50 Shades of Bloody Chamber

Angela Carter's "The Bloody Carter" is a very dark story based off the tale of Bluebeard, in which Bluebeard stores the bodies of his previous wives in a chamber. Carter's story also makes a lot of references to tales and legends such as King Mark, Dracula, Tristan and Isolde, and Red Riding Hood ("All the better to see you.") These references as well as the many others gives the reader an idea of the atmosphere the main character is in. It's dark and sinister and deals with a passionate 'love' which is really just an obsession. It also gives the reader an idea about how young and naive the new bride is.

The choker made of rubies is a fascinating symbol of the story because it represents wealth, extravagance, ownership, humiliation, and even survival. It represents survival because the girl tells the story of how people who escaped execution during the Reign of Terror would tie red ribbons around their necks. This is very appropriate for the girl considering she herself is almost beheaded. She overcame her sadistic Big Bad Wolf much in the way her own mother conquered her would-be victimizers. (the mother even shoots him much like in certain versions of Little Red Riding Hood.)

the nonsensical nonsense known as Alice

Alice in Wonderland is a part of many people's childhood. I know it was a big part of mine. I can still remember watching the film and reading the book and wanting to be Alice. In fact, I was even her for Halloween one year. She was my hero, my idol, etc, as I'm sure she was for other little girls. Honestly, Alice is still kind of my hero and the inspiration she gives me probably means that I will always be a kid at heart, which is 100% fine by me. Alice is an icon, I can get a mental image of her immediatly, although it's from the disney cartoon which I was more influenced by growing up (my family wasn't much for story time.) When watching the film or reading the book I always felt as if I was going on the journey with Alice. I got to be her shadow, and wanted too be the tweedle dee to her tweedle dum, best friends. Looking back I probably grew with her as she journey through Wondeland learning lessons. Methaphorically of course, I didn't flood anyone's house with my tears. I wanted to be with Alice and adventure through Wonderland and experience the magic, the vivid colors, the creatures, etc of a land I could only read about. That's what I find to be one of the best things about Victorian children's literature, which hit it's stride with Alice and brought about books such as Peter Pan. When reading these books you get to have that moment, even if it's brief, where you get to go to Wonderland, Neverland, or any other land and you get to be a kid again. As the book closes and Alice or Wendy decides that it might be time to grow up you are transported back to real life and into your big kid body. By experiencing the lands through these books you can also experience them on your own in your imagination. Hey, I've been to Wonderland once, why can't I go back on my own time? These lands help you remain a kid at heart, proving that you never have to grow up. You can always return to being a kid when you go back to the lands of your childhood.

Forbidden Fruits: Just Say No

I must admit that it took several times to read through Rosetti's "Goblin Market" to read into the story beyond a Fairy Tale or Biblical allegory. Let's face it, by now women should learn to NOT accept fruit from strangers. It never goes well. The story draws similarities to Eve, Mary Magdalene, Hansel and Gretel, etc. We covered most of this in Monday's class.

The element of the story that I found difficult to parallel to any other text but the idea of Lizzie making Laura eat the fruit from her flesh. It has been considered feminist and even homoerotic. While Laura is the fallen woman that is easily swayed and becomes the victim of addiction, Lizzie personifies the light, or good, qualities of a person, manifesting the archetypes ranging from the Christlike martyr to the virgin that survives a slasher movie. They seem to be yin and yang, as portrayed by the way they sleep in each others' arms as if in the womb, meshed together as if one person. While I can see how it is a feminist text due to a woman saving another woman rather than a Prince Charming or Jesus Christ coming in to save them from their sins, I think it reflects the battling sides of a person such as the darkness that is susceptible to greed, temptation, and addiction. But on the flip side, that darkness is conquered by resistance and conviction and the light and dark must battle and feed off each other to be a whole person.

Cry of the Children

Browning's Cry of the Children comes in an era where child labor is exponentially increasing alongside the Industrial Revoluation. Before, children would work on farms or in shops, but with technology growth, they started to work in factories instead as cheap labor. The urging for working children to "go out, children, from the mine and from the city" and play in the meadows presents the dichotmy of a society once agricultural, now industrial. Youth and life are associated with nature while the cold metal of machines are associated with death. The poem is not only drawing attention to the ghastly conditions of child labor, but also to the shift from nature to machine.

Cry of the Children draws attention to the conditions of child labor, forcing the audience to question society's role in taking away children's innocence. The poem blatantly describes the jaded and hopeless attitudes working children have toward death, God, and life. The ending lines say, "But a child's sob in the silence curses deeper/ Than the strong man in his wrath," indicating that though they are young and unwise, the pain a child endures can be more powerful than the petty vengences of a man. Children have raw emotion due to their inexperience, so they do not understand their pain as much as an adult does, but can feel it deeper than adults. Browning's poem calls for protection for the children and questions the morality of a society that uses children as another stepping stone toward power.

The crying children.

The Cry of the Children provides an insight of the life of working children and the misery of life. These children were in fact the little adults of the Victorian period that we discussed in class. These children are in so much misery that they think "Death in life, as best to have". These children have obtained the belief that death would be more enjoyable than life because all they do is suffer and do labor. They then begin to question religion, God more specifically. They question his existence because he has not answered there prayers. These children did not get to experience a normal childhood; such as, innocence, joy,  and growing experiences. These children were thrown into a life they had no choice but to take and are miserable living it. In this selection were are shown sides that make us feel more sympathetic towards the children because we do not get to see their kid side. To experience what they have at such a young age makes a person grow up faster than they should and not enjoy life, as these children have.

Evolution

Adeline’s character was the character that intrigued me the most. When she was forced upon LaMotte we were introduced to a scared and helpless individual. When she was first introduced, it was unclear what type of character she would be, but it was made apparent that she would be a major character. The fact that she was placed under LaMotte’s care, caused a bit of confusion. What kind of role would she play, since LaMotte is already married? She seemed like she would be a fragile and troublesome character, although she did cause a few problems, she was the opposite of weak. She stood up for herself and did not give into anything she did not want to. Adeline takes everything learned from LaMotte and applies it to her everyday life, and because of that we see a evolution in character.

Our Leading Lady

As soon as I was introduced to Adeline’s character while reading The Romance of the Forest, I knew that there was a reason the Radcliffe chose to have this woman as our heroine. As the book was starting out, I could tell that many readers (especially female readers) would have a problem with Adeline because she came off as the typical damsel in distress. It seemed that she was constantly being dramatic, fainting, or crying. She is described as being young and beautiful, and these things only add on to the idea that she is also naïve and innocent; almost to a fault. If you take her at face value, she seems like a weak protagonist. However, I also got the feeling that there had to be more to Adeline. There’s no way that this woman is nothing past her crying and gentleness. I argued this in our class discussion, and it was a risky argument to make, considering that at that point we had only read the first part of the novel and we still didn’t know much about her. As I went on to read further in the book, I found that my argument was a pretty solid one. Although Adeline seems like a fragile being, the mysterious things about her that are revealed as the novel goes on make us appreciate her character a little more. She is in fact a strong character, and I’m glad that I gave her the benefit of the doubt from the beginning. I believe the Adeline’s true strength is revealed towards the end of the book (for example when she refuses to marry the Marquis despite all the trouble that it may cause) as the plot begins to shift and we begin to understand who she really is. These things allowed me to view her as a woman with high moral standards and the perfect heroine for a mysterious gothic romance.

Feminist Problems

Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest isn't necessarily my cup of tea. But that's probably due to the lack of a "strong" heroine. Adeline is described as small in comparison to her surroundings, taken in by the La Motte's, and doesn't appear to have a whole lot to say. I suppose my dislike of her is slightly my fault, because as a reader I know that I tend to sympathize with characters who have a strong backbone and gumption. I just feel that Adeline really doesn't have a whole lot to offer and is simply a vehicle to get things to happen.

Which, in  a sense I'm glad that there is a female protagonist here. We're experiencing the actions in the story through a feminine scope, as opposed to the predominant male scope. That shows some sort of progress, not Jane Austen's kind of progress; but, I'll take it. (Which is the statement of any woman, ever. Even with the advent of one Elizabeth Bennet.)

Where is Lucy?

In William Wordsworth's poem "Lucy Gray," he creates the story of a young girl who disappears in a snowstorm, causing her family to go searching for her with little hope. The ballad is bleak and heart-wrenching as the mother follows her young daughter's footprints but fails to bring her home, and yet the final stanzas give a trace of hope with the words "Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child." This verse could have easily have been more haunting, saying something along the lines of "To this day, her spirit dwells in the midsts forever searching for her family..." (which would certainly give it more of a Gothic influence) but instead it claims that she could be alive. Could this futile optimism be to spare the reader the idea of the death of a child? Is it even optimism at all? The idea of Lucy being alive or at the very least having her spirit still lost in the wild could either be interpreted as her being apart of nature now and being preserved as an innocent child, or it could be seen as her being forever lost and ignorant much like in Purgatory. Innocence and ignorance seem to hand-in-hand when it comes to the bliss of naivete but Wordsworth is well aware that there is nothing blissful about a child being lost in the height of a snowstorm. He based the poem on a real story of a girl who got lost in a snowstorm and was later found drowned in a canal. Rather than tell that story and give Lucy a conclusive and finite ending, he gives the story a certain vagueness that is looming. Should we feel hopeful or haunted?

Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!

William Blake critiques the status of children through the symbolic use of animals in his collection. In Song of Innocence he often refers to children as lambs, and the poem itself describes a soft and gentle creature being “meek and mild.” This is a classic Christian symbol that is meant to invoke a sense of innocence and helplessness. However, Blake meant to make a more sinister connection with the addition of Songs of Experience. The lamb is also used in the Old Testament as a sacrifice; during Passover a Paschal Lamb was killed in order to atone for sins, basically washing away sin in blood. Blake saw children as being abused by religious leaders who supported an economic environment that allowed children to be the victim of cruel work conditions. This is most evident in “Holy Thursday” were he speaks about children being reduced to misery and poverty, most likely working instead of attending Thursday night services. These children sacrificed their innocence in order to serve a system that did not support them economically or spiritually. The companion piece to “The Lamb” is “The Tyger.” The tiger in Christianity represents martyrdom. There are many stories of Christian being thrown to lions and tigers in huge arenas for all to see. This is much like the children being thrown into a life of labor with “good Christians” as the spectators simply watching as the children get devoured by a life of poverty and hardship.

Blake's case

In Songs of Innocence/Experience, William Blake likens the transition from childhood into adulthood as one of almost spiritual importance. In Innocence, Blake portrays the unbridled joy of childhood innocence in its most pure form. This, to Blake, is the period in which we are our greatest and even likens children to angels. As children, we are pure because innocence is all we know - we know not of the struggles and sacrifices necessary to maintain a stable life. Given the time period in which he was raised - one of industrialization in Britain - Blake was given the luxury of being able to live as a child for far longer than most lower-middle income children. He only attended school until he was 9 and was pulled out by his parents and home schooled by his mother for the rest of his adolescent years. During this time, Blake was prone to visions and had a very active imagination, which often alienated him from his peers and caused his neighbors and extended family to think him mildly insane. At the age of ten, he claims to have seen God and a gathering of angels in a tree outside of his window. I believe much of the idealism and holiness that Blake writes about in Innocence is a view of childhood reminiscent of his own experience growing up.

A portrait of Dealing with Death

I find that in his poem “We Are Seven” Wordsworth really does something unique with his writing and that is give a glimpse into how a poor young girl sees the world. In the conversation between the man and the young girl we learn that there are seven children total, it becomes very quickly understood that not all is as it seems. She says there are seven but two dead and four are gone away. This strikes me on a number of levels. The first is because it was not uncommon for non- aristocratic families to have large numbers of kids and depending on their social status or income may not have been able to care for all of them on their own and for Wordsworth to make a reference to this seems a bit odd. The second reason is even though her two siblings are gone she still counts them as among us as if nothing had happened. I cannot pretend to know what Wordsworth vision for the cultural sentiment towards the dead in this poem would be. Reading this made me more curious as to what his views on the place of the dead in his own society were and was this poem based on some of his own life experiences or was he taking in descriptions and looking at how certain groups viewed their deceased?