The Hours

I, for one, am sorry to say this is the last post of the semester--and on time for the first time in weeks, I might add!

This has been a fantastic discussion and I thank you all for your thoughtful responses. I think the level of the discussion has been incredibly high and you have treated each other with the respect and consideration you all deserve. I hope you have found this as useful and intellectually stimulating--and as entertaining--as I have (and as I'd hoped I would!). Discussions like this make me want (and need) to return to teach another day.

So for the last issue for discussion: What about The Hours? Remember that this film is based on a novel of the same name, which is an excellent read, by the way. What did this vision of the novel, from three perspectives (a modern retelling, a woman reading the novel, and the life of Woolf), add to your understanding of the novel? Did the combination of themes and characters, especially in the New York retelling, reveal anything new to you about the story Woolf tells?

You only need to respond to this prompt for grading purposes, but feel free to respond to each other.

Woolf and . . . Austen? In the same sentence?

Now, I must admit that I was thinking to myself that I was re-reading Woolf like I re-read Austen BEFORE I read the Eagleton comment, but his connecting of the two has me intrigued. If you accept his assertion that both Austen and Woolf write about the home, and what goes on inside it (very little of the rest of the world is there, only peripherally in Mrs. Dalloway), and the home of the upper middle class, for that matter, then you will also see that they treat the subject differently. How so? Indeed, you may not think they do. Critics call Austen's works novels of manners. Could you classify Mrs. Dalloway in the same way?

Figure out the question(s) in that!!

The Death of the Soul

We began our discussion of Peter's dream in class. Because we have just had Peter's point of view before he falls asleep, it seems natural that the point of view is still his. Some interpretations say the traveler is Peter himself, who sees a woman figure at the end of the path in the forest (symbol of the soul that Clarissa mentions????--just speculation) that begins as branches and sky, progresses to a mother-figure, and finally ends in the form of a landlady. This is ripe for psychoanalytic criticism as we try to analyze the dream by looking at the dream narrative and then trying to find the meaning of it. Plus, who hasn't had dreams that go all over the place? Hmmmm.

Think about that, but focus for this discussion on what he says immediately upon waking, "the death of the soul." To what is he referring and how does this comment and its origins reveal his relationship with Clarissa?

The Modern World

The issues of the modern world that permeate Lawrence's fiction are social and political. To name a few, they are Collectivism, Industrialization, Commercialism, Materialism, Urbanization (and the resulting blight to the countryside) and Secularism. Where is the place of the individual in all this, according to Lawrence? What characters in his novels achieve individualism, if any do? And finally, because the beginnings of the modern world were hovering on the horizon in the 19th century, how is Lawrence's treatment of this different from Hardy's?

Again, please excuse the late post.

Lawrence and Religion

It seems that Lawrence is really struggling with defining the place of religion in this novel. Critic Keith Cushman sees the novel as Lawrence's story of three generations of the Brangwen famiy that "traces the gradual evolution of English society from traditional culture to modernity" (xiii). Do you think that his treatment of religion--and its place in society--is linked to the change in the social construction of society? In other words, is the description of how the characters see religion, or their understanding of religion, simply a Lawrence idiosyncracy or an exploration of how the place of religion was changing in early modern England?

My apologies for the late post. I was away from a computer both literally for some of the time since Thursday and figuratively for the entire time.

Hardy and Nature

It wasn't clear to me that anyone had actually read the Eagleton chapter. If you did, you should have let me know.

At any rate, Eagleton states that when Hardy "looks at a landscape or a piece of Nature, he is usually preoccupied less by the thing itself than by the traces of history and humanity inscribed within it" (192). How does FFMC illustrate this observation?

How Far From the Madding Crowd?

The setting of Far From the Madding Crowd is very different from that of Moll Flanders, Persuasion, and Wives and Daughters. Naturally, how characters will act is a function of setting. How different are Hardy's characters from the characters in the other novels? Is this difference just attributed to setting, do you think?

The Book is Better . . . .(?)

In what specific ways does the film of Persuasion we saw differ from the novel, and how do those changes affect your response to the story and the characters?

Yes, I admit, I worked long and hard on that prompt!!

Moll and Anne

Defoe's and Austen's protagonists could not be more different, I'd suggest (feel free to disagree), but the ideas in the novels are similar. Compare and contrast the treatment of the various themes--you choose--in Moll Flanders and Persuasion.

Sociable versus Personal Morality

Eagleton brings up the question of innate human moral sense, of duty and conscience, "a kind of inner light which will instruct us in the difference between right and wrong conduct quite independently of the opinions of others." He constrasts this to a "sociable idea of morality," which states that the good influence of others teaches us virtue (110). He claims that Persuasion (obviously) investigates the question of "whether it is right or wrong to be morally persuaded by another;" do you follow your own conscience or allow yourself to be "shaped by social pressures" (110).

In the first half of the novel, how is this played out? How does the conduct of many of the major characters show what is more important, personal value or social acceptance?

Is it Authentic?

Does it matter to your understanding of Moll Flanders as a character, or to your interpretation of the themes in the novel, that while the novel is an "autobiography," its writer is a man? Can you see anything masculine about Moll Flanders the novel or Moll Flanders the character? Is she authentic?

Moll Flanders fits into the modern definition because she does rebel against the social norms of her day. Despite being a servant/maid, she is zealously courted by one brother for marriage and by the other brother as merely a lover. As the novel progresses and Moll Flanders develops as a character, she learns the power of saying ‘NO’ to men who assume that they will win her affection by simply asking. She states multiple times that a woman’s power and authority lay in her modesty and does her best to at least appear to be modest to the men who desire her. She resists the men that court her and by so doing causes them to be desperate for her so that after each day, she is more valuable in their eyes. She knowingly and aggressively determines the person she will become. She is far from complacent toward the situations that she is in. She takes all that she can get from the men around her and admits, more than once, that she places a lot of value in herself. Given, she more than likely would have had a much different life had she been born into different circumstances-she was obviously defined somewhat by her kinship and social status-but she went to extreme measures to improve herself in the world she lived in. She was born into circumstances that she could not control, but from that starting point, she chose her own course. One example of that is she didn’t want to go to ‘service’, so she complained and was given permission to continue her duties in her home. For the most part, she got what she wanted to out of life.

Moll Flanders the Individual

Oh, I am so excited to begin this discussion!!

Terry Eagleton says the "novel is a sign of the modern human subject. It, too, is 'orginal,' in the sense that modern men and women are supposed to be the authors of their own existence. Who you are is no longer determined by kinship, tradition or social status; instead it is something you determine for yourself" (7). How does Moll Flanders (the character) fit this description of the modern woman? Does her character resist this definition or embrace it?

Those of you new to my discussions will find that I tend to ask a string of questions (this time is nothing) but they are all just different ways of asking the same thing.