Eliot's Silas Marner

As I picked up Eliot’s Silas Marner over the weekend, I kept referring back to our class discussion on the pros and cons of the city. We listed (among other things) that isolation, money, and machinery are key components to city life, and that each of these concepts can negatively impact the spread of urbanization. Although for some moving into a large city provides endless opportunities of freedom and monetary growth, others might easily feel lost and alienated by the complexities of city life. 

In Silas Marner however, I noticed that in the beginning of the novel, the main character has a very different experience with the city. When we are first introduced to Silas, he is a well respected and an active member of the community. He maintains close relationships with many community members, and he is heavily involved with the church. In fact, he is engaged to be married and maintains a fairly decent living as the local weaver. He does not harbor any feelings of isolation until he is accused of a crime he did not commit and is forced to leave town. 

When he relocates to the countryside, I was struck by his odd behavior. His life becomes very mechanical; he locks himself up in his cottage working sixteen hour days and never attempts to befriend his neighbors. I was surprised that a man who used be very friendly and affectionate, now only communicates with people through business interactions. His emotional attachment to others is completely turned off; he resigns himself to living as a hermit. During his first twelve years in Raveleo, Silas’s only trusted companion is his “brown earthenware pot” (15). He has grown so attached to this object that when he accidentally breaks it, he is grief stricken. Silas even goes as far as putting the “bits together and [props] the ruin in its old place for a memorial” (15).  His distress over the pot suggests that although Silas is quite capable of being affectionate, he continues to be haunted by his past, and it prevents him from moving forward. For the most part, the country offers Silas a place of solace, but it also allows him to hide from his past and his future. By keeping to himself, he does not have to confront any further possibilities of being betrayed by his community.

His change in behavior not only limits him from establishing friendships, but it also fuels his new obsession with work and money. I was caught of guard by the way Silas throws himself into his work. Now, I understand that this may be his way of avoiding his past and current situation, but I did not expect that he would also become hungry for money. The more he stays away from others, more diligent he is with work,  and the more he focuses on acquiring wealth. I can’t quite figure out the reason behind his greed? What does the money replace? The text suggests that his obsession is an “incipient habit” (14), but I think it goes beyond a simple habit. Perhaps the wealth provides Silas with a sense of security he never had before? I’m not sure...either way, his fixation on the guineas is very daunting. He is so attached to the money that he would “not exchange [his] coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He handled them, he counted them, till their form and color were like the satisfaction of a thirst for him” (14). Furthermore, Silas is not only consumed by money, but he also does not use it to his advantage. He lives below his means, keeping the bags of money within arms reach as if they were meant to be his companion and nothing else. His determination to work and make more money, does not fit my idea of the a man living in the country. I would imagine that anyone who moves away from the city would be more inclined to slow down rather than work their life away. 

Reworking Rousseau: Frankenstein as a Critique of Rousseau's Emile

Frankenstein  is most commonly celebrated as a cautionary tale about the dangers of science that allows mankind to transgress the natural order, a warning that humanity may be overreaching with its ever increasing ability to manipulate nature. The understood danger is that mankind may, like Victor Frankenstein, lose control of our scientific creations and may thereby unwittingly cause our own destruction. While such a tale may have seemed fantastic in the Romantic era, today the creation of life is an apple just beyond our grasp and the warning seems well-grounded in reality. The splitting of the atom, the invasion of the heavens as we begin our exploration of space (with the implied colonialism and exploitation of resources that will accompany said exploration), and the decoding and manipulation of the double helix are all marvels of human ingenuity that could conceivably lead to the demise of the human race - and quite possibly, all life on this planet.

At the Water’s Edge with the Ancient Mariner

                                                                                                                                       5,150 Words

New Academic Review

At the Water’s Edge with the Ancient Mariner   

June 13, 2013

William Cooper

“Unspeakable Discovery: Romanticism and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

by Matthias Rudolf

March 2013

European Romantic Review, 33 pp. $0.10

“Striking Passages: Memory and the Romantic Imprint”

by Ashley Miller
Spring 2011
Studies in Romanticism, 23 pp. $0.10

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner first appeared as the first poem in The Lyrical Ballads of 1798, the reception was less than enthusiastic. Critics judged the 800-line anonymous poem’s complexity as obscurity, its inventiveness as weirdness, and its commanding strength as flamboyance. In fact, Wordsworth, the sole listed author of the Ballads, seriously considered dropping what was to become Coleridge’s most famous work from subsequent editions. So the 1800 edition of the Ballads saw position of the Rime was changed and much of its purposely archaic language modernized. Its title was recast as The Ancient Mariner, a Poet’s Reverie—last thing to  say in order to create a reverie among your readers.

The Reality and the Idea: Thoreauvian Science and Transcendentalism in Walden

Johnny Mendoza

Professor Garrett

English 560- Romantic Natures

June 8, 2013

The Reality and the Idea: Thoreauvian Science and Transcendentalism in Walden

            Towards the end of “Economy” in Walden, Thoreau writes of the “customs of savage nations” who once a year burn their excess amounts of clothes, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes” (62). The clothes, along with furniture, pots, pans, and other household utensils that have accumulated, are gathered together in one great heap and set on fire. Thoreau learns of this practice through William Bartram, an American botanist, who upon his travels through South Carolina documents the Mucclasse Indians engaging in what they considered to be a purification act. As Thoreau in this chapter is considered with living economically and not going beyond an inordinate amount of provisions, he wonders whether this practice might be profitable to adopt or not. Nevertheless, he credits this ritual, similarly practiced by Mexicans “at the end of every fifty two-years,” as the truest manifestation of an inward spirituality he has ever heard (W 63). These customs, Thoreau says, reveal “they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not” (62). The idea refers to the inspiration received “directly from Heaven,” and the reality consists of some form of documented record to show evidence of such a revelation (W 63).

“Purgatory Now: The Motif of Transgression and Expiation in the Poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge”

ALFRED C. VALRIE JR.

Thursday, 13 June 2013

Frances Ferguson, in her essay entitled “Bathos of Experience,” argues that we should consider the Romantics in terms of a “redeemed phenomenology” (39) which strikes a balance between human interactions with the world being cast as solipsistic, or quintessentially singular, and the world imposing its own preternatural, nonhuman being, or essence, on the subject.  Because, in recent Romantic criticism, each, the world and the subject, runs the risk of, in Ferguson’s words, “doing one another in” (39), we must reinterpret the Romantics as, first, beholden not to the mind or the world, but to the discovery of truth, and secondly, that once this truth—this transcendence—is reached, becoming cognizant of the poem and poet himself as message and evangelist, respectively.  In ancient and Medieval epics, the discovery of truth dealt more with righting an Everyman’s relationship with an angry pagan god or reckoning the full measure of salvation with the aloof Christian God.  When Ferguson calls the sublime a concern with power greater than our own, we can draw a line from Homer and Dante directly to Wordsworth and Coleridge by reason of the latter two’s fascination with the death of innocence and a ‘waking up,’ as it were, to the power of truth immanent in nature, whether that be human or environmental.  In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth encounters his former, idealistic self in Dorothy and in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the main character arrives at newfound innocence through a process of exploration.  In the case of each poem, whether the exploration is internal, external, or both is a matter of profound interpretation.  What we must realize is that only by examining each poem can we begin to know, first, the totality of the word ‘nature,’ and secondly, the importance of sublime notions in commonplace discourses.

Zizec's Eco-terror

          Zizec in his essay explores the various types and uses of fear in relation to environmental policy, or ecology. Early on a distinction is made between terror and fear. Zizec argues that the only true remedy for fear is to be terrorized, to assume the worst has already befallen us. He says we should not search for safety but that we should do the opposite. Next is a Nietzscheian "death of god" pronouncement in which Zizec argues that the thought of a great "other" is equally as horrific as the thought that we are alone in the universe.
          The following section focuses on scientific advances and globalization. Zizec argues that the fear perpetuated by religion, which has up until now been nullified by science, is no longer containable by the latter. Furthermore he states that the rapid advance of technology and access to the human genome will forever change nature, resulting in an absence of what we consider nature: "there is no nature." This he believes will form an alliance between religious groups and environmentalists, who both stand to gain from a concrete and objective definition of what is natural.
          Zizec ends with four steps to revolutionize this earth's ecology: Strict egalitarian justice; terror (ruthless punishment of all who violate the imposed protective measures, Inclusive of severe limitations on liberal "freedoms," technological control of prospective law-breakers); voluntarism; and trust in the people.  

Gothic Will

This is another book I really enjoy. I’ve read it several times for various classes and I’ve taught it once to an Honors English class. Until this seminar I didn’t even realize that there was an earlier version. The versions I’ve read and worked with have always been the 1831 version. I know that some people have a problem with the overblown language and the general perceived faults that come in a Gothic and  Romantic work. I like how the book incorporates so many different issues and themes. No matter how many times I work with it there is something new or different to focus on. I especially groove on the links between this and Paradise Lost. Like so many other people, I’m a little in love with Milton’s character, Satan, and seeing echoes of him throughout the novel is amusing.

Of all the themes and motifs that the book contains one that hit me harder than normal was the idea of “will”. This time, and it may be the difference in edition, it felt like the book was a novel about will. Frankenstein gets into trouble because of his desire to go further than any other man in science (natural philosophy?). He essentially brings the monster into being through an excess of will. After Victor rejects the monster that excess of will then rebounds on him through the monster’s attacks on his loved ones. At the end of the novel, when Walton confronts the monster about his heinous actions, the monster replies that he was in agony as he committed those crimes yet something still urged him on. To my mind that “something” could only be his will. This reminded me of two things from other books. One was the character of Clithero from the novel Edgar Huntly by Charles Brockden Brown and the other was The Lord of the Rings. In Edgar Huntly, the character Clithero is this man who through an unfortunate event becomes obsessed with killing his benefactress and her daughter. When he thinks them dead or out of his reach he behaves fairly normally. Once he realizes that they are living nearby he turns into an unstoppable fiend bent on their destruction. He has less motive for causing  pain than Frankenstein’s monster but the idea of unstoppable drive is what reminded me of him while I was reading Walton’s interview with the monster at the end of the novel. The other thing the willful monster reminded me of was the part of The Lord of the Rings where Saruman’s operation for creating the Uruk-hai is discussed. There is a stark contrast in LOTR between Sauron’s forces who use “unnatural” means to gain the advantage in the war for Middle Earth and the “good guys” who are more aligned with the “natural” world. The scene at Isengard brings to mind the archaic definitions of the word “machine”: 1a. a constructed thing, 1c. a military engine. It is senseless, mindless, ceaseless industry and activity. This too seems like an embodiment of an excess of will, although I’m guessing it has much to do with Tolkien’s criticism of the industrialization of the modern world.

One other thought that kept popping up was that I wonder what a post-colonial reading of the novel would look like. The other times I read this book was in my high school AP English class and during my undergrad work so my exposure to the criticism of Frankenstein isn’t extensive. For some reason the idea of reading this book in terms of colonizer and colonized was smacking me over the head like a two-by-four. I was also seeing parallels between the framed narrative in this novel and in Wuthering Heights. I was wondering if the story-within-a-story trope was especially popular during this general literary epoch or if it’s just a popular form for weird English women who like to write weird stories.