"Lestrygonians" Observation

This is a really difficult text to read because Joyce uses (third-person) streams of consciousness rather than a traditional, structured third-person narrative (so it reads like a person's thoughts, meaning that there are lots of fragments and jumping around, because in real life, one idea often gives birth to a new one altogether, seemingly out of nowhere, and they are not always in complete sentences). He also seems to go back and forth between writing from an outside narrator's point of view and from the perspective of the main character (Bloome). Anyway, I like this part:

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on [Bloome's] palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs. In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky grumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

I like the way Joyce uses streams of consciousness here to connect the mating flies to a memory of a sexual encounter between his wife and himself. The passage is particularly powerful near the end, when Joyce gets more explicit by mentioning "nipples" and "tongues." The sexual encounter reaches its peak just as Bloome thinks "she kissed me" (my emphasis), and then the word "me" leads him back to the present, the "me now" (again, my emphasis). Then he sees the flies again. At this point, Joyce brings the passage full circle, and one might even say that, in a way, he uses the romantic memory of the Bloomes' lovemaking to fill in the details of the "stuck" flies' own lovemaking. We MIGHT even be tempted to say that he compares/contrasts the flies and the Bloomes and, doing so, humanizes the flies or, conversely, animalizes Bloome and his wife.

Struggles of Women

Through out this short story, one is able to see the struggles that women have had to endure through the lens of academia. Virgina Wolfe, uses the narrator to develop many ideologies as to why women have had to endure such hardships through out time. She develops this in many different ways, first by developing the idea that women are not permitted to do many things that men are allowed to do, such as simply walking on the grass rather than a gravel walk way. Wolfe, then furthers here argument by looking at the financial possibilities for women in the concentration of writing. She discusses the fact that many of the most famous writers were indeed men until a certain point in time. She writes that during the time of Shakespeare no woman would have ever been able to write that way. She then develops he idea that women’s rights have been changing by looking at several of the latest writers and the struggles that they have been able to bring forth such as female realist writers writing about a lesbian relationship.
While Virgina brings up many points as to the struggles of women in writing, I would like to question this in a very different light. The genre of sports seems to much the same as writing. As many women were unable to compete in any form of competition let alone to be considered some of the greatest athletes of their generation. Yet, has this changed today, I would argue that just as Wolfe has seen the writings of women go from none to the abilities to write about lesbian relations, women in the area of sport have gone from no recognition to being considered some of the greatest athletes of their generations. I would argue that, Virgina Wolfe, sheds light not only to the struggles of women during the time of her writing, she has shed light to a genre of women struggles in society.

Three Lifetimes, in two Hours

In contrast to my previous post about Virginia Woolf's essay, I think that the Hours is an extremely effective, and powerful message, not just for the place of women in society, but the place of lesbians in a society that is not accepting to them, and the place of artists and visionaries, and in a world that seems to care little for finding a deeper meaning to existence. At first one begins to question what it is that these women have in common that they all should be placed in such a strong comparison. The movie assists in this nicely, however, the complexity of the commentary is astounding, and though I have seen this movie three times already it would take many more for me to fully understand it. One of the most impressive displays of this is in the use of device to connect characters throughout the modern (1950, 2001) stories to the archetypes that Virginia Woolf is faced with. For example, by connecting the cracking of the eggs of Clarissa (the 2003 woman) with the cracking of the eggs of the servants, Clarissa is more often than not compared to the mundacity and business of the everyday life of Richmond surrounding Virginia. This is also quite obvious from how Richard treats Clarissa in their relationship. However, Clarissa often times also plays the part of Virginia, as seen from her conversation with Richard's ex, she seems to be "stuck" in a spiritual sense, and life has never seemed the same to her since her days with Richard. Also when Richard makes her feel as though her life is "trivial" he represents the archetype of Virginia's husband and the male dominated literary world. I am particularly fascinated and impressed with the integration of 1950's conformity into the story as it is a very powerful display of socially conditioned oppression perfectly appropriate for the tale. In my opinion the character of Laura Brown serves to live out the actuality of the Mrs. Dalloway character created by Virginia, and since this story merges with the modern story of Clarissa and Richard I think that this then creates a dichotomy: the author, and her characters as manifested in reality, and the resonating effect of such characters into modernity. It is a beautiful story that I have loved since I saw it the first time, although I will admit it does become a bit melodramatic at times. In short it is hard to say what unifies these characters but I think if I were to pick it would fall somewhere in the gray areas between the following quotes:
"Im living a life I have no wish to live..." (Virginia Woolf)
"It (meaning her previous life) was death....I chose life." (Laura Brown)
"To look life in the face, and know it for what it is, love it, and then put it away..."(Virginia Woolf)
It is amazing but the movie almost seems to leave me with a sense of having experienced what is described in this last quote.

A beautiful film to the very last moment.

Give them free...

Woolf proposes to show how uneven the playing field was for women at her time in literature (amongst other fields). I do not believe that Woolf is necessarily advocating for some sort of separate education for women—rather I believe that Woolf recognizes that women have been downplayed in literary terms for so long, that the few women that make it tend to, somehow, assimilate to the mainstream male-oriented literary culture and are not represented in full, free terms. Women writers who write as they wish, experiment, think independently, etc., were perhaps shunned by the literary gate-keepers and so the successful women writers had to sort of conform. Her need for “money and a room of her own” to write successful fiction is not to be taken too literary. It’s meant to show the vast different and uneven playing grounds that men and women face entering the literary market. Goes in line with the saying I once heard, “Women have to work twice as hard to be thought of half as good.” So the women need to be isolated from this oppressive phallocentric society that only supports men—and attempts to condition women to similar thinking—they need to isolate themselves from that, get some money for food, etc., and begin to be free enough to think for herself.
I.e., men stop hating…give the women an equal opportunity, or give ‘em a room by themselves, with some financial support.

A Room of One's Own Review

In A Room of One’s Own the one main reoccurring theme is inequality and power of men over women. This theme is prevalent when the narrator is unable to find hardly any history or scholarship on women. Not to mention the information that she did find had a biased perspective written by men. To further illustrate the theme of inequality, the narrator made up a story about a Judith Shakespeare, the sister of William Shakespeare. William was always able to pursue his ambitions where as Judith was restrained. When her father beats her for refusing marriage, Judith is an example of the power of men over women. By the end of the story the narrator comes to the conclusion that even though Judith may have had just as much if not more talent than William, since Judith was a woman, her talent was confined by the society that she lived in. Inequality is also portrayed in the statement, “A women must have money…to write fiction.” Not very many women had money back in old days. Women were discriminated against, not getting paid as much as men for the same job, therefore men had power over women. In conclusion, because men had power over women, there were not many successful women writers.

A Tomb of One's Own

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Finally, a gender's issue that isn't forced! Mary Beton/Seton/Carmichael very plainly, easily, and happily writes a story for us which we can understand. She contends that Judith Shakespeare, a fictional sister of William's, would not have been afforded the same respect had she the same talents as her brother. In a metaphorical sense she asks for five hundred pounds a year to sustain any female author as she writes.
But this is not any militant feminism. Instead, she seems to be promoting the poetic license of any artist, so long as all are given equal credit and equal criticism for their individual efforts. Oxbridge, then, becomes a satire of the previously masculocentric literary world.

That a woman should be given the same opportunity as a man seems justified and fair.

Woolf On Wabash?!

While sitting, reading, and thinking in a room of my own with five hundred a year, these series of thoughts came to me.----“For we have too much likeness as it is!” With that quote, Virginia Woolf (or Mary Seton, Mary Beton, Mary Carmichael, or whomever) suggests that Wabash College, a college for men, is a good thing. While Woolf’s lengthy speech fundamentally concerns the need for supplying women with a room of their own and five hundred pounds a year to live on, whether figuratively or literally, I believe it resonates with a suggestion that women and men should be educated separately so as to hone their individual and unique voices. Woolf states, “Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?” She elaborates further, discussing how men and women can only write truly excellent poetry (or prose) if they are unencumbered by competition with the other sex. Competition pits one gender against the other, it forces males to defend their sex and a females their own. However, according to Coleridge and Woolf, for the mind to be resonant and porous, for it to transmit emotion without impediment, for it to be naturally creative, incandescent, and undivided, the mind must be androgynous. It must utilize both voices distinctly, without defending one against the other. It must be free to go where it pleases whether that is to a mark on the wall or to a scene where two people get into a taxi—it must be free to explore. It must be composed of the truth, and not just gender specific truth, rather it must “celebrate some feeling that one used to have, so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now” (2098). And it must do so for both men and women—not falling on deaf ears to half of the population. Indeed, it may seem somewhat paradoxical, but for Woolf, the mind becomes androgynous not through mutual interaction and education but through individualized gender specific education that elevates each voice respectively and doesn’t pit one voice against the other. She’s not saying that one sex can’t write about the other sex or can’t think about it or can’t interact with it (in fact by mentioning the shilling size hole on the rests on back of each persons head that only the opposite sex can see, she proposes that these things should happen), she is merely suggesting that in respect to providing for the best the education of women and men, so long as society continues to change in the favor of equalizing the rights and opportunities of women, they must be taught separately.