“As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame”

To follow Christ is, according to Micah 6:8, to "act justly," or as Gerard Manly Hopkins expresses it, "to justice." While we celebrate Christ's birth, think on how you can be Christ's presence on earth now.

This is the second half of one of Hopkins's poems, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame," in which he compares the kingfisher, one of England's most colourful birds, catching the fire of the sun on its wings, and the dragonfly drawing flame on its iridescent body to humans that should reflect Christ, since God sees us, by His grace, as "little Christs."

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—

Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Hopkins was a Jesuit monk, so a follower of Ignatius's theological teachings. Jesuit professor Tim Muldoon explains this poem as such:
When a kingfisher, a dragonfly, a stone tumbling down a well, a bell does what it is made to do, it "selves"– it speaks itself. And when a human being "selves," the person manifests Christ in the world. That, according to Aristotle, is virtue. That, according to Ignatius, is freedom. (http://ignatianspirituality.com/4534/faith-and-action/)
Hopkins's beautiful verse and inventive language convinced me to study his works for my master's thesis. I hope you will also be inspired by his words.

(photo of kingfisher from Creative Commons)

The Poems of Gerard Manly Hopkins

You can hear another one of Hopkins' most famous poems,"Inversnaid," here.

Chaucer: Neither Feminist, Nor Sexist, Yet Both and Neither

Geffrey Chaucer is one of the most important authors in the English language, probably only second to Shakespeare. He wrote during the Middle Ages, so before Shakespeare, often playing with earlier legends, fairy tales, and serious books. By "playing with," I mean he adapts the story to make it more ironic, funny, or to make a point. In many ways his style was very post-modern. Sometimes he inserts himself into his stories (he is one of the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, for example) and sometimes he interrupts his narrative to address his readers. Just the practice of recreating a story that already exists, is rather post-modern. Case in point:

For my Chaucer class, I wrote an essay on how we can't know if he was a feminist or a sexist because of his ironies. In fact the debate does not only rage among opposing camps, but amongst feminists themselves. He engages in the antifeminist rhetoric (Example: Emulate the Virgin Mary, Avoid Eve-like behaviour like the plague), but also allows his female characters to combat this rhetoric. The most powerful example is the Wife of Bath (Alison) whose fifth husband reads to her from a book called "The Book of Wicked Wives" which records evil women from Eve, passing by Delilah, and several women from Greek mythology that murdered their husbands. Of course, he's trying to show Alison how women are inferior to men and much more evil.

One day she can't take it anymore and rips out three pages from the book. This leads to a physical fight, which leads to Alison's deafness in one ear...BUT, although she's hurt, she wins her point. Her husband agrees to stop reading his favourite book and even more remarkable, he agrees to let her have control over their house and land. (Ironically, the house and land were hers to begin with, but by marrying him, she had lost her rights to them simply because she was a woman). Furthermore, he grants her complete "maistrie" (mastery) and "soveraynetee" (sovereignty) in their relationship, telling her she can do as she wishes for the rest of her life.

Sounds like Chaucer is advocating women's equality, right? Not exactly. His description of her is far from flattering. She is much more sinful than saintly: sensual, unfaithful, deceitful, proud, lustful, frivolous, manipulative....On top of that, she takes biblical passages out of context to defend herself. As one critic, S.H. Rigby, asks, is she in fact just "a debunker who is herself being wittily debunked?" Her argument for the equality of women, or more accurately their superiority over men, may be Chaucer's farce of the feminist point of view.

In the end it is impossible to know. As another critic, Priscilla Martin, put it Chaucer's "ironies, ambiguities and multiple narrators present a hall of distorting mirrors" so Chaucer can be seen as sexist or feminist, neither, or both.


The Wordle:

(click to enlarge)

Jude

Kate Winslet starred in the movie adaptation of the book in 1996. Here's the trailer, which covers the main points of Jude and Sue's relationship.

Jude the Obscure Themes

He regrets that he doesn't accomplish these goals or later goals of having a lasting relationship with Sue. On his death bed he "he often rambled on upon the defeat of his early aims."
And the Wordle (click to enlarge image)

Here are some of the main themes of Jude the Obscure that we presented to the class.

Sexual tension:

Jude the Obscure is rife with sexual tension. In the first part Hardy highly sexualizes the narrative. We can almost sense the hormones coursing through Jude and Arabella's bodies. For example, after running up a hill together Arabella falls to the ground in exhaustion pulling Jude to his knees beside her. As she speaks to Jude, the narrator describes her body "heaving and falling in quick pants, her face flushed, her full red lips parted, and a fine dew of perspiration on her skin," a description that seems more appropriate to a woman recuperating after sexual intercourse than after exercise.

Unconventional view of Marriage:

Sue says, "it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover." After his marriage to Arabella, Jude calls marriage "a daily, continuous tragedy."

Social Conventions:

Although they live outside of the boundaries of societal conventions, Jude and especially Sue live by strict moral codes. For the period of time during which they both share the same moral compass, they are the most harmonious. Yet when their values differ, it leads to tension and eventually rupture. For example, Jude is dissatisfied with Sue's principle that dictates that they not have sex until both are divorced even though they live together. Because they are an unmarried couple living together, they are shunned by their communities forcing them to move often. Sue is disowned by her father. Sue realizes the reason that they are disdained is that their views are before their time; as she says, they are "pioneers." It is because of her moral views that Sue later decides to return to her ex-husband, arguing that since they had a relationship sanctioned by society and the church he, not Jude, is her rightful partner. So her views lead to the death of their relationship.

Death:

Jude is an orphan being raised by his great-aunt Drusilla Fawley. His father had suddenly died of an illness about a year before the beginning of the narrative and his mother had committed suicide by drowning herself.

After learning of his mother's suicide and being depressed about his loveless marriage with Arabella, Jude tempts fate by walking on the thin ice of a pond hoping to fall through and drown. When the ice fails to break, he rationalizes that he is not "sufficiently dignified" for suicide.

Death by suicide and murder is the great tragedy of the novel. Sue is honest with Father Time, admitting her feeling that it would be better for children to be "plucked fresh than stay to wither away miserably." This yearning reflects the "coming universal wish not to live." As one critic writes, this "modern" solution of the "dilemma of birth," suicide, is the only acceptable solution posited by Hardy in his later novels.

Treatment of Children:

It seems that in their romanticized ideal of union, Sue and Jude neglected the realism of raising children. "Father Time" feels that he and his half-siblings are a burden to Jude and Sue. Just the fact that the children's names are never mentioned suggests the parents' emotional detachment from them.

Unfulfilled Goals

Other than being a scholar, Jude wants to be a Christian divine/mystic. His marriage to Arabella is the first of many obstacles hindering him from realizing his dreams.