World Brain

I first have to give major props to Jimmy Wales to have created something as universal as Wikipedia.

While I sometimes question the validity of the articles on Wikipedia I am glad they are all there. Wikipedia gives new meaning to the idea of free information. The great thing about the site is that it is a wonderful starting point for an informational source. Lately it seem that I have a hundred different ideas or topics that interest me and I want to know more about so I always start looking things up on Wikipedia. In a world where need to know knowledge is at your finger tips Wikipedia is the easiest place to begin. The site has its faults, but the creator and his team work hard to keep things correct and above board.  I can waste hours just browsing around on pointless topics always learning a little something new. So yes, Wikipedia is one of the greatest inventions ever in my book, (and clearly being in my book counts for a lot!)

The end...and then some.

I can see why readers and play goers would have been upset with Pygmalion being called a romance. In ending it did leave me wanted a much nicer wrap so I read on through the sequel hoping I would find it there but what I actually found was more shocking! It never occurred to me that Liza couldn't really read or write. I mean I guess I understood that as a poor gutter girl she wouldn't have had much use for anything other than basic math, but once Higgins got a hold of her I guess I just assumed he fixed everything. When Shaw writes, "Eliza, though she could count money up to eighteen shilling or so, and had acquired a certain familiarity with the language of Milton [...], could not write out a bill without utterly disgracing the establishment" (117) my heart broke for the poor girl. How could Higgins and Pickering be so cruel as to tempt her mind with all these wonderful new thoughts and ideas, and not ensure that the woman could read and write properly! Suddenly the entire injustice of the play made sense to me. How could she go back to the gutter when she had glimpsed the world beyond?  But, how could she stay in that world without more education? My inner feminist blood boils at the thought. These two gentlemen take in this poor girl solely for their own amusement and leave her more damaged than she was at the start! To Liza's credit (and some to Pickering...after all he did help her out with the shop,) she managed to find contentment in her life with Freddy and their little shop.

Garn!

Pickering: Does it occur to you, Higgins, that the girl has some feelings?
Higgins: Oh no, I don't think so. Not any feelings we need bother about.

Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is one my favorite plays ever. The heroine, Eliza Doolittle is just adorably irresistible not too love. She has such a drive to see her dreams come true, even if her dreams are not as lofty and those of Higgins and Pickering.

While this play is a hilarious comedy it is also an interesting critic on the relationship between men  and women as well as, the affect of class on language, education, and psychology. Poor sweet ill-speaking Liza is thrust into relations with two men (Higgins and Pickering) who are obviously a part of a higher more educated upper class. Liza must struggle to understand and learn from these men in order to better her social standing, but will learning proper English, or as Higgins claims, "the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible" (18), really help elevate her?

I think in some sense it will. With correct pronunciation Liza could herself a job in a flower shop like she dreams, but will she be able to rise above the misogyny of the rest of the culture. I started off with the above lines because they are wildly funny and horribly sad. Higgins does treat Liza ill and at first you think it is just his nature, that is the only misogynist, but Pickering and even Miss Pearce do little to really correct him. I could almost chalk this all up to a form of snobbery on their behalf, but then you have Liza's father who says, "she' [Liza's] only a woman and dont know how to be happy anyhow" (47). This statement from Mr. Doolittle shows that it is more than just a simple class distinction. In the beginning of our book in the introduction by Nicholas Grene he claims, Shaw has reworked, "the Ovidian legend int a feminist fable" (xvi). I am hopeful by the end of the play I will agree full heartily with that claim, but for now I will stand behind and support Liza for being a good girl.

Carpe Diem

(So just as an aside before really starting on this post I have to say after reading this poem I had to go watch the Dead Poets Society...and it isn't even the poem from the movie..go figure!)

The whole idea behind this beautiful poem (To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell,) is the idea of Carpe Diem, seize the day. The yooung man writing this to his coquettish lady friend is trying to urge her to seize the day with him and their love. I suppose he is trying to win her heart by reminding her we are all only here for a short while so we have to make the most of every moment, however, I think he goes about it in a poor fashion.

From my personal experience it is never wise to remind a woman that one day her beauty and youth will fade and she's going to end up as worm food.  Not the best mode of flattery there Marvell. On the other hand he does seem to be committed to wait things out with her and take it slow in winning her heart as long as there is some form of sexual fulfillment in the end.

In ending the poem after all his "flattery" and promise to "wait" he begs her not to make him wait for either her love or her body, because after all...life is short.

Deciphering the women of Wuthering Heights

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom. 

~Maya Angelou "I know why the caged bird sings"

I feel like all the women in Wuthering Heights could be described as caged birds because of their social constructed gender restraints. They all have this beating passion to free themselves, but do not seem to know the means of obtaining that freedom. To me the greatest tragedy of the entire story is how stuck everyone seems to be their own social constraints, no matter how hard they try to escape they cannot.

The only people that seem to really make a lasting change for themselves in Hareton and young Catherine. What had me puzzled is the thought that both Catherines seem so similar yet only young Cathy was able to really assert herself, and in the end free herself more so than her mother. Lyn Pykett, the author of the essay, "Changing the Names: The Two Catherines," makes an interesting claim at the end when she says, "Cathy exercises one of the few forms of power available to the powerless--resistance" (476). It is through her resistance of all the negativity and cruelty around her that keeps her strong, and it is her mother's lack of resistance that turns out to be her downfall.

However, I feel that Catherine the elder gets a bad wrap in this essay. She went from being somewhat wild, free, and "un-gendered" to suddenly realizing her need to conform.  Pykett says this is exemplified when Catherine says "Heathcliff is more myself than I am " (86). Pykett continues by trying to explain what Catherine may have meant, "[This,] is perhaps as much a statement of her identification with an earlier, pre-gendered version of herself, as it is a declaration of elemental passion" (471). This is to say that Catherine identifies more of her "free" self with Heathcliff. This idea that Catherine was once wild and free and now having to be tamed is what I think turns out to be her undoing within the book. It is much harder to take a free bird and turn them into a caged one, than say freeing a caged bird.

The bird born in her cage is young Catherine. She was born into a stricter social structure and I does not experiences the freedom that her mother had as a child. In many ways I would argue that this structure has helped young Cathy become more experienced at what it means to be a woman within her time than her mother. While Cathy was naive in the world and thus easily tricked by Heathcliff and Linton she has a greater understanding of how a woman can exert her influences and power successfully. She is therefore able to find peace and a balance with her "true" self and the self that society has created for her, and that is what makes young Cathy a free bird.

It's all ambiguious

When I heard the title Wuthering Hieghts, I dont' think Communism and I was glad the paper didn't lead us too deeply down that idea. Definitely an interesting essay and not an idea I would have easily pulled from the book on my own reading, but after reading the marxist critic I can easily see how the idea was cultivated.

The part of the critic that caught my interest is on page 404 toards the end where the aurthor Terry Eagleton is discussing the differing viewpoints on who actually wins out in the end of the book. Eagleton asserts, (through the help of  T. K. Meier,) that , "the victory [is] of tradition over innovation." (404). Of course that makes perfect sense. Despite all of Heathcliff's planning and manipulating Haerton and young Cathrine will rightfully inheirt Wurthering Hieghts and Thrushcross Grange after his death. The legal sense of tradition has pervailed!

However, Eagleton doesn't stop there but brings to light another opinion that maybe, "the old world has yeilded to the new," (404). There is the assertion that Hareton and young Catherine are now inheriting a new world that through his own sheer  will power of normal deviation Heathcliff has created for them.

I think it is easy to see Heathcliff's struggle throughout the text as the struggle of the proletarian. Despite his evil nature at times he is still a under dog fighting the powers that be in a struggle for revenge...or perhaps justice depending on how you look at things.

In the end the man thing I gathered from this critic is that it is all rather ambiguious.

Eternal Love and Inner Peace?

I knew by the end of this book my heart go out to the elder Cathrine and Heathcliff and that was the last thing I wanted. That's right, I didn't want to give in and let the two wicked people be the ones tugging at my heart strings! There, had to get that out first and foremost, but enough of the emotions!

Getting back to the actual text I felt as though up until the end I was entertaining some form of British soap opera with all the revenge and planning and manipulating. However, by the end it was as though I was stuck watching the decent of a mad-man. In thinking of Heathcliff as a man lost in insanity I began going back through the rest of the text and found that everyone is a little mad.  Suddenly I was feeling like Alice in wonderland speaking to my Bronte-cat and informing her that I did not want to hang out with mad people, I could feel her smile grow as she taunted me back saying that everyone was mad here and even I was mad, why else would I be here. 

All of the characters who slip into madness seem to do so in connection with their own self despair.  This despairing madness can be seen first on page 74 with Hindley when his wife passes and him giving "himself up for reckless dissipation". Hindley's madness only increases as time goes on, (due to in part the effect of all his drinking,) and it seems to come to a head in chapter 13 on page 134 when he confesses his desire to murder Heathcliff because, "some devil urges him." However, Hindley is not alone in his madness. Catherine faces similar types of madness when it comes to the issue of Heathcliff. When Heathcliff is courting Isabella, (which you might even call her utter blinding devoting a kind of madness,) Catherine has her own fit of madness in chapter 11 after a fight between Edgar and Heathcliff. Catherine's decline is steady from this moment onward and in the next chapter we see just how far her sanity has fallen and that recovery is unlikely. Like the elder Catherine I found Cathy to be filled with her own type of madness for example at the end of chapter 28 when she reveals how she threw a fit in order to frighten Linton so he would release her. I don't want to make to big of a medical dispute on the subject of clinical madness with these characters but a sister, brother, and daughter...maybe there is something to form of heredity madness.

On the other hand, all this madness could be purely emotional. In talking with a friend of mine who absolutely loves this book and hails it as the greatest tragic romance since Romeo and Juliet she said is inclined to believe that all the character's madness are just another form of eternal love. In a way that makes a lot of sense. Hindley doesn't go mad until the death of his wife. Catherine doesn't have her first fit until she realizes she is losing Heathcliff. Cathy starts to slip when she hears of her father's impending death. Even Heathcliff's blinding madness can easily be seen as his own pledge of everlasting love to Catherine. In thinking about all of this with the idea of eternal love I could feel this twisted sense of passion in such passages as:  Catherine telling Nelly that her and Heathcliff are one (88), and Heathcliff's mad confession to Nelly and Cathy that there is one who doesn't shrink from him and one who is always with him (285). Is the tragedy of Heathcliff and Cathrine really the tragedy of all great lovers in that their paths are set and destined to never full entwine? Or, is the tragedy that two self-centered selfish creatures such as Catherine and Heathcliff could never obtain true love without destroying each other regardless of their circumstances?

I find myself with more questions than answers at this point and one of my biggest being, how did Bronte view the relationships between men and women? One of my favorite points in the book is when Heathcliff is telling Nelly his funeral arrangements and how he is happy his end his near. "No minister need some; nor need anything be said over me -- I tell you, I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncovered by me!" (284). The Heights is described so bleakly, barren,gloomy, and completely uninviting (much similar to the description of the characters) in the first chapter of the book and yet by the end Mr. Lockwood is giving a almost complete reversal description of the place speaking of the flowers that covered the wall and the gates were open. Not only are the gates open but so is communication. When Lockwood first arrived no one wished to speak to him nor to anyone else and this time Lockwood stumbles upon Cathy and Hareton reading and engaging each other in conversation. Heathcliff in the above mentioned quote says that he was near his heaven and that was because at this point he has been in communication (or at least he feels he has been in communication,) with the spirit of Catherine. Taking the romance out of the equation for a moment it made me think that heaven, being a state of supreme happiness and peace, can be found in simple socialization and communication. Could it be the way to find true inner peace and happiness is by taking focus off the self and learning to live and function with others?  Maybe this wasn't Bronte's main purpose for writing this novel, but it has gotten me to thinking more.

You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

First I feel like I need to confess that I have put off reading this book for years because it seems to be wrapped in a cloud of gloom.  I know all stories can't be happy go lucky, but this particular one seems to have an ominousness air about it. I mean even the title Wuthering Hieghts, it just sounds bleak....but I  digress.

 I would like to come back to the idea of bleak. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary on-line bleak is defined as: Exposed and barren and often windswept. Cold. Raw. Lacking in warmth, life, or kindliness, grim. Not hopeful or encouraging, depressing. Severely simple or austere.

All of those define the characters and environment of Wuthering Heights. As a reader my heart goes out to the characters, especially Heathcliff because I almost feel they are all creations of their environment and that from the beginning their path is laid out for them. Then I stumbled upon an interesting comment that the narrator Mr. Lockwood makes.  On page 71 in our editions he says, "I perceive that people in these regions acquire over  people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things." In other words, there is this self-centered introversion that just about all of the characters possess It is a blend of self-preservation and just plain selfishness.

I am starting to get the idea that maybe my sympathy for them is misplaced. If I spend all my time just focused on myself then of course my inner demons are going to start to rule me, and I get a feeling that is what's happening with the characters. As human beings we are by nature social people meaning that we need contact with others to live normal healthy lives. With the idea of social behavior in mind I start to read the book feeling more and more like I am reading a case study for a psychology class. While the family lives together they certainly do not communicate with each other in so much as they speak but do not listen.


While finishing up my readings I was reminded of the song, Hotel California, by The Eagles and the last line that says, "You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I feel as though the house of Wuthering Heights is another version of the Hotel California. All the characters seem trapped within this place and even the spirit of the departed Catherine seems to cling to it's wall. This book needs a What's Eating Gilbert Grape, kind of ending. They just needs to set fire to the place and burn away all that remains of the past.

Please Mr. Orwell...don't hit me anymore!!!

Did anyone else feel harshly reprimanded after reading this?  I swear it was like having a flash back to the eight grade when my little four-foot-nothing teacher Mrs. Rue was rapping her desk with a ruler telling me and the class that writing was a privilege and that she was going to revoke ours  if we didn't straighten up! (True story.)

Of course the reason I feel reprimanded, (then as much as now,) is because I am guilty of just about everything he listed. But, the one that really got me to thinking was when Orwell wrote, "When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style." My down fall is of course the fact that I hurry.  Now I don't always hurry because I procrastinate; I usually hurry because I am afraid that if I don't get down what I am thinking right away I will forget.  Then, when I go back to read over I apparently gloss over the fact that I sound a little pompous and just move on through the text.. I would like to blame society for modeling me into the fast-pace-have-to-accomplish-everything monster I have become, but in truth it is my own choice to live in such a lie.

I started off mentioning the story from eight grade in which my teacher informed me  that writing is a privilege and I believe it's true. Keeping that truth in mind however I have to think about how I approach my writings.  Do I treat them like they are a privilege?  No I often treat them like a drudgery. For me this article reminded me that writing is a mind set.  I think Orwell's rules for correcting writing are great, but for me it is more than just the rules to learn it's about finding myself, (even a small part of myself,) in whatever I am writing.

"One must be an inventor to read well." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have always had a terrible habit of reading nonfiction in a nonlinear pattern.  Most nonfiction books I find tell a story from point A to point B, but for whatever reason, (especially if it's a book I am required to read,) I find it impossible to just simply follow the dots to the end.  As much as I enjoy The History of Reading by Alberto Manguel this book is no different and I find myself skipping pleasantly along through the chapters at random.  Now that you have a glimpse at my reading habits I think the rest of this entry will make a little more sense. 

At the start of this semester of school I find myself in a bit of a financial bind.  If I simply wait on financial aid to come through to purchase book will of course put me behind in my readings, so I thought I would check with the school library and see if they had any of the books I would need and as lucky would have it they did.  I picked up my copy of Manguel's book and began skimming the pages all the while trying to keep the Petrarch conversation with Augustine in mind (page 63.) I have always been someone who marks in books.  I mark important passages, passages I wish to learn more of, interesting words or phrases, or even quirky comments made by character.  I hardly ever buy new books because I like to find books that others have loved and marked and to see where their readings take them.  However, the one place I never expect to find markings is in library books.  As you can probably guess while doing my skimming I came across markings in the library book!  (OH THE HORROR! at least that's how the library acted when I made mention of it to them.)

There are just two simple blue ink brackets on page 179 marking off the sentence, "All writing depends on the generosity of the reader."   It was like a private note left just for me as if to say...yes I am talking to you reader. At first glance it sounded so simple and straightforward and yet it still gnawed at my mind all day.  I had the feeling that I was still missing some bigger part of this idea. 

Late last night I headed back to the page reading my now esoteric message once more. After reading it two more times I continued on with the pager seeing if maybe what I was missing would be revealed later.  A few lines later on the same page I read this, " [The reader/writer relationship] is a fruitful but anachronic relationship between a primeval creator who gives birth at the moment of death, and a post-mortem creator, or rather generations of post-mortem creators who enable the creation itself to speak, and without whom all writting is dead.*" Suddenly the cliche little light bulb went on in my head.  I would venture to say that many of us in the English department are here because of several reason but one being that we have something to write.  On several of the other blogs I have read of students wishing to one day publish a book of some sorts to bee seen on the selves of bookstores.  I must confess that I too have that same goal in mind, but what use is the writing if no one is willing to read what is written? 

I have had numerous teachers remind me over and over that when you write you keep your audience in mind because you are really writing for them. It's interesting when you really start to think about it trying to understand and figure out your audience, but how many novel writer do that?  In reading Manguel's book I'm starting to think it has more to do with understanding yourself and the story than understanding your reader.  In the quote above it calls the writer the creator.  If you write or "create" a book that is true to you and your original idea then you do so in the knowledge that out there somewhere in the world there is some reader who will delight in your book; and with it they will create their own understanding of the text.

Throughout Manguel's entire book I get a sense that he is who he is because of what he has read.  Numerous times in my own childhood I can remember reading of things that I had not yet physically experienced or would never be able to physically experience, and yet because of the writer's words and my own inventive imagination it was as if I was experiencing them.  There is a power that comes with writing and reading and both require so much give and take from each other, but it's in those moments of inventive struggling or pulling that wondrous things can happen.






*Added emphasis.

That fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.

Caleb Crain's article, Twilight of the Books, is about the fall of reading and one explanation as to why that has occurred.  He uses the writing and research of several other to talk about how writing is "unnatural," and give us a brief history of how writing came about. I'll be honest that with all the technology around and short cuts on writing I just assumed reading was on a decline, but never really gave it much thought.  Reading was always such a huge deal in my own childhood that it never really occurred to my that it wasn't that way for everyone. Growing up reading started out as a chore for me because I suffered with dyslexia that went undiagnosed for years. I was placed in special phonic classes because my spelling was so horrible and yet the teachers would all marvel at how well I learned to read.  In the article they talk briefly about dyslexia and how the reading remains effortful and I have to confess there are times when I find that to be completely true and other times where it all feels very second nature.

By the end of the reading I was slightly sad to think of a world in which reading became once more just a hobby to the elite. Reading should be enjoyed by the masses. There is so much that one can experience they read for themselves. Throughout this whole article I kept thinking of the movie Idiocracy. In the comedy it shows a world in which reading has become obsolete and the devastating effect that it has one the world at large. I would hate to think of our world ever actually coming down to something like that, (I mean the movie wasn't even that funny.)

I don't want to end this on a down note however so I will com back to my favorite qoute from the article which Crain actually takes from Maryanne Wolf; "The secret at the heart of reading," Wolf writes, is "the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than those that came before." Reading provides a personal way for a person to broaden their thoughts and minds....isn't that reason enough to keep it alive?

Just a simple introduction

My name is Sarah and I would imagine like most of you I have had a crazy week.  Between the snow and family and school being open and closed I think I might have gone a little stir crazy at times.  However all that is melted away and we are back to normals....or at least as normal as it gets right?  A few things I guess I can tell you about myself is that I do in fact love to read, (and you are shocked that I am an English major right?) I am an amateur photographer which basically means I own a camera and will take pictures of just about anything in hopes that it turns out amazing.  Writing has also always been a good way for me to spend my time from poems to short stories to of course the next great American novel, (well at least I can dream...) I like being able to go to concerts, theatrical performances, and museums when I have the time and money.  All in all I am just your average southern girl trying to make it through this crazy world just one day at a time.