Discuss how the characters Gwendolyn and Cecily break gender roles.
During the Victorian Era, women were supposed to stay at home, have children and also take care of them. In other words, they should be the mistress of a household and obey their husbands in order to transmit the idea of a ‘perfect family’ to the others (appearance). They were educated not to hear the truth, because they had to be innocent, pure, submissive, and delicate like a rose, as Algernon describes Cecily in Act II:
“Because you are like a pink rose, Cousin Cecily.”
[Act II]
However, despite of living in a Victorian society, Cecily and Gwendolen break gender roles. Gwendolen, for example, shows her ‘rebellious’ behavior in the very beginning of the book, by disobeying her mother’s order, and also asking Jack to propose:
“Lady Bracknell: Won’t you come and sit here, Gwendolen?
Gwendolen: Thanks, mamma, I’m quite comfortable where I am.”
[Act I]
“Lady Bracknell: […] Gwendolen, you will accompany me.
Gwendolen: Certainly, mamma.
[Lady Bracknell and Algernon go into the music-room, Gwendolen remains behind.]”
[Act I]
“Gwendolen: I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet.”
[Act I]
All these excerpts from the play show how certain Gwendolen is. She is confident and seems to have a very strong personality. Her own cousin realizes that by saying:
“Didn’t it go off all right, old boy? You don’t mean to say Gwendolen refused you? I know it is a way she has. She is always refusing people. I think it is most ill-natured of her.”
[Act I]
As we can verify, she definitely not a typical Victorian girl, since she breaks many gender rules during the play, and also because she sometimes behaves in a very rebellious way, especially when she runs away to meet ‘her Earnest’ in the countryside. This attitude is not acceptable for a young lady at that time, and that’s the reason why Lady Bracknell lies to her husband:
“Her unhappy father is, I am glad to say, under the impression that she is attending a more than usually lengthy lecture by the University Extension Scheme on the Influence of a permanent income on Thought.”
[Act III]
Another example in the play is Cecily. She is also very strong and has a great ability to manipulate the other and her own live. She has a personal diary where she creates her own identity. According to her, this diary is just “simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions” [Act III]. She also invents and ‘controls’ her romance with her Uncle’s Jack brother. At the time, girls were supposed to be in love with a sensible man, but Cecily breaks these rules when she affirms:
“Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.”
[Act II]
It’s clear she doesn’t want a sensible man. She wants a “very wicked and bad” [Cecily – Act II] instead. Thus, Cecily is very intelligent, mainly if the subject matters to her. Although she is “a perfect angel” [Algernon - Act II] he knows the truth and she is not innocent at all. Actually, both girls are not innocent as it was expected, and in doing so, Wilde shows the hypocrisy of that society, because even if it creates strict rules for woman, they can perfectly be broken by ‘innocent, pure, and sweet’ young ladies.
The relation between Laura’s characteristics and her nickname (Blue Roses)
The play written by Tennessee Williams is full of symbols. One of them is the title of the book itself: The Glass Menagerie. Laura, one of the main characters, has a collection of glass ornaments. As we know, glass is beautiful and fragile at the same time, and these characteristics somehow represent Laura’s personality.
Another very important symbol is the nickname Jim gave Laura when they were in high school: Blue roses. Laura explains the origin of this nickname in the play. According to her, everything was a misunderstanding: “When I had that attack of pleurosis – he asked me what was the matter when I came back. I said pleurosis – he thought that I said Blue Roses” [Scene 2].
Despite her nickname seems to be something simple, it is so much meaningful. Its importance and significance is emphasized in the beginning of scene two: “On the dark stage the screen is lighted with the image of blue roses. Gradually Laura’s figure becomes apparent and the screen goes out.” [Scene 2]
Blue roses do not exist, and cannot be found in nature, unless they are genetically modified. These characteristics make the flower something unique, different from the other roses. Thus, Laura is as rare and unique as the blue roses, because she is different from other girls. She is crippled and as a consequence of this “little defect” (as Amanda said) she is too fragile, shy, and thinks she will never be able to get married.
The Chinese folktale(*) entitled Blue Roses shows another meaning for this flower: a hope for an unachievable love. When Laura explains to her mother the origin of the nickname, it is possible to see how fascinated she is when she remembers Jim and his acts towards her: “Whenever he saw me, he’d holler, “Hello, Blue Roses!” I didn’t care for the girl that he went out with. Emily Meisenbach. Emily was the best-dressed girl at Soldan.” [Scene 2] So, in my opinion, this nickname is the best remembrance of Jim (and their impossible love) she has.
Lastly, I believe that is important to mention the connotation the color blue has. This color represents sadness, gloom and… depression. The story takes place in the United Stated during the Great Depression in the 30s. This period was very sad and chaotic. People had no jobs, no money. They used to live in a fantasy world, in which the cinema was the biggest (and maybe the only) attraction. Watching movies was the same thing as forgetting/escaping from reality. Thus, the color of the flower show us this blue moment people were living at the time, and also Laura’s feelings.
(*) http://www.civprod.com/storylady/stories/TheBlueRose.htm
Lady Macbeth and her (unconscious) guilt
Lady Macbeth is one of the most important characters in this Shakespeare tragedy. She first appears in Act I, Scene V, reading a letter, which tells her the prediction the witches had made before. By this first participation we can start thinking about her as being a strong, cold character, once she says her husband is ”too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way” (Act I, Scene V, lines 16-17). According to her, he is not able to do wrong things in order to conquer what (s)he wants. He is too kind for that. So, she starts evoking the spirits of darkness to unsex her. In other words, she wants to get rid of her womanish characteristics and act like a man: ruthless, stronger and ambitions. She also fears the effects that remorse would create on her. Thus, she asks the same spirits to keep remorse away. Later on, after planning the whole crime, Lady Macbeth question her husband’s manhood. She is being so ambitious and cruel, and at the same time, she uses Macbeth’s love for her to control him. He, even being afraid of the consequences of the possible crime, caves in and kill the King.
- “If we should fail?” (Act I, Scene VII, line 66)
Up to this point, Lady Macbeth is the one who planned everything, who controlled the situation, and who made Macbeth being less human and becoming a murder. She is responsible for his dark side, because after Duncan’s death her husband kept committing crimes, without her ‘orders’, agreement or acceptance. And here, in my opinion, is where the guilt starts appearing. I see Lady Macbeth as being guiltier than Macbeth himself, just because the ideas, the whole plan were hers. Before she appeared in the story, Macbeth was constantly thinking in the witches’ prediction. However, he did not plan anything because he is somehow scared and he knows that it is not right to kill somebody:
- “… whose horrid image doth unfix my hair…” (Act I, Scene III, line 149).
- “[Aside] If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.” (Act I, Scene III, lines 158-160)
As the story goes (and the Banquo, Lady Macduff and her son die), it is clear to see how Lady Macbeth gets insane due to the (indirect) guilt and the responsibilities she carries with her because of these later crimes. In Act V, Scene I, she is kind of hallucinating, and because of this she mentions the victims:
- “… yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him.” (Act V, Scene I, lines 39-40) ” = the King
- “The thane of Fife had a wife: where is
she now?” (Act V, Scene I, lines 51-52) ” = Lady Macduff
- “I tell you yet again, Banquo’s
buried; he cannot come out on’s grave.” (Act V, Scene I, lines 71 -72) ” = Banquo
Despite the fact she started the tragedy as a ‘naive’ person, who did not think about the consequences of her acts, in the end of it she changes a little bit since she is so overwhelmed by her thoughts and her guilt. As a result she goes crazy and kills herself. In doing so, that is the reason why I believe she guiltier than her husband.
To counter Malthus – Analysis
As we’ve been studying in our literature classes up to now, we can clearly see Margareth Avison profile through her poems. They show us her care about people and how society is living nowadays. Higgins (2007), in his text, tell us how much she “deplored the excesses of technology, the unexamined and unfiltered love affair that our culture and time have with a narrow understanding of knowledge”. She did live a simple life and wrote about that to make people think about it.
This current poem shows us the same theme. She is now, as the title says, countering Malthus. Malthus was one of the pioneers of population growth studies and according to him the population won’t be followed by food growth.
The first paragraph brings the main idea of the poem. She starts giving us a personal opinion and countering Malthus. According to her, how can we talk about quantity (“who is too many”) if we do not know anything about quality (“how to live”)? The full stop here indicates a pause. It seems she is thinking and presenting her ideas gradually.
In the second paragraph we have a comma which gives some emphasis to the word “Presence”, which is Jesus Christ. According to the poet, God is the only reason for people being alive. The full stop indicates a pause of idea again.
The third paragraph brings a kind of plea. She exposes how people are living nowadays: in huge places full of strange people. This first part shows us a contradiction and it also counters Malthus. Why this vast territories and seashores aren’t able to produce food for those who need? Is this fact related to how much people worry about their neighbors? I think so, and in my opinion, Margareth thinks the same way because she ends this paragraph begging people don’t let anybody suffer without some care. She says that we can’t let anyone die without worry about that. The punctuation (full stop), once again, shows the pauses of the author’s thoughts.
The next part talk about how costly is to get in touch with people. It is funny because at the same time we are next to many people, we are also far away from them. And she questions that by using a question mark. This situation is really sad and has to do with the last sentence of the previous paragraph. People do not care about the others anymore. That’s way they are too close and too far at the same time. She ends this fourth paragraph using ellipsis. They show that this “concern” still exists. It’s a kind of continuous idea, a preoccupation with this whole situation, which has no solution.
Finally, the last paragraph shows the human being condition. She describes men becoming desperate because of hunger, of poverty. And it’s, for sure, a consequence of the lack of care people gas inside their hearts. We are seen as numbers, not as humans. The word “quantity” clearly shows that. The punctuation used divides these ideas: human being condition and the lack of worry towards the world population.
Higgins, Michael W. Avison Biography. 2007 – available on <http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/1047/852/>
To Counter Malthus by Margaret Avison
None us in this so
burdened earth has known
how to live, let alone
who is too many.
Presence, each day
afresh, you give a
purifying signal to
sting us alive.
Vast territories and seashores
still bear these thronging
strangers. May none die
without somebody caring.
To know even one other is
costly. And being known.
Alive, among so many
more now? a concern…
Hunger makes men desperate, threatens
to congeal the quandary. Yet
Presence abides untouched
in the churn of Quantity.
A Thunderstorm – analysis
The poem Thunderstorm is sonnet written by Archibald Lampman. This Canadian poet is considered the impressionistic poet because his poem has a lot of characteristics from the Impressionism. By reading the poems we can usually see an image of what is being described. They have a huge sense of movement and also the presence of colors, and the five senses on them. Other characteristics are rhythm and rhyme. The poem has 14 rhyming lines with a regular alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables. It is called iambic pentameter. It can be shown through the scansion of the first two lines:
|
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
|
A |
mo- |
-ment |
the |
wild |
swal- |
-lows |
like |
a |
flight |
|
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
ˇ |
/ |
|
Of |
With- |
-erd |
gust- |
caught |
lea- |
-ves, |
sere- |
-nely |
high |
The rhyme scheme is: abbaaccadeffde
The following lines will show the analysis of each part considering the notions of movement, colors, and senses presented in the poem.
“A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still.”
The poem starts with the description of some moments before the thunderstorm arrival. The first movement we have is the swallows flying in the windy sky. In addiction, the second movement is represented by the gust tossing the leaves in the sky. Despite of this they are still on the trees. The main sense here is sight, but the word “gust” implies a sense of hearing because the wind makes some noise/sound sometimes.
“Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on.”
The next part is describing the storm itself, and it also makes reference to the sunset (“weird twilight”). Through these words we can infer that perhaps the sky is red or quite purple. The word “darkening” on the line 8 reinforce the idea that the sun is going down and the storm is already there, in the sky. Furthermore, the movement the wind makes is described by the words: “spreading”, “rolling fringe”, “wheeled”. Once again we have the sight as the main sense.
“And now from heaven’s height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast.”
These lines bring the description of the thunderstorm as well. Now the movement of the wind seems to be stronger because according to the poem it is swaying the elm-trees and it is creating a particular roar (made by the wind as I mentioned before). The word “pelted” characterizes the rain and makes it strong too. Then we have the word “blast” which shows that the wind is getting strength and is sweeping the pains with its movements. Hearing is an important as sight in this part because it has more sounds, such as the ones from the rain and the wind, but also the description of the facts.
“Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields are gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.”
The last four lines of the poem describe the sounds the thunder makes using the words “pealing” and “crash”. It also shows how it happens in the sky by using the words “wild white flash”. Other things described here are the fields and the gardens. They are bleared and disarrayed, and it implies the movement of the wind in that place. It is ended by the description of how the rain is arriving: “column on column” which means gradually. Again the senses used are hearing and sight.
In conclusion, the poet creates an image of a thunderstorm by describing each single episode in a unique way making us imagine the moment, and maybe hear the sounds in there.
A Thunderstorm by Archibald Lampman
A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.
Analyze this poem, thinking of the five senses that are referred to, thinking of the movement that occurs. Write an analysis that is line by line.
Poem analysis
In the poem Welsh History, R. S. Thomas tells us how the Welsh people see their past, present and future.
He begins showing us how the past in Wales was. It is marked by several battles and war. According to him these battles was fruitless and they also influenced people’s behavior making them tense and anxious. Another consequence of the war was the poets’ and kings’ death. The Welsh people considered themselves as conceived from legends, from histories about their red (bloody) past. However, at the same time it can be considered as a glorious past, with heroes and good people.
The sentence “We were a people, and are so yet” shows us how these people see their lives today. They still live the impact of the war. The events of the past are somehow present in their (dead) culture and identity. However, in spite of all these bad and painful memories the Welsh people have hope and believe that things will change, there will be peace among them, and they will continue being armed, but not as they were before.
Welsh History
We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.
Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.
We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn
Armed, but not in the old way.
R. S. Thomas (1913 – 2000)
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