--- for the session on 14/10/10 ---
Virginia Woolf - The Legacy
At first I thought this story would go into a different direction, something more cliché, like the husband coping with the death of his wife, etc. But I soon realized that this wouldn't be enough to write a story worth reading, and as Angela was keeping diaries the husband hadn't read I thought that he might discover a secret of hers, but then the story developed really fast, so fast, that the end came like a real shock (not only the content, but also that it was just suddenly over) At first the story was slow, took its time, than speeded up more and more and bang! the end. I had this picture of the "perfect wife" in mind. A loving, caring, supporting, selfless woman, actually I didn't like her - she was just too perfect, too good. And I absolutely hated the way her husband thinks about her, as if she was too stupid to understand things that go beyond cooking and cleaning (the passage where he finds out that M.B. gave her books by Marx). At this point I was sure that there was more to her than was obvious and than her husband thought of her, but I didn't expect this dramatic ending. It made me like her. Not because she killed herself, or maybe that too, the fact that she was so pationate about something (or someone...? I wonder if it were M.B.'s ideas, that he made her think or really him that she loved) that she gave her life for it. And the more I think about it, the more sure I am that she did commit suicide. Now also the beginning makes sense, when Gilbert says that it was as if she had known she was going to die and prepared legacies for the ones she left behind and her diaries weren't actually "the last piece of her life she didn't share with her husband", like he thought naively. She left him the truth, to hurt him. Maybe she began to realize (by talking to M.B.?) that her husband was feeling superior and thinking of her as less worthy, or stupid or whatever. She might have fallen in love with this other man, who decided to kill himself and then she decided to follow him and leave the husband who didn't know that she secretly hated him. It was her final penalty, a sign of power. This changes my picture of Angela and Gilbert completely, because first I thought of him as the poor, loving husband who lost a wife. But my pictures of the two characters switch positions. This end leads me to thinking that this short-story is a piece of feminist literature, "portraying" a powerful woman, superior to her husband, who himself thought of her as inferior. I just realized these things, while thinking and writing about the story and after this process I can say that I like the story very much, even though (or maybe even because) it has a dramatic, sad ending.
Virginia Woolf - Extract from A Room of One‘s Own
The information given in this text makes me angry and sad - thinking about what Virginia Woolf tells us: that there were probably so many great talents lost, due to the stupidity of men (and probably some women, too). I completely agree with her: fighting for the further emancipation of women is important and worth taking sacrifices for. Yet, I think that the situation for female authors is certainly better know than in 1928, when this text was written. I'm not sure if there are women who don't write because they don't have the chance to. Well, I suppose the situation is different in other countries. But in our society today poverty and a lack of education are probably the bigger problem (not sexism). So I don't think that female writers are discriminated against very often (at least in our society), but it's still important that there are many of them, because they certainly do represent "the other side of the story". It's a fact that there still is a lot of sexism, everywhere in the world. Who if not female authors talk (write) about these stories, these lives?
--- for the session on 21/10/10 ---
Kate Chopin - Story of an Hour
I like the style of writing of this text, you can really feel with the protagonist. I particularly found interesting the passage where she talks about love (the "unsolved mystery") and how it is unimportant compared to self-assertion. I think (though never having experienced love for a lover) that she is probably right. But it's hard to have an opinion on this topic if one hasn't been in a situation like this one. But if love (and her's wasn't even very strong) comes with feeling somehow "imprisoned" and suppressed, then I totally understand her. Something I've noticed is that it seems that practically all stories written by women at that time have a tragic, sad ending. I wonder if there are also stories by women who were more conservative maybe? Just more content with their lives and the accepted values of their time. Did these women exist but just not write about their lives, because they, too, thought that a woman shouldn't be doing things like that (because they require thinking) or did they just not have anything to write about because they didn't really have problems?
Kate Chopin - A Pair of Silk Stockings
This story, too, makes me sad, because in my head I can't help imagining how this character's life will go on after the last sentence of this story. This day was probably the greatest thing she had experienced for ages (and she has apparently experienced it before, because she says that she used to buy high-priced magazines) . She might regret having spent all this money for herself afterwards. Well, that does not necessarily have to be true, she could also be really glad about it. But whichever, the money for her children is gone. I think this story shows how hard the lives of women more than a hundred years ago were on a different level (than being suppressed in their personal freedom and not being treated equally): how much sacrifices they had to make, how much they had to relinquish and how stressful everyday-life was. I'm not saying that men didn't have a hard time at their jobs, too, but it was just "common knowledge" that they did and helping them relax was just one additional duty for women, who's hard work was simply ignored or at least not appreciated but taken for granted. So personally I think that what the woman in this story did was right. One can't go on, working like that and suffering like her (not eating properly, having a lot of worries that come from being poor and having children, etc.) without ever doing something pleasant for oneself, and not crack under the burden.
--- For the session on 13/01/11 ---
Barbara Kingsolver - The Muscle Mystique
Personally, I think it looks better when a woman does not have a lot of muscles, just because I don't think it's attractive, I've always thought that one doesn't need muscles to get through life. Of course sometimes they come in handy and it's something different if you are not able to open a jar or even your own front-door, so I understand the protagonist of The Muscle Mystique. The thing I was wondering about after I was finished reading was wether it's "unfeminist" to find women with muscles unattractive and wether it's really personal taste or if it's maybe part of a classic cliché about the way women should be (as opposed to men gentle, thin, lean and worst of all weak?). I cannot really tell but I think I understand the narrator's urge to be strong, maybe even if it has nothing to do with men.
I liked the part of the story where she talks about beauty standards in different parts of the world and at different times, because I thought that it was very true. However, I think that there are also other reasons.
- Response after discussion in class: -
Strangely, I didn't quite catch the humor in this essay most of the time. I suppose that has got something to do with the mood one is in while reading. Well, this time I had a slightly different uptake than everyone else.
The piece is certainly well written, in a quite light-hearted manner. And I like how the author makes fun of these "freaks" who take body-building or at least going to the gym so seriously. Especially the passage where she talks about her grandfather and how he would think that it's bizarre to work out without really, literally "working". Nowadays we are used to it, but when you come to look at it, it is actually pretty bizarre.
Lora Neale Hurston - “Sweat“
From the very beginning of the story I had the feeling that it would end the way it does. It was just inevitable because of the way Delia was treated by her husband - and because it is visible that she is a strong woman and couldn't and wouldn't take her abuse infinitely.
I suppose there are several other stories that treat the exact same subject and (to a certain point) also follow the same pattern in the story-line: The main character is mistreated in some way and because he or she is strong endures it until suddenly, something (sometimes even seemingly insignificant or small) happens - the last straw. The person snaps and takes revenge on his/her tormentor in some way, and in most cases without thinking, and without remorse, guilt or pity.
"Sweat" distinguishes itself from this (more or less) cliché; Delia warns her husband several times that she won't take this treatment any longer and that she will leave him, still, she hopes that he will take this as an incentive to change his behaviour ("Perhaps her threat to go to the white folks had frightened Sykes! Perhaps he was sorry! Fifteen years of misery and suppression had brought Delia to the place where she would hope anything that looked towards a way over or through her wall of inhibitions" -- When she comes home to find the box with the snake empty). When, instead, he hurts her again, she makes a decision to kill him, but she does it in a very calm way and accepts this to be the only possible solution ("Well, Ah done de bes' Ah could. If things ain't right, Gawd knows tain't mah fault."). Delia gives up on trying to change the situation - now she will just end it. I thought that this sounded kind of indifferent, but at the end, when he is dying one can see that she is not cold-hearted because when she hears Sykes scream with pain, she feels ill, overwhelmed by her feelings. And shortly after this she feels extreme pity when he looks at her. She didn't want him to see her and know that it was her, who killed him. It seems to me that killing him was a necessity to her, something she didn't like to do but it had to be done anyway, so that she could live the life she deserved.
I liked this aspect of the story a lot, because I think it makes it much more realistic and what's more, I can identify with Delia, because I don't think I could kill someone (even if I were in the same situation) without feeling at least a little bit of pity for this person.
After reading:
As I understood it, while reading, I thought that Delia killed her husband herself by making sure that he would free the angry trapped snake himself and be bitten by it. But it wasn‘t here - she was passive. It was „some higher power“ like God, someone who rescued her.
Alice Walker - “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self“
I like this story because it shows the significance of beauty in being a woman. It plays an enormous role, even for Alice Walker, who is a very intelligent and successful woman. I don‘t think that a disability like hers would be unimportant to a man (I am talking about the physical aspect, the looks of it, not the blindness) but it would probably not be as big a problem. But for Alice Walker the shame and the self-hatred caused by her deformation are reason enough not to look at the passers-by on the street. And not only that: her whole life is affected, education and social life alike, only because she is not beautiful anymore. Her outer appearance changed her inside, but nobody even seemed to notice, not even her family.
Throughout the first part of the story it seems that Alice Walker only experiences and receives superficial love, obviously by friends and such but also by her family who doesn‘t understand her and she even has the feeling that she stops being her father‘s “little girl“ when she has the accident with her eye. This all ends when she becomes a mother and the first real unconditional love, the love of her daughter shows her how unimportant her eye really is.
Susan Vreeland - “Magdalena Looking“
This story made me think back at “A Room of One‘s Own“ by Virginia Woolf, as an example of how women were victims of the time they lived in, not being able to live out their potential. Magdalena seems to have great emotions in her and an understanding of art and an eagerness to express herself, and yet all this is lost.
In this story especially the relationship to her father made me sad, the way she is only as much to him as the next object he needs for the setting of his painting, a glass of milk.
But still more tragic than that I find the fact that even-though Magdalena seems (to me, at least) a very sensitive and strong person who has dreams of traveling the world and portraying it the way it really is, she never breaks out of her life - she goes along with the plan someone else made for her life. At the end she even wonders if art might be the only purpose (or at least her purpose) in life - “to tell a truth in art“ but it‘s all retrospective - too late. But then again, there is this contradiction to the idea; At the very end she talks about her picture and that so many people will be close to it, but that they will never really know her. So doesn‘t that mean that all the “truth“ is for nothing because nobody can understand it? Maybe what she means is, that it helps her at least.
I like the part where she sees the painting her father made of her a lot. It gives the reader a new perspective on the things he read before. When we read about her feelings and wishes when she is young, we think like her - that they might still come true, we still have hope for her. But looking back - with Magdalena‘s very eyes, the same eyes, just older, we realize that her life was bound to end like it did from the very start. All the hoping and wishing was naiveness.
Erica Jong - Extract from Fear of Flying
I don't think Isadora's idea of a "zipless fuck" is neither completely good nor is it completely bad. I can see why she would idealize this idea. On the one hand theoretically it is not a bad thought that one experiences "pure passion" with someone because this person is a stranger. The matter is minimized, reduced to the pure animalistic, physical act of sleeping together. Of course sex is healthy and important and not knowing one's partner eliminates problems like expectations and obligations. It is a very honest thing and as some see it ("all men", as the cliché tells us) combines pleasure and freedom. (By the way, I think that it is essential that the author is a woman because if a man had written this book there wouldn't have been any discussion about the fantasy of the "zipless fuck, because in general it is expected of men to have fantasies like this).
On the other hand I'm not sure if one even can achieve "real", immense pleasure if the partner was just "picked up off the street" and doesn't mean anything to the person. And is it even possible to NOT have expectations if the sex was good? What if you want to do it again? What if you do? Doesn't it all start there again?
I think that the "zipless fuck" is a very natural desire that probably exists in everyone to a certain extend, but I don't think that one can become happy by only having "zipless fucks" and no serious relationships. Pure physical sex without emotions or reflections of any kind is just half of the whole. I think this strategy is the recipe for depression (at least in the long run).
Moreover I see nothing bad in being "attached" to someone, loving this person, because he or she is of value for one and this is certainly more important than pure sexual intercourse. Yes, of course it might be hard or tiresome sometimes but there would be no ups without downs.
Anne Rivers Siddons - Extract from Downtown
I have read the whole book before, and I have to say that I liked it a lot, mostly because of the time it is set in (I am very interested in the 60s) and the topics it therefore deals with. I remember being impressed by the attitude towards life (that is expressed in the prologue). I wonder if the feeling of opportunities and change the narrator feels (or felt, since she is looking back on her youth) surrounded by are due to the special time and place she happens to live in or if anyone could experience a similar sensation, no matter when (because I am sure about the "where": Also the protagonist of Downtown first moves to Atlanta, she couldn't have had the same experience in her little hometown).
In these first chapters of the book, Smoky's father (and the rest of her family, her whole background) naturally still plays a major role in her life. Even though she claims that she does not love her father anymore. Nonetheless, one's upbringing is important. But what I think the book also shows is that it cannot hold you back from changing and from personally growing. The main character, Smoky, is the best example: She comes from a very religious family and, even-though she herself is not that religious and wants to start a new, exciting life, shares conservative views with her father like for example that taking the pill is something condemnable. In the course of the book, though, she picks up the spirit dominating the city around her, changing her ways of thinking and her attitude towards life.