclaiming of his father’s property. <br /><br />In this way, Orestes is celebrated throughout the text as hero despite his killing of his own mother. In a later scene, though, the issue of matricide is finally addressed more directly. Nestor explains to Telemachus Clytemnestra’s complicity with Aegisthus’s treachery against Agamemnon, which led to her murder at the hands of her son, “At first [Clytemnestra] would have nothing to do with the scheme, for she was of good natural disposition; moreover, there was a bard with her, to whom Agamemnon had given strict orders on setting out for Troy, that he was to keep guard over his wife; but when heaven had counseled her destruction, Aegisthus carried this bard off to a desert island . . .—after which she went willingly enough to the house of Aegisthus” (25). This version of the Clytemnestra/Aegisthus myth is telling in several ways. First of all, it entirely omits the event that many versions of the story suggest led to Clytemnestra’s eventual alliance with her husband’s enemy, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their adolescent daughter, Ighigenia, to the gods in exchange for the guarantee of success in the Trojan War. Indeed, Clytemnestra joined with Aegisthus an angry mother seeking revenge for her daughter’s brutal murder. Also, Nestor portrays Clytemnestra as a mindless being—in keeping with the perception of women as little more than chattel during this period, according to Brulѐ (75)—in need of shepherding by a male bard in Agamemnon’s absence and easily led astray after the bard’s abandonment. Given her object status as well as her inclination—if not held in check by patriarchal forces—toward animalistic behavior, then, it is little wonder that Telemachus is able to learn to perceive his initial obedience to the (m)other as an impediment to his achievement of male subjectivity.<br /><br />Indeed, before leaving to attempt to retrieve his father, Telemachus signals his newfound manhood by relieving his mother of her duties as interim head-of-household. After she criticizes the musical choices of the household bard, Telemachus instructs Penelope, “Go then, within the house and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for speech is a man’s matter, and mine above all others—for it is I who am master here” (8). Telemachus, thus, silences Penelope’s expression of opinions regarding the public space of the household and banishes her to manage the more inconsequential women’s sphere of spinning and weaving. In a later scene, after he has reunited with Odysseus and secretly plotted with his father to defeat Penelope’s suitors, Telemachus takes yet another opportunity to assert his mastery over his mother. Not knowing that Odysseus has returned in the disguise of a beggar, Penelope has reluctantly agreed to let him participate in the bow stringing contest to win her hand in marriage. Telemachus again orders her into the house, saying, “This bow is a man’s matter, and mine above all others, for it is I who am master here” (231). In both of these instances, Telemachus asserts his own subjectivity by way of reinforcing his mother’s objectivity as a woman in his charge.<br /><br />Telemachus goes on to demonstrate that he is equal in strength and bravery to father, as the outnumbered pair proceed to massacre Penelope’s suitors after Odysseus successfully strings his own bow and reveals himself to the other men. In the final scenes, then, Telemachus reaches a point of full identification with Odysseus; no longer a child under his mother’s care, he asserts his manhood by fighting side-by-side with his warrior father. When Penelope hesitates in her acceptance of Odysseus’s return, Telemachus again shows his allegiance to his father over his mother: “Mother—but you are so hard that I cannot call you such a name—why do you keep away from my father in this way? . . . No other woman could bear to keep away from her husband . . . but your heart always was as hard as a stone” (246). Here, Telemachus constructs his mother—a woman who, as the story reminds us repeatedly, has mourned the absence of her husband for 20 long years—as an other, insensitive and inhuman in her resistance to his father, the model that Telemachus must approximate in order to attain subjectivity as a man.<br /><br />Probably recited for decades or even centuries before being written down, <em>The Odyssey</em> was transcribed, translated, and circulated in the Ancient World like no other story except for Homer’s other epic, <em>The Illiad</em>. The two were memorized and taught almost as sacred texts in Ancient Greece and Rome. Amazingly, they continue to enjoy reputations as literary greats. The ageless popularity of <em>The Odyssey </em>speaks, I think, to the power of a patriarchal social structure that positions women as others, obviously established in full force by Homer’s time and surviving even into today.<br /><br />Works Cited<br /><br />Brule, Pierre. <em>Women of Ancient Greece</em>. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2003.<br /><br />Homer. <em>The Odyssey</em>. Ed. Harry Shefter. Trans. Samuel Butler. New York: Washington Square P, 1969.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-10067761809214197902011-05-16T08:08:00.000-07:002011-05-16T08:26:09.084-07:00The Power of Fertility in Inanna Literature and TodayFertility has been on my mind lately. Not because I want another kid (ever!), but instead because of some lucky confluence of issues in my professional and personal lives. At the same time that I am preparing to teach a collection of myths surrounding Inanna, a Mesopotamian goddess of fertility, in my Honors humanities course in the fall, my daughter (now eight) has decided to educate herself on what will happen to her as she goes through puberty (a process that, experts say, begins for girls in the contemporary US between the ages of eight and 12). In a move surely representative of some sort of developmental milestone, Taegan apparently plucked American Girls’ <em>The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls </em>off her shelf one day last week (it’s been there for at least a year) and started flipping through the pages. Minding my own business in another room, I was only alerted to the situation when she then bombarded me with a barrage of questions borne, I am certain, out of a mixture of fascination and horror at the diagrams and frank information presented in the book. Once I figured out what was happening, I made a point of stopping what I was doing and, as all of the childrearing advice books suggest that parents do, answered Taegan’s questions to the best of my knowledge. This was hard for many reasons, not least of all because I could really use a refresher course on female anatomy terms and functions myself (honestly, could <em>you</em> explain the female reproductive cycle off of the top of your head?). But the real stumper was a question fairly unrelated to anatomy: “So, if girls have to go through all of this so that we can have the babies, why don’t we get more respect? Why has there never been a girl president?” <br /><br />Well, first of all, this is a super question, and I’m proud my little girl for thinking this way (one point for feminism!). Secondly, the answer is kind of counterintuitive. In fact, in a lot of ways, it is precisely <em>because</em> we have the babies that we are still not considered ideal for high-level political leadership. There is still a wide-spread assumption that our capability for nurturing life prevents us from making tough political decisions. And, perhaps more significantly, great measures have been taken over the course of history to contain female fertility, as it has been constructed (by a white, male patriarchal power structure) over time as posing some sort of threat to humanity, civilization, order, etc.<br /><br />But I am learning that it has not always been this way! As my recent reading has shown, Inanna was revered for her duality of “feminine” and “masculine” traits. Inanna was the most prominent and lasting Mesopotamian goddess, not only of fertility, but also of sexual love and combat; she was worshiped for her ability to make babies and to make war. In a Sumerian hymn to Inanna entitled “Loud Thundering Storm” (ca. 2,000 BCE) for instance, the goddess is portrayed as simultaneously a sustaining life-force (“. . . you pour your rain over the lands and all the people”) and a destroyer of life (“You trample the disobedient like a wild bull . . .”) (Wolkstein 95). Inanna’s power is in her ability to nurture and to kill. And, in our contemporary world, wouldn’t this make her a great president? ;)<br /><br />Within the context of a fertility cult like that of Inanna, it makes perfect sense that a god or goddess would be both loving and terrible. This is because the god or goddess represents the earth (or “Nature”) itself, the source of all food and shelter and human life, but also the cause of destruction on mass scale, due to flooding, drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, cold, heat, etc. If the earth is the model for god, then of course god is terrifying and unpredictable. This basic ideology, that the divine is both nurturing and destructive, carries over into most major world religions exactly because, at their core, all religions are fertility cults in that they function to explain the dual nature of the earth that both sustains and kills us.<br /><br />Now, because we are all of the earth (and/or of god, if you prefer), I believe that we are all of dual natures, just like the earth, Inanna, Yahweh, God, etc. We are all capable of nurturing life; we are all capable of battle. The early Mesopotamians seemed to understand this, that fertility was not the purview of only women and that fighting was not the purview of only men. Gods were worshiped for their powers of fertility just as goddesses were; goddesses were worshiped for their powers of destruction just as gods were. <br /><br />Over time, though, it seems that the Mesopotamians abandoned many of their fertility goddesses and placed more and more faith in their phallic gods. Indeed, Inanna is exceptional in that she lived on as a prominent fertility goddess—as Ishtar in the Semitic languages—until the end of the Ancient Mesopotamian era. Interestingly, though, along the way, Inanna/Ishtar develops in the literature into a castrating matriarch, a man-eater, not unlike the vagina flower in Pink Floyd’s <em>The Wall </em>(see my discussion of this little gem <a href="http://literatimom.blogspot.com/2010/05/resisting-trip-in-pink-floyd-wall.html">here</a>). In the Babylonian <em>The Epic of Gilgamesh</em> (ca. 600 BCE), Gilgamesh declines Ishtar’s advances because of her long history of wounding and maiming her lovers. By way of refusal, he lists and explains Ishtar’s male conquests: <br /><br />There was Tammuz, the lover of your youth, for him you decreed wailing, year after year. You loved the many-coloured roller, but still you struck and broke his wing . . . . You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him, and seven. . . . You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herd-boys chase him away, how own hounds worry his flanks. (Matthews 6) <br /><br />Somewhere along the line, it seems, Innana/Ishtar’s sexuality, once celebrated as a representation of fertile lands and people, became threatening, perhaps especially to male kings like Gilgamesh. From a symbol of the life-giving and destructive powers of the earth, Inanna was therefore turned into an emasculating bitch.<br /><br />These later Mesopotamian religions are not alone. Many religious traditions depict female sexuality as threatening instead of—as with the early fertility cults—as life-sustaining. Paula Kirby makes this point explicit in her <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/religion-lies-about-women/2011/04/13/AFDS9mXD_blog.html">recent post </a>at <em>The Washington Post</em>: <br /><br />The truth is that the Abrahamic religions fear women and therefore go to extraordinary and sometimes brutal lengths to control them, constrain them, and repress them in every way. Show me a non-religious society that feels so threatened by the thought of female sexuality that it will slice off the clitoris of a young girl to ensure she can never experience sexual pleasure. Show me a non-religious society that feels the need to cloak women from head to toe and force them to experience the outside world through a slit of a few square inches. All three Abrahamic religions share the myth of Adam and Eve, the myth that it was through woman that evil was let loose in the world. They share the heritage of Leviticus, which declared a menstruating woman unclean, to be set aside, untouched, a revulsion that remains even today among some orthodox Jews, who will refuse to shake a woman’s hand for fear she may be menstruating. What kind of lunacy is this? It is the lunacy of a Bronze Age mindset fossilized by the reactionary forces of religion.<br /><br />Hmmm. So, now we don’t have “girl presidents.” It seems to me that it is perhaps time to reclaim our female right to leadership on the basis of our immense powers of fertility, sexuality, and, yes, even battle. We do have the babies, as Taegan says, which makes us literal embodiments of bounty, regeneration, and violence (see my description of the childbirth process <a href="http://literatimom.blogspot.com/2010/05/margaret-atwoods-1982-giving-birth.html">here</a>). Just like men, we are strong and powerful in our life-giving abilities and also weak in the face of an earth that is still so often unpredictable and terrifying. What we may even have over men is that we have not been socialized to deny our weaknesses and to engage in physical combat to protect our interests, but instead to acknowledge our very human shortcomings and work through battles with communication, empathy, and—and here’s that “feminine” word again—nurturance.<br /><br />Note: I’m also working on putting together a <a href="http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/viewer.aspx?sbid=2929408">presentation</a> for my Humanities class on the development and meaning of fertility cults. I’d be happy to share my speech notes that will go along with the presentation.<br /><br />Works Cited<br /><br />Matthews, Roy T. and F. Dewitt Platt. <em>Readings in the Western Humanities</em>. Vol. 1. 3rd ed. London: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1998.<br /><br />Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel Noah Kramer. <em>Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth</em>. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-10494484957021507142011-01-13T19:07:00.000-08:002011-01-13T19:08:51.367-08:00"Kubla Khan" RegretIn preparing to teach Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (1816) this week, it struck me—as it has when I’ve read this poem in the past—just how sexist this “classic” really is. Womanhood is nothing more than a metaphor in this carefully wrought little poem. Its “woman wailing for her demon-lover” represents the unknown, the beautiful, the terrifying, the emotional, the bodily, the creative, the generative. And ready access to all of this is the speaker’s rightful pursuit. In this way, of course, the wailing woman’s own expression of feeling is usurped as property of the (male) poet. Similarly, the “Abyssinian maid” with a dulcimer is portrayed as a muse in the poem, her own art existing only to stimulate the poet’s creative process. The sexism here is powerful in that it resonates with centuries of literary tradition. Women are so often in canonized literature portrayed as excessively sensual and emotional, symbolic of sublime creativity and/or serving as muses for male writers who imagine themselves strictly cerebral beings. <br /><br />I used this poem in my “Reading and Writing about Literature” course today to begin to teach close reading. I hoped to facilitate my students’ discussion of the poem’s formal elements and eventual articulation of its possible meanings. This was quite an ambitious goal for a single class period, given the complexity of “Kubla Khan,” but my students (a really smart bunch!) were up for the challenge. By the close of the period, we had teased out several possible interpretations, and I ended feeling like we had really done the poem justice. But now, reflecting again on my initial reading of the poem, I am wondering if we did the women in the poem justice. <br /><br />Certainly, we talked about both of the women figured in the poem. But we stayed mostly on the level of symbolism. In other words, we read these women just as the speaker in the poem does, in service to the male poet’s creative process. I don’t want to turn every class period into a feminist rally, but I do wish that we had been a little bit more “meta” about our reading of the women in Coleridge’s poem. We could have at least acknowledged our treatment of these figures as mere symbols and noted the problematic implications of this type of reading. <br /><br />Looking back on our discussion of the poem, I realize that one student gave me a perfect opening to incorporate a feminist angle into our conversation. He said that it almost seemed as if the wailing woman was causing the chaos that overtakes Kubla Khan’s “pleasure dome.” For whatever reason—and maybe it was because he went on to right away make an additional point—we moved quickly to a different topic. I remember thinking that I wanted to go back to what he had said and ask students to think more about why Coleridge might have chosen to figure this woman in particular as either impetus for or characteristic of the terrible and yet awesome energy that erupts into the paradise portrayed in the poem’s opening lines. Much as I wish that I had, I just never returned to that point.literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218226270919785997.post-28766215723082154112010-11-30T05:19:00.001-08:002010-11-30T06:02:35.796-08:00"Matriarchy" and the Contemporary Black FamilyFor all of you who are wondering where I've been, I'm back to let you that the last few weeks have brought some exciting changes in my life. Not only are we selling our house and moving into a beautiful new home (hopefully within the month of December because it is dang hard to keep a house clean enough to show with an 19-month-old and a 7 1/2-year-old--this situation does not accentuate my better nature!!), but I have also been assigned three new classes for the Spring semester. I am thrilled to be teaching two sections of a "Reading and Writing about Literature" class, an introductory course in the English major, and a colloquium for the Honors College. Because the theme of my colloq so well matches the focus of this blog, I thought that I'd share my syllabus and schedule with you, my loyal followers. <br /><br />I've entitled the course "'Matriarchy' and the Contemporary Black Family." As the syllabus demonstrates, we're taking as a springboard the US Department of Labor's Moynihan report of 1965 which--although likely well-intentioned--propelled the myth of the black matriarch into the forefront of the American consciousness. The report attributed the "pathology" of the black family to its "matriarchal" nature, pointing out that many black families were headed by women who oftentimes ran the home and at the same time financially supported the men in their families. The report was meant to convey the necessity of creating more jobs for black men, but many have claimed that it blamed the victims, the women who were--and had been for centuries--keeping it all together in the face of greatly oppressive social and political circumstances. The matriarch myth has stayed with us and has played out in complicated social scripts as well as in popular culture representations of black women. <br /><br />This course will therefore investigate "matriarchy," past and present. It starts with "The Articulation of the Matriarch Myth" in 1965 and then jumps back to slavery to explore what I am calling, facetiously, "The Rise of the Matriarch" from slavery times up to the 1960s or so. This portion of the course will examine the historical circumstances that positioned the black woman as so central to the black family and also media representations of this positioning, such as in <em>Amos and Andy</em>, for instance. Next, we will move to "Disciplining the 'Matriarch,'" which will cover the ways that both black men and mainstream America have endeavored to punish black women for their deviance and powers of emasculation in movements such as Black Power and Reaganism. In addition to the listed readings, in these weeks we will view an episode of <em>Sanford and Son</em>, <em>Boyz in the Hood </em>and a documentary on hip-hop music. The fourth unit in the course is "Michelle Obama in the Context of 'Matriarchy'" and will explore Obama's portrayal in the media as an emasculating matriarch and the ways that she has negotiated this stereotype. Finally, in "Making Sense of the 'Matriarch,'" we will try to reckon with the legacy of the matriarch myth for us today.<br /><br />I am proud of this course because my conception of the overall narrative arch of the story of the matriarch has been affirmed by the readings that I've found. Like me, many critics and theorists that I'm including in the course trace the myth of matriarchy to Moynihan, and, together, they present a complex and rich understanding of the significance of his report. In other words, the readings build on each other and complicate each other. It is awesome to see the course come together like this!!<br /><br />Please take a look at the tentative syllabus that I've posted below! I'd love to hear your suggestions about how I can make this semester an even richer experience for my students as we work together to understand black "matriarchy."<br /><br /><strong>“Matriarchy” and the Contemporary Black Family</strong><br /><br />Instructor Information<br />Name: Dr. Andrea Powell Wolfe<br />Office: RB 297<br />Office Hours: Tuesday 2-3 and 3:30-5, Thursday 2-2:45, and by appointment <br />Email: andreapowellwolfe@gmail.com <br />Website: http://andreapowellwolfe.weebly.com <br />Blog: http://literatimom.blogspot.com <br /><br />Course Information<br />Title: HONRS 390: Honors Colloquium<br />Semester: Spring 2011<br />Location: Honors House <br />Meeting Times: Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:45<br />Credit Hours: 3<br /><br />Required Texts<br />Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. (any edition)<br />Williams, Sherley Anne. Dessa Rose: A Novel. (any edition)<br /><br />Additional Texts<br />Readings for the course are listed on the schedule below. In addition to the two books that I’m asking you to borrow or purchase, I will also provide some handouts in hard copy. You will access the majority of the readings for this course, however, either on the World Wide Web, through Blackboard, or via Electronic Course Reserves. In order to locate readings stored in the Electronic Course Reserves, log in to CardCat and then select “Course Reserves” from the menu bar.<br /><br />Course Description<br />This course will constitute a semester-long interrogation of the term “matriarchy” as it has been used over the course of decades to describe the make-up of the black American family. Grounded in an awareness of “matriarchy” as a terrible misnomer in this context, the course will explore ways that the classification of the black family as “matriarchal” has reinforced oppressive cultural and political conditions for black Americans. We will endeavor to recognize the widespread abuse and subjugation of black women over time and still celebrate the strength of black mothers who have nurtured children and maintained families in the most dire of circumstances throughout American history. We will discuss ways that black men have reacted to the labeling of their families as “matriarchal.” Perhaps most importantly, we will attempt to uncover how the stereotype of “the matriarch” continues to play out in contemporary media representations of black womanhood and how it has played out in social scripts surrounding even our current First Lady, Michelle Obama. <br /><br />Course Requirements<br />Paper #1 100 points<br />Paper #2 100 points<br />Paper #3 100 points<br />Final Exam 200 points<br />Participation 20 points per class<br />Quizzes 10 points each<br /><br />Papers<br />Assignment sheets for each paper will be posted in the “Assignments” area in Blackboard. In general, these assignments will ask you to use textual evidence to support thoughtful and sophisticated claims regarding “matriarchy” and the black family. Papers will be 4-5 pages (1400-1750 words) in length and will be due to my email before class on the days noted on the course schedule. Late papers will lose 10 points per day late (including weekends).<br /><br />Final Exam<br />The final exam will be comprehensive and will consist of short essay questions. In order to prepare for the exam, you will need to read carefully, participate attentively in class, and take good notes throughout the semester. <br /><br />Quizzes<br />Quizzes over reading notes and class notes may be given without advanced notice. You are always welcome to use written or typed notes for quizzes. Quizzes cannot be made-up.<br /><br />Participation <br />Your active and thoughtful participation in this course is absolutely critical to its success! Because discussion is such a big part of the Honors Colloquium experience, you will earn daily participation points for coming to class and engaging in meaningful discussion. Part of participation is also preparation to learn and interact in the classroom. This means that you must bring the appropriate reading(s) to class every day, either in hard copy or in electronic form on your laptop. Participation scores will be posted in the grade book in Blackboard after every class. <br /><br />Extra Credit<br />Because I want to give you the opportunity to make up points that you might lose due to necessary absences, I will allow you to complete two extra credit assignments throughout the semester for a total of 40 points in extra credit. For each extra credit assignment, you will choose a full-length book (either critical or literary) or a film (either documentary or fictional) to review for extra credit. I will be happy to recommend texts that might match your personal interests, and, even if you do not need suggestions from me, I ask that you allow me to “approve” your selections before you begin working on these assignments. Each review should be 3-pages (1050 words) in length and should analyze the representation of black motherhood in the text that you have chosen.<br /><br />Attendance Policy<br />You will lose all daily participation points when you miss class. While one or two absences may not affect your overall grade in the class, making a habit of missing class will most certainly negatively impact your grade. Any requests for a waiver of the penalty for missing class must be made before the absence for which you seek to be excused. <br /><br />Classroom Behavior Policy <br />It is my goal to foster a classroom environment in which every student feels comfortable contributing to discussion. Though we will not always agree with one another, we must listen to one another with respect. Furthermore, you are never required to agree with me or with a text we are discussing; disagreement is a valuable part of the thinking process. I will not tolerate disruptive behaviors such as reading newspapers, talking on cell phones, texting, emailing, or sleeping in class. Behaviors like these will cause you to lose participation points for that day. In order to promote engaged discussion, I may ask you to close your laptop at times during class.<br /><br />Plagiarism<br />In order to protect the integrity of the university and of students who work hard, I take academic dishonesty seriously. The intentional or unintentional use of another’s writing without giving proper credit or any credit is theft and the use of a previously written paper for a current course without approval of the instructor is dishonesty. These types of actions undermine the educational process and may be cause for course failure or expulsion from Ball State University. <br /><br />Disabilities/Accommodations Statement<br />If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, if you have emergency medical information to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible<br /><br />Extra Help<br />I am happy to meet with students about drafts, assignment questions, additional discussions of a text, and absence policies, etc. during office hours or by appointment. I also encourage you to visit a writing tutor at The Writing Center to work on your papers at any stage in the writing process. <br /><br />Syllabus Information Disclaimer<br />Parts of the syllabus and the course, including the schedule and assignments, are subject to change to meet the needs of students in the course. <br /><br /><strong>Course Schedule</strong><br /><br /><strong>Articulating the Matriarch Stereotype</strong><br /><br />Tuesday, January 11 Introductions<br /><br />Thursday, January 13 Readings Due: Syllabus; Daniel P. Moynihan, US Department of Labor, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”, Chapters II-IV<br /><br />Tuesday, January 18 Reading Due: Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” in Blackboard<br /><br /><strong>The Rise of the “Matriarch”</strong><br /><br />Thursday, January 20 Reading Due: Deborah Gray White, “Jezebel and Mammy: The Mythology of Female Slavery” on Reserve<br /><br />Tuesday, January 25 Reading Due: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Chapters I-XIV<br /><br />Thursday, January 27 Reading Due: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Chapters XV-XXXIII<br /><br />Tuesday, February 1 Reading Due: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Chapters XXXIV-XLI; Stephanie Li, “Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” in Blackboard<br /><br />Thursday, February 3 Reading Due: Deborah Gray White, “From Slavery to Freedom” handout<br /><br />Tuesday, February 8 Reading Due: YouTube videos, “Scarlett Dresses for the Barbeque”, “Mammy—Gone with the Wind”; Maria St. John, “’It Ain’t Fittin’: Cinematic and Fantasmatic Contours of Mammy in Gone with the Wind and Beyond” in Blackboard<br /><br />Thursday, February 10 Reading Due: George Kirby, “Amos and Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy” <br /><br />Tuesday, February 15 Reading Due: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, Acts I-2<br /><br />Thursday, February 17 Reading Due: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, Act 3; Ellen Silber, “Seasoned with Quiet Strength: Black Womanhood in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959)” in Blackboard<br /><br /><strong>Disciplining the “Matriarch”</strong><br /><br />Tuesday, February 22 Assignment Due: Paper #1<br /><br />Thursday, February 24 Reading Due: bell hooks, “The Imperialism of Patriarchy” on Reserve<br /><br />Tuesday, March 1 Reading Due: Amiri Baraka, “20-Century Fox,” “Newshit,” “Song,” “Lady Bug,” “A Poem for Black Hearts,” “Black Art,” “For a Lady I Know,” “Civil Rights Poem,” “Beautiful Black Women . . .,” “Bludoo Baby Want Money and Alligator Got it to Give,” “Leroy,” and “Who Will Survive America” handout; Daniel Matlin, “’Lift Up Yr Self’: Reinterpreting Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Black Power, and the Uplift Tradition” in Blackboard<br /><br />Thursday, March 3 Reading Due: Hortense Spillers, “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words” on Reserve <br /><br />Tuesday, March 8 No Class; Spring Break<br /><br />Thursday, March 10 No Class; Spring Break<br /><br />Tuesday, March 15 Reading Due: Herman Gray, “Reaganism and the Sign of Blackness” on Reserve<br /><br />Thursday, March 17 Reading Due: Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose, “Prologue” and “The Darkey”<br /><br />Tuesday, March 22 Reading Due: Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose, “The Wench” and “The Negress”<br /><br />Thursday, March 24 Reading Due: Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose, “Epilogue”; Ashraf H. Rushdy, “Reading Mammy: The Subject of Relation in Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose” in Blackboard<br /><br />Tuesday, March 29 Reading Due: Linda M. Burton and M. Belinda Tucker, “Romantic Unions in an Era of Uncertainty: A Post-Moynihan Perspective on African American Women and Marriage” in Blackboard<br /><br />Thursday, March 31 Reading Due: “Between Apocalypse and Redemption: John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood” in Blackboard <br /><br />Tuesday, April 5 Reading Due: Mark Anthony Neal, “Baby Mama (Drama) and Baby Daddy (Trauma): Post-Soul Gender Politics” on Reserve<br /><br /><strong>Michelle Obama in the Context of “Matriarchy”</strong><br /><br />Thursday, April 7 Assignment Due: Paper #2<br /><br />Tuesday, April 12 Reading Due: Mosheh Oinounou and Bonney Kapp, “Michelle Obama Takes Heat for Saying She’s ‘Proud of My Country’ for the First Time”; Fox News, “Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama’s Baby Mama!”; Marcus Baram, “Rusty DePass, South Carolina GOP Activist, Says Escaped Gorilla Was Ancestor of Michelle Obama”; The Paparazzis, “Comedian Jay Mohr disrespects Michelle Obama”; Alicia Shepard, “Juan Williams, NPR and Fox News” <br /><br />Thursday, April 14 Reading Due: Fight the Smears, “The Truth about Michelle”; Lois Romano, “Voices of Power: White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers,” Chapter 3; The White House, “First Lady Michelle Obama”<br /><br />Tuesday, April 19 Reading Due: The Huffington Post, “Up In Arms: Michelle Obama’s Sleeveless Style Sparks Controversy”; Wendy Donahue, “Some harrumph over Michelle Obama’s sleeveless dress”; Bonnie Fuller, “Michelle Obama’s Sleevegate: Why Can’t America Handle Her Bare Arms?”; Madison Park, “How to get Michelle Obama’s toned arms”; Andrea Sachs, “Michelle Obama’s Fashion Statement”; Danny Shea, “New York Magazine Blog Takes Down Michelle Obama Booty Post”; Gina, “Another ‘Booty’ Post: ‘That Site’ Puts the Marginalization and Dehumanization of First Lady Michelle Obama Up for Vote”; Erin Aubry Kaplan, “The Michelle Obama Hair Challenge”<br /><br />Thursday, April 21 Reading Due: The White House Organic Farm Project, “About TheWhoFarm”; Michelle Obama, “Remarks by the First Lady to Unity Health Care Center”; Sesame Street, “Sesame Street: Michelle Obama and Elmo—Healthy Habits”; AOL Health, “First Lady Michelle Obama Answers Your Questions on Let’s Move!” <br /><br />Tuesday, April 26 Reading Due: Patricia Yaeger, “Circum-Atlantic Superabundance: Milk as World-Making in Alice Randall and Kara Walker” in Blackboard; Kara Walker, “I Dream of Michelle Obama” <br /><br />Tuesday, April 26 Reading Due: Andrea Powell Wolfe, “Michelle Obama and the Historical Positioning of the Black Mother within the Nation” in Blackboard; Ann Ducille, “Marriage, Family, and Other ‘Peculiar Institutions’ in African-American Literary History” in Blackboard<br /><br /><strong>Making Sense of “Matriarchy”</strong><br /><br />Thursday, April 28 Assignment Due: Paper #3<br /><br />Thursday, May 5 Final Exam at 9:45-11:45literatimomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350416090357900369noreply@blogger.com0