Virginia Woolf and "The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection"

My God! Virginia Woolf's life was filled with so much loss at an early age that I couldn't imagine how it would feel to be dealt those cards. The first blow would come in the death of her relative Julia Cameron. Soon after, Woolf's half-sister who was also her substitute mother died during childbirth. After this came the death of her father in 1904. Two years later, her brother died of typhoid during a trip they were on in Greece. Needless to say, her losses were sure to have had a significant influence on her writing, both in style and content.

In her work, "The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection", Virginia Woolf, according to the book, "takes the garden shears of her missing character and tears representation to pieces (1224)." The story is somewhat difficult to follow at first, because you have no clue as to who the poem is discussing. While it's a narrative, we find out a little deeper into the work that her name is Isabella Tyson.

Apparently, the story deals with the inward journey of Tyson. She is trying to figure out who she is as a person, and decided that she isn't happy with what she sees. Depressing, I know. The beautiful thing about this poem, in my opinion, is that it shows us that we are fully capable of metacognition and this helps us make the changes necessary to better ourselves.

We can see Tyson's reflection of herself change when she says the following:

"Suddenly these reflections were ended violently and yet without a sound. A large black form loomed in the looking-glass; blotted out everything, strewed the table with a packet of marble tablets veined with pink and grey, and was gone. But the picture was entirely altered. For the moment it was unrecognisable and irrational and entirely out of focus. One could not relate these tablets to any human purpose. And then by degrees some logical process set to work on them and began ordering and arranging them and bringing them in to the fold of common experience. One realised at last that they were merely letters. The man had brought the post." (p.1226)

To me, Woolf was realizing all of the good things about herself, until she takes a negative turn and starts thinking about her downfalls. The most important thing to take away from this is to understand that it's not thinking about bad thoughts that makes your self-image go down, but it's how you respond to those negative thought. There's an old saying that applies to this: "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it."

T.S. Eliot

Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but why does T.S. Eliot's name even show up in a book entitled "British Literature". First of all, Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. So he's an American. His schooling? He attended school in St. Louis and finished his collegiate career at Harvard. Are these not American institutions? While he did spend some time in Paris, this still has nothing to do with British literature.

The book claims that Eliot's works are a product of British and French literature, but that's somewhat of a silly comment. To say that his work is constituted as British literature just because his poems "are deeply indebted both to French and British poets (1192)" is like saying all Christians are Jews because Jesus was a Jew. It's flawed logic.

When I read Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", I coudln't help but think of it as a drunken country song. I mean that in the nicest way possible. It was fun and exciting to read. Read this part and tell me what you think:

"Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent" (p. 1195)

I found that pretty funny.

William Butler Yeats and "No Second Helen"

William Butler Yeats has proven to be a breath of fresh air in our readings. I was beginning to tire over the same pattern of poetry that we've been following. While I could spot some differences in Victorian and Romantic poetry, they still remained very similar in wording and form (in my honest opinion). Yeats was different in that some of the poems shown in our book dealt with raw, complicated emotion that we have not seen yet. Yeats was infatuated with Maud Gonne, a lady who introduced herself to Yeats and informed him about the effect one of his poems had on her. This sparked Yeats to write poems to her, which all dealt with his love for her. When he eventually proposed to her, she declined and instead married and Irish soldier. Gonne was beginning to become somewhat of a political radical, and this provided fuel for the fire in Yeats.

In his poem, "No Second Helen", Yeats compares Helen of Troy to Maud Gonne. In the poem, he discusses the bitter rivalry between him and her husband. The rivalry is most evident in the following one line:

"Had they but courage equal to desire?" (p. 1118)

Essentially, he's comparing the soldier's courage to his, even thought they may be demonstrated in different forms. I really enjoy how the jealousy shines through in Yeats writing. He words it in a very simple way, but the emotion is thick. We see this most in the opening lines of the poem. He says,

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent of ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great," (p. 1118)

I noticed that he never discussed any loss of love for her, but rather he pointed out all of her flaws. This shows me that Yeats still remembers the way the Gonne used to be like, and still hopes to have a chance at her.

Thomas Hardy was a nice read...

Thomas Hardy was an individual who bridged the gap from the Victorian era to the modern era. He started his career as a Victorian novelist and later abandoned it to become a modern poet. A lot of his works discussed issues like class tensions, industrialization, and questioning religious faith. Some of his most well-known works include "Far From the Madding Crowd", "The Return of the Native", "Tess of the d'Ubervilles", and "Jude the Obscure". Some of these books were very controversial, and most readers were astounded that someone would even write it.

Soon after the backlash from his novels, Hardy decided to express himself through poetry. With the Victorian age fading away, Hardy took on the writing style of the modernists. His style was very similar to religious hymns and writings. Hardy was saddened by all of the death that came with World War I, yet he remained somewhat of a nationalist. This can be observed when he says the following:

"All nations striving to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christes sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

That this is not the judgement-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it where they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening." (p. 1077)

I like how Hardy takes both sides of the war. He is quick to point out war and all of its madness, but he's quick to jump to the other side and show you why it's necessary. It doesn't feel like you're being fed a load of propaganda when you read his works.

I'm glad to see that Thomas Hardy lived a long life (88 years). It seems like most people we've covered have either had their life cut short or not pushed past 70. Hardy was a pleasure to read because he made you actually think about what he was writing, as opposed to being spoon-fed.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins was man who led a very admirable life. He was a poet who was Oxford educated. While attending Oxford, he converted to Catholicism and decided to become a priest. This decision had a tremendous impact on Hopkins and can definitely be seen in his poetry. Apparently, Hopkins had a lot of personal issues with his decision to become a priest, but it wasn't about the religion itself. It dealt more with what came with being a priest. For starters, not being allowed to engage in sexual activity. The obvious implications of this rule is that Hopkins was without a wife and children. This was painful for him, and you can feel his pain in a lot of his poetry. Some of his works focused a lot on death, and how he wished he was dead.

In his poem, "Spring and Fall: to a young child", we can see Hopkins discuss death through the eyes of a young girl. The young girl in the poem is sad and depressed because she is watching leaves fall from a tree. The symbol of death is very disturbing, but Hopkins points out the following:

"Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for." (p. 776)

The young girl, Margaret, is who the reader should care about. She is looking at the leaves falling and it's a reminder to her that she is going to die. So, in essence, Hopkins is pointing out that when we mourn someone's death, we are subconsciously mourning our own future death.

Hopkins also focuses on nature, but more in how he sees God in it. In his work, "Pied Beauty", he seems to be making the point that you can see God's love for the individual in nature. The poem discusses God's love of the unique and how he enjoys things being different. Regardless of how something looks, whether similar of different, it is beautiful in God's eyes. We see this when he writes,

"All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how!)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him." (p. 776)

The cool thing about Hopkins is that he didn't gain recognition until around 40 years after his death. He is considered one of the best writers of the Victorian age, and he wasn't even published until 1918. It appears that the World War I crowd was a big fan of his content and writing style. Needless to say, his works spoke to many people and his legacy continues.

Oscar Wilde and "The Decay of Lying"

Oscar Wilde was more than an interesting fellow. To say he was a man before his time would be an understatement. An Irishman, Wilde can be considered one of the most fascinating individuals of the 19th century. He was a poet, a playwright, and a philosopher. He had a meteoric rise and a tragic nadir. Oxford educated, he became a leading proponent of the aesthetes movement, which can be summed up by what Walter Pater said: "Poetic passion, the desire of beauty, love of art for art's sake." (p. 828) Wilde gained his wealth from the plays he wrote, and was very popular in America. He had a wife and two kids (the two kids are the characters in "The Decay of Dying"). Oscar Wilde later became involved in an affair with an aristocratic man's son. The father of the son became outraged when he learned this, and sent Wilde a letter calling him a sodomite. He later started spreading this among the people of England. Wilde then filed suit against the man for libel, but the claim came out to be true that Wilde was involved in this behavior. This landed him in jail for two years. Once he was released from prison, he was disowned by his family, who while he was in prison, changed their last name. This led Wilde to live the rest of his life as a bum. He later died in a Paris hotel, poor and dejected. Always the comedian, Wilde said it best when he said, "I am dying beyond my means." (p. 830)

In his piece, "The Decay of Lying", he set up a dialogue between two individuals using the names of his two sons, Cyril and Vivian. It's important to keep in mind that Wilde plays Devil's advocate in almost all of his works. In this one, he takes on Plato in his assertion that art is a lie. In my opinion, Wilde hits an important issue head on and I couldn't agree more. He discusses two different kind of lying. He tells us to always think outside of facts. If we argue with one another based on facts, we wouldn't progress. Lying by means of exaggeration is acceptable, and encouraged, by Wilde, as this helps us think outside the box. Lying by means of distorting facts is despicable, according to Wilde. He says it best when he says,

"Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy...or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of anybody, and in the short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth-telling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting people who are much younger than himself, and often ends by writing novels which are so like life that no one can possible believe in their probability." (p. 834)

Wilde was very interesting to say the least.

John Stuart Mill

As I was reading about John Stuart Mill's life, I couldn't help but think, "Great, another radical striving for blah, blah, blah..." Now, before you take that the wrong way, let me clarify. Almost all of the author's we've covered had dabbled a bit in extreme political views. These usually constituted the same things, whether it involved women's rights, equality, etc. So, when reading about John Stuart Mill, I wasn't exactly moved by his political views, as I've been calloused by those before him (and after). However, after reading more about him, I realized that Mill was an incredibly good guy. He was unbelievably selfless! You know, it's one thing to say you're for women's rights and equality, but it's another thing to actually live up to that. Mill practiced what he preached. The fact that he said his wife deserved just as many accolades for his writings as he did was surprising. Most people, and it's completely human and understandable, would want sole recognition for their works, especially when your name is John Stuart Mill! But he claims that he and his wife thought out loud together, and their conversations inspired his writings. I thought that was very admirable.

When I was reading Mill's "Statement Repudiating the Rights of Husbands", I couldn't help but wonder what kind of response he got from the men in his area. Did he get beat up when he was walking down the street? Was he allowed into the local pub? For every man that didn't believe in John's approach, they must have been ticked off that some guy was infringing on what they believed to be the best part of marriage. He was rocking the boat. I personally liked it when Mill said the following:

"And in the event of marriage between Ms. Taylor and me I declare it to be my will and intention, and the condition of the engagement between us, that she retains in all respects whatever the same absolute freedom of action, and freedom of disposal or herself and of all that does or may at any time belong to her, as if no such marriage had taken place; and I absolutely disclaim and repudiate all pretence to have acquired any rights whatever by virtue of such marriage." (p. 527)

There must have been an angry mob following Mill around daily. To be a woman and speak like this was not entirely unheard of at the time, but a man!?! They must have been livid! I think that's why I like Mill. He wasn't doing it to be outrageous, or even to get noticed, but he was doing it because he actually believed in it. That's why Mill was such a good guy.