Author: caterpillerflying

Over the entire semester the class has held discussions over different ideas and meanings in regards to female depictions of the Victorian Era. Different authors and painters of the Victorian Era have documented the many deviations of women through writings and illustrations; however, the major successes of women throughout the period have been discounted or otherwise gone unnoticed. I have constructed a homework assignment that requires students to do a little research on any woman of the Victorian Era who was acknowledged for anything besides being feeble-minded or rebellious according to a societal perspective. Discussions have revolved around plenty of negative chronologies of women. Essentially, we must also focus on female revolutionaries, after all; these women have also made huge contributions to the Victorian Era and many more eras to come.

Students will research female revolutionaries that helped to alter societal perceptions of women. Students are then required to create a small blog of at least 100 words describing in detail of a specific female contributor. These female contributors will be further discussed in class to better educate one another. The female revolutionaries will be compared with today’s female contributors. Even the most rebellious means of success can be written about. Male artists, kings, prophets, gamblers, etc. have all been granted recognition, in spite of the grief that may have affected those around them. Students may inquire about female gamblers, writers, or even prostitutes that may have reformed the profession in any way. The point of this particular assignment is for students to link the past to the present. As the instructor of this lesson, I want students to understand the ways in which women were able to make a status for themselves or how they gotten to where they are now.

Rodan
Rodan’s images are hard, frozen sculptures depicting a scene, but he sees them as alive and is able to portray them as alive. It is valuable as an artist to give your art life; you give your art a piece of yourself. Our art has more meaning to us when we put a piece of ourselves in it. You are portrayed in your art, and those who are able to capture the natural aspect of movement and life are able to create better art.

Gambling
To have nothing, means it is all over, there is nothing. As long as we can feel something, we are still alive. Even if things are awful, there can be hope. Believing in nothing and to go into a consciousness of nothing can be more terrifying than the idea of Hell, where at least there is something concrete. A lot of people find pleasure in gambling; it gives them hope that things can change with just one more game. It can be addicting, as people desperately hope for the one game that can change their stars. In these poems it appears that the writer is only an observer. He is the voice of reason and the people being observed are not in their right mind, as they would rather suffer in torment. By the third poem, Smitz’s voice of reason has changed, as he is envies their joy and perceived happiness in gambling. Smitz seems to lack passion, and desires the passion that he sees in the gamblers, even though he recognizes that they aren’t much more than skeletons. The poems are somewhat hypocritical because they judge them for the gambling while envying or admiring them.

Rodan
Rodan’s images are hard, frozen sculptures depicting a scene, but he sees them as alive and is able to portray them as alive. It is valuable as an artist to give your art life; you give your art a piece of yourself. Our art has more meaning to us when we put a piece of ourselves in it. You are portrayed in your art, and those who are able to capture the natural aspect of movement and life are able to create better art. 

Gambling
To have nothing, means it is all over, there is nothing. As long as we can feel something, we are still alive. Even if things are awful, there can be hope. Believing in nothing and to go into a consciousness of nothing can be more terrifying than the idea of Hell, where at least there is something concrete. A lot of people find pleasure in gambling; it gives them hope that things can change with just one more game. It can be addicting, as people desperately hope for the one game that can change their stars. In these poems it appears that the writer is only an observer. He is the voice of reason and the people being observed are not in their right mind, as they would rather suffer in torment. By the third poem, Smitz’s voice of reason has changed, as he is envies their joy and perceived happiness in gambling. Smitz seems to lack passion, and desires the passion that he sees in the gamblers, even though he recognizes that they aren’t much more than skeletons. The poems are somewhat hypocritical because they judge them for the gambling while envying or admiring them.

Rodan
Rodan’s images are hard, frozen sculptures depicting a scene, but he sees them as alive and is able to portray them as alive. It is valuable as an artist to give your art life; you give your art a piece of yourself. Our art has more meaning to us when we put a piece of ourselves in it. You are portrayed in your art, and those who are able to capture the natural aspect of movement and life are able to create better art. 

Gambling
To have nothing, means it is all over, there is nothing. As long as we can feel something, we are still alive. Even if things are awful, there can be hope. Believing in nothing and to go into a consciousness of nothing can be more terrifying than the idea of Hell, where at least there is something concrete. A lot of people find pleasure in gambling; it gives them hope that things can change with just one more game. It can be addicting, as people desperately hope for the one game that can change their stars. In these poems it appears that the writer is only an observer. He is the voice of reason and the people being observed are not in their right mind, as they would rather suffer in torment. By the third poem, Smitz’s voice of reason has changed, as he is envies their joy and perceived happiness in gambling. Smitz seems to lack passion, and desires the passion that he sees in the gamblers, even though he recognizes that they aren’t much more than skeletons. The poems are somewhat hypocritical because they judge them for the gambling while envying or admiring them.

Throughout history, the subject and idea of ruin has meant different things to different cultures and time periods. Compare and contrast the idea of ruin to Thomas Hardy’s “The Ruined Maid” to another poem on ruin from another era or culture. (250 words) Post the other poem as well.

 

Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Ruined Maid,” was written in the year 1866, and describes the life of a “ruined” woman. It presents a unique look at a ruined woman who has in fact made her life better through her ruin. She is well dressed, speaks politely and lives comfortably. However, the connotation of the word ruined, pertains to the fact that she is a fallen woman, or a prostitute. Although her world is not ruined, and she is living quite amiably, others still see her as ruined because of her profession.  

 

Stevie Edwards’ poem, “What I Mean by Ruin Is…”, was written in the year 2011, and the word ruin has a much different connotation than that of the above mentioned poem.  Edwards’ poem describes a woman whose life is a ruin. She has no food, and goes on dates to get some. Her life is constant string of indecision, and an old love has left her unable to return to herself. She is haunted by her past and is raw to the world. No one is there to care about her. In this poem, she is not ruined, but her life is ruined. In the current era, one does not usually look at a person and say, they are ruined, they instead look at their life and call that ruined. The focus is no longer on the individual as much. The word, although it may still have the same meaning, is no longer used in the same way as it was before.

 

 

Stevie Edwards

WHAT I MEAN BY RUIN IS…

When there’s only condiments left in the fridge
and you join a free online dating service
so men will buy you dinner.

When you’ve shucked the night with the dull blade
of indecision and gulped down everything,
even the pearls.

When some old, left-handed love has left
your guitar strung backwards
and you can’t find any songs
for rain in its frets.

When you wake up next to the body
of your past and it looks ready
to wrinkle and bald.

When the last burn of summer is peeling
from your breasts and there’s nothing to husk
the pale, raw of new flesh.

When the woman who wears her hair
in the old way quits mumbling about Jesus
on the street corner and takes her salvation
pamphlets to a pauper’s grave.

When you’re too ugly to pray,
but pray
                and the only voice
on the drunk subway wails
                                good grief.

 

I think this assignment has value, because it shows the evolution and constant changing of a word’s meaning in society. By looking at the different values in society and the different set up, one can see how words mean different things in different places. In my example above I found that in the 19^th century the word ruin usually was labeled to a fallen woman, even though she had a good life. Because of her actions, she would forever be labeled ruined. However, looking at a poem from the 21^st century the word ruin is not used to describe a person, but instead a person’s life. It is not one choice she made that made her ruined, it doesn’t actually describe her as ruined at all, but instead her life. Her life is a ruin, because she is poor, because no one cares about her. The word is used in a completely different manner. Which makes sense considering things are more acceptable or forgiven in society today than they were back then.

I think this assignment would encourage good class discussion because everyone would be coming up with something different. One person may compare it to a poem from the medieval era, while others might find poems from different cultures. This is also a good follow up to our first assignment on choosing a word and writing about what it means to poem, so you could use this as a follow up and ask to find that word in a poem from another era and see if the connotations are the same or different. So the word wouldn’t have to be limited to the word ruin.

 

-Elyssa Reisman 

 

In Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Romance of the Forest she uses foreboding words to foreshadow Adeline’s discoveries. The beginning of this excerpt from chapter eight, Adeline retires to her chambers. Upon entering she notices the deterioration of the furniture and the greatness of the space. These objects are fairly ordinary however Adeline’s current mood causes her surroundings to take up a “Melancholy” feel in her imagination. However, Ann Radcliffe manipulates Adeline’s senses to foreshadow the events that follow. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “melancholy” means: “ill tempered, sullenness, brooding and anger.” This is the label she gave her spacious room. At first this seems a missive statement and it simply passes through the listener’s ear. Further on in the text we understand why Adeline was feeling this sense of foreboding. She finds a secret passage way behind a tapestry and follows it into a small labyrinth of different rooms. These rooms call to her memory, a nightmare she recently had about a murder. She fancies she will see a corpse on the floor but all she finds is a rusty knife. We can infer that she thinks the rust on the knife was caused by the wetness of blood and she quickly leaves the premises. The reason Adeline was feeling the “melancholy” of her own room was not because of the character of her chamber. Radcliffe was giving her audience a taste of the mood in the hidden inner chambers before Adeline found them. The atmosphere of a murder scene has an ill tempered and angry atmosphere. A predator before a murder will have a brooding and sullen attitude. Those the perceived actions of murder happened in retrospect but the melancholy mood lingered in the hidden chambers and even began to leak into Adeline’s own room and mind.

 

-Katie Anthony

Oxford English Dictionary. Melancholy, n. www.OED.com. (Oxford University Press: England) Date Accessed: October 14, 2012.

In her poem, “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti used the Goblins and their market as an extended metaphor of women being drawn to the sexual promises/desires of men.  Two sisters have two different experiences with the Goblins. One goes willingly and becomes enamored with the “fruit” she devours and begins to waste away. The other goes in order to save her sister; she ignores their calls and is attacked/ravaged by the Goblins. When the second sister, Lizzie, goes to the Goblins and refuses their advancements, Rossetti describes the scene as, “White and golden Lizzie stood,/Like a lily in a flood,/ Like a rock of blue-veined stone/ Lashed by tides obstreperously, –/ Like a beacon left alone/ In a hoary roaring sea” (408-413).  She uses similes in order to paint a picture of Lizzie’s bravery. In the description she uses the word “obstreperously” in one of her similes. Obstreperous means “clamorous, noisy or vociferous” (Oxford English Dictionary). Lizzie stood against the goblins like a rock that is lashed by the clamorous and rough sea. This definition could make sense when talking about ocean waves. However, it also has another definition that fits the poem better. Obstreperous can also mean, “Noisily or aggressively resisting control, advice, etc.; turbulent, unruly; aggressive, argumentative, or bad-tempered” (Oxford English Dictionary). The tide that is hitting against her are the Goblins, they are “unruly,” “aggressive,” and “bad-tempered.” The word is able to encompass the unruly waves of an ocean, but also portray the aggressiveness of the Goblins who seek to get at her. Rossetti seeks to portray the falling of a woman, but also the strength and sacrifice a woman can possess. In showing how Lizzie stands against the obstreperous Goblins to save her sister, Rossetti paints a different picture of a fallen woman. Although it sounds as though she is raped, she is still portrayed as more of a self-sacrificing hero than a fallen woman.

Elyssa Reisman

 

Oxford English Dictionary. Obstreperous, adj. www.OED.com. (Oxford University Press: England) Date Accessed: October 15, 2012.

 

In retrospect of the assigned readings, many of the class discussions have revolved around the meaningful societal customs of the Victorian era. The various readings clarify the range of respectable and or dishonorable conduct amongst the individuals in accordance to class, labor, and wealth. Out of all the texts that we have conversed so far, the word that I found to be most fitting overall was “rebuke”. The word, ‘rebuke’, definitely applies to almost every poem, short story, or scholastic painting that we have talked or written about so far, especially the most recent materials.

            I actually came across the word, ‘rebuke’, in Gabriel Rossetti’s “Jenny’, a poem in which a male subject narrates his particular perception of this young female entertainer who is prostituting herself to him. To rebuke someone or something is to the equivalence of shame, admonishment, criticism, disapproval, etc. Throughout the poem the narrator seems to enjoy the company of Jenny; however, it seems as though he condemns or reprimands her for her dishonorable lifestyle. Unfortunately, there were many women much like Jenny who underwent similar lifestyles and were very much rebuked from society in spite of their desperate reasoning for taking up prostitution, which was very common throughout the Victorian era. Later on, subsequently assigned texts and images revolve around other issues throughout the Victorian era, besides prostitution such as rape, ill-suited relationships, the endeavors within harlot houses, etc. All of these aspects were rebuked biblically, socially, and most of all very harshly. Women were and still are the main victims to this sort of societal treatment. What makes the word, rebuke, so significant is that the actions in rebuking an individual have not changed. The underlying cause of the dishonorable or shameful acts of a person is always and will forever be overlooked. 

–Malarie Williams

In Oscar Wilde’s poem The Harlot’s House he uses mechanical imagery to dehumanize fallen women. This poem is one man’s view of prostitution. The speaker of this poem is a man with his female lover passing a brothel on the street. While the man shows distain for the occupation, atmosphere and participating women, his lover leaves his side and enters the harlot house. There it is insinuated that she loses her innocence by becoming a prostitute herself, a fallen women. Looking into the text, Wilde uses imagery to convey the prostitutes as machines, non-living things and as imitating life. This can be seen simply in the word “automatons” he uses in the fifth stanza of the poem. An automaton is a “moving device having a concealed mechanism, so it appears to operate spontaneously.” Historically these automatons were “originally denoting various functional instruments including clocks, watches as well as moving mechanical devices made in imitation of human beings (Oxford English Dictionary).” The context in which this word “automaton” is used is to depict the harlot dancers as “wire-pulled” robots. Likewise, in other places in the text Wilde describes these women as “clockwork puppets”, “the dead”,
“marionettes” and objects that behaved like “live things.” What Wilde is doing here is insinuating that once a woman has fallen, she becomes a flat and hollow thing, a person no longer but a mere thing. On first glance is appears that Wilde is casting judgment on these unfortunate women, calling them dead, unresponsive and mechanic things. However, how does a piece of machinery come to be? It is manmade. Machines cannot make themselves; they must have an engineer or manufacturer. Though Wilde is dehumanizing these fallen women, he is also recognizing their victimization. He is insinuating that though their profession is soiled, they were shaped into prostitutes by the men who paid for their services.

 

Katie Anthony. 10/14/12

 

Oxford English Dictionary. Automaton, n. www.OED.com. (Oxford University Press: England) Date Accessed: October 14, 2012.

Victorian England was governed by the Monarchy who was answerable to the powerful Parliament, a more democratic way of government. This parliament had representatives much like Congress in the United States of America. Delegates for each region of the country would represent the people and help make decisions on behalf of the people. The initial problem regarding this system was that many places in England, particularly the “industrial north” were not being properly represented and therefore the voice of the lower class and the working middle class was not heard in parliament (Everett).

            The common people knew their voice was not being heard and that no attempt was made at acknowledging their existence. Therefore in cities like Manchester and Birmingham people began setting up their own small political systems. These systems were discovered by the English government and deemed illegal. Many of the lower classes, wanting desperately for their opinions to be heard, began rioting. Attacks were made on Sir Charles Wetherall, a local anti-reform politician and on his mansion. These riots consisted of younger men in numbers exceeding four and five hundred (Ewald). The endeavors of these men to bring about justice were not highly esteemed by their fellow lower classmen, because of their violent displays, however, their fervor conveys an accurate description of the lower class’ push for a voice and power.

            Change happened in the form of the Reform Act of 1832. This reform redistributed the representation so that the lower and middle class were given a voice and a hand in their countries inner workings. This act so drastically changed the distribution of power among the classes that some likened this social-political change to the outcome of the French Revolution, saving the bloodshed (Everett).

            While the lower classes rejoiced in their achievements and steps towards equality, this act was met with much resistance from the upper class. When the bill first was passed from the House of Commons to the House of Lords, the Lords rejected the bill and were greatly disturbed by the audacious suggestion that lowly people could be given authority in their government system. The Lords were tarrying and going to reject the bill however the Duke of Wellington ordered the Dukes to either pass on their vote or make a decision. Over 200 Lords decided not to vote and the bill passes into law against the wishes of most of the upper class politicians (Bloy).

 

Bloy, Marjie. (April 1997). The Reform Act Crisis. Retrieved from www.victorianweb.org.

Everett, Glenn. (December 31, 2010). The Reform Acts. Retrieved from     www.victorianweb.org.

Ewald, Alexander Charles. (April 4, 2002). The Bristol 1832 Reform Bill Riots—A Late   Victorian View. Retrieved from www.victorianweb.org.