I'm sure you've all heard the chatup line where a boy approaches a girl and says 'You must be really tired', to which she replies 'Why?' and then he comes out with the punchline: 'cos you've been running through my mind all day' (apologies if the wording is incorrect, I can't remeber it exactly!).
Well, I've come up with a response to that for all you girls out there: 'Well, no, not really, its quite a small distance you see.' Implication: your brain is small. etc. etc. Somehow it doesn't sound as funny as when I first came up with it!
Anyway, wouldn't you prefer something like the poem below? I know I would! And now if it's a male reading this he will immediately print this out and give it to the one he loves. No! Don't do that either! It's so much better when you compose your own poems, from the heart rather than stealing someone else's. When will they learn! Great, I sound like some worn out agony aunt which was not my intention, just wanted to share this poem with you all so here it is, (in red. what a cliche!)
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
By W. B. Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the clothes under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
28 March, 2006
27 March, 2006
Thank You....
Just want to thank all these people for their advice and influence (both positive and negative!!) on me! Keep smiling! (not too much, you'll get wrinkles if you haven't got them already!)
'Mom and Dad' : words aren't enough
Fatso, Mouse and Chatterbox: couldn't ask for a Worse...sorry meant best (!) set of sibllings. You've made my life miserable...but hey, revenge is sweet....I'll get you when you least expect me to....
'Ape Next Door': stop perving on married men!
'Married Girl' : beware of housework...it makes you ugly! And four letter words are so dirty aren't they, like iron, cook, dust...lol!
'Froggy' : You'll never know what you meant to me...nothing! lol.
'Dob' : ???!! Where to start, where to end....
'Mo' : ................
'Cat and Sam' : You've kept me on the striaght path...not!
'Workaholic Rich' : One word: Thanks! When are you retiring again? Lol.
'Ribena Gang' : Lets kick 'lucozade' out! lol.
'Imaginary friends' : Don't worry, I know you exist even if no one else can does!
All my teachers
Apologies if I have forgotten anyone, will add more as i go along!
A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
by Craig Rane
I love this poem! Its hillarious. My comment in brackets-not part of the poem!
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings
[ William Caxton invented printing press, so here ‘birds with many wings’ is actually books-when books are perched on your hands, each side on each palm it resembles birds-especially when you were young and you’d draw birds and a broad wide ‘V’-well I did anyway, not all of us are gifted artists! Lol. ]
they cause the eyes to melt [Books make you cry]
or the body to shriek without pain. [Books make you laugh]
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making clothes darker.
[ Simply put: when it rains you go inside and look out of your window-window becomes tv screen. Rain can makes clothes darker, even the world outside, even your mood! Makes me feel down-but i like that ‘down’ as opposed to the ‘down’ you feel when someone dies/ after a messy break…not that I would know. lol. ]
Model T is a room with the lock inside-
a key is turned to free the world
[ Here, evidenlty Model T is a car and when you turn the key the whole world passes you by.]
for movement so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
[ Hillarious! Talking about watches on the wrist, I like the idea of time in a box, almost as if we have control over it and it doesn't control us]
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling it with a finger.
[Telephone! You pick it up to stop its 'snoring' and yet we 'wake it up deliberately' when we want to make a call]
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
[You're never too old for childish toilet humour are you! lol. The punishment room is the toilet, and implicit social norms prevent adults suffering openly. And yes...smell...]
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves-
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
[When you go to bed, sometimes you dream- so you're reading about yourself in colour!]
Nice poem isn't it? Fantastic-especailly for little children. I strongly recommend it. Always manages to cheer me up.
Gender and Sexuality
Gender and Sexuality in ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Nights at the Circus’
Carter celebrates Fevvers vivacity, sexuality and ambiguous gender role whereas many of Dickens’ characters are not only sexually repressed, such as Louisa who falls at her father’s feet from slightest stirrings of desire, but also in very fixed gender categories or even extreme, such as the hyper-femininity of Sissy and Stephen’s wife and the hyper-masculinity of Gradgrind and Bounderby. In this essay I will examine sexuality, the excess of it or lack of it in characters and gender identity.
In Victorian society women thought ‘to be at the mercy of their biology’ and their ‘strengths were emotional ratherthan bioogical, sympathetic and domestic rather than rational and worldly’ (Gilmour. 1993: 191) and for all these reason and much more women were seen as unfit to exercise their vote. However Fevvers is not ‘at the mercy of [her] biology’ because she ‘was not docked via what you might call the normal channels. […] but just like Helen of Troy was hatched’ (Carter. 1994: 7). Thus right from the start she is portrayed as androgynous and indeed very ‘worldly’. Her gestures are ‘grand and vulgar’ and she dreamt of very ‘worldly’ things such as ‘bank accounts […] and the jingling of cash registers’ (Carter. pg 7). Even physically she is androgynous: the swan had masculine and feminine connotations and so ‘becomes the ambiguous, androgynous creature associated with both man and woman’ (Milne). She represents both Cupid and Venus. Her ‘discovery of wings is treated as if it were something like the onset of menstruation […] or the hump […] a second breast that has to be concealed’ but at the same time something masculine, ‘the hump maybe be phallic, mbiguously bisexual’ (Armstrong, 1994: 273). According to Gamble she ‘blatantly displays the freakish excesses of her body, all twits, wings and the tantalising illusion of nakedness’ (Gamble. 1997: 161). In conclusion, Fevvers is both oxymoronic and androgynous in many aspects.
Like Fevvers, Louisa Gradgrind is not at ‘the mercy of [her] biology’. This is because of Gradgrind’s philosophy that ‘the one thing needful’ is ‘facts’ (Dickens. 1994: 1). Being a ‘man of realities’ (Dickens. Pg 2) and ‘perfectly devoid of sentiment’ (Dickens. pg12) he has brought up his children on these principles. Therefore Louisa is likewise ‘devoid of all sentiment’ and de-sexualised. Her complete lack of emotion on hearing Bounderby’s proposal from her father, which ironically Gradgrind is ‘moved by’, (Dickens. Pg 90) appals the reader. Her marriage is not a question of mutual love and desire but rather on questions of facts, Gradgrind informs his daughter
‘the question of fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: shall I marry him?’(Dickens. Pg 88)
It is therefore not surprising after being brought up on these principles, that Louisa is tempted by James Harthouse, a man who even impresses the witch of the novel, Mrs Sparsit: on seeing Harthouse her immediate thoughts are:
‘Five-and-thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding, well-dresses, dark hair, bold eyes.’(Dickens. Pg 107)
A man that even Mrs Sparsit finds ‘good-looking’ will inevitably stir some affection in Louisa, this even Mrs Sparsit herself predicts. Like the prisoners who can never escape the ‘tyranny of [Countess P’s] eyes’ (Carter. Pg 214), so Louisa cannot escape Mrs Sparsit’s gaze and her descent down the ‘staircase’ provides much amusement to Mrs Sparsit. She follows Louisa, hoping to catch her with Harthouse but instead she becomes a grotesque figure: as it starts raining her white stockings become various colours and caterpillars are attached to various parts of her dress. And it is this scene, according to Lodge that proves her to be the witch of the novel:
‘Traditionally witches are antipathetic to water. It is appropriate, therefore, that the frustration of Mrs Sparsit’s spite, when she loses track of Louisa, is associated with her ludicrous, rain-soaked appearance’(Lodge. 1969: 103)
Louisa does ‘fall’, but not at the bottom of the staircase, but at her father’s feet. Not only is she de-sexualised but she also does not comply with expectations of her gender. For example, domestic duties. When Mrs. Sparsit comes to live with her and Bounderby, she overlooks the domestic side of the household even though this is traditionally the wife’s role and compared to Mrs Sparsit, Louisa appears incompetent.
From the first chapter the reader is aware of Gradgrind’s hyper-rationality (his demands for ‘Fact!’) which consequently makes him hyper-masculine. But it is not his hyper-masculinity that I find humorous, because he does redeem himself at the end by acknowledging and accepting the failure of his system, rather it his de-sexuality that amuses me. For example, in chapter one of the first book, Dickens portrays Gradgrind as the epitome of ‘squareness’: ‘square forefinger[…]square wall of a forehead […]square coat, square legs, square shoulders’ (Dickens. Pg 1). His de-sexuality is so extreme that Dickens de-personifies him too, but what is humorous here is that whilst he is de-personified his clothes take on personality: ‘his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp’!
The fundamental difference between Nights at the Circus and Hard Times is that Carter appears to celebrate human sexuality and ambiguous gender roles whereas Dickens portrays sexually repressed Victorians and punishes ambiguous gender roles. For Dickens those who do not comply with Victorian gender construction are not given a happy ending. For example, Sissy Jupe is portrayed as a Victorian female stereotype: the ‘Angel in the House’ and thus she meets what is expected of her gender, for this Dickens rewards her with a husband and children and a home- the reader hopes a happy home with a loving husband. This was perceived as utopia for a Victorian woman. In contrast, the ‘Bully of humility’ (Dickens. 1994: 12), the hyper-masculine Bounderby is disgraced and removed of his false pride-rather appropriately-in front the very audience to whom he had previously boasted of his fairy-tale origins.
In Carter’s novel ‘the radical possibilities of fluid gender roles are given a happy ending’ (Suleiman, 1994: 115). By Carter’s own admission Walser becomes an ‘object’ (VanderMeer. 2001) when traditionally it is women treated and regarded as objects and VanderMeer sees Walser as ‘weak specimen’ but Carter refuses to marginalize him as a character simply because men have marginalized women. She may point out the stupidities, cruelties, and ignorance of men, but she will not deny the individual his “right to vision.” Nor will she deny the positive realities of romantic heterosexual relationships even as she skewers the negatives and promotes lesbian liaisons’ (VanderMeer. 2001)
At the end, Carter celebrates human sexuality: Walser and Fevvers are making love and it is Fevvers who is on top. This scene ‘inverts the classical stereotype of a male figure with wings overwhelming a woman’ (Day. 1998: 192). Day is referring to the classical myth of the rape of Leda by Zeus disguised as a swan (in the myth it is the man with wings on top) . But more importantly, as Day points out, this is more than just an inversion of a stereotype. One of the characteristics of masculinity is dominance, especially over women but throughout Circus Carter portrays women as the more rational and dominant species. But in this scene Carter is not trying to show Fevvers dominating Walser, rather she is showing that the relationship between Walser and Fevvers is not
based on the principles of dominator and dominated but on the idea of love between equals (my emphasis). The cancelling of the traditional patriarchal icon of male dominance is necessary to emblematise this new relationship. (Day. 1998: 192)
As Fevvers is the ‘New Woman’ and as she will ‘hatch’ Walser ‘into the New Man…fitting mate for the New Woman’ (Carter. 1994: 281) the reader can assume that this relationship is an example of the ‘New Relationship’ in the new century. To Carter, the notion of ‘hatching’ becomes a metaphor for the idea that gender identity is something that is not given but made (Day. 1998: 181).
Bibliography
Armstrong, Isobel (1994) ‘Woolf by the Lake, Woolf at the Circus: Carter and Tradition’. In Sage, L. (ed) Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of Angela Carter. London: Virago Press Limited. Pg 257-278.
Carter, Angela (1994) Nights at the Circus. London: Vintage.
Day, Aidan. (1998) Angela Carter: The Rational Glass. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dickens, Charles (1994) Hard Times. London: Penguin Group.
Gamble, Sarah (1997) Angela Carter: Writing From the Front Line. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gilmour, Robin (1993) The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890. New York: Longman.
Lodge, David (1969) ‘The Rhetoric of Hard Times’. In Gray, E. Paul (ed) Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hard Times. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Pg 86-105.
Milne, Andrew. (n.d) Spider’s and Threads: Arachnological, Intertextual Weavings in Angela Carter’s Writing [online] Available from: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/andrew.milne/page%201.htm Consulted on 9.12.2005
Suleiman, Susan R. (1994) ‘The Fate of the Surrealist Imagination in the Society of the Spectacle’. In Sage, L. (ed) Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of Angela Carter. London: Virago Press Limited. Pg 98-116.
VanderMeer, Jeff. (2001). Angela Carter. [online] Available from: http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/carter.html Consulted on 9.12.2005.
Individuality v Culture
Culture is a ‘human phenomenon’ (Mclaren. 1998: 14) but it cannot be defined exactly because it is a process which changes constantly and it is not fixed (Mclaren. 1998:14). However it is possible to identify certain everyday normality that constitutes culture, for example, the clothes we wear, the food we eat and what we do in our leisure time.
And yet surely all this-the food we eat and the clothes we wear constitutes our sense of ‘individuality’, for example you think you are an individual because the clothes you wear and the food you eat is different to others. Many sociologists believe that in actual fact people are socialised into their identity and individuality. (Jorgensen et al. 1997: 22). If the culture one inhabits constructs the individuality of a person can this then be called ‘individuality’? Is there such a things as individuality? Of course many would argue that there is such a thing as individuality, how can two people in the world be the exact same? Here the problem is distinguishing between the biology and genes of a person and their personality and characteristics.
Perhaps this can be answered in terms of conformity. We all want to be liked and accepted by our peers so we adopt parts of a culture and make it our own individual thing in order to project the image that we are like someone else. Solomon Asch’s (1958) conformity experiment confirms human beings need to be accepted. In his experiment, when people were tested individually to estimate the length of the lines almost no errors were made-the length of the lines was fairly obvious in the first place. However when tested in groups, even when the answer was obvious, individuals tended to answer incorrectly-give the same answer as those in the group, in this way a group normality emerged. His experiment shows how far people are willing to go to be accepted by the group: they are willing to state the wrong answer and minimise their individuality and opinions in order to conform to the group normality to give the impression that they are like others.
It is ironic that we want to be individuals and yet we want others to identify with us and think we are like them so that they will accept us. This perhaps why we get stereotypes: ‘observers can glean clues from conduct and appearance which allow them to apply their previous experience’ (Goffman. 1959: 335). Because we want others to identify with us we project a certain image of ourselves and for this reason others construct a certain image of us which in turn is actually very different from who we are !
Jaan Valsiner identifies that contrast between culture and individuality and argues that you can’t separate the two: ‘personal uniqueness is always related with the cultural meaningful world’ (Valsiner. 2000: 55), the personal system of created meanings becomes projected to the world through our personal arrangement of things that are important to us, for example the clothe we wear. We project our individuality to the world but that individuality in the first place is not so unique and ‘individual’. It is very circular in that the culture you are part of influences in the formation of your individuality and yet simultaneously you project that individuality back to the world as your own unique thing.
I think our sense of individuality is vital for our own psychological well being: I think I am an individual, therefore I am. According to Stuart Hall if we think we have a unified identity and sense of individuality is ‘it is only because we construct a comforting story of ‘narrative of the self’ about ourselves…the fully unified, completed, secure and coherent identity is a fantasy. (Jorgensen. 1997: 31). This suggests that our sense of individuality is in fact ‘fiction’ – a comforting ‘narrative of self’. Notion of individuality could be opium of the masses, it is important for people to think they are different, that they are an individual. I think ideas about individuality is comforting because it assures us that we are ‘special’, it is a driving force in our everyday. It could even reinforce belief in a greater being-as we are individuals and our destinies are different to others but nevertheless equally important than surely someone greater has constructed us all?
Culture and individuality are often seen as opposites and I am arguing that they are not opposites. In fact as mentioned before often they work in conjunction with each other: we present ourselves as individuals and yet that individuality is influenced and depends on many factors, one being the culture inhabited by the individual. Culture and individuality are indeed different but nevertheless equal; one needs not die for the other to live. In conclusion it is impossible to be different but simultaneously-impossible to be alike!
_______________________________
Bibliography
Jorgensen N, Bird J, Heyhoe A, Russell B, Savvas M (1997). Sociology: An Interactive Approach . London: Harper Collins.
Mclaren, C. Margaret (1998) Interpreting Cultural Differences. Dereham: Peter Francis Publishers.
Valsiner, Jaan (2000) Culture and Human Development. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
My thoughts on Reading
Ernest Hemmingway once remarked: 'there is no friend as loyal as a book' and for me that is a nail in the coffin. Books have always been a huge huge part of my life. And in this long marathon that we call life, each time I've finished a lap, whether I come first or last, I've had a good book by my side. Books have acted as milestones in my life so far, so much so that I can't imagine a particular stage in my life without acknowledging the book of the time.
Fairy tales and 'The babysitters club' during my early years, the first 'grown up' book I remember reading is 'Anne of Green Gables'. I think it was the first part, and I remember sitting on my carpet and for some reason - which escapes me now - weeping at the scene when Anne assumes her adopted parents didnot want to keep her because she is a girl. That is all I remember from that book, that scene has stayed with me this many years but I can't remember anything else at all! Then when I discovered boys it was silly popular romance fiction for teenagers, always with a happy ending (of course). I read 'Jane Eyre' around this age too and I loved it, during my first years at secondary school I always felt a bit out of place especially when compared with the other girls and suddenly along came Jane Eyre with her plain books but brain and wit and she got her man in the end! Although now looking back Rochester gives me the creeps with his fixation on the childish aspects of Jane Eyre's looks and character! I read 'Pride and Prejudice' shortly after this and just loved Elizabeth Bennet, like her I've always had a sharp tongue and often misjudge others and jump to conclusions without all the fact, traits that I believe will no doubt accompany me to the grave.
Then, around fifteen I developed an embarrassing crush on a teacher and coincidentally I read a book called 'Love Lessons'. And for the first half of the book I was blissfully happy because this teacher has an affair with one of his students but halfway through everything changed, it revealed the darker side to these kind of relationships-what kind of man would knowingly take an advantage of a young under-age vulnerable girl? Especailly one in the position of trust as he was?
So you see different books marked different times, 'Anne of Green Gables' when I was the only girl amongst four boys in one house, 'Jane Eyre' when I was being bullied, 'Pride and Prejudice' helped me feel comfortable with who and what I was, 'Love Lessons' when...well, never mind that (!) and many other books such as the fairly recent booker prize winner 'The Line of beauty' and shortlisted booker prize nominee 'Cloud Atlas', both marking the end of an era.
It frightens me that more books are being written and yet less read. In this modern techno-obsessed world no one has time to just sit down and read and yet hours are wasted on the internet or watching bad telly. There's no time for parents to read bed time stories and I really believe that love of books, the seed of this should be planted at a young age. I'm only glad mine was - and now I can bore you all with that love for books.
Hello World!
One word: Lost!
Everyone has a blog these days don't they?! I guess you can't have too much of a good thing.
I'm not sure what I'm hoping to achieve with this blog! All I know is that it is a place where I can post my thoughts anonymously (kinda), bradg my talents and knowledge (modest too!) and if i happen to learn something along the way - well thats great. But most likely the technical side will drive me up the wall.
If anyone happens to read anything here, well that's fantastic! Please leave comments and subscribe as a follower.
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