My recently published essay on gender performativity in Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop can be found on page 57 of this journal:

Love is Unlucky... Wider Reading 13: Anna Karenina

All good blogs are alike; every bad blog is bad in its own way, though I hope Tolstoy would have liked this one. Almost every aspect of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s life is incorporated into Anna Karenina; the loss of his mother at a young age, his social awkwardness, antimilitaristic sentiments, his courtship of his wife, contact with peasants, and his overwhelming awareness of the power of death. This novel, his second most famous after War and Peace, is often viewed as the turning point in Tolstoy’s career, the point at which he shifted away from fiction and toward faith. The tug-of-war between these two forces helps create the rich portrait of Anna, whom Tolstoy both disapproves of and loves.

The novel explores the rich tapestry of mankind’s capacity for love, set against the opulent backdrop of the twilight of the Russian Empire. Despite the elegant settings, danger lurks and around every corner is the constant reminder that this powerful, precarious world is soon to drop. An impoverished train worker is killed; a privileged man who has seen the crisis coming leaves his duties to work with the commoners. The novel, however, centres on the lives and loves of families inhabiting the high societies of St Petersburg and Moscow. Anna is the wife of the respected but dull Minister Karenin. What love she lacks in her marriage she lavishes on her only son, Seryozha, and later her affair with handsome cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Meanwhile Anna’s brother, Oblonsky, is experiencing marriage troubles of his own. Dissatisfied with his wife’s fading attractiveness, he has been caught with the governess and must repent his infidelity. His wife’s young sister Kitty, at the same time, has her heart broken by Vronsky as he chooses Anna over her, but finds happiness in her friend and suitor, Levin.

In his depiction of Anna’s appearance at the train station during her first meeting with Vronsky, Tolstoy emphasizes Anna’s spiritual rather than physical attributes. This method of characterizing her is important, for it reinforces from the very beginning that although Tolstoy may harshly condemn adultery on an abstract level, he does not portray Anna as a passion-crazed vixen—as popular novels of the time often represented the straying wife. The parallel structure of Anna’s and Levin’s story lines was one of Tolstoy’s strokes of genius in composing Anna Karenina. Their stories begin on very different notes: Anna finds love with Vronsky just at the moment when Levin loses love with Kitty. Anna’s decision to act on her feelings brings her thrills and excitement, whereas Levin’s decision brings him dejection and depression. Both Anna and Levin seek truth in their personal relationships, unwilling to settle for anything less. Anna discovers that she would prefer to suffer with her true love rather than continue to lead a life of lies and deceit with a man she does not love. Her = unconventional actions are prompted by a desire not for rebellion for its own sake but for absolute sincerity in her emotional life. Similarly, Levin, after Kitty’s rebuff, does not go after the next girl on his list but resigns himself to eternal bachelorhood and withdraws to the country. Like Anna, Levin wants all or nothing in love.

Anna Karenina - Quotations

Love is Enduring... Wider Reading 9: Birdsong

Birdsong is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who arrives in Amiens, France in 1910. After a passionate love affair with his married landlady that goes terribly wrong, he leaves only to return four years later to fight in the Great War. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself. Entwined with his story are numerous heartrending tales of others affected by the fever sweeping Europe: from Michael Weir, his best friend, Jack Firebrace, whose tender heart becomes his undoing, Jeanne, a woman of endless kindness and patience, to the 1970s and the story of Elizabeth, who discovers her grandfather's tale through his letters, diaries, and the stories of those who were close to him. Set before and during World War One, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale.

The novel defies modern convention by exclusively employing the omniscient narrator to tell its harrowing story. Penetrating into the deepest thoughts, pasts and even, in some cases, futures of every single character, it seems unnervingly invasive, but becomes an all-encompassing narratorial rubric to complement perfectly the difficult subject matter. Birdong is indeed difficult; it is a World War One novel with an explicit focus on trench warfare - that most horrifying and unimaginable of all wartime terrors. While the public consciousness may have a vague notion of the sheer horror, a true understanding remains forever ungraspable to the individual.

Birdsong has a tripartite plot structure, beginning with a long pre-war love story. Faulks’ intentions in doing this are obvious and multiple: put simply, this section serves to humanize the characters we are soon to see committing horrific acts of brutal killing and to drive home to the reader what’s at stake. There’s also more than a little dramatic irony. The reader knows what is coming, and is powerless to warn the characters. Stylistically this is also the most colourful part of the book. The writing here is metaphor-heavy, plentiful with adjectives and parenthetic digressions. The second section offers the ‘meat’ of the novel. A jump-cut to mid-war trench life carries with it a drastic change in Faulks’ linguistic register. The synaesthesia of sex is replaced with that of war: now there’s blood, iron, mud and agony. There’re no more metaphors, few adjectives, many more concrete nouns and a focus on active verbs. The contrast with the first part of the book is abrasive and sudden – here there is no artificiality of language. The third and weakest part of the novel is another jump-cut, but this time to a modern-day setting. The characters and events that occupy this part of the novel seem extremely dull and muted, creating a sharp contrast to the horror, and excitement and bravery, of war.

Birdsong - Quotations

Love is Trouble... Wider Reading 8: Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan" was published in Yeats's 1928 collection “The Tower,” after being rejected for publication by The Irish Statesman. The collection is often considered to be one of the most celebrated and important literary works of the twentieth century. Yeats started writing the poem for a political publication when he was well into his sixties, presumably intending to inject political meaning into it, but he changed it several times before the final version that we know with a new title. Leda, the beautiful Queen of Sparta is bathing when Zeus, disguised as a large swan knocks her off balance. The swan is ferocious as it lands on top of her, and caresses her thighs with his webbed feet and holds the back of her neck in his bill. She can't escape as the swan presses down with his chest on her own. The swan completes the act, and Leda becomes pregnant with, among others, Helen of Troy. This act will cause the entire Trojan War, the death of Agamemnon and the beginning of Rome. As the swan overpowered her, the poet wonders if Leda acquired any of Zeus's knowledge before, his appetite sated, he “let her drop.”

“Leda and the Swan” describes a precise moment which represents a change of era in Yeats’s historical model of gyres, in which a great, changing event happens every two thousand years – the fall of Troy in 2000 B.C, the birth of Christ in A.D. 0, and a “rough beast,” which was supposed to appear around 2000 A.D. It is important to note the lasting impact of the Trojan War. The conflict brought about the end of the ancient mythological era, and the birth of Rome and modern history. Like “The Second Coming,” “Leda and the Swan” is valuable more for its powerful and evocative language — which manages to imagine vividly such a bizarre phenomenon as a girl’s rape by an immense swan — than for its place in Yeats’s occult history of the world.

While the use of sexually suggestive language does alter the perception of rape in the sonnet, it does not thwart it entirely. The references to sexual desires in conjunction with rape are likely the result of cultural attitudes towards rape during the time period in which the piece was written, such as blaming women. Despite its ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem maintains a breathlessness that is partially due to enjambment, a poetic technique that Yeats uses liberally in his poetry. While the subject matter of the poem is violent and disturbing, the structure of "Leda and the Swan" conveys feelings of love, safety and beauty. The intensity of the rape is controlled by the narrow confines of the sonnet, an aesthetically pleasing and heavily structured art form traditionally associated with romance. The violence of the rape is then controlled within the constraints of the sonnet. Additionally, the sonnet itself is brief, thus ensuring the rape will be brief as well.

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Leda and the Swan - Quotations

Love is Scandalous... Wider Reading 7: The School for Scandal

Richard Sheridan's comedy was first performed in 1777 and focuses on the superficial intrigues and scandals of the overfed, underworked upper classes of Georgian England, centring around two young brothers. Joseph Surface is hypocritical, "a sentimental knave," but popular in society. His brother Charles is considered to be a wastrel, who squanders his uncle's fortune in gambling, but is morally decent and generous, and greatly desired by the duplicitous Lady Sneerwell. Both men want to marry Maria, an heiress and ward of Sir Peter Teazle. Maria, however, prefers Charles over Joseph. In order to detach the couple, Lady Sneerwell and Joseph spread rumors about an affair between Charles and Lady Teazle, Sir Peter's extravagant new wife. Meanwhile, Sir Oliver Surface, newly returned from the East Indies, assumes various disguises in a vanity project to test his nephews' characters. Misunderstandings, mistaken identities, gossip, and bad behaviour abound in this comedy of manners.

One of Sheridan's most famous plays, The School for Scandal disparages the behaviour and customs of the upper classes through witty dialogue and an intricate plot, with comic, farcical situations which expose the shortcomings of the individuals involved. These C=characters consist almost entirely of stock types — the bore, the flirt, the gossip, the wastrel, the rich uncle, etc.—rather than individuals with unique qualities. Comedies of manners in Sheridan's time typically avoided the romantic sentimentality that characterized many other stage dramas of the eighteenth century. The author mainly satirizes malicious gossip and hypocrisy in the fashionable society of 1770s London. Underlying the comedy, however, is a serious theme: condemnation of the odious practice of slander and, in the case of the written letters, libel. Spreading scandal was commonplace in London's high society at this time, when conversation in drawing rooms, at balls, in spas, and across card tables was a form of entertainment.

Amid all the wrongdoing in the play, it is it is worth commenting upon the moral resolve of Maria, and, to a lesser extent, Charles. She refuses to gossip and repeatedly denounces the practice. She tells Mrs. Candour, "'Tis strangely impertinent for people to busy themselves so [with gossip]." Maria also steadfastly refuses to become involved with Joseph Surface even though her legal guardian, St. Peter Teazle, pressures her to do so. For his part, Charles Surface, despite his extravagance and devil-may-care lifestyle, refuses to compromise the basic goodness that defines his character. In particular, he refuses to sell the portrait of his benefactor and uncle even though the bidder, Sir Oliver in the guise of Mr. Premium, offers him a large sum of money. Moreover, even though he has little money left to support his wastrel ways, he contributes a generous sum to the destitute Mr. Stanley.

The School for Scandal - quotes.docx by

Love is Dangerous... Wider Reading 4: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

"The business of the novelist," author Thomas Hardy once wrote, "is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." It is the latter Hardy captures in one of his best and most well-known novels, and equals even the likes of Charles Dickens in his ability to move the reader on behalf of those who society and history have discounted. Tess, a milkmaid, is scarred by her encounter with her calculating, usurping "cousin," and is a heroine without wealth or position. Despite this, her story has a heart-breaking pity within it that reveals the universal condition of people and society in the late 19th century.

The action of the novel is largely confined to the rural back lanes and fields of Wessex - the fictional corner of south-west England made so brilliantly real by Hardy - a technique employed by the author to demonstrate how actions have far-reaching consequences, even if they only affect a small number of people. However, the skill of the writer means that the reader is left with such an exact impression of rural life in the late 19th century, that the whole of society can be found in the one place.

Love is the dominant theme in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and is the driving force behind most of the tragic events within. The desire that Alec D'Urberville feels for Tess is the main reason for his attack, and her hatred of him because of this is partly what drove her to murder. Contrastingly, the love that Angel Clare and Tess feel for each other is the conventional, romantic kind, which makes it all the more tragic when they are separated because of his prejudices.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Quotations

Love is Forbidden... Wider Reading 2: Lolita

"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style" opines Humbert Humbert, erstwhile college professor, aesthete and tortured romantic. Establishing him as one of the greatest writers in the English language, Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov's impossibly funny and rapturously beautiful story of Humbert's total, catastrophic obsession with twelve-year-old Lolita Haze. At once prim and predatory, Humbert will stop at nothing in his frenzy to possess his "nymphet," first marrying her mother and then embarking with Lolita on a journey across the American landscape, through roadside diners and five-dollar-a-night motels. A once sublime and awful, cruel and irresistible, Lolita is a triumphant masterpiece of twentieth century literature.

"Lolita" has often been described as "the only convincing love story of the twentieth century." Although the novel was banned on publication on the grounds that it was pornographic, Lolita is most definitely a story about love, not lust. Indeed, many types of love are explored within the novel, and all are experienced by one man. While Humbert's love for Lolita borders on the obsessive, it is also unrequited, despite the duo's spending upwards of three years together. The emphasis on "forbidden" love is questionable, however, as the taboo element of the novel changes with the time in which it is read.

As I mentioned before, most contemporary readers dismissed the novel as too explicit and shocking, with a level of public outrage not seen since "Lady Chatterley's Lover." However, to the modern twenty-first century reader, the actual words and scenes within the novel itself are fairly harmless, compared with the level of candidness now popular in fiction. The subject matter, however, remains just as shocking in its dealing with underage sex and paedophilia, though this is up to the opinions of the reader.

I personally find the novel both appalling and enlightening, and it is one of my favourite books. The sophisticated language used by Nabokov is untouchable, and exactly mirrors the conflict of the protagonist.

Lolita - Quotations