One doesn't expect one's giants to be human.
Toril Moi --
bulwark of feminist academia -- is
in person
a school-girl
with crimpy blond hair
and a red handbag.
Practices for Disturbing Times
5 years ago
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Early mornings with Percy Shelley
I am in the process of creating a new lifestyle for myself. One in which I actually wake up in the morning. (Shocking, I know). Eat breakfast (with many, many cups of coffee), and then spend all of my daylight hours in the library.
I've done well so far. With the exception of Saturday and Sunday (where my routine was broken with a migraine and church), I've done a complete week without falling off the wagon. Written about half of a (rough) rough draft of my theory essay, and read about 800 pages of Icelandic myth and history.
The real test will be how well I survive the revival of crew training tomorrow.
But anyway. That was actually just a prelude to say that I was in the Bodleian today, reading The Poetic Edda (translated by the professor I'll be working with this term), when one of the women from my Thursday night Bible study asked if I wanted to take a lunch break with her. So we went to a local deli and bought baguette sandwiches (Brie and onion marmalade) and then ate them in her college's MCR (which, for those of you uninitiated, is the "Middle Common Room" -- i.e. the place where grad students hang out).
She's a member of University College, and gave me a bit of a tour, which included this lovely memorial to (arguably) the college's most famous member: Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In case you didn't know, besides being married to the author of Frankenstein, Shelley is one of the most famous of the Romantic poets, usually remembered beside such names as Byron and Keats.
What I found exceedingly amusing, however, is that this memorial (given to the college because it was too large to transport, as originally intended, to his grave in Rome) commemorates a student who lasted a grand total of one term at Oxford. That's right. On the 25th of March it will be exactly 200 years since Shelley was expelled.
Which explains, I suppose, why, when originally offered the memorial, the Fellows of the college decided to reject it. But granted foresight (and extra money from his daughter-in-law) they finally accepted what has become the college's leading tourist attraction.
It, appropriately enough, is described as the statue that "continues to fascinate and disturb." I think that Shelley, the author of "infidel poetry" (so described by the journalist who gloated, upon hearing of his death, that "now he knows whether there is God or no") and the "inspiration to rebellious students everywhere" (so claimed by one of Oxford's current student newspapers), would appreciate the description.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Writing is Woman's (or why theory makes my head hurt)
So, this is my attempt to think through, in a space that is nonthreatening in its informality, some of my ideas for the theory essay that is currently leaving me wordless and angsty. I would like to claim (though my college friends would have to verify) that I've never struggled so much with an essay in my life. That I've never been so utterly incapable of coherent thought, or worthwhile expression. Maybe it's the pressure of trying to create something worthy of Oxford (whatever that means), or maybe it's the attempt to reflect on pure, unadulterated theory, without the grounding in literature and life. Or maybe I'm just out of practice. After all, other than two application essays and a few (short) creative writing pieces, I haven't written anything since graduating almost two years ago.
But I really want this OUT OF THE WAY. Done with, so I can move on to better things. Things like Icelandic literature and books on myth.
Here is what I do know:
It is an essay that will touch on the work of Cixous. And Virginia Woolf. And maybe Kristeva, Irigaray, and others.
It is an essay about women. About women and their relationship to writing. About women and the metaphor of writing the body. Feminine ecriture, writing is woman's, and all that.
Toril Moi has an essay, written in 2008, that points out one of the main complications that seem to lie at the heart, not just of women and writing, but of feminism and theory in general. There seems to be a tension, a conflict even, between political feminists and literary theorists (be they queer, postmodern, etc.) Between those who need the signifier "woman" to retain it's meaning and significance, and those who wish to displace the binaries (and the signifiers) altogether. In writing, this issue takes the form of dissonance: a political mandate to read and study the work of women writers vs. the theoretical conjecture that the author (and gendered subject) is dead.
Moi argues that the feminists and theorists have no real answers for each other, and generally escape conflict by avoiding the debate altogether.
But I think there's a way out of this seeming standstill, and always has been. When Roland Barthes wrote about the death of the author, he was affirming, in many ways, what feminists already knew: that the patriarchal, masculine subject -- the mythic phallus, impenetrable and whole -- was an illusion. A protection, as Peggy Kamuf puts it, between the boundlessness of an unlimited textual system and our own power to know. And it was time, Barthes argued, for the myth to be put to death, and the text liberated from the constraints of the Author-God.
But this displacement of the omnipotent (male) Author, rather than erasing the political significance of women's writing (as so many feminists seem to fear) opens new doors to symbolically re-interpret the relationship between gender/sex and writing.
Virginia Woolf famously asserted, in her 1928 treatise on women and writing, that great writers are androgynous (and must not think of their sex). She also asserted, somewhat contradictorily, that women must write as women, and not as men.
Taken on closer evaluation, these two statements prove to be related, for Woolf seems to imply that to write as a woman -- a real woman, and not the stagnate image created in the patriarchal conscious -- is to be androgynous: fluid, multiple, ever-shifting, changing, never coded, never closed. It is, in short, to be all that phallogocentricism, in its obsession with stability, wholeness, and rigidity, is not.
Helene Cixous makes a similar argument, stating that woman has never lost her bisexuality.
As the repressed/oppressed/negated signifier in the binary man/woman, woman holds no commitment to the phallocentric order. In fact, it is the very passion with which patriarchal discourse has attempted to obliterate her that provides the means for her to break free. For the signifier "woman," subsumed/submerged/swallowed/annihilated by its partner "man," can never hold the weight of the real woman, with breath and blood, body and voice. All woman has to do is show up -- write her body, her very self, into being -- for the existing discourse to crash and burn.
And since woman has no allegiance to the phallocentric ideal of unity and oneness (for, as Luce Irigaray so blatantly points out, woman's sexuality is not one, but two, and not two, but many), she is free to be nothing and everything; to return and start again from elsewhere; to never say exactly what she means. Lacking a phallus to begin with, she is unfettered by the fear of castration. She could never claim to posses the (one) truth, so she has no need to defend it.
And since woman is multiple, and writing is multiple, Cixous can make her claim -- bold and threatening -- that writing is woman's.
For it is time for a new metaphor, not the Father-Author and his text, but the mother-writer and the boundless Other that she births. For, as Kamuf points out, the metaphor of the father is one of mediation and intentionality. It is to stand removed, and to present a work whole and unblemished, as one conceived it to be. The metaphor of motherhood, on the other hand, is one of illegitimacy, of borrowed names, and of deep, vulnerable, exposure.
It is the realm, not of the universal (masculine) truth, but of individual (feminine) experience. The realm of the embodied text (and it is, somewhat ironically, embodiment and specificity [rather than universality] that allow individual voices to survive in all their multiplicity and contradiction).
As Woolf writes in Three Guineas, "As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country." To be a woman is to be an exile, separate from the patriarchal structures of culture and power that have defined so much of our discourse and rhetoric -- our very tools for understanding the world. But as Kristeva states, all writing must come from a place of exile, for only then can we be set free from the bonds of the common sense. Or in the words of Cixous, we must trade places with the moon to gain a new perspective.
Luckily for women -- especially women who desire to write -- we already live on the moon, so writing with a new voice, untainted by the Law of the Father and the rules of a phallogocentric economy, isn't hard at all.
All we need is the courage to find our voice in the first place.
But I really want this OUT OF THE WAY. Done with, so I can move on to better things. Things like Icelandic literature and books on myth.
Here is what I do know:
It is an essay that will touch on the work of Cixous. And Virginia Woolf. And maybe Kristeva, Irigaray, and others.
It is an essay about women. About women and their relationship to writing. About women and the metaphor of writing the body. Feminine ecriture, writing is woman's, and all that.
Toril Moi has an essay, written in 2008, that points out one of the main complications that seem to lie at the heart, not just of women and writing, but of feminism and theory in general. There seems to be a tension, a conflict even, between political feminists and literary theorists (be they queer, postmodern, etc.) Between those who need the signifier "woman" to retain it's meaning and significance, and those who wish to displace the binaries (and the signifiers) altogether. In writing, this issue takes the form of dissonance: a political mandate to read and study the work of women writers vs. the theoretical conjecture that the author (and gendered subject) is dead.
Moi argues that the feminists and theorists have no real answers for each other, and generally escape conflict by avoiding the debate altogether.
But I think there's a way out of this seeming standstill, and always has been. When Roland Barthes wrote about the death of the author, he was affirming, in many ways, what feminists already knew: that the patriarchal, masculine subject -- the mythic phallus, impenetrable and whole -- was an illusion. A protection, as Peggy Kamuf puts it, between the boundlessness of an unlimited textual system and our own power to know. And it was time, Barthes argued, for the myth to be put to death, and the text liberated from the constraints of the Author-God.
But this displacement of the omnipotent (male) Author, rather than erasing the political significance of women's writing (as so many feminists seem to fear) opens new doors to symbolically re-interpret the relationship between gender/sex and writing.
Virginia Woolf famously asserted, in her 1928 treatise on women and writing, that great writers are androgynous (and must not think of their sex). She also asserted, somewhat contradictorily, that women must write as women, and not as men.
Taken on closer evaluation, these two statements prove to be related, for Woolf seems to imply that to write as a woman -- a real woman, and not the stagnate image created in the patriarchal conscious -- is to be androgynous: fluid, multiple, ever-shifting, changing, never coded, never closed. It is, in short, to be all that phallogocentricism, in its obsession with stability, wholeness, and rigidity, is not.
Helene Cixous makes a similar argument, stating that woman has never lost her bisexuality.
As the repressed/oppressed/negated signifier in the binary man/woman, woman holds no commitment to the phallocentric order. In fact, it is the very passion with which patriarchal discourse has attempted to obliterate her that provides the means for her to break free. For the signifier "woman," subsumed/submerged/swallowed/annihilated by its partner "man," can never hold the weight of the real woman, with breath and blood, body and voice. All woman has to do is show up -- write her body, her very self, into being -- for the existing discourse to crash and burn.
And since woman has no allegiance to the phallocentric ideal of unity and oneness (for, as Luce Irigaray so blatantly points out, woman's sexuality is not one, but two, and not two, but many), she is free to be nothing and everything; to return and start again from elsewhere; to never say exactly what she means. Lacking a phallus to begin with, she is unfettered by the fear of castration. She could never claim to posses the (one) truth, so she has no need to defend it.
And since woman is multiple, and writing is multiple, Cixous can make her claim -- bold and threatening -- that writing is woman's.
For it is time for a new metaphor, not the Father-Author and his text, but the mother-writer and the boundless Other that she births. For, as Kamuf points out, the metaphor of the father is one of mediation and intentionality. It is to stand removed, and to present a work whole and unblemished, as one conceived it to be. The metaphor of motherhood, on the other hand, is one of illegitimacy, of borrowed names, and of deep, vulnerable, exposure.
It is the realm, not of the universal (masculine) truth, but of individual (feminine) experience. The realm of the embodied text (and it is, somewhat ironically, embodiment and specificity [rather than universality] that allow individual voices to survive in all their multiplicity and contradiction).
As Woolf writes in Three Guineas, "As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country." To be a woman is to be an exile, separate from the patriarchal structures of culture and power that have defined so much of our discourse and rhetoric -- our very tools for understanding the world. But as Kristeva states, all writing must come from a place of exile, for only then can we be set free from the bonds of the common sense. Or in the words of Cixous, we must trade places with the moon to gain a new perspective.
Luckily for women -- especially women who desire to write -- we already live on the moon, so writing with a new voice, untainted by the Law of the Father and the rules of a phallogocentric economy, isn't hard at all.
All we need is the courage to find our voice in the first place.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Christmas Trees and Old Icelandic
Back at Oxford I am. After a glorious Christmas with family (though missing the gametrekkers). A live Christmas tree (with glowing shells), the glory of the Pacific coastline, crackling fires, cookies and goodies galore, and, most wondrous of all, the bright warmth of family -- grandmothers, brothers, parents. How I love them all.
And then New Year's in Minnesota with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and the hardest puzzle I've ever encountered.
All while reading Icelandic sagas and NOT writing my theory essay.
But now I am back. In an empty room and an empty apartment, with jet-lag, lovely memories, and the need to get back to work. Hard work, and really fast. I have Icelandic history to read (lots of it), Sagas to plot out (a necessity, since there are so many names I can't keep track of what happens from chapter to chapter, much less book to book), dissertations to plan (along with people to meet with), and, most dreaded of all, a theory essay to write (with all the reading that goes with it). So I probably won't get around to writing that PhD/DPhil proposal and applying to programs. But oh well. I think I need another year anyway. To read and think and really know what I'm planning.
But if the essay ever gets written, and a decision on a dissertation topic and adviser is ever made, then I'll have to admit that I'm excited about what comes next. About getting back to literature. About building arguments from the texts of stories. About learning about Iceland. Though this year is making me wish, SO strongly, that I had more/stronger languages. Norse, Old English, Middle English, French, and yes, a better reading knowledge of Arabic. What I wouldn't give to float effortlessly through Medieval (and modern) texts that now I'm not allowed to touch, or must access through mediation.
And these sagas burn with tales of betrayal and revenge. Friendships destroyed. Blood-ties honored. Loyalty torn. And in the middle the women hover, egging on their husbands, brothers, uncles, to blood-lust and manhood, often at the cost of their own happiness and their men's lives.
And I find it interesting that these stories, of heathen faith and legendary courage, black magic and violent deeds, are mediated through a Christian era. The old gods, it seems, may be rejected but they are never doubted. Thangbrand, King Olaf's missionary to Iceland, tells the people, not that Thor is an illusion, but that without God's will he would never have lived in the first place. And the gospel is spread with both "fair words and dire punishments" (The Saga of the People of Laxardal). God proves himself (for, indeed, the God of the Icelanders is certainly male) with heathen miracles and proofs of power. The ministry of incarnation amongst a culture bound to the heroic code? Who's to say? For isn't this the same God that once ordered the butchering of men, women, and children, proving to surrounding nations that the God of Israel was strong?
But there are hints of another way. Hauskuld, who declares that even if it were true that his foster brothers have been treacherous, he would still "far rather suffer death at their hands than work them any harm" (Njal's Saga). Or Njal himself, the seeker of peaceful restitution, who refuses to shed blood and thinks of the new religion, when it comes, that here at last is a way to God.
And then New Year's in Minnesota with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and the hardest puzzle I've ever encountered.
All while reading Icelandic sagas and NOT writing my theory essay.
But now I am back. In an empty room and an empty apartment, with jet-lag, lovely memories, and the need to get back to work. Hard work, and really fast. I have Icelandic history to read (lots of it), Sagas to plot out (a necessity, since there are so many names I can't keep track of what happens from chapter to chapter, much less book to book), dissertations to plan (along with people to meet with), and, most dreaded of all, a theory essay to write (with all the reading that goes with it). So I probably won't get around to writing that PhD/DPhil proposal and applying to programs. But oh well. I think I need another year anyway. To read and think and really know what I'm planning.
But if the essay ever gets written, and a decision on a dissertation topic and adviser is ever made, then I'll have to admit that I'm excited about what comes next. About getting back to literature. About building arguments from the texts of stories. About learning about Iceland. Though this year is making me wish, SO strongly, that I had more/stronger languages. Norse, Old English, Middle English, French, and yes, a better reading knowledge of Arabic. What I wouldn't give to float effortlessly through Medieval (and modern) texts that now I'm not allowed to touch, or must access through mediation.
And these sagas burn with tales of betrayal and revenge. Friendships destroyed. Blood-ties honored. Loyalty torn. And in the middle the women hover, egging on their husbands, brothers, uncles, to blood-lust and manhood, often at the cost of their own happiness and their men's lives.
And I find it interesting that these stories, of heathen faith and legendary courage, black magic and violent deeds, are mediated through a Christian era. The old gods, it seems, may be rejected but they are never doubted. Thangbrand, King Olaf's missionary to Iceland, tells the people, not that Thor is an illusion, but that without God's will he would never have lived in the first place. And the gospel is spread with both "fair words and dire punishments" (The Saga of the People of Laxardal). God proves himself (for, indeed, the God of the Icelanders is certainly male) with heathen miracles and proofs of power. The ministry of incarnation amongst a culture bound to the heroic code? Who's to say? For isn't this the same God that once ordered the butchering of men, women, and children, proving to surrounding nations that the God of Israel was strong?
But there are hints of another way. Hauskuld, who declares that even if it were true that his foster brothers have been treacherous, he would still "far rather suffer death at their hands than work them any harm" (Njal's Saga). Or Njal himself, the seeker of peaceful restitution, who refuses to shed blood and thinks of the new religion, when it comes, that here at last is a way to God.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
a jot (regarding radical feminism and queer theory)
Warning: forthcoming moment of intense geekiness. All those not interested in feminist theory, this is your chance to run away.
So, I just read a transcription of a talk given by one of our Women's Studies conveners (at the London Feminist Network's "Feminar"), addressing the difference between radical feminism and queer theory's use of the term "gender." Fascinating.
But I'm not sure I agree.
Cameron and Scanlon's critique seems to ground radical feminism firmly within a dialog of rights. Liberation from an oppressive system is the goal (and a very worthy one, I might add), and it is achieved through clear political objective.
That I have no problem with.
However, I'm wary of letting utilitarian objectivity (for so it almost seems) discredit queer theory's potential to disrupt established binaries, and thereby enact social transformation. For, by defining gender as the system of power relationships existing between men and women, radical feminism has tied it inseparably to a binary that queer theory seeks to displace. If they succeed (which I would argue they often do) in undermining the concepts of an essential sex, a true gender, or a coherent sexuality, do they not thereby create a world in which the male/female binary is rendered absurd? If the binaries undergirding oppression and inequality (male/female, white/black, etc.) are demonstrated to be, not only unstable, but entirely fantastical, must not the entire system collapse?
It seems to me that binaries cannot survive in a world that has, not two, but (as Virginia Woolf once pled for) an infinity, of genders.
But perhaps I am being simplistic.
So, I just read a transcription of a talk given by one of our Women's Studies conveners (at the London Feminist Network's "Feminar"), addressing the difference between radical feminism and queer theory's use of the term "gender." Fascinating.
But I'm not sure I agree.
Cameron and Scanlon's critique seems to ground radical feminism firmly within a dialog of rights. Liberation from an oppressive system is the goal (and a very worthy one, I might add), and it is achieved through clear political objective.
That I have no problem with.
However, I'm wary of letting utilitarian objectivity (for so it almost seems) discredit queer theory's potential to disrupt established binaries, and thereby enact social transformation. For, by defining gender as the system of power relationships existing between men and women, radical feminism has tied it inseparably to a binary that queer theory seeks to displace. If they succeed (which I would argue they often do) in undermining the concepts of an essential sex, a true gender, or a coherent sexuality, do they not thereby create a world in which the male/female binary is rendered absurd? If the binaries undergirding oppression and inequality (male/female, white/black, etc.) are demonstrated to be, not only unstable, but entirely fantastical, must not the entire system collapse?
It seems to me that binaries cannot survive in a world that has, not two, but (as Virginia Woolf once pled for) an infinity, of genders.
But perhaps I am being simplistic.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within . . .
Kohleun just introduced me to the song "I am not my hair" by India.Arie, the themes of which are close to my heart. It may seem like an obvious message, yet there are moments when I feel like the whole crazy world just doesn't get it -- and that it's the most important message we can hear.
It's not just about hair, obviously, but all of the ways in which we're required to live up to expectations and imagined reality. All the ways we're required to hide our true humanity.
I wrote "Bare" for a creative writing class a few years ago. It was a semester of intense angst centered around this subject, and I almost shaved my head over Christmas just to prove a point.
Some people have been offended by this piece, but please don't be. It's not meant to be taken analytically, as an absolute profession of belief, but as an experimental attempt to capture something that I've experienced. And that I long for. As I've said elsewhere, "I think, through this, I was trying to touch on the issue of pain . . . devastation . . . war . . . and the way our society hides from those things. From the reality of sweat and blood, behind the facade of perfection. I believe in beauty, but it is a very different type of beauty than the ideal my culture is trying to force down my throat. It is a beauty that comes through the ashes—the marks of living—rather than by denying them."
Bare—An Ode to Beauty Bald
I want to shave my head. It’s one of those crazy ideas that terrify my parents. They interpret it, I think, as a sign of my slowly dissolving faculties. The warping of my brain by too much study and feminist theology. After all, why would anyone want to destroy all sign of womanly beauty? The golden ringlets that grew into longer curls. Shear them off in humiliation and shame.
I try to explain. How a boy I liked, once told me that he liked my hair. Liked it down. Said it made me beautiful, those strands of tarnished gold. Strands that are not me.
And I rebel. I will not be my hair. I will reclaim my womanhood from a Bible that proclaims me, and my head, to be man’s glory.
I want to be known for the mind that lies beneath the hair. For the part of me that thinks and yearns and ponders. For the passion and the life, under the meaningless wisps that grow and die, without my consent or say-so. That require nothing of me. Reflect nothing on me.
I want to shave my head in honor of those who never had the choice. In solidarity with the broken. The women at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau. Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Those who survived, and those who didn’t. To honor a humanity that was not taken, cannot be taken, with our hair.
To celebrate survival. From cancer. Leukemia. Radiation and chemo. The women who wear headscarves, and wigs. Afraid to show the scars of battle. The sign of loss, and life. Proof that they’re still here.
I want to join the ranks of men like Yule Brynner and Michael Jordan. Of human beauty unadorned. Skin, and sweat, and age. Unafraid to expose the blue veins that pump life, blood and oxygen, through membrane and golden tissue. The sandpaper texture. The shape of their skulls.
I want to demonstrate a different kind of beauty. Sleek and sexy elegance that denies hairspray and color dyes, styling products and curling irons. Proclaim freedom from magazine images and picturesque perfection. From Barbie dolls and Disney princesses, long silken tendrils, hair to their knees. Coiffured and flowing expectations. Stop hiding beneath the mask of color.
I want to wear henna on my head. Make patterns of tribal beauty. Declare myself at home with earth and sky.
I want to stop running from the feel of my own skin. I want to be myself, free of pins and clips and rubber-bands. And I want to love it.
I want to inhale wind and rain through the pores on my skull. To taste life and pain. To deny the acceptability of pretence, to destroy the masquerade, the papier-mâchéd perfection. To mourn injustice with the women of Beowulf—heads bare, weeping to high heaven. Sackcloth and ashes, and shorn hair.
And most of all, I want to be a nun. Set apart for unreserved worship. To return to child-like innocence, and feel nothing between my head and God, but air and sunlight. To be uncovered before my maker, not in shame, but in the humility of a newborn, and beloved, child. To remember my humanity in the presence of a genderless God. A God who created my soul before she created my hair.
I want to feel my prayers rise out of the top of my skull. Float along air currents. Be breathed in by the Almighty (hairless) God.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Papua New Guinea is Coming Soon
In less than two weeks, I graduate. Two days after that, I fly across the globe. And by "across the globe," I mean further than I have ever been before. I am going to Papua New Guinea (via a layover in Australia) to spend three weeks with eight theatre students, sharing stories with the people we meet.
I'm not really planning on blogging about the experience that much (for one thing, internet will be scarce, and I seem incapable of writing about things in retrospect). However, one of my fellow travelers, fellow writing/lit majors, and fellow ARC consultants, Sara Kelm (she was also my stage manager sophomore year), will be writing about the time extensively (she's been awarded a Richter's Scholarship to do travel-writing, and such). So I'm going to send you to her site, unabashedly: Sara is Going to Papua New Guinea.
Here is her introduction to our fellow adventurers [my comments are added in brackets]:
Cast of Characters
Just so you know who I'm talking about when I talk about people:
George Fox: the guy our school is named after; mostly I'll use it to refer to the university (also I may use GFU or Fox).
Rhett: director, professor, genius. He lived in PNG as a little boy while his parents were missionaries. This is his first time back in 20 years. I worked with Rhett on the last mainstage production at GFU. Thinker, mastermind, time-oriented, mildly sarcastic. [My director for As It Is In Heaven last spring. Also my professor for Acting I, Acting II (which I'm currently taking), and Acting IV (a Shakespeare acting class). He is an amazingly compassionate person, and a great teacher. He's also an amazing director, and probably the reason Fox's theatre department is so good].
Jere: executive assistant to the Vice President of Student Life at Fox. She lived in PNG about 15 years ago for a few years with her family. I work with her in the Student Life office, and she is a hoot. Loud, blonde, endlessly funny with a wicked humor and love for animals, travel, and cooking.
Todd: Rhett's dad and the reason we're able to go to PNG. He has quite a few contacts in PNG, and he's there right now, teaching. He's also an adjunct theatre professor at Fox. He loves PNG, loves Pigin, and loves to laugh. Intense like Rhett, he'll be a good help to us while we're there.
Jessie: roommate. Junior. Nursing major. [Acted with me in Moth].
Stephen: old friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre double major. [Acted with me in Moth].
Nicole: close friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
Jordan: other token boy. Junior. Writing/Lit & Theatre. [Was our vocal coach for As It Is In Heaven. He taught us lots of great Shaker songs].
Emily: fellow stage manager. Sophomore. Spanish & Theatre.
Karith: fellow writing/lit friend. Senior. Writing/Literature.
Cyndi: lover of the Beatles. Junior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
Whitney: sweet girl. Junior. Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
And me. Sara: who-knows-what-she's-doing-here. Junior and a half. Writing/Lit & Psychology. [As I already said, fellow writing/lit major and ARC consultant. She was my stage manager for Moth, and is currently taking an idependent study with me and another writing/lit friend].
I'm not really planning on blogging about the experience that much (for one thing, internet will be scarce, and I seem incapable of writing about things in retrospect). However, one of my fellow travelers, fellow writing/lit majors, and fellow ARC consultants, Sara Kelm (she was also my stage manager sophomore year), will be writing about the time extensively (she's been awarded a Richter's Scholarship to do travel-writing, and such). So I'm going to send you to her site, unabashedly: Sara is Going to Papua New Guinea.
Here is her introduction to our fellow adventurers [my comments are added in brackets]:
Cast of Characters
Just so you know who I'm talking about when I talk about people:
George Fox: the guy our school is named after; mostly I'll use it to refer to the university (also I may use GFU or Fox).
Rhett: director, professor, genius. He lived in PNG as a little boy while his parents were missionaries. This is his first time back in 20 years. I worked with Rhett on the last mainstage production at GFU. Thinker, mastermind, time-oriented, mildly sarcastic. [My director for As It Is In Heaven last spring. Also my professor for Acting I, Acting II (which I'm currently taking), and Acting IV (a Shakespeare acting class). He is an amazingly compassionate person, and a great teacher. He's also an amazing director, and probably the reason Fox's theatre department is so good].
Jere: executive assistant to the Vice President of Student Life at Fox. She lived in PNG about 15 years ago for a few years with her family. I work with her in the Student Life office, and she is a hoot. Loud, blonde, endlessly funny with a wicked humor and love for animals, travel, and cooking.
Todd: Rhett's dad and the reason we're able to go to PNG. He has quite a few contacts in PNG, and he's there right now, teaching. He's also an adjunct theatre professor at Fox. He loves PNG, loves Pigin, and loves to laugh. Intense like Rhett, he'll be a good help to us while we're there.
Jessie: roommate. Junior. Nursing major. [Acted with me in Moth].
Stephen: old friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre double major. [Acted with me in Moth].
Nicole: close friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
Jordan: other token boy. Junior. Writing/Lit & Theatre. [Was our vocal coach for As It Is In Heaven. He taught us lots of great Shaker songs].
Emily: fellow stage manager. Sophomore. Spanish & Theatre.
Karith: fellow writing/lit friend. Senior. Writing/Literature.
Cyndi: lover of the Beatles. Junior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
Whitney: sweet girl. Junior. Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].
And me. Sara: who-knows-what-she's-doing-here. Junior and a half. Writing/Lit & Psychology. [As I already said, fellow writing/lit major and ARC consultant. She was my stage manager for Moth, and is currently taking an idependent study with me and another writing/lit friend].
Friday, April 3, 2009
NUCL and Mrs. Dalloway
One conference down, and two to go.
This Saturday I'll be reading "Feminine Consciousness, Community, and Isolation in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway" (which should actually be "Mrs Richard Dalloway: the Tension of Feminine Consciousness," or something more like a title and less like a list) at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature in Portland (assuming we find a ride).
And since I know you're all so interested, here it is! =)
This was the first tutorial paper I wrote in Oxford. The style is pretty different than a thesis-driven American essay, so keep that in mind. Also, it's basically a rough draft since I had to do all the research, and all the writing, in less than a week (not something I'd ever attempted before). I'd love to have the time to completely rewrite it, because some of the ideas fascinate me, but I don't feel like they're expressed very well (or fully articulated) in this essay.
Anyway, this version has been tampered with (I had to rearrange a few of my sections), but hopefully it still flows alright.
The world of Mrs. Dalloway is spilt between the forces of isolation and community. It is a book about the individual within society—a book about fragmentation and unity. At the story’s center is Clarissa Dalloway, and Clarissa Dalloway’s party. Clarissa, the society hostess, defines ‘life,’ that essence that she loves and lives for, in terms of bringing people together, solving the supreme mystery that is “simply this: here was one room; there another.” Asking herself what she truly means by this thing called ‘life,’ she expresses a desire “to go deeper…to combine, to create”: “Here was So-and-So in South Kensington; someone up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it.” It is her “offering,” her “gift,” and even Peter Walsh cannot help but come under her influence, despite his contempt for her social obsessions: “She seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed.” Her party, with which the book ends, is the culmination of this desire to assemble (bringing together characters from throughout the book and Clarissa’s past) but it is by no means its only manifestation.
Indeed, Clarissa seems to associate this same idea of ‘life’ with the city itself. For while the book ends with Clarissa’s party, it begins with her pushing open her front door and plunging into the swinging, jingling, trudging uproar that is the city. She is swept along, surrounded by automobiles and rushing, laughing, mourning humans—individuals who are brought together in chance meetings (such as that between Clarissa and Hugh in the park), mutual awe (like the rumor allowed to “accumulate in their veins” ), and puzzlement over flying advertisements. Throughout the book this theme is maintained—the city as a backdrop for union, the meeting of disparate souls. In Laura Marcus’ book, Virginia Woolf, Marcus argues that this use of city as “consciousness in motion” is typical of modernist authors. However, Marcus suggests that Woolf is unique in her exploration of “communication and circulation in the city”—presenting London, not as a wasteland of isolation, so much as a unifying of individual aspects of society and humanity. Indeed, it is within this larger context of the city that the true significance of Clarissa’s party can be seen. It is not simply to bring together her specific guests that Clarissa plays the enchanting hostess, but to become part of the larger unifying force that London symbolizes: “She, too, loving it as she did [life; London; this moment in June] with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it...she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.”
But against this physical backdrop of London, there is also the internal struggle for unification within Clarissa herself. It is the struggle for identity; the desire to bring together the different aspects of experience and emotion, and create a coherent whole. Upon looking at her face in the mirror, Clarissa purses her lips “to give her face point. That was her self – pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together...different...incompatible...into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-point, a radiancy.” She must assemble “that diamond shape, that single person” before she can return to the duties of the house. As Marcus explains, “Her identity fragmented, it has to be recollected, assembled, gathered together like the torn dress she intends to wear to her party that evening.”
This tension—this desire to unite disparate elements into a unified whole—is present in Clarissa’s constant memories of the past. Throughout the book, Clarissa is shadowed by her eighteen-year-old self: throwing open the French windows at Bourton, kissing Sally Seton, taking walks with Peter Walsh. The present is constantly filtered through previous experience—through events, relationships, and places. Peter remembers the younger Clarissa remarking, “She felt herself everywhere...she was all that. So that to know her, or anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.” And as she walks through London, Clarissa ponders the connection she still has with Peter, “she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there...being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best...it spread ever so far, her life, herself.” And this constant spreading, these connections that define and redefine Clarissa’s identity, this ability to simultaneously be eighteen and in her fifties (“she felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged” ), leads Clarissa to the conclusion that a person’s essence cannot be defined or captured: “She would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.”
In The Experimental Self, Judy Little argues that the significance of this fractured identity is found in its role in the formation of a uniquely feminine consciousness. She proposes that women’s place on the outskirts of society has left them unsuccessfully socialized, and therefore capable of a subjective identity. They are forced to learn the language of a male-dominated social sphere, while also possessing their own language—the language of their mothers. This, Little states, allows women to be uniquely adaptable, able to migrate between different visions of reality and points of view. She suggests that this grants women an extreme relational tendency (unlike men who define themselves in opposition to the other), and quotes Patricia Waugh to state that women’s fiction “can be seen...as an attempt...to discover a collective concept of subjectivity which foregrounds the construction of identity in relationships.” Such an identity must, by nature, be extremely volatile, changing (or fragmenting) with the relationships that shape it, and Little goes on to state that, in Woolf’s novels, “self is a discourse...a means that facilitates the celebration of friendship and shared lives.”
However, there is another side to this feminine consciousness, and that, ironically, is self-chosen isolation—isolation used to withstand domination and preserve self, even at the cost of community. The suicide of Septimus Warren Smith, and Clarissa’s interpretation of his death, is perhaps the ultimate example of this practice. For Septimus, though not a woman, is certainly an outsider in society, so made by his traumatic experiences in the Great War and his inability to maintain “a sense of proportion.” Clarissa describes Septimus’ death, not as passive acquiescence (though she later cries out against the darkness), but as a self-chosen defiance—defiance, presumably, against men like Sir William Bradshaw, who “make life intolerable” by “forcing your soul.” This is consistent with Clarissa’s hatred of Miss Kilman, who desires, in Clarissa’s mind at least, to convert her, to destroy “the privacy of the soul.” And even when she speaks of the men she loves, of Peter and Richard, Clarissa seems wary to let them too close, or share too much intimacy: “There was a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching [Richard Dalloway] open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s independence, one’s self-respect – something, after all, priceless.” She was right, she states, to not marry Peter, because he demanded that everything be shared, “everything gone into,” and “it was intolerable.”
This unease seems to represent, not a backlash against Clarissa’s original desires to combine and create, but a fear of domination. This is obviously true in the case of Miss Kilman and Sir William Bradshaw, but subtler when applied to Peter and Richard. Despite both men’s love for Clarissa (though Peter may deny being “in love” with her), there is a level at which, being female in a male-dominated society, she is very much in their power. This is especially true of Richard, because he is her husband, and even Peter comments that one of the tragedies of married life is that “with twice [Richard’s] wits, [Clarissa] had to see things through his eyes.” Furthermore, Clarissa, while walking in London, “had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway.” All the different fragments of Clarissa’s identity are swallowed up by that name.
However, there is another level at which isolation is beyond Clarissa’s control—not an attempt to maintain identity and withstand domination, but simply a frustration of her desire to cohere. For although an outsider’s status grants freedom to move between social spheres and perspectives, it ultimately prohibits full acceptance to any single portion of society. Thus, beneath the surface of Mrs. Dalloway flows a consistent current of discontent—of failed realization—as communion is sought, reached for, and lost. The moments of deepest separation seem to follow those of strongest union (or attempted union), for, if we are to believe Little’s account of feminine consciousness, that which drives Clarissa to pursue unity is ultimately what keeps her separate and apart.
Even in the midst of the ‘life’ that is London, Clarissa experiences moments of intense isolation: “She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone.” Directly following the contemplation of her own domestic bliss, Clarissa comes to the conclusion, “There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At midday they must disrobe.” This last statement, though seemingly peculiar, is particularly significant. In the second to last chapter it is faintly echoed, when, in the midst of her party, Clarissa moves into a side room and finds herself suddenly alone. “There was nobody. The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.” Clarissa’s dress, representing her role as hostess and socialite, comes into stark contrast with the sudden emptiness and silence. For though it is her gift to assemble, to bring together, it seems that fragmentation can only be held off, delayed, not prevented. For, eventually, “women must put off their rich apparel,” or even if they do not, the darkness may prevail regardless. For even as Clarissa’s party takes hold, turning “into something now, not nothing,” Clarissa feels dissatisfied, “for though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs...had a hollowness.” And when she hears of Septimus’ death, she interprets it as “her disaster – her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.”
And so, the struggle against alienation is lost. Septimus is dead, and the splendor of Clarissa’s party has fallen to the floor. “Closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone.” But no. “She must go back. She must assemble.” “They went on living...they would grow old.” Woolf leaves us with no clear answers, only a continuing dance of isolation and community—of drawing together and falling apart. But perhaps that is as it should be. For Woolf sees identity as a dialogue and self as an experiment—they are not to be established, but explored. Through her novels, Woolf is presenting “the courageous view that human beings are ideologically mobile”—are capable of change. Identity, as Woolf presents it, is contradiction warring for coherence, and, Little suggests, being unwilling to explore the fragments, to know more than “the (one) truth or...just one self,” limits a person’s humanity, and the artist’s creative response. Perhaps reaching coherence—creating unity—is not as significant as the process, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.” The process that, according to Mrs. Dalloway, is life.
J. Little, The experimental self: dialogic subjectivity in Woolf, Pym, and Brooke-Rose (1996)
L. Marcus, Virginia Woolf, 2nd edn (2004)
V. Neverow-Turk and M. Hussey, ed., Virginia Woolf: themes and variations (1993)
V. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1996)
This Saturday I'll be reading "Feminine Consciousness, Community, and Isolation in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway" (which should actually be "Mrs Richard Dalloway: the Tension of Feminine Consciousness," or something more like a title and less like a list) at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature in Portland (assuming we find a ride).
And since I know you're all so interested, here it is! =)
This was the first tutorial paper I wrote in Oxford. The style is pretty different than a thesis-driven American essay, so keep that in mind. Also, it's basically a rough draft since I had to do all the research, and all the writing, in less than a week (not something I'd ever attempted before). I'd love to have the time to completely rewrite it, because some of the ideas fascinate me, but I don't feel like they're expressed very well (or fully articulated) in this essay.
Anyway, this version has been tampered with (I had to rearrange a few of my sections), but hopefully it still flows alright.
Feminine Consciousness, Community, and Isolation in Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
© 2008 Karith Amel Magnuson
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
© 2008 Karith Amel Magnuson
The world of Mrs. Dalloway is spilt between the forces of isolation and community. It is a book about the individual within society—a book about fragmentation and unity. At the story’s center is Clarissa Dalloway, and Clarissa Dalloway’s party. Clarissa, the society hostess, defines ‘life,’ that essence that she loves and lives for, in terms of bringing people together, solving the supreme mystery that is “simply this: here was one room; there another.” Asking herself what she truly means by this thing called ‘life,’ she expresses a desire “to go deeper…to combine, to create”: “Here was So-and-So in South Kensington; someone up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it.” It is her “offering,” her “gift,” and even Peter Walsh cannot help but come under her influence, despite his contempt for her social obsessions: “She seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed.” Her party, with which the book ends, is the culmination of this desire to assemble (bringing together characters from throughout the book and Clarissa’s past) but it is by no means its only manifestation.
Indeed, Clarissa seems to associate this same idea of ‘life’ with the city itself. For while the book ends with Clarissa’s party, it begins with her pushing open her front door and plunging into the swinging, jingling, trudging uproar that is the city. She is swept along, surrounded by automobiles and rushing, laughing, mourning humans—individuals who are brought together in chance meetings (such as that between Clarissa and Hugh in the park), mutual awe (like the rumor allowed to “accumulate in their veins” ), and puzzlement over flying advertisements. Throughout the book this theme is maintained—the city as a backdrop for union, the meeting of disparate souls. In Laura Marcus’ book, Virginia Woolf, Marcus argues that this use of city as “consciousness in motion” is typical of modernist authors. However, Marcus suggests that Woolf is unique in her exploration of “communication and circulation in the city”—presenting London, not as a wasteland of isolation, so much as a unifying of individual aspects of society and humanity. Indeed, it is within this larger context of the city that the true significance of Clarissa’s party can be seen. It is not simply to bring together her specific guests that Clarissa plays the enchanting hostess, but to become part of the larger unifying force that London symbolizes: “She, too, loving it as she did [life; London; this moment in June] with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it...she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.”
But against this physical backdrop of London, there is also the internal struggle for unification within Clarissa herself. It is the struggle for identity; the desire to bring together the different aspects of experience and emotion, and create a coherent whole. Upon looking at her face in the mirror, Clarissa purses her lips “to give her face point. That was her self – pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together...different...incompatible...into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-point, a radiancy.” She must assemble “that diamond shape, that single person” before she can return to the duties of the house. As Marcus explains, “Her identity fragmented, it has to be recollected, assembled, gathered together like the torn dress she intends to wear to her party that evening.”
This tension—this desire to unite disparate elements into a unified whole—is present in Clarissa’s constant memories of the past. Throughout the book, Clarissa is shadowed by her eighteen-year-old self: throwing open the French windows at Bourton, kissing Sally Seton, taking walks with Peter Walsh. The present is constantly filtered through previous experience—through events, relationships, and places. Peter remembers the younger Clarissa remarking, “She felt herself everywhere...she was all that. So that to know her, or anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.” And as she walks through London, Clarissa ponders the connection she still has with Peter, “she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there...being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best...it spread ever so far, her life, herself.” And this constant spreading, these connections that define and redefine Clarissa’s identity, this ability to simultaneously be eighteen and in her fifties (“she felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged” ), leads Clarissa to the conclusion that a person’s essence cannot be defined or captured: “She would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.”
In The Experimental Self, Judy Little argues that the significance of this fractured identity is found in its role in the formation of a uniquely feminine consciousness. She proposes that women’s place on the outskirts of society has left them unsuccessfully socialized, and therefore capable of a subjective identity. They are forced to learn the language of a male-dominated social sphere, while also possessing their own language—the language of their mothers. This, Little states, allows women to be uniquely adaptable, able to migrate between different visions of reality and points of view. She suggests that this grants women an extreme relational tendency (unlike men who define themselves in opposition to the other), and quotes Patricia Waugh to state that women’s fiction “can be seen...as an attempt...to discover a collective concept of subjectivity which foregrounds the construction of identity in relationships.” Such an identity must, by nature, be extremely volatile, changing (or fragmenting) with the relationships that shape it, and Little goes on to state that, in Woolf’s novels, “self is a discourse...a means that facilitates the celebration of friendship and shared lives.”
However, there is another side to this feminine consciousness, and that, ironically, is self-chosen isolation—isolation used to withstand domination and preserve self, even at the cost of community. The suicide of Septimus Warren Smith, and Clarissa’s interpretation of his death, is perhaps the ultimate example of this practice. For Septimus, though not a woman, is certainly an outsider in society, so made by his traumatic experiences in the Great War and his inability to maintain “a sense of proportion.” Clarissa describes Septimus’ death, not as passive acquiescence (though she later cries out against the darkness), but as a self-chosen defiance—defiance, presumably, against men like Sir William Bradshaw, who “make life intolerable” by “forcing your soul.” This is consistent with Clarissa’s hatred of Miss Kilman, who desires, in Clarissa’s mind at least, to convert her, to destroy “the privacy of the soul.” And even when she speaks of the men she loves, of Peter and Richard, Clarissa seems wary to let them too close, or share too much intimacy: “There was a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching [Richard Dalloway] open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s independence, one’s self-respect – something, after all, priceless.” She was right, she states, to not marry Peter, because he demanded that everything be shared, “everything gone into,” and “it was intolerable.”
This unease seems to represent, not a backlash against Clarissa’s original desires to combine and create, but a fear of domination. This is obviously true in the case of Miss Kilman and Sir William Bradshaw, but subtler when applied to Peter and Richard. Despite both men’s love for Clarissa (though Peter may deny being “in love” with her), there is a level at which, being female in a male-dominated society, she is very much in their power. This is especially true of Richard, because he is her husband, and even Peter comments that one of the tragedies of married life is that “with twice [Richard’s] wits, [Clarissa] had to see things through his eyes.” Furthermore, Clarissa, while walking in London, “had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway.” All the different fragments of Clarissa’s identity are swallowed up by that name.
However, there is another level at which isolation is beyond Clarissa’s control—not an attempt to maintain identity and withstand domination, but simply a frustration of her desire to cohere. For although an outsider’s status grants freedom to move between social spheres and perspectives, it ultimately prohibits full acceptance to any single portion of society. Thus, beneath the surface of Mrs. Dalloway flows a consistent current of discontent—of failed realization—as communion is sought, reached for, and lost. The moments of deepest separation seem to follow those of strongest union (or attempted union), for, if we are to believe Little’s account of feminine consciousness, that which drives Clarissa to pursue unity is ultimately what keeps her separate and apart.
Even in the midst of the ‘life’ that is London, Clarissa experiences moments of intense isolation: “She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone.” Directly following the contemplation of her own domestic bliss, Clarissa comes to the conclusion, “There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At midday they must disrobe.” This last statement, though seemingly peculiar, is particularly significant. In the second to last chapter it is faintly echoed, when, in the midst of her party, Clarissa moves into a side room and finds herself suddenly alone. “There was nobody. The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.” Clarissa’s dress, representing her role as hostess and socialite, comes into stark contrast with the sudden emptiness and silence. For though it is her gift to assemble, to bring together, it seems that fragmentation can only be held off, delayed, not prevented. For, eventually, “women must put off their rich apparel,” or even if they do not, the darkness may prevail regardless. For even as Clarissa’s party takes hold, turning “into something now, not nothing,” Clarissa feels dissatisfied, “for though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs...had a hollowness.” And when she hears of Septimus’ death, she interprets it as “her disaster – her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.”
And so, the struggle against alienation is lost. Septimus is dead, and the splendor of Clarissa’s party has fallen to the floor. “Closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone.” But no. “She must go back. She must assemble.” “They went on living...they would grow old.” Woolf leaves us with no clear answers, only a continuing dance of isolation and community—of drawing together and falling apart. But perhaps that is as it should be. For Woolf sees identity as a dialogue and self as an experiment—they are not to be established, but explored. Through her novels, Woolf is presenting “the courageous view that human beings are ideologically mobile”—are capable of change. Identity, as Woolf presents it, is contradiction warring for coherence, and, Little suggests, being unwilling to explore the fragments, to know more than “the (one) truth or...just one self,” limits a person’s humanity, and the artist’s creative response. Perhaps reaching coherence—creating unity—is not as significant as the process, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.” The process that, according to Mrs. Dalloway, is life.
Bibliography
B. R. Daugherty and E. Barrett, ed., Virginia Woolf: texts and contexts (1996)J. Little, The experimental self: dialogic subjectivity in Woolf, Pym, and Brooke-Rose (1996)
L. Marcus, Virginia Woolf, 2nd edn (2004)
V. Neverow-Turk and M. Hussey, ed., Virginia Woolf: themes and variations (1993)
V. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1996)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
My slightly heretical view of Lewis and salvation, at my father's request . . .
Well Baba, here it is. I haven't looked at it in a while, and didn't have a chance to edit before submitting it, so I'm sure there are lots of things that need to be tweaked. For instance, glancing over the first paragraph just now, I'm realizing that I need to rewrite the entire way I refer to God . . . (especially given my last post =).
I wouldn't say this is my best work; I remember being very unhappy with it when I wrote it (over spring break at Megan's house), but it seemed to fit the conference theme better than anything else I had.
If you have any suggestions, or notice other issues, let me know.
But there seems to be a problem: God has provided salvation, but it is a limited salvation, available only to those who know His Son. Acts 4:12 reads, referring to Jesus, “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” and Jesus himself says, “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But what of those who suffer from ignorance, never having been exposed to the Gospel—those in other religions who are desperately seeking to serve God, but without having heard of Christ, or His atonement? Are they to be condemned for never believing in a name they have never heard? “Given that becoming a Christian is necessary for salvation,” argues James F. Sennett in his essay, “Worthy of a Better God,” “it follows that if God condemns one who has never heard the Gospel, then he is punishing that person for failing to do something she didn’t have the ability to do” (243). Where is the justice in that? Where is the mercy?
Romans 1:20 addresses this challenge, but with surprising implications. It states that, since creation, God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen through nature, leaving humanity without excuse. This verse seems to suggest that humanity has always had the ability to turn to God, but is choosing not to. Those in this passage are not condemned for ignorance, but for willfully rejecting God. As verse twenty-one continues, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” There is no evidence that those spoken of in this passage know God through the divine revelation of scripture or Christ’s incarnation. Instead, they are held accountable for the general knowledge they possess—leading to the conclusion that it must be possible to know and please God, even without hearing the name of Christ.
This appears to be in direct contradiction to the Acts 4:12 and John 14:6 passages. How are they to be reconciled? According to John Sanders, the answer is religious inclusivism, the belief that “the unevangilized are saved or lost on the basis of their commitment, or lack thereof, to the God who saves through the work of Jesus” (qtd. in Nash 104). According to inclusivists, Christ’s atoning death is necessary for salvation, but knowledge of His death is not (Nash 104). This, in many ways, is a continuation of the belief that faith, not knowledge, saves. It is meeting Christ, not any idea about Christ, which is the important thing. Jesus’ own disciples rarely understood who He was, or what He was about to do. However, they knew Him, and that was enough to impel them to leave everything, and simply follow.
C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is filled with examples of such encounters with Christ—such encounters with Aslan. In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory and Polly are entranced with the beauty of Narnia, the new world that is being sung into existence around them. However, once they see “the Singer himself . . . [they forget] everything else” (Lewis, MN 62). In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a transformation occurs at the very first mention of Aslan’s name:
In all of these instances, Aslan is adored and worshiped before he is recognized, and in most cases, before he is named. Perhaps the greatest example of this doctrine-less conversion is Shasta’s meeting with the great Lion. After walking beside an invisible Aslan for some time, Shasta asks, “Who are you?” Aslan, refusing to name himself, replies, “Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281). When the fog clears, Shasta comes face-to-face with the King for the first time, and falls at the feet of the unnamed Beauty. He knows nothing of Aslan, not the lies of Calormen, nor the truth of Narnia, but he sees the Lion, and it is enough (Lewis, HHB 282).
However, all of this is one step removed from the issue of inclusivism. In the previous examples, encounters with Christ (or Aslan) save without being fully recognized for what they are, or who they are with—but they are with Aslan. In the same way, in Saul’s climactic conversion experience, he acknowledges the speaker as Lord before he knows who is speaking—but Christ is speaking (Acts 9:5). Arguing that encounters with Christ save, even when they are not recognized as encounters with Christ, is not the same as arguing that salvation can occur without encountering Christ. Lewis does seem to take this step, however, stating elsewhere that “there are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). This seems to imply that not all who are saved will have come face-to-face with Christ, whether recognized or not.
But perhaps this is not what Lewis means by “belong[ing] to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). For, is he really saying that salvation can occur without encountering Christ, or is he arguing for the possibility of encountering Christ, not only without realizing that we have done so, but while actually thinking He is someone else? In other words, is it possible to have come to Christ through a different religion, not because Allah and Christ are the same, but because that which we called by the name of Allah, was actually Christ? Can we know Christ by a different name? Acts 4:12 appears to answer this question with a forceful negative, reminding us that Jesus has the only name with the power to save humanity. Lewis does not necessarily disagree, but he cautions us with the reminder that names, in our fallen state, tend to be misused.
Two examples from The Chronicles of Narnia bear testimony to this fact. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver is furious to hear the White Witch call herself Queen of Narnia, but Aslan is unperturbed. He affirms that titles have indeed been stolen, but promises that “all names will soon be restored to their proper owners” (Lewis, LWW 175). Then, in The Last Battle, there occurs an even more significant misuse of names. In it, a donkey is disguised to look like Aslan, and is given the blasphemous name “Tashlan,” a mix between Tash, the demon god, and Narnia’s true Lord. However, even this false name does nothing to alter reality, and the true natures of the donkey, Tash, and Aslan all remain unchanged. As the young Calormen warrior, Emeth, argues: the existence of a false Tash does not make the real Tash any less true (Lewis, LB 756)—and it is this loyalty that sets him apart as “worthy of a better God” (Lewis, LB 728). Aslan himself declares, “if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted” (Lewis, LB 757). This is because Aslan and Tash, regardless of name, retain their identities and are unchanging.
Therefore, although Christ saves, Lewis seems to argue that he does so through His deeper name, the name that manifests His very identity and cannot be misused—“Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281) the “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). For, ultimately, it is not any word, but Christ Himself, who brings life. It is the person behind the name, not the name itself, which is infinitely significant. Aslan can respond to the White Witch’s treachery with the words, “Peace, Beaver” (Lewis, LWW 175), because her misuse of sacred titles can have no ultimate effect. She can lie, but she can never change reality. In the same way, Tashlan can be invoked, but Aslan remains himself, regardless of name. As Aslan tells Emeth, “Not because [Tash] and I are one, but because we are opposites—I take to me the services which thou has done to him” (Lewis, LB 757). The implication is that Jesus, the one and only, who declared that “no servant can serve two masters” (Luke 16:13), is so abounding in goodness that service done to Him will never be mistaken for anything else.
Of course, Lewis may be in danger of taking this concept too far. His emphasis on good motives has the danger of focusing salvation on human actions and attitudes, rather than on Christ’s all-redeeming grace. In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape makes the statement, “[God] often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew” (Lewis 136). And Lewis once wrote in a letter, “I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him” (qtd. in Sennett 235). One problem with these statements is that they assume a capacity for sincerity, and authentically good motives, in unredeemed humans. They also imply that those virtues are enough to gain God’s grace. But are we not taught that, although Christ transforms us, and through Him we can do all things, without Him we are dead? Has Lewis progressed from the possibility of encountering Jesus by a different name, to the non-necessity of encountering Him at all?
Before this question can be answered, however, we must establish the effect that encountering Christ actually has on the process of inheriting eternal life. In the previous examples of salvation in Narnia, transformation always comes when Aslan is seen. Does this mean that encounter and salvation are synonymous, and that experience of Christ is enough to bring life in itself? If so, and God’s goodness, beauty, and terror are too awesome to be resisted, then God could force Himself upon us by simply revealing His presence. However, this is not the case—a choice must still be made. In The Horse and his Boy, Prince Rabadash meets Aslan with the hate-filled words: “Demon! Demon! Demon! [. . .] I know you. You are the foul fiend of Narnia” (Lewis 307). This statement bears a strange resemblance to the demonic cry of recognition: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). Rabadash stands as a reminder that Aslan’s grace must be accepted, not simply experienced. As James 2:19 states, even the demons believe—and shudder.
But if encountering Aslan is not enough to lead to salvation, the question still remains, is it necessary? The answer to this question is complex, but ultimately, I think it is affirmative. Coming to life in Christ is a perplexing and mysterious process, about which C.S. Lewis says, “A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; [but] what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work” (Mere Christianity 37). Although we may never fully understand how Christ saves, part of His work seems inextricably bound up in the individual’s response to “the central Christian belief [. . .] that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start” (Lewis, Mere Christianity 37). In God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, Christ’s grace does not seem to be enough; we must respond to that grace. We must respond to Him. And how are we to respond, if we never encounter Him?
This is not a question of knowing Christ by the right name, or of knowing “the true stories of Aslan” (Lewis, HHB 282), but of simply knowing Him. It is about having the opportunity to look Him in the face—Him of who Emeth says, “It is better to see the Lion and die than to be the Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him” (Lewis, LB 756). And it is about responding to that look, with either hatred or love. For, ultimately, those seem to be the only choices. As Christ himself states, “He who is not with me is against me” (Mathew 12:30).
But if an encounter with Christ is necessary, then we are back to a slightly modified version of the question, what of those who have never heard? It now becomes, what of those who have never seen? Never seen Aslan, never looked into the eyes that are “gold that is liquid in the furnace” (Lewis, LB 756), or had him touch his tongue to their foreheads—what of them? Is this a twisted form of predestination, where Christ reveals Himself to some, and not to others, therefore selecting those who can choose to respond, and banishing the rest to the darkness? I believe C.S. Lewis answers this challenge with an emphatic no.
I John 2:23 reads: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” The implication is that, to lose life, Jesus must be denied, not merely lived in ignorance of. If salvation results from a person’s belief in Christ, once encountered, then, conversely, damnation is a rejection of Christ, also once encountered. Salvation cannot occur without meeting God, but neither can damnation. Both result from a person’s response to the Messiah, and response requires encounter.
And encounter we shall have, every one of us—though not necessarily on this earth. The Bible makes it very clear that all of humanity shall stand before its Maker on the Day of Judgment. Christian or not, we shall all have our hearts laid bear and be without excuse. As Lewis says of that day, “This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature [. . .] That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not” (Mere Christianity 42). We shall see the glory of the Lord, and we shall respond with all that we are, and ever have been.
In the Bible, Jesus states, “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:7-8). The promise is that those who search will find God—but when is never specified. In The Last Battle, Emeth meets Aslan on the other side of death, and like Shasta on the mountaintop, takes one look at the Glorious One and falls on his face in worship. And Aslan, who is “more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty [. . .] surpasse[s] all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert” (Lewis, LB 756), responds by bending his glorious head to kiss the Calormen’s forehead. Sennett argues that the only significant difference between Shasta’s meeting with the Lion, and Emeth’s, is that the one takes place in life, and the other after death. And this is only important because it is not important at all: “Aslan’s ability to grant the grace that is the natural culmination of the journey is not limited by the confines of birth and death [. . .] In the context of the all important matter of searching after truth, the question of which side of the Stable Door Emeth stands on when he finds it strikes us as totally irrelevant—and it is. All that is relevant is what the Lion knows—that Emeth, like Shasta, was on the journey (Sennett 241).” Whether Christ is met in life or death is insignificant—the important factor is that, once seen, He is embraced.
In the end, Lewis is urging us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. We must seek truth, respond to the beauty we see, and go forward in obedience. We can only walk on in the knowledge we have, but walk on we must. Ultimately, many of us may find ourselves in the position of Emeth, meeting the Lion with the brokenhearted confession, “I have been seeking Tash all my days.” But our God is a God of mercy, as well as justice, and Aslan’s response is not to condemn, but to declare, “Beloved [. . .] unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek” (Lewis, LB 757). Regardless of language, the I AM is Lord, and He will reward all who have honestly pursued Him. Every journey will culminate in an audience with the High King, and there shall be no excuses. He shall either be the fulfillment of everything we have lived and longed for, or the horror we have always fled. All things shall be made clear, “justice shall be mixed with mercy” (HHB 307), and God shall save all who are truly His.
---. The Last Battle. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 669-767.
---. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.111-197.
---. The Magician’s Nephew. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 11-106.
---. Mere Christianity. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 1-118.
---. The Screwtape Letters. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 125-188.
Nash, Ronald H. Is Jesus the Only Savior? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
Sennett, James F. “Worthy of a Better God: Religious Diversity and Salvation in The Chronicles of Narnia.” The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview. Ed. Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.
I wouldn't say this is my best work; I remember being very unhappy with it when I wrote it (over spring break at Megan's house), but it seemed to fit the conference theme better than anything else I had.
If you have any suggestions, or notice other issues, let me know.
C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Issue of Religious Inclusivism
© 2007 Karith Magnuson
God the Father, who is deep and sacrificial love, sent His one and only Son, not to condemn the world, but to bring it life. As I Timothy 2:3-4 states, “God our savior [. . .] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” This truth is the saving work of Jesus, who came that we might have life, and have it to the full. The life He gives is bread and light; it is salvation, redemption, and the forgiveness of sins. Grounded in the cross and resurrection, this life is eternal, and brings rightness with God and reconciliation with our neighbors. Ultimately, it is embodied in the very person of Jesus Christ.© 2007 Karith Magnuson
But there seems to be a problem: God has provided salvation, but it is a limited salvation, available only to those who know His Son. Acts 4:12 reads, referring to Jesus, “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” and Jesus himself says, “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But what of those who suffer from ignorance, never having been exposed to the Gospel—those in other religions who are desperately seeking to serve God, but without having heard of Christ, or His atonement? Are they to be condemned for never believing in a name they have never heard? “Given that becoming a Christian is necessary for salvation,” argues James F. Sennett in his essay, “Worthy of a Better God,” “it follows that if God condemns one who has never heard the Gospel, then he is punishing that person for failing to do something she didn’t have the ability to do” (243). Where is the justice in that? Where is the mercy?
Romans 1:20 addresses this challenge, but with surprising implications. It states that, since creation, God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen through nature, leaving humanity without excuse. This verse seems to suggest that humanity has always had the ability to turn to God, but is choosing not to. Those in this passage are not condemned for ignorance, but for willfully rejecting God. As verse twenty-one continues, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” There is no evidence that those spoken of in this passage know God through the divine revelation of scripture or Christ’s incarnation. Instead, they are held accountable for the general knowledge they possess—leading to the conclusion that it must be possible to know and please God, even without hearing the name of Christ.
This appears to be in direct contradiction to the Acts 4:12 and John 14:6 passages. How are they to be reconciled? According to John Sanders, the answer is religious inclusivism, the belief that “the unevangilized are saved or lost on the basis of their commitment, or lack thereof, to the God who saves through the work of Jesus” (qtd. in Nash 104). According to inclusivists, Christ’s atoning death is necessary for salvation, but knowledge of His death is not (Nash 104). This, in many ways, is a continuation of the belief that faith, not knowledge, saves. It is meeting Christ, not any idea about Christ, which is the important thing. Jesus’ own disciples rarely understood who He was, or what He was about to do. However, they knew Him, and that was enough to impel them to leave everything, and simply follow.
C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is filled with examples of such encounters with Christ—such encounters with Aslan. In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory and Polly are entranced with the beauty of Narnia, the new world that is being sung into existence around them. However, once they see “the Singer himself . . . [they forget] everything else” (Lewis, MN 62). In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a transformation occurs at the very first mention of Aslan’s name:
“They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps has already landed.”Then, in The Horse and his Boy, when Aslan reveals himself to Hwin and Bree, two talking horses from Narnia, they do not see the connection between the stories of Aslan and the fierce and dangerous lion before them. Nonetheless, Hwin, in an act she does not recognize as faith, trembling (in fear or delight), walks up to Aslan and tells him: “You’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else” (Lewis, HHB 299). And Aslan, before he has revealed his identity, in a moment that recalls Christ’s “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace” (Mark 5:34), kisses Hwin and declares her his child.
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different [...] At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. (Lewis 141)
In all of these instances, Aslan is adored and worshiped before he is recognized, and in most cases, before he is named. Perhaps the greatest example of this doctrine-less conversion is Shasta’s meeting with the great Lion. After walking beside an invisible Aslan for some time, Shasta asks, “Who are you?” Aslan, refusing to name himself, replies, “Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281). When the fog clears, Shasta comes face-to-face with the King for the first time, and falls at the feet of the unnamed Beauty. He knows nothing of Aslan, not the lies of Calormen, nor the truth of Narnia, but he sees the Lion, and it is enough (Lewis, HHB 282).
However, all of this is one step removed from the issue of inclusivism. In the previous examples, encounters with Christ (or Aslan) save without being fully recognized for what they are, or who they are with—but they are with Aslan. In the same way, in Saul’s climactic conversion experience, he acknowledges the speaker as Lord before he knows who is speaking—but Christ is speaking (Acts 9:5). Arguing that encounters with Christ save, even when they are not recognized as encounters with Christ, is not the same as arguing that salvation can occur without encountering Christ. Lewis does seem to take this step, however, stating elsewhere that “there are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). This seems to imply that not all who are saved will have come face-to-face with Christ, whether recognized or not.
But perhaps this is not what Lewis means by “belong[ing] to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). For, is he really saying that salvation can occur without encountering Christ, or is he arguing for the possibility of encountering Christ, not only without realizing that we have done so, but while actually thinking He is someone else? In other words, is it possible to have come to Christ through a different religion, not because Allah and Christ are the same, but because that which we called by the name of Allah, was actually Christ? Can we know Christ by a different name? Acts 4:12 appears to answer this question with a forceful negative, reminding us that Jesus has the only name with the power to save humanity. Lewis does not necessarily disagree, but he cautions us with the reminder that names, in our fallen state, tend to be misused.
Two examples from The Chronicles of Narnia bear testimony to this fact. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver is furious to hear the White Witch call herself Queen of Narnia, but Aslan is unperturbed. He affirms that titles have indeed been stolen, but promises that “all names will soon be restored to their proper owners” (Lewis, LWW 175). Then, in The Last Battle, there occurs an even more significant misuse of names. In it, a donkey is disguised to look like Aslan, and is given the blasphemous name “Tashlan,” a mix between Tash, the demon god, and Narnia’s true Lord. However, even this false name does nothing to alter reality, and the true natures of the donkey, Tash, and Aslan all remain unchanged. As the young Calormen warrior, Emeth, argues: the existence of a false Tash does not make the real Tash any less true (Lewis, LB 756)—and it is this loyalty that sets him apart as “worthy of a better God” (Lewis, LB 728). Aslan himself declares, “if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted” (Lewis, LB 757). This is because Aslan and Tash, regardless of name, retain their identities and are unchanging.
Therefore, although Christ saves, Lewis seems to argue that he does so through His deeper name, the name that manifests His very identity and cannot be misused—“Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281) the “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). For, ultimately, it is not any word, but Christ Himself, who brings life. It is the person behind the name, not the name itself, which is infinitely significant. Aslan can respond to the White Witch’s treachery with the words, “Peace, Beaver” (Lewis, LWW 175), because her misuse of sacred titles can have no ultimate effect. She can lie, but she can never change reality. In the same way, Tashlan can be invoked, but Aslan remains himself, regardless of name. As Aslan tells Emeth, “Not because [Tash] and I are one, but because we are opposites—I take to me the services which thou has done to him” (Lewis, LB 757). The implication is that Jesus, the one and only, who declared that “no servant can serve two masters” (Luke 16:13), is so abounding in goodness that service done to Him will never be mistaken for anything else.
Of course, Lewis may be in danger of taking this concept too far. His emphasis on good motives has the danger of focusing salvation on human actions and attitudes, rather than on Christ’s all-redeeming grace. In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape makes the statement, “[God] often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew” (Lewis 136). And Lewis once wrote in a letter, “I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him” (qtd. in Sennett 235). One problem with these statements is that they assume a capacity for sincerity, and authentically good motives, in unredeemed humans. They also imply that those virtues are enough to gain God’s grace. But are we not taught that, although Christ transforms us, and through Him we can do all things, without Him we are dead? Has Lewis progressed from the possibility of encountering Jesus by a different name, to the non-necessity of encountering Him at all?
Before this question can be answered, however, we must establish the effect that encountering Christ actually has on the process of inheriting eternal life. In the previous examples of salvation in Narnia, transformation always comes when Aslan is seen. Does this mean that encounter and salvation are synonymous, and that experience of Christ is enough to bring life in itself? If so, and God’s goodness, beauty, and terror are too awesome to be resisted, then God could force Himself upon us by simply revealing His presence. However, this is not the case—a choice must still be made. In The Horse and his Boy, Prince Rabadash meets Aslan with the hate-filled words: “Demon! Demon! Demon! [. . .] I know you. You are the foul fiend of Narnia” (Lewis 307). This statement bears a strange resemblance to the demonic cry of recognition: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). Rabadash stands as a reminder that Aslan’s grace must be accepted, not simply experienced. As James 2:19 states, even the demons believe—and shudder.
But if encountering Aslan is not enough to lead to salvation, the question still remains, is it necessary? The answer to this question is complex, but ultimately, I think it is affirmative. Coming to life in Christ is a perplexing and mysterious process, about which C.S. Lewis says, “A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; [but] what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work” (Mere Christianity 37). Although we may never fully understand how Christ saves, part of His work seems inextricably bound up in the individual’s response to “the central Christian belief [. . .] that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start” (Lewis, Mere Christianity 37). In God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, Christ’s grace does not seem to be enough; we must respond to that grace. We must respond to Him. And how are we to respond, if we never encounter Him?
This is not a question of knowing Christ by the right name, or of knowing “the true stories of Aslan” (Lewis, HHB 282), but of simply knowing Him. It is about having the opportunity to look Him in the face—Him of who Emeth says, “It is better to see the Lion and die than to be the Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him” (Lewis, LB 756). And it is about responding to that look, with either hatred or love. For, ultimately, those seem to be the only choices. As Christ himself states, “He who is not with me is against me” (Mathew 12:30).
But if an encounter with Christ is necessary, then we are back to a slightly modified version of the question, what of those who have never heard? It now becomes, what of those who have never seen? Never seen Aslan, never looked into the eyes that are “gold that is liquid in the furnace” (Lewis, LB 756), or had him touch his tongue to their foreheads—what of them? Is this a twisted form of predestination, where Christ reveals Himself to some, and not to others, therefore selecting those who can choose to respond, and banishing the rest to the darkness? I believe C.S. Lewis answers this challenge with an emphatic no.
I John 2:23 reads: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” The implication is that, to lose life, Jesus must be denied, not merely lived in ignorance of. If salvation results from a person’s belief in Christ, once encountered, then, conversely, damnation is a rejection of Christ, also once encountered. Salvation cannot occur without meeting God, but neither can damnation. Both result from a person’s response to the Messiah, and response requires encounter.
And encounter we shall have, every one of us—though not necessarily on this earth. The Bible makes it very clear that all of humanity shall stand before its Maker on the Day of Judgment. Christian or not, we shall all have our hearts laid bear and be without excuse. As Lewis says of that day, “This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature [. . .] That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not” (Mere Christianity 42). We shall see the glory of the Lord, and we shall respond with all that we are, and ever have been.
In the Bible, Jesus states, “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:7-8). The promise is that those who search will find God—but when is never specified. In The Last Battle, Emeth meets Aslan on the other side of death, and like Shasta on the mountaintop, takes one look at the Glorious One and falls on his face in worship. And Aslan, who is “more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty [. . .] surpasse[s] all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert” (Lewis, LB 756), responds by bending his glorious head to kiss the Calormen’s forehead. Sennett argues that the only significant difference between Shasta’s meeting with the Lion, and Emeth’s, is that the one takes place in life, and the other after death. And this is only important because it is not important at all: “Aslan’s ability to grant the grace that is the natural culmination of the journey is not limited by the confines of birth and death [. . .] In the context of the all important matter of searching after truth, the question of which side of the Stable Door Emeth stands on when he finds it strikes us as totally irrelevant—and it is. All that is relevant is what the Lion knows—that Emeth, like Shasta, was on the journey (Sennett 241).” Whether Christ is met in life or death is insignificant—the important factor is that, once seen, He is embraced.
In the end, Lewis is urging us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. We must seek truth, respond to the beauty we see, and go forward in obedience. We can only walk on in the knowledge we have, but walk on we must. Ultimately, many of us may find ourselves in the position of Emeth, meeting the Lion with the brokenhearted confession, “I have been seeking Tash all my days.” But our God is a God of mercy, as well as justice, and Aslan’s response is not to condemn, but to declare, “Beloved [. . .] unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek” (Lewis, LB 757). Regardless of language, the I AM is Lord, and He will reward all who have honestly pursued Him. Every journey will culminate in an audience with the High King, and there shall be no excuses. He shall either be the fulfillment of everything we have lived and longed for, or the horror we have always fled. All things shall be made clear, “justice shall be mixed with mercy” (HHB 307), and God shall save all who are truly His.
Works Cited
Lewis, C.S. The Horse and his Boy. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 205-309.---. The Last Battle. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 669-767.
---. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.111-197.
---. The Magician’s Nephew. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 11-106.
---. Mere Christianity. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 1-118.
---. The Screwtape Letters. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 125-188.
Nash, Ronald H. Is Jesus the Only Savior? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
Sennett, James F. “Worthy of a Better God: Religious Diversity and Salvation in The Chronicles of Narnia.” The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview. Ed. Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Feminism and Faith
"Rather than employ a variety of names to more effectively illustrate the mystery of God, the teachers and preachers of our childhood always used the male pronoun. Their words contradicted the lessons they taught us. Religion had given God a man's name while claiming that God was beyond naming, that 'he' was a mystery." -Patricia Lynn Reilly
We're reading Reilly's text, A God Who Looks Like Me, for Feminism and Faith, a group I attend on Thursday nights. So far, I'm not a huge fan of the book. Mostly, I think, because it's a bit too "self-helpish" for my taste. And I'm not completely sure where the author is actually going with her observations. However, it is a good jumping-off place, and has led to good conversations.
The group is a slightly modified continuation of something we started in the fall of 2007. It sort of died that spring (Megan, Tammi, Kohleun and I were the only ones who showed up on a regular basis), was discontinued last fall, and then resurrected this spring. We meet at the home of a religious studies professor (Kendra Irons, who Kohleun T.A.s for), make dinner, watch the occasional movie, and have discussions.
It's a lot of fun, and really refreshing. Most of the students are sophomores, who I hadn't met before this spring, but it's a good group of interesting (and interested) people.
If you want to be bored to tears, you can read the article I wrote about the group for my journalism class (fall '07). This is a great example of why I hate this particular form of writing:
We're reading Reilly's text, A God Who Looks Like Me, for Feminism and Faith, a group I attend on Thursday nights. So far, I'm not a huge fan of the book. Mostly, I think, because it's a bit too "self-helpish" for my taste. And I'm not completely sure where the author is actually going with her observations. However, it is a good jumping-off place, and has led to good conversations.
The group is a slightly modified continuation of something we started in the fall of 2007. It sort of died that spring (Megan, Tammi, Kohleun and I were the only ones who showed up on a regular basis), was discontinued last fall, and then resurrected this spring. We meet at the home of a religious studies professor (Kendra Irons, who Kohleun T.A.s for), make dinner, watch the occasional movie, and have discussions.
It's a lot of fun, and really refreshing. Most of the students are sophomores, who I hadn't met before this spring, but it's a good group of interesting (and interested) people.
If you want to be bored to tears, you can read the article I wrote about the group for my journalism class (fall '07). This is a great example of why I hate this particular form of writing:
A new women studies group at George Fox University will discuss the gender of God, body image, sexist language, female sexuality, the presentation of God in art, domestic violence, identity and other related issues.
At 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, Kendra Irons and Jill Lepire held the first meeting of a George Fox discussion group focused on women’s issues and faith. Twelve students attended the meeting on the outside patio of Newberg’s Coffee Cottage. Following meetings will be at 5 p.m. every Friday at Hoskins House, located at 214 River St. on the George Fox campus.
Irons, an assistant professor of religious studies at George Fox, facilitated the meeting, which Lepire, a junior double majoring in psychology and religion, organized. Lepire approached Irons about being the group’s faculty advisor in the spring of 2007. Irons said she agreed because she is passionate about helping women on the “road to feminism.”
Susan Suihkonen, a senior elementary education major, offered Hoskins House as the group’s venue. Suihkonen, who lives in Hoskins House with seven other women, said that they want their house to be a place of safety where people are accepted unconditionally. She sees this as an important environment for the women studies group because “being part of this group puts people at risk of rejection.”
The women who attended the first meeting ranged in age from sophomores to seniors, and were pursuing majors in religion, Christian ministries, writing and literature, art, international studies, elementary education, psychology and philosophy. When asked why they were at the meeting, most answered that they were becoming dissatisfied with the church and its presentation of a male God.
Katiana Hultz, a junior international studies major, said she’s excited about the group because it’s a place where she can be true to herself without offending others.
“We’re very limited in what we feel we’re allowed to think and believe,” said Hultz. “Knowing that there were other people who thought like this made me very happy.”
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Inklings, Inkblots, and one more conference . . .
Kohleun and I just heard back about our last conference. We'll both be reading at Sigma Tau Delta's Faith in the Humanities Conference, at Northwest University (near Seattle, Washington). The conference is March 19th and 20th, the two days before spring break. We're still not exactly sure how we'll be getting up there, but I think one of our professors is going to road-trip with us. Which should be a lot of fun. =)
Kohleun will be presenting a creative non-fiction piece (somewhere along the lines of her first memory, and the church), and I'll be reading a paper I wrote two years ago for my C.S. Lewis and the Bible class: "C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Issue of Religious Inclusivism." Both papers are a little . . . heretical. So things should be interesting. =)
On a side note, the class/professor I wrote my C.S. Lewis paper for is still exerting significant influence on my thinking, and the thinking of my friends. Starting this spring, a group of us has been meeting every Saturday, from 2:00-4:00 (i.e. 2:00-5:30/6:00), to share ideas, fellowship, and papers. We jokingly refer to ourselves as the Inkblots -- similar to the Inklings, but with no beer, few men, and one two-year-old child (and rather less brilliance =). We meet at the house of a married student (who took C.S. Lewis and the Bible with me) and his wife (who grew up in Africa) and we drink lots of tea. Although the idea was to form a writing group, it isn't that exactly. For one thing, we read our papers aloud, rather than handing out hard copies, so it's very hard to comment on grammar, syntax, or form. Invariably, it becomes a discussion about content -- the ideas conveyed, the imagery used, and the emotional power expressed. Since I'm already in a writing group (two of my fellow writing/lit majors and I are doing an independent study with our favorite writing prof) this is a nice change of pace. A very different focus.
In many ways, this group is a culmination of ideas we've been discussing for the last two years (since taking Roger's class). For all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, the Inklings, Lewis, imagination, fantasy, Tolkien, etc. have always been significant (at least in the abstract), but I think Roger's class inspired a deeper academic/intellectual exploration of what those authors are actually doing, and why they are successful (an exploration that leaked into Shared Praxis the next year, and reading Charles Williams' work). I'll admit that this doesn't hold true for all Inklbolt members (*cough* Kohleun *cough*), but it's the foundation that inspired the group. And the core that keeps it going.
On a further side note, favorite professors should NOT go on sabbatical during students' last year of college. It is most distressing.
(While at Fox, Roger Newell's classes have probably had the most significant influence on my spiritual journey. I've found each of them to be transformative in some subtle, but powerful, way: Bible Survey, Christian Foundations, and C.S. Lewis and the Bible).
Kohleun will be presenting a creative non-fiction piece (somewhere along the lines of her first memory, and the church), and I'll be reading a paper I wrote two years ago for my C.S. Lewis and the Bible class: "C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Issue of Religious Inclusivism." Both papers are a little . . . heretical. So things should be interesting. =)
On a side note, the class/professor I wrote my C.S. Lewis paper for is still exerting significant influence on my thinking, and the thinking of my friends. Starting this spring, a group of us has been meeting every Saturday, from 2:00-4:00 (i.e. 2:00-5:30/6:00), to share ideas, fellowship, and papers. We jokingly refer to ourselves as the Inkblots -- similar to the Inklings, but with no beer, few men, and one two-year-old child (and rather less brilliance =). We meet at the house of a married student (who took C.S. Lewis and the Bible with me) and his wife (who grew up in Africa) and we drink lots of tea. Although the idea was to form a writing group, it isn't that exactly. For one thing, we read our papers aloud, rather than handing out hard copies, so it's very hard to comment on grammar, syntax, or form. Invariably, it becomes a discussion about content -- the ideas conveyed, the imagery used, and the emotional power expressed. Since I'm already in a writing group (two of my fellow writing/lit majors and I are doing an independent study with our favorite writing prof) this is a nice change of pace. A very different focus.
In many ways, this group is a culmination of ideas we've been discussing for the last two years (since taking Roger's class). For all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, the Inklings, Lewis, imagination, fantasy, Tolkien, etc. have always been significant (at least in the abstract), but I think Roger's class inspired a deeper academic/intellectual exploration of what those authors are actually doing, and why they are successful (an exploration that leaked into Shared Praxis the next year, and reading Charles Williams' work). I'll admit that this doesn't hold true for all Inklbolt members (*cough* Kohleun *cough*), but it's the foundation that inspired the group. And the core that keeps it going.
On a further side note, favorite professors should NOT go on sabbatical during students' last year of college. It is most distressing.
(While at Fox, Roger Newell's classes have probably had the most significant influence on my spiritual journey. I've found each of them to be transformative in some subtle, but powerful, way: Bible Survey, Christian Foundations, and C.S. Lewis and the Bible).
Friday, February 27, 2009
Conferences on literature . . . here we come!
Now that I'm in my last semester of my senior year in college (we're not even going to address how scary that thought is), I have finally gotten around to submitting papers to literature conferences.
So far, I have submitted to three, and have heard back from two -- both good news. I'll be presenting some of my creative non-fiction work (potentially two essays) at the Speaking Truth to Power Conference (sponsored by the Conference on Christianity and Literature), hosted at George Fox University, April 16-18.
I also just heard that Kohleun and I have been accepted to present at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature (NUCL), hosted at the University of Portland on April 4th. I'll be reading one of my Oxford essays: "Community, Isolation, and Feminine Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway."
Kohleun will be presenting the paper she wrote (in Oxford) on the women poets of World War I.
Now I just have to figure out what people actually DO at conferences...
So far, I have submitted to three, and have heard back from two -- both good news. I'll be presenting some of my creative non-fiction work (potentially two essays) at the Speaking Truth to Power Conference (sponsored by the Conference on Christianity and Literature), hosted at George Fox University, April 16-18.
I also just heard that Kohleun and I have been accepted to present at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature (NUCL), hosted at the University of Portland on April 4th. I'll be reading one of my Oxford essays: "Community, Isolation, and Feminine Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway."
Kohleun will be presenting the paper she wrote (in Oxford) on the women poets of World War I.
Now I just have to figure out what people actually DO at conferences...
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Vagina Monologues
If all goes according to plan, Kohleun and I will be graduating in May with the first ever Women Studies' minors from George Fox University. While a minor may not seem that impressive, it's a huge step for the school (and something the writing/literature department has fought hard for). Hopefully, a full-fledged major will be next . . .
As part of this new minor, Kathy Heininge (one of my favorite literature professors) is teaching a Gender Theory class this semester. Kohleun and I are both taking it (it's my sixth class with Kathy), and it's one of the highlights of my week. There are only eight of us (7 girls, and 1 brave guy), and we sit around a table, in a bright sun-light room (assuming it's not raining), and talk about fascinating issues. We never have enough time to really delve into the topics (which is crazily frustrating), but it raises a lot of good questions (something that Kathy is great at -- she always says that she doesn't lecture, she questions).
Anyway. All of this to say that five of us (and Kathy) went to see the Vagina Monologues this past Friday. We went over to Kathy's for dinner first (and petted her beautiful cats and wonderful dog), and then drove down to Western Oregon University in Monmouth.
We actually got there a little late, so we missed the very beginning, but it was still a pretty compelling show. That's not to say that it was an easy, light, or uncontroversial show. There were definitely portions that I found highly problematic and very disturbing. However, I completely support the show's existence, and believe that it raises important topics that need to be voiced, discussed, and demystified. Of course, I suppose the question is, are all of those topics of equal value? Female sexuality, sexual violence against women, the vagina, orgasms . . . ? Is there a point at which the show goes too far? I don't thinks so, not really. If this were simply a show to amuse and entertain, and used sexual/vulgar references as an easy way to achieve those goals . . . then I would take issue. The Vagina Monologues, however, is a far cry from easy, or shallow, entertainment. It is meant to be thought provoking, amusing at times, and perhaps inappropriate (although, who decides what is and is not appropriate in a patriarchal society?) . . . but it is none of these things thoughtlessly or pointlessly.
Ultimately, it is a show that asks questions. Where do we center our value as women? Is it in a particular part of our anatomy? And if so, is that identification a good or a bad thing? A liberating or enslaving thing? Why are we so afraid to use the word vagina? What is it that society has told us about our vaginas, and our relationship to our vaginas? Should we be afraid of them, value them, do everything within our power to protect and hide them, treat them as something odd, shameful, painful . . . inhuman?
As a Christian, the implications go even further: how does God intend us to view our sexuality -- a sexuality that was divinely created, and declared good? Is it a sexuality that needs to be reclaimed from all of the warping connotations and practices that have been imposed upon it, associated with it, etc.? And if so, how does that reclamation happen? What is the road forward?
There is another aspect of this show which is easier, perhaps, to categorize according to morality and the heart of God. And that is the issue of sexual violence, particularly the large scale sexual violence being perpetrated in places like the Congo (here's a link to an article detailing the reality of the situation). Or the comfort women of Asia, still pleading with the Japanese government for a formal apology before the last of them die, taking their stories with them. If men have the right, in so many societies, to use women’s sexuality against them, surely women have the right to join together and discuss what their sexuality actually means.
The Vagina Monologues is not just about provoking-thought or raising discussion, it is also about protecting the unprotected and eliminating violence (the show inspired a grass-roots movement known as V-Day, dedicated to ending international violence against women and girls).
(Kohleun's Vagina Monologues T-shirt)
As part of this new minor, Kathy Heininge (one of my favorite literature professors) is teaching a Gender Theory class this semester. Kohleun and I are both taking it (it's my sixth class with Kathy), and it's one of the highlights of my week. There are only eight of us (7 girls, and 1 brave guy), and we sit around a table, in a bright sun-light room (assuming it's not raining), and talk about fascinating issues. We never have enough time to really delve into the topics (which is crazily frustrating), but it raises a lot of good questions (something that Kathy is great at -- she always says that she doesn't lecture, she questions).
Anyway. All of this to say that five of us (and Kathy) went to see the Vagina Monologues this past Friday. We went over to Kathy's for dinner first (and petted her beautiful cats and wonderful dog), and then drove down to Western Oregon University in Monmouth.
We actually got there a little late, so we missed the very beginning, but it was still a pretty compelling show. That's not to say that it was an easy, light, or uncontroversial show. There were definitely portions that I found highly problematic and very disturbing. However, I completely support the show's existence, and believe that it raises important topics that need to be voiced, discussed, and demystified. Of course, I suppose the question is, are all of those topics of equal value? Female sexuality, sexual violence against women, the vagina, orgasms . . . ? Is there a point at which the show goes too far? I don't thinks so, not really. If this were simply a show to amuse and entertain, and used sexual/vulgar references as an easy way to achieve those goals . . . then I would take issue. The Vagina Monologues, however, is a far cry from easy, or shallow, entertainment. It is meant to be thought provoking, amusing at times, and perhaps inappropriate (although, who decides what is and is not appropriate in a patriarchal society?) . . . but it is none of these things thoughtlessly or pointlessly.
Ultimately, it is a show that asks questions. Where do we center our value as women? Is it in a particular part of our anatomy? And if so, is that identification a good or a bad thing? A liberating or enslaving thing? Why are we so afraid to use the word vagina? What is it that society has told us about our vaginas, and our relationship to our vaginas? Should we be afraid of them, value them, do everything within our power to protect and hide them, treat them as something odd, shameful, painful . . . inhuman?
As a Christian, the implications go even further: how does God intend us to view our sexuality -- a sexuality that was divinely created, and declared good? Is it a sexuality that needs to be reclaimed from all of the warping connotations and practices that have been imposed upon it, associated with it, etc.? And if so, how does that reclamation happen? What is the road forward?
There is another aspect of this show which is easier, perhaps, to categorize according to morality and the heart of God. And that is the issue of sexual violence, particularly the large scale sexual violence being perpetrated in places like the Congo (here's a link to an article detailing the reality of the situation). Or the comfort women of Asia, still pleading with the Japanese government for a formal apology before the last of them die, taking their stories with them. If men have the right, in so many societies, to use women’s sexuality against them, surely women have the right to join together and discuss what their sexuality actually means.
The Vagina Monologues is not just about provoking-thought or raising discussion, it is also about protecting the unprotected and eliminating violence (the show inspired a grass-roots movement known as V-Day, dedicated to ending international violence against women and girls).
(Kohleun's Vagina Monologues T-shirt)"VDAY: Until the Violence Stops"
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Bodleian Library
There are over a hundred libraries in Oxford. Most belong to the individual colleges, and can only be used by members (for example, we can use the Wycliffe Hall library, but not the Trinity College library). Others are more widely accessible, such as the faculty libraries (there is one for every subject). You have to be a university member, and you have to register with each library individually (I'm registered with the English, Classics, History, and Theology faculty libraries) but they allow you to check books out, which is hugely helpful.And then there is the Bodleian. The Bodleian is the only actual "university" library, and it is HUGE. Several of its main buildings are clustered in the general vicinity of the Radcliffe square (the Old Bodleian, the New Bodleian, the Radcliffe Camera, etc.), and they are constantly building on.
This library, while gorgeous and amazing (you feel like you've stepped into history when you walk through the doors) is hugely complex. There are books located in each individual portion of the library, called "reading rooms." These cannot be reserved, and must simply be found on the many shelves of glorious knowledge. The vast majority of books in the Bodleian's collection, however, are found in "the stacks." The stacks are a mysterious entity, location unknown, where literally thousands of books wait to be requested. To get a book moved from the stacks to somewhere you can actually access it, you look it up on their database, and have it requested to a specific reading room. Within a specified amount of time, your book will arrive, and you go to that room to pick it up and read it there (my reading room of choice is the lower rr of the Old Bodleian). The Bodleian does not allow books to be taken from the premises, or moved from room to room.
This, though it sounds easy enough, was really difficult to get used to. Not the system per se, but the inability to check books out. The necessity of always reading in the library. Getting your books at the beginning of the day, claiming a table (by an ancient window, overlooking the towers and spires of Oxford), having to leave your books behind every time you needed a coffee break or food (there is a coffee shop in Blackwells, a really famous bookstore across the street), and then handing them back at the end of the day (you can have them held for you, or returned to the stacks). It was especially tricky during the British Landscapes course, because the library was still on holiday hours, and closed down at 7:00pm, and wasn't open during the weekend. However, it has definitely driven home the importance of taking good reading notes. =)
One really cool thing about the Bodleian is that it was England's first copyright library. This basically means they get a copy (or can if they want) of every book published in England since 1610. This, needless to say, has made the Bodleian a world famous research library (and is the reason it's constantly outgrowing its space allotment). The library was named after Sir Thomas Bodley (1545-1613), who secured its copyright status (and left his fortune to it) after he refurbished, and reopened, the Oxford Duke Humfrey's library in 1602. The Duke Humfrey still exists within the confines of the Old Bod., and is where the forbidden section of the Hogwart's library was filmed for the Harry Potter films. If you want to see some amazing pictures, I highly recommend you search Google images for "bodleian library."
A little archaic, but I think the following poem is cool just for the realization that every book written by every English scholar, poet, or novelist will stand tribute to this creator of libraries. What a legacy!:
Most noble Bodley! we are bound to thee
For no small part of our eternity.
Th' hast made us all thine Heirs: whatever we
Hereafter write, 'tis thy Posterity.
This is thy Monument! here thou shalt stand
Till the times fall in their last grain of Sand.
And whereso'er thy silent reliques keep,
This tomb will never let thine honour sleep.
Still we shall think upon thee; all our fame
Meets here to speak one Letter of they name.
Thou canst not dye! Here thou art more than safe
When every Book is they large Epitaph.
-Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)
(the passage to Radcliffe Square)
(the Radcliffe Camera, with the University Church in the background)
(the Radcliffe Camera, with All Souls College in the background)
(the Radcliffe Camera -- the upper reading room has a reputation for looking like Bell's library in Beauty and the Beast)
(in the Old Bodleain courtyard)
(a door inside the courtyard of the Old Bod.)
(by the "Visitors May Not Pass Beyond This Point" sign in the Old Bod.)Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Virginia Woolf and Cambridge: why she isn't there
I don't think it would be a stretch to say that Virginia Woolf loved Cambridge. She was in awe of its wealth and history -- the heritage of learning it represented and embodied. Of walking there, she wrote: "The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning" (Oxbridge is the term used to sum up all that Oxford and Cambridge together represent). And of course, there is her description of the aftereffects of lunching at King's (a multi-course feast of partridges and ducklings and salmon and soup and cream and salads and potatoes and puddings and wines): "And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."
This week, for my primary tutorial, I'm rereading A Room of One's Own (for the third time). It's an amazing text, filled (anti-feminists may be surprised to hear =) with compassion, good humour, and a lot of common sense. I've loved it every time I've read it.
My tutor assigned a piece of secondary literature, however, that's been making me realize how intensely ironic it is to be reading/studying A Room of One's Own in the context of Oxbridge.
On the one hand, Woolf was intensely aware that she, as a woman, was an outsider. Women were not allowed to receive degrees at Cambridge until 1948 (about 30 years after Oxford students), and in 1921 (just 7 years before Woolf gave her historical address at Girton) a mob of male students destroyed Newnham's beautiful bronze memorial gates, in celebration of voting "overwhelmingly" to prevent women from receiving degrees. "The symbolic and real violence of this chilling scene is mitigated in most accounts and turned into a joke to shame the women" (J. Marcus).
To add to this, there is Woolf's own account of visiting Cambridge -- an account riddled with exclusion: "He was a beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me" . . . "[A] kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library" . . . "and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and the poverty and insecurity of the other and the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge."
And of course, there is her less than shining description of dinner at Fernham (Oxbridge's female counterpart) to compare to lunch at King's, and her conclusion: "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp of the spine does not light on beef and prunes."
While this is disturbing enough, and the starting place for Woolf's discussion of women and fiction, there is the added peculiarity that Woolf, the uneducated daughter of an educated man, never truly belonged at Fernham either, and, as Woolf, has never been accepted at Cambridge. Jane Marcus, the author I was reading (Virginia Woolf, Cambridge, and A Room of One's Own), states that nowhere in Cambridge is there a single plaque to commemorate Woolf's work, and that none of her manuscripts are available in the university's libraries (being held in open collections, instead). All her male relatives, and all her Bloomsbury friends (with the exception of her husband), figure prominently in library and college, and even her female cousins are well respected at Cambridge, having served as librarians and presidents for the women's colleges. Virginia, on the other hand, has only the remembrance of absence and trespass. She -- who visited Cambridge often to see brothers, friends, and a Quaker aunt (the famous Friends' theologian, Caroline Stephen), and delivered one of the century's most celebrated feminist lectures within its confines -- she is only an outsider:
"It is October, 'October, the birth of the year,' as Virginia Woolf says in A Room of One's Own. It is Michaelmas Term in Cambridge, the birth of the academic year. How differently Woolf's elegy for the lost history of women writers echoes on these ancient stones. Why did I expect that she would have left some trace in this town, some mark on its walls? . . . Why is it such a terrible reality to face the facts of Virginia Woolf's analysis of the university as a patriarchal institution, to feel her discomfort here, her sense of being a stranger, as she complains in drafts of the essay? Not much has changed. I itch to take out a tube of the lipstick she so disdained and write 'Virginia Woolf Was Here' all over the walls that bear the names of the great dead who studied here, men's names of course."
-Virginia Woolf, Cambridge and A Room of One's Own: 'The Proper Upkeep of Names' by J. Marcus (1996)
This week, for my primary tutorial, I'm rereading A Room of One's Own (for the third time). It's an amazing text, filled (anti-feminists may be surprised to hear =) with compassion, good humour, and a lot of common sense. I've loved it every time I've read it.
My tutor assigned a piece of secondary literature, however, that's been making me realize how intensely ironic it is to be reading/studying A Room of One's Own in the context of Oxbridge.
On the one hand, Woolf was intensely aware that she, as a woman, was an outsider. Women were not allowed to receive degrees at Cambridge until 1948 (about 30 years after Oxford students), and in 1921 (just 7 years before Woolf gave her historical address at Girton) a mob of male students destroyed Newnham's beautiful bronze memorial gates, in celebration of voting "overwhelmingly" to prevent women from receiving degrees. "The symbolic and real violence of this chilling scene is mitigated in most accounts and turned into a joke to shame the women" (J. Marcus).
To add to this, there is Woolf's own account of visiting Cambridge -- an account riddled with exclusion: "He was a beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me" . . . "[A] kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library" . . . "and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and the poverty and insecurity of the other and the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge."
And of course, there is her less than shining description of dinner at Fernham (Oxbridge's female counterpart) to compare to lunch at King's, and her conclusion: "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp of the spine does not light on beef and prunes."
While this is disturbing enough, and the starting place for Woolf's discussion of women and fiction, there is the added peculiarity that Woolf, the uneducated daughter of an educated man, never truly belonged at Fernham either, and, as Woolf, has never been accepted at Cambridge. Jane Marcus, the author I was reading (Virginia Woolf, Cambridge, and A Room of One's Own), states that nowhere in Cambridge is there a single plaque to commemorate Woolf's work, and that none of her manuscripts are available in the university's libraries (being held in open collections, instead). All her male relatives, and all her Bloomsbury friends (with the exception of her husband), figure prominently in library and college, and even her female cousins are well respected at Cambridge, having served as librarians and presidents for the women's colleges. Virginia, on the other hand, has only the remembrance of absence and trespass. She -- who visited Cambridge often to see brothers, friends, and a Quaker aunt (the famous Friends' theologian, Caroline Stephen), and delivered one of the century's most celebrated feminist lectures within its confines -- she is only an outsider:
"It is October, 'October, the birth of the year,' as Virginia Woolf says in A Room of One's Own. It is Michaelmas Term in Cambridge, the birth of the academic year. How differently Woolf's elegy for the lost history of women writers echoes on these ancient stones. Why did I expect that she would have left some trace in this town, some mark on its walls? . . . Why is it such a terrible reality to face the facts of Virginia Woolf's analysis of the university as a patriarchal institution, to feel her discomfort here, her sense of being a stranger, as she complains in drafts of the essay? Not much has changed. I itch to take out a tube of the lipstick she so disdained and write 'Virginia Woolf Was Here' all over the walls that bear the names of the great dead who studied here, men's names of course."
-Virginia Woolf, Cambridge and A Room of One's Own: 'The Proper Upkeep of Names' by J. Marcus (1996)
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Week in the Life . . .
So, I'm not sure how much information people actually want about my life, but I'm going to give it to you regardless. =)
My week schedule (approximately) is as follows:
Sunday:
But overall, a fun challenge. Such a different way of doing education -- completely research based, and dependent on the student's own quest for knowledge. Reminds me of home schooling, just a bit. =)
My week schedule (approximately) is as follows:
Sunday:
* Either high mass at St. Mary Magdalen's or unprogramed worship at the Oxford Friends meeting (which is right next to the Eagle and Child, where Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams used to hang out).Monday:
* Tea at Crick (where I live) from 4:30-5:30. Jonathan (our Jr. Dean -- basically, an RA/RD) serves, and we have lots of biscuits. There's even a tea faerie who takes our orders, which involve secret codes such as "Dracula's Dream" and "Fat Cow."
* Every other week I have a paper due at 9:00pm.Tuesday:
* Some weeks there's a Young Friends meeting, which involves 30min of silence, and free dinner.
* I was going to WomCam (Women's Campaign) meetings, but I've been busy.
* 10:00am lecture on Virginia Woolf ("Contextualizing Woolf") with Dr. Whitworth, author of Virginia Woolf: Authors in Context.Wednesday:
* Every other week, my secondary tutorial (Classical Literature) at 11:30. It's with Jonathan, and involves coffee, and sometimes biscuits. They've tended to run about two hours (rather than the designated one), and have been a lot of fun. Which is great, because Classics is, frankly, terrifying. I have absolutely no background in the discipline and it's so HUGE. But Jonathan asks great questions, gives me time to process and gather my thoughts, and has very enlightening opinions (and an amazing store of knowledge). I've learned a ton.
* Tea at Frewin Court (where the program's offices are) from 2:00-4:00. This involves a ridiculous amount of chocolate, and lots of cheese puffs. Simon, our Tutor for Student Affairs (dean of student life) serves, and most of the 60-some students pass through his office during the two hour period. Kind of crazy.
* Seminar lecture at Wycliffe Hall (the actual college we're members of) from 2:30-3:30, followed by tea. The subject is "Faith and Scholarship," which they are very quick to emphasize is different than "Faith and Learning." Unsurprisingly, it's about pursuing Christ, and academic excellence, at a research university (such as Oxford) -- especially long term.Thursday:
* Movie night at the Vines (the other house), which I go to if I can. They're usually playing something that has something to do with England (e.g. Fawlty Towers, A Man for all Seasons, etc.).
It's about a 40min hike, out into the sort-of-country, through fields lit by old-style lanterns, under an Oxford sky. Really beautiful and silent. Reminds me, for some odd reason, of Narnia.
* A Virgil lecture at 11:00, with Dr. R.W. Cowan. He's in his mid-twenties (I would guess) and loves to jump around a lot, have goofy pictures on his slide shows, and read ancient texts in different voices. He was very disappointed last week, 'cause we ran out of time before he could impersonate Venus. =)Friday:
It's held in the Examination Schools, a gorgeous, huge, old building where Tolkien used to lecture.
* "Contesting Texts" lecture at 3:00, with Dr. Methven. It's a small lecture (held in a big room, but not many students go), but really interesting. Basically, the point is to demonstrate literary criticism in action, and the professor analyzes two texts every week, looking at them through various lenses.
* Then, at 6:00, I have my primary tutorial on Virginia Woolf. It's been a challenge. I love Woolf's writing, so have really enjoyed the primary texts and getting familiar with criticism and secondary sources. However, I feel a complete lack of connection with my tutor. I don't think I approach the texts the way she wants me to, but I'm never sure what she does want, and she's given me barely any feedback on any of my work so far. It's a bit frustrating, but I'm hoping I will get better at understanding her expectations and communicating my ideas as the term progresses (though, freakily, I'm already half-way done).
* 9:00am lecture on sexuality and gender in ancient Greece and Rome, with Dr. T. J. Morgan. This is for my "long essay" due the week after term finishes. My subject is something along the lines of interpreting Medea as a feminist text within its historical context, and whether that's even possible.Saturday:
* 11:00am lecture on Homer, with Dr. R. B. Rutherford. If truth be known, I tend to fall asleep slightly in this one. It's fascinating, but the week is long, and it comes at the end. Need I say more?
* Best part of the whole week: Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society! So fun. Depending on the week, we might be doing dramatic readings, mock trials, or hobbit dancing. =)
Next week is Gandalf's fireworks. But, sadly, I'm going to miss them.
* Totally depends on the week. If I'm going into a two-tutorial week (like this one is), Saturday is spent trying to crystallize the ideas for my Monday classics paper. If not, exploration is in order.Overall, this may not seem like that much, but our handbook is infamous for saying that most tutors will assign more weekly reading than U.S. students are used to reading in a semester. Since I'm a lit. major, that's not exactly true, but the load is definitely not light. I read most of my primary sources this summer, so that's been very helpful, but I'm still getting used to the process of spitting out research papers. I'll let you know if I ever manage mastery . . .
And even though last Saturday should have been spent studying, I went to an open-air French market and bought Turkish delight.
(I went with a friend I met at the Tolkien Society -- she happens to be Egyptian, and we recently discovered that we have HCC and CCS connections, amazingly enough). =)
But overall, a fun challenge. Such a different way of doing education -- completely research based, and dependent on the student's own quest for knowledge. Reminds me of home schooling, just a bit. =)
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