A New Year, A New Look

I thought I'd play around with the blog templates a bit. So far this is my favourite for 2010. The beach, the waves (can you hear them?), plus lighthouses always remind me of Grandma, so it seems like a winner.


Here's a picture of me with my Grandma Keller feeding the seagulls popcorn.

Back to School

Today I start back for my last semester of complementary undergrad classes...which means I can start my master's in the fall. Since I last posted I've been doing a lot of reading. For Christmas presents I found some great literary journals that I gave to some of my high school friends that love to read. A quick overview:

Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century:
A monthly poetry-only journal. The December 2009 issue was dedicated to the sonnet (a 14-line poem made famous by Shakespeare). All sorts of sonnets were highlighted: traditional Shakespearean to inventive backwards sonnets. As the blurb of the magazine aptly says: "there’s nothing more liberating than a little restriction." When writing poetry I've found the same thing, having a pattern beforehand helps to reduce the anxiety of filling the blank page before me. Interesting and innovative, this review is great for those who like to play with language and only want poetry in their issues.

Tin House: A quarterly filled with all types of literature and artwork. Each issue has a theme (work, love, obsessions, winter reading...) and is full of both fiction, non-fiction, and stories related to the theme. And on top of that there's great artwork. I was immediately drawn to the Fall 2009 issue which had the whimsical design of having half the issue dedicated to "dread" and the other half to "hope," each having its own front cover and meeting in the middle. To top it off the pages were upside down of each other. It's hard to explain in fact. I remember having childhood books like it, that had two stories in the same book that started from either end of the book and met in the middle. Anyway, it immediately caught my attention. Since I bought it I learned that my best friend, and poet, has submitted a poem to be published in it. Crossing our fingers!

H.O.W. Journal : A semiannual journal with a great mélange of poetry, short stories (fiction and non-fiction), photography and artwork. I'll let the website speak for itself: H.O.W. Journal is an art & literary journal that publishes an eclectic mix of today's prominent writers and artists alongside upcoming talents with an effort to raise money and awareness for the 15 million children worldwide that have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Honestly I wanted to keep this one for myself, but I gave it to a friend for Christmas anyway. I may just buy myself a copy soon!

White Wall Review: An annual publication of poetry, short stories, artwork, and photography (all in black and white). This one I did keep for myself! Published by the literary society of Ryerson University in Toronto, the stories and poetry are excellent. I especially enjoyed Jennifer Burwell's exerpt from her first work of fiction, Thrown. I also read and reread Adam Seelig's poetry, especially "Irises Flower." The one drawback, (okay, get ready, I'm a horrible person), was that every issue showcases the writing of two or three students enrolled in Ryerson's writing workshops. Of course this encourages a new generation of writers, but really the writing is sub par, especially compared to the professional writers included in the volume.

Poetry Magazine: A monthly poetry review. I also kept this one. It's affordable price (only $3.75 American and $5 Canadian, newstand) makes this a no-brainer. Half original poetry and half a review of poetry collections, this slim volume is great for reading on public transit. (I get mine out on the bus ride to the university). This is for those that want poetry, and only poetry, nothing fancy.

Of course, I also perused the December and January issues of The Sun. As always, the Readers Write section is my favourite. December's theme was Anger and January's is Narrow Escapes. Do you have any stories to share about either of these topics?

Well...it's time to get ready for class. I hope this list gives you some ideas about what to read in 2010.

For those of you in the Quebec City area who would like to look through these and other literary journals in both English and French, there's a good selection at Lecto Magazines on Quatre-Bourgeois near the 2nd Cup.

“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.

Jude the Obscure

This session, I've spent a lot of time discussing, researching, and writing about Thomas Hardy's last novel Jude the Obscure. It is a tragedy and a depressing depiction of society.

    The tragic life of Jude Fawley can also be seen to symbolize the tragedies of hasty marriages, social ostracism brought on because of living by a different moral code than that of the society, poverty, and the abandonment of dreams. Disillusionment with organized religion which seemed cruel, civil law which seemed irrational, and natural law which leads everyone, no matter their supposed worth, to suffer and eventually die, causes Jude to eventually enter into a state of inertia. He resigns himself to death. What has brought him to this state?

    As a child, an orphan, Jude Fawley dreams of becoming a scholar in Oxford (named Christminster in the book) because his beloved schoolmaster does so. So as a teenager, he works as a stonemason to make enough money to move there and pursue his dream. But one day when he's nineteen years old, as he's walking down the street thinking on his future plans, he's hit by something. When he bends down to see what it is, he finds it is a pig's penis! Yep, a pig's penis! Thrown at him by the flirty, uncouth country-girl, Arabella, who works in her father's slaughterhouse. She wanted to get his attention...and she sure does. As with many men his age, his hormones shout louder than his reason. Jude abandons his dreams of scholarly pursuits to spend time with Arabella, who wanting to trap him into marriage, seduces him and then pretends she's pregnant so he'll marry her. He does the honourable thing and marries her although they are completely unsuited for each other. Less than two years later Arabella leaves him to move to Australia with her family.

    Free from his responsibilities to Arabella, he finally moves to Christminster. He seeks out his cousin Sue Bridehead and quickly falls in love with her. They are completely suited to each other, but cannot marry because Jude is already married. When Sue finds this out, she marries Jude's ex-schoolmaster, to whom HE had introduced her. Jude is devastated and Sue immediately regrets her hasty marriage. Although in Christminster Jude cannot enter any of the colleges because he is too poor. So having completely lost hope of marrying Sue and of becoming a scholar, he turns to alcohol. In a bar one night he runs into Arabella who had returned to England and is working as a bartender. She tells him that while in Australia she got married again thinking that no one would ever find out she was already married. She wants a divorce so that her Australian husband can join her in England. Jude agrees to it. Sue, meanwhile, is completely repulsed by her husband and leaves him. She moves in with Jude, but refuses to sleep with him until both officially divorced. Her husband agrees to the divorce on the grounds that she is having an affair, so it is a faulty divorce.

    Living together, unmarried, in nineteenth century England, the couple is shunned by society. Jude cannot find work to support them because as soon as it is found out that he is living with a woman, not his wife, he is fired. It is even hard for them to find landlords that will accept them as tenants. They have to move from town to town throughout rural England. Then, Arabella drops a bomb on them...she had been pregnant when she had moved to Australia and although her parents had raised their son there, her parents have decided to send the child back to England to be cared for by his biological parents. Of course Arabella does not want the responsibility of raising the boy, so she sends him to Jude. The boy had never been christened so is nicknamed "Little Father Time" because he is so serious. He doesn't find joy in what most children enjoy. At school he is ridiculed because his "parents" aren't married, so Jude and Sue decide to marry. Yet every time they go to a church or before the justice of the peace they think that the marriage vows are anti-passion and decide not to go through with the ceremony. But they let those around them believe that they have married to protect "Little Father Time" from taunts at school. To show Jude that their "marriage" is serious, she agrees to sleep with him.

    Fast forward three to four years. The couple now has two children of their own and Sue is pregnant with a third. On impulse, Jude decides to move back to Christminster. They arrive completely unprepared and have to find a place to sleep for the night. They are rejected everywhere because they are unmarried. Finally they find a place that will accept Sue to stay with the children if Jude sleeps elsewhere. Being in Christminster reminds Jude of his failure to achieve his dreams, depressing him. Sue is overwhelmed by their poverty, taking care of three young children with another on the way, and also feels guilty that Jude never realized his goals. "Little Father Time," now nine or ten years old, in his uncanny sensitiveness asks Sue if she is upset because of life's difficulties. Instead of soothing him, she verifies that life is hard and that it would be better to die young than to have to suffer through it. He takes this to heart.

    The next morning Sue leaves the children alone to meet with Jude at his inn to decide what to do about finding a place for all of them to sleep that evening. When they return to her room they discover a ghastly scene. "Little Father Time" had hung his younger half-brother and half-sister by the neck to hooks on the door. Then he had hung himself. With the shock Sue also loses the baby she was carrying. Obviously Jude and Sue are in great distress. Sue decides that the tragedy happened to teach her that she should never have left her ex-husband, from whom she'd gotten the divorce on false grounds. She leaves Jude and returns to her ex-husband. Jude is completely devastated; he's lost his whole family. Arabella learns of the disaster and tricks him into marrying her again (her Australian husband had died by this time). Of course he is entirely unhappy with her and when he falls ill and can't provide for her anymore, Arabella comes to hate him. He becomes an invalid and his dying wish is to see Sue one last time and to try to mend their relationship. He sneaks out of the house while Arabella is gone and makes the long voyage to Sue in awful weather. Sue rejects him, so he returns home to die. When he dies, Arabella is out courting the doctor, so he dies completely alone and abandoned.