April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson

Read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" HERE.

I'm the internet's least consistent blogger. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to this post!

Revolutionary Road spoiler alerts ahead!

Almost immediately in both Revolutionary Road and "The Lottery", the reader realizes she's entered a world populated by characters wrestling indoctrinations, by people timid but eager to slough the burden of dated, sometimes dangerous, groupthink.

In Revolutionary Road, a suburban complicity, a "tacit agreement to live in a total state of self-deception" is quickly established, especially amongst the four characters, young married couples The Wheelers and The Campbells, struggling hardest to imagine themselves as separate from the environment that defines them, "as members of an embattled, dwindling intellectual underground", "painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture". The novel opens to reveal a changing town, consolidated and newly industrialized, and a group of culturally aware young adults, The Laurel Players, to which The Wheelers and The Campbells belong, but with which they refuse to be lastingly associated. With the lips of this chasm, one separating traditional expectations from new sensibilities, The Wheelers and Campbells flirt cautiously; still bound by the customs and proprieties of the community they resent, the young revolutionaries find solace in only the smallest, most private rebellions.

Similarly, in "The Lottery", a village of people governed by habit are introduced. The villagers gather on a particular day, what the reader quickly gathers is an annual tradition, every year "of course", and fall into place almost instinctively, while we adjust our feet to their rhythm, to conduct the eponymous lottery.

Like The Wheelers and Campbells of Revolutionary Road, there are those among the villagers prepared to quietly question the status quo.

"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."

Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."

In both stories it is made clear, even before any consequences are explicitly defined, that dissenters will not have an easy time publicly rejecting accepted norms - which brings me to April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson: two women who meet tragic ends after (bravely? foolishly?) deciding to act against expectations. Each woman steps beyond her role as wife, mother, woman and pays for these usurpations with her life.

April Wheeler, wife of Frank Wheeler, decides, against her husband's will, in a defiant "denial of womanhood" to abort the couple's third child, because the pregnancy hinders The Wheelers' plan to abandon suburbia in favor of Europe, the universal panacea of unsatisfied Americans in the world of Revolutionary Road, and because she realizes, from her end at least, that her marriage is truly loveless. Tessie Hutchinson, wife of Bill Hutchinson, decides to make a spectacle of herself before her entire village, by protesting the lottery's proceedings, which, as she is promptly reminded, is not how things work.

"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."

"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.

For her noncooperation, Tessie wins the lottery... whose prize is death by stoning. The morality of this (centuries old?) practice is as resolute as is it horrific and archaic. No, the lottery isn't fixed - and Tessie is not chosen by any artful design of her peers, but her punishment, if judged against the expectations of the world she inhabits, is fitting. April too dies at the end of Revolutionary Road, due to complications of her the late term abortion she secretly performs on herself. And the story couldn't have ended (as successfully) any other way. The message is that women who step out of traditional roles are exposing themselves to criticism, risking social isolation, and in Revolutionary Road (1961) and "The Lottery" (1946), committing a most literal form of self-sabotage. It's important to include that, while ironic, and in the case of "The Lottery" allegorical, both of these stories provide valuable commentary on and insight into not only the historical roles of women, but the unattainable standards and unbearable pressures associated with attempting to shed blindly accepted traditions.

Despite all of their protestations and aspirations to conquer the depths by which they're swallowed, The Wheelers, Campbells, and Hutchinsons are very much defined by, and in some cases, content to behave within (or afraid or unable to disobey) the limits assigned them.

Watch a short film adaptation of The Lottery and the trailer for the Revolutionary Road feature film below (I've got to see this movie eventually!):

___________________

There seems to be some occult providence dictating the things I happen to read. What other explanation could there be for a girl who makes reading lists, never abides them, yet constantly stumbles upon prose inexplicably supplementary to what she has last read?

While reading an article on Gawker today about shady and hastily assembled Craigslist Writing employment postings, I came across a blind link under this user comment: "Gosh, this is where we're heading, huh? Everyone should read this, then". I followed the blind link to what I quickly discovered was "Builders" from The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates. Naturally, because I've been reading and enjoying Yates' Revolutionary Road, I dove into "Builders" - and in it I discovered familiar themes, discussions of which I will save for my posts about Revolutionary Road.

What struck me most was the story's male protagonist - and how, with all his misguided aggression toward his well-meaning wife, I could end the story not hating the character. I feel similarly about Revolutionary Road's Frank Wheeler. And here's why:

Just as Frank Wheeler resents in his wife the recognition of his own weaknesses, (the "suffering creature whose existence he tried every day of his life to deny but whom he knew as well and as painfully as he knew himself"), we as readers of Yates' work often find his characters repulsive because they amplify flaws we abhor in ourselves. From what I can tell, Yates' characters have a tendency to spin in the mud; in both stories of his I've read, the reader jumps into a mild hell in media res with characters who loathe themselves and their insignificance as much as we pity them for their lack of progress.

Bob Prentice in "Builders" models his life after and measures his talents and evolution as a writer against Hemingway. When Prentice is conned, his shame is only magnified by his realization that "Ernest Hemingway could never in his life have known... [his] own sense of being a fool." And he was serious.

I'm 22-years-old (the same age as Prentice in "Builders") and understand having idols and feeling inadequate. But seeing these perceived failings in Bob Prentice and Frank Wheeler makes them seem hilarious and trivial. These yard sticks that exist only in our own minds, to which we hold ourselves strictly accountable - become prohibitive neuroses - and frankly, it's hard to witness in others, even if the others are fictional.

So when a stumped Prentice, struggling with writer's block, reacts to his wife's suggestion that he stop trying so hard to be "literary" and "think of Irving Berlin" by saying he'd "give her Irving Berlin right in the mouth in about a minute, if she didn't lay off [him] and mind her own goddamn business," the feminist in me wants to continue the story resolved to dislike Bob Prentice - but the human in me can relate to misplaced anger and aggression, and especially hypersensitivity on the matter of others' opinions of my writing.

I'm finding it impossible to hate Yates' impossible characters, in short.

Update: On the Chicago Reader's Lit & Lectures homepage today, an article originally published by the paper in November 2003 was featured, written by J.R. Jones detailing his intimate history with Richard Yates and his interview for Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Works of Richard Yates. In the article is this quote: "...[Yates] could be disarmingly candid and grimly funny, especially regarding himself, and the compassion for life’s losers that made his stories heartbreaking was evident every time he spoke." Sounds about right.

Revolutionary Road posts up next....

=)

The absence of men in Kristin Hunter's An Interesting Social Study

Read An Interesting Social Study HERE and Susan Glaspell's Trifles HERE.

"I know how things can be--for women. ...We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of the same thing."
--from Trifles by Susan Glaspell (1916)

There are only three characters in Kristin Hunter's short story - a young, African-American woman, "the new resident", approximately 30 years old, and two older Caucasian women, Mrs. Powell and Corinna - and this story of learned acceptance over evening drinks would be complicated in the presence of men.

While talking on an open porch on the mid-1960s Cape May shore, the new and old residents find common ground and can judge each other (or learn not to) more accurately once they discover they're not so different.

Corinna mentions to the new resident that when she “was growing up, girls weren’t supposed to train for careers. [They] went to school to become young ladies. The schools [she] went to, National Cathedral and Finch, were mostly finishing schools.” Upon reflection, the new resident, who had completed her undergraduate studies at Spelman, a Historically Black University for Women, realizes Spelman is little more than the same, all three with their weekly tea parties and frivolous social engagements. The new resident, in disclosing her Bryn Mawr graduate studies, also gains the respect of Mrs. Powell who "went to Spence" and doesn't think anyone learned "a damn thing in those young-lady schools, especially in the South".

It's relatively simple for the three women to overlook their separating circumstances and find commonality, but among men, the new resident's approval might not have been as easily earned. Though the three women are divided (superficially) by class, race, wealth, and age, they're still, in a sense among their peers.

The new resident said softly, almost to herself, “I wanted a quiet place to work on my thesis this summer. That’s why I picked Cape May. Besides, I heard it was a pretty town.”

“Well, you came to the right place if you wanted quiet,” Mrs. Powell said, pouring herself another double slug of whiskey. “This town is so damn quiet it gets my nerves sometimes.”

In Susan Glaspell's 1916 drama, Trifles, a woman is suspected of killing her husband - and when two female neighbors accompany officials to the home in search of proof, the two find all they need: proof that the suspect had been oppressed and emotionally abused by her husband (manifested in erratic sewing, a canary with a snapped neck, the cessation of the woman's singing, for which she had once been known in the community). For this, they suppress the evidence against her, secretly repairing her stitchwork and stealing the canary's corpse, pardoning her crime because they, a jury of her peers, understand the stagnant oppression, the "stillness" she must have had to endure.

Similarly, the three women on the porch at Cape May during that mid-1960s summer, "a strong tide seem[ing] to have scattered the varicolored bodies of bathers as randomly as shells," couldn't possibly condemn one another for being of a different race, or for the sins of their forefathers. They find in each other friendship, understanding, hope - understandings that in the presence of men, would have been more difficult to achieve.

...And male characters would have elongated and complicated the fairly simple narrative. Its 8 pages could have easily become a novel with the hurdles the women would have had to overcome in reaching the same end.
=)

Restless Young Men

“Weren’t the biographies of all great men filled with this same kind of youthful groping, this same kind of rebellion against their fathers and their fathers’ ways?”
--Revolutionary Road

Paul in Paul's Case by Willa Cather.
Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
The Real Life Frank Abagnale Jr. (whose story was featured in the book and movie Catch Me If You Can).

All 3 restless young men fighting to escape their fathers' (men they at once admired and resented) curses of mediocrity nearly, or completely, achieve ruin in their own lives.

Cather's Paul steals money from his employer and flees to New York with dreams of a glamorous new life, surrounded by the arts - free of his middle-class existence and the "horrible yellow wallpaper" in his room. Similarly, Frank Abagnale Jr. runs away from home once his father's trouble with the IRS plunges his family into impecuniousness. He, like Paul, lies, cheats, and steals his way to wealth. From what I've read so far, Yates' Frank Wheeler has the same begrudging respect, coupled with disgust, for his father as do Paul and Abagnale - wondering "...who wanted to be a dopey salesman in the first place, acting like a big deal with a briefcase full of boring catalogues, talking about machines all day to a bunch of dumb executives with cigars?"

He as an adolescent also plans a trip - his on a freight train - to begin his own life: "[Frank] spent all his free time in a plan for riding rails to the West Coast. ...he had rehearsed many times the way he would handle himself." He steals his father's hat for his journey and stuffs it with newspapers so that it would fit his small head properly, just as Frank Abagnale Jr. borrowed behaviors and epigrams from his father and used them to his advantage.

These three characters all exhibit a restless, impatient quest toward manhood - but not just any state of manliness - one that would eclipse whatever claims to greatness their fathers' may have laid, taking from them the estimable, leaving behind the execrable.

In Revolutionary Road, it's made clear early in the book that Frank values masculinity, admiring "men who looked like they’d never been boys at all", posing to affect a more distinguished jawline, "the face he'd given himself in the mirror since boyhood and which no photograph had ever achieved", "saunter[ing] manfully" to his father's heavy briefcase as a child and "pretend[ing] it was his own". Abagnale's heroes are pilots, doctors, lawyers, James Bond, Paul's those great men of the stage - and each of these three young men pretended to their goals before they're old enough to achieve them.

Unfortunately, (100 year old spoiler alert!!!) Paul kills himself once he realizes he'll be returned to obscurity, Frank Abagnale Jr. is caught forging checks and imprisoned (though he eventually begins work as an FBI fraud specialist) and I don't yet know what comes of Frank Wheeler. I haven't finished the book.
=)

There seems to be a recurring theme in literature (and movies) of Restless Young Men. Freud's Oedipus Complex, perhaps? Except without the creepy part about marrying one's own mother.... I'll keep a keen eye out as I continue Revolutionary Road.

TRIVIA - Leonardo DiCaprio played both Frank Abagnale Jr. AND Frank Wheeler in the film adaptations of Catch Me If You Can and Revolutionary Road. Coincidence? I think he has that earnest, Restless Young Man Look about him.

"We became drivers and garbage men, so that our children could become doctors and lawyers, so that our grandchildren could become artists and writers, so that our great grandchildren could become models and socialites."

Gus von A. - The Fallen Dandy

" 'You see, Aschenbach has always lived liked this' -- here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand to a fist -- 'never like this'--and he let his open hand hang relaxed from the back of his chair. It was apt."

Thomas Mann, at the outset of his novella Death in Venice, takes great care to establish his protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach as a disciplined man and respected poet - only to have the character's admirable qualities, by the story's end, disintegrate - replaced by ruinous obsession and capricious, irresponsible whim. Though the tenets of dandyism (as defined by dandyism.net) may not have been explicitly stated and assembled at the time of Death in Venice's publication, it is clear that Thomas Mann wrote Gus von A with strict parameters in mind so as to make his descent into chaos and madness that much more shocking than if such misfortune had befallen a more mediocre man. When evaluated against the 12 points of comparison outlined in 'The Anatomy of a Dandy', von Aschenbach's heights appear at their highest and his lows seem beneath what would be thought capable of such a man. The loss of his physical distinction, elegance, self-mastery, aplomb, independence, wit, skepticism, endearing egotism, reserve, discriminating taste, and caprice - all of the things that make a dandy a dandy - is disturbing for the reader to *witness*, to endure - and I believe this theme of humbling and self-destruction is a large part of why this story persists as a classic.

Let's start at the very beginning - a very good place to start:

“Dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.” - Max Beerbohm

By this definition, Gus von A was a textbook dandy: "The union of dry, conscientious officialdom and ardent, obscure impulse, produced an artist..."

1. Physical distinction

Dandyism can only be painted on a suitable canvas. It is impossible to cut a dandy figure without being tall, slender and handsome, or having at least one of those characteristics to a high degree while remaining at least average in the other two. Fred Astaire was neither tall nor handsome, but he was “so thin you could spit through him.”

Count D’Orsay, of course, had all three qualities to the highest degree.

“To appear well dressed, be skinny and tall.” — Mason



2. Elegance

Elegance, of course, as defined by the standards of a dandy’s particular era.

“[The dandy’s] independence, assurance, originality, self-control and refinement should all be visible in the cut of his clothes.” — Ellen Moers

Dandies must love contemporary costume, says Beerbohm, and their dress should be “free from folly or affectation.”

Gus von A's initial physical description is as follows: "somewhat below middle height, dark and smooth-shaven, with... his almost delicate figure... rimless gold spectacles... , aristocratically hooked nose... yet it was art, not the stern discipline of an active career, that had taken over the office of modeling these features." By the final pages of the story, von Aschenbach was sickly, "worn quite out and unnerved... his head burned, his body was wet with clammy sweat, he was plagued by intolerable thirst." There was no sign, physically, of the man with whom we first became acquainted.

On his boat ride to Venice, Gus von A encounters an old man he considers foolish in his attempts to mimic the look and mannerisms of youth ("Could they not see he was old, that he had no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them?"). This ridiculous old man in all his buffoonery becomes a foil for von Aschenbach's own conscious decision, once deluded by obsession with his young muse Tadzio, to don the facade of youth in his old age: "A delicate carmine glowed on his cheeks where the skin had been so brown and leathery. The dry, anæmic lips grew full, they turned the colour of ripe strawberries, the lines round eyes and mouth were treated with a facial cream and gave place to youthful bloom." Disregarding how ridiculous he must have looked with stark hair dye, his face covered and caked in rouge, Gus von A, by the story's end loses any claims he held on admirable physical distinction or elegance.

2 down. 10 to go.

3. Self-mastery

Barbey speaks of the dandy’s staunch determination to remain unmoved, while Baudelaire says that should a dandy suffer pain, he will “keep smiling.”

“Manage yourself well and you may manage all the world.” — Bulwer-Lytton

“Immense calm with your heart pounding.” — Noel Coward



4. Aplomb

While self-mastery is the internal practice of keeping emotions in check, aplomb is how it is expressed to the dandy’s audience.

“Dandyism introduces antique calm among our modern agitations.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly

Gus von A and the characters he as a writer created possessed " 'the conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness, which clenches its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the swords and spears that pierce its side.'... there was the aristocratic self-command that is eaten out within and for as long as it can conceals its biologic decline from the eyes of the world". Not unlike Elliot Templeton in Maugham's The Razor's Edge, who ignores his own imminent mortality in favor of honoring a party invitation, the dandy never betrays any sign of inner conflict - a tenet to which Gus von A at first adhered. He knew that "almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions. And that was more than observation—it was the fruit of experience, it was precisely the formula of his life and fame, it was the key to his work."

So bizarre, then, was his eventual loss of any sense of propriety or concept of how he would be perceived in his madness. Caught in what should have been embarrassing, reproachable situations, the new Aschenbach "remained there long, in utter drunkenness, powerless to tear himself away, blind to the danger of being caught in so mad an attitude." The power of intoxicating obsession over the learned life-long practice of self-mastery and aplomb becomes apparent in these words.

5. Independence

Ideally financial independence, but if the dandy is forced to work, a spirit of independence will be expressed through his work, as with Tom Wolfe. Independence — often to the point of aloofness — will also characterize the dandy’s dealings with the world.

“The epitome of selfish irresponsibility, he was ideally free of all human commitments that conflict with taste: passions, moralities, ambitions, politics or occupations.” — Moers

“Independence makes the dandy.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly

Gus von A was born rich, remained rich throughout life, lived by his pen and maintained independently wealthy until his death. He had no dependents and therefore no human commitments other than his own strict expectations of his life and career. Nothing to see here. 11/12 isn't bad lol.

6. Wit

Especially a paradoxical way of talking lightly of the serious and seriously of the light that carries philosophical implications.

(See Oscar Wilde, his characters such as Lord Henry and Lord Goring, and to a lesser degree every other notable dandy.)



7. A skeptical, world-weary, sophisticated, bored or blasé demeanor

“The dandy is blasé, or feigns to be.” — Baudelaire

“A spirit of gay misanthropy, a cynical, depreciating view of society.” — Lister


8. A self-mocking and ultimately endearing egotism

“Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.” — Wilde, “The Ideal Husband”



9. Dignity/Reserve

Pelham keeps “the darker and stormier emotions” to himself — Bulwer-Lytton

“A flawless dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered romantic.” — Oscar Wilde, “An Ideal Husband”

In the face of a Venitian cholera plague, one being hushed by police for the sake of tourism, Gus von A eschews all natural problem-solving and skepticism in favor of willful ignorance, so that he can extend his holiday and remain near Tadzio, his young muse.

He also begins to think and speak gravely of love, obsession, the nature of art and the artist, the lover and the loved, in grand lofty allusions to Phaedrus and Socrates. "Such were the devotee's thoughts, such the power of his emotions." Any poetic ability he'd once had for flitting lightly over such emotions was wiped away by madness.

"He trembled, he shrank, his will was steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But.. his heart throbbed to the drums, his brain reeled, a blind rage seized him, a whirling lust... and in his very soul he tasted the bestial degradation of his fall." In a dream, his own insanity was made apparent.

10. Discriminating Taste

“To resist whatever may be suitable for the vulgar but is improper for the dandy.” — Moers



11. A renaissance man

“A complete gentleman, who, according to Sir Fopling, ought to dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love letters, and an agreeable voice for a chamber.” — Etherege, quoted by Bulwer-Lytton in “Pelham”

Gus von A was powerless to resist the improper and vulgar once blinded by passion. "The presence of the youthful beauty that had bewitched him filled him with disgust of his own aging body; the sight of his own sharp features and grey hair plunged him in hopeless mortification; he made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of his youth". He began to wear bright clothes and ostentatious jewelry; his taste was lost to foolishness.

He remained enough of a gentleman outwardly - and the fury of his final work, inspired by Tadzio, seems to confirm that his talents for writing weren't damaged by his madness, so I don't think his status as a renaissance man was every in jeopardy. 10/12 isn't bad (lol).

12. Caprice

Because dandies are an enigma wrapped in a labyrinth, and because dandyism makes its own rules, the final quality is the ability to negate all the others.

For in the end there is not a code of dandyism, as Barbey writes. “If there were, anybody could be a dandy.”

The 12th tenet more or less nullifies my above arguments, but that's the beauty of the thing. Even for all his missteps, in the last line of Death in Venice, we realize that Gus von A's fans and admirers are completely oblivious and, (100 year old spoiler alert!) in death, he is restored to the position in which we first found him.

"And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease."

His "preoccupation with [Tadzio's]form lead to intoxication and desire, they may lead the noblest among us to frightful emotional excesses, which his own stern cult of the beautiful would make him the first to condemn. So they too, they too, lead to the bottomless pit." Death in Venice remains so fascinating because of its protagonist's determination to ruin himself though every impulse advised against such lunacy.

Basically, if it could happen to him, the most disciplined and dandiest of dandies, it could happen to any among us.

Virginia Woolf's success in creating 'Modern Fiction'

Inspired by Amateur Reader's post - Herman Melville's Mardi was written by Herman Melville:


Read Virginia Woolf's essay Modern Fiction HERE, The Mark on the Wall HERE, and To The Lighthouse (Chapter 6 - Starting with the words "He was safe..." to end of chapter) HERE. Because To The Lighthouse is a novel, I figured it would make the most sense to tackle a representative except for readers not familiar with the book.


I love to read because the things I learn from books inform the choices I make when writing. A close reading of any great piece of literature can guide its reader through the author's processes and intentions, can influence (not define) an aspiring writer's style and motivate him or her to take care that each word tell. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors for this reason. She not only provides the active reader stimulating and instructing fiction, but in her essay Modern Fiction, she outlines criteria by which modern fiction should be evaluated - and holds herself to her own standards. By her own definitions, Woolf creates, in varying degrees of success, modern fiction.

In 1921, Virginia Woolf's The Mark on the Wall was published, in 1925, her book The Common Reader, which contained Modern Fiction, and in 1927, To the Lighthouse. In this 6 year period we see Woolf's work progress from exemplary, but aimless, to challenging and purposeful - and have her own words as the bellwether by which to measure that progress. I consider these my formative literary years, and what better example than Woolf for taking literary matters in one's own hands can a girl have!


In Modern Fiction, Woolf defines two types of fiction, that which is concerned with the body, and the most desirable - that which is concerned with the spirit. Novels concerned with the spirit, she claims, are "what it is we exact." If that is true, then we as readers get exactly what it is we exact from Woolf's To The Lighthouse - and while we come closer to the spirit, to "life" in The Mark on the Wall than in what Woolf terms as "materialist" fiction, the piece still does not satisfy the readers quest for "the essential thing" it is we search for in fiction, "whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality." For that reason, I believe Virginia Woolf truly becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF in To the Lighthouse - and in The Mark on the Wall, she is well on her way. Woolf assigns properties to what she considers fiction concerned with both the body and with the mind - and believes that "life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small." In that sense, both To The Light House and The Mark On The Wall contain some aspect of "life" by Woolf's own definition - but To The Lighthouse succeeds in adhering to more of the properties that readers now know to be hallmarks of Woolf's best work.

In To The Lighthouse, the character Mr. Ramsay contemplates his place in the world while in real time observing his wife read to his son. In The Mark On The Wall, Woolf's speaker chronicles random thoughts while in real time looking at the titular mark on the wall. In exploring the thoughts of their respective speakers, both pieces capture the "myriad impressions" that Woolf claims "the mind receives" in Modern Fiction. However, these impressions are to an end in To The Light House, whereas in The Mark On The Wall they seem scattered, and to have no specific purpose.

In being concerned with the spirit, a piece of fiction must focus on the abstract rather than the concrete and in The Mark On The Wall, the speaker's thoughts are centered on physical objects (trees, birds, wood); in To The Light House Mr. Ramsay's abstract thoughts are only spoken of in concrete terms to make tangible abstract concepts. Just as with the literal body and spirit, both can be perceived, but only the body physically.


To The Lighthouse, while it employs a stream of consciousness style is less self-concerned than The Mark On The Wall. Because The Mark On The Wall is written in first person, with phrases "I like," "I understand," "I should," "I feel," repeated as often as they are, the piece seems selfish and "never embraces or creates what is outside itself or beyond"; it has "the effect of something angular and isolated", all of which are qualities Woolf attributes to "materialist" fiction.

In both pieces, "emphasis is laid in unexpected places." Because Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse grapples with his position in his own life and family, this emphasis is in unexpected, yet logical places - always keeping in mind the book's overall aim and maintaining an "obedience to vision." Historical figures of questionable importance, how a dying soldier will be remembered, the alphabet used as a concrete analogy for Mr. Ramsay's quest through his own mind - these seemingly disparate mentions all converge to illuminate Mr. Ramsay's existential musings. The emphasis in To The Light House don't seem to achieve any greater purpose than to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind... however disconnected and incoherent in appearance."

Like the works of the Russian artists Woolf praises as "saintly" in Modern Fiction, To The Lighthouse appears "vague and inconclusive" only in that it asks many unanswered rhetorical questions. Similarly, Woolf states in her essay that "life presents question after question which must be left to sound on after the story is over". Mr. Ramsay's vacillating between a life dedicated to family and one to work constantly begs the question "Who shall blame him?" while suggesting his favoring the former. Of course, no one could blame a man for choosing his family over his work - though it's a question people struggle with every day.

The Mark On The Wall asks questions as well, but they are self-involved, have no larger implications beyond the story's speaker and give the reader no incentive to want to know their answers. They do not "endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit".

To the Lighthouse is by Woolf's own definition a true work concerning the spirit in that it embodies "life" - which is what Woolf believes modern fiction should always endeavor to do. The Mark on the Wall was a valiant effort, but pales in comparison to Woolf's later work. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF.



*The Amateur Reader said this would be a tricky post and it WAS! I'm not even sure I'm saying everything I mean to say, but this is my first go at explaining an author's coming into her own. I may rehash this later with more textual examples from TTLH and TMOTW - because I only used quotes from Modern Fiction in the post above.

IN OTHER NEWS - tomorrow is Becca's Book Blog's
ONE MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!!
So far, So good!

Disparate Obligations in "A White Heron"

“Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, - who can tell?”

After all this talk about The Yellow Wallpaper being perceived as propaganda(!), I figured I'd find a short story that, while having a clear agenda, manages to not suffocate its readers. I came up with Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron". Through her use of a third-person omniscient speaker, Jewett makes a persuasive case for her environmentalist platform, while permitting the reader room to make his or her own choices and not feel stifled by the author’s beliefs.

I can relate, even if in a very small way, to the decisions that Sylvia, the young heroine of "A White Heron", had to make between the environment and money and between the environment and personal relationships. As a member of the ASPCA, an organization whose members are often staunch vegetarians, some vegans, there is pressure from that community to follow suit (but I love MEAT! and the costs of being an aspiring vegetarian in a house full of adamant meat eaters piles up QUICKLY lol), so with this glimpse into the life of the little girl who had to make a very tough decision between her obligation to the environment and forces pulling her in opposing directions, I can certainly empathize.

Jewett does a great job of implanting objective information, making sure that by the story's end the reader knows Sylvia’s answer to the question (“Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, - who can tell?”) , and prompting the reader to ponder his or her own obligations and biases.

Alongside her lengthy descriptions of the permanency and beauty of nature and the transience (and vulgarity?) of human life, Jewett places the story of a young girl's first romantic attraction and coming of age - balancing both with care not to seem biased, so the reader feels they themselves are forming these opinions. The noted literary critic J.V. Cunningham asserts that "When style is overpowering it takes us over. We think we have said what we have heard,"; Jewett's style has that effect.

Once Sylvia is faced with the choice between her romantic interest, a young scientist who happens upon her house in the wilderness hoping to find and kill or capture the eponymous white heron, and nature, the scientist's position in her circle of obligation slowly degrades. The scientist goes from being regarded by Sylvia first as an “enemy” with a “very cheerful and persuasive tone”, and a “stranger” with a “kindly” tone, to a “companion”, to the professional title of “ornithologist”, then a “handsome stranger”, and finally to a “friendly lad” once the two become acquainted and she grows to enjoy his company. He once again becomes a “stranger” and is then assigned the generic term “sportsman” when her decision to save the bird is made. By the end of the story, he is merely “the hunter”.

The reader takes the journey with young Sylvia and admires the scientist, who is never named, as Sylvia does, fears him as she does, trusts him as she does, and is left with the choice to take or leave him as she does.


"A White Heron" remains relevant today because people chose between the environment and money, the environment and convenience, or the environment and profits all the time. Reports of large corporations struggling over the importance of environmental effects of their products or byproducts are printed almost daily. Every time someone pumps gasoline into their car, or throws away a diaper, or disposes of a paper cup on a city street, they are making a decision about what they think is important in their lives.

If anyone can make the argument that this is a piece of propaganda, I'd love to hear or read it lol.

The Yellow Wallpaper as Propaganda???

I shouldn't have been surprised to find that some believe Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper to be little more than a one-sided and "quite bald piece of propaganda" (from a comment on GoodReads.com) - BUT I was.

More surprising to me was that after reading a few well-formed and qualified opinions and reviews, I can see why they might believe that.

From my favorite GoodReads.com reviewer, Keely, comes this:

Roland Barthes talked about 'writerly' and 'readerly' books. I've struggled for a long time, myself, in trying to come up for terms to talk about the differences between conscientious works and those which are too bumbling, too one-sided, or too ill-informed to make the reader think.

While The Yellow Wallpaper brings up interesting points, it does not really address them. The text has become part of the canon not for the ability of the author, which is on the more stimulating end of middling, but because it works as a representational piece of a historical movement.

As early feminism, this work is an undeniable influence. It points out one of the most apparent symptoms of the double-standard implied by the term 'weaker sex'. However, Gilman tends to suggest more than she asks, thus writing merely propaganda.

It's may be easy to say this in retrospect when the question "is isolating women and preventing them from taking action really healthy?" was less obvious back then. However, I have always been reticent to rate a work more highly merely because it comes from a different age. Austen, the Brontes, Christina Rossetti, and Woolf all stand on their own merits, after all.

This symbolism by which this story operates is simplistic and repetitive. The opinions expressed are one-sided, leaving little room for interpretation. This is really the author's crime, as she has not tried to open the debate so much as close it, and in imagining her opinion to mark the final word on the matter, has doomed her work to become less and less relevant.

This is the perfect sort of story to teach those who are beginning literary critique, because it does not suggest questions to the reader, but answers. Instead of fostering thought, the work becomes a puzzle with an accurate solution to be worked out, not unlike a math problem. This is useful for the reader trying to understand how texts create meaning, but under more rigorous critique, we find it is not deep or varied enough to support more complex readings.

Unfortunately, this means it is also the sort of story that will be loved by people who would rather be answered than questioned. It may have provided something new and intriguing when it was first written, but as a narrow work based on a simplistic sociological concept, can no longer make that claim.

The story is also marked by early signs of the Gothic movement, and lying on the crux of that and Feminism, is not liable to be forgotten. The symbolism it uses is a combination of classical representations of sickness and metaphors of imprisonment. Sickness, imprisonment, and madness are the quintessential concepts explored by the Gothic writers, but this work is again quite narrow in its view. While the later movement was interested in this in the sense of existential alienation, this story is interested in those things not as a deeper psychological question, but as the literal state of the woman.

Horror is partially defined by the insanity and utter loneliness lurking in everyone's heart, and is not quite so scary when the person is actually alone and mad. Though it all comes from the imposition of another person's will, which is very horrific, the husband has no desire to be cruel or to harm the woman, nor is such even hinted subconsciously. Of course, many modern feminists would cling to the notion that independent of a man's desire to aid, he can do only harm, making this work an excellent support to their politicized chauvinism.

I won't question the historical importance or influence of this work, but it is literarily very simple. A single page of paper accurately dating the writing of Shakespeare's Hamlet would also be historically important, but just because it is related to fine literature does not mean it is fine literature.

Art by~kaitaro0401

My response:

Your point is valid and I'd agree that in retrospect The Yellow Wallpaper may be seen as bordering on sensationalism - but I HAVE to propose that Gilman MAY have presented only one side of the argument INTENTIONALLY to reflect the lack of options presented her - and her female contemporaries.

Does not her presentation of a concrete, resolute stance on the issue exactly mirror the speaker's husband's stance on the rest cure? Maybe the frustration you feel as a reader is supposed to mimic the frustration Gilman's speaker feels.

Ama brought up Gilman's own doctor whose words, "Live as domestic a life as possible … and never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live," were taken as law - not to be questioned or acted against.

Maybe I'm giving Gilman far too much credit... but it's a possibility. And what fun are criticism and analysis without dissent?

love your reviews btw.

The Yellow Wallpaper is simply too important to write off as artful, ornate propaganda.

What say you?

UPDATE: Keely has responded and misunderstood my argument, thinking that I had suggested Gilman's work was meant as satire. Not the case. My 2nd response:


I'm not suggesting that The Yellow Wallpaper was written satirically at all. I'm suggesting that Gilman chose to position herself so firmly that the reader could experience the constriction she and her speaker felt. In mirroring her husband's unflappable views, it would have been detrimental to her argument to present them as equally flawed because her husband didn't think his methods flawed in the least.

He earnestly believed he was doing what was best for her and smotheringly so. I think that Gilman was recreating her experience for the reader - no *wink wink*.

And I'd have to agree that Gilman creates a formidable ENEMY against whom the reader barely has a choice to side, but, as seen in the case of your review, there's plenty dialogue to be had because of it.


**and if you're reading this, leave a comment. This blog has been up for ALMOST a month now and I've only gotten 2 comments so far, though my traffic tracker tells me LOTS of people are passing through. I'd LOVE for this to become a dialogue - or any of my other posts for that matter.

Sharon Olds - Rite of Passage + Children's Perspectives

My second favorite poem is Rite of Passage by Sharon Olds. I love literature that deals with children's perceptions of themselves, each other and the world - and this poem touches on that through the eyes of a parent reluctant to see his or her son grow up.

Janiyah & Sinclair

I babysit often(!) and my cousin Janiyah and her friend Sinclair never cease to amaze me with their acute observations and talents for making even the simplest things profound and expressing their wonder pithily. Maybe it's because I don't remember how my mind worked or how I saw the world as a child (at the ripe old age of 22) - or how words and letters looked before I learned to read, or what purposes I ascribed to machines before I learned their use.


Literature that believably taps that pool of innocence captures me every time. Some favorites include First Confession by Frank O'Connor, The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake (both versions from Songs of Innocence and Experience), and though people HEAVILY criticize it - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.

*spoiler alert*

Without my making any claims about its historical accuracy or feasibility, its morality, or perceived exploitation of the fable form to push its agenda, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas told the story of a boy's life in Nazi German betraying few signs of its adult author (though I realize a 9-year old child couldn't have written this book). It captured the way children internalize and regurgitate words and phrases they hear, using them in and out of context - the narrator Bruno repeatedly calling his sister The Hopeless Case after hearing the phrase used once, referring to Auschwitz as ‘Out-With’ and Hitler (the Führer) as The Fury.

*end spoiler alert*

Subject matter aside, its narrator was not unlike Ralphie from the movie A Christmas Story - precocious, prone to hyperbole and bouts of waking fantasy, with a tendency to believe that everyone's against him.... It's a success in storytelling.

All that brings me to Rite of Passage, which is not told from a child's POV, but manages to accurately convey the way children see themselves in relation to each other - and how adults perceive these miniature showdowns... I have a younger brother (I'm almost 8 years older than him) and I've seen what Olds describes in her poem IN ACTION.

Rite of Passage

As the guests arrive at our son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the midnight cake, round and heavy as a
turret behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

The images of gathering little men "tiny in each other's pupils" "jostling, jockeying for place" remind me of mammal cubs at a watering hole, instinctually play-fighting to learn the survival skills they'll need later in life, the fights "breaking and calming" like undulating waves - as is the fickle nature of childhood grudges.... The speaker's son banning the small men together against a common and weaker enemy, "a two year old", only relayed to the reader through the speakers eyes...

This poem is perfect.

There's so much to love here and I could write more BUT I have a traffic tracker that lets me know what people are Googling to find their way here and a LOT OF YOU are cheating on papers.... TISK TISK! No Freebies!

Anywho - I'm reading Revolutionary Road now + coming up there'll be more on 'Hip Hop as Literature' and Death in Venice (Gus von A as a fallen dandy).

Death in Venice Part 2

I said I wouldn't write one (because what can I say about this book that hasn't been said???), but here's a MINI review of Death in Venice. I'm going a bit into some of what I'll cover in my future posts about this story (Gus von A as a fallen dandy), but whatever. I don't think anyone is reading this blog yet lol.


In 'Death in Venice', Thomas Mann allows his readers to view a respectable man's descent into madness, into a dark, disturbing obsession where reason and logic have no impact on actions - where passion reigns sovereign... and it's jarring to *witness*.

The story begins with such attention taken to establish the story's protagonist (*Gus von A*) as hyper-disciplined, possessing the utmost aplomb and self-mastery - only to have him come undone as the book progresses.

This is one of those stories where syntax and diction play as much a part in the reader's investment as does the plot itself. Mann's sentences are at first long, and intricate - with far too many dependent clauses (seriously, try to diagram some of these suckers!)... but by the story's end, peppered amongst the ornate are an equal number of staccato phrases (often the protagonist's hurried and ill-considered decisions to act on whim).

I love the art of writing and Mann's style is the equivalent of literary porn. The subject matter isn't lacking scandal either. GREAT read. It's short enough to read quickly, but why rush. Savor it a bit.

Death In Venice Part 1

I just finished Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and loved it! I have so much to say about the story that I've decided to break my entries into sections. This is part one. (Technically, it's part 2 because I posted my thoughts on a quote from the story HERE - so check that out also).

First, a summary: Death in Venice is the story of Gustav von Aschenbach (but I'll be calling him Gus von A), an acclaimed and well-respected German writer, who, in an uncharacteristic departure from his hyper-disciplined lifestyle, becomes obsessed with a beautiful boy named Tadzio while vacationing in Venice.



It seems pointless to review this classic story, so I'll be discussing some of my observations instead, starting with my thoughts on this quote:

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

This is the absolute truth, but I can only speak from my own experience. I spend a lot of time alone these days (thanks depression!) and have never been more creative or bizarre in my life. The chance to do heaps of silent sustained reading is plenty to be thankful for, so it's not all bad and I've gotten to know what I'm like when there's no one else around, when I don't have to answer to anyone's expectations. A descent into madness isn't out of the realm of possibility though (ha!).

Montaigne's On Idleness has something to say about this and it's very similar to Mann's description of Gus von A's isolation and its effects on his mind:

"I find... like a runaway horse, [the mind] is a hundred times more active on its own behalf than ever it was for others. It presents me with so many chimeras and imaginary monsters, one after another, without order or plan, that, in order to contemplate their oddness and absurdity at leisure, I have begun to record them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of them."

Which is why I write as much as I do. Montaigne's Essays are the most honest and articulate exploration of character and personality I've ever come across (which is why we're still talking about them over 500 years later) and as I read of his epiphanies and moments of self-discovery I often find myself nodding in agreement. The same was true of my reaction to parts of Death in Venice.

When literature is truly universal, which all great literature is, any reader can see his or her self reflected in its words. The passing of 500 years, the separating distance of an ocean and several nations, a difference in sexual orientation, race, gender, ethnicity and language proves no hindrance to the power or poignancy of a great story.

That's all for now.

Part 2 - Tadzio is to Gus von A as Dorian Gray is to Basil Hallward.
Part 3 - Gus von A as a fallen dandy (as defined by dandyism.net).
Part 4 - "Who shall unriddle the puzzle of the artist nature?"
Part 5 - Death in Venice: on the page and beyond (on: the real Tadzio, Rufus Wainwright's Grey Gardens, the movie adaption, and mythological allusions).