To Be or Not To Be

The Jane Austen Punishment List

mjclit08 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:32:53 +0000

1. An evening at a recital given by Mary Bennet.
2. A tour of Rosings with Mr. Collins
- OR – (updated)
Watching an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous guest-hosted by Mr. Collins.
3. Relationship advice from Lady Russell.
4. A visit to a library with Miss Bates.
5. An audience with the Queen accompanied by Mrs. Bennet.
6. A night of babysitting Lady Middleton’s children.
7. Sir Walter Elliot standing in for your father at a father/son wilderness survival camp.
8. One day of nursing Mary Musgrove through one of her illnesses.
9. The friendship of Lucy Steele.
10. An evening of backgammon with Mr. Woodhouse (and don’t expect sweetbread and asparagus when the refreshments arrive).
11. A girls’ clothes-shopping expedition and makeover with Caroline Bingley.
12. Having Lydia Bennet over for a two weeks’ holiday.
13. A conversation with Mrs. Elton about Maple Grove.
14. A carriage ride with John Thorpe.
- OR – (updated)
Buying a used car from John Thorpe. (Joshua Silverman writes:)
“This was suggested by a query whether it was possible to imagine any Austen character as a used car salesman. Not only does John Thorpe fit the bill, but his boasts to Catherine about the smoothness of the ride, the great mileage he gets from his horse, and his prowess in wheeling and dealing, leave me astonished at Austen’s prescience.”
15. Matchmaking by Caroline Bingley.
16. A weekend in Reno or Las Vegas with Mr. Wickham.
17. Aunt Norris moves in next door and becomes an Amway distributor.
18. A moral discussion with Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins.
19. A cross-country tour in the Barouche with the condescending Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
20. The ultimate: Being Charlotte Lucas when she performs her conjugal duties with Mr. Collins, especially when he moans “Catherine!” instead of “Charlotte!” at the crucial moment.

Can you think of any to add to this list?

[Source: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austt10j.html#songlist]

For my Literature Students…Hope you’ll be suitably inspired in this last leg of the race!

mjclit08 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:04:21 +0000

King Lear Act IV Sc. VI: Blind Gloucester Meets Mad Lear (Laurence Olivier)

Mind your Language!

mjclit08 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:33:54 +0000

This is hilarious! Pay attention to your use of English!

Jane Austen’s House

mjclit08 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:24:41 +0000

Year-End Theater Offerings

mjclit08 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:18:22 +0000

VICTOR/VICTORIA
Armed with little more than fiery determination and a passion for singing, Victoria Grant arrives in Paris to fulfil her dreams. A chance encounter with has-been actor Carroll Todd convinces her to pretend to be a female impersonator in order to get noticed. She becomes Count Victor Grazinski at a swanky Paris Nightclub and becomes the toast of the town. Things get complicated when a gangster from Chicago, King Marchan falls in love with “her”. Victoria has to make the ultimate sacrifice – will she be true to her love and give up her passion or will she pursue her passion and surrender true love?
(Excerpt from www.sistic.com.sg)
DATES
9-29 Nov 2009 (Except, 14, 16 & 23 Nov)
Mon(9 Nov), Tues to Sun, 08:00PM
@ the Esplanade Theatre

Jane Austen on the Web

mjclit08 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:17:40 +0000

Hey all…here are some interesting links to Jane Austen (and P&P) sites.

1. My Pride & Prejudice
2. Austen Blog (Austen fanfic galore!)
3. Jane Austen’s World (very beautiful blog on everything relating to Austen and the Regency Period)
4. The Republic of Pemberly (One of my favourite sites; one of the most comprehensive Jane Austen sites.)
5. Austenprose (Great website for all Austen groupies)

Literally Literary: A Midsummer Day’s Camp [8th June]

mjclit08 — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:21 +0000

Hi everyone! Please do the survey here: Click!

Ariel

mjclit08 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:55:34 +0000

Ariel

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! — The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks —-

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air —-
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel —-
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

The poem Ariel by Sylvia Plath is a poem that explores many notions of identity through the central metaphor of a horse. As known in real life, Plath did have a horse, which was named “Ariel”, which she would ride on. In the poem, she explores the idea of being powerless and the idea of rebirth as she has done in many of her other poems. This is seen in the movement from darkness at the start of the poem to darkness at the end of it.

The persona in “Ariel” can be related to that of one with a powerless or weakened identity. In the first stanza, the quote ‘Stasis in darkness’ reflects the persona as a powerless identity right from the start who is trapped in darkness and yet unable to move away from it. This stanza also brings in the idea of Ariel, relating to greek mythology as the metaphor of the horse as god’s lion, and shows how they might fuse together. However, this shows her inability to perfectly be one with it through the splits and passes that leads to the persona not being able to catch up a seen by “The brown arc … catch”. The persona’s entrapment by others can be seen by, “cast dark hooks” from “nigger-eye berries”, which actually are blackberries. In this quote, there is a substitution of the word black with nigger-eye to show how a sense of voyeurism that makes her powerless. It is because of this powerless identity thus it gets “hook[ed]” back by these voyeurs. In fact, the blackberries which reflect her achievements are subverted into “black sweet blood mouthfuls” due to these “voyeurs” who bring her down, to the point that her achievements are nothing but mere “shadows” from what they used to be. These ‘Voyeurs’ refers to the persona’s child as proven by the mention of ‘The child’s cry’. There is also this idea of Lady Godiva being powerless and shameful for riding around naked, exposing herself to the world due to husband’s oppression. Thus the name “Peeping Tom” for a voyeur originates from later versions of this legend in which a man named Tom had watched Godiva ride naked, which links back to the idea of nigger eye.

However, it is only through this significant weakened and powerless state that allows the persona to rise up. Thus, we go into the next point of the rebirth and rise of the persona. The power of the persona is realized through the aid of the metaphor of the horse that aids in her shedding of her weak identity, which allows development of a stronger identity to be put in place. This is represented by the imagery of “something else hauls me through the air” showing the return of the surge of power that she had. Implying that the “horse” that she could not catch earlier in the poem, “brown arc”, is hauling through the air like rising above, and at the same time, the “flakes” have been dropping in that process of being hauled up. “Flakes” here is a symbolic of the things that have been “hook[ing]” her from being successful. Which brings in the idea of Lady Godiva again as she was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry, in England, in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants. This is an open symbolic of defiance as it is what leads to Godiva’s success, and tom gets struck blind. This link to “Ariel” as the persona “unpeels” “dead stringencies”, thus becoming more free and powerful with the “hooks” gone, akin to Godiva.

There is thus the idea of being shamed before rising up as an aftermath. The quote “foam to wheat, a glitter of seas” gives an idea of becoming from a mere substance of foam to that of a glitter of seas. Rising up links to Goddess of Venus who was born from foam. This shuns aside weaknesses as “a child’s cry melts in the wall” to become stronger. Relating to the idea of dew being something renewed every morning which gives an idea of constant rebirth to become stronger and stronger. The quote “I am the arrow, the dew that flies” into the “red eye”, which in otherwards refers to the sun and to be one with it. It shows that one is strong to even to dare to be within the sun which relates that the no fear mentality that allows rebirth in comparison with earlier “darkness” to now the “cauldron of morning”, this cycle of rebirth.

In conclusion, the poem “Ariel” is one where the persona explores the idea of being powerless and the idea of rebirth as she has done in many of her other poems

By:

Annabelle

Victoria

Martin

Fazari

Siti

Denise

*I do not know what had happened but I had uploaded this a week ago and it is somehow gone? I was alerted by Martin thus I re-uploaded this post. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Analysis: Sheep In Fog

mjclit08 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:50:14 +0000

(Sheep In Fog)
The poem “Sheep In Fog” conveys the notion of a tainting and progressive corrosion of purity as well the intrusion of a “darkness” into the “light” of the speaker’s surroundings. Furthermore, the poem raised the concerns of the perversion or warping of goodness or a form of paradise into a negative aspect or perspective, leading to the eventual meaning of the poem in which the speaker’s identity, which was assumed to be pure and untainted (much like the innocence that sheep are symbols of) is tainted or blurred due to various events that acts as the “Fog”.
Plath communicates these meanings through the use of contrasting images of blackness and whiteness, where “The hills step off into whiteness” is contrasted against a statement in the later stanza where “Morning has been blackening”. This shows the initial whiteness of the speaker’s surroundings being progressively tainted with darkness, another allusion to the corrosion of a pure identity, much like an accumulation of sin. Plath uses imagery to further enforce her point on the tainting through the intrusion of darkness into the light whiteness of the speaker’s surroundings, where the corrosion is of a great nature, destroying the initial identity instead of merely staining it. Another prevalent aspect throughout the poem, which served as a communication of the deconstruction of the speaker’s initial pure identity, is the perversion of the notions of good or images that symbolize good or positive sentiments. From the last stanza, the speaker refers to the eventual ascension into heaven as a “threat”, where paradise is “starless and fatherless, a dark water”, a complete opposite of the glorious heaven that is so often talked about in religions. This symbolizes the permanence of the tainting or deconstruction of the speaker’s identity, to a point where even when delivered into heaven, the corrosion remains instead of being translated into glory, as Christianity dictates in the Bible, tainting even heaven itself into a place of gloom and emptiness.

Similar to other poems in Ariel, Sheep explores the thematic issues of the essential void and the contrast between the two extremes of two colors in the color spectrum, black and white. Aligning to The Moon and The Yew Tree, Sheep also shows the invasion of the ‘black enemy’ into the white Self’s territory systemically. Similarly discussed in Tulips, the theme of ‘void’ runs throughout Sheep too. While the Self realizes that the Self is ‘fatherless’ and ‘starless’, the Self has no sense of belonging, as rendered fatherless she is no different from an orphan who has no inkling of his or her identity which is based on a person’s roots, heritage and familial background. The Self also dawns upon the very fact that the Self has been emptied off of dreams, aspirations and maybe even navigation in life. Like the landscape of a ‘starless’ night, it suggests that the Self is blank without stars to guide her and without any sources of light to differentiate the Self from the surrounding blackness of the sky. Likewise in Tulips and Sheep, the notions of ‘emptiness’ are communicated through an ‘effacement’ and the Self being reduced to a ‘cut-paper’ shadow, which is intangible and weightless, it equates the Self to be nothing in Tulips. Similarly, in Sheep, the Self is ‘emptied’ of human traits as the Self is hatching human characteristics onto the objects of her surroundings, namely, the train which leaves smoke, humanized by the usage of metaphor, ‘a line of breath’ and meanwhile she is stripping off her fresh to her ‘bone’ and ‘heart’, to reveal a raw and naked Self, which is empty in the end. Therefore, Sheep is characteristic of Plath’s poems with her usage of black and white, and empty imageries imbued in her poems to often convey an intangible sense of Self.
It is significant to see how Sheep ends with ‘a dark water’, which remains to be mysterious and unable to be seen through the murky waters. This asserts a sense of superiority into its observers. While the observers are able to see their own mirrors of reflection through the black water they are unable to penetrate the Self’s identity not able to see through the dark water. Hence, the ‘dark water’ holds the upper hand as the dark water, an embodiment of the Self is able to see its observers and reflects images of its observations and continue to let its identity remain a secret. While the observers are unable to see themselves, the dark water is able to and shows them themselves. Essentially, this may serve to empower the sense of Self, achieving a omniscience status.

08A101
Brian, Velvarie, Andrea, Fadzeera, Simyee

The Arrival Of The Bee Box

mjclit08 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:16:18 +0000

I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can’t keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

The poem appears to allude to the speaker’s mixed sentiments towards a bee box that she had just received. Upon closer analysis, we find that the imagery and literary techniques applied seem to detail the speaker’s journey of finding a way to assume a form of authority and assert her identity in society.

The speaker begins by putting herself in an authoritative position, being the owner of the box that she had ‘ordered’. She establishes herself as having power over the bees in the box; as she describes her possession, however, the imagery she likens the box to be hint at some bizarreness in nature. The box being a ‘coffin of a midget’ is one of the many instances that Plath uses death imagery in her poems; here, it suggests that the speaker is in a roundabout manner ordering her death by ordering the bee box. That the speaker calls it a ‘square baby’ represents the unnaturalness of the box to her, as the fresh innocent nature of a baby is sharply contrasted against the angular rigidity brought to mind by a ‘square’. The unnatural imagery used can be interpreted that the speaker views her authority over the bees as unnatural as well, thus questioning the true extent of any authority she might have.

Acknowledging the danger of the bees, there is an underlying tone of fear when the speaker remarks ‘I have to live with it overnight’. Even so, she continues with the admission ‘(she) can’t keep away from it’. This could imply that the speaker has an unnatural attraction to fatality or death, as seen from the death imagery in the previous stanza. It could also imply that the speaker is so desperate about holding on to her authority that she does not deem to be stable, that she is unwillingly to remove herself from the box’s presence even for a night.

Attempts to surround herself over the physical manifestation of her authority remain futile. As the box ‘(have) no windows’, the speaker looks through the tiny grid where there was nothing but darkness, emphasized by the alliteration of ‘dark, dark’. The imagery used here, of African labourers ‘minute and shrunk for export’, is that of power, of the exporter shipping the angered but helpless labourers out. This can be tied to the poem’s context, where the speaker is the exporter with the power over the bees, the exports, as she can choose their fate according to her fancy.

The speaker’s thoughts change as she wonders what she will do with the bees and questions ‘how (she can) let them out’. Realizing their fate was in her hands, she takes a further step to deciding what to do with them. As she thinks, the speaker realizes that as their ‘ruler’, she actually has no idea what her ‘subjects’ desire, as they speak ‘unintelligible syllables’. Their speech was to her an ‘appalling’ noise of ‘a Roman mob’, and even after trying to decipher the ‘furious Latin’, she throws in the towel and professes ‘(she) is not a Caesar’. The speaker gives up trying to decide what to do with the bees.

After pondering and wavering between her decisions, the speaker comes to a sudden realization that ‘she had simply ordered a box of maniacs’. The matter of fact tone hints at a certain coldness as she distances herself from the bees, and her distancing from authority over them in exchange for assertion of her opinion. She realizes the choices that are open to her as she willingly gives up her control over the bees, passing that authority back to others. The bees ‘can die’ as she ‘need(s) feed them nothing’, owing nothing to the bees as ‘(she was) the owner’ – a dictator’s view on authority.

However, we see a peculiar change in her attitude towards the bees in the next stanza. The first line shows a glimpse of empathy for her ‘subjects’ – ‘I wonder how hungry they are’. This compassion implies that the speaker is not one who will be willing to give up her emotional capacity for authoritative power alone. She continues to ponder if ‘they would forget (her)’ if she let them free. The speaker assumes that, since she is nothing of any food source to them, the bees would not harm her, and might ‘ignore (her) completely’. However, in her kindness to free the bees, she overlooks the pun on the word ‘sweet’ in the line ‘tomorrow I will be sweet God’ – a direct contradiction to her previous remark that ‘(she) is no source of honey’. This could imply that the speaker is so taken with the idea of being a benefactor to her ‘subjects’ that she overlooks the danger involved in doing so.

The poem ends with the line ‘The box is only temporary’, emphasized by the break in the 5-line stanzas before it. It is also symbolic of the temporary nature of the box – the line indeed breaks out from the physical shape of the boxed 5-line stanzas, proving its permeance. By the end of the poem, we can see quite clearly that the speaker has confidence in her opinions, that she has made a choice to ‘set (the bees) free’, showing us that the speaker has thus asserted her identity through her firm stands on her opinion.

Lyn, Lynette, Joan, Hui Ming, Sarah

08A101