Month: October 2024 (Page 2 of 2)

The prompt for essay from ENG 216:

Choose one of the non-fictional pieces we have read so far this semester and one scene, chapter, or passage from the novel. Compare and/or contrast the way women are characterized in each, paying special attention to the assumptions each work seems to be making.Be sure that you bring your comparison to a point. You should develop an analytical claim, identify a focus for discussion, and explain why both matter. Your introduction should conclude with a statement like the following: By analyzing [name your focus], I will argue that [state your interpretive claim], which is important because [answer the “so what?”].

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• To what extent does its depiction of men (as sons, brothers, husbands, friends), their expectations regarding women, their conversations about them, or their behavior towards them seem connected to the legal ideal?

• In what ways do the women in the novel seem to embody the legal idea of women as presented in our non-fictional readings? Non-fictional works include Bodichon’s Plain Summary, Cobbe’s “Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors” and Bronte’s Preface to the novel.

• How do the women in the novel show acceptance of or resistance to the legal ideal? If readers are supposed to side with Helen, are they also supposed to view all her actions equally favorably? To what extent does the novel endorse challenges such as hers to the law?

Google Doc copy of my essay with comments/questions as a place to continue working from:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u-HbgnKu60Bs4oyNaArJVzsArUfNxxw5R-oiwPgXeOo/edit

In thinking about what aspect of this past work I want to extend and make room for further exploration that reflects the skills I have gained since this project, I want to be able to go further in depth in the theories of other Victorian writers/thinkers for more context. By narrowing in on the conversation around marriage, which is obviously central to the legal implications Helen faces in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, can extend from my piece that argues the ideal of marriage stipulated in the law does not match reality, to one that asks why WAS this the reality? For instance, what did the parliamentary debates say on matters such as coverture? Who were the political theorists writing and speaking on this subject. In that, I can employ the work of J.S. Mill and his take on what marriage was meant to achieve and why the law had to require it in order to meet certain ends? Specifically, his arguments within his essay “The Subjection of Women.” What other systems of laws surrounding marriage had been attempted or proposed? (Extending further from Bodichon here)

ENG 216 Essay: The Legal Ideal and its Irrefutable Detriments: In Conversation with Brontë and Bodichon 

“The extent to which the novel exemplifies and personifies certain legal models versus that of the reality for women poses a significant challenge when evaluating just what the law was supposed to achieve. Brontë’s novel allows us to work through those legal restraints on a woman’s individuality in a fictional setting and, accompanied by Bodichon’s remarks, forces us to grapple with those unrealistic expectations of love, protection, and marriage in a world where women are unseen in the eyes of the law.”

“The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 might have been present or in the works during Brontë’s time, but it was not in the 1820s where The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is set. Knowing this, we can begin to understand the drastic measures that Helen must take to remedy the wrongdoings against her, such as Mr. Huntington’s infidelity, but also keep in mind her lack of agency over her child. Brontë, through a fictional narrative, can look back to a time without such reforms and options for women to stress the importance of society in progress further.” 

“While the laws may hold up one perfect and idealistic rendition of marriage and all the subsequent circumstances that follow, public sentiments began to ponder how and why their everyday problems were not reflected in the law.”

“Brontë’s novel, coupled with non-fictional works of later reform activists like Bodichon and Cobbe, expertly uncovers the ensnarement women are subjected to via the role of marriage and child custody in the legal system while illuminating the necessity for hypothetical, unattainable ideals to make way for women.”

• This past project makes the most sense to me in considering the ways in which the other areas of Victorian law and literature can expand out of just one novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, and one non-fiction prose, Barbra Leigh Smith Bodichon’s piece “A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women: Together with a Few Observations Thereon
• The idea that my essay contends with is how a novel was able to allow society to embody this woman’s life which follows the correct course that the law affords women – get married and have children. Yet, through the course of the novel we can witness the abuse, verbal and physical, the economic confines and that idealistic rendition of marriage that the law of this era recognized is not in line with the realities women may face.
• Where I would want to expand upon is looking into this period that became an era of social change through the law and what other sources of literature, case law, legislation, etc. brought it about. What were the reactions to Brontë’s novel and what were the leaders of this discourse saying about those literary embodiments of women outside of the law?

HIS 278: Women in the Ancient World

” Through inquiry into the traditional scope of the Laws, the only mention of women was denoted to their submission to patriarchal rule and limited rights under guardianship. By researching Roman women’s domestic duties and daily lives, including familial, religious, and other social relationships, I can draw out areas where they had agency and power over themselves and others around them.”

“While we do not have access to all of the laws, as mentioned previously, the selection we do have access to implies that the only mention of women was to set a precedent in the legal system that the positions they had were incumbent upon men’s decisions. For instance, under Table V. Inheritance and Guardianship, the law states, “…Women, even though they are of full age, because of their levity of mind shall be under guardianship…” (Lefkowitz & Fant,174).”

Benchmark #1 Notes: Faculty Meeting 10/9

• The project → written essay – revision of my essay from ENG 216: The Legal Ideal and its Irrefutable Detriments: In Conversation with Brontë and Bodichon 
• How to make this project a smaller scale than the honors project
  • Thinking more about this idea of how literature can come into play when the law no longer feels secure in protecting one’s needs/rights → maybe that can be the entry point where we look to that Victorian literature before women had legal personalities and that was there way to showcase justice/empathy for those outside of the law → NOW we are entering a period where certain legal safeguards are slipping backwards → is it time now to turn back to literature in order to not repeat those same patterns → That precedent can be a major agent of change as it was when those laws started to come about in the Victorian era regarding women yet now they seem to have become a source of confinement and grounds to continue patriarchal norms 
  • Catalyze change
    • Embodiment of implications of the law 
    • Child custody → caroline norton (1839 act) – Bradshaw 
    • OR gaskell (1853) Ruth and mercy and justice → In the novel versus in the case law
    • Cobbe, Bodichon → J.S Mill the subjection of women → examining the subjection of women → very logical approach → what explains the condition of women at the time – justice, expediency, reasons for marriage – men don’t make marriage attractive enough – reason its required is no one wants to do it (domesticity) *(1869)
      • Have we ever tried any other way ?
      • Comparison between different mode of constituting society → between the two sections – look to chapter one
        • Equality argument and supposed to effect a general progress → Bodichon looks at other parts of Europe and family 
        • Where men get their ideas of women (mother and wives)
          • Look to literary women → how do literary women express and write about – George elliot and Bodichon come in as the context of what Mills is exposed to 
        • What men fear → how that translates into funneling women into marriage (middle class option) 
      • Gaskell not meant to be historical fiction like Brontë’s novel was (mid victorian century) (1847-1869) middle point where this legislation comes into play
        • Married women’s property acts
        • Child custody 
        • Divorce and matrimonial → probate and not religious 
      • Looking for a way to bring sources together so that a snapshot of this moment of actual reform 
    • Primary materials
      • parliamentary debates (transcripts through Millbank – Houses of Parliament records database – Hansards entity that published those reports) 
      • Non-fiction prose Mills, Bodichon, Cobbe 
      • Fictional novels Brontë/Gaskell 
    • Why am I going back to this period? → this is the precedent (common precedent reference – precedential idea of conservatism)
      •  Looking at this middle period of change in the courts and started with Bodichon and then Bronte 
    • Look at Mill and grab that part about literary women and what are they doing and why did people HATE the Tenant of Wildfell Hall
      • That archival version was one source and one novel and now they are exemplary but opened up those bigger questions
        • Bring in Mills 
• Mills offer a point of expansion where we ask what where those examples of the literary women

2QCQ

Quotes:

• “To make into language the objects, forms, colors and relations of the speechless world is the challenge of the painterly poem. The abstractions of esthetic theory here give way to direct observation and specific transpositions from visual to verbal representation. The world of things and the world of ideas intermingle in this genre, which prompts such questions as: Why did the poet choose to write about this particular painting? In what sense can a poem extend the “meaning” of a painting or deepen our appreciation of it? How has the painter’s style influenced the poet’s sense of verbal composition”(Moramarco 25).
• That final line is chilling because it applies to all of us who view the painting as well as to the mourning parents. The Effie of the painting, immortalized in art, has a kind of permanence that our fragile and transient lives can never have. Like the figures on Keats’s Grecian urn, she remains fixed and enduring through the assertion of the artistic imagination, conveying “unheard melodies” to us”(Moramarco 33).

Comment: 

When Moramarco discusses this idea of poetry and painting, I found this idea of transpositions and mixing of these two artistic forms of the written word and painting interesting as it connects to our thoughts on what we are allowed to do with other people’s work. Moramarco raises these questions about why a poet might feel compelled to select one painting over another and how can the poem extend the meaning or alter our interpretation of it. This to me feels very similar to our discussions in class of the idea of Harris’ project – how can we take something that we are drawn to whether it be our own work or not and find a way to do something meaningful with it that doesn’t replace the original work but makes way for our voice. Then jumping ahead in Moramarco’s piece, he analyzes the poem by Adrienne Rich titled “Mourning Picture” in conjunction with the painting “Mourning Picture” by Edwin Romanzo Elme and makes the very case that Rich’s poignant last line speaks to us as a viewer of the painting in a way that addresses both the subjects within the painting and reaches through time to ourselves. The extension that the poem brings also makes a choice to give a voice – agency– to the young girl, Effie, within the painting that provides an entirely different feeling when viewing the painting that we might not have had before. 

Question: 

Does this example of extending a work through the addition of a poem inspired by the painting “Mourning Picture” feel different to us than the Goya and Shonibare? Is there something to be said about why our discussions tend to lean toward imitation, copying, etc.  when the two artists are working within the same medium versus this transition Moramarco states between visual and verbal representations? Does one feel less original than the other?