Tag: Analysis

Alice as an Allegory for Victorian Society

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Alice is a multi-tiered allegory for Victorian life, just as The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the economic and socio-political times of 19th century America.  Both stories feature young girls who lose their way and end up in a land that doesn’t make sense,[1] from which they “awake” after their adventures, suggesting that their dreamlands are idealized places. Alice even remarks, “What a wonderful dream it had been.”[2]

Hatters went insane due to prolonged exposure to mercury vapors during the felting process: “Erratic, flamboyant behavior was one of the most evident alterations caused by mercury,”[3] so the Mad Hatter is based in reality. The similarity between the two stories, along with a seed of truth in Alice, shows that there is more to the story than nonsensical language and tangential off-shoots. Lauren Millikan, in her senior project[4], identifies numerous allegories.[5] Historical interpretations include:

Political (International expansion led to violence and fear of the monarchy, as reflected in the Queen’s behavior [Queen Victoria], who constantly proclaims, “Off with their heads”.)

Colonial (Alice misunderstands the native culture, frequently insulting the animals, “I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!”[6] and insisting on proper etiquette.)

Math (As a mathematician, Carroll loved puzzles, games, and mind teasers[7], which are prevalent in Alice: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”[8] )

Science (Darwin’s findings[9] are referenced as animals appear out of the water i.e. Alice’s tears[10], which suggests that Alice is god-like in this new world, especially during times of growth, and culminates with her boldness during the trial[11])

Humanity (The mistreatment of children and the mentally ill were prevalent in Victorian society, “’…an insane person was “appropriated” to the status of a child, which was an improvement over the status of animal.’[12] Although, considering the marginal identity of children, this still kept them on the furthest edges of society”[13]. The Duchess and her “child”, who becomes a pig, showcase this injustice.)

[1] My husband pointed out this similarity.

[2] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1985 edition, page 144

[3]  http://corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Mercury-mad-hatter.htm

[4] “Curiouser and Curiouser, The Evolution of Wonderland”, Lauren Millikan http://www.carleton.edu/departments/ENGL/Alice/index.html

[5] Other theories on Millikan’s site: http://www.carleton.edu/departments/ENGL/Alice/criticism.html

[6] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1985 edition, page 59

[7] Charles Lutwidge Dodgson biography, http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Dodgson.html

[8] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1985 edition, page 79

[9] Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859.

[10] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1985 edition, page 32

[11] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1985 edition, pp. 136 – 144

[12] Jan Gordon citation: http://www.carleton.edu/departments/ENGL/Alice/Footbibliography.html#gordon

[13]  http://www.carleton.edu/departments/ENGL/Alice/CritVict.html

Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Their Relation to Classic Mythology Revisited

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After my essay was peer reviewed by a few particularly astute students, I felt the need to improve my original work, so I am reposting this essay with several important changes, hopefully resulting in a more focused and accurate essay.

 

“The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats” is a prime example of why fairy tales continue to fascinate us. These tales are rich with symbolism and echo mythological constructs.  Six of the seven little kids were swallowed whole by the wolf, only to be cut out by the mother, after which they leapt out, unharmed. This is reminiscent of the origin story for the Greek gods, in which Cronus, a Titan, was “told by Earth and starry Sky that he was destined to be overcome by his own son,” as punishment because he had cut open his father, Sky, with a sickle, despite Cronus acting out his mother’s wishes. Cronus swallows his own children whole to avoid this fate. Zeus’ mother conspires to save her child, so she “wrapped a huge stone in… blankets… [and Cronus] swallowed it…” Cronus’ other children were then freed from his belly.

 

In this regard, we can view the wolf as a father figure, since the mother conspires with her youngest child to free the other children by cutting open the wolf and replacing them with rocks. When the wolf falls into the water, drowning with the weight of the stones in his belly, this act signifies a transition of power as the wolf is no longer feared or holds power over the people. In essence, the kids are now in power. The act of son overtaking father, allowing for the transition of power, is a key aspect of mythology, as suggested by Joseph Campbell, who looks at the psychological significance of myths which pervade every society.

 

These stories stay with us as a universal constant because they put into words our fears and hopes. The Grimm brothers exemplify the oral mythological tradition by their use of symbolism, which is essential to the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next.

 

Works Cited

The World of Myth, an anthology, by David Adams Leeming
The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers by Joseph Campbell (originally produced in a series of interviews)
Signs and Symbols, An Illustrated Guide to Their Origins and Meanings, published by DK Publishing in 2008 (no author listed)

Discovering the Joy of Shakespeare, or For the Love of Romeo and Juliet

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I’ve been studying Romeo and Juliet for some time now. Of course, I know the main plot points – it’s been parodied countless times in countless art forms, and I read the play, with much instruction, during my freshmen year of high school. Yet, as I took up the book again, I found myself stymied by the language. I could not behold the grandeur of the vocabulary, as so many fans of the Bard seem to attest. As someone with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s, whenever I read anything – whether intellectual or not, I reread each sentence at least twice, sometimes more. This makes me a slow reader, but an excellent analyst of literature. However, when trying to understand the whole of a Shakespearean work, one cannot just concentrate on the meaning of every single word. Looking at footnotes and dictionaries frequently while attempting to read the play disrupts the natural rhythm of the play.

Sure, for intensive study of Romeo and Juliet, or any other play by any other playwright for that matter, understanding the nuances of the language, the double meanings, or the lost meanings from Elizabethan times to our own, is essential. As I’ve learned in my Shakespeare in Community course, this understanding likely came naturally to the original audiences of Shakespeare’s plays. Language is fluid, though; it changes with each generation. Reading work that may be a hundred years old, or 600 years old, or one thousand years old is like reading a different language. One studies the grammar and syntax of a foreign language, immersing oneself in the culture and spoken words, before one has enough mastery to read a book in that language and understand it as second nature.

As a writer, I was determined that I should read this play, rather than watch the play performed, as if that was somehow cheating. But I was so fixated on every word I didn’t understand, I was getting nowhere fast. Finally, I relented. I watched the 1976 version of Romeo and Juliet. Immediately, I saw and heard things that I just couldn’t pick up by reading. I love literary analysis and enjoy it immensely, but how can I analyze something I don’t fundamentally understand at its core. I only knew this play as if looking through tiny peepholes in a fence, missing the wholeness of the work. Shakespeare is a different language to me: I needed to watch the reactions of the characters, their movements, their facial expressions; I needed to hear the laughter (I never knew there was so much joviality in the first acts! I read those lines as stoic, not recognizing a goodhearted jest between friends) to appreciate the story behind the words. It was as if watching and listening to the action without focusing on understanding every word provided me with subtitles to each scene, allowing me not only to get the gist of what was happening, but also to finally hear those beautiful, passionate, unbridled words. The play came alive! With whispers and shouts and declarations of love, crying vehemently and vows of rage-filled revenge – I couldn’t insert these emotions into my reading because I was hung up on just understanding the vocabulary.

Now, for the first time, I observed Romeo, Juliet, and their family and friends as teenagers. The duels between Mercutio and Tybalt were most likely caused by the hormones coursing through their bodies, coupled with the feud between the two houses that those boys may not have even fully understood. While Mercutio antagonizes, Tybalt remains bull-headed. Blows were bound to be had, but over-zealous teenagers armed with weaponry, and it’s no wonder that disaster struck. I was more drawn in by the injustice and the sadness of young life lost during senseless battles than I was by the love and lust between Juliet and her Romeo that intensified as each act progressed. Only as I watched them kiss passionately before their wedding ceremony did I realize how in love they were. Until then, I only saw Juliet as a child of 14 – naive, willing to do whatever her mother asked of her, sweet and innocent. Romeo and Benvolio tried to keep the peace among the houses, but alas, poor Romeo was bested by circumstances (and Tybalt’s bull-headedness). This is not the play I read as a 14 year old, focused on these weird, outdated words and listening to lectures just to understand what this darn story was about.

Shakespeare was a playwright. His works are meant to be performed in the theatre. I love books in all their glory, but now I will approach plays as plays and not as books. The message seems to get lost in the translation.

Critical Analyses of various Australian Literature works

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Hello again,

It has been quite some time since I’ve dedicated myself to updating this blog, as I’ve been rather busy developing my new business. I have started taking free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs, as they are commonly referred to), and this has given me an outlet for learning and writing, which I have sorely missed.

The following analyses are in response to a peer assessment from my “Australian Literature: A Rough Guide” course (of which the deadline has now passed, so I feel free to post my “answers” publicly). I included the prompts because these topics were not of my own brilliant choosing, but they are nonetheless thought-provoking.

This was an exercise in brevity, as I had to objectively analyze rather dense and important national and cultural writing in less than 200 words! A stretch for me, as I tend to lean toward the side of verbosity. I think the end result came out quite well. I will not post summaries of the works cited because it would be far too long and tedious a task, but most of the literature can be found online or bought for a reasonable price. The works I have chosen are well worth the read, as are many other Australian pieces!

Just a side note: These views are my own. While you may take from them concepts, ideas, and curiosity (which I hope you do!), you may not take from them literally. You should form your own opinions of the pieces. In other words, PLEASE DO NOT PLAGIARIZE.

Australian Literature: A Rough Guide

Peer Assessment

1. Choose a specific passage of text from week 1 – it doesn’t matter how long – and describe how you think it constructs a locale or place.

*Instructors’ Notes: “How do you feel it?” Construction is demonstrated via imagery, description, feeling, narrative, etc.

Tim Winton’s In Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir was my first sampling of Australian literature, and I was surprised by how vividly he constructs place through narrative. He speaks of Australians as “surrounded by ocean and ambushed from behind by desert – a war of mystery on two fronts.” The language, “surrounded”, “ambushed”, “war”, invokes feelings of fear, especially as he laments on our lack of control over either: “…we cannot subdue or comprehensibly understand…” His line, “The desert is a spiritual place… and the sea the mere playground of our hedonism,” gives an exaggerated sense of the people’s thoughts who call this place home, and furthers our understanding of Australia – and Australians – as wild and untamed by his passage, “Nowhere else on the continent is the sense of being trapped between sea and desert so strong as in Western Australia.” Without resorting to simple descriptive prose of the landscape, at least until page three, Winton has already given us a glimpse of life in Australia through his powerful selection of language: Australia is rough and wild, and the expanse of the land and sea is contrasted against the narrow living space on the beach, the only habitable place – the “edge.”

2. What was the most interesting perspective on injustice that you encountered in the readings for week 2? Refer to any or as many texts as you wish.

*Instructors’ Notes: What was new or different to you in terms of injustice? What surprised you? What was new to your sense of literary elements, for example: how it’s different in its method of communicating the content?

The most interesting perspectives on injustice were in the contradictions; we tend to think of justice as straightforward, but in two particular texts, “For the Term of His Natural Life” by Marcus Clarke and “A Convict’s Tour to Hell” by Francis Macnamara, justice – and therefore injustice – is framed by the individual, whether ‘lawman’ or ‘convict’, or even the outsider, Mrs. Frere. In Clarke’s work, these two viewpoints are contrasted heavily. While Mrs. Frere and the convicts see the torture of these men and boys as cruel and unnecessary, the keepers of justice, Maurice Frere and Captain Burgess, view their treatment as deserved. Even in the extreme, as in ‘One Hundred Lashes’ or in the jumpings-off to which Mrs. Frere became exposed, the men are convinced they aren’t to blame. Likewise, it is this reversal of roles present in “A Convict’s Tour to Hell” where good versus evil, just versus unjust, are called into question. We find that the men charged with keeping order in life are tortured in Hell for their tyranny, and the convicts, so abused in life, are free to ascend to Heaven – their petty crimes assuaged by their gross mistreatment.

3. Week 3 focused on stories that all had some relation to history. How important do you think historical reality is for the literary imagination? Present your view by referring to any or as many texts as you wish (from any week).

There’s always an inevitable bias by the writer or by those in power, so historical accuracy is often blurry, at best. Perhaps not as important as the actual details or accounts are the concepts, feelings, and emotions in the context of an event. For example, consider Ned Kelly as a legend versus a historical figure. From the outset, he is wrongfully accused, so his personal history isn’t based in reality. The only accounts of Ned Kelly that can truly be seen as historically valid are his letters, such as “The Jerilderie Letter” (which still undoubtedly contains certain bias), but the legend of his injustice takes precedence over historical accuracy. For example, Peter Carey’s “The True History of the Kelly Gang” is largely speculative, though his work is based on real people and true events. Clarity is key: whether a text is based on real events with fictional characters, completely imagined or biased intentionally to exemplify a theme, a text which contains historical figures but may intentionally or unintentionally be historically inaccurate, or as accurate as possible, such as the field journals of early explorers. Otherwise, the reader is misled in knowledge and may even feel betrayed.

4. Compare two different versions of ‘home’ in Australian Literature that you encountered in week 4. Refer to more than one text.

*Instructors’ Notes: Make a comparison by geographical context or descriptive elements or family obligations, etc.

I find it intriguing that two writers have such contrasting views of their homeland’s habitability, and which they prefer: the interior or the coast. For A.D. Hope in “Australia”, the writer finds that “…her five cities, like five teeming sores… each drains her… where second-hand Europeans pullulate… on the edge of alien shores.” He compares the coastal cities to Europe, with “… the chatter of cultured apes/Which is called civilization over there,” viewing them as devoid of spirit. Hope finds solace in “The Arabian desert of the human mind,/Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come.” On the other hand, Christina Stead’s “For Love Alone”, particularly ‘Sea People’ insists “There is nothing in the interior…” She refers to the “endless dust” and “the salt-crusted bed of a prehistoric sea”. However, her description of the coast is rather picturesque: “The skies are sub-tropical… suns and spirals… a reflection of the crowded Pacific Ocean, with its reefs, atolls, and archipelagos. It is a fruitful island of the sea-world…” Although Teresa leaves Australia for Europe, she recognizes that Australians are born of water, “…‘Men of what nation put you down – for I am sure you did not get here on foot?’”