"My Last Duchess": Romantic but Anti-Romance

Of all the Romantic poetry we've been reading, Robert Browning has definitely been one of my favorite writers, which was kind of a pleasant surprise, since I hadn't really heard of him before. I really like how his poems generally start out with a description of an object or a landscape and then personified it in a way so that it came to represent some aspect of the greater human experience. Maybe I'm like internally emo or something but for some reason his darker, cynical stances on human emotions and reality was very moving to me. The poem "My Last Duchess" that we read this week particularly stuck out to me, because the first time I read it through, I couldn't really tell what was going on, but it gave me kind of a sinister vibe. The title for one thing is a little ominous - my last duchess? Did you   go all Henry VIII and off her or something? Lines such as "Then all smiles stopped together" and  "There she stands/As if alive" only made it all the creepier, and I was wondering who this poem was based off of, it it was a real event, so I decided to do a little research and analysis of this poem for this week's (and my last!) post.

Lucrezia de'Medici, first wife of Alfonso d'Este,
suspected inspiration for My Last Duchess

Apparently the word "Ferrera" (in our book it says Ferrars, but everywhere online I saw the poem it says Ferrera so maybe that was a typo) refers to Alfonso II d'Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrera, which is a province in Italy. Browning I guess was doing some research about him for another poem called Sordello. I looked up this Duke Alfonso, and something I found intriguing was that his first wife (he was married three times) was 14 when they got married, then she died mysteriously three years later, and one of the suspected causes of death is poisoning. Just an interesting coincidence.

The poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue. Characteristics of a monologue is that the speaker is usually an outside character, not the author themselves, they are usually addressing someone but we can only tell who is being addressed from clues in the monologue,  and the purpose of the monologue is typically to reveal the inner character of the speaker. Apparently Robert Browning was most known for his dramatic monologues, and they were a popular form during the Romantic era because they allowed for a sort of exploration of one's inner emotional experience.

Once I knew this, the poem was a lot easier to understand. The speaker in this poem is presumably the Duke (of Ferrara perhaps), and from the line "The Count your master's known munificence" he is addressing a servant of sorts to a generous Count, and it seems there are some sort of marriage negotiations going on. The most important aspect of the poem, as of any dramatic monologue, however, is the character of the speaker that is revealed through their words. And it would appear that our speaker is one slimy guy. There is an overwhelming sense of egotism - the speaker describes how offended he was by how kind his wife was to all other men "...as if she ranked/My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/With anybody's gift". When she smiled at him it was seen merely as an expected behavior: "Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt/Whenever I passed her; but who passed without/Much the same smile". It almost seems like the speaker had such an extremely large ego that it evolved into a strong paranoia, the Duchess was "too soon made glad,/Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er/She looked on, and her looks went everywhere" - it sounds like the Duchess is (was) one of those people who is generally optimistic, being nice to everyone, finding good in everything, but the Duke wants all of this attention turned toward himself.

And so, somehow, the Duchess is now smiling for only the Duke. In the lines, "The depth and passion of its earnest glance,/But to myself they turned (since none puts by/The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)" we see that the Duke has the Duchess' portrait behind a curtain, and so he now even has control over who gets to see the painting of his wife. I also think it's interesting how the speaker comments twice about how the Duchess looks alive - she has quite literally turned into another piece in his collection. The way the poem concludes only confirms this - the speaker never mentions what happened to the Duchess, only that he gave commands and she stopped smiling - and then he casually brushes it aside, saying "Nay, we'll go/together down, Sir!" He then comments on a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse, reinforcing his image as an all-controller looking to tame things and add them to his collection to show off and assert his power even further. This could be an overly-feminist interpretation of the poem, but still, if you were servant of the Count who may be marrying his daughter to this man, would you let this event take place?

Works Cited

Browning, Robert. "My Last Duchess". Six Centuries of Great Poetry. Ed. Erskine, Albert and Robert Penn Warren. New York: Dell Publishing, 1922.

"My Last Duchess". The Victorian Web. 27 Oct 2011. 5 Dec 2013. <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/duchess/duchess.html>.

"My Last Duchess". Wikipedia. 21 Nov 2013. 5 Dec 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Last_Duchess>.

"Poetic Technique: Dramatic Monologue". Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets. 5 Dec 2013. <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5776>.

So What Actually is up with _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_?

I have to admit, I wasn't super moved by Romantic poetry when we first started reading it. I can appreciate that at the time it was kind of revolutionary to write in common language, to revere nature and "simple people" as subject matters, to give so much importance to the experience of the individual, but I honestly didn't really get any real sense of passion from the earlier poems we read. From what I have learned about the Romantic movement from past history and music classes I've taken, this sense of passion, whether positive or negative, created from the experience of man in nature, is one of the most important aspects of the movement, but I was starting to doubt that that applied really to Romantic poetry, until, however, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner completely proved me wrong. In this poem nature is constantly inspiring profound emotions, in both the Ancient Mariner, and the experience of the reader - it struck me as a truly Romantic piece, at least by my perception of Romanticism, and so for this week's post I wanted to look at how this poem embodied Romantic ideas.

Going off of what I've studied about Romantic music, the Romantic movement in the arts originated as kind of a reaction to the preceding Classical movement. The Classical movement was largely defined by strict adherence to standard forms - a piece of music or other form of art was considered aesthetically pleasing and beautiful if it achieved a sense of balance and resolution, it was very much guided by logic and order. Early Romantics however started to veer away from this definition of beauty toward an idea of beauty as reflecting the individual's true experience, which was often too complicated to be balanced and where neat resolution wasn't always realistic, and as a result, started to veer away from tho strict forms. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was published in 1798 as part of the Lyrical Ballads collection of poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and is thus considered to be the earliest true Romantic work - so it was at the point where older forms hadn't been completely abandoned, but instead were used in more non-traditional ways, which definitely applies to the form of this poem. This poem is considered to be in the form of a ballad. According to traditional form, the ballad is composed of quatrains, four-line stanzas, that rhyme the second and fourth lines (abcb rhyme scheme), with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (four iambs) and iambic trimeter (three iambs) ("Ballad"). The poem starts out adhering pretty strictly to this form - the entire Part I is composed of these quatrains, and an example of the scansion would be:
  x     /      x     /    x  /   x     /
The sun came up upon the left,            (a)
  x    /   x     /     x     /
Out of the sea came he!                        (b)
  x     /      x         /     x    /   x     /
And he shone bright and on the right   (c)
    x      /      x /   x    /
Went down into the sea                        (b)  (Coleridge 1.28-32)

However, as the poem progresses, the poem starts to stick to this form less and less, with stanzas of five or six lines, and rhyme schemes that didn't always rhyme alternating lines, and then in Part VI the poem even takes on a form of dialogue between the First and Second Voices. It is interesting though because toward the end of the poem, as the Mariner gradually makes it back to land and receives his penance, the form starts to go back to following the standard form, which suggests maybe some sort of resolution after all.

Here's an illustration that I thought really embodied this
personification of nature: "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, Plate 6: The Ice Was All Around"
By Gustav Doré

Even though the poem follows a traditional form for the most part, the way the subject matter is portrayed within this form is strikingly new and Romantic. A large part of this is the way nature is personified in many ways throughout the poem. The stanza in the example above portrays the sun as masculine, giving a sense of brightness and power and order. However, later on in Part I, forces of nature start to be portrayed as more monstrous: "The ice was all around:/ It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,/ Like noises in a swound!" (Coleridge Part I, 379)). After the Mariner kills the Albatross and the ensuing curse sets in, nature is described as rather hellish and uncompromising: "All in a hot and copper sky, the bloody Sun..." and "Water, water, everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink" (Coleridge Part II, 381). It's also interesting because the forces of nature in the movement of the sun and the moon are what provide a sense of order to the poem by giving a sense of the time passing. In Part VI, the surroundings are described in relation to the moon - the bright eye of the ocean is cast toward the moon, the eyes of the dead men are described as glittering in the moon, the moonlight and shadow of the moon is reflected on the harbor - the moon seems to be a source of vision.

Another notably Romantic aspect of the subject matter is the overwhelming sense of fantasy. In this poem, fantasy arises in the form of surreal, almost nightmarish visions. We see first the vision of the skeleton ship with the Life-in-Death spectre-woman and her mate Death: "The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,/Who ticks man's blood with cold" (Coleridge 383). In Part V, the ship starts moving because of the force of a spirit: "From the land of mist and snow,/ The Spirit slid: and it was he/ That made the ship to go" (389). The voices that appear in the end of Part V through Part VI, according to the annotation, are "The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons" provide the verdict on the Mariner's penance. And then the mysterious figure of the Hermit in the Woods guides the Pilot and Mariner to land and frees the Mariner from the burden of his guilt by commencing his penance sentence.

The deviance from standard form, the strong emotional imagery created with nature, and the use of elements of the fantastical as the driving forces behind the plot and development of the poem are all big examples of Romanticism at work in this poem. The poem is also Romantic overall in its general lack of resolution - while the Mariner sins and is punished for his sins, it is never made clear his motives for killing the Albatross, and so it is hard to glean a clear moral-of-the-story from the poem (except maybe to not kill good omens - but why, why??). I think this might be intentionally vague, to suggest that human nature isn't always rational, that maybe the experience of the individual during their personal journey is maybe more important than the outcome of this journey, that instead of striving to achieve perfect harmony and establishment of the "good" and the "right", this uncertainty and wildness of emotion, though often terrifying, are more representative of true beauty.

Works Cited

"Ballad". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 14 Nov 2013. 22 Nov 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad#Ballad_form>.

Coleridge, Samuel. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Six Centuries of Great Poetry. Erskine, Albert and Robert Penn Warren. New York: Dell Publishing, 1992. 377-397. Print.

Is John the Savage Jesus?

I just finished Brave New World, and I gotta admit, I didn't think it could give a more cynical view of society, couldn't see how more twisted it could get, but these last couple of chapters totally blew the rest of it out of the water. I was impressed, really impressed, by just how crazy that perfectly content, completely boring society managed to get. John the Savage's ending didn't surprise me a whole lot though, honestly you could kind of see it coming, there was no way he was ever going to be able to escape civilization. I was interested in thinking about what his death might have represented though, especially in the context of the final "orgy-porgy" that took place.

I wouldn't proclaim myself an archetypal critic by any means, but I've studied archetypes in literature a little bit before and I think it's an incredibly interesting concept. Archetypes are basically categories of characters, each of them serve a specific function in the context of the text, and undergo the same sorts of transformations or journeys that have been found in many types of literature across cultures and history. This commonality is often used to make an argument for the existence of a collective unconscious, suggesting that these characters and what they go through represent something fundamental about the human experience, that we have these innate aspirations and history that we are born with, that get projected into the stories we tell. I don't know if I think that's all true necessarily, but I think it can be pretty cool to look for these different archetypes in novels.

So looking back on Brave New World, especially after that final chapter, the first archetype that popped out to me was the sacrificial archetype, which John seemed like he might fit. There are two kinds of sacrificial archetypes, at least that I know of, the sacrificial redeemer, and the scapegoat. The sacrificial redeemer comes bearing some knowledge, with the intention of enlightening a society (or even just a group of characters) with this knowledge, but in order to truly redeem the society, must die (or sacrifice something else major besides life) for their beliefs. This figure is similar to Jesus in the biblical story. The scapegoat, however, is a character that gets singled out and blamed for something negative about society, often unjustly, and is eventually killed to remove this negative aspect of society.

Here's an artistic representation of John on the mesa that
I really liked: "John ''The Savage'" by Rachel Davey

From when we first meet John, the things we find out about him and the way he is described make him out to maybe be a prophetic character of sorts. He describes the realization he had when he spent the night alone on the mesa, thinking about how easy it would be for him to kill himself but deciding not to: "He had discovered Time and Death and God" (Huxley 127). When John travels to London, his intention isn't necessarily to "save" them - at first he's excited to see this "brave new world" with people as perfectly beautiful as Lenina in it. After Lenina throws herself sexually at John, and after the children at the Hospital for the Dying show such disrespect (as John sees it) when Linda dies, the evils of the civilized world become increasingly unacceptable to him. It is finally at the soma distribution scene that we first see John become motivated to try to make a change in the society: "Linda had died; others should live in freedom and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he must do..." (191). John tries, though in vain, to reveal to the masses how enslaved they are to soma, how it is being used to control their lives, but their conditioning is so deeply ingrained that John has catastrophic results with "those he had come to save" (192).

John still holds fast to his view of morality however, and we see this put to the test in his discussion about God with Mustapha Mond. While Mond is arguing the necessity of sacrificing the individual for the sake of society, of the need to abolish strong emotions to endue stability, John sticks to his justification of his beliefs (though these beliefs were fed to him by Shakespeare): "it is natural to belief in God" (211), "If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices" (212), "God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic" (213), "tears are necessary" (213", and ultimately, "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin" (215). Essentially what John is arguing for is the right to be fully human, the view that, in his eyes, the freedom to be an individual is more important than the stability of society.

But John gets banished. Granted, he wants to be banished, but regardless, he fails to save civilization. Instead he eats it (whatever that means, I'm still not clear about that part). At the lighthouse, we start to see signs that John is going to be a sacrificial character or sorts. In attempt to purify himself, he holds his arms out "as though he were on a Cross", in a sort of "voluntary crucifixion" (218). He is trying to get himself back grounded to his original purpose, to remember Linda and what her death represented, "to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life" (221). Yet he can't escape civilized life - the reporters swarm, his every action is recorded and broadcasted by cameras wiring the surroundings - civilization is quite literally infesting his life, and eventually he kills himself in order to free himself. John gave the ultimate sacrifice in order to stay true to his beliefs.

But the nature of John's death and its function in the novel makes his character deviate from the sacrificial redeemer archetype. It isn't made totally clear, because the novel ends with his death, what impact his death had - does it allow society to realize their flaws and save themselves from the evils John saw in them, or does his death allow society to overcome the last negative obstacle in achieving stability? The latter is more probable, but we never do find out. However, the "orgy of atonement" (230) as it is referred to when the hordes that came to see the Savage all start whipping themselves, could provide an argument for redemption. It is suggested that perhaps the crowds were ready to be saved through John's means: "Drawn by the fascination of the horror and pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement"(230). And, they do ultimately experience true pain and suffering (presumably), which is a large part of what John was arguing for. But then all that we are told about the outcome of this mass atonement is that it was all over the papers the next day - we don't know how, or if even, this event changes society, so you can't ever really tell whether John was successful in saving civilization with his ideals as a sacrificial redeemer, or if he was a scapegoat and the the removal of his ideals from civilization is what saved it. But I think this intentionally left unclear. John isn't portrayed as a true prophet, all of his ideas are just Shakespeare quotes, and as Mustapha says, "One believes in things because one has been conditioned to believe them" (211). In the end we are not left with a clear idea of what is right and what is wrong, who the good guys and bad guys are, instead the greater idea that we are left with is that morality is subjective.

So this kind of shows the limitations of archetypal criticism - they don't always hold true. It would be interesting to see how modern and post-modern literature adheres to archetypes, if they're even still prominent. But I do still like to believe in the idea of a collective unconscious, as that could be one of our biggest tools to keep our society from going down the path we saw in Brave New World.

Mother (*gasp!*) Nature in _Brave New World_

I've never really been the type of person that is in to futuristic, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-themed stuff - I wasn't into sci-fi books growing up, never got the whole zombie craze, apocalyptic blockbusters never appealed to me. I don't really know why, call me old-fashioned, but the idea of a techno-future is just not that interesting to me. So I've kind of had mixed feelings about Brave New World. I'm impressed by how convincing the utopian dystopia Huxley created is - it really does seem like a pretty feasible society, one that I probably wouldn't mind living in if I had been born into it. But it seems a little bit too false - the characters are mostly robotic, but they're pretty harmless, really, so while I think that Bernard's rebellion is noble, he doesn't strike me as some grand hero. I guess Huxley makes his point pretty well, that freedom is better than stability, that pain and agony is necessary to ever feel true happiness, but it just hasn't really moved me. Maybe it's because I'm too much of an optimist, and the society in Brave New World doesn't really seem to me like anything that could ever possibly exist, but I do understand how at the time it was published this sort of reality could have seemed fathomable. So I guess it's a good thing that it doesn't seem like we'll end up in this brave new world after all, maybe that's progress?

What had really struck me though reading this so far is the way aspects of our current life are seen in this future world - Jesus, marriage, families, love - they're usually seen as disgusting and backward, something this new civilization has triumphed over. However, there is still one thing that this world can't seem to completely rob of its power, the same force that is one of the only forces still posing a major threat to our society today, and that is nature.

At first we are led to believe that nature has been conquered, that it is some old nuisance that human advancement has gotten the better of. We first see nature in the first paragraph in the form of a "harsh thin light", "hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose flesh". Nature is looking for something organic, something to feed on, to decay, but instead it only finds "the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of the laboratory" - though the light still gets in, it is easily deflected by the technology of the lab - "wintriness responded to wintriness" (Huxley 15). We see nature portrayed as distracting, peoples' enjoyment of it keeping them from fulfilling their maximum productivity, their maximum consumption - but this is easily overcome by conditioning, by shocking babies when they see roses, because "a love of nature keeps no factories busy" (Huxley 31).  We even see nature portrayed as boring, something that used to limit us, but now is pathetic in comparison to our science: while once people used to breed like animals, the pleasure of sex led to birth and babies and other unthinkable things, now they can be guaranteed sterile, and people can have as much sex as they want with none (for the most part) of the unpleasant consequences. After all, "fertility is a nuisance", and science has brought humanity, at last, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention" (Huxley 23).

Davidson, Daniel.
Brave New World Ocean Scene. 2012.

But nature is still there, no matter how tall buildings are built, no matter how many helicopters fill the sky, there is still a natural environment that can't be entirely avoided, and this starts to pop up more and more as the novel progresses.

Nature first starts to present itself as a disturbing force when Bernard takes Lenina to look at the ocean. Lenina is deeply troubled by the power of the ocean and the night, seeing is as almost monstrous, with the "rushing emptiness of the night", "the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them", "the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracting among the hastening clouds" (Huxley 89). Bernard came to look at the sea to feel peaceful, and indeed most of us would see the moon behind clouds over the ocean at night as calm, beautiful, almost meditative, but Lenina's response to this scene shows the great power nature has to upset the emotional flatness that is so key to this society's stability.

This, poor Lenina soon finds, is nothing compared to the powers of the natural world at work in the savage reservation. Here Nature as a vehicle for death and decay and filth is running rampant, and Lenina witnesses for the first time what the reality is of living in Nature without modern science to protect and preserve you - she sees what old age looks like, she sees the ever-indecent spectacle of mothers nursing babies, she sees disease, she sees dead dogs and women pick lice out of their children's hair. (This part reminded me a lot of the story of Buddha and the Four Sights, when Prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, first left his hyper-protective palace and along the way saw aging, disease, and death for the first time, before seeing a man who was abstaining from indulgence as a way to escape suffering, that in turn inspired his consequent spiritual journey - just a side note, which could maybe provide some interesting comparison depending how the novel progresses from here).

This almost sickening portrayal of the effects of nature provides a pretty convincing argument for the benefit of living in the cleanliness and comfort of the new world. It seems kind of impossible how one could prefer to live in this apparent squalor over it, and for a brief period of time we see how maybe nature is holding us back after all. However, we see a similar effect of the ocean scene on Lenina with John that reveals the still-persisting threat that nature can pose. This scene involves John's experience when he spent the night alone on top of the mesa. John was banished from the rest of the men and is received by Nature, and we for the first time really face death - Nature's ultimate triumph over all, even these modern super-humans. In this scene, the landscape is portrayed very much as a valley of death: "The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight", "this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight", "he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death" (Huxley 127).

And this shows the threat nature poses to this new society that is perhaps greater than death - it is the power of nature to inspire self-reflection. It is a source of contemplation, which is why Bernard finds peace in watching the ocean - when you are in nature and nothing else is there to distract you, the only thing you have left to face is yourself, which is exactly what this society works so hard to prevent from happening - the individual in solitude. It is because John was completely alone and had nothing to turn to but nature that "he had discovered Time and Death and God" - arguably three of the most heretic concepts in the new world, which is the real reason that Nature is the ultimate enemy of this society. It will be interesting to see what role this enemy plays in the future of this novel, and I'm wondering if this enemy will be the ultimate defeater of their race after all.

Liminality and the Lighthouse

I just finished To the Lighthouse, and now that it has been wrapped up (or maybe more rounded off, since there wasn't really any clear resolution), it's interesting to look at the novel as a whole. It left a big impression on me, and no matter what people thought of the novel, I think everyone can agree that it was nothing like the novels we're used to. A big part of what struck me about it was the heavily visual style of it - it felt almost like reading a painting more than a story, if that makes sense. When we talked in class about the concept of liminality, I starting noticing more and more how space is used to describe characters and images in the novel. The term liminality refers to the period of being at a threshold, of being neither here nor there - emphasizing the blurred  in-between space instead of a clear location. This idea helped me understand the characters in a new way, and got me thinking that maybe one of the points of this novel (if there are any clear points), is the emphasis of the characters being in this liminal state - not entirely sure how to define where they are in life, they always seem to be searching but not quite getting there.

One way the idea of liminality appears in the novel is the emphasis on distance between objects or people. This comes up a lot in the scene at the dinner table, where the space between people sitting is mentioned frequently. Sometimes the space between people is portrayed positively, as a means of connection. When Mrs. Ramsay first walks into the room, she notices, "Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her" (Woolf 126). There is a tension at dinner for a while, everyone feels something is lacking, there is an inability to connect. When the fruit plate is brought out however, and the candles are lit, everyone is brought together by the space between them being filled: "Now all the candles were lit up, and the faces on both sides of the table were brought nearer by the candlelight, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table" (Woolf 146). In this case the space between characters needs to be turned into a threshold, a channel through which people across distances can feel like they can reach each other. The creation of this in-between force in turn established boundaries, provided comfort in making clear what is "here" and what is "there": "inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a reflection in which things wavered and vanished, waterily" (Woolf 147).

Along with being portrayed as a uniting force, liminality is also portrayed as a source of vitality - the uncertainty of being in an in-between state creates a sort of freedom, a potential for make things happen, to decide how and what will be reached on the other side. This appears at the dinner as well, when everyone is waiting for Paul and Minta to come in: "Lily Briscoe, trying to analyze the cause of the sudden exhiliration, compared it with that moment on the tennis lawn, when solidity suddenly vanished, and such vast spaces lay between them; and now the same effect was got by the many candles in the sparsely furnished room" (Woolf 147). In the final scene when Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James are on the boat, Cam experiences this sense of excitement in being on the sea, in between the home island and the lighthouse: "What then came next? Where were they going? From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the adventure (that she should be alive, that she should be there)" (Woolf 280). Cam seems to be tired of her father and James worrying so much about destinations - Mr. Ramsay worrying over compass points, James determined to prove a point to his father - Cam seems to want to be free from this worry and relish in the possibilities that lie in being in an in-between state. To Cam, being on the boat, in between, makes her realize the value of that space: "The sea was now more important than the shore" (Woolf 284).

Here is a photograph of the lighthouse from Upton Towans Beach that is said to have been the inspiration for
Woolf's novel - apparently a small stretch of it was auctioned off for $129,336 back in 2009.

Cam serves as a contrast to most of the other characters though in how they feel about being in this in-between space - for most of them are consumed by how to get from one place to another. Mr. Ramsay is stuck between Q and R, and sees himself as on a heroic expedition to make it through the in-between space to reach R and maybe one day Z. Lily's search throughout the whole novel is to find a way in her painting to connect the masses on the left with the masses on the right. The ultimate destination however, is the lighthouse. There is a great build-up around reaching the lighthouse, but once the lighthouse is reached, it doesn't seem to live up to its anticipation: "So it was like that, James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock" (Woolf 301). The relief of simply reaching the destination seems to overshadow the destination itself: "For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking of [Mr. Ramsay] landing there which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost" (Woolf 308). Ultimately, Lily's vision leads her to drawing a line in the center of the painting in order to finish it.

And this is what I think maybe the overarching point of the novel is - the realization of the importance of the space in between instead of simply the destination. What the Lighthouse represents is another investigation entirely, but I do think that the Lighthouse might represent more a general meaning that the characters are searching for in their lives - they are searching for a way to reach the state of having meaning, to find meaning, to understand it, but maybe the search itself is what is more important than whether or not the destination is ever reached - that may be why the novel is entitled to the lighthouse. The passage I found that sums this up the most is when Lily is talking about how life is like a work of art:

"What is the meaning of life? That was all - a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark" (Woolf 240).
The novel seems to be arguing that maybe life shouldn't be seen as revolving around getting from here to there, but instead relishing in the threshold, in the liminality, and what we can create from this space.

Modernist Arts In _To The Lighthouse_

After reading extensive amounts of writings (really, way too much) on artistic movements in modernism for my DigiPrez, trying to make sense of all the madness that was behind them (and as a result only getting more confused), I saw a huge spectrum of ideas that artists were striving portray in their work. Though trying to understand these movements often led me in circles, usually pointing to no clear answer, it was nonetheless fascinating and helped me notice a lot of similar ideas in To The Lighthouse, which got me thinking about the relationship between literature and other art forms during the modernist period.

As I quickly learned when doing my research, modernism wasn't actually a clear movement of its own, it's more of an umbrella term encompassing several movements in the arts that branched off during this time in reaction to the radical shifting in worldview that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. Because of this, you can't really directly compare modernist literature such as To the Lighthouse to modernist art because they weren't technically part of the same movement - the term "modernist" is a term we can use to describe the period now in retrospect, but at the time, visual art had a more subtle, fragmented influence on literature. So in this week's post I am going to look at the concepts behind different artistic movements in modernism and see how these concepts are present in To the Lighthouse.

Heckel, Erich. Portrait of a Man. 1919.

One of the first "modernist" movements to arise was German Expressionism, which began roughly in 1905. Expressionists sought to portray an image in the way that they perceived them emotionally - an object was portrayed beyond just what it was, it was portrayed as what it represented to the artist, which was reflected in use of color, lines, and composition. Much of the emotion that was being conveyed was a sense of alienation of the self from the outside world ("German Expressionism"). To the Lighthouse, and most of Woolf's writing, is brimming with expressionism - the smallest details, objects, encounters the characters have are described in such a way that a deep meaning is revealed behind them. Mrs. Ramsay shows this pretty clearly when she is sitting knitting and stops to look around the room: "It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one" (Woolf 97). Another particular instance in the novel which exhibits expressionism, including the idea of alienation of the viewer, is seen when Mr. Ramsay is looking at Mrs. Ramsay reading to James in the window and thinks:

"Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off,  and halts by the window and gazes at his son and wife, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of stars" (Woolf 57).

It's a very simple image, Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James, but Mr. Ramsay seeing them sees at once their beauty and his separation from them, revealing his inner turmoil about deciding between striving heroically for greatness and his desire to surrender and relish in life's beauty.

Mondrian, Piet.
Composition with White and Yellow. 1942. 

This image of Mrs. Ramsay reading to James evokes musing in several characters, one of whom is Lily Briscoe, who is painting a scene that includes the two in the window. In her painting, she has represented Mrs. Ramsay and James as "the triangular purple shape" - when Mr. Bankes asks Lily why she did this, it is explained as "in that corner, it was bright, here, in this, she felt the need of darkness" (Woolf 81). Mr. Bankes has a hard time grasping this - he is used to the subject of paintings being portrayed with "reverence" - the largest painting in his house was praised by painters and valued at high prices, but for Lily the search in her painting is not for reverence, but "how to connect this mass on the right hand with all that on the left" (Woolf 83). I saw a lot of similarities between how Lily perceived the window and the art of the De Stijl movement. De Stijl began in 1917, and was a form of Dutch abstract art, which sought to create a "universal visual language", using shapes and lines not to depict particular people or subjects, but to convey an underlying sense of harmony ("Modern Art Timeline"). As Lily says, "the picture was not of them", instead they were represented in her deeper search to create a sense of connection and balance.

Magritte, René. Time Transfixed. 1938

Through the artist Lily's eyes, one can see a lot of "modernist" ideas appear in her perspectives. Oftentimes, how Lily sees things doesn't make a lot of logical sense, it's rather strange and surreal. I think comparison can also be done between some of these perceptions and the art of the Surrealists. Surrealism originated in the 1910's, and was heavily influenced by the work of Freud, seeking to free the mind from the constraints of the conscious through exploring dreams and the private mind  - Surrealist art often featured strangely juxtaposed objects that served as symbols, a warping of reality with the workings of the imagination (Voorhies). Though dreams and the workings of the unconscious is not  explicitly evoked, this use of symbolic, oddly juxtaposed objects I think is seen pretty well in Lily's "kitchen table"stuck upside down in a pear tree- the image she sees in her mind to represent Mr. Ramsay's work: "And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity which stuck there, its four legs in the air" (Woolf 38). It's very strange that Lily should see the work of a philosopher as a scrubbed kitchen table lodged in a pear tree, but we see that she uses this image because his work doesn't make sense to her: "She asked [Andrew] what his father's books were about. 'Subject and object and the nature of reality,' Andrew had said. And
when she said Heavens, she had no notion of what that meant, 'Think of a kitchen table then,' he told her" (Woolf 38). We see that Mr. Ramsay's "reality" doesn't make sense to Lily, so she uses her imagination to make sense of it, to create a superior reality, which was precisely what Surrealists sought to do.

Picasso, Pablo.
Ambroise Vollard. 1915.

A final artistic movement that is seen throughout the novel is Cubism. Cubism was invented by 1907 by Pablo Picasso. These works were made of up small fragments of images with shifting perspectives to create an image of a whole. This idea of striving to create a whole from fragments can be seen across several art forms and movements under modernism, and appears several times throughout the novel. Again, Lily Briscoe voices this idea, when looking at Mrs. Ramsay and James in the window, and thinking, "... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach" (Woolf 73). Mrs. Ramsay seems to be constantly undergoing fluctuations in feelings toward her husband, and in one part they converge: "Suddenly, as if the movement of his hand had released it, the load of her accumulated impressions of him tilted up, and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all she felt about him" (Woolf 39). This search for unity, for how all one's conflicting emotions and judgements and desires can be added up together is something characters in this novel grapple with frequently. You can see Lily struggling with this when she is trying to form some sort of opinion of Mr. Bankes, the Ramsay's, and love in general: "How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking what one felt, or disliking?" (Woolf 40).

While there was no one clear "modernist" movement, it makes sense that you can see similarities between so many of the movements in visual arts and literature. People had completely lost faith in traditional institutions, structures, forms, and were striving to create something new. This was obviously incredibly difficult however, and the struggle for original creation itself was very important to the time, and so it is only natural that artists fed off of each other, tried to take new ideas in their own direction, which is why I think there was such an intense relationship between the arts. Trying to read the novel with visual concepts in mind has been a little challenging but has helped give me new perspectives on the writing, so it will be interesting to see how this continues as the novel progresses.

Works Cited:
"German Expressionism". MoMA - The Collection. The Museum of Modern Art. 2013. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/ge/>.

"Modern Art Timeline"> ArtFactory. www.Artyfactory.com. 2013. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/timelines/modern_art_timeline.htm>.

Voorhies, James. "Surrealism". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2000-. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1955. Print.

The F-Word in _Pride and Prejudice_

So I, like several other people in our class, found myself getting oddly riled up during class lately about the (deceptively) seemingly controversy-free Pride and Prejudice. The novel has inspired more discussion in our class that I think I've seen with any other novel, and the primary center of this has been the debate over whether or not Pride and Prejudice is a feminist text. As a disclaimer before I explain my argument on the subject, I should probably say that I definitely consider myself a pretty strong feminist. Before everyone grimaces and goes to read someone else's blog post, I have a comment on feminism that will influence my argument a lot - I think feminism is greatly misunderstood. Most people hear the word feminist and instantly think of the standard bra-burning, man-hating, obnoxiously preachy idea of a feminist, but to me at least that's not actually what feminism is about. To me feminism is the empowerment of women - supporting women of any background or belief system in taking control of their own lives, whatever this may entail. It's about being strong. Through this light, Pride and Prejudice is most definitely a feminist text.

Look at all that mud!
 Kiera Knightly in Pride and Prejudice.

Elizabeth Bennett is one of literature's most famous strong heroines, which is the immediate argument to be made for feminism in this novel. Lizzy's father's estate is entailed on a male heir, she has a very low income, and not the most lucrative societal connections, and in the Victorian era this meant that a woman would either have to marry into money, or become a spinster. This was just the reality of the situation. A lot of people argued that Lizzy is not then a truly strong woman, because she chose to marry into money, that she eventually succumbed to society's ways - if she was a true feminist character, she would have married a poor man! Gone off and made money on her own! Never have needed a man anyways! But this would not have been realistic in the time, and part of what I think makes Lizzy such a good example of a strong woman is that she advocated for herself in a way that was practical, that could inspire real women confined to the same social constraints to make positive changes in their lives. This is best seen at the end of the novel with Georgiana Darcy's "education": "Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband, which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself" (Austen 345). It is for Lizzy's wit and unwillingness to submit to social rules governing conversation that Darcy falls in love with her. Of course Lizzy kind of makes him say it: "'My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners - my behavior to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere, did you admire me for my impertinence?' 'For the liveliness of your mind, I did'" (Austen 338). You see right here that Lizzy knows she is less than conventional, and prides herself in it. You sometimes see a side come out in Lizzy that she kind of likes the power she has over Mr. Darcy: "He told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable" (Austen 325). Granted, it's not power that Lizzy wants in a marriage, she just wanted respect, which Mr. Bennet explains pretty well, "I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could neither be happy nor respectable unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior" (Austen 335). Lizzy wants a husband who respects her for who she is, but who she also can respect.
This idea of marrying someone for who they are as a person (though it does help some when said person is quite rich) and for the connection they have to each other is very important to this novel. It would have been very logical for Lizzy to marry Mr. Collins - he was their heir to her estate and had respectable income - refusing this alone, given her situation in life, was a pretty radical move. She also refused Mr. Darcy initially, even though he is probably the wealthiest character in the novel (besides Lady Catherine), because he went against what she valued in people - he (nearly) ruined Jane's change of happiness, ruined Wickham's life (so she thought), and for hurting, of course, her pride - she makes it pretty clear that she had no desire to marry him: "You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it" (Austen 172). Darcy had to change to become the type of person, not just the role in society, that Lizzy wanted to marry. And changed him she did -  Darcy says, "By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased" (Austen 328). Lizzy had high standards. And it may not seem that radical now (thankfully), that a woman demand that her standards be met, but two hundred years ago, especially if you had no means of supporting yourself, for a woman to even think that they might have the power to change a man so that she could love him as a person, would definitely be radical.
The conventional, expected behavior of women during this time is shown through the character of Charlotte Lucas upon becoming engaged to Mr. Collins: "Without thinking highly of either men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want" (Austen 111). While Charlotte's character and decision also serves to provide a nice contrast to Lizzy's, she is not shown in a negative light - she did what she had to do, essentially - marriage had been her goal and she achieved it. Lydia's marriage is also an interesting contrast to both Lizzy's and Charlotte's marriage - she married for passion, not for practicality or a connection of the minds, and though money trouble is foreshadowed for her, her happiness is never doubted: "If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear Wickham, you must be very happy" (Austen 343). All three women married to get what they wanted in life, whatever that may be, which is why Pride and Prejudice to me embodies a deeper, inclusive sort of feminism as well.
I think the categorization of this novel as "proto-feminist" is important to consider as well. The characters may not have wrestled free from constricting societal laws and smashed the patriarchy by any means, but in this novel we see something of a start. We see women taking control of their decisions to please themselves - Charlotte, Lydia, and Lizzy all married men that were objectionable to some degree by other characters, but they went ahead because they wanted to. And with Lizzy, we see someone who different, and knows it, and uses it to her advantage, and she tell's her future husband so: "You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them" (Austen 338). She is unquestionable a strong female character, who sees nothing wrong with who she is (for better or for worse), and makes sure that a man she falls in love with loves her for who she is. For women reading this at the time - and honestly, for me reading this now, this kind of mindset can be very inspiring. And I think this discussion, this comparing of past and present values, this attempt at defining happiness, that arose these past few classes from this novel is alone justification for why it is considered a masterpiece.

Work Cited:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Letters of Love and Life in _Pride and Prejudice_

Based on discussions in class so far over Pride and Prejudice, I don't think guys really understand just how wholly marvelous Mr. Darcy is to us ladies. Tall, dark, handsome, witty, well-read, mysterious, filthy rich and a good dancer?? Really, this is perfection we are dealing with. If I had been approached by Mr. Darcy in the woods with a four-page letter detailing his private life, I definitely would have swooned, or at least had a much more positive reaction than Lizzy did. I've found myself wishing a lot reading this book that letters were still "a thing", because they were so much more personal than most communication these days, and so I was interested in class today when we were talking about epistolaries. I've read Pride and Prejudice a few times and seen the BBC adaptations an actually unreal amount of times, and I've always just taken the letters for granted, but I thought it would be interesting to look more into the technical, functional purpose of letters in the novel.

The epistolary novel is defined by a novel that is comprised of a series of documents, which includes diary entries and other formats, but usually is through letters. In epistolaries, the letters play crucial roles in turns of events in the plot, and also serve the purpose of giving a more intimate view of a character by conveying their thoughts without the interference of a third-person, narrator's point of view ("Epistolary novel"). Based on this definition, I wanted to evaluate to what extent Pride and Prejudice could be defined as an epistolary. 

There is the obvious difference - Pride and Prejudice isn't really comprised of a series of documents, it is primarily narration with letters interspersed. However, the letters function in this novel as a force heavily impacting the plot. The first time we see a letter, it serves to introduce us to the character of Mr. Collins: "The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father, always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach" (Austen 55). The letter here acts as as a natural segue that is realistic to how such social exchanges were at the time period, but also clearly reveals Mr. Collins' motivations and general tone of communicating with others that instantly tells the reader a lot through implication of his character without extensive description. 

This latter purpose of revealing the character's ways of thinking is also seen later on in a letter to Lizzy from Jane after her negative experience with Miss Bingley in London: "But, my dear sister, though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I still assert, that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was as natural as your suspicion" (Austen 132). Here we clearly see Jane's ability to automatically consider everyone's perspective in a situation and justify the actions and feelings of each, which tells the reader a lot more about Jane as a person than pure description could provide. This also serves as a source for the reader to learn of plot advancements occurring in a different place than where the main character (Lizzy) is. 

Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, 1995.

But perhaps the most important letter in what we have read of the novel so far (though it is by far the most important letter in the novel), is the one Mr. Darcy hands Lizzy in the tree grove after his catastrophic attempt at a marriage proposal. In terms of influencing the plot, it does so extremely, being what ultimately influences Lizzy to start changing her opinion of Mr. Darcy, and revealing Mr. Wickham's deception:

 "But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent, as to render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole" (Austen 182). 

Because Lizzy's change of opinion about Mr. Darcy (along with some change on his part too) was necessary for the plot to advance toward their ultimate betrothal, her reaction to hearing his side of the story was of utmost importance, and the letter serves perfectly to reveal this. It also established the truth about Mr. Darcy from Mr. Darcy himself - so far all we really know of his character is his cryptic dialogue in conversation and the varying accounts of him from other characters. This back-and-forth banter about Mr. Darcy makes it a little difficult to always know what to believe about him, and so the letter serves a further purpose of making Mr. Darcy's actions and feelings believable because we are hearing them firsthand: "I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being" (Austen 179). This first serves to grab the reader's attention (ooo, juicy secret!) but then consequently makes the reader want to take Darcy's side, which is crucial for his development as a character.

So I guess you could classify Pride and Prejudice as a quasi-epistolary novel - though letters do not serve as the primary format of the novel, they do serve huge roles that I didn't even realize of creating shifts in the plot as well as giving an up-close view of the characters by allowing the reader to "hear" their inner thoughts. 

Works Cited:

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19898. Print.

"Epistolary novel". Wikipedia. 1 Oct 2013. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel>.

Satan, A Hero??

Dore, Gustav.
Satan Talks to the Council of Hell. c. 1866.

In one of our classes when we were just starting Paradise Lost, we talked about the question of whether or not Satan could be considered the hero of the epic. I was really interested in the idea of someone (especially from the 17th century) trying to make the Antichrist into a hero or sorts, and for the first couple books it almost seemed like Satan was going to the star of Paradise Lost. As the story progressed though, attention turned to God, to Adam and Eve, and Satan became less and less, well, cool. His character became increasingly deceitful and greedy - Satan became less a champion of those in servitude and more a selfish, jealousy-driven being stuck in the past. After the epic was over, I wanted to try and look back at the plot to see if Satan's journey modeled the monomyth idea of a typical "hero's journey" (I'm weirdly into the idea of the monomyth for some reason), but when I looked into the specific plot transitions and character development during the stages of the monomyth, Satan didn't adhere to any of them, in fact he went through almost the exact opposite stages. That was I stumbled upon the idea of the "Byronic hero". Doing some research, I read that critics of Milton never sympathized with Satan until the Romantic era, and that was when the view of Satan as an archrebel fighting tyranny came to be. The poet Lord Byron came to develop a hero type in several of his works that is now called the Bryonic hero. The Byronic hero is said to possess flawed grandeur - they have grand aspirations and are in many ways morally superior, but have flaws such as pride and vengeance that eventually control them ("The Satanic and Byronic Hero: Overview").
This type  of hero seemed to match Satan incredibly well as he is portrayed in Paradise Lost. When Satan delivers his first epic speech in Book I, he is rallying the fallen angels after their fall from Heaven and is portrayed as morally superior to his defeater, God: "Here at least/We shall be free... .To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n." (Milton 1.258-63). Key characteristics of Byronic heroes are being deceitful, emotionally conflicted, seductive, and having a troubled past ("Byronic Hero"). Satan was extremely deceitful - deceit came to be one of the words associated with Satan, as he took on the shape of animals to eavesdrop on Adam and Eve in Eden, the form of a heavenly spirit to question the angels about humans, and ultimately the body of the Serpent in Eve's fateful temptation. The other three traits Satan also embodied, but sometimes in a more subtle way. You don't really see Satan's emotionally conflicted side until he is first looking on Eden in Book IV, showing regret  about rebelling against God: "He deserv'd no such return/From me, whom he created what I was/In that bright eminence, and with his good/Upbraided none; nor was his service hard./What could be less than to afford him praise" (Milton 4.42-46), and then blaming himself for his choice: "Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will/Chose freely what now it so justly rues" (Milton 4.72-73), and then accepting his fate of belonging to eternal Hell: "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;/And in the lowest deep a lower deep/Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide/To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven" (Milton 4.75-78).
Satan's seductive side came out especially when he was tempting Eve - the temptation of Eve was in many ways a seduction, be it a sinister one. When Satan comes upon Eve in the form of the Serpent, her beauty and innocence overcomes him for a moment: "Her graceful innocence, her every Air/Of gesture or least action overaw'd/His malice, and with rapine sweet bereav'd/His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought" (Milton 9.459-462). The Serpent is immensely charming to Eve, winning her over by speaking to her vain side, calling her "A Goddess among Gods", "Empress of this fair world", "Sovran of creatures, universal Dame" (Milton 10). Satan seems to have figured out the key to making a girl listen to you, by making her feel empowered: "He ended, and his words replete with guile/Into her heart too easy entrance won" (Milton 9.732-34).
And, in the end, Satan ultimately accomplishes his goal of corrupting mankind, introducing Sin and Death in to Eden, effectively ruining Paradise. However, he goes back to Hell to brag about his success, expecting the fruits of victory: "Ye have th'account/Of my performance: What remains ye Gods,/But up and enter now into full bliss" (Milton 10.502-503), but then is turned into a snake along with the rest of the rebel angels. This to me represents the essential embodiment of a Byronic hero - the eventual defeat of the once-hero because of flaws - in Satan's case, vengeance and greed - that the character cannot overcome. This is also what makes it impossible for Satan to be considered a true hero of Paradise Lost, because instead of championing over others because of enlightened morals (as a true hero is supposed to), the opposite happens - Satan is defeated by forces of superior morals because of his "wrong" morals. So I guess Satan may not have been able to turned into a real hero because of his fundamentally evil nature, but he is nonetheless given a more complex hero form - a dark hero, but in many ways a hero nonetheless, and to me it was this alternate view of a hero that made Paradise Lost a surprisingly thought-provoking read.

Here's a link to a chart that shows the basic pattern of the traditional hero's journey monomyth in case anyone is interested:
http://mormonmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/monomyth.jpg

Works Cited:

"Byronic Hero". Wikipedia. 30 Sep 2013. 04 Oct 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero>.

"The Satanic and Byronic Hero". Norton Topics Online. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 04 Oct 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_5/>.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1968.

The Existential Crisis and _Paradise Lost_

I never thought I would find myself saying this, but I've been getting really into Paradise Lost lately. I was afraid that the book would pretty much be too-complex plot full of allusions I was having to Google every page, but the past couple of books have really surprised me. I think what I've been enjoying most is the character development, especially of Satan. It's a pretty crazy idea really, writing an epic based on the Bible from Satan's perspective, and I have noticed myself thinking a lot about the moral dilemmas and arguments that have been posed as result of this. We talked a bit in class about the existentialist themes that come up in Paradise Lost, especially in Satan's speeches, so I decided to look into this more for my post this week.

Here's a depiction of a chaotic world if I ever saw one:
Brueghel, Pieter the Elder.
The Fall of the Rebel Angels. 1562.

Existentialism is an intellectual movement that was formalized in the aftermath of Word War II by writer Jean-Paul Sartre (though several writers and philosophers before him laid out the ideology behind the movement), and was further developed by writers such as Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett. The basic principle behind existentialism is the emphasis of the individual in an absurd and indifferent world. The slogan usually used to explain existentialism is "Existence Precedes Essence" - we have no control over the world around us, the only thing we can control is how we exercise free will. We must give our lives meaning, establish our own values, our own essence (Banach "Existentialism"). The idea of the individual having the power to control their moral codes and perception of the world around them appears often in Paradise Lost. In Satan's speech in Book 1 after the rebel angels fell to Hell, he describes himself as "One who brings a mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time./The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" (Milton 1.253-55). I interpreted this as Satan asserting that no matter what situation God might put him in, he still has control over his mind.
This free will is portrayed as an intentional aspect of God's creations - God himself explains this in Book 3, speaking to his Son about how it is Satan's fault (and eventually man's fault) that they fell from Paradise: "I made him just and right,/Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall./Such I created all th'Ethereal Powers/And Spirits, both them who stood ad them who fail'd" (Milton 3.98-102). Throughout the following passage, God argues that if he hadn't given spirits the freedom to choose their values and actions, then he couldn't be sure that they were sincere in their allegiance to him. The idea that our fate is not predestined, that we are responsible for our own actions also appears in this passage: "They therefore as to right belong'd,/So were created, nor can justly accuse/Their maker, or their making, or their Fate;/As is Predestination over-rul'd/Their will, dispos'd by asbolute Decree/Or high knowledge; they themselves decreed/Their own revolt, not I" (Milton 1.111-117). Here God is saying that it isn't his fault the rebel angels fell from Heaven, they made the decision themselves to revolt. This argument appears again later on in Paradise Lost, after the creation of Adam and Eve. When the angel Raphael visit Adam, he tells him that if they are obedient they can one day come to Heaven. Adam is slightly aghast at the idea of "if" they are obedient, he wonders how he could not obey such a wonderful God. Raphael tells him that his happiness is his own decision: "That thou art happy, owe to God,/That thou continu'st such, owe to thyself/.../And good he made thee, but to persevere/He left in thy power, ordain'd thy will/By nature free, not overrul'd by Fate" (Milton 5.520-27).
This adds another element to the existentialist argument - we are responsible for determining our morals and living by them, but this also means that we are responsible for our actions. When Satan is first seeing Eden, he undergoes a complex inner reflection, and we see him experience some remorse about losing his place in Heaven. However, he acknowledges that he knows he is to blame for this because of how he exercised his free will:
 "Hadst thou the same free Will and Power to stand?/Thou hadst: whom hast thou them or what to accuse,/But Heav'n's free Love dealt equally to all?/Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate/To me alike, it deals eternal woe./Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will/Chose freely what it now so justly rues" (Milton 4.66-73).
Satan realizes he could have chose to stay and submit in Heaven, he tries to blame the nature of God's Love as forcing him into his situation, but then he sees that he still ultimately chose how he responded to his environment. This embodies the essence of existentialism - we can control the nature of the world around us, but we can determine the relationship we have with the world around us. Just as Adam and Eve are responsible for their happiness because of their decisions, Satan is unhappy because of his.
Most of the existentialist writings during the mid-1900's emphasized the idea of the alienated individual trying to find meaning in and make sense of a chaotic world. Much of this work was in a way protesting social and political systems that seemingly lacked moral logic, which makes sense given the historical context of the rise of Hitler and the brutality of World War II during this time (Crowell "Existentialism"). The existentialist themes that appear in Paradise Lost are considerably different from this - the free will of the individual or presented as an opportunity - you can have happiness and a beautiful world if you choose, that is, if you choose to obey God. Instead of protesting "the system", it is in a way encouraging conformity to God's laws. However, in my opinion existentialism is still technically prevalent throughout the work in the sense that God isn't responsible for our Fate - being omnipotent, God knows our Fate, but ultimately Adam, Eve, Satan, and all the other angels in the story are responsible for choosing their own fate. It will be interesting to see how (or if) this idea comes into play in future books of Paradise Lost, especially surrounding the fall of Adam and Eve.

Works Cited:
Banach, David. "Existentialism". Department of Philosophy. St. Alsem College. 2006. 27 Sep 2013. <http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sartreol.htm>.

Crowell, Steven. "Existentialism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. 11 Oct 2010. 27 Sep 2013. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/>.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York, Ny: Penguin Books, 1968. Print.

Birth and Death in _Paradise Lost_

To be honest, I was struggling with Book II of Paradise Lost pretty hard for a while - I had just got out of a Physics exam, was on the crashing end of a hyper-caffeinated day, and was going cross-eyed trying to follow the arguments for Peace and War being made by the fallen angels. But then Satan's daughter Sin shows up at the gates of Hell? Along with her son Death, the product of Satan raping her in Heaven? Now we're talking. Apart from adding a much-welcomed twist to the plot, this Sin character really got me thinking about how birth and death are portrayed in Paradise Lost.
 It's interesting to be dealing with birth and death with immortal spirits in a universe made up of still mostly Chaos. In this version of the universe, birth often has a purpose - it is the creation of a being or spirit that is being brought into the world as a consequence of someone's actions. This is seen especially in the relationship between Satan, Sin, and Death. Sin, the daughter of Satan, was born out of the left side of Satan's head when he was conspiring against God in Heaven:
"...in sight/Of all the Seraphim with thee combined/In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King,/All on a  sudden miserable pain/In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast//Threw forth, till on the left side op'ning wide,/Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,/The shining heavenly fair, a Goddess arm'd/ Out of thy head I sprung" (Milton 2.751-758).

Blake, William. Satan, Sin, and Death. 1808. 

In short, because Satan began plotting against God, Sin was born into Heaven. This bears an interesting parallel to Greek mythology - Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was "born" out of Zeus' forehead. It is also noteworthy that Sin was born out of the left side of Satan's head - the word "sinister" Latin word sinistra literally means "left" - the "left side" came to be associated with evil and bad omens ("Sinister"). As we soon find out in Paradise Lost, Satan raped his daughter Sin in Heaven, which resulted in her giving birth to Death after falling from Heaven herself. This birth, Sin claims, distorted her body (she is a serpent from the waist down), and her son Death continues to rape her, leading to the birth of hell-hounds that are constantly breeding in and out of her womb: "These yelling Monsters that with ceaseless cry/Surround me, and as thou saw'st, hourly conveiv'd/And hourly born, with sorrow infinite/To me, for when they list into the womb/That bred them they return" (Milton 2.795-99). Though this "un-holy Trinity" of Satan, Sin, and Death is rather gruesome, it marks a transition in Paradise Lost from Satan being portrayed as a hero of sorts to getting closer to Milton's original purpose to "justify the ways of God to men" (Milton 1.26). It makes sense in a way that Sin would be the offspring of evil, and would provide a temptation in Heaven that ultimately results in rape and the creation of Death. This bears another parallel to Eve's punishment in Genesis - after Eve disobeys God and eats the Forbidden Fruit, God punishes Eve by making childbirth painful and subjecting her to Adam's will: "Then he said to the woman, 'I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pin you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). Here birth is again a punishment of sorts, and just as Adam controls Eve, Death has power over Sin.
Along with being portrayed as a means of punishment and an explanation for creation, the idea of birth is also portrayed frequently alongside death  as almost synonymous with death. Hell is described in terms of life and death: "A Universe of death, which God by curse/Created evil, for evil only good,/Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds" (Milton 2.622-24). Milton's description of the Abyss outside the gates of Heaven and Hell perhaps best illustrates how closely related birth and death are related, "...Into this wild Abyss,/The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,/Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,/But all these in their pregnant causes mist/Confus'dly" (Milton 2.910-14).
There are several dichotomies present in Paradise Lost - Heaven and Hell, good and evil, light and dark - birth and death is a more subtle dichotomy, one that is harder to notice. And instead of being portrayed as opposites, birth and death are seen as interrelated. Birth results in the creation of Death and eternal punishment, and conversely, in Hell, Death (both the character and the concept) feed uncontrollably on life. The idea of the Abyss as a sort of uncharted Chaos best symbolizes this, being the source of material from which life is created and where life is destroyed. It will be interesting to see how birth and death and their role in creation will be conveyed as the epic continues, especially in the creation of man.

Words: 788

Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1968. Print.
"Sinister." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2013. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinister>.

Ariel vs. Caliban in _The Tempest_

Fuseli, Henry. Ariel. c. 1800-10.

 So as I going over (and over, and over) The Tempest these past couple of weeks, one of the things that really struck me was Prospero's relationships with Caliban and Ariel. Both were creatures of some form that inhabited the island and were both taken in as slaves, essentially, to Prospero, yet they were treated and were treated by Prospero so differently. Caliban's character is this deformed brute, the spawn of the moon-witch Sycorax and devil, while Ariel is an air-spirit who can command the spirits of other elements. Prospero sees himself as the rescuer of sorts of both Caliban and Ariel - he gave Caliban shelter and taught him to speak his language, and freed Ariel from a tree where he was imprisoned, and in return for these "favors" he binds Caliban to fetching his wood and Ariel to performing various trickeries of the Naples crew. Yet while Prospero praises Ariel one moment ("Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel, hark in thine ear" [Shakespeare 1.2.317-18]) he turns around and barks at Caliban, "Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself upon thy wicked dam, come forth!" (Shakespeare 1.2.319-20). It was pretty funny actually to see how completely different treatment Caliban and Ariel received from Prospero, so I decided to look into what these two characters might be supposed to represent, what Shakespeare's intention may have been in creating this contrast.
As this is a play that is roughly four centuries old, of course it was pretty difficult to find any concrete, factual information about what Shakespeare himself was trying to convey with these two characters, but I did find a few articles by scholars giving their interpretations of the contrast between Caliban and Ariel. There were a lot that argued the The Tempest was in a sense Shakespeare's commentary on colonization of native civilizations in the New World, that Caliban and Ariel embodied the different way natives were viewed and treated based on their level of cooperation with their colonizer (Caliban being the ungrateful rebel and Ariel the glorious example of what can happen if you do all you can to please the power that freed you from your previous entrapment) - here's a link to an article on Columbia's website that I found particularly interesting: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html

However (and who knows why, maybe it has something to do with being raised by a mother who majored in Psych), the interpretations that struck me the most were the ones that looked at Ariel and Caliban as conflicting aspects of Prospero's internal character. Here's a link to an article I found on a strange website called "Personality and Consciousness" and gives a "Jungian interpretation" of The Tempest: http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=the_tempest. It's a little out there, but I thought the underlying point was an interesting way of viewing Ariel and Caliban that I hadn't really thought of before. The article's author, Barry Beck, argues that Ariel embodies Prospero's conscious mind - that over which he has control over, the civilized part, that

Buchel, Charles.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree As Caliban. 1904.

which he can rely on as a means to achieving an end. Caliban on the other hand embodies Prospero's more animalistic subconscious mind - that which he can punish but not entirely control, the ugly monster who is nonetheless an part of the island that Prospero can't get rid of (Beck). I do agree with this perspective - Ariel is a charming spirit who speaks in nicely flowing rhymes and carries out Prospero's every order to perfection, while Caliban is, well, the son of the devil, who says vulgar things, resents being given orders (for the reason that he is part of the nature of the island and feels the island thus belongs to him), and wanted to populate the island with Prospero's daughter (Shakespeare 1.2.349-51). By utilizing Ariel, Prospero consciously controls nearly all of the characters and events occurring around him almost exactly to his will, yet Caliban still crashes the finale, drunk and wearing stolen clothes.
While I was interested in thinking about the political and psychological interpretations of these two characters, my personal interpretation that I came to find was more a combination of both perspectives. I think the discovery of the New World and the interactions with the people and environment there permanently shook up the Old World's psyche, which was reflected in its politics, scientific ideologies, and art - and this includes The Tempest. Without intending to, Western civilization was in a sense sucked into a storm of mysterious creatures and environments, and they had the technological means to take power over it all, but struggled with how exactly to use this power - to free or not to free if you will. To me, Ariel and Caliban embody different parts of mankind's reaction to encountering a purely wild world. As Gonzalo put it, "All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement inhabits here" (Shakespeare 5.1.104-5) - some parts were ugly and wicked, some parts were beautiful and liberating, but both were necessary advancing the shipwrecked group to the next phase in their lives on a personal level and as a greater society.

Works Cited

Beck, Barry. "Shakespeare's The Tempest: A Jungian Interpretation". Personality and Consciousness. eLearners.com. 1993. 08 Sep 2013. <http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=the_tempest>.

O'Toole, Michael. "Shakespeare's Natives: Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest". Quixotic: An Electronic Journal of Experimental LitHum Texts. Columbia University. 08 Sep 2013. <http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html>.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1960. Print.