Literature Ladies

This is the text for a project I did for Literature class. I did my project on how women are portrayed and seen in various pieces of literature and in different time periods. I also drew a picture for each entry. I might add those pictures to this post later. Or I might not.

The Rape Of the Lock
The entire purpose of Pope's poem is to mock Belinda's overreaction at having a piece of her hair cut off by an admiring Baron, so she's automatically made to look a bit ridiculous and over dramatic.
The character of Belinda is very daring. She challenges two men to a card game, and wins. When she is wrong, i.e. her hair is cut off, she makes a huge fuss and gets everybody in uproar at the offence. This shows that she is not the kind of person to back down.
Belinda is very vain. The best example of this is because she makes such a big deal about her lost hair. She has also spent all day working on her appearance for this social event, as have all the other fine ladies.
Despite protesting once he cuts off her hair, Belinda is flirtatious with the Byron. It is for this reason that he wants to cut off a piece of her hair; they've been flirting and he wants a token of her. The fact that she's made many men pine for her is also mentioned in the poem.
Despite her frivolity, Pope paints her as being supported by many protective spirits and muses, all of whom also get up in arms when her hair is cut. This shows some admiration for her determination and character.

The Lady of Shalott
The poem is about a Lady who is trapped on a lonely island on a river. She can't leave, because she is cursed to never participate in real life or else die. She must sit in her tower, weaving, and can only watch the outside world through the reflection of a mirror. She's clearly not happy, but she is resigned to her fate until a certain Sir Lancelot rides by.
When Sir Lancelot of Camelot rides by and the Lady of Shalott sees him, she wakes from her stupor, gets in a boat that she inscribes with her name, and rides down the river. By the time she reaches Camelot, she is dead. The King, Queen, Lancelot and all the people mourn the waste of such a pretty soul.
Even though it doesn't work out for her, the Lady's act of leaving her solitary, meaningless existence is admirable. She isn't satisfied with her situation, so she finally gets up and leaves towards the real world she's been watching for so long. Even though she knows she will die, she decides that fate is worth it if it occurs in an effort to get above her worthless existence.
It's a bit unfortunate that what motivated her had to be seeing a gallant man on a horse, but the sentiment is admirable all the same. In fact, it shows that she is actively going after something, even if it is only a sort of vision.

To The Ladies
This poem is overall very resentful towards the institution of marriage. In fact, Lady Mary Chudleigh compares wives to servants, saying the only difference is that a wife has a title and is not paid for her labours and obedience. Marriage is described as "the fatal knot", which implies that once married, a wife is practically dead and does not live a real life of her own.
She says that a husband rules his wife completely, and she must obey and submit to his commands.
This shows wives in the early 18th century as suppressed, mistreated creatures. This is probably accurate, as marriage was a very unequal contract then and women were seen as objects to be acquired or to manage rather than actual people. Lady Mary Chudleigh writing this poem, however, puts her in stark contrast to the existence she has described in her poem.
It's rather unfortunate that at the end of the poem she dedicates a few lines to saying things along the lines of "all men are horrible, you must protect yourself and shun them", as that has been an attitude that feminists have been criticized and ridiculed for a lot over time.

My Last Duchess
As we only get an account of the Duchess from her resentful widower, we can't really paint a realistic picture of her character, but it is an excellent medium for seeing how women would have been viewed in the Italian Renaissance. The poem was written around 1842, centuries after the time it is set in, and Robert Browning was fascinated by the psychology of the age of rebirth. The character of the Duke is seen as a bit of a psychotic man, as well as very possessive, jealous and forbidding.
If one puts the Duke's bias aside, the late Duchess seems like a lovely girl, very happy and pleasant. She might have blushed at practically everything, but she also seems to have been unassuming and courteous. Considering the situation from her perspective, the Duke probably had absolutely no reason to be jealous of anyone, which goes to show that he's rather extreme, especially seeing as he probably had his wife killed.
The Duchess certainly seems to be more an object the Duke purchased than a person he married. If you consider the historical characters the poem is inspired by, this certainly rings true. The Duchess was a Medici when the later all-powerful family was still establishing its wealth and prominence. She would have been married of to the Duke when she was 14 for money, connections and influence. The fact that the match was advantageous for her and her family would have caused an even more significant power imbalance in her marriage.
The reason the Duke was unhappy with her was that she seemed too happy all the time. This seems like a strange grievance to have, but the problem is actually that the Duke resents the thought of anyone complimenting his wife and he is also displeased that she seems just as pleased by insignificant gifts as she was by being married to him. Her smile is pretty much the same for anyone and anything, and she smiles at everything.
The creepiest part of the poem is that he's telling this story to somebody with whom he's negotiating his second marriage with. This shows that he really didn't care about what he did to his first wife. Also, the fact that the man he's talking to is still going along with the negotiations goes to show how insignificant women were at the time.

Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1800 peoms in her lifetime, as well as carrying out a vast amount of correspondence with various acquaintances. Despite this, she had barely a dozen published while she was alive. Nearly all of her work and personality came to life only after she had died.
"Because I could not stop for Death" is one of her most famous poems, and is one of many examples of her fixation on death and immortality. She never married and lived an introverted and increasingly reclusive life in her parents' house until her own death in 1886 at the age of 55. In the later part of her life, she became known as an eccentric in her hometown of Amherst. She took to never leaving her house and eventually insisting on talking to visitors through a door. In fact, even people she was in regular correspondence with didn't see her for years. When people did see her, she was always wearing white.
In terms of her writing, she did not fit into her time at all. Her punctuation, rhyme patterns, and capitalization was unconventional, and in fact all her poems were edited heavily before publication for a long time, in order to suit the taste of the time.

Arson

I have a problem.

It's called confrontation.

Mostly, it presents itself when somebody asks me something about myself that I haven't actively determined yet.

"What's your favourite book? Favourite movie? What's the nicest place you've visited?"

And suddenly I blank. I am an illiterate bookstore worker who's never even seen a video and who has never left her house. I literally have no recollection of any book, movie or place I've ever experienced. Actually.

And in situations like that, I can mostly blow it off as, "Oh, you know, there are still so many books I want to read, as a bookstore worker it's really hard because you'll never have enough time... Oh, I just like movies in general, I quite liked [most recently released movie title]... Well, I've really been all over the place..."

Applications? Not so easy to do that.

I don't think I've ever known a phrase so horrible and terrifying as DESCRIBE YOURSELF TO THE COMMITTEE. That's a terrible question. I hate the committee. I do not want the committee to know me. The committee can't HANDLE the truth. Fight the man.

Of course, not only do I have to talk about myself (ugh), I have to make myself sound fancy (double ugh) and good (not possible. Also, ugh). Quite a few scholarships hang on this.

Arson is sounding like a really nice option.

No seriously, on top of all this, they want me to "include a description of your passions and motivations and explain how they relate to your educational plans and goals."

Kill me.

"I am        um           ...       ...uh.

I can't even come up with a mock/informal/joke description of myself. I literally cannot talk about myself. I can maybe force myself to talk about my experiences, something very, very specific about myself or put a lot of myself into a character. But describing myself or talking about myself is actually not possible. I simply don't know how.

I was hoping that writing would get... I don't know, something rolling. But no such luck.

We Must Away / Ere Break Of Day

I have now seen the Hobbit three times. Of course, each time was amazing. What I love about watching movies over and over again, especially with movies with as much detail as Unexpected Journey, is being able to focus more on the little details, the aesthetic, the things happening in the background that only serve as ambiance on the first viewing.

Of course, this time Sir Ian McKellen gave me an aha-moment. Because of course Ian McKellen would give me feels in the middle of a magical fights scene. He's just that good.

Let me lay the scene:

The dwarves have been captured by the goblins and are facing the enormous blob of a Great Goblin (and I have to say that despite the gross cyst-chin, I think Barry Humphries' voice acting was very good). They've been beaten down, searched and unarmed by the mass of ugly creatures around them, and none of the dwarves, not even Thorin, seem to be able to see a way out of this mess they're in. In fact, they look like they're not even putting up a fight anymore. Most of them have just resigned themselves to having the crap kicked out of them and are really just waiting for the torture machines to get there. Even Thorin Oakenshield, bravest of all dwarves, looks thoroughly beaten and hopeless.

And suddenly, a burst of light. Light and silence. It's breathtaking and beautiful, so pure and strong it knocks all the goblins and the dwarves off their feet. In the middle of the light and silence, we see the silhouette of Gandalf, holding his staff in one hand and his sword, the Foe-hammer, in the other. He doesn't look relaxed like his normal self, but he's not poised for grueling battle, either. He looks powerful and wise and nobody could ignore him. He looks like some nearly divine power come from a greater place.

And out of his mouth come the words:

Take arms! Fight! Fight!

The first two times I saw this, I loved this scene and it touched something in me, but I could never quite pinpoint what it was. This time I realized why it resonated so profoundly with me.

At this point in my life, I'm in a position where I have to constantly look to the future. That scares me. I don't want to settle for a normal life, I want to achieve things, I want to be something, I want to be happy and I want to feel that I've actively earned my happiness. Right now I don't know how to do those things. I have my own demons to face, some from my past, some from my self and some from anxiety about my future. And I think it's important for me to recognize that I do have anxiety about my future, and about my past. Not to a diagnosable degree, but it's certainly present in me and the way I feel about and deal with things. I feel a lot of weight on my shoulders, a lot of pressures, expectations, doubts and obstacles, metaphorical goblins kicking me in the side and beating me down until I'm lying there, completely hopeless.

I desperately want to defeat those demons. I often tell myself to never settle, to do everything I can to achieve the happiness and the dreams I want to fulfill, but it's hard, especially with all the odds against you, as they are predisposed to be.

That's why the image of Gandalf imploring the dwarves to fight is so powerful to me. He's telling them to get up, to take arms and shake of the goblins holding them down. Furthermore, he's telling them to fight their way out of the mountain. The entire time they're escaping, they're running headfirst into their enemies and fighting through them.

The way Gandalf says those words is so vehement and determined. It inspires me. He's not saving them. He's throwing them straight into the danger and telling them to stand proudly and do their best. He doesn't say anything about where they have to go or where they will be safe. He's simply telling them that they have to try. Because damn it all if they get hurt or they never get to the end. It's still better than if they hadn't tried.

So from now on, whenever I find myself weak or unresolved or afraid, I can think of Gandalf's words and feel encouraged. And I can think of the greatness of both Gandalf and Sir Ian McKellen, and I can try and fight my way through the goblins, out of the Misty Mountains, to the hope of reaching for my own greatness.