I am a scholar and so every once in a while I have to write something. Sometimes it’s an essay, sometimes a paper, sometimes just a summary of what I read. Some of it is fun (especially when you can come up with your own thesis) but most of it is dreary work that just gets you in a bad mood…
Okay, I may exeggerate because I am not my best just today… It’s my birthday tomorrow, though, and I am so gonna enjoy it and not think a second about the paper(s) I have to do. *smile*
Anyways, I’m gonna post some of my essays here for those interested. I guess, it’s useless to ask you not to use them, though I’d rather you didn’t. I know that sometimes you’re in a tight spot and the only person you have to blame is yourself because you had been plain lazy. I’ve been there (of course, I would never cheat, I earn all my grades, good and bad), but please, if you have to copy, at least, read the text beforehand, because some answer to a question and not necessarily the one your teacher/instructor wants you to answer. Just a bit of friendly advice.
Well, without further delay…
Suicidal Ambiguity
- or better reasons to kill oneself
“Suicide is bad,” is a conviction of Western societies, it is ingrained in Christian religion – which is the dominant religion in the Western world we live in – and it is probably not something we would question when actually experiencing the loss of a loved one who took his or her life. But in the hypothetical construct of a literary thesis we are allowed, no, we are compelled to question this conviction, this convention.
To help us do so we are to work with the texts that give us some inside on the circumstances, we are to quote persons of higher academic standing than we are at this moment in time. They will help us to come to a conclusion. They will – hopefully – tell us, why Edna Pontellier killed herself.
But what, if these texts only tell us their part of the story, what if they do not answer our question or lead us in a wrong direction, what if these texts are hints that could lead us to an answer or any answer we are looking for. It is not that I doubt the necessity of secondary sources; I am just not convinced that the sources we have been reading so far will lead me to the answer I am looking for. The sources are primarily about New Orleans, the novel takes place in New Orleans. But does New Orleans really play an integral part in the suicide of Edna Pontellier? Or is it merely an outer circumstance?
I will argue in my essay that the sources we have read so far are not the answer to Edna’s suicide, but I will also show why they could be considered as an answer, before I give the reason I think is plausible.
Edna Pontellier is an ambiguous character. She is a woman, but is she a woman in Grace King’s sense of the word? Is she a woman like New Orleans?
One could argue that she is. Though not born in New Orleans, she tries hard to be a part of it but seems to finally succeed when she stops trying. She becomes a “frivolous woman,” (King, XIV) a woman who laughs. Her similarities with the city become clearer as the novel progresses. Her sexual liberation may start at the beginning of the novel but is not complete until the end. Water acts as a metaphor of this liberation – in the end she is naked and engulfed in it.
Edna starts acting upon her desires when she gets intimate with Adobin but he is not who she desires, he is only the means to satiate her need for physical contact. But as she observes close to the end: “To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it is somebody else. It makes no difference to me…” (Chopin, 108) Even Robert who she claims to love seems to have little hold on her. One could easily argue that she desires him more than loves him; her love could be called an illusion.
Kate Chopin relates their relationship in these terms: “Her seductive voice, together with his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had deprived him of every impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her.” (Chopin, 103) She is portrayed as the seductress, as the sexual being while he is a lover. But he also wants to possess her and this is something that Edna cannot comply with. Even the man who she claims she loves is not allowed to keep her.
Sexuality, frivolity, seduction – Edna discovers these things after the return from the island. Robert may have been the seed Edna’s desire grew of but he is not there to harvest the fruits of his labor, and after his return from Mexico he seems overwhelmed by her desire, a little frightened, one could argue, not man enough to receive what she is willing to give him.
Edna’s personal history, however, seems to negate the connection – the sisterhood – with the city she lives in since it is not the city she was born in. Grace King herself says that birth place equals mother, and Edna is very much a Kaintuck, though she may not be “a hardy Western pioneer.” (King, XVII) She is married to a Creole, but Kate Chopin describes her as “an American Woman, with a small infusion of French which seemed to have been lost in delution.” (Chopin, 6) Adèle warns Robert that she is not one of them, that she may yet take him seriously when he should not be. Adèle may underestimate Robert’s feelings here but she is certainly right about Edna. Edna may at different times try to adopt character traits she admires in a Creole, but she can never become one. One may argue that her whole transformation is a attempt to become a Creole but I think it is rather her sexual, sensual, independent self that is trying to free itself. That is not to say that Creoles do not embody these traits but Creoles are not the only ones capable of having them. She is not a Creole and she may even show a little contempt toward the culture and also the city it infiltrates.
Which brings us to Grace King’s contemporary George Washington Cable who had more than a little contempt for the Creoles that still inhabited New Orleans at the time Kate Chopin’s novel was set. Edna was married to a Creole which may or may not have been her first contact with this culture, but even though Léonce likes displaying his savoir vivre as a Creole he is not a typical representative of the culture and does not seem thoroughly at home within it. Edna is said to never before have “been thrown so intimately among them” (Chopin, 10) before her vacation on the Grand Isle and as her husband only spends the weekends at the island he does not seem to enjoy himself much within the company – though he can be said to at least understand it. Does Edna then dislike them, feel slighted by them, envious of their lives?
For once, she singles them out as their friends and lovers. Robert, as well as Adobin, are Creoles, but they have more in common with the “handsome, proud, illiterate, elegant [...], slow, [a] seeker of office and military commission” (Cable,137) than Edna’s husband who is industrious to a fault and likes to display his property and wealth with grandeur. Adèle Ratignolle becomes a very close friend, and she is the ultimate illustration of a Creole woman, being described by Chopin as “the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm,” that “her beauty was all there” (Chopin, 9) and Edna “liked to sit and gaze at her fair companion as she might look upon a faultless Madonna.”(Chopin, 11) That does not seem like Edna did not like Creoles or envied them more than liked them. Neither seem they forced into “civil and political fellowship with the detested Américain.” It’s a mutual adoration, mixed with more complicated feelings that different cultural upbringings might inflict.
If the Creole culture and its most vibrant representitives (I will not even suggest that Edna’s love for Robert might have driven her to suicide because that would simplify the novel to old clichées) were not reasons for Edna’s suicide it might be looked for in Roach’s text about performativity of the Manifest Destiny. Edna most definitely plays roles at different times in the novel. “Wife” is a role she detests but has chosen for herself, “mother” is a role she only fills reluctantly if at all (“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman.” Chopin, 9), and “Creole” – as we have seen – does not mix well with her “habitual reserve.” (Chopin, 14). Maybe “woman” is a the most fitting description of the role Edna wants to play. The integral scene here is the last dinner at the house at Esplanade which can be seen as her mocking her role as “wife”. She plays hostess to people whom her husband would never have invited, she displays all his property and even wears an embarrassingly expensive piece of jewellery which her husband has just send her. She performs a sort of “divorce” here, she puts her “freedom” (or what she perceives as freedom) on display and maybe this is the reason it is not taken seriously by her audience. Had she just run away in the middle of the night, maybe even to Mexico to seek out Robert, her intentions to free herself would have seem more serious to others. The point here, though, is that her freedom is an inner development, and she wants to make it visible to the people around her; though clumsyly demonstrated it is still deeply felt.
Madeleine in her criticism of my earlier draft of this essay has pointed out to me that Edna’s suicide can be seen as her own Manifest Destiny, her southward expansion toward the water that finally freed her. I do think she has a point in calling it Edna’s destiny but I think the term “Manifest Destiny” is too loaded with male prophesy. What men sought was land, riches, the promise to own everythings that spanned from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Finding themselves were the least of their concerns, since they already owned themselves.
Which finally brings us to Walter Johnson and slavery. And again, we have a term that does not work for me as a discription of Edna’s life, though she might have thought it an accurate one:
In the book Léonce clearly sees Edna as part of his property (“‘You are burned beyond recognition,’ he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.” Chopin, 4), the setting in the South as well as the close proximity to the former Slave markets (“… they began in the neighborhood where today Chartres Street meets broad, boulevarded Esplanade,” Johnson, 2) support this picture. Moreover, Edna sees herself as a slave, but this might only be for lack of a better word. There is no word for woman’s status compared to man’s stutus in the course of history. I think, Edna’s kind of “slavery” (in lack of a better word), and her kind of “freedom,” her perception of it, are very different from the definitions a former slave would use.
She is not property, her body is still her body, she is not whipped into obedience, she is not shackled to her children, yet she is not “free.” To say that women did not have the kind of freedom men had is stating the obvious. Still, Edna tries to gain this freedom, this going where she wants to go, this following her passions either into the arms of Adobin or into her atelier where she paints or to Madame Reizs. She feels she has a right to this kind of freedom, but it is only so long as her husband lets her live this freedom that she can actually experience it. It is not only Léonce who binds her, though, and it is not only marriage which is the shackles that won’t let her go. She is bound into her role in society, she can’t be free because nobody will see her the way she envisions herself – as an independent woman: Léonce arranges for the house to be under construction, so as to present the picture of his intact manhood to society, and Edna does not defy him: Adèle asks her where the children and Léonce will fit into her new house, never assuming that Edna would want to live there on her own. It is also Adèle who makes Edna’s obligations clear to her: how can you be free if you are a mother? How can you sacrifice your children for your (indecent) grasp for freedom?
How can she, indeed? Edna does not answer this question but instead fulfills her “destiny,” sheds the shackles of “slavery,” and sets herself “free.” The water is as much representation of her childhood (when she ran out into the fields to escape the social obligation of church-going), as it is sexual liberation as the sea enacts the embrace of a lover (Chopin, 14) and her own emancipation from male dominance. It is not New Orleans she runs from, not the Creole that makes her take her life. She is not a slave, she is not performing anymore. Her suicide is more deeply enrooted in feminism than the texts we have so far read allow us to interprete. That is why I had to defy them, to seek a more convincing truth beyond them. Edna killed herself to set herself free.
Sources
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, ed. Margo Culley (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994)
George Washington Cable, The Creoles of Louisiana (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1884)
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Grace King, New Orleans: The Place and the People (New York; London: The Macmillan Company, 1917)
Joseph Roach, City of the Dead (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
This is one of my first essays of university level – I guess that would equal college-level here but we don’t make the distinction in Germany.
It is about language and uses of language in literature. I got a 1,3 for it (which would equal an A- in the U.S. but don’t kid yourself, it would have been a straight A in the U.S., German instructors are harsher graders).
All Sorts
Find an example of an author using unconventional spelling and/or non-standard language as a means of indicating the social class of her or his characters. You might like to compare an earlier and a more modern work of literature. Is it always the characters from the lower social classes whose speech is marked?
In 1913 Edward Morgan Forster began writing his novel “Maurice”. He finished it the following year, but due to the topic – male homosexuality – it was only published in 1971- after the author’s death.
There are probably books in which marked speech appears more frequently or more elaborately, but it was the first book I thought of when I read the assignment. “Scudder” immediately came to my mind, and although he is not the only character whose language has been marked by Forster, his is the most obvious case.
Alec Scudder is the gamekeeper at the Durham estate Penge and as such feels obliged to show respect to his employers as well as their friends. It is thus he talks to Maurice Hall at their first conversation: “’I’m sure I’m very sorry I failed to give you and Mr London full satisfaction, sir.’” He’s referring to a situation, in which he had refused to take the tip offered by Maurice.
Later – after he and Maurice had spent the night together – Scudder feels free to fall back into the pattern of his usual speech in written words (“’…I said the boathouse as the ladder as taken away and the woods is to damp to lie down…’”) as well as in spoken language (“’Oh that wor only Mill, that wor Milly’s cousin…’”). Because of his education – however low it might seem compared to Maurice’s – he is able to adjust his language according to the situation. Still, it is obvious that he takes pride in himself and his upbringing and that to him the differences between himself and Maurice vanishes, as they become lovers.
Maurice Hall comes from the upper middle class and earns his living as a stock broker. Although he received much the same education as his friend Clive Durham, there are considerable differences in their social statuses and intellectual abilities. These differences are marked by Forster mainly in the distinction of vocabulary. An exclamation such as: “’Hall, why this thusness?’” would not be something uttered by Maurice, since he is neither intellectual nor philosophical. His answer is a proof thereof: ”’Religion means a lot to me,’ bluffed Maurice. ‘Because I say so little you think I don’t feel. I care a lot.’”
All the above are examples of how class or degree of education mark speech, but there are other sorts of aspects of one’s personality that distinguish persons from one another. Early in E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice eats lunch with a fellow student – Chapman –, the dean, and the dean’s cousin Risley. This young man’s language is thus described by the author: “…, and when he spoke, which was continually, he used strong yet unmanly superlatives.” His statements are also marked by exclamation marks and words written in italics. Chapman tries to make fun of the man, since his language indicates to him that Risley is a homosexual. He is not very successful though, since once again the difference between intellect and mere education is stressed – Chapman belonging to the second group.
It’s also interesting to note how the educated English male has no means to refer to a homosexual other than acknowledging a popular case: ”’I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.’” Maurice tells Dr. Barry and later asks Mr Lasker Jones if there was a scientific term for his “trouble”. This indicates the inability of a moral society to name “immoral” behaviour.
These are markings of language as I have found them in E. M. Forster’s “Maurice” and they mostly refer to social class or education. But as one browses through modern literature one is able to find even more ways to mark language, and Terry Pratchett is a master therein. His approach is sometimes different from Forster’s because – though there are social classes and differences in their languages – the main focus lies on the different species, described in his Disc World novels.
There are for example dwarfs. In “Men at Arms”, Corporal Carrot of the Night Watch presents a gift to his superior Captain Vimes, who is resigning (or so he thinks). Engraved into the watch are the following words: “’A Watch From, Your Old Freinds In The Watch’ Carrot had been behind that, sure enough. Vimes had grown to recognize that blindness to the position of the “i”s and “e”s and that wanton cruelty to the common comma.” Though dwarfs usually use Standard English, their writing style is somehow eccentric.
Trolls on the other hand rarely seem to bother with anything but rudimental speech. That is not because they are dumb per se but because their brains work better in a cold climate. Since other species encounter them in cities rather than in their own environment (the mountains), they are considered dumb. Thus they are often reduced to articulation in terms like this: “Detritus sniggered. ‘Him too little to be a guard,’ he said.” Because of their inability to express themselves properly and because of their sheer bulk, trolls are usually set to work at the docks lifting heavy things rather than working with mechanical devices as dwarfs do.
While the language of human beings vary by their social status and level of education, there is one character in the Disc World whose language is marked by his “profession”. Death’s comments are always very well distinguishable from every other person’s, since they are written in capital letters and without quotation marks. “YOU’RE DEAD,” is a remark many people – or rather spirits – have heard from him. Thus, Pratchett draws attention to the fact that Death is a unique figure (gods are not since there are so many of them) and deserves a unique way of articulation.
There are more ways to mark language; there are ways to extinguish, to discriminate, to stress. The author’s ability to paint pictures is limited compared to his ability to describe a character’s language. As in life somebody’s accent, dialect, use of colloquialisms, and ability to adjust the language to certain situations can tell a lot about a person. In literature, it helps us categorize a character – sometimes too willingly or too rashly but is not that one of the author’s intentions by using marked language at all?
This is another essay from my first year, the one about afterellen.com, actually. Unfortunately, WordPad has eliminated my footnotes (my laptop does not have Word, I hate that), so you have to live without them, sorry:
Considering the vast amount of media that can be found on the internet, write an essay presenting your own set of guidelines on how to evaluate these sources and how to avoid being manipulated by language. Make use of the linguistic features that were listed in the Critical Reading Guidelines.
Breaking my own rules –
Or how to be a professional lesbian
“The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP).” (wikipedia.com) To me the internet is a way of communicating with friends, watching movie trailers, and getting the latest celebrity news. The overindulgence in the latter will be the topic of this essay, because the best guidelines cannot prevent you from becoming biased where news touch your life.
This might sound a little cryptic but the following example hopefully enlightens what I mean: I was talking to a fellow student about the presidential Primaries in the USA and mentioned Ellen DeGeneres (she had interviewed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on her talk show). My opposite did not know who Ellen DeGeneres was and I could not believe this to be possible. I felt personally insulted by his lack of knowledge of something that is part of my culture, part of my life. But I guess a heterosexual male who does not watch the Oscars and is not interested in the most popular talk show on American TV might not know Ellen.
It is difficult to put an incident like this into perspective. How is it possible that a person that is so important for the gay community – not only in the USA but probably in every western country – might not be known by everybody? And why am I so involved in the subcultural processes of a country on the other side of the earth?
Whatever might be the answer to the first question, the answer to the second one is easy: the internet. More precisely a homepage called AfterEllen.com. AfterEllen.com was founded in 2002 by Sarah Warn and has since “become the leading entertainment site for and about lesbian and bisexual women, with news, reviews, interviews and commentary on lesbian and bisexual women in TV, movies, music, and more.” The homepage’s title is a reference to Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom “Ellen”, the main character being the first leading primetime character to come out – simultaneous to the actress who played her. And this homepage is the reason why guidelines cease to work for me.
I do have guidelines, especially where it comes to celebrity news. The most important is that I think half of these news are only half true while the other half is all lies. For example, to this moment I do not believe that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are a couple – but maybe this has more to do with denial than with any guideline. Still, I find most celebrity news hard to believe and since I am a movie geek these are the news that are most important to me. Another guideline might be that I consider most news bad news which is the reason why I tend to ignore what goes on in the world outside Hollywood. Finally, I know that the weather will never be what the weatherperson predicts. These might not be the most elaborate of guidelines but they have worked for me. They still do most of the time but rarely after I have spent hours watching vlogs on AfterEllen.com.
When I am getting up from behind the computer monitor after one of those sessions I am convinced that 99 per cent of the world’s population are lesbians, the remaining 1 per cent being bisexual women. I believe that everybody has a set of “opinionated bunnies” in their backpack to show their approval or disapproval of things, and that “Spashley” is the cutest couple on American TV. And why do I believe those things? Because I have been brainwashed into a professional lesbian – and willingly so. I cannot resist this influence, because I simply do not want to. But it has its drawbacks. I find myself talking about TV Shows that will probably never appear on German TV, often to an audience that does not know what I am talking about. I also catch myself asking people “What is u-up?”, imitating a character from TheN’s show “South of Nowhere”, which often alienates my opposites.
So why, if I know about the negative influence it has on me, am I still going back? Another easy answer: because I am part of the lesbian community, there more than anywhere else. The subcultural terms appeal to me. I know what they are talking about when they refer to “the exploitation of lesbians during sweeps” and can nod in approval when Lori Grant holds up the “She’s hot”-bunny. The staff of this homepage consists entirely of lesbians and they do not take themselves or what they do too seriously. They allow themselves to criticize TV companies for stereotyping lesbians as killers, home wreckers or supporting characters without any kind of private life, and they praise others for portraying lesbians as they are (I am not referring to “The L Word”).
My point is that sometimes we are too involved to be objective. That is not a bad thing since we are human beings. In the privacy of our own home we may be as biased as we want to be, political correctness may be banned from the confines of our private thoughts. But we should allow others the same prerogative and not blame them for not knowing who Ellen DeGeneres is.
This is a rather short piece I wrote for UNA (Understanding North America) in Sociology (course held by T. Scholz). The question was about Putnam’s concept of “social capital” – it’s in German and I am rather too lazy to translate it:
Tele Vision, the Usual Suspect
In his article “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America” Robert D. Putnam introduces two concepts; one which he calls “social capital” meaning “features of social life – networks, norms, and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives” and another which he calls “civic engagement” meaning “people’s connections with the life of their communities, not only with politics”. These two concepts have in the past worked together to uphold a civic America, however, they seem to cease working properly in our modern world. Therefore, Putnam has started a search for the “villain” that, beginning with the 1960s, has disrupted a working social system. His findings can neither be called surprising nor innovative because he blames the destruction of American society on everybody’s favourite scapegoat: the TV set.
Putnam observed that Americans who had come of age during 1910 and 1940 – he calls them the “long civic generation” – were much more involved in communal work than later generations. They also showed a significant trust into institutions, which to Putnam is proven by the high voting percentage during the presidential election in 1960. He is puzzled, however, of what caused the decline in “social capital” as well as trust in generations who came after the “long civic generation”. And he introduces several factors who could have been influential in the decline of social life in the United States.
The list of these factors reads like a who is who of reasons for social problems in every part of the world – just to name some examples: “economic hard times”, “suburbanization”, and of course the Religious Right’s all time favourite “disruption of marriage and family ties” – and he proves them all to be “innocent” of having anything to do with the crime committed on American society. He notes that some of the factors could have a minimal influence on social changes but then quickly brings forth evidence that it cannot be so. The surveys he uses to support his argument are multiple but somewhat confusing as Putnam brings them into context with other factors in rapid succession.
It seems to me that the author “doth protest too much” at some points in his argumentations and too little at others. While he bombards the reader with as many numbers as possible he dismisses small discrepancies within his “usual suspects” as insignificant, although they might add up to a larger number in the long run. His attempt at masquerading a sociology study as a crime story is more disturbing than helpful as he confesses early on that he is looking for “a villain” – the one and only factor for undermining American values. Putnam seems determined to show the reader that the only factor that can be taken into account is the overindulgence in watching television.
I am not convinced, though. Reading his article I stumbled across the fact that he dismisses an important aspect – at least it seemed important to me – in a subordinate clause: the trauma of World War I and II (as both wars would have affected the “long civic generation”, because it affected two successive generations) and the patriotism and nationalism that was due to winning both. It would also be interesting to see if the decline in “social capital” first occurred in the generations following the 1940s or if it was an ongoing trend that had its origin much earlier, for example after the Civil War. I also think that the loss of trust in institutions during the 60s is not surprising as the Vietnam War was not the heroic adventure World War II seemed to have been. And Watergate did not help the matter any.
There may be many reasons besides watching too much TV that helped the decline of “social capital” along but to blame it entirely on TV is – in my opinion – naïve. But it may be a comfort to Putnam that as the program is getting worse more people are inclined to switch it off every once in a while. But, of course, now Americans have further options to not socialize with their neighbors and friends as the internet has developed beyond anybody’s wildest dreams and most people are carrying mobile phones every step they do.
Since I told y’all that I screwed up my “All the King’s Men”-essay, I should also tell you that my really nice professor gave me a chance to revise it. And this is it and it’s not even grated yet.
Well, for the way I handled it: I remembered something I have learned some years ago, that is, that I can write about anything if I use Shakespeare as a catalyst for my thoughts. I am not sure it worked with this but it helped me getting it done.
And since wordpad has killed my footnotes once again: the two quotes are from “Hamlet,” of course.
“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”
“The Other” is a concept every human being is acquainted with. It is constructed every time we define ourselves as part of a group. When I am part of a club, the club is the “in-group,” everybody not in the club is the “out-group,” “the other.” My “family,” my “university,” my “friends,” my “sports team.” When there is an inside there must be an outside. This policy is especially rigorously followed when it comes to politics but it is also intentionally blurred. Barack H. Obama’s presidential campaign had the headline “Yes, we can.” The “we” was ambiguously connotated: we, the American people; we, the democrats; we, the African-Americans; we, everybody who votes for Obama. It was free for interpretation, and everybody was invited to join “the club.” In this case – as in any other – “We” has the inherent potential of being “good,” while “they” must consequentially be “bad.” Both, “All the King’s Men” and “A Hall of Mirrors,” work with this bipolarized model to create an atmosphere of conspiracy and paranoia while being ambiguous on the question of who is “we” and who is “they.”
In his breakthrough speech in “All the King’s Men,” Willie Stark calls his audience “hicks” and “red-necks” (136) and then he says, “I’m one, too.” (142) He makes the men in women in Smalltown, America, his equals, his friends and neighbors, and they start listening to him and, finally, vote for him. And when he says, “Up there in town they won’t help you,” (143) he makes the invisible politicians the enemy of the hard-working American. In a way, this is how Willie Stark sees himself throughout the novel, as the hard-working man who is fighting the political machine. The fact that he is creating his own political machine, that he corrupts, bullies and blackmails people is not something he overlooks but defends with his philosophy of “good comes out of evil.” He has to be evil (toward some people) to create an atmosphere of good (for all people). “Us” for Willie Stark is what is All-American, “they” are the people who weaken All-American ideals.
His view is controversial. Do results justify means? For the people in Uptown New Orleans, the people narrator Jack Burden grew up among, Willie Stark is a man who came onto power too suddenly and has not learned how to deal with it. Power – to them – is something that is handed down through generations and should not be given to up starters from the country who do not have the historical understanding to cope. Their understanding of “us” – in a political sense – can be lead back to Thomas Jefferson who thought that a “gentility,” a group of educated men who think alike should reign. Willie Stark is the personification of “the other;” they do not understand (intellectually they do understand but the fact is, they simply do not like it) how he came to the position he holds and therefore he is the enemy. Adam Stanton is as much a representative of this way of thinking as Judge Irwin, and they both fail to adept to Stark’s politics – they both die.
In “A Hall of Mirrors,” Matthew J. Bingamon might not be a politician but he does have a political agenda: blacks are bad; whites are the true Americans (note how WUSA can be read as “White United States of America” when we take WASP as an example). Whites are “in,” blacks are “out.” “White” within the book is performed through political players, be it Lester Clotho or Bingamon and Minnow at the rally – the rally itself seem a bizarre play in which the main actors think they are “among themselves” and the big players plan a disruption by “the others” – to prove their point visually. But during Rheinhardt and Farley’s last encounter with Bingamon, the owner of the radio station is put in a ridiculous position, in an outcast position himself: he is paralyzed; and Farley conducts that he has got syphilis. Bingamon is “outed” in the novel as well as by the novel. Rich, white and powerful is substituted for one – more powerful – moniker: syphilis. His racism is equated with sickness and Bingamon is suddenly at the outskirts of respectable society – he has become “one of them” (the sick, the sexually depraved, the social outcasts).
If we follow this line of argumentation to Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” we have another example: Jim Garrison tries to find out who killed John F. Kennedy. He tries to find those “them” that deeply traumatized his fellow countrymen (and himself). There are several potential groups, some of them already a “they-”group through historical and political interaction with the United States, who act as suspects: the Mafia (one might almost say “the usual suspect,” in this case), the Cubans, the Communists. But as Garrison finds some links to the American Government – links that might go as far up as the Oval Office (now occupied by former Vice-President Lynden B. Johnson) – he finds himself under severe attack himself. The press is fed with “evidence” that Garrison might have drugged, threatened, or abused witnesses. He suddenly becomes the one who has to defend himself and his group of associates. This small circle is cast as outsiders, although the agenda of the film clearly is on their side; they are victimized by the film and stigmatized within the story as obsessed and manipulative.
Though our sympathies lie with Jim Garrison in this case, we are not surprised to find him under attack. This is part of the political game. If you want to be inside you have to find someone who stand outside; only through the threat of the outside is your status on the inside legitimized. But though this “game” is played professionally in politics, it is not to say that it is the only field it is played on. By taking up Binx Bolling from “The Moviegoer,” we might find a very personal field where the inside/outside-game is played. Binx’s relationship to his aunt Emily is an important tie in his life and she supports him more than he can remember anyone else doing before her. He trusts her and vice versa; she is a matriarchal figure that does reign in her family kingdom. After his infamous flight with Kate on a train to Chicago, aunt Emily summons Binx to tell him how disappointed she is:
“Discovery that someone in whom you had placed great hopes was suddenly not there. It is like leaning n what seems to be a good stalwart shoulder and feeling it go all mushy and queer.” (221) And she tells him that he is no gentleman; a group she holds in high esteem and might even include herself in (Binx would). He is outcast by his aunt and there is only one way to redeem himself, he has to marry Kate.
Binx is the only characters of those mentioned who seeks redemption. Stark justifies his actions with “the greater good,” Bingamon does not see his wrong, Garrison seeks the truth despite the threats made to his family – these men are true to themselves, even when they are wrong. Binx’s redemption costs him his “search,” maybe something more substantial if we interpret the quote above as a hint on Binx’s sexuality (which I like to do). Politics seem to justify “amoral” behavior while one’s family is less inclined to let one get away with it. Those aforementioned (fictional) politicians act on Shakespearean principle which is also an American value: “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man.” Binx abandons this principle, he is too scared to be on the outside (or out). He marries Kate to please his aunt; the question is if it will please him or Kate for the rest of their lives.
Sources
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. (New York: Vintage, 1960)
Stone, Robert. A Hall of Mirrors. (Boston: Mariner Books, 1966)
Warren, Robert Penn. All The King’s Men. (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1946)
Film
JFK, produced by A. Kitman Ho and Oliver Stone, directed by Oliver Stone, screenplay by Zachary Sklar and Oliver Stone, based on the books “On the Trail of the Assassins” by Jim Garrison and “Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy” by Jim Marrs. Cast: Kevin Costner (Jim Garrison), Sissy Spacek (Liz Garrison), Tommy Lee Jones (Clay Shaw), Gary Oldman (Lee Harvey Oswald). Warner Bros. Pictures (1991)
Speaking of essays I wrote during my stay in NOLA: here is one for my “Gender, Realism, Regionalism”-class. It’s about Henry James’s “The Portrait of a Lady.” The thing about James is that he wrote great stories, he just wrote them boring. While reading “The Portrait” I always had the impression that the book was getting longer… in the end I just read the dialogues. But I think I still found something interesting to write about for my first short essay for the class:
To Queer Things Up
Why does Isabel Archer marry Gilbert Osmond? This is one of the questions “The Portrait of a Lady” never satisfactorily answers, not even to the heroine. To Isabel nothing seems more important than her freedom, her expression of her free will, her choice. Still, she decides to marry a man who imposes his will on the women in his life with a deliberate intolerance toward everything he dislikes. The book is clear on the point that Isabel’s acceptance of Osmond is not entirely her idea, though, that she is manipulated, that her friend Madame Merle pushes her toward her former lover. But what are the extraordinary powers this woman possesses that Isabel would yield her strong will to her wishes when neither her friends nor relatives could persuade her to marry other men who had more to offer? What is the relationship between these women that would give Madame Merle reign over her young friend? And what formal devices does Henry James use to build and destroy a relationship that seems the centerpiece of all relationships Isabel Archer builds throughout the novel?
From the beginning Isabel Archer is described as “independent,” it is actually the very first word that is attached to her by her aunt in a telegram to Gardencourt. And throughout the novel this independence is not only expressed as the freedom to do and speak as she pleases but also by a suspicion of something that would bind her permanently – not only to a person but most likely to a place: marriage.
Isabel has just turned down her second suitor when she meets Serena Merle in Gardencourt. The first meeting is set up by James as a fateful meeting as Isabel “had not yet divested herself of a young faith that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence on her life.” The younger woman begins immediately to speculate on her new acquaintance, she is enchanted by her music, and in the course of this first meeting the narrator, who describes Selena through Isabel’s eyes, refers to the older woman’s looks several times; she is “not pretty, yet her expression charmed,” “Isabel thought her a very attractive person,” and her face “though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging and attaching.” And this is what Isabel does: she engages and attaches herself to Madame Merle, not only out of necessity (since their hosts have abandoned them) but because she is intrigued.
Serena Merle’s influence on Isabel is great but one has to wonder if – as a friend – it is great enough to persuade Isabel to marry. Since Madame Merle has an ulterior motive to succeed (her wish to provide her daughter with a mother, not Osmond with a wife) she is bound to take desperate measures and also determined to tutor Isabel into a loving mother (and tutor) for her own child.
James applies a rather sensual vocabulary that borders on sexual in describing the friendship of the two women:
“The gates of the girl’s confidence were opened wider than they had ever been; she said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels.” (239)
This is even more remarkable because sexual expression is mostly missing from the novel (there is only one character that exudes sexuality, Caspar Goodwood, and he is perceived by Isabel as dangerous). The freedom expressed in words is culminating in deeds as “Isabel kissed her, and, though some women kiss with facility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace was satisfactory to Madame Merle.”
The question of sexual intercourse between the women is, of course, not touched upon but the term of “romantic friendship” can be easily applied whether the women entered a sexual relationship or not. Isabel is aware that her admiration is a “perverted product” but she sees no harm in admiring something that is good and lets herself be guided willingly by Serena Merle.
In her article “The Female World of Exorcism and Displacement,” Melissa Solomon argues that Madame Merle is displaced by Osmond and I agree, in so far as James substitutes a same-sex relationship by the socially sanctified institution of marriage (since the context he lived in did not really give him a choice in the matter). I am doubtful, however, if the substitution can be applied within the plot since the conventions for same-sex relationships were so different from the ones for relationships between the sexes – even without the implication of a sexual relationship. Even though the relationship between Osmond and Isabel shares some attributes with the one between Serena and Isabel, the level of intimacy cannot have been the same.
This becomes especially clear in the ending when Isabel dissolves her relationship with Serena completely but refrains from leaving Osmond. The final meeting between Isabel and her friend is staged at the convent – and after Isabel has left Osmond. The platform is exclusively female, and celibate (as the women’s friendship has either always been or will from now on be) and is reminiscent of a showdown. Osmond is – as the setting implies – absent both physically as well as from the women’s minds. For the last time James enters the realm of the women’s relationship and displays them as mothers – coincidentally or not – to the same child. And the topic of their conversation is their child and not Serena’s betrayal. In the end Serena even tries to defend her dealings in Isabel’s affairs by pointing out that it was Ralph who made her attractive to Osmond by giving her a fortune. The result of the scene is that Serena Merle obeys probably for the first time to the wishes of somebody else and leaves the country so that one can argue that there are some feelings left between the women.
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel about marriage. Strangely enough, most people in it are not married, not allowed to get married or rejected when proposing. The most conventional marker of heterosexual relationships is described as a cruel institution, and an outdated relic. And the deepest, most intimate and most devastating relationship the main character enters within the timeframe of the novel is the one with another woman – who even makes Isabel give up her precious freedom.
Sources
James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. London: Penguin Books, 1963.
Solomon, Melissa. “The Female World of Exorcism and Displacement.” Studies in the Novel 28.3 (1996): 395-413.
I wrote another essay for the same class. It was a really good class and I am glad I took it though I never much liked the realists – I still don’t, much. But I will stil write my bachelor thesis about the time and about some of the writers and Sarah Orne Jewett will be one of them. I like the different approach she takes on the problem of womanhood, that she creates valuable realms for them that are not the kitchen.
Read:
Islands of Domesticity and Labor
- Public and Private Spheres in “The Country of the Pointed Firs”
Sarah Orne Jewett would leave her home in Boston for several months at a time to write in the rural and undisturbed atmosphere of Maine’s countryside. She would write home to her “Boston wife” Annie Fields, telling her of her progress and how she missed her. But going away seemed inevitable. Jewett’s writing did not flourish in the industrialized confinements of the big city, it sought refuge in the industrious ports in the North where people were not held in horrible working conditions in factories but worked for families and friends in their private habitat. (Faderman, 1994)
This private habitat, a living or working space in which a person would be alone, takes up a lot of room in Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel “The Country of the Pointed Firs.” And they are spaces that are more often than not possessed by women. The best example for this is the narrator herself, a writer who comes to the fictional village of Dunnet Landing mainly to write – much like Jewett herself did. But living in the community of Dunnet and being part of a household that sees many visitors – and customers – a day the narrator finds it difficult to concentrate on her work as she “laughed and listened again, with an idle pen.” (8) And she flees these conditions to a refuge within the refuge of Dunnet: a schoolhouse. This schoolhouse is abandoned for the summer by teacher and students and the narrator rents it to write there. Notwithstanding that not a lot of writing is actually done in the schoolhouse, there are instances the narrator uses the abandoned building – which very conveniently seems to be build on higher ground – to learn about the people she later describes in the novel. The schoolhouse is established not only as her hiding place but also as her lookout, and at one point her “home” as she receives Captain Littlepage as her visitor. The narrator’s status as a writer is linked to this place but it also marks her as the visitor, the outsider – and it is no coincidence that the one story that is not linked to Dunnet is being told there, as well.
Though it is the most obvious place of refuge in the book, the schoolhouse is not a single incident in a community that is living so closely together. Mrs. Todd’s herb garden is another spot of industry for a single woman. She is the only person in the village to take an interest in herbs – as contrary to studied medicine -, the only “stereotypical herb-dealer” if you want. And her profession is closely – though not exclusively – linked to the patch of garden next to Mrs. Todd’s house. This space of labor is enhanced to the house when Mrs. Todd starts making her drops and also to other patches of fields that Mrs. Todd usually visits alone (though there are instances when she “allows” the narrator to come with her).
The story of the hermitage Joanna is portrait as a singular incident but many of the people in the book are living alone. Mrs. Blackett lives on an island with her son, William, but is mostly left to her own devices. And she is very industrious in her home.
“I done it all myself with William’s help. He had a spare day, an’ took right holt with me; an’ ‘t was all well beat on the grass, an’ turned, an’ put down again afore we went to bed. I ripped an’ sewed over two o’ them long breadth.” (38)
Her home is her working space and it is again a space for a single woman to do work – mostly alone.
There is a distinction that Jewett makes between the sexes and the distinction is made by reversing traditional gender roles: women earn money in her story; men are retired or too shy to function in society (like William). Thus women have working spaces while men have homes where they often do domestic chores, like, for example, Elijah Tilly who is knitting during most of the time the tale is occupied with him. The women’s working spaces are not disrupted by male presence (though William helps his mother she stresses the point that he “has been son an’ daughter both.”) (39), while the domestic routines of the men are constantly occupied with female presences – in Captain Littlepage’s case with Mari’ Harris; in Elijah Tilly’s case with his deceased wife. Private and public spheres are not traditionally inhabited but are modified by Jewett to fit the circumstances of the people of Dunnet Landing and, also, it seems Jewett’s feminist ideal.
As a working woman Sarah Orne Jewett valued the existence of ‘a room of one’s own,” especially for a female writer. But she did not think her profession the only one in need of such a space. In a time when most women – in her world, at least – worked in factories or in the private sphere (which was not her “own room”) of her home, it is noteworthy that Jewett built a whole community in which women were the bread-winners. However, one should also note that the community she describes consists mostly of older people and that Jewett seems to consciously omit closer inspection of traditional family moments within the novel (which she could have inserted at the Bowden family reunion, for example). Which is to say, her community of women workers with their own spaces of occupation is closely linked to a post-sexual age, hermitage or – as in the narrator’s case – the freedom to choose.
Sources
Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs. New York: Signet Classic (Penguin Group), 2009.
Lillian Faderman, ed.. Chloe Plus Olivia – An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. (Sarah Orne Jewett, 96-113)
Shreve, Anita. Introduction, Introduction to The Country of the Pointed Firs. New York: Signet Classic (Penguin Group), 2009.
I always try to take courses in English with topics I am not comfortable with, or know llittle about, or am somehow prejudiced against. In my second semester I did a poetry-class because I think poetry is somehow a neglectable part of literature, something that is almost too easy and can therefore not be great art. I know I am wrong but it still sometimes feels like it.
Well, here is an essay I wrote for the class (I became a fan of Millay’s work in the process):
Please write a one to three page essay/critique about a poem which is not in our reader by an US American woman poet of the 20th cent.. The critique should give away why you chose the poem and give its content and a little analysis. Think of it as a comment or critique you would post on the internet or as a review in a magazine or book.
Friends
(Age 17, Cash Prize, St. Nicholas League)
I
(He)
I’ve sat here all afternoon, watching her busy fingers send
That needle in and out. How soon, I wonder, will she reach the end?
Embroidery! I can’t see how a girl of Molly’s common sense
Can spend her time like that. Why now – just look at that! I may be
dense,
But, somehow, I don’t see the fun in punching lots of holes down
through
A piece of cloth; and, one by one, sewing them up. But Molly’ll do
A dozen of them, right around
That shapeless bit of stuff she’s found
A dozen of them! Just like that!
And think it’s sense she’s working at.
But then she’s just a girl (although she’s quite the best one of the
lot!)
And I’ll just have to let her sew, whether it’s foolishness or not.
II
(She)
He’s sat here all the afternoon, talking about an awful game;
One boy will not be out till June, and then he may be always lame.
Foot-ball! I’m sure I can’t see why a boy like Bob – so good and
kind –
Wishes to see poor fellows lie hurt on the ground. I may be blind,
But, somehow, I don’t see the fun. Some one calls “14-16-9”;
You kick the ball, and then you run and try to reach a white chalk-
line.
And Bob would sit right there all day
And talk like that, and never say
A single word of sense; or so
It seems to me. I may not know.
But Bob’s a faithful friend to me. So let him talk the game detested,
And I will smile and seem to be most wonderfully interested!
E. Vincent Millay
E. Vincent Millay and the „Gender Issue“
Edna St. Vincent Millay was awarded five Dollars from the St. Nicholas League for her poem “Friends”. This may not seem to be such a great sum of money today but the year was 1909 and “Vincent” – as Millay preferred to call herself – was just 17.
I came upon “Friends” in Karl Yost’s Bibliography of Millay’s work which I had borrowed by mistake from the library. The book included three of her early poems and an essay by Harold Lewis Cook. It turned out to be a happy coincidence for me, because I was at a loss of which poem to analyze for this assignment – only knowing that it had to be one by Millay.
The poem is a portrait of young life as the poet would have observed it daily: a girl would knit, a boy would talk about football. The simplicity of the topic belies the style in which it was written. Although the lines differ in length, Millay sticks to the pair-rhyme at all times, creating a poem which consists of two sonnets of twelve lines. Those two sonnets seem like fraternal twins with their exclamation-marks and the similar beginning of the fifth line “But, somehow, I don’t see the fun… .” Moreover, Millay’s words play with gender roles, mixing them with the subtitles of the two stanzas and also with her ambiguous perception of her own sexuality. The lyrical “I” is not one but two persons and they change from one stanza to the other, the subtitles indicating the gender of the “I”. This has a confusing effect on the reader at the first superficial reading, especially since one would expect a female voice from a female artist. And there is also the question if a boy would describe Molly as a girl “of common sense” rather than a pretty girl? Did Millay maybe describe Molly as clever rather than pretty to emphasize the point that the poem is about friendship not love?
This is probably the case and all the more intelligently done for it. The poem is not a love poem but a poem about the friendship between the sexes and, though it may very well disappoint the first expectation of an adult reader of our time, befits the age of the poet as well as the first publication – which was in a children’s magazine.
Still, there is an ambiguity in the lyrical “I”s as well as in the objects of their perceptions, while all four “persons” seem also stereotypical not so much of their time but of their respective genders. The knitting girl and her male friend share this as much as Bob, the football fan, and the girl who just smiles at him despite being bored (unless, of course, the narrator of the first stanza is Bob and that of the second Molly, which would make it a poem about two people and what they are thinking at the same time on the same afternoon). But at the same time Millay emphasizes the differences between men and women, the misconception, the misunderstanding. These facts, however, do not separate the friends as the poem asks for tolerance in the face of the follies of both sexes.
“Friends” is exceptionally insightful to the differences of the sexes without being cynical about it. Millay takes on a fresh and clear approach on how she understands the relationships that were at the time just building before her eyes. But she did not only observe and describe them, she twisted them around a little bit. She wrote under a male pseudonym and wrote from the perceptions of both a male and a female spectator. To me it seems that she may have been aware of a masculinity within herself that did not collide with her femininity but rather went hand in hand with it. This masculinity is very well displayed not only in the five! exclamation-marks Millay uses in the first stanza (thus adopting a more forceful writing style), but also in the sexism when she writes “But then she’s just a girl… .” And then there are the beginnings of the stanzas which put emphasis on the male as the boy-I starts with “I’ve” and the girl-I with “He’s”. One would assume thereby that Millay grew up in a world that focused on men rather than women and that she was very aware of that fact and maybe even criticized it this early in her life.
Millay, however, does not pretend to be grown-up in this poem, still she seems very mature for her age. Her style is already well-developed, but there is also youth and innocence within the lines. She combines a classic style with modern views, and adds her emotions into every piece of work. It amazes me how a seventeen year-old can have such talent and I envy her for it – especially after having looked at my own mediocre writing from that age. And that is probably the main reason I took “Friends” instead of a later better-known poem of Millay, because it shows a picture of the talent of a young woman who would grow up to be a poet.
Sources
BRITTIN, Norman A., Edna St. Vincent Millay, (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967)
YOST, Karl. A Bibliography Of The Works Of Edna St. Vincent Millay, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937)
Well, I have another one for you. This one is actually the only academic work to show for the last half year – which is sad. But it’s about one of my favorite topics: the movies… hm, maybe I should put it into “Watchables” as well…
The Women (2008): Reno-vated
When I first heard that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts had bought the rights of „The Women“ to make a remake of the 1939 classic, I thought: „Please, don’t!“ And although I next thought about a possible cast, I never doubted that it was a bad idea. (I am aware that there has been a remake before but since I have not seen it I cannot say anything about it.) It took 13 years for director Diane English to bring this remake to the big screen and despite bad critiques it was quite successful (for a movie without any male characters), still, its value is debatable, even though it claims to have a positive message for women.
The story follows socialite Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), whose husband, Stephen, is a big-shot financier at Wall Street and has been charmed by a woman (Eva Mendes) from the perfume counter at Saks, New York (the “Spritzer girl”). After some initial debating with her mother (Candice Bergen) and her friends (Annette Benning, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing) Mary decides to get a divorce. After having been betrayed by her best friend Sylvie (Benning), she “breaks up” with her, too, and gets some new perspectives while sharing a joint with “the Countess” (Bette Midler) at some rich women’s hide-out. Coming back she is going through an extensive make-over and reunites with Sylvie. Her husband meanwhile is terribly unhappy with his choice in girlfriend and wants his wife back. The conclusion is an extended (and disturbing) birthing scene (Mary’s friend Edie [Messing] is having her first son after four daughters) during which Stephen calls to get a date with his wife. Happy Ending.
One might ask why it took so long to make a movie so many stars were willing to sign on to (at times rumors included Blythe Danner, Marisa Tomei, Uma Thurman, and Queen Latifah, while Julia Roberts pulled out because she and Meg Ryan could not agree who was to play the lead) but production faced a lot of problems including pulling out of directors and actresses alike and some rewriting of the 1939 plot. Ultimately Diane English, who wrote the screenplay, took on the directing post and conspired with Victoria Pearman from Mick Jagger’s production company, Jagged Films, to get the show on the road.
While the acting is excellent (and it should be with acting veterans like Annette Benning, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman, and Carrie Fisher giving their all), the lines they have to deliver leave a lot to be desired. While these include old clichèes about lesbianism by the only lesbian character (Jada Pinkett Smith), the usual topic of conversation hardly varies from having children to respective husbands to charity work back to the lovable brood, since women have nothing else to talk about. The film claims to represent the modern woman but wades through marketable stereotypes. These rarely lift to leave time for the leads to connect and show that this is a film about friendship rather than about a failed marriage getting repaired at all costs (which of course happens despite the fact that the husband is a cheater). The movie sometimes leans too heavily on the characters of the 1939 film, especially in the case of Candice Bergen’s character, Catherine Frazier. Mary Haines’ mother in the origial, Mrs. Morehead played by Lucile Watson, is a Victorian matron for whom marriage is the ultimate goal of womanhood and is worth preserving under all circumstances and Candice Bergen’s character seems to support this old-fashioned attitude as well. Her recipe against marital problems is a face-lift.
And this seems to be a message of the film as well. Although all actresses speak out against artifically changing one’s appearance in the “Behind-the-scenes”-sequence (which is sort of comical in Meg Ryan’s case since everybody can see that she had her lips botoxed) the movie sends the message that all a woman has to do to feel better about herself is a make-over, a new haircut, a shopping-trip, a manicure, and she will feel as good as new, no, better than new, improved.
In addition to the conflicting messages send by the plot, the setting in an upper-class New York society sets the women of the film too far away from the viewer. The 1939 version had a greater variety of social statuses (if not of ethnicity) but the women in the 2008 version are all upper-class, a socialite, a publisher, the wife of a successful painter, a writer. Crystal Allen’s greatest fault seems to be that she is “the Spritzer girl” and not some up-shot CEO herself. It is so much less degrading for a successful woman to lose her husband to a woman of class and status than to someone working the perfume counter, I am sure.
Another claim the movie and its makers make is that it is more about friendship than the original. Given, the 1939 version was a lot about gossip, casting columnist Hedda Hopper as Dolly Dupuyster of the same occupation is proof enough of that but George Cukor would not have gotten the title of “women’s director” if he had just shown a bunch of catfighting women. Instead he matches the women more evenly to their characters than their husband’s paychecks. In the end Mary (Norma Shearer) might have lost Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell) as her friend but that woman is much better matched with Mary’s rival Crystal (Joan Crawford), while Mary links with Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard) and Countess De Lave (Mary Boland). These women may not have been feminists but they are also not elitists, at least Mary is not and she is the heroine after all.
I guess, what is most annoying to me is that the movie is trying hard to be accepting and supporting diversity in women but pushes these same diversities to the sidelines. It is no coincidence that the only gay woman in the main group of four is also the only woman of color. At the same time the woman to steal the husband is a latina and in the end she turns out to be bisexual (she is hooking up with Alex’s ex, a supermodel) since everybody knows that bisexuals are sexually amoral/promiscuous. Also, three of the four leads get their private happy ending – the straight women, while the gay woman must be contented to be professionally successful.
“The Women” of 2008 has been made under the pretense of being empowering to women, all women, but the only women it is supporting are straight women with kids and/or a job of middle to upper class. At the same time it stereotypes women as shoppers and gossips, who only need a new pair of shoes to get over their failures in life. I am saddened by this since I had hoped that even as bad as the concept of a remake of a classic is, it might have been witty and feminist and empowering for women. Why anyone would want to make a remake of a George Cukor movie anyway is beyond me. Why not just watch the original?
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Women_(2008_film). July 9th, 2010, 4.44 p.m.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032143/. July 9th, 2010, 4.44 p.m.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430770/. July 9th, 2010, 4.44 p.m.