Month: March 2018

Categories
Blog Assignments

Mary Poovey, “‘My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster”

In ‘My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster, Mary Poovey analyzes Mary Shelley’s career as a writer and personal life behind her gothic masterpiece – Frankenstein. Poovey’s writing largely deals with the concept of egotism and imagination and how these affect Shelley’s works and characters. Poovey also argues that Shelley constantly faced the battle between the urge to create and the anxiety of meeting the “prevalent social expectations that a woman conforms to the conventional feminine model of propriety.” To support her argument, Poovey analyzes the differences between the first edition (1818) and the second edition (1831) of Frankenstein, not only to bring clarity to some stranger changes, but to understand Shelley’s career transition in those years.

Victor Frankenstein

Even though Shelley claimed that she didn’t want to change any portion of the story or introduce any new ideas or circumstances, she made significant changes to the main character – Victor Frankenstein. In both 1818 and 1838 editions, Victor Frankenstein appears as an egotistic and self-assertive protagonist who ruins his life and people around him, but Shelley changed the origin of Victor’s creative urge in later editions. Poovey describes that, in the 1818 edition, Victor is driven by his innate desire and imaginative activity and believes that “his desire to conquer death through science is fundamentally unselfish and that he can be his own guardian.” But for Shelley, desire must be regulated by domestic relationships because it can protect oneself from the external world. Shelly suggested “as long as domestic relationship govern one’s energy, desire will turn outward as love”. Victor abandons his home to pursue his desire in both editions, but domestic relationships present as an option for him in the 1818 edition.

In the 1838 revision, Shelley depicted Victor as the “helpless pawn of a predetermined ‘destiny’, of a fate that is given, not made”. Because Victor’s destiny is doomed, he is powerless and helpless to change his fate. He must leave his family to create the monster. Shelley wrote, “such a man has virtually no control over his destiny and that he is therefore to be pitied rather than condemned”.

The monster

In the monster’s narrative, Shelley indented to make the monster a symbol of the consequence of Frankenstein’s self-assertion. Animating the monster gives Victor Frankenstein’s imagination a physical form. It fulfills Victor’s innate desire, but eventually destroys his domestic relationship while the monster kills his family and friend. Poovey also argues that the monster seems simply the agent of Victor’s desire, but it also presents to be a “Godwinian critique of social injustice.” The monster’s story becomes “a symbolic extension of her comment on the ego’s monstrosity, an inside glimpse of the pathos of the human condition.”

Mary Shelley

Poovey also makes the point that we cannot understand Mary Shelley as a writer without considering her as a person. Mary Shelley was the daughter of two prominent people, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, then the wife of Percy Shelly. “Shelley was encouraged from her youth to fulfill the Romantic model of the artist, to prove herself by means of her pen and her imagination.” According to Poovey, Shelley constantly felt the pressure to be something great and as Shelley herself put it, she was “Nursed and fed with love of glory.” Shelley’s stepsister Claire Clairmont once wryly remarked, “in our family, if you cannot write an epic poem or novel, that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not worth acknowledging.” Shelley faced not only the pressure to be “original” with her writing, but the pressure to meet societal expectation that a woman should be self-effacing and supportive to her family rather than to a career. Caught between these two models, Shelley developed a pervasive personal and artistic ambivalence toward feminine self-assertion.

The first edition of Frankenstein was published in 1818, when Shelley was just twenty. Even though people were praising the work’s power and stylistic vigor, they also criticized its inappropriate subject and lack of a moral, which was an essential during that time. One of the first reviewers commented “Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is—it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality.” Some of the critics even assumed the author of Frankenstein to be a man who is no doubt a follower of Godwin.

Later, in the introduction of 1831, Shelley felt guilty about her “frightful” transgression and apologized for her adolescent audacity. The primary purpose of 1831 introduction was to explain and defend the audacity of what now seems blasphemy. Shelley claimed, “How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” In the 1831 edition, Shelley wanted to assure her reader that she was no long the “defiant, self-assertive girl who, lacing proper humility, once dared to seek fame and to explore the intricacies of desire”. Shelley also claimed to be “very averse to bringing herself forward in print”. While Shelley continued to write, her work became less subversive and her characters became more meek, domestic, and feminine. She subjected her characters to pain and loneliness. This allowed her to achieve both social approval and her desire to prove herself worthy of her parents and Percy Shelley.

Discussion questions:

  • What is the effect of a series of first person narratives in the book?
  • Do you agree that there is a lack of moral in Frankenstein? If no, what is the moral of this book?
  • At the end of the Volume two, the monster asks Frankenstein to create a woman creature for him. Does Frankenstein have the duty to do that?
Categories
In-class writing Notes

In-class work 3/15

Draft and revision example number 1

Draft and revision example number 2 and number 3

In-class assignment: group 1

In-class assignment: group 2

In-class assignment: group 3

In-class assignment: group 4

In-class assignment: group 5

In the comments, reflect on this exercise. What did you change, and why? What challenges did you encounter? What did you discover about the editing process? How can you apply this to your own writing and editing?

Categories
In-class writing Notes

3/13 notes

Subject: What is this poem about?

  • It’s about a mountain – Mont Blanc

 

Form:

  • It’s very long
  • Descriptive – that is, not narrative – no story
  • Divided into 5 parts
    • First part:
      • A lot of imagery – paints a picture of the environment – waterfalls, mountains – metaphor for the human mind
      • No sign of Mont Blanc
      • Starts IMMENSE: “the everlasting universe of things” – literally all things for all time
        • Within the human mind
      • Second part:
        • More assonance and consonance
        • Moved from the human mind to the ravine
        • Tone: not very grounded; you feel you are about to fall over
        • Returns to the human mind and the universe of things
      • Third part:
        • First mention of Mont Blanc
        • Comparing the way we experience the view of the mountain – the structure of the mountain – some parts of it are obscure – metaphor for the human mind?
          • But makes you understand it in pictures not words
        • Referencing creation
        • Something inaccessible
        • Creation in the guise of destruction
        • No one can tell us what happened. Probably because they’re dead.
        • Repetition with eternal/everlasting/eternity
        • “wilderness has a mysterious tongue” – wilderness is saying something we can’t understand
        • difference between understanding and feeling – feelings can’t be explained away easily
      • fourth part
        • expanded his view beyond the particular location
        • danger
        • emphasizes “this” – why? Marks a change in the poem? It gets dark
        • trying to explain the beauty of death?
          • Everything that happened already happened – repeats, constantly
          • Man-made imitations of mountains, with powerful associations – city of death
        • No obvious rhyme scheme, but there are rhymes
          • Stream of water making you just think – stream of consciousness – no real logic – irregular rhyme scheme – one idea leads to the next – not trying to structure it in a traditional way – feels like a flowing river
            • But it all kind of falls into place if you read it with the meter
          • Rhythm
            • Iambic pentameter
            • Provides a loose structure that allows freedom for imagery
          • Lots of consonance and assonance

 

Word choice or diction

  • Pairs “gloom” and “glittering” – could be describing night and day in nature?
  • More contrast (in order, moves through the poem): high/low, man-made/natural, life/death, order/chaos
    • Comparing the way we experience the view of the mountain – the structure of the mountain – some parts of it are obscure – metaphor for the human mind?
Categories
Glossary

Symbolism

 

Symbolism

 

Symbolism is defined by “expressing the intangible and invisible means by means of visible and sensuous representations.” In modern literature there are countless examples of symbolism as writers are inspired to express many ideas rather than one. Futhermore, readers are encouraged to practice ambiguity when they discover symbolic interpretations. Basic things such as color can contain symbolic meaning such as Red for death, danger, and panic whilst Green represents wealth, nourishment, and pleasure. Thus narrative’s consist wholly of symbols, motifs, and underlying themes.

 

We see examples of symbolism in Milton’s “Paradise Lost”

 

Milton uses “Brightness and Light” in symbolic representations of God in his epic poem.

 

“If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d

From him, who in the happy Realms of Light [ 85 ]

Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst out-shine

Myriads though bright: If he Whom mutual league,

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope

And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,

Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd [ 90 ]

In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest

From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger prov’d

He with his Thunder: and till then who knew

The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those”

 

References:

https://www.britannica.com/art/Symbolism-literary-and-artistic-movement

Categories
Glossary

Sublime

Sublime 

Sublime refers to the beautiful, excellence, and awe. When we see the “sublime” we immediately realize that we are engulfed by a emotional and physical sensation caused by the environment or certain experience. To many travelers we experience the sublime often just by interacting with foreigners and immersing ourselves in different cultures. When we experience sublime moments they might spark an allusion to a positive memory or an earlier expedition .Getting off the beaten path is an achievable path so long we truly seek it and are prepared for the consequences. Travel literature written by Wollstonecraft includes several first hand encounters of the sublime.

 

We see an example of the sublime in Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.”

 

“Entering amongst the cliffs, we were sheltered from the wind, warm sunbeams began to play, streams to flow, and the groves of pines

diversified the rocks. Sometimes they became suddenly bare and sublime. Once in particular, after mounting the most terrific

precipice, we had to pass through a tremendous defile, where the closing chasm seemed to threaten us with constant destruction,

when, turning quickly, verdant meadows and a beautiful lake relieved and charmed me eyes.”

 

References

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/what-is-the-sublime-r1109449

https://perceptivetravel.com/blog/2011/05/17/some-thoughts-on-the-sublime/?doing_wp_cron=1520807058.3378660678863525390625

 

 

Categories
Blog Assignments

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the intellectual Beauty of the Nature, Mont Blanc

I read the chapter of “Sisters” from the book “Young Romantics” by Daisy Hay. The chapter talked about the relationship between Mary Shelley, the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and her sisters Claire and Fanny through their own stories and stories of others.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was first married with Harriet Westbrook, a poet, in 1811. Shelley then fell in love with Mary Shelley, an English novelist who finally became his second wife. He eloped with Mary and abandoned Harriet during her second pregnancy and left her in great misery. She was under great pressure and decided to end her life while pregnant with her baby with an unknown father. Although she left her suicide note to Shelley and begged him to leave their children to her sister Eliza, her last wish was not granted at the end.

Claire Clairmont is the step sister of Mary. She was with Mary during her elopement with Shelley. Claire soon fell in love with Shelley too. She envied Mary’s relationship with Shelley and the life she had with him. Mary, of course, did not want to share her love with Shelley with her step sister. Claire left with a broken heart but she did not lose her passion for love and kept seeking for a relationship with others. Later, she set her eye on Lord Byron, a poet and politician. Byron’s wife left him because of his immoral care and love for his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Claire targeted the wounded man and started writing to him. Finally, they met in London and started their relationship. She quickly fell in love with him while Byron was cold with her after the novelty has passed.

In order to improve the relationship with Byron, Claire introduced Byron to Shelley, whom had been admired by Byron for some time. Both men recognized and respected each other’s talent and quickly became good friends. They spent time together at a small chalet named Montalegre which was owned by Shelley at the shore of a lake. Their friendship grew fast. Byron suggested that everyone should write a ghost story, which was the inspiring point when Mary started to develop the idea for Frankenstein. Shelley played a key role in the development of Frankenstein and acted as Mary’s editor and agent. Because of the immoral and dishonorable relationship between Shelley and Mary, their work of Frankenstein was first condemned and censured. However, when Frankenstein had been published, it proved that they worked so well together and they gained their respect back from the public.

Mary had a conversation with Shelley and Byron about the idea for the beginning of her novel, Frankenstein. She shared the reading and conversations into poetry. Shelley, Mary and Claire travelled to Chamouni, the village from which intrepid tourists could explore the Mont Blanc glacier. Mont Blanc later became the title of one of his most famous poems. Actually, the conversation with Byron about the first generation of Romantic poets had influenced Shelley’s poem, “Mont Blanc”, in which he rewrote Coleridge’s conception of a Christian sublime, which was transformed into a symbol of the limits of human knowledge.

When they returned from Charmouni, Claire found out that she was pregnant with a child conceived with Byron. As soon as Shelley learnt about her pregnancy, he took on responsibility for her. He helped Claire to negotiate with Byron about the baby’s future. Unfortunately, these negotiations disrupted the friendship between them. Claire realized there was a gap of social status difference between she and Byron. Finally, they all agreed that Byron would send for the child when it was old enough to leave its mother and that Claire would have the right to see it when she desired. Although this arrangement seems to be weirdly vague, it was better than Byron’s first suggestion which asked Augusta, his half-sister to handle Claire’s baby. After Byron admitted to Claire, his immoral relationship with Augusta, Claire was totally disappointed and left London with Mary and Shelley with her broken heart.

Fanny Imlay is another half-sister of Mary. They sent letters to each other often. In Fanny’s last two letters to Mary, she described and accounted England’s state as ‘evil’ and ‘misery’ and cried out for help to fix Godwin family’s financial problem. However, Shelley refused to help. Fanny accused Shelley as being irresponsible. She was deeply melancholic and depressed. She killed herself with an overdose of laudanum. Her last letter to Godwin was somehow torn by someone, to avoid the signature off and thus a formal identification of the body. The Godwins were spared of the humiliation of having their daughter publicly named as suicide without the signature on. Since there was no identification of the body, Funny’s body was interred in an unmarked grave after the inquest.

Leigh Hunt, an agoraphobia English critic, a poet and a writer. He published the ‘Story of Rimini’ which is the tale of Rimini, Francesca, who was trapped in a passionless marriage and finds solace in the arms of her brother-in-law, Paulo. When Hunt wrote the story, he was actually having, his sister-in-law, Bess Hunt, living in their house. The tale somehow implies the relationship between he and Bess. On the other hand, he emphasized that his wife, Marianne Hunt, who had helped him to overcome his agoraphobia was the love of his life. He said that both women are essential to his happiness while he ignored how cruel he was to both Marianne and Bess. His tale soon became subject of public comment and so did the relationship between he and Bess.

When Hunt’s family was in a desperate financial situation, he wrote an article called “Young Poets” and published by The Examiner. The article drew the attention of three young writers, including John Keats, John Hamilton Reynolds and Shelley. Shelley had retained his respect for Hunt at the beginning. Later Hunt wrote to Shelley to draw this attention to “Young Poets” and mentioned his financial distress in the letter. Shelley then sent a substantial amount of money to help him out of his difficulties. This has become a juncture of their friendship.

After the death of his first wife, Harriet, Shelley wanted to claim his two children back from the Westbrook family. The Westbrooks refused and both sides began to prepare for a custody battle in the courts. That time, Hunt gave Shelley constant source of support. Their friendship was strengthened by crisis and adversity and reinforced his confidence to win the custody of his children.

From the Chapter, Mary seemed to be indifferent to her half sisters. They were not closed and did not have much affection for each other. Shelley did not show much concern for the two sisters too though he took up the negotiation with Byron after learning about her pregnancy. The Chapter tells stories of the sisters and Hunt and Bess but does not seem to any link to the analysis of the poem “Mont Blanc”.

The poem “Mont Blanc” was composed after Shelley’s journey with Mary and Claire. The idea of “Mont Blanc” came from a conception of a Christian sublime which refers to a symbol of the limits of human knowledge. Shelley praised human knowledge as the intellectual beauty of nature of the Mont Blanc. In his poem, he wrote, “The everlasting universe of things / Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, / Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— / Now lending splendour, where from secret springs / The source of human thought its tribute brings / Of water”. This canto implies that human knowledge contributes to human’s exploration of more unknown things in the universe. This knowledge, as the biggest secret of human technique, might bring a brighter, darker or vaguer future to human but human could do nothing else without this.

Shelley also uses “Mont Blanc” to describe the beauty of human’s life cycle from birth to death, as the intellectual sounds and views its power of nature. “Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:- the power is there, / The still and solemn power of any sights, / And many sounds, and much of life and death.” The word “power” is referred as the beauty of human knowledge and transformed into the symbol of the Christian sublime.

Question:

  • Why would Shelley send a large amount of money to help Hunt instead of Godwin family?
  • What is the meaning of “Christian sublime”?
  • What do you think about the relationship of Bess, Marianne and Hunt?
Categories
In-class writing Notes

3/8 notes and in-class writing

Subject: What is this poem about?

 

  • Historical context: great famine, nightmare, post-apocalyptic – the world was literally dark, the sky was full of ash
  • Begins as a dream – imagines the end of the world
  • Men forgot their passions through anticipation of destruction
  • Fear of the end of the world
  • People burned the world for warmth and light
  • Loss of hope
  • Wild beasts were tame
  • Snakes lost their venom
  • People ate animals, and then each other
  • Last two people were enemies – saw each other and screamed and died
  • Darkness conquered the Universe
  • Earth was a lump of death and chaos
  • Rivers and lakes and oceans all stood still
  • It’s about the end of the world and how people reacted
  • Dark nature of humanity – killing to survive – when there’s no hope anyway
  • We don’t see humanity banding together the way that they do in other post-apocalyptic visions – for example, War of the Worlds, The Walking Dead
  • 28 Days Later – dark
  • Mad Max – world runs out of water – fighting over water
  • Is there a cause for the apocalypse in “Darkness”? Not explicitly – just a “dream” – only “cause” is Byron’s imagination

 

 

 

Form: What is the form of this poem? Consider meter, rhyme scheme, structure, and so on.

 

  • No rhyme scheme
  • Felt more like a speech than a poem – no real pausing point – first-person narration – not divided into stanzas, just one long block of text
  • Iambic pentameter – lots of Shakespeare – Paradise Lost – could be writing into the epic tradition? Or into that elevated kind of heightened emotional register
  • Could the rhythm be mimicking the way your heart beats faster in the dark?
  • Unrhymed iambic pentameter = blank verse
  • Lots of dashes – creates a pause – caesura (that’s a pause in the middle of a line) – processing time – dramatic effect – both reflection and anticipation – dark word generally comes right before or after – give something dark and then jump – how does the pause change the meaning of the phrase it interrupts?
  • Almost feels stream-of-consciousness – lots of ands and very few periods – no real grammatical structures
  • Like dreams – the connective tissue is grammatical rather than narrative
  • Not enough time to take a breath – build anxiety, feel like you’re running for your life – reinforces the dreamer’s effort to hold onto the dream narrative? – when you don’t pause you don’t think – not necessarily rational – but would this undermine the warning – there’s no reason things will be like this? – but it’s a dream to him but it could also already happen – reflecting panic, or preventing us from seeing that panic isn’t necessary
  • Where do the full stops fall – is there significance? – builds from nature to man to the universe

 

Word choice or diction: What is the tone? Is there any repetition? What imagery is used?

 

  • Darkness is gendered female – why? Mother Nature – kills off everything, all human kind, all nature, rivers, lakes, chaos of hard clay? Mother Nature can be cruel?
  • Hell on earth – hell has spread to earth
  • -less words – negating everything – Mother Nature gives life and takes it away – emphasizes the void? – picture the whole world – mentions all the things that are around, and then takes it all away – connection to what it normally is, and then it isn’t
  • Chaotic
  • People who live near volcanoes are the exception – they’re the only people who don’t need to burn things for light
  • Last line – even if we weren’t here, it would continue as it was – without wind and rain and clouds there’s no hope of anything growing back – clouds usually block sunlight, but in this context there’s nothing for the clouds to block – even nature is sort of lacking in purpose
  • Why are some words capitalized?

Prompt: Use this brain storm to begin analyzing the poem. Explain the significance/meaning of one or more elements we observed in this poem.

Categories
Blog Assignments

Gillen D’Arcy Wood, “The Year Without a Summer” a Year of “Darkness”, Lord Byron

Mt Tambora Information Graphic

The Wrath of Mt. Tambora

A very poignant phrase that begins this article goes as followed “To be alive in the years 1816-1818, almost anywhere in the world, meant to be hungry.” Even though it was named “A year without a summer.” The duration of the effects of the centralized disaster felt around the world lasted approximately for three years starting in 1815. It was considered a weather crisis. Agriculture failed, nothing was growing from the ground and what did grow was often washed away through terrible flooding throughout many regions. People ate what they found or stayed their hunger by eating things that had no nutritional value, for example, peasants in Yunnan, China would suck on white clay. Imagine sucking on chalk because there was nothing else. It was rough not only ecologically but financially, sociologically, and economically. Despite this there were a few bright spots that would turn out to be the most enduring discoveries and advancements to this day.

Firstly, what caused this 3-year period of darkness? In the time between 1815-1818 the global climate was deteriorating rapidly before bouncing back like it never happened. On April 10, 1815 Mount Tambora volcano erupted on the island of Sambawa in the Dutch East Indies in what is now known as Indonesia. It was the most notable volcano event in recorded history as well as having the largest eruption in the past 10,000 years. It spewed approximately 43 kilometers, that’s 26.7 miles of gases and ash upwards into the stratosphere and had fallout of approximately 1300 kilometer, 807.8 miles out into the distance. The entirety of Indonesia and the East India regions were under cover of darkness. It The eruption created sulfate gases that formed into an aerial dust cloud that created a massive debris fall of 100 cubic kilometers, which is the visual equivalent of 40,000 times as big as The Great Pyramid of Giza. It not only obscured the sun over Indonesia but continued to circle the earth and cause a great disruption over weather patterns and weather precipitation for the next few years. Average temperatures also fell by a margin between 3°F and 6°F degrees. In Indonesia alone, the direct impact caused 90,000 deaths, the highest in volcano related deaths.

Major Changes Bring Major Pains

Mt. Tambora altered history for many people. The 3-year long food crisis was a weakening blow to colonization efforts, giving way to local revolts against western influences, piracy, and slavery. It disrupted the monsoons that created the condition for typhus and cholera which itself spread throughout Bengal in 1817 and further across the entire globe, becoming an epidemic that killed millions. It spread so far due to the massive migrations of people in search for land and food within distant nations. In China There was a revolt against the Qing Dynasty that was the catalyst for the opium trade to begin in Yunnan and later poppy production became a popular marketable venture. In Western Europe many people were displaced from their native homes and or invaded their neighbors in Russian or headed further out to America. This time was not without adventure as there was a huge rush toward the North Pole when it was discovered the ice caps were melting and artic exploration became a distraction for many enterprising people in the nineteenth century. Farmers in North America left for more promising prospects in Ohio, Pennsylvania and the Midwest which became a major agricultural leader for the U.S.A and the Atlantic world. You can imagine the price of staple foods like rice were much higher than what many could afford.

Poor climate conditions lead to poor agriculture. Image Courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine.

This bleak picture of the period is not without a silver lining. Amidst the homelessness, diseases, famine, death and despair there were political and healthcare reforms happening in Ireland, humanitarian efforts taking place in France where authorities helped maintain the affordability of bread during the food shortages despite the tense relationship between the citizens and those in rulership post Napoleon’s rule, and many others who followed suit in the reforms of those in political powers as they realized and rekindled their responsibility towards those of the lower classes. Although it is the lower classes who took the brunt of the disaster and of whom we do not have sufficient recorded materials to adequately analyze the scale of this three-year event. The upper classes in contrast, left plenty behind for historians to pour over because the upper class was both educated and literate. These records took many forms most often in the romantic literary genre that would describe the atmosphere and the sentiments during that time, often disguised within a story. Other times not disguised at all. Many such stories would bloom from this crisis. One such is in the form of a poem aptly named “Darkness” written by Lord Byron.

Visual Depiction of Lord Byron

Of Poems and Dreams, of Nightmares in Scenes

Lord Byron was an aristocrat and a traveling companion to Mary Shelley and he wrote this poem after experiencing a particularly dark day when on any normal day it should have been sunny outside. The poem is about dreaming of a dream that turns out to be a living nightmare. During such a dream listlessness takes hold of men and they forget themselves and what drives them, spending their time praying for the light to return. Time seems to have been lost in a never-ending cycle, especially when they are hardly able to see the sun in the sky. A desolate time where watchfires were your only source of light and heat in the cold. Anything flammable was used to keep the fires going. Furnishings were fuel as well as parts of your home. Whole cities were smoldering for warmer days. There was no resolution in sight for those who survived the aftermath of the volcano. Regular food was scarce, and people took to eating once considered wild game such as birds and snakes alike. I did find the part about snakes quite interesting and it reminded me a bit of Paradise Lost.

“/…/the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.”

The snakes twining itself around the helpless flightless birds who are unable to fly are both “punished” by a hungry human. This part stood out during my second time reading the poem. Byron also wrote of war that ceased. Who has the vigor to fight on an empty stomach? It was a moment where all earth was one in thought and direction driven by the single purpose of hunger. Where there was no master over beasts and the beasts became the masters out of sheer survival instinct. Dogs were turning on their masters, famine, a different kind of beast, was consuming the flesh of the people and those that escaped its emaciating grasp would fall dead in their tracks. Dread sails forth from the following words.

“/…/The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.”

Although I find this next line to be the most striking on several levels.

“Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.”

Not only does it refer to the climate crisis, but it can also refer to the fact that the universe is actually a deep expense of black and just is. There’s no sense in fighting the universe it will continue to be and doesn’t need help to do what it is there to do. The universe could also refer to the Earth itself as the self-regulating entity it is and all they could do was wait it out in the hopes that things went back to how they were which they did. It’s almost like the Earth had major cold for 3 years and was congested and stuck in the bed of space suffering from hot flashes and the chills that took a long time to heal.

  1. What would you do if we were in a three-year food shortage?
  2. Are we adequately prepared to handle such a disaster today?
  3. What stood out to you while reading “Darkness”?

 

Work Cited

Wood, Gillen D’Arcy. “1816, The Year without a Summer.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. March 06, 2018.

To Learn more about what happened with Mt. Tambora do visit the Smithsonian Magazine.

Categories
Notes

Notes 3/6

Subject: What is the subject of this poem? What is it about?

  • The dangers of bringing a stranger home
  • People are not necessarily what they seem
    • Initially seems that Geraldine is innocent, but she comes to seem evil – people who seem good aren’t necessarily
    • Wariness of blind trust
  • Christabel is in the woods praying by a tree, she finds Geraldine, who says she was kidnapped by a group of men – there are implications that something worse happened – Christabel takes pity on her and brings her home – something bad happens – supernatural confrontation with Christabel’s dead mom – weird naked sleep-over – what is the symbolism of the wine? – did Christabel drug her, or…?
  • No one really knows what’s going on

 

Form: What is the form of the poem?

  • Just cuts off – fragmentary, unfinished, left to readers to imaginatively complete
  • Rhyme scheme – a bit sing-song-y (especially toward the beginning) – not quite regular
  • Meter or rhythm – not quite regular
  • Scansion
  • Why does the rhythm change in particular lines? Could it mark the transition from speaker to speaker?
  • Why does the 4-accent rule break on “a wel-a-day! / … / These words did say”? Could it mark a change of tone in the poem? Or some kind of transformation?
  • Enjambment – makes you expect something else from the conclusion of the sentence

 

Word choice or diction: What do you notice about Coleridge’s choice of words? What’s the tone of the poem? Is there any repetition, whether of a particular word or of an image?

  • “lovely”
  • “Jesu Maria!”
  • “oak tree”
    • what is the significance of an oak tree? Solid, strong, been around for a while? Could indicate something about the power dynamics of the characters?
  • Very gendered – Geraldine and Christabel are both women, even the mastiff is female – call Geradline “maiden” often
  • Speech, power of speech – ability to tell / knowledge / sin
    • Sameness and difference, doubling, self?

 

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Anya Taylor, “Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ and the Phantom Soul”

“Christabel” is a juxtaposition of characters and gender roles of which are at play. Christabel is motherless at birth and represents the common downfall of females that have little to no support and are eager to obey. Christabel prays in the woods in relation to the dream she had the night before about marriage, during her ritual Geraldine intervenes by asking for her aid. Geraldine is the daughter of a nobleman and a victim of kidnapping coincidentally situated where Christabel was praying. This brings all of Christabel’s attention to escorting Geraldine back to her home.

Geraldine spends the night in Christabel’s night and both individuals spend time discussing their personal backgrounds. Christabel reveals to Geraldine the death of her mother at birth as Geraldine sympathizes and wishes her mother was here now too. Geraldine uses this moment to infiltrate the emotions of Christabel and asserts her that her prayers will repay the kindness that was shown to her. As Christabel undressed and  readys herself to sleep although she is unsuccessful due to worries about Geraldine. It’s as if a supernatural spell was put onto Christabel to accept Geraldine’s presence. Later in the morning Sir Leoline the widower, is introduced to Geraldine. In fact Sir Leoline was close aquantices with “Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine” who is the father to Geraldine. Although the boyhood friendship didn’t end in good terms this opportunity to aid Geraldine was the perfect opportunity to mend it. Geraldine asks to be escorted back to her home although this becomes a dilemma as “Bracy” the bard has dreams of Christabel as a bird being strangled by a green snake. Sir Leoline chooses to disobey his own daughter’s wishes in order to execute the wishes of Geraldine, an individual who he has just met.

Coleridge’s main theme of this play explores the vulnerability of motherless women. The author was able to bring light to the life of females that he encountered during his period. If we recall Wollstonecrafts “Vindication of the Rights of Women” we explore a similar theme of women at a young age treated superficially and were taught to accept a man made hierarchy between males and females. Although, the power of “reason” is what creates us equal in the ability to decide what is best for our own self interests. Why do women have to prove their capabilities in this era? Do the insecurities of men encourage their defiance against feminism? These are still relevant questions society is trying to comprehend. Another motif Coleridge explores is the supernatural realm, particulary in reference to Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and the story of Adam and Eve. Geraldine puts Christabel under a spell the first night of their encounter with  sinful intent. Whilst Geraldine is amist her prayers the two see eachother naked and sleep in the same bed, this causes us to question the corruptiveness qualities attached to Geraldine. She continues to persuade Christabel in believing that a spell is in control of her, the reader may infer that this evil spirit is possibly Geraldine. After Christabel introduces Geraldine to her father, Sir Leoline is asked to escort Geraldine back home on the very day Bracy the bard dreamed of Christabel’s own demise. A vision so vivid of her as an “ailing bird” being strangled by a serpent just as in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.’

Sir Leoline is conflicted in deciding to help his own daughter or agree to the wishes of Geraldine. Leoline’s decision to nullify his daughter’s decision represents the threat of a charming lady such as Geraldine in the presence of a widower. Coleridge is pointing readers to question the roles of women in society and “fear” their power over decision making. The supernatural is a reacurring theme in “Christabel” and more specifically witch like qualities that Geraldine posseses can suggest that Christabel may just be dreaming of this figure. The “fall of grace” in Adam and Eve can be correlated as to when Christabel is praying in the woods. She tends to Geraldine as she stands helpless in the “Garden of Eden” enabling her to deceive Christabel with a false disguise of purity.  

Anya Taylor focuses on the vulnerability of both characters especially at the beginning of their interactions (Page 712.)”It is certainly true that Christabel assertively wills her own adventure up to line 230. She leaves the castle at midnight of her own will. She is not prevented by guards or nurses from leaving the walls and going alone into a deep forest. She is left alone to do as she wishes; no one notices her absence or cares for her, despite the tag “whom her father loves so well” (line 24). As Christabel is seen praying for the knight of her dreams we acknowledge further her sense of loneliness. Mixed with the sudden fasle presence of purity and helplessness (Geraldine) a disaster was bound to occur. Anya Taylor mentions that Coleridge’s attempt to progress the feminist movement may not be his only motive but to provide readers with a “thought experiment” [Page 708] enabling numerous theories to be viable. Anya states on [Page 708], “The poem narrates incidents in the emotional life of a young woman; it shows her acting and being acted upon; its segments— written at different times—circle backwards to address questions that had been left unanswered. The poem, part of Coleridge’s lifelong meditation on the vulnerabilities of will and agency, is in many ways a female version of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

 

  1. Do you think feminism is the sole theme of Christabel? Or are there several motifs to explore?
  2. Are the works of Coleridge and that of Wollstonecraft’s relatable?
  3. What do you think helped influenced Sir Leoline’s decision to betray his own daughter?