Created a youtube channel last week. Slowly adding new work as I learn how to use imovie at a more in depth level. Compiling everything I've written in the last nine years....
Monster's Youtube Channel Link!
XOXO
Monday, October 21, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
T-SHIRT QUEEN
Your life is in fringes
Our closet is a time capsule
Where each fabric acts like a picture
I sit on the floor at your altar and brush my fingers
through
All your past vacations
Ex lovers
Each smile
Every stain
The day we first met
You wore a David Bowie ‘A Serious Moonlight’ tour t- shirt
A green peacock surrounded by flowers
Woman’s fit and scoop necked to impress
You were five when he went on tour, so you obviously didn’t
go
But I remember you were the first person I met
That thought he was as cool as I did
And would have full conversations about the genius behind
the Labyrinth
And Ziggy Stardust
On the day you told me you loved me
pulled off your t-shirt and pressed your bare heart to mine
A sea god poked his head out from under the covers
Blue hair swirling around us
Keeping us safe
I exposed my chest
And came to you like a fisherman into a light house
Out of the rain
And into the rest of my life
The day I borrowed your unicorn t-shirt and jacket
That displayed a fanciful pink unicorn
killing a small bear, a dwarf AND a wizard
I told you that it looked like I was in a unicorn gang
And we were gonna mess you up
You pulled rank saying since they were your clothes
It was your unicorn gang
And I was forced to be your second in command
In a gang that I made up
On the day you got down on one knee
You were dressed in mermaids
Three beautiful girls in pale gray
with burgundy triangles over their lonely eyes
You said they were natives
I told you
“All mermaids are natives because in the sea they don’t have
the luxury of immigration”
It’s a small price to pay for magic
Oh and yes, yes I will marry you
Because I couldn’t imagine calling anyone else’s name
Wouldn’t recognize my own chest without your heart inside it
When you pass they will not swaddle you in silks
Won’t bury you in flowers with petals that will fall and
brown at your altar
You will go out with a gang of horses blazing across your
chest
An upside down triangle striped with the colors of the
rainbow wrapped around your legs
Madonna’s “Girl’s just wanna have fun” resting on your
stomach
And I will sit on the floor of our time capsule closet
Run my hands through the fabric of our memories
Keeping your love safe
Awaiting your eternity
Sunday, August 25, 2013
City
X
A recent report by a Hurricane,
“…but the city does need to be treated.”
Hurricane makes
judgments in the interest of wind, “The physical will remain in decay unless
corruption is rooted out. As for the political, prepare to be taken over.
Physical could be remade in exchange for building.” The city doesn’t need the
physical, only the rebuilding. Instead of rebuilding ways for new players, the
system was washed away in an article.
That Boom conducted a study on the land,
“The city
needs, needs not…
…to temper enthusiasm over many ailments.” Boom claims it could be
expanded if the city began an
exchange.
The city needs
the political to be expanded. The city doesn’t need to temper enthusiasm, only
to remake. The city will set up rebuilding as a matter of urban policy instead
of building for the sake of buildings. Hurricane says, “Prepare to be taken
over because of education, the physical infrastructure of the allowed. Private
development systems will be washed away and cured. The city conducted a study revealing
ailments to be remade. Boom, a recent report by an article on the land to be
treated
Hurricane said.
It’s time one’s
religious affiliation allowed for more private developments that transcend instead
of rebuilding. The audience will remain in decay unless corruption is rooted
out. Explaining Hurricane, but the city does need, could be remade and you
should conduct a study about settling. Consider relationships systems washed
away to be treated –start because relationships explaining the physical way for
new players coax smile many ailments into physical.
Boom on the land.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Play it as It Lies
We are running around barefoot, each footprint like a time machine taking us forward and back, rocking back and forth. Waking up each morning after another we tied strings to our toes so we could try to pull away.
Soul split itself in half so that it could be half in the smoke stacks and half in the ocean. Cotton mouth with q-tip teeth, tongue all moistened with algae, split in two, trying to reach sunlight. When you kissed me it felt like a morphine drip. Gutter mouth, cherry tongue, spittin' out bombs like gum drops.
It gets cold at night here in paradise, air dense with questions that can only be answered in riddles. I used to know what it meant to cry but I was so caught up in oblivion I didn't even notice when those rivers ran dry.
I took the string off my toes and tied them to my eyes, putting a bitter pill under one eyelid and Naloxone under to other. I don't want to dream anymore. One way or another it's time to wake up.
I remember your finger on my eyelids
And the night you died in paradise
The sky burned red with blood
The sky opened up and washed soul's wrists clean
And the cat ran away with the spoon.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Free Enterprise
Critical Annotation Project
Primary Text: Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
Research Question: I would like to further investigate how Cliff uses the formal features like form and language to create plurality within history and to (re)construct the lives of her characters. I am especially interested in her creation (or discovery) of ‘woman warriors’ and how she constructs them in the text.
Secondary Text: Ghostwriting Transnational Histories in Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise by
Erica L. Johnson.
(Re)Searches: When searching, I always like to be intentionally vague. It leaves room to uncover the unexpected. It’s especially helpful when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I started with what interested me the most about the novel (1) how it’s written, (2) the use of mythology and (3) woman warriors. I tried Jstor first just because it’s the database I am most familiar with and has always produced good results. Below are those that appeared most fruitful-
Jstor -> ‘free enterprise’ -> ‘free enterprise michelle cliff’ -> The Art of History -> Fluidity Without Postmodernism -> Add ‘mythology’ -> Front Matter -> Add ‘women warrior’ -> Michelle Cliff and the Authority of Identity
Then when I didn’t stumble across anything that sounded good enough from browsing the abstracts I tried
Project Muse.
Project Muse -> ‘Michelle Cliff Free Enterprise’ -> Ghostwriting Transnational Histories -> ‘michelle cliff free enterprise mythology’ -> ‘feminism Michelle Cliff’ -> Gendered legacies of Romantic Nationalism -> Configurations of Caribbean History
A lot of the results were either book reviews or interviews with the author, ultimately unhelpful. There were also lots of results that featured other works by Michelle Cliff such as No Telephone to Heaven. Unfortunately, the first article I got really excited about, Reconfigurations of Caribbean History: Michelle Cliff’s Rebel Women, focuses on Cliff’s novel Abeng.
Summary:
Johnson begins with a quote from Nada Elias, Trances Dances and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. The quote explains that in many disciplines, such as the sciences and poetry, there is a certain amount of guesswork involved. However, only in the histories of women and other marginalized characters is that guess work considered fiction. Johnson follows this epigraph with several quotes from Cliff herself, showing artistic intent and establishing an objective view for the novel. She owns that she had to invent a certain amount of material but likens her piece to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, “she uses on historical event but re-imagines it (Johnson, 115.)”
Johnson then opens her argument that Cliff’s novel and others like it, are actually a form of ghostwriting. She then gives two major points towards her argument. The writers use real but poorly documented subjects and uses literary strategy to flesh out their histories. Secondly, the writers use archival material as referents and shape their narratives to serve historical truth (Johnson, 116.) Specifically, in Free Enterprise, the character of Mary Ellen Pleasant is being fleshed out. There is evidence that she somehow participated in the raid of Harper’s Ferry but she is excluded from the ‘official’ history. Johnson explains these types of historical figures as the ghosts present in history, like the ghosts present in Morrison’s novels. Cliff creates Mary Ellen’s story and in doing so “works as a novelist, historian, and biographer, a combination that produces a framework specific to the genre of ghostwriting (Johnson,17.)”
According to Johnson, Cliff uses many writing strategies and strategies of representation to mold the collaboration between her artistic license and existing documentation of Pleasant, placing Pleasant into a pluralized history. She does this by playing off of undeniable truths in history, ie events, figures and artifacts.
Her first point that “Cliff draws on the adjacencies of various colonial contexts throughout the novel” focuses specifically on the ghosts left behind from slavery. Ghosts are created by violent or criminal acts because violence is often purposely forgotten. The winners tell the tale and the conquered become the haunts of history. Thus by pairing Mary Ellen with the character of Regina, Annie Christmas, she shows the adjacencies of Jamaica and the U.S., (117) two places connected by the slave trade. Pleasants life is shaped by her struggle against ‘the trade’ and those that joined her in stories of resistance (118.) For example, Annie Christmas, Marian Adams, Malcolm X, all make appearances in the novel entering into a give and take with Pleasant showing what one life can lend to another. The lives of her friends and acquaintances not only root her within history but help remember her story through dialogue and letters. Integrating Mary Ellen’s story in with others, showing a wider background of resistance (123)
Cliff further integrates Pleasants story into history through the insertion of historical artifacts such as JMW painting of the Zong and the Shaw Memorial. “The novel presents a powerful pair of visual allegories of historical (re)construction (123) JMW Turners painting and the Shaw Memeorial- connects characters to history. “The thing is behind us. Surely we can enjoy the art it engendered (124.)” “the pronoun “we” is not universalizing but rather encompasses divergent perspectives (124.)” Shaw memorial- sculpt the likeness of missing men
Johnson summarizes the ‘official’ historical information on Pleasant claiming that Cliff bases “her depiction of Pleasant on letters and newspapers from San Francisco’s city achieves and on the unpublished autobiography Pleasant dictated to a ghostwriter in her later years (Johnson, 121)”
This point argues for her main point that Free Enterprise is ghostwritten by proving her point that the story is not all based in Cliff’s imagination but holds similar to history.
Enlarges relationship between Annie and Mary to intgrate Mary into ‘a global mechanism of resistance (125)” – letters
Oral storytelling
Leper colony, dangerous bodies (127) “Cliff also draws on the lotif of plague, quarantine, and contamination in order to invert the very notions of ostracism and marginalization (128), characters share a contaminated space knowledge, mutial understanding
Cliff creates a multi-history, listening to the voices of ghosts and conjectures, then weaves Mary Ellen’s story throughout. Dialogic nature/storytelling, epistolary, historical narration
Insertion of historical artifacts
“a book about the black-centered struggle for emancipation, a struggle which for the most part has been excised from the official record… (120)”
“Cliff ‘rescues’ Brown (131)132 sitaution her character through historical evidence
“This margin -to-center strategy (133.)”
Does not claim to be the one, undisputed history, but rather creates pluralization within history. Quotes Wendy Walters, it is the natural will to take fragments and create something objective and whole- but there too many stories, too many histories for that to be an option (119) –lending to Cliff’s form, gaps, jumpy, switches.
Critical Response:
One of the main draws from this text is that it creates a discussion of Cliff’s work with that of Morrison, which we read earlier in the semester. Johnson draws similarities that I had not before thought of. Morrison and Cliff both come at their subjects through a form of recovery (or rememory), re-imagination and invention. Johnson discusses historical ghosts, people like Mary Ellen Pleasant and those affected by the middle passage that through the crime and violence of marginalization have been forced out of the ‘official’ history. Also, smaller, less obvious similarities like the theme of ‘falling apart.’ The characters of Beloved all share the experience of falling apart as do the lepers in Cliff’s novel. Holding with the integration of these similarities I would also pull in Beloved as source material for my research paper.
Johnson uses many sources that I would like to explore further. For instance, Nada Elia, Traces, Dances and Vorciferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives, Wendy Walters, and NourbSe Philips. I think it’s important when analyzing Cliff to put her into perspective with other authors opinions and their strategies of representation.
I agree in full with the article. This is easy because like Free Enterprise itself the article doesn’t make any sweeping claims, if you agree that the novel is a form of ghostwriting it is hard not to also agree with her main claims: that Cliff uses undeniable facts like people, events, and artifacts to place her characters into history and that she uses strategies of representation such as dialogue, a historical narrator and letters to re-imagine and create a pluralized history.
It is also hard to dispute Johnson because she uses Cliff herself abundantly. In the beginning saying, “No one is more articulate about Michelle Cliff’s work than Cliff herself (115.)” and following with a plethora of quotes on the novel and how it works. There’s no way to argue with an author on their intent.
Johnson also uses full advantage of indisputable truths in her article.
Primary Text: Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
Research Question: I would like to further investigate how Cliff uses the formal features like form and language to create plurality within history and to (re)construct the lives of her characters. I am especially interested in her creation (or discovery) of ‘woman warriors’ and how she constructs them in the text.
Secondary Text: Ghostwriting Transnational Histories in Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise by
Erica L. Johnson.
(Re)Searches: When searching, I always like to be intentionally vague. It leaves room to uncover the unexpected. It’s especially helpful when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I started with what interested me the most about the novel (1) how it’s written, (2) the use of mythology and (3) woman warriors. I tried Jstor first just because it’s the database I am most familiar with and has always produced good results. Below are those that appeared most fruitful-
Jstor -> ‘free enterprise’ -> ‘free enterprise michelle cliff’ -> The Art of History -> Fluidity Without Postmodernism -> Add ‘mythology’ -> Front Matter -> Add ‘women warrior’ -> Michelle Cliff and the Authority of Identity
Then when I didn’t stumble across anything that sounded good enough from browsing the abstracts I tried
Project Muse.
Project Muse -> ‘Michelle Cliff Free Enterprise’ -> Ghostwriting Transnational Histories -> ‘michelle cliff free enterprise mythology’ -> ‘feminism Michelle Cliff’ -> Gendered legacies of Romantic Nationalism -> Configurations of Caribbean History
A lot of the results were either book reviews or interviews with the author, ultimately unhelpful. There were also lots of results that featured other works by Michelle Cliff such as No Telephone to Heaven. Unfortunately, the first article I got really excited about, Reconfigurations of Caribbean History: Michelle Cliff’s Rebel Women, focuses on Cliff’s novel Abeng.
Summary:
Johnson begins with a quote from Nada Elias, Trances Dances and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. The quote explains that in many disciplines, such as the sciences and poetry, there is a certain amount of guesswork involved. However, only in the histories of women and other marginalized characters is that guess work considered fiction. Johnson follows this epigraph with several quotes from Cliff herself, showing artistic intent and establishing an objective view for the novel. She owns that she had to invent a certain amount of material but likens her piece to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, “she uses on historical event but re-imagines it (Johnson, 115.)”
Johnson then opens her argument that Cliff’s novel and others like it, are actually a form of ghostwriting. She then gives two major points towards her argument. The writers use real but poorly documented subjects and uses literary strategy to flesh out their histories. Secondly, the writers use archival material as referents and shape their narratives to serve historical truth (Johnson, 116.) Specifically, in Free Enterprise, the character of Mary Ellen Pleasant is being fleshed out. There is evidence that she somehow participated in the raid of Harper’s Ferry but she is excluded from the ‘official’ history. Johnson explains these types of historical figures as the ghosts present in history, like the ghosts present in Morrison’s novels. Cliff creates Mary Ellen’s story and in doing so “works as a novelist, historian, and biographer, a combination that produces a framework specific to the genre of ghostwriting (Johnson,17.)”
According to Johnson, Cliff uses many writing strategies and strategies of representation to mold the collaboration between her artistic license and existing documentation of Pleasant, placing Pleasant into a pluralized history. She does this by playing off of undeniable truths in history, ie events, figures and artifacts.
Her first point that “Cliff draws on the adjacencies of various colonial contexts throughout the novel” focuses specifically on the ghosts left behind from slavery. Ghosts are created by violent or criminal acts because violence is often purposely forgotten. The winners tell the tale and the conquered become the haunts of history. Thus by pairing Mary Ellen with the character of Regina, Annie Christmas, she shows the adjacencies of Jamaica and the U.S., (117) two places connected by the slave trade. Pleasants life is shaped by her struggle against ‘the trade’ and those that joined her in stories of resistance (118.) For example, Annie Christmas, Marian Adams, Malcolm X, all make appearances in the novel entering into a give and take with Pleasant showing what one life can lend to another. The lives of her friends and acquaintances not only root her within history but help remember her story through dialogue and letters. Integrating Mary Ellen’s story in with others, showing a wider background of resistance (123)
Cliff further integrates Pleasants story into history through the insertion of historical artifacts such as JMW painting of the Zong and the Shaw Memorial. “The novel presents a powerful pair of visual allegories of historical (re)construction (123) JMW Turners painting and the Shaw Memeorial- connects characters to history. “The thing is behind us. Surely we can enjoy the art it engendered (124.)” “the pronoun “we” is not universalizing but rather encompasses divergent perspectives (124.)” Shaw memorial- sculpt the likeness of missing men
Johnson summarizes the ‘official’ historical information on Pleasant claiming that Cliff bases “her depiction of Pleasant on letters and newspapers from San Francisco’s city achieves and on the unpublished autobiography Pleasant dictated to a ghostwriter in her later years (Johnson, 121)”
This point argues for her main point that Free Enterprise is ghostwritten by proving her point that the story is not all based in Cliff’s imagination but holds similar to history.
Enlarges relationship between Annie and Mary to intgrate Mary into ‘a global mechanism of resistance (125)” – letters
Oral storytelling
Leper colony, dangerous bodies (127) “Cliff also draws on the lotif of plague, quarantine, and contamination in order to invert the very notions of ostracism and marginalization (128), characters share a contaminated space knowledge, mutial understanding
Cliff creates a multi-history, listening to the voices of ghosts and conjectures, then weaves Mary Ellen’s story throughout. Dialogic nature/storytelling, epistolary, historical narration
Insertion of historical artifacts
“a book about the black-centered struggle for emancipation, a struggle which for the most part has been excised from the official record… (120)”
“Cliff ‘rescues’ Brown (131)132 sitaution her character through historical evidence
“This margin -to-center strategy (133.)”
Does not claim to be the one, undisputed history, but rather creates pluralization within history. Quotes Wendy Walters, it is the natural will to take fragments and create something objective and whole- but there too many stories, too many histories for that to be an option (119) –lending to Cliff’s form, gaps, jumpy, switches.
Critical Response:
One of the main draws from this text is that it creates a discussion of Cliff’s work with that of Morrison, which we read earlier in the semester. Johnson draws similarities that I had not before thought of. Morrison and Cliff both come at their subjects through a form of recovery (or rememory), re-imagination and invention. Johnson discusses historical ghosts, people like Mary Ellen Pleasant and those affected by the middle passage that through the crime and violence of marginalization have been forced out of the ‘official’ history. Also, smaller, less obvious similarities like the theme of ‘falling apart.’ The characters of Beloved all share the experience of falling apart as do the lepers in Cliff’s novel. Holding with the integration of these similarities I would also pull in Beloved as source material for my research paper.
Johnson uses many sources that I would like to explore further. For instance, Nada Elia, Traces, Dances and Vorciferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives, Wendy Walters, and NourbSe Philips. I think it’s important when analyzing Cliff to put her into perspective with other authors opinions and their strategies of representation.
I agree in full with the article. This is easy because like Free Enterprise itself the article doesn’t make any sweeping claims, if you agree that the novel is a form of ghostwriting it is hard not to also agree with her main claims: that Cliff uses undeniable facts like people, events, and artifacts to place her characters into history and that she uses strategies of representation such as dialogue, a historical narrator and letters to re-imagine and create a pluralized history.
It is also hard to dispute Johnson because she uses Cliff herself abundantly. In the beginning saying, “No one is more articulate about Michelle Cliff’s work than Cliff herself (115.)” and following with a plethora of quotes on the novel and how it works. There’s no way to argue with an author on their intent.
Johnson also uses full advantage of indisputable truths in her article.
For the Love of Women
An essay written in the winter of 2012 for a class entitled 'Women in Literature.'
---------------------------------------
[Love Manifesto]
1.
Freedom Fighter
Virginia Woolf
Writes
A Room of One’s Own
In the middle of a war
not over
not over until
EVERY PERSON
EVERYWHERE
The right to choose
Own room.
2.
In the midst of a war, choosing sides only depletes numbers. Something disturbing one always finds in political writing is this distinction between the Eastern and Western worlds. When you look at the west you see: the U.S.A, Mexico, Chile, and Canada. The East: Japan, Iran, and India. Each side offers so much diversity it would be absurd to group them together.
So why do it? In her book, Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes, Katherine Bullock, a converted Muslim feminist, claims that Western society views the veils as always oppressing the women that wear them. She goes on to say that it is this view “on which Western politicians rely and which they manipulate when they need to assert their interests in the Muslim world.” In this example the dichotomy between east and west happens through personal interest; creating an “other” to demonize for your own gain. The “other” present in talk between the western and eastern world isn’t much different than that in the fight between the sexes. In fact, Woolf proposes in A Room of One’s Own that men have only insisted on women being inferior because of their need to be superior. She claims that even if there were three sexes (three sides- western, eastern and central) that men would instantly start coming up with ways that they were superior to the new sex.
In the fight for freedom and equality we must stand together. The creation of the “other” creates dispute, rage, urge to kill, urge toward violence. Most popular creation of the “other” being Hitler’s demonization of the Jews. Jew against Germany. Germany vs. Jews. West against east. Women against men. Women against women.
3.
Burka Vs. Bikini
West vs. East
Man vs. Woman
Naked as liberation
Veiling as liberation
If women stand
Against women
What hope do we have?
4.
Early female writers “sought to ineffectively veil themselves by using the name of a man.”
To stand together we have to stop judging the cultures and traditions of others. Instead we have to celebrate diversity. When one in the western world looks at veiling or another culturally sanctioned ritual such as (my threaded discussion example) female genital mutilation, usually their first thought is, how oppressive. I’m glad we don’t have anything like that in our country. But in literature, afraid of gender stereotyping we veil or names. George Elliot, J.K. Rowling; afraid of being seen for who we truly are we change to avoid. But every year women and men alike die from risky plastic surgery procedures. Female genital surgery (another form of mutilation) has become popular in our culture. Procedures like labioplasty and hoodectomys (words so heinous that even Word’s spell check has no idea what to do with them) “…are becoming more popular as social acceptance of these cosmetic and reconstructive procedures continues towards mainstream (quote from a plastic surgery website whose name I do not remember).” Women are mutilating their genitals because they live in a society that tells them that to be perfect means to change. How is this any different from a society that tells women to be chaste and virginal or to be faithful and devote is to be perfect? The difference lies in interpretation; in judgments that must be destroyed.
5.
U•to•pi•a
[yoo-toh-pee-uh]
noun
6.
Christina Rossetti is seen by feminist as a symbol of constrained feminine genius because although Rossetti was a great female poet/writer in a time when being a female poet/writer was unpopular in a patriarchal society, she was against women’s rights such as suffrage, convinced it was against her religion. Even feminists are guilty of trying to fit people into little boxes that imply life. But if we are truly feminists we cannot only want freedom for those who agree with us. We must also fight for the freedom of those that would be against us regardless of skin, gender, or creed. Our differences aren’t the problem. It’s those that believe differences cannot co-exist within their utopian ideals. They spend their days thinking, if everyone was like me, the world would be a better place. What made Rossetti a true feminist was her establishing a right to choose her own path. Even when her own gender turned against her, she was strong in her beliefs because she chose them herself.
7.
An imaginary island
described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia
(1516) as enjoying perfection in law, politics, etc.
8.
It is important to remember that the problems Woolf finds in society and thinking about women’s right are not long over or gone. Woolf quotes Professor Trevelyan’s History of England saying that “Wife beating was the recognized right of man, and was practiced without shame… Similarly, the daughter who refused to marry the gentlemen of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung from the room…” Fact: Most U.S. states did not consider spousal rape a crime until the 1970’s and it wasn’t officially made illegal until 1993. Crisisconnectioninc.org reports that about 25% of all rape cases are marital rape.
We in the U.S. have not yet left the struggle. There is no ascending into a separate sphere of progressive superiority. NO ONE is safe until EVERYONE is free. Fact: Although the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote in 1920 some states, such as Mississippi, didn’t actually ratify the amendment until 1984. United we stand, divided we fall.
9.
Virginia Woolf was a freedom fighter. Her novel’s main claim, that to be successful a woman must have a room of her own and 500 pounds can be interpreted many different ways. A woman must have a physical and mental space of her own to be able to create to the fullest of her ability. A woman must be independent, free of patriarchal societies that would do her harm. A woman must not be under anyone’s thumb, free to make her own decisions. A woman must be free. This freedom is the essential component to her creativity; her right to choose. If all women have the right to choose Christina Rossetti is allowed to choose her religion, Muslim women may choose whether or not to veil. If we as a people allow each other the right to choose, that’s my utopia.
10.
2. ( usually lowercase )
an ideal place or state.
Any visionary system
of political or social perfection.
---------------------------------------
[Love Manifesto]
1.
Freedom Fighter
Virginia Woolf
Writes
A Room of One’s Own
In the middle of a war
not over
not over until
EVERY PERSON
EVERYWHERE
The right to choose
Own room.
2.
In the midst of a war, choosing sides only depletes numbers. Something disturbing one always finds in political writing is this distinction between the Eastern and Western worlds. When you look at the west you see: the U.S.A, Mexico, Chile, and Canada. The East: Japan, Iran, and India. Each side offers so much diversity it would be absurd to group them together.
So why do it? In her book, Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes, Katherine Bullock, a converted Muslim feminist, claims that Western society views the veils as always oppressing the women that wear them. She goes on to say that it is this view “on which Western politicians rely and which they manipulate when they need to assert their interests in the Muslim world.” In this example the dichotomy between east and west happens through personal interest; creating an “other” to demonize for your own gain. The “other” present in talk between the western and eastern world isn’t much different than that in the fight between the sexes. In fact, Woolf proposes in A Room of One’s Own that men have only insisted on women being inferior because of their need to be superior. She claims that even if there were three sexes (three sides- western, eastern and central) that men would instantly start coming up with ways that they were superior to the new sex.
In the fight for freedom and equality we must stand together. The creation of the “other” creates dispute, rage, urge to kill, urge toward violence. Most popular creation of the “other” being Hitler’s demonization of the Jews. Jew against Germany. Germany vs. Jews. West against east. Women against men. Women against women.
3.
Burka Vs. Bikini
West vs. East
Man vs. Woman
Naked as liberation
Veiling as liberation
If women stand
Against women
What hope do we have?
4.
Early female writers “sought to ineffectively veil themselves by using the name of a man.”
To stand together we have to stop judging the cultures and traditions of others. Instead we have to celebrate diversity. When one in the western world looks at veiling or another culturally sanctioned ritual such as (my threaded discussion example) female genital mutilation, usually their first thought is, how oppressive. I’m glad we don’t have anything like that in our country. But in literature, afraid of gender stereotyping we veil or names. George Elliot, J.K. Rowling; afraid of being seen for who we truly are we change to avoid. But every year women and men alike die from risky plastic surgery procedures. Female genital surgery (another form of mutilation) has become popular in our culture. Procedures like labioplasty and hoodectomys (words so heinous that even Word’s spell check has no idea what to do with them) “…are becoming more popular as social acceptance of these cosmetic and reconstructive procedures continues towards mainstream (quote from a plastic surgery website whose name I do not remember).” Women are mutilating their genitals because they live in a society that tells them that to be perfect means to change. How is this any different from a society that tells women to be chaste and virginal or to be faithful and devote is to be perfect? The difference lies in interpretation; in judgments that must be destroyed.
5.
U•to•pi•a
[yoo-toh-pee-uh]
noun
6.
Christina Rossetti is seen by feminist as a symbol of constrained feminine genius because although Rossetti was a great female poet/writer in a time when being a female poet/writer was unpopular in a patriarchal society, she was against women’s rights such as suffrage, convinced it was against her religion. Even feminists are guilty of trying to fit people into little boxes that imply life. But if we are truly feminists we cannot only want freedom for those who agree with us. We must also fight for the freedom of those that would be against us regardless of skin, gender, or creed. Our differences aren’t the problem. It’s those that believe differences cannot co-exist within their utopian ideals. They spend their days thinking, if everyone was like me, the world would be a better place. What made Rossetti a true feminist was her establishing a right to choose her own path. Even when her own gender turned against her, she was strong in her beliefs because she chose them herself.
7.
An imaginary island
described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia
(1516) as enjoying perfection in law, politics, etc.
8.
It is important to remember that the problems Woolf finds in society and thinking about women’s right are not long over or gone. Woolf quotes Professor Trevelyan’s History of England saying that “Wife beating was the recognized right of man, and was practiced without shame… Similarly, the daughter who refused to marry the gentlemen of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung from the room…” Fact: Most U.S. states did not consider spousal rape a crime until the 1970’s and it wasn’t officially made illegal until 1993. Crisisconnectioninc.org reports that about 25% of all rape cases are marital rape.
We in the U.S. have not yet left the struggle. There is no ascending into a separate sphere of progressive superiority. NO ONE is safe until EVERYONE is free. Fact: Although the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote in 1920 some states, such as Mississippi, didn’t actually ratify the amendment until 1984. United we stand, divided we fall.
9.
Virginia Woolf was a freedom fighter. Her novel’s main claim, that to be successful a woman must have a room of her own and 500 pounds can be interpreted many different ways. A woman must have a physical and mental space of her own to be able to create to the fullest of her ability. A woman must be independent, free of patriarchal societies that would do her harm. A woman must not be under anyone’s thumb, free to make her own decisions. A woman must be free. This freedom is the essential component to her creativity; her right to choose. If all women have the right to choose Christina Rossetti is allowed to choose her religion, Muslim women may choose whether or not to veil. If we as a people allow each other the right to choose, that’s my utopia.
10.
2. ( usually lowercase )
an ideal place or state.
Any visionary system
of political or social perfection.
Go Wilder
The Picture of Dorian Grey has a dark fairytale like quality about it that does not fail to enchant and ensnare its readers. A story worthy of Anderson. I've read it twice now and cannot stop raving about its eloquence and complexity.
The following is a paper I wrote in the winter of 2012 for a British Literature course...
[In the Name of Beauty: A Further look in the homoerotic subtexts of
The Picture of Dorian Gray]
In the 1930s and 40s, after vast ethnolinguistic research, anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism, or “the idea that language to some extent shapes the way in which people view and think about the world around them (Haviland113.)” Most of Whorf’s research on this topic came from translating English into Hopi, a North Native American Language. He discovered that Hopi differs from English in many ways including: vocabulary, grammar and verb tenses. In interpreting the text of Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, I would like to flip this hypothesis to look at it from behind. From this perspective the hypothesis would read, “The way in which people view and think about the world around them shapes their language.” We see this in America through the constant pejoration and amelioration of specific words in our language, a good example being the word “gay.” Whereas in the late 14th century the word “gay” most likely would be used to mean "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree (Harper)" it moved to having undertones of promiscuity into a slang term for homosexual men. Presently, young people will use the term “gay” towards anything they find un-pleasurable or stupid. This pejoration of the term “gay” shows Americans fearful, unwillingness to accept homosexuals in modern day society and proves the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis correct.
On a similar note, in the beginning of Francis Mondimore’s book A Natural History of Homosexuality, he gives a brief history of the invention of the word “homosexuality.” “Homosexuality” was created in 1869, in an open letter to the German Minister of Justice from writer Karl Maria Kertbeny. In drafting the new North German Federation, a debate had formed over whether to keep the section of the Prussian Criminal Code making sexual contact between persons of the same gender a crime (Mondimore3.) The actual language of the text is this: “IV. Section 143 of the Prussian Penal Code determines ‘Unchastity contrary to nature exercised between persons of the male sex or by human beings on animals shall be punished…’ (Malik.)” It is important to note the difference of language because of the distinction between the words “gender” and “sex” and also between male and female sexuality. Sex is biological and objective, while gender is socially constructed and, therefore, subjective. The code determines only that sexual contact between men is a crime. Gender is still a concept to be built upon, as well as the concept of female homosexuality. This history shows the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to be true. As hostility for what is considered “degenerate forms of male sexuality (Cohen1)” ascends, new words are created to reflect the new state of being.
Twenty years after the emergence of the word “homosexual” makes its (un)popular debut Oscar Wilde would have seemed to have ‘missed the boat.’ The main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, namely Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil Halloway, maintain a pre-homosexual mentality in a post-homosexual environment. Alex Ross of the New Yorker, in describing the book, claims that against popular ideals of the time, “no work of mainstream English-language fiction had come so close to spelling out homosexual desire (Ross.)” Wilde’s main characters mentality and natures are more like those of ancient Greeks than Victorian England, reflecting instead, Wilde’s own sexual desires and ideals.
Around the time of Kertbeny coining the term “homosexual,” he was also developing the concept of sexual orientation, “This idea that some individual’s sexual attraction for persons of the same sex was an inherent and unchanging aspect of their personality was radically new (Mondemore3.)” Since this time sexual orientation has quickly ingrained itself in all aspects of our lives; it’s become a method of identification. Our modern day culture cannot, now, conceive of a human being without sexual orientation; conceive of the way Wilde’s characters identify themselves sexually. They, like the Greeks, would be most appropriately considered bisexual. The creation of “homosexuality” has turned bi-sexuality into a type of purgatory, filled with those waiting to find out what their relationship-future will hold for them.
We can explore this mysterious bisexuality through acts of marriage. In the society of ancient Greece as well as Victorian England, marriage was a requirement for heterosexual sex, and sex was required for procreation. England told its women to, lie back and think of the empire, heterosexual relationships are a duty. However, for men in ancient Greece, sexual contact with both sexes was not only accepted but expected as “necessary compliments to procreation (Mondimore.)” Men need contact with other men to gain a fulfillment that cannot be found in relationships with women. Women were seen as un-intellectual objects, run by their emotions and frivolous desires. For these reasons, women cannot experience real love. “The first edition of Mahaffy's book, Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander, proposes that Greek men preferred beautiful Greek boys because women were not sufficiently cultivated to provide interesting company (Terpening.)” These ideas are present in The Picture of Dorian Gray through the constant philosophizing and warnings from the character of Lord Henry. Dissatisfied with his marriage (he and his wife are only once seen in the same room), on woman’s manner Lord Henry pontificates, “Women represent the triumph of matter over mind (Wilde)”, and on their appreciation of aesthetics, “Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least good women have not (10.)” Lord Henry does not only reflect Greek and Victorian ideals, he embodies them through his language and relationships.
Wilde himself was dissatisfied in his marriage. In 1884, he married Constance Lloyd with whom he had two children. William Terpening describes the union in his short biography, The Picture of Oscar Wilde: A Brief Life,
Terpening then goes on to suggest reasons for Wilde’s insistence on the marriage. He is unconvinced that Wilde thought, like the Greeks, that women “were not sufficiently cultivated.” He uses the examples of Wilde’s regard for his mother and the relationship between the male and female characters Salome and The Sphinx in one of Wilde’s later works, Salome, to prove his higher regard, or at least sympathy, for women. “Perhaps in his quest for a kind of naturalness that was uncorrupted by society, he sought along the way a mannequin so pure, so blank, that he might craft her into the ideal woman.” At first, in reflection of The Picture of Dorian Gray, this argument appears weak. However, it is familiar. Perhaps Wilde’s love for Constance is similar to that of Dorian’s love for Sybil Vane. Dorian loves Sybil for her emptiness; she is Juliet, she is Rosaline, but she is never Sybil Vane (Wilde.) When Sybil falls in love and becomes a real person in Dorian’s eyes her image is completely shattered and he leaves her. One cannot craft perfection, perfection is only a mirage. In this way Dorian and Sibyl’s relationship mirrors that of Wilde and Constance, marked with a warning sign. Marked further by the commentary of Lord Henry, when Dorian tells Henry of his love for Sybil, Henry responds with, “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex (34.)” There’s a constant dichotomy present in the text between the sexes that illustrates the disconnect felt by men that prompts the need for contact with other men or “intellectual contact.”
In Modern, as in Victorian times, the acceptability of sexual acts depends on the biological sex of the partners involved. However in ancient Greece, “the social acceptability of a sexual act was not determined by the gender of the partners but rather the balance of power between them (Mondimore8.)” If one was having sex with a woman, the male (the penis) would be the dominant and the female would be the submissive. When males chose other male partners, younger partners or those of lower status became the submissive partner to avoid degrading either member of the partnership. The ideal relationship between men was one where there was an older, dominant partner called erastes and a younger, submissive partner called eremenos. In this relationship the older male would reach climax by sticking his penis in between the thighs of the younger male. This relationship continued until the eromenos partner reached a certain age, at which time he would marry a woman and become an erastes.
We see this type of older male/younger male relationship develop in The Picture of Dorian Gray between the characters of Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen describes this relationship saying that, “Dorian is born at the conjunction between Basil’s visual embodiment of his erotic desire for Dorian and Lord Henry’s verbal sublimation of such desire (Cohen.)” Dorian becomes the eremenos for his older friend, Basil. In fact, earlier revisions of Dorian Gray show more of the love between Basil and Dorian then the later versions. In describing Dorian to Lord Henry he says, “I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray (Wilde.)” And in explaining why he cannot display the painting Basil explains, “Where there is really love, they would see something evil, and where there is spiritual passion they would suggest something vile (Ross.)” Dorian also plays the eremenos role for Lord Henry, who also falls for the charm of Dorian’s innocence and great beauty, making Basil jealous of their relationship. Basil, who first tries to keep Dorian a secret from Lord Henry, is hurt when they hit it off so well and even becomes jealous when Dorian confides his love for Sybil Vane to Henry before telling him first. However, all great relationships must come to an end. Later in the novel, as Dorian grows older, although he never marries, he finds his own erastes/eromenos relationship with young men in the city, just as Wilde himself develops his own erastes/eromenos relationship. “He met the charming but temperamental Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), then an undergraduate at Oxford, and began a very close relationship with him. This continued for years (Terpening.)” Through this relationship we find Wilde, again, creating a narrative of bisexuality, a middle pathway between extremes.
In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen makes a convincing case for the homoeroticism of Wilde. He begins by summoning meaning behind the norms of Victorian England, “Victorian Bourgeoisie’s effort to control a degenerate form of male sexuality- ensured standards (Cohen1.)” He goes on to detail Wilde’s conquest, “By juxtaposing male same-sex passion with a cultural concept of “manliness” that seeks to exclude it, the novel deconstructs those definitions of human nature that deny the homo erotic as unnatural (Cohen5.)” Wilde is often described as a revolutionary for Gay Rights, a fighter in the name of beauty. By choosing what to include and what to ignore in the context of illustrating Victorian England, Wilde creates a commentary on what is important and what is not important. He creates a plea for the middle path that he claims as his stories moral. “All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment (Ross.)” Life cannot be lived within the boundaries of black and white.
Works Cited/Referenced
Cohen, Ed. "Writing Gone Wilde: Homoeriotic Desire in the Closet of Representation." PMLA Oct. 1987: 801-13. JStor. Modern Language Association. Web. Mar. 2012. .
Harper, Douglas. "Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2012. .
Haviland. Et Al. "Language and Communication." Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge. 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008. 113. Print.
Malik, Faris. "Benkert-143.htm." The WELL. Born Eunuchs Library, 1999. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .
Mondimore, Francis Mark. "Before Homosexuality." A Natural History of Homosexuality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 3-15. Print.
Ross, Alex. "Deceptive Picture: How Oscar Wilde Painted over "Dorian Gray"" The New Yorker 8 Aug. 2011, Arts and Culture sec. The New Yorker. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. .
Support Easy
The following is a paper I wrote in the winter of 2012 for a British Literature course...
[In the Name of Beauty: A Further look in the homoerotic subtexts of
The Picture of Dorian Gray]
In the 1930s and 40s, after vast ethnolinguistic research, anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism, or “the idea that language to some extent shapes the way in which people view and think about the world around them (Haviland113.)” Most of Whorf’s research on this topic came from translating English into Hopi, a North Native American Language. He discovered that Hopi differs from English in many ways including: vocabulary, grammar and verb tenses. In interpreting the text of Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, I would like to flip this hypothesis to look at it from behind. From this perspective the hypothesis would read, “The way in which people view and think about the world around them shapes their language.” We see this in America through the constant pejoration and amelioration of specific words in our language, a good example being the word “gay.” Whereas in the late 14th century the word “gay” most likely would be used to mean "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree (Harper)" it moved to having undertones of promiscuity into a slang term for homosexual men. Presently, young people will use the term “gay” towards anything they find un-pleasurable or stupid. This pejoration of the term “gay” shows Americans fearful, unwillingness to accept homosexuals in modern day society and proves the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis correct.
On a similar note, in the beginning of Francis Mondimore’s book A Natural History of Homosexuality, he gives a brief history of the invention of the word “homosexuality.” “Homosexuality” was created in 1869, in an open letter to the German Minister of Justice from writer Karl Maria Kertbeny. In drafting the new North German Federation, a debate had formed over whether to keep the section of the Prussian Criminal Code making sexual contact between persons of the same gender a crime (Mondimore3.) The actual language of the text is this: “IV. Section 143 of the Prussian Penal Code determines ‘Unchastity contrary to nature exercised between persons of the male sex or by human beings on animals shall be punished…’ (Malik.)” It is important to note the difference of language because of the distinction between the words “gender” and “sex” and also between male and female sexuality. Sex is biological and objective, while gender is socially constructed and, therefore, subjective. The code determines only that sexual contact between men is a crime. Gender is still a concept to be built upon, as well as the concept of female homosexuality. This history shows the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to be true. As hostility for what is considered “degenerate forms of male sexuality (Cohen1)” ascends, new words are created to reflect the new state of being.
Twenty years after the emergence of the word “homosexual” makes its (un)popular debut Oscar Wilde would have seemed to have ‘missed the boat.’ The main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, namely Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil Halloway, maintain a pre-homosexual mentality in a post-homosexual environment. Alex Ross of the New Yorker, in describing the book, claims that against popular ideals of the time, “no work of mainstream English-language fiction had come so close to spelling out homosexual desire (Ross.)” Wilde’s main characters mentality and natures are more like those of ancient Greeks than Victorian England, reflecting instead, Wilde’s own sexual desires and ideals.
Around the time of Kertbeny coining the term “homosexual,” he was also developing the concept of sexual orientation, “This idea that some individual’s sexual attraction for persons of the same sex was an inherent and unchanging aspect of their personality was radically new (Mondemore3.)” Since this time sexual orientation has quickly ingrained itself in all aspects of our lives; it’s become a method of identification. Our modern day culture cannot, now, conceive of a human being without sexual orientation; conceive of the way Wilde’s characters identify themselves sexually. They, like the Greeks, would be most appropriately considered bisexual. The creation of “homosexuality” has turned bi-sexuality into a type of purgatory, filled with those waiting to find out what their relationship-future will hold for them.
We can explore this mysterious bisexuality through acts of marriage. In the society of ancient Greece as well as Victorian England, marriage was a requirement for heterosexual sex, and sex was required for procreation. England told its women to, lie back and think of the empire, heterosexual relationships are a duty. However, for men in ancient Greece, sexual contact with both sexes was not only accepted but expected as “necessary compliments to procreation (Mondimore.)” Men need contact with other men to gain a fulfillment that cannot be found in relationships with women. Women were seen as un-intellectual objects, run by their emotions and frivolous desires. For these reasons, women cannot experience real love. “The first edition of Mahaffy's book, Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander, proposes that Greek men preferred beautiful Greek boys because women were not sufficiently cultivated to provide interesting company (Terpening.)” These ideas are present in The Picture of Dorian Gray through the constant philosophizing and warnings from the character of Lord Henry. Dissatisfied with his marriage (he and his wife are only once seen in the same room), on woman’s manner Lord Henry pontificates, “Women represent the triumph of matter over mind (Wilde)”, and on their appreciation of aesthetics, “Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least good women have not (10.)” Lord Henry does not only reflect Greek and Victorian ideals, he embodies them through his language and relationships.
Wilde himself was dissatisfied in his marriage. In 1884, he married Constance Lloyd with whom he had two children. William Terpening describes the union in his short biography, The Picture of Oscar Wilde: A Brief Life,
“The marriage… represented all that was to go badly with the union as a dumbfounded and unappreciative woman of quite mediocre intelligence was thrust into the resplendent world of the Aesthete Prince…Visitors would repeatedly describe the shy and doll-like bride hanging on each of Wilde's words, speaking little, an attractive prop more than a person (Terpening.)”
Terpening then goes on to suggest reasons for Wilde’s insistence on the marriage. He is unconvinced that Wilde thought, like the Greeks, that women “were not sufficiently cultivated.” He uses the examples of Wilde’s regard for his mother and the relationship between the male and female characters Salome and The Sphinx in one of Wilde’s later works, Salome, to prove his higher regard, or at least sympathy, for women. “Perhaps in his quest for a kind of naturalness that was uncorrupted by society, he sought along the way a mannequin so pure, so blank, that he might craft her into the ideal woman.” At first, in reflection of The Picture of Dorian Gray, this argument appears weak. However, it is familiar. Perhaps Wilde’s love for Constance is similar to that of Dorian’s love for Sybil Vane. Dorian loves Sybil for her emptiness; she is Juliet, she is Rosaline, but she is never Sybil Vane (Wilde.) When Sybil falls in love and becomes a real person in Dorian’s eyes her image is completely shattered and he leaves her. One cannot craft perfection, perfection is only a mirage. In this way Dorian and Sibyl’s relationship mirrors that of Wilde and Constance, marked with a warning sign. Marked further by the commentary of Lord Henry, when Dorian tells Henry of his love for Sybil, Henry responds with, “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex (34.)” There’s a constant dichotomy present in the text between the sexes that illustrates the disconnect felt by men that prompts the need for contact with other men or “intellectual contact.”
In Modern, as in Victorian times, the acceptability of sexual acts depends on the biological sex of the partners involved. However in ancient Greece, “the social acceptability of a sexual act was not determined by the gender of the partners but rather the balance of power between them (Mondimore8.)” If one was having sex with a woman, the male (the penis) would be the dominant and the female would be the submissive. When males chose other male partners, younger partners or those of lower status became the submissive partner to avoid degrading either member of the partnership. The ideal relationship between men was one where there was an older, dominant partner called erastes and a younger, submissive partner called eremenos. In this relationship the older male would reach climax by sticking his penis in between the thighs of the younger male. This relationship continued until the eromenos partner reached a certain age, at which time he would marry a woman and become an erastes.
We see this type of older male/younger male relationship develop in The Picture of Dorian Gray between the characters of Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen describes this relationship saying that, “Dorian is born at the conjunction between Basil’s visual embodiment of his erotic desire for Dorian and Lord Henry’s verbal sublimation of such desire (Cohen.)” Dorian becomes the eremenos for his older friend, Basil. In fact, earlier revisions of Dorian Gray show more of the love between Basil and Dorian then the later versions. In describing Dorian to Lord Henry he says, “I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray (Wilde.)” And in explaining why he cannot display the painting Basil explains, “Where there is really love, they would see something evil, and where there is spiritual passion they would suggest something vile (Ross.)” Dorian also plays the eremenos role for Lord Henry, who also falls for the charm of Dorian’s innocence and great beauty, making Basil jealous of their relationship. Basil, who first tries to keep Dorian a secret from Lord Henry, is hurt when they hit it off so well and even becomes jealous when Dorian confides his love for Sybil Vane to Henry before telling him first. However, all great relationships must come to an end. Later in the novel, as Dorian grows older, although he never marries, he finds his own erastes/eromenos relationship with young men in the city, just as Wilde himself develops his own erastes/eromenos relationship. “He met the charming but temperamental Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), then an undergraduate at Oxford, and began a very close relationship with him. This continued for years (Terpening.)” Through this relationship we find Wilde, again, creating a narrative of bisexuality, a middle pathway between extremes.
In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen makes a convincing case for the homoeroticism of Wilde. He begins by summoning meaning behind the norms of Victorian England, “Victorian Bourgeoisie’s effort to control a degenerate form of male sexuality- ensured standards (Cohen1.)” He goes on to detail Wilde’s conquest, “By juxtaposing male same-sex passion with a cultural concept of “manliness” that seeks to exclude it, the novel deconstructs those definitions of human nature that deny the homo erotic as unnatural (Cohen5.)” Wilde is often described as a revolutionary for Gay Rights, a fighter in the name of beauty. By choosing what to include and what to ignore in the context of illustrating Victorian England, Wilde creates a commentary on what is important and what is not important. He creates a plea for the middle path that he claims as his stories moral. “All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment (Ross.)” Life cannot be lived within the boundaries of black and white.
Works Cited/Referenced
Cohen, Ed. "Writing Gone Wilde: Homoeriotic Desire in the Closet of Representation." PMLA Oct. 1987: 801-13. JStor. Modern Language Association. Web. Mar. 2012. .
Harper, Douglas. "Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2012. .
Haviland. Et Al. "Language and Communication." Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge. 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008. 113. Print.
Malik, Faris. "Benkert-143.htm." The WELL. Born Eunuchs Library, 1999. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .
Mondimore, Francis Mark. "Before Homosexuality." A Natural History of Homosexuality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 3-15. Print.
Ross, Alex. "Deceptive Picture: How Oscar Wilde Painted over "Dorian Gray"" The New Yorker 8 Aug. 2011, Arts and Culture sec. The New Yorker. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. .
Support Easy
50 Shades part II
From my Goodreads...
Let the games proceed!
As full of drama and surprises as Fifty Shades of Grey was, Fifty Shades Darker is a drama explosion. The plot is one outbreak after another punctuated by more aggravated talk of inner goddesses and subconsciousness. Most of the filler being annoyingly redundant. The featured couple talks their issues to death leaving the audience dead in their chairs.
(I began highlighting all the abundant abilities of Ana's inner goddess... the list is vast, these being the only ones I was willing to transcribe. My inner goddess...
"...does three backflips over the gym floor (85.)"
"...bouncing about like a five-year-old (203.)"
"...tackles her to the ground (205.)"
"...performs a quick arabesque (210.)"
"...stomps off pouting, her arms crossed like an angry toddlers (228.)"
This bitch even has her own line! "Its like he has a direct hotline to my inner goddess (205.)"
After discussing this with a friend she shrugged, "insecure, irrational, whiny female narrators are very in right now" ...why? Whatever happen to the empowered women? Female narrators that where searching for their voice on their terms? Narrators that didn't need to babble on endlessly about their inner goddess because they realized (at least by the end) that they were the goddess.
Reading in many ways is like eating. You read Woolf and Winterson for protein, they make you strong.
You drink in Wilde like the pleasures of your morning coffee, widening your eyes and stretching out at the wonder of a new day. The Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy is like candy. But not like Neil Gaiman, whose fantasies wrap his readers into a thick coating of chocolate and cream. These books are like dots, like milk duds. To be fair, candy, in moderation, is acceptable. Sometimes you just need something sweet. And in turn, sometimes the candy books make you appreciate the filet even more. However, would I ever recommend this book? Most definitely not. Not unless who are looking to get some type of pompous satisfaction from how bad it's written, edited and developed.
I have a philosophy, a rule if you will, that I never seriously judge anything without experiencing it firsthand. If you do not feel this way in regards to reading, you should definitely explore other avenues to satisfy in the "romance" section.
I’ve resolved that that this is a fan fic (because it makes me feel better) I imagine the writer behind the facade, sitting at his computer dreaming of something beyond himself. (For isn't that a goal of all literature)This book was made tolerable by my constant daydream of this young boy writing daily in his blog. This would justify the poor editing, constant and uncontained/undedeveloped drama and the constant usage of made up words and phrases within the inner narrative. Ex. "Kinky fuckery", "fucked-upness (95)(227)," "crazy with a capital K (104)"
This thought process also put my mind at ease when I laughed out loud at some of the zingers hidden in the novel. Ex- When Ana asks Christian why is has had a change of heart he replies, "I figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." ... Upon discussing Elena, "I don't know what the social conventions are for meeting known molesters of children (158)"
I assume this is the only way people can watch those detestful reality television shows. By skimming from event to event, daydreaming of something far beyond the show.
-----------------
Lastly, I would just like to point a the redundant and immature language in the sexual scenes. Ex. "...in that way" & "there!" We get it, you don't have to giggle conspiratorially like a 5th grader that just got her first kiss on the playground. At some point, Ana actually uses "there!" to describe not only her vagina but her butt hole as well. Now that's not even consistent!
^ this just adds to my teen in his basement on the computer theory.
Let the games proceed!
As full of drama and surprises as Fifty Shades of Grey was, Fifty Shades Darker is a drama explosion. The plot is one outbreak after another punctuated by more aggravated talk of inner goddesses and subconsciousness. Most of the filler being annoyingly redundant. The featured couple talks their issues to death leaving the audience dead in their chairs.
(I began highlighting all the abundant abilities of Ana's inner goddess... the list is vast, these being the only ones I was willing to transcribe. My inner goddess...
"...does three backflips over the gym floor (85.)"
"...bouncing about like a five-year-old (203.)"
"...tackles her to the ground (205.)"
"...performs a quick arabesque (210.)"
"...stomps off pouting, her arms crossed like an angry toddlers (228.)"
This bitch even has her own line! "Its like he has a direct hotline to my inner goddess (205.)"
After discussing this with a friend she shrugged, "insecure, irrational, whiny female narrators are very in right now" ...why? Whatever happen to the empowered women? Female narrators that where searching for their voice on their terms? Narrators that didn't need to babble on endlessly about their inner goddess because they realized (at least by the end) that they were the goddess.
Reading in many ways is like eating. You read Woolf and Winterson for protein, they make you strong.
You drink in Wilde like the pleasures of your morning coffee, widening your eyes and stretching out at the wonder of a new day. The Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy is like candy. But not like Neil Gaiman, whose fantasies wrap his readers into a thick coating of chocolate and cream. These books are like dots, like milk duds. To be fair, candy, in moderation, is acceptable. Sometimes you just need something sweet. And in turn, sometimes the candy books make you appreciate the filet even more. However, would I ever recommend this book? Most definitely not. Not unless who are looking to get some type of pompous satisfaction from how bad it's written, edited and developed.
I have a philosophy, a rule if you will, that I never seriously judge anything without experiencing it firsthand. If you do not feel this way in regards to reading, you should definitely explore other avenues to satisfy in the "romance" section.
I’ve resolved that that this is a fan fic (because it makes me feel better) I imagine the writer behind the facade, sitting at his computer dreaming of something beyond himself. (For isn't that a goal of all literature)This book was made tolerable by my constant daydream of this young boy writing daily in his blog. This would justify the poor editing, constant and uncontained/undedeveloped drama and the constant usage of made up words and phrases within the inner narrative. Ex. "Kinky fuckery", "fucked-upness (95)(227)," "crazy with a capital K (104)"
This thought process also put my mind at ease when I laughed out loud at some of the zingers hidden in the novel. Ex- When Ana asks Christian why is has had a change of heart he replies, "I figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." ... Upon discussing Elena, "I don't know what the social conventions are for meeting known molesters of children (158)"
I assume this is the only way people can watch those detestful reality television shows. By skimming from event to event, daydreaming of something far beyond the show.
-----------------
Lastly, I would just like to point a the redundant and immature language in the sexual scenes. Ex. "...in that way" & "there!" We get it, you don't have to giggle conspiratorially like a 5th grader that just got her first kiss on the playground. At some point, Ana actually uses "there!" to describe not only her vagina but her butt hole as well. Now that's not even consistent!
^ this just adds to my teen in his basement on the computer theory.
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