Pricilla's Blog

The play The importance of being Earnest written by Oscar Wilde is a comedy which describes one micro culture during the Victorian period, the aristocratic manners of the high society and its triviality. It is a play that language is more important than action and the main themes presented in the play are: the triviality of social life, art for art’s sake, double life, marriage (for pleasure or for business), and the role of women, among others.

In the Victorian society young girls were suppose to be innocent and wait for their parents to arrange their marriages. The last thing to tell a girl was the true, because true is cruel. We can see this illustrated in the first act when Jack says:

“My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!”

This excerpt is criticizing society because young women were not even allowed to read the newspaper in order to avoid the truth. Girls were raised to be apart from reality, so the ladies were considered innocent but, there are two characters which do not fit in it, Gwendolen and Cecily.

Gwendolen is a very strong character, with her own ideals, not like the innocent Victorian girls. She flirts with Jack, when she visits Algernon, with her mother, Lady Bracknell, she speaks to him in a very romantic language but exaggerated, she wants to marry him, especially because of his name. And she speaks with authority:

“[Gwendolen]: Mamma! I must beg you to retire. This is no place for you. Besides, Mr Worthing has not quite finished yet.

[Lady Bracknell]: Finished what, may I ask?

[Gwendolen]: I am engaged to Mr Worthing, mamma” [Act 1]

In this excerpt we can realize a break gender role, because girls did not arrange their own marriages, this was their parents’ role. Gwendolen also differs from Victorian girls because they used to be pure and very innocent and Gwendolen was not. She sometimes even takes control of the situation, when Jack proposes her, for example:

“[Gwendolen]: I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.

[Jack]: Well… may I propose to you now?

[Gwendolen]: I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr Worthing, I think is only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am fully determined to accept you” [Act 1]

She is very direct in her discourse and she knows what she wants. In the same act, she wants to show people that she has somebody who “loves” her when she says:

“What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Earnest! They are quite, quite blue. I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present” [Act1]

Besides Gwendolen we also have Cecily who breaks the role of gender. Cecily keeps a diary in which she used to invent things like an imaginary world. And it is in this diary that she creates a love story with a person she even did not know:

“[Cecily]: … I remember only too well that I was forced to write letter for you. I wrote always three times a week, and sometimes oftener”[Act2]

Just like Gwendolen she is fascinated with the name Earnest and she decides, by herself, to get married with her cousin but, even the “husband” didn’t know that he was engaged with her.

“[Algernon]: But how did we become engaged?

[Cecily]: Well, ever since dear Uncle Jack first confessed to us that he had a younger brother who was very wicked and bad…” [Act 2]

The two characters, Gwendolen and Cecily, break the gender roles of the Victorian Era when they express opinions and ideas, when they manipulate the men they were interested and when they decide to get married without their family’s arrangement.

In the play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams we are introduced to the three main characters, Amanda, Tom, and Laura, who are different, each one with their own characteristics, but with one in common: their desire to escape from reality. Each one of them has a personal reality.

Laura is very fond of her glass ornaments which are very fragile and beautiful, just like she is, she seem to be a piece of her own glass collection. She is very sensitive, shy, naive, and she has an inferiority complex because of her physical problem. She could not handle situations of pressure and also stress. She likes Jim, who is described as popular and a high school hero. He is the person who gave her, by misunderstanding, the nickname “blue roses”:

Laura: He used to call me – Blue Roses. [...] When I had that attack of pleurosis- he asked me what the matter when I came back. I say pleurosis – he thought that I said Blue Roses! So that’s what he always called me after that. Whenever he saw me, he’d holler, “Hello, Blue Roses!” (Scene II)

Blue Roses is a nickname that brings the idea of mythical significance, because in real life blue roses do not exist naturally, just like the other symbol related to Laura: her glass unicorn. This mythical thing is recognized by Laura in the dialogue they have in chapter seven:

Laura: But blue is wrong for – roses…

Jim: It’s right for you! You’re pretty!

It shows that he recognizes her as something unique and pretty as a rose. The color blue brings the idea of negative feelings such as sadness and sorrow which can be associated with Laura’s inferiority complex that Jim points out also in scene seven:

JIM: You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! [...] A lack of confidence in yourself as a person. You don’t have the proper amount of faith in yourself.

It is difficult to determine which one is guiltier, because both of them do their own part in committing the crime against the king. After knowing about the witches’ prophecy the couple shows their ambition in order to achieve the power. In my opinion the guiltier on Duncan’s death is Macbeth.

The crime was planned by both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. But the first person who thought about killing the king in order to replace him was Macbeth, even before telling his wife the event, which involved the possibility of becoming the king:

(…) My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man,

That function is smother’d in surmise

And nothing is, but what is not.

Act 1, scene 3

Macbeth’s desire would let him do anything, even evil things, to conquer the position wanted:

(…) Stars hide your fires,

Let no light see my black and deep desires

Act 1, scene 4-Lines 57-60

When Lady Macbeth received a letter from her husband she got amazed by the idea of becoming the queen, so she started to plot Duncan’s murder. We face to a character who is very powerful, naïve (who does not think about the consequences of killing somebody), strong, ruthless and more ambitious than her husband, who had ambition but without obsession, differently from her who had evil ambitious.

(…) Thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.

Act 1, scene 5

Lady Macbeth manipulated her husband; she even questioned his manhood in order to convince him to commit murder:

(…) When you durst do it, then you were a man:

And to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man.

Act 1, scene 7, lines 49-51

After so much insistence, trying to persuade her husband of killing Duncan, Macbeth was convinced of doing so:

I am settled, and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Act 1, scene 7, lines 84-85

Lady Macbeth just talked about committing the crime which is very different than actually do it, for this reason I think that she is not as guilty as Macbeth. She did not commit any crime, but it does not mean that she was innocent because she was not. What I am trying to say is that he was the one who committed the actual murder, making him the guiltiest.

He did not have to listen to what his wife said; he could, perfectly, make his own decision. And this was what he did, making him to take two wrong decisions. Firstly, when he let himself being persuaded to kill a man and secondly, for becoming a murder, a very coward murder, by the way, for killing an old, sleeping man, who did not have any chance to react, to fight for his life.

Macbeth did the physical murdering and Lady Macbeth succeeded in convincing him that he must murder the King. These were the part that each of them had in committing the crime.

As the title suggests, “To counter Malthus”, the poem written by Margaret Avison is arguing against Tomas Malthus’ ideas. Let us see how she does this stanza by stanza:

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

In the first stanza we have a negative view of the world. The poetic voice describes it as “burdened”, it means an overload, a difficult and unpleased place. She states that no human being has known how to live in this problematic world, so how can we decide who is going to live and who is going to die. Since from here Avison starts to criticize Malthus’ hypothesis, which is about the population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence and that disease and famine was a way to control the quantity of people who represents the poor class. The evidence that she is against this ideas is when she uses the comma and the imperative “Let”, it seems that she is talking directly to Malthus, for him to leave the mass of people alone; They who are consider the poor ones, the big quantity, “who is too many”. When she uses this term she is referring to growth population. Here she shows that she is against his idea of deny any assistance to the poor ones.

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

In the second stanza she starts to talk directly with the “Presence”, this presence in capital letter in my opinion is God, truly I think it is more than a talk, it is a pray to God. She first evokes God using a vocative and then a comma. God is a presence in her life. Then she refers to Him again with the pronoun you. Showing a presence of something bigger than everything, even than problems. She continues talking with Him “You give a purifying signal”. Purifying is used here because God is pure, so everything that comes from him is pure, else well. He is the one who can keep us living, even with all suffer in the earth we do not loose faith and hope on Him.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers . May none die

without somebody caring.

She starts the third stanza with descriptions of the world, now positive ones. She says that even being a crowed place it can support the big quantity of strangers, who are people who doesn’t know each other, people who are strangers among them. Then she uses the modal verb as a wish she had, a wish to God, she continues her prayers. She wishes that nobody dies without having another person to worry about, to cry this person’s death.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

In the fourth stanza she continues talking about the “strangers” referred previously, for them to know the other will cost, because for us to know somebody else we have to dedicate something, we have to dedicate our time, our attention and we stop caring only about us, we cannot just live our lives and let the others die, we have to know one another, and do not be selfish. “And being known” means to let the other know you, to donate yourself. Besides this, it brings the idea that the man is not an island, he cannot live alone. We cannot live like strangers among so many people. And she uses the dot before that sentence to continue the idea that was broken in the sentence before and to reinforce the idea of letting the otters know you. In the last two lines she makes a question that it seems that she is referring to the people who belongs to the teeming masses (a life full of suffering), being alive among so many is concern. In the last line she did not conclude her idea, she let space for the reader to reflect.

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn if Quantity.

In the last stanza she states that hunger is what threatens congeals the quandary (the problem, dilemma) of stratification and she also related it to the population growth. This famine is a representation of poverty and suffering. And even with so many problems in the world (as starvation, poverty, illness, etc) people do not loose faith in God. Presence is a constant for those people who believe on It, and it remains untouched. As if she wanted to say to Malthus, who wanted to control the quantity of people, “Yes, there are a lot of people in the world and ‘hunger makes men desperate’ but there is something bigger than this and everything, a ‘Presence’ The one responsible for our lives and our destinies. What really matter to Him is not what we have, or what we produce while we are here, but who we are”.

To Counter Malthus

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity.

*Form*

“A Thunderstorm” is a poem which was written by Archibald Lampman and it is a point of view of the poet, a description of a natural phenomenon. It is a sonnet of fourteen lines with alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables as it is represented down, where I scanned the first three lines:

ˇ    /     ˇ      /      ˇ       /    ˇ        /    ˇ     /

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

ˇ      /      ˇ      /        ˇ        /          ˇ     /   ˇ    /

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high

ˇ       /   ˇ     /      ˇ      /     ˇ    /         ˇ        /

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky

The rhyme scheme is ABBAACCADEFFDE

*Analysis*

The poem has characteristics of the Impressionism because Lampman was an impressionist, who used to describe the nature in his works, in this poem he described a particular moment, we can also see the great sense of the movement and sensory perception, and this characteristics are not a peculiarity of this one.  It is a poem rich in details; he gives us so much information in only fourteen lines that we could even paint it if we want. So, let us take a look at the it:

A Thunderstorm

1 A moment the wild swallows like a flight

The word which brings the idea of movement is flight, when the birds (swallows) flight in the sky. They are flying to run away of the storm which is not happening here yet, these (until the third line) are moments before the thunderstorm begins. The poet is comparing the birds with leaves, the idea is divided, and he started in this verse and finished in the second verse.

2 Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

In this second line we also have the second movement; it is represented by the word gust. The same word also has the sense of hearing implied on it. Here he completed the comparison between birds and leaves, which he started doing in the first line, the birds flying high like the leaves, but not all of them (leaves), the wind just catch the older ones, because they get withered and also more fragile. As it is going to rain, the wind takes these leaves away, in my opinion, a sense of touch.

3 Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

This line is referring to the birds tossing in the sky; once again we have the idea of movement with the word toss. The sky is muttering, it is making some noise, not a loud noise, but low, to announce the arrival of rain. So we can say that here we also have the presence of one of the five senses, the hearing.

4 The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

The leaves continue there, flying in the air, as the birds, in the second line, serenely high. Here we have a not so dark sky, a sunset, but it is described as stranger, weird. Here I imagined a mixed of colours, vivid (from the sunset) and darker (from the clouds of rain) colors.

5 The hurrying centres of the storm unite

The idea of movement in this line is very strong. The center of the storm is hurrying, it is much windier. And the clouds of rain are joing together to make the storm stronger.

6 And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

It is a representation of the movements of the rain, spreading and rolling fringe, the rain falling down, touching everything.

7 Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

It is a continuation of the idea of the previous line, the rain affecting everything.
It brings more description of the powerful storm.

8 Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,

It is getting darker, because of the storm. Once again he started one idea to conclude on the next line.

9 With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,

The sense of hearing is present in this line, beyond the sound of the rain, we have the trees making long, loud and deep sound when the wind and rain movement them, sometimes slowly from side to side and sometimes very quickly and powerfully, also a sense of touch.

10 And pelted waters, on the vanished plain

The water is running, falling down, very fast, probably noisier, and this is almost an aggression on the plain, and the next line is a continuation.

11 Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash

The water plunges. The sky is wild, full of thunders, which turn the sky, even for a second lighter, crossing the sky out with white. A very beautiful image. I thought about the contrast of colors, the gray of the rainy in the sky and the white of the flash. It has, in this line the sense of sigh.

12 That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,

This verse continues the idea of the previous one, but here we have the sound made by the thunder. It was not just one sound, but series of sounds “pealing thunder-crash”. The sense present here is hearing.

13 Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,

As a result of the power of the rain we have the description of the fields and the gardens which got bleared and disarrayed, a real mess, because the it was not a weak rain, it let the place disorganized.

14 Column on column comes the drenching rain.

This verse is also about the consequence of the storm in the landscape. The rain came very slowly, “column on column” it means gradually and it left everything extremely wet.

*General comments about movement and sense*

As we could see since the beginning of the poem we had the permanent idea of movement. The birds flying as leaves, the wind catching and tossing leaves to the sky, in the description of the storm, “hurrying center unite”, of the wind and the rain itself, coming slowly and becoming stronger and stronger , pelting from the sky.

As I said before this poem has sensory perception, and we have some of the five senses present in it, in my opinion the main sense in the whole poem is sight, the poet describes everything he sees perfectly. The sense of hearing is implied when he mentioned the thunders, but also the rain, and when the wind shakes the elm-tree. He did not say once but it is implicit the sense of smell of the water wetting the ground. And the sense of touch is represented by the wind and also by the rain, which involve the elements of the landscape; they are touched by the rain and by the wind else well.

I conclude saying that Lampman’s poem is great. After I read it I could imagine myself in the place, feeling the wind and even the smell of the rain.