Week 6 has been another up and down week, I'm afraid! A real tasty broth of textures and flavours, taking me all the way from Chaucer's Middle English up to last century's antihero psycho-thrillers, some texts more exciting than others, but all offering up something deliciously different to the day before. Here's what I've been getting up to!
***THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE TEXTS*
Bombastic in its style, announcing its presence with the framing device of the eponymous Knight beginning his narration, the tale quickly roots itself in the upper echelons of a social hierarchy, the product and chronicle of the ruling class; the narrator may laud Theseus' 'chivalry', but this is entirely absent from his arrogant initial supposition that the 'woeful lament' of two ladies he meets in the road must be caused by 'great envy of my honour'. Neither does the heterodiegetic narrator come out of this too perfectly, hypocritical in the extreme as he is, realised by Chaucer's use of paralipsis - whilst his reasoning that 'the remnant of the Tale is long enough' caters to his guest's attention spans and intimates his good companionship and perhaps modesty, the proclamation 'I would have told you fully the manner / How the reign of Femenye was won... / And of the great battle... / And how Ypolita was besieged... (etc. etc.)' draws attention to the very details he is ostensibly truncating, proving him nothing more than a garrulous gossip eager to show off what he knows. Beyond this, given Chaucer's explicit references to the subjectivity of this narrated tale, a reader could also flirt with the possibility of the knight as a wilfully unreliable narrator, aggrandising almost all characters and placing them in an almost obsequiously noble light, from Duke Theseus, 'such a conqueror/That there was no one greater under the sun' to the emphasised beauty of Emily, 'fairer to be seen/Than is the lily upon its green stalk'.
L. D. Benson argues that the tale deviates from the pseudo-classical epic style attempted by Boccaccio, whose Teseida formed its basis; this is seen in its infusion of subversive religious challenge and astrological belief. Not only does Palamon lambaste the '"cruel gods that govern/This world.../Why is mankind more obligated unto you/Than is the sheep that cowers in the sheepfold?/For man is slain exactly like another beast'", but his brother's attempt at consoling him - seeing as his love at first sight for Emily is rendered in terms of physical pain, turning him 'so pale and deadly to look upon' and leaving him 'as though he were stabbed unto the heart' - offers the theory that their imprisonment at Theseus' hands is the result of 'some wicked aspect or disposition/Of Saturn, by some arrangement of the heavenly bodies'. Chaucer also keenly commands setting, structuring the tale to sweep from a bloodstained battlefield to the confined cell of a 'great tower, so thick and strong', through which the lovelorn knights can gaze directly onto the garden with its brightly-hued flowers under the 'bright and clear' sun, this contrast between liberty and imprisonment being reinforced when Arcite is freed from prison on the condition that he never returns, in his eyes dooming him to a worse punishment since, although free, 'nor nevermore shall see his lady'. Translating Boccaccio's tale into the English upper class by an injection of probing philosophy, Chaucer weaves themes of the power of love - a 'necessity' which is also 'a greater law.../Than may be given to any earthly man', as per Arcite - and nobility into an engaging courtly love narrative.
E. M. Forster published five exceptionally-regarded novels throughout his lifetime, leaving his early work Maurice, which he himself had deemed 'publishable - but worth it?', to be posthumously released. Its treatment of the contentious subject matter - homosexual love - verges on nonchalant, presented more clinically than shockingly given that the contemporary social context of its writing would render even any mention of Maurice's 'obscenity' egregious. Forster also appears to swipe at private schools (represented through the 'old-fashioned' headmaster Mr Abrahams who 'cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well') and their production of 'healthy but backward' schoolboys, although it's difficult to gauge whether this appearance is a result of the six-decade-long gap between the novel's production and its reception - after all, Forster does opine that 'there is much to be said for apathy in education', and the novel is rooted in the kind of upper-class Cantabrigian pretentiousness from which its author hailed, a land of coachmen and maidservants, where teachers need a pompous 'prelude' to what they're going to say, and where the 'fourteen and three quarters'-year-old boys are 'ignorant little beggars'; Forster exaggerates the overblown grandeur of religious belief when Mr Ducie cries '"God's in his heaven. All's right with the world. Male and female! Ah wonderful!"'.
Whilst death should rarely be thought of favourably, Forster certainly died at just the right time, following the sexy 60s' boom of liberty in love. The benefit of posthumous publication is in allowing the reader to glimpse a bygone age (where 'the mystery of sex' is to be approached 'very simply and kindly', and of course recognised as the activity of 'male and female, created by God') and identify it as alien to their present - in the context of much more enlightened attitudes, the 1970s reader could recognise homophobia's role as a part of this ludicrously stuffy society, and condemn it, learning lessons from the past to become more tolerant in the present. These more enlightened attitudes are represented from the off by Maurice, who privately scolds his teacher as a 'liar, coward' who 'told [him] nothing' about sex, a topic which Maurice pretended not to know anything about. More than simply illuminating the dichotomy between adults' perceptions of teenagers and the truth beneath, Forster here offers the first clues as to Maurice's sexuality; although the author's reasoning that Maurice simply isn't ready for this talk is fairly compelling, Maurice's failure to 'himself relate [the traditional explanation of sex between 'male and female']' foregrounds how it simply doesn't apply to him. And is it that different from heterosexual love anyway? Both are secrets, at least to begin with - Maurice promises his teacher he has heard 'not a word' about sex before and swears not to tell other people, and equally supposes 'some special curse [has] descended on him' when he first dreams about himself in a gay relationship. Yet Maurice gradually grows in the confidence to accept, and enjoy, his sexuality, beginning to 'make a religion of some other boy... he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly and be unable to work'.
As Forster remarks, 'so curious a fabric is the human', a concept he investigates throughout the novel by splitting its characters off into cults - the teachers who believe themselves authorities on everything; the shut-away upper classes in general, represented by Mrs Hall, almost cowardly in her passive content to live in 'a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for' and to explain every egregious action away as 'overtiredness'; and, most notably, the schoolboys. There were 'so many boys of [Maurice's] type - they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra', and with tribes come rituals; Maurice subscribes to these by adhering to a spiteful system of teasing romantic interests - 'other boys sometimes worshipped him, and when he realised this he would shake them off' - and to another of bullying - 'having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed unhappy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do'. This highlights how unfair discrimination is just that - unfair, and unnecessary; this is surely a message which would resonate in a society that was just about coming to terms with sexualities which deviated from the norm, further revealing the temporal serendipity of Forster's passing which allowed the publication of the book.
The power of love is a key theme within the novel, presented as having the same effect and representation as heterosexual love despite its different specifics. Even from a young age, Maurice feels something for the servant boy George, evidenced by the 'great mass of sorrow' that overwhelms him when he learns George has left the family. Love is transformative - Maurice daydreams about boys, enjoys a 'dirty little collection' of thoughts about boys, emerges from a dream 'yearning with tenderness and longing to be kind to everyone, because his friend wished it, and... might become more fond of him'. Love is no less powerful than The Knight's Tale, but its power by necessity reveals itself in an entirely different way - how could Maurice express his passions in terms of physical pain, as Palamon did, when he practises the Wildean 'love that dare not speak its name'? Forster tackles homosexual desire introspectively, diving into the lucid power of Maurice's thoughts and dreams to uncover his 'secret life'; indeed, his 'part brutal, part ideal' dreams not only mirror his state of mind as a whole (Forster is confident that 'they will interpret him') - they also intimate that his sexuality is innate, an immutable part of his identity. 'As soon as his body developed he became obscene', yet even before adolescence, he dreamt 'he was playing football against a nondescript whose existence he resented. He made an effort and the nondescript turned into George' - a naked George, that is. That Maurice 'made an effort' to fill the void with George represents how, contrary to the narrator's professional authoritative declarative that Maurice 'became' obscene, he made no conscious effort to be anything other than who he always was. The dream was 'more real than anything he knew' - a prejudiced society may shut people out as it pleases, but Maurice can retreat to dreams to unlock his true identity. The unintended juxtaposition of the pre-war setting and 1970s publication allows Forster's well-written novel to catalyse a change in opinions, revealing that while society may have changed for the better, homosexuality has always been a part of it, innate and uncontrollable, something which should be treated as equal to heterosexual love.
Whilst death should rarely be thought of favourably, Forster certainly died at just the right time, following the sexy 60s' boom of liberty in love. The benefit of posthumous publication is in allowing the reader to glimpse a bygone age (where 'the mystery of sex' is to be approached 'very simply and kindly', and of course recognised as the activity of 'male and female, created by God') and identify it as alien to their present - in the context of much more enlightened attitudes, the 1970s reader could recognise homophobia's role as a part of this ludicrously stuffy society, and condemn it, learning lessons from the past to become more tolerant in the present. These more enlightened attitudes are represented from the off by Maurice, who privately scolds his teacher as a 'liar, coward' who 'told [him] nothing' about sex, a topic which Maurice pretended not to know anything about. More than simply illuminating the dichotomy between adults' perceptions of teenagers and the truth beneath, Forster here offers the first clues as to Maurice's sexuality; although the author's reasoning that Maurice simply isn't ready for this talk is fairly compelling, Maurice's failure to 'himself relate [the traditional explanation of sex between 'male and female']' foregrounds how it simply doesn't apply to him. And is it that different from heterosexual love anyway? Both are secrets, at least to begin with - Maurice promises his teacher he has heard 'not a word' about sex before and swears not to tell other people, and equally supposes 'some special curse [has] descended on him' when he first dreams about himself in a gay relationship. Yet Maurice gradually grows in the confidence to accept, and enjoy, his sexuality, beginning to 'make a religion of some other boy... he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly and be unable to work'.
As Forster remarks, 'so curious a fabric is the human', a concept he investigates throughout the novel by splitting its characters off into cults - the teachers who believe themselves authorities on everything; the shut-away upper classes in general, represented by Mrs Hall, almost cowardly in her passive content to live in 'a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for' and to explain every egregious action away as 'overtiredness'; and, most notably, the schoolboys. There were 'so many boys of [Maurice's] type - they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra', and with tribes come rituals; Maurice subscribes to these by adhering to a spiteful system of teasing romantic interests - 'other boys sometimes worshipped him, and when he realised this he would shake them off' - and to another of bullying - 'having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed unhappy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do'. This highlights how unfair discrimination is just that - unfair, and unnecessary; this is surely a message which would resonate in a society that was just about coming to terms with sexualities which deviated from the norm, further revealing the temporal serendipity of Forster's passing which allowed the publication of the book.
The power of love is a key theme within the novel, presented as having the same effect and representation as heterosexual love despite its different specifics. Even from a young age, Maurice feels something for the servant boy George, evidenced by the 'great mass of sorrow' that overwhelms him when he learns George has left the family. Love is transformative - Maurice daydreams about boys, enjoys a 'dirty little collection' of thoughts about boys, emerges from a dream 'yearning with tenderness and longing to be kind to everyone, because his friend wished it, and... might become more fond of him'. Love is no less powerful than The Knight's Tale, but its power by necessity reveals itself in an entirely different way - how could Maurice express his passions in terms of physical pain, as Palamon did, when he practises the Wildean 'love that dare not speak its name'? Forster tackles homosexual desire introspectively, diving into the lucid power of Maurice's thoughts and dreams to uncover his 'secret life'; indeed, his 'part brutal, part ideal' dreams not only mirror his state of mind as a whole (Forster is confident that 'they will interpret him') - they also intimate that his sexuality is innate, an immutable part of his identity. 'As soon as his body developed he became obscene', yet even before adolescence, he dreamt 'he was playing football against a nondescript whose existence he resented. He made an effort and the nondescript turned into George' - a naked George, that is. That Maurice 'made an effort' to fill the void with George represents how, contrary to the narrator's professional authoritative declarative that Maurice 'became' obscene, he made no conscious effort to be anything other than who he always was. The dream was 'more real than anything he knew' - a prejudiced society may shut people out as it pleases, but Maurice can retreat to dreams to unlock his true identity. The unintended juxtaposition of the pre-war setting and 1970s publication allows Forster's well-written novel to catalyse a change in opinions, revealing that while society may have changed for the better, homosexuality has always been a part of it, innate and uncontrollable, something which should be treated as equal to heterosexual love.
Highsmith enjoyed reading around psychological topics, including Cleckley's treatise The Mask of Satiny which introduced the idea of the psychopath as a typically charming, manipulative, narcissistic, self-seeking, anti-social male from a 'non-family' environment. So far, the conman Ripley subscribes to most of these; he is already a fairly highly-developed character, although perhaps his traits adhere too closely to this definition of psychopathy, rather than presenting a more complex character, such as the kleptomaniac Sasha in Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (see week 3 of the reading challenge). He certainly earns antiheroic status, commanding the narrative from the off with his flawed character; he is uncertain (downing a drink 'in a hurry' to evade a pursuer before succumbing to temptation by 'taking a chance and going in for another drink'); materialistic (noticing his acquaintances based on their hair colour - 'the big man with red hair, whose name he always forgot', 'a blonde girl', a man 'greying at the temples' are all identified by him); superior, disparaging Greenleaf's 'pathetic, hungry expression'; and clearly accustomed to the life of a malefactor - the 'friendly, smiling and hopeful' face of Greenleaf 'was more confusing to Tom than if he had focused a gun on him'. Ripley defies an interpretation of himself as 'intelligent, level-headed, scrupulously honest, and very willing to do a favour', allowing Highsmith to represent Ripley as the embodiment of the false appearances that are so easy to put up; even when talking to Greenleaf, his mouth and his brain are saying different things, Highsmith presenting a series of these juxtapositions to further her duplicitous portrayal of Ripley.
Yet an antihero embodies the liminal space between hero and villain, defying dichotomous categorisation of these archetypes - and so Ripley lacks the professionalism of a truly dedicated criminal mastermind, merely carrying out petty confidence scams; he is also charming and confident, 'strolling' to a bar, where he sits '[facing] the door challengingly, yet with a flagrant casualness', and some of his lies both provide amusing insight into his state of mind and represent his commitment to obliging the needs of his listener - although he 'had never seen' Richard's pen-and-ink drawings, 'he could see them now... could see Dickie smiling, holding them up for him to look at, and he could have gone on for several minutes describing details for Mr Greenleaf's delight'. Much of Tom's paranoia seems to stem from the high-functioning mental power that also fuels his imagination and natural sense of resourcefulness - he obsessively counts his scam money to the nearest cent (although 'it amounted to no more than a practical joke'), and immediately sees Greenleaf's offer of moving to Europe as 'a possibility. Something in him had smelt it out and leapt at it even before his brain'.
The obvious flaw in this early passage is that, whilst offering an insightful study into the psyche of a 'bored, god-damned bloody bored, bored, bored!' antihero, I feel as though I know nothing about anybody else - setting, other characters and plot are all a little light in an introduction which sets the ball rolling at the expense of establishing a defined milieu first. Perhaps that's a good thing - I'd have to read the rest of the novel to fully contextualise the relevance of this opening. Who knows whether I will? Tom is a fairly interesting character so far, although given the limited amount of time we all have to read for pleasure, I'm not sure whether this one is worth pursuing further - it just lacks the strong opening and elegance of style that I prefer. Nevertheless, we could all learn from Tom's philosophy - 'something always turned up'. Who can predict what the future will hold?
Saying that, this atmosphere of sheer fun is notably off-limits to half of the population. Dorimant is a notorious offender, flitting like a pollinator from women to women, seeing his current partner as a 'pis aller' (last resort) whilst writing her love letters, all the while lamenting 'what a dull insipid thing is a billet-doux written in cold blood, after the heat of the business is over!', yet every party has a derogatory vocative for the orange-woman, who is 'double-tripe', 'huswife' (since shortened to the offensive 'hussy'), 'cartload of scandal' and an 'insignificant brandy bottle', begging the question of when the jokey atmosphere goes too far. Jacknewitz maintains that this 'dramatic satire illustrates a return to the traditional treatment of women within the process of courtship and love' - that is, as objects to be oppressed - although Dorimant is certainly the main proponent of the sexism. He challenges the orange-woman's promise of 'the best fruit', maintaining it to be 'nasty refuse', and similarly suggests that 'this fine woman [Harriet]... is some awkward, ill-fashioned, country toad' - on top of it all, the fact that he has 'not had the pleasure of making a woman so much as... be sullen... these three days' constitutes 'calm in my affairs'. Given Dorimant's central role as the lord of misrule, could Etherege be criticising his reliance on mischief as possibly slightly over-the-top, as his attitudes are clearly bordering on misogyny? Amusing from the start, whilst providing some sustenance for contemporary feminist critics, The Man of Mode is an enjoyable enough riot that I'm sure I will enjoy the rest off.
There are multiple valid interpretations of exactly what is happening to the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, and to be honest, I'm not sure which (or which combination) I agree with the most. Certainly, the overriding view at the time of publication, that the narrator is exhibiting an extreme level of consciousness and connectedness with the subliminal world is supported by her incredible presience, as she immediately 'will proudly declare that there is something queer about [the house]'. This rather Romantic view is quickly dismissed by John, who 'laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage'. Ah, bingo. The Yellow Wallpaper, among other things, analogises women's inferiority and oppression within the prison of marriage with the contemporary failure to adequately recognise and treat mental conditions. Drawing on her own experiences of S. Weir Mitchell's inefficient 'resting cure' for anxiety, Gilman crafts a story which isolates the narrator from the world in which she lives. Only three other characters appear, one of which is imaginary, and, by necessity of the nature of the epistolary format, the action all takes place in the narrator's bedroom, separate from the 'DELICIOUS garden' in the 'most beautiful place' that is the environs of the house. Gilman, as Chaucer did in The Knight's Tale, exploits setting to give the perspective of a prisoner looking out onto liberty but not being allowed to partake in it.
The gaoler in all of this? John. The narrator's husband 'does not believe [she is] sick!' and ensures she is 'absolutely forbidden to "work"', effectively trapping her in a cage with her thoughts and spectating at the fight to the death that he has created. John exhibits an unequalled level of influence over the narrator, both physically and mentally; when he says that she is getting better, she feels better, and vice-versa. She initially attempts to 'write for a while in spite of [his instruction]' but soon realises the difficulty of 'having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition'; similarly, her resistance is again stamped out when John fixes her 'such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word' after she insinuates that whilst '"better in body", she is not better in mind'. Rather than actually resting as is claimed, the narrator exhausts herself by '[taking] pains to control [her]self'; here, Gilman illuminates how women's forced subservience has a damaging effect on their mental health, shining the spotlight on an oft-neglected issue at the time. Since there is 'no REASON to suffer', John reckons there is no suffering; Gilman's subtle criticism of this stance foregrounds the necessity for men and women to understand each other's differing modes of communication - logic is all very well and good, but it must be matched by an understanding of traditional feminine intuition. What's wrong with 'giving way to fancy', as John cautions against? Gilman's semantic choices track John's control over his wife (having already made his sister a 'perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper'); she maintains him to be 'very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction', not realising the implications of her words, whilst he patronisingly looks down on her as a '"little girl"', crying '"bless her little heart"', both times employing the diminutive adjective to assert himself over her. Is he simply trying to signify that he is authoritative enough to take care of his wife? Is he trying to metaphorically slap his wife into what he perceives as the real world? Is he seizing the opportunity to assert himself over a frail partner? Or has she been his plaything since the beginning? She becomes repressed beyond belief - her baby is only mentioned once, halfway through, and she begins to feel apologetic for her condition, lamenting her status as 'a comparative burden already'
The narrator's self-expression is a key theme of the novel, and even though she knows writing would 'rest' her and demands 'I MUST say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief!', it is stolen from her by John as the story unfolds; this is represented through his forbidding her to write, as he denies her the 'dead paper and a great relief to my mind' provided by her diary; the accelerating pace of the story's climax implies the entries are getting few and far between as the story progresses, so he clearly influences and reduces her ability to express her thoughts - exactly what we'd advise sufferers of mental health conditions to do these days: to share their experience. Interesting to note that the 'dead paper' of the diary not only contrasts with the 'living souls' whom she is forbidden to talk to, but also with the increasingly living wallpaper which so torments her; the narrator spends the rest of her time tracing the patterns in the wallpaper of her room; more than simply demonstrating the amount of time she is forced to spend bedridden, this structural device mirrors her mental deterioration. At first, irregularities on the paper are merely 'lame uncertain curves' which 'plunge off at outrageous angles' on a paper whose 'colour is repellent... a smouldering unclean yellow' - this description intimates a simple clash of tastes - but as the narrator's anxiety consumes her brain, so do her descriptions of the paper gain increasing sentience and viciousness, as it exerts 'a vicious influence', 'lolls like a broken neck', prompts her to realise she 'never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before'. And then the woman appears.
A 'faint figure behind' who 'seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out', the woman in the wallpaper is the exact parallel of the narrator, emphasised when the two become one during the tense climax. Having suffered a pattern which she believes 'slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you', the narrator realises that it not only oppresses her (as does John) but also 'becomes bars! ...The woman behind it is as plain as can be'. As the narrator becomes more and more oppressed by John, the woman becomes clearer and clearer to her, to the point where she 'can see her out of every one of my windows', and as a result our narrator becomes more aware of what she has been subjected to. The final few pages of the story frantically pick up the pace, roaring to a climactic cliffhanger in a way quite unlike any denouement I have ever read before; depending on how they're interpreted, these pages can change a reader's understanding of the entire story they have just read, present themselves as a statement of the narrator's empowerment, finally breaking free of the wallpaper and being able to realise her situation and embark on a mission to heal, or simply act as a harrowing coda to the narrator's experiences. Me, personally? I think it's all of the above.
In the novel, which prioritises introspective characterisation over heavy plot, Woolf captures a family beset by conflict on the Isle of Skye. Much of the novel is told through the characters' thoughts and perceptions of the (minimal) events around them; to properly understand the mechanisms of thought, Woolf would sit listening to herself think for hours on end - through this introspective exploration, the author weaves a complicated system of family dynamics illustrating the complexity of everyday family life. Immediately a wedge is driven between Mr Ramsay, who tells his son James ('the image of stark and uncomprising severity') that they won't be able to go to the lighthouse as he wishes; Mrs Ramsay views this as the 'caustic saying' of an 'odious little man', whilst James wishes for 'an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him'. From Mr Ramsay's point of view: he takes a sadistic pleasure in 'disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife'. Mrs Ramsay is the biggest hypocrite of all; whilst bemoaning the 'strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very fibre of being' exhibited by her offspring, she herself criticises them as 'so critical... they talked such nonsense'. The atmosphere of distrust and half-concealed loathing is reciprocated. Meanwhile, the eight children seek privacy and independence in a home environment where they are forced to be together, their bedrooms 'their fastness in a house where there was no other privacy', insinuating their uneasiness around their siblings. Narrowing the focus, the Ramsay daughters Prue, Nancy, Rose confront their mother; they 'sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers... there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivary, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire'. Put simply, they are feminist in a way alien to Mrs Ramsay, who enjoys playing the stereotypical hostess role - part of the conflict stems from Mrs Ramsay's inviting 'too many people to stay' on the island; she believes 'she had the whole of the other sex under her protection, for reasons she could not explain... something trustful, childlike, reverential'.
One of these lodgers is Mr Tansley, a friend of Mr Ramsay who is disparaged as 'a sarcastic brute' by the children for his competitive streak when it comes to 'Latin verses', and for his conversational desire to have 'turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them'. To Mrs Ramsay, too, he is an 'awful prig - oh yes, an insufferable bore' and a proponent of 'ugly academic jargon' - but then again, she seems annoyed by everyone, reserving hatred for the guests she graciously welcomes; is it because she feels 'all her wit and her bearing and her temper' come from the 'mythical Italian family' from whom she is descended, 'and not the sluggish English' - is she simply dissociated from the entire English way of life? Anyway, Tansley seemed to be about to present a metaphorical spanner in the works at the point where I stopped reading - whilst walking to the bay with its 'great plateful of blue water' and 'hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere', he begins to feel that 'everything he had ever known [has] gone crooked a little'. And what is the cause of this emotional disturbance in so phlegmatic a man? All at once he realises: 'it was this: it was this - she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen'. Suddenly overcome by 'an extraordinary pride' for the first time in his life, Tansley relishes 'walking with a beautiful woman'; whether it'll be acted upon remains to be seen, but it nevertheless complicates the already twisted web of divisions and connections between the characters of these introductory chapters, and promises an introspective study of human nature and relationships. If I can find the time to explore it further and get to the bottom of exactly what it's trying to say, I think I will.
So - a mixed bag, but for the most part, these week's texts have been challenging (perhaps too challenging in Woolf's case!), stimulating and above all, exciting to read. I've tackled Chaucerian knights, antiheros, Restoration romps and broken families. Without meaning to, several themes have (rather eerily, actually) cropped up in multiple texts - imprisonment (Chaucer/Gilman), breakdown of family relationships (Gilman/Woolf), the power of love (Chaucer/Forster), a misogynistic attitude towards women (Etherege/Gilman). All in all, another solid week of texts!
Re next week - the next week of the reading challenge will very likely not be starting on Monday. I'm exceedingly busy at the moment, so it will be incredibly difficult to write the introductory post before Monday. I'll endeavour to get the Week 7 menu to you as soon as possible, and then we can start reading from then and hopefully the whole thing will sort itself out! Until then, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all kinds of notifications and updates and, whatever you're currently enjoying: happy reading!
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