‘The World’s Wife’… destabilises the phallocentric tradition of writing… she gives voice to the overlooked female figures’ – Brinda Samanta
Duffy’s revisionism is a ‘remarkable addition to the tradition… female subject-speakers give commands… they adopt colloquial language and masculine expressions’ – Rumana Rahman
Duffy ‘artistically explores the opinions of the wives of several legendary characters silenced by history… Duffy gives voice to women, feminising history’ – Mary Louisa Lum
Duffy and others use ‘poetry to create their own gender identities… language… [this] reveals how they see themselves in relation to the other gender’ – Shakir Hussein Ali
‘Duffy’s adaptations of myths are feminist corrections of patriarchal canonical stories, reclaiming authority from male-centric narratives’ – Simeone Schoonwater
Deconstructing Gender Norms:
Duffy ‘questions traditional conceptions of men and women… [creating] a female/feminist tradition’ – Antje Peukert
Duffy’s speakers ‘shock by their irreverent language, taboo and slang… disrupt the linguistic signifying process… enabling the assertion of alternative domains of cultural intelligibility’ – Rumana Rahman
Transcendence of Duffy’s work
Duffy ‘transcends the boundaries of space and time… problems of women have been the same down the centuries… women get the privilege of speaking about themselves’ – Dr. Nisha Mathew
Hi all, considering most (if not all) of Year 12 has started studying ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker for coursework by this point in the year, I thought it would be valuable to post a critical analysis and overview of both Walker as an author and a person as well as an interrogation into TCP in light of her background, beliefs, and ideas. This deep dive could be used to supplement your understanding of Walker alongside providing more background context for its success in popular culture.
The deep dive comes in the style of a 40 minute, long form YouTube video from an account specialising in commentary around contemporary and iconic literature; it provides a balanced overview of why TCP deserved and won the Pulitzer Prize, the legacy of the novel, its significance in the black community, and also why we must be careful to ‘glorify’ Walker as a writer and a poet in light of her problematic viewpoints concerning her proven and prevalent antisemitism in some of her recent works.
I was looking through my files and found the following files on Byron’s poems ‘So We’ll Go No More a Roving’ and ‘On this Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Years.’ Unfortunately, I don’t have an electronic copy of my notes on Skull Cup so I’m afraid, dear readers, that you’ll just have to be content with the two. I hope that they come in useful!
Below I’ve just dumped an essay plan on the presentation of social class in Othello. A tricky question that should anyone be inspired to write an essay of their own on this topic, I hope the following will provide some useful ideas.
Please look forward in the next few weeks for the next crop of talent to take over the English blog with their own writings and talents. But, in the meantime, enjoy the following piece!
EXPLORE THE PRESENTATION OF SOCIAL CLASS IN OTHELLO
Abstract Ideas
Essential part of reputation in Venetian life – delegates power, respectability, and morality. In this way, Iago defrauds the corruption inherent to even Venetian society, forming a microcosm for the larger social landscape through Othello’s Venetians. Reputation is a greater quality than the merit of one’s character or achievements – Iago implies Cassio was promoted through corrupt favoritism, not merit.
Linguistic barrier of classes through the ability to employ blank verse in appropriate settings, e.g., “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” connoting civilized conversation
Iago as an indigenous member of Venetian society: white, married, respectable who is passed over for promotion by the aristocratic, Cassio
CONTEXT: The portrayal of Othello as existing within the uppermost ranks reflects the contemporary ethnic diversity of Venice in which the interchange between Europe, Africa, and Asia became common – in Venice, many African moors achieved the highest ranks in society, such as Allesandro de Medici who ruled Florence.
Ralph Berry says ‘class as motivation is central to motivation in Othello.’ In relations between military rank and social class lie the cause of tragedy. Enlarging the miliary dimension of the play, reversing the relative military standing of the from his source, Shakespeare thickened the motivational texture of the play that makes the class relationships between the principle characters of the play significantly freshened.
CRITICAL RESPONSE: If Berry is correct to assert that the causes of tragedy in the play lie in the relationships of ranks and class, then it is imperative to believe that Iago’s initial and foremost motivation is to secure military promotion and thus seek to discredit Cassio to obtain the promotion he was denied originally, or even seek to destroy Othello to punish him for choosing Othello in his place. Indeed, both outcomes do occur, but not necessarily for the reasons that Berry suggests. It would appear that he neglects the ‘motiveless malignity’ that A.C. Bradley suggests and warns of Iago’s intrinsic unreliability of his communications, “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.” [1.1.63]
IAGO – ICON OF MERITOCRACY (?)
QUOTATIONS
MEANING
CONTEXT
CRITICAL VIEW
“I know my price: I am worth no worse a place.”
All Iago’s intelligence, efficiency, and caprice have availed him nothing for he remains ‘his Moorship’s ancient.’ The genesis of this tragedy, thus, is in his determination to secure justice for himself, restore the hierarchical order to one of ability and merit; rather than find recourse in law, in which he is aware that there is no resolution, he takes affairs into his own hands and devotes all his intelligence and ability to his own interpretation of executive justice.
Iago’s conspiracy against Othello might be interpreted as an allegory for civil unrest and rebellion, as in the Gunpowder Plot against James I in 1605. Shakespeare condemns the corruption that runs throughout the veins of long-standing, infallible institutions, like military organization.
Perhaps, the blasphemic nature of Iago’s speech is what really denotes the radicalism of his ideology, even discounting an invocation in the divine providence of God to be the base of the Venetian social order. Such ideas would have likely struck a discordant chord with the more plebeian, theological tastes of contemporary audiences.
Venice worked powerfully on English imaginations during the Renaissance as an object of desire, evoking wealth, art, and Italian sophistication, but also as an object of repulsion, evoking Italianate greed and decadent sexuality. The collusion between civilization and primitivity makes for the perfect cause of Iago’s machinations, exposing this society for all of its hypocrisies and insidious effects – “There’s many a beast then in a populous city / and many a civil monster.”
John C.McCloskey – “His tragic intrigue has its genesis, consequently, in his determination to secure justice for himself.”
“His Moorship’s ancient,” “Curse of service,” “In following him, I follow but myself.”
Discarding the social norms dictated by hierarchical status, Iago makes a mockery of the subservience demanded of him through the pejorative term, ‘Moorship;’ he reciprocates the same disrespect he believes he has received in the passing over of his name for promotion. When confronted with injustice, he chooses to emulate it rather than reject it. The impulse that governs Iago is a keen awareness of the ordering of the Venetian social ladder. The phrase, “I follow him to serve my turn upon him,” suggests that altruistic love is impossible: all loyalties are founded on ulterior, egotistical motives. Here, Shakespeare might be alluding to the emerging system of capitalism, implying that all human relations are corrupted by the need to compete for survival. Pun upon. ‘serve’ interweaving duplicity and loyalty.
“Tis the curse of service; / preferment goes by letter and affection, / Not by the old gradation.”
Shakespeare undermines all gradations of meritocracy in Venetian, or contemporary English, society; he suggests that favoritism, nepotism, and elitism are the values that underpin our society. The “curse of service” is that that social class – the boundaries that prescribe social relations – are the inevitable consequences of unequal power, egotism, and greed (See: Cassio and “Reputation, reputation, reputation. I have lost the eternal part of my soul, and what remains in bestial”); here, A.C. Bradley’s description of Iago’s ‘motiveless malignity’ appears rather a reduction of his cynical thought. Iago is not merely a malcontent, intent in inciting chaos, but a symbol for the discontentment of the lower classes. Iago, an ensign, is subordinate to the majority of characters in the play: he desires to uncover the “pitch” that lays beneath the naïve “virtue” of the Venetian cast.
“In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands. Their best conscience / is not to leav’t undone, but keep’t unknown,”
Iago is a fierce critic of the decadent sensuality of Venice as the, “Pleasure capital” – he condemns “unbittered lusts” and the “fruits of whoring.” He is a keen opponent of the sexual and moral liberties within Venice, and the façade it perpetuates (a habit that he returns in “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”) In this way, Iago is a conservative traditionalist, preaching the inherent dangers of sexual desire and falsehoods whilst pushing for the change of his own personal liberties. Above all, in his paradoxical sense of progressivism, Shakespeare presents Iago’s ideology as ultimately shaped by egotism. He is in no way a moral guardian, but intelligently seeks self-benefit in social anarchy.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IAGO AND CASSIO
QUOTATIONS
MEANING
CONTEXT
CRITICAL VIEW
“One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,” “That never set a squadron in the field, nor the division of a battle knows” “Mere prattle without practice is all his soldiership”
Here, Iago’s worlds might elicit surprising sympathy amongst a naïve audience for the voices the typical antipathies of doers and thinkers, men of action and mere scholars, workers and bosses. Still, such a complaint in motivated by hatred and fed by jealousy and resentment, thus intrinsically unreasonable, even in perfectly egalitarian society it is not expected that soldiers who have fought, “At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds” are only qualified for command positions. We recognize that to serve, and command entails completely different abilities and responsibilities.
Bradley wrote that Iago was not of gentle birth or breeding. For all his powers, he is a vulgarian, schooled in the barrack-room raconteurs by which Iago talks about Othello’s marriage-night (“He’s made forever”) even in the sexual connotation of ‘boarded’ that Iago intends to convey. The word ‘knave’ by which Iago repeatedly dubs Cassio, had its origin in class, being often used in contrast with the word ‘knight; and developed to mean ‘a base and crafty rogue.’ This context indicates that Iago means to impugn the gentlemanliness that so clearly distinguishes Cassio from him. He brings Cassio to his social level first in words, only secondly in deeds. Elizabethans knew well from campaigns in Ireland, the Netherlands and at Cadiz the hazards of inexperienced gentlemen being appointed to command positions.
Ralph Berry says ‘class as motivation is central to motivation in Othello.
“It must not be. If Cassio do remain, he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”
Iago’s self-serving speech suggests that he is deeply hostile towards Iago: a hostility that perhaps stems from class antagonism. Class is the single-most and defining aspect of the relationship between Iago and Cassio.
Iago: “Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carract. If it prove lawful prize, he’s made forever.” Cassio: “I do not understand.”
The central feature of this passage is in emphasizing that Cassio and Iago have a communication problem: “I do not understand.” Iago shrouds his communication in metaphor. Arguably, Cassio understands Iago’s words, but rejects the register of the discourse and its attempts to situate Cassio within Iago’s linguistic milieu. When Cassio claims not to understand Iago’s communication, he rejects the offensive code employed of someone by a lower social status. Key in this is that Cassio and Iago employ different speech codes based on social class.
Cassio: “Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, That I extend my manners; ‘tis my breeding that gives me this bold show of courtesy.”
Shakespeare confirms Cassio’s social superiority in the gentlemanly courtesies he extends to the wife of a colleague of a lower social class, even commenting on the gaping social gulf between them.
Cassio: “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!”
Desperate repetition of ‘reputation’ – importance of one’s reputation, social standing as a man of status – long-living, more so than the corporeal body. Self-interestedness of the personal pronoun, ‘my.’ Exclamative – devastation at loss of his status. This loss of respectability is mirrored in Shakespeare’s choice of prose rather traditional meter. Essential part of reputation in Venetian life – delegates power, respectability, and morality. In this way, Iago defrauds the corruption inherent to even Venetian society, forming a microcosm for the larger social landscape through Othello’s Venetians. Reputation is a greater quality than the merit of one’s character or achievements – Iago implies Cassio was promoted through corrupt favoritism, not merit.
CONSENUS BETWEEN OTHELLO AND IAGO – VALUE OF EGALITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT
QUOTATION
MEANING
CONTEXT
CRITICAL VIEW
Othello: “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?”
Ordinarily, we might accuse such certainty of his services to the state as being hubristic, but his racial status relieves him of such a label. He demonstrates a belief in the show of his history of achievements and ability ‘broils and battles’ that Iago believes he has been denied.
The portrayal of Othello as existing within the uppermost ranks reflects the contemporary ethnic diversity of Venice in which the interchange between Europe, Africa, and Asia became common – in Venice, many African moors achieved the highest ranks in society, such as Allesandro de Medici who ruled Florence.
‘Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which eh interprets the world…He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run by money and self-interest.’ – Sean McEvoy
Iago: “Not to affect many proposed matches of her own clime, complexion and degree, whereto we see, in all things nature tends”
Iago awakens Othello’s mind to the alien nature of his relationship, of early prejudices to racial miscegenation as a gross betrayal of a ‘natural order’ – Othello’s fragile self-image, inextricably tied to how Desdemona validates him, collapses at thought of his social inferiority. Iago exposes Othello to realizing the gap in age, sympathy, and manners between him and Desdemona – this incongruity lends some credence to the insinuation that the marriage cannot last. According to the racialized prejudices of the Jacobean audience, which stress the supremacy of white characters, Othello’s very presence as a military commander, sitting at the top of the social strata and married to a white woman of high wealth and esteem would all appear very ‘unnatural’ – the tragedy of Othello meets at this intersection of race and class.
“My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?”
INTRODUCTION: Through Othello, Shakespeare explores all the gradations of social class that colored his contemporary society, revealing the corruption that courses throughout long-standing, once infallible institutions like military rank. Shakespeare depicts Iago as an insurrectionist, impelled to the destruction of such a hierarchy from the inside and determined to bring about the anarchy and order in which all notions of authoritarian power are destroyed. The class antagonism between Iago and Cassio emphasizes the falsehoods upon which the exterior walls of Venetian class society were built: the communicative codes of blank verse necessarily exclude the ‘vulgarian’ figures of Othello and Iago. Othello’s assimilationism into the world of gentility and manners produces resentment and jealousy in Iago; the former betrays the value of egalitarianism that Iago holds sacred. Thus, the genesis of the tragic course lies in the hierarchy of social class – an inevitable consequence of greed, egotism and power relations – and the attempt to destroy its bearings in the colony of Cyprus.
Below is an essay question for Othello that Mr Durrants’ class planned last week. I hope it will be useful.
EXPLORE SHAKESPEARE’S PRESENTATION OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE IN OTHELLO.
Contrast between prose – everyday speech reserved for the lower-class – and blank verse.
Racialised and class expectations of language use – Othello’s deft capacity to speak in verse, Iago’s crude expletives and sexual imagery – “Black ram is tupping your white ewe”. Othello – “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] / “Feats of broil and battle”
Reflection of contemporary attitudes in language – “wild cats”
Language of insinuation – “Ha! I like not that” – language manipulation is the source of Iago’s power e.g., blunt soldier-speak with Roderigo,
Function of Cassio’s courtly language (typically employed in romance) in developing character e.g., “He hath achieved a maid / that paragons description and wild fame.”
Racial epithets undermine Othello’s personhood; the eponymous is not mentioned once: racialised language harshly depicts the ugliness of contemporary prejudices
Absence/ right to speech in female characters e.g., Desdemona’s monologue in act one, scene three: “My noble father, I do perceive her a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education.”
Language that subverts stereotype – Desdemona’s powerful declarative “I have not deserved this.” – clipped lines deserve attention. Why? What does it emphasise?
Use of Othello’s language to reflect his dissipating sense of self over the course of the play – charting his downfall e.g., “My blood begins my safer guides to rule”
Blank verse soliloquies that are typical of the villain in tragedy e.g., “So I will turn her virtue into pitch.”
CRITICAL VIEWS (AO5)
F.R. Leavis comments that the theme of the tragedy is concentrated in Othello’s final speech. Grennan – “The speech of the women … occupies a pivotal understanding in the play’s moral world”
POINTS TO CONSIDER:
Awareness of uses of blank verse and prose
In blank verse and iambic pentameter, what words/ syllables are stressed and what are the implications of this?
Consider Shakespearean lines as lines of poetry: analyse effects of caesurae and enjambment
Short / clipped lines
Shared lines – indication of intimacy (“O my fair warrior!” / My dear Othello!”) (O: “I am to blame” / “Why do you speak so faintly?”) – latter quotation signals a newly-broken chasm in their marriage.
Imagery / tone
OTHELLO AND LANGUAGE Charts his downfall – mental disintegration. Lower citizen according to racialised hierarchies Uncertainty in using language / confidence in material achievements – “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul” Outsider status to the refinement of Venice Physical and dynamic force, versed in “feats of broil and battle”: perhaps, this is the reason why Iago’s deft persuasion is so effective and unfamiliar to him?
QUOTATION
ANALYSIS
CONTEXT
CRITICAL VIEWS
Othello: “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] / “Feats of broil and battle”
Despite his hesitation, Othello speaks with a measured calm in blank verse, typically reserved for civilized conversation – clashing of confidence (“My parts, my title and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly”) and uncertainty about his status and his abilities – outsider to the refinement of Venice. Othello is more characterized as a corporeal, dynamic force from his ‘feats of broil and battle.’
Galenic system of humours (Renaissance humanism) – Othello identifies with a choleric temperament: jealous, ambitious, vengeful.
Inherent racialised hierarchies for Jacobean audiences: Othello ought to be in the lower caste accordingly (Great Chain of Being)
Racial other; conscious of his status
“Othello’s fatal flaw is his credulity” – Kenneth Muir
“Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which he interprets the world… He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run my money and self-interest.” – Sean McEvoy
“He is a stranger, a man of alien race.” – Helen Gardner
Asyndetic repetition,exclamative – obsessive focus on bloodlust, submits to defeat and even racial stereotyping
Othello: “O, vain boast, who can control his fate?” / “Where should Othello go? Now: dost where thou look now? O ill-starred wench, pale as thy smock. When we shall meet at compt this look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven and fiends will snatch at it.”
Rhetorical questioning and third-person: induced insanity. Disassociation from physical frame invoked by the third-person.
AO2 LANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF ACT 4, SCENE 1: BIANCA
Establishing his social superiority and his contempt for Bianca by insulting her (‘fitchew’), Cassio feels molested, ‘haunted’ by here mere presence.
Yet, still, her social inferiority assuages his concerns for his own status – he takes joy in her dependence upon him as she ‘hangs and lolls and weeps upon [him].’
Despite the prose marking her as a low-status character, she grasps power in the violent confrontation of her language (“Let the devil and his dam haunt you!”), making insulting exclamatives and a tone of incredulity that betrays her inner sense of esteem, otherwise robbed of her by the nature of her social background as a female prostitute.
Essay Plan
“Rude am I in speech and little blest with the soft phrases of peace.”
Shakespeare employs different varieties of language to demonstrate in Othello, in all the violence and chaos that is engendered, the great power of language to meld and manipulate the human mind (Renaissance humanism): language is the mobilisation of hierarchies of power and status in action.
Iago as the ‘chief playwright of the play.’ Verbal manipulation is his source of power, foil to Othello’s physicality. His language defies the boundaries of drama and the stage – strategy.
Iago revels in the falseness of his performance, of “outward action,” but his self-identification as the villain of the play immediately tips the audience’s favour in Othello’s direction (despite any existing racial prejudices of the Jacobean audience). However, due to being held audience to his dramatic monologues, typical of a tragedy’s villain, we are caught in his schemes even as passive spectators; the dramatic irony of the play forces the audience into an uneasy complicity with Iago’s villainy.
Othello, in contrast, is most familiar with ‘feats of broil and battle’ that might require the actor on the stage to perform as a more corporeal, dynamic force comparative to others in the play.
Iago is a metacharacter in that he undoes the typical expectations of an actor: that is to create a convincing illusion of reality by converting dialogue into speech, script into natural behaviour. Instead, he turns his ostensible impromptu speech back into dialogue and script – note his inversion of biblical verse, “I am not what I am.” It is appropriate, therefore, for A.C.Bradley to claim he is the ‘chief playwright’ because his Janus-like profile reveals knavery to us but “honesty” to his Venetian fellow.” Iago, as a character, emblematizes the pervasive duplicity of Shakespeare’s work, that of making a play that matches life.
At the end of the play, it is Iago’s lack of speech, “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know” that defines him – truth that we are so anxious to know dissolves into silence
Ways in which language conveys social hierarchies of contemporary Jacobean society: race, gender, and social class.
Play uses discriminatory descriptions, such as “Thick lips,” “Sooty bosom,” “Lascivious moor,” regarding Othello’s race in order to reinforce Jacobean prejudices against Black African residents in England and the growing European participation the slave trade is reflected in Iago and Roderigo’s comments towards Othello. Othello’s sexual relationship is seen as unnatural, establishing a black-white binary from the beginning. The crudeness in which Iago and Roderigo speak might further undermine the authority of the Great Chain of Being which informed much of Iago’s racial ideology, as he subjects him to animalistic imagery as a “Beast of two backs;” perhaps, through this blunt, dysphemistic language, Shakespeare holds a mirror to the manufactured setting of Jacobean prejudice.
The first monologue of the play is given at the duke’s discretion as he asks, “What in your part can you say to this?”, implying that Othello requires permission in the public sphere to speak at will. This makes an interesting parallel to how Desdemona is permitted to speak, ‘I pray you, hear her speak,’ here emerges a complicated intertangling of gendered and racial hierarchies manifested in speech. Both Othello and Desdemona are marginalized from the public sphere by nature of their ascribed statuses.
Grennan comments that “The speech of the women … occupies a pivotal understanding in the play’s moral world” and it is Desdemona’s powerful declarative, “I have not deserved this.” As the clipped line makes a sharp departure from the regularity of the iambic pentameter, she too cuts through the mystification of moral groundings of the play as she demands why she, who has made no false action, is being punished.
Tragedy befalls Othello for his inability to perceive beyond the surface of language and implications.
Othello: “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] Despite Othello’s unsurety in his practice of civilised speech, he demonstrates the ability to deftly compose a measured form of blank verse as to his needs in his monologued depiction of his and Desdemona’s courtship, thus the audience bears witness to his communicative faculties that lead the duke to admit, “Your son-in-law is more fair than black”.
Progressively, throughout the play, however, we observe that he is increasingly robbed of his abilities of communication that is in stark contrast to the confident (even bordering upon hubristic) declaratives of his earlier statements that “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall serve me rightly.”
Indeed, as Kenneth Muir writes, “Othello’s fatal flaw is his credulity” and what demonstrates this hamartia better than his failure to grasp the signs of language – signifiers and the signified fail to exist in any dramatic reality, ensnared in the Bradley-like doubled illusions of Iago represented in his ironic subversion – “I am not what I am.”
Shakespeare, tracing the course of Othello and Desdemona’s marriage, from their covert marriage merely appearing as husband and wife upon the stage in act one, scene three that is, at this point, perfectly harmonious from the rich, romantic tapestry of chivalric love evoked from their shared lines of pentameter, “O my fair warrior!” / My dear Othello!” By act 4, their relationship has been irredeemably fractured, even beknownst to Desdemona in the cruel irony of their dialogue, “The handkerchief!” “I pray, talk me of Cassio.” “The handkerchief!” stresses the interplay of direct and indirect speech, stressing the newly broken chasm between their once-perfect harmony.
Concluding: As a playwright himself, Shakespeare knows all too well the power that language, both implicatory and suggestive, can hold on and enmesh the human mind. It is the method by which our social world and relations come to fruition. Othello’s tragedy is a consequence of his failure to express – produced more of social unsurety than ability. He is destroyed by the symbolic value of language to Venetian society; something that he fails to comprehend by the end of the play.
Class Introduction
“I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear.”
For Grennan, as dramatic means and thematic ends, ‘speech is of vital importance to this play.’ Othello explores a cross-section of Jacobean society, presenting a variety of language representing race, gender, and social status – more specifically, the antagonisms between European and the ‘other,’ male and female, wealthy and the destitute. Finally, Shakespeare’s purpose is to engage the audience in the characters’ power struggles, dynamics and often, their powerlessness as revealed in the language they use. For Honnigman, Iago enjoys a ‘God-like sense of power’; this power is manifested most obviously in his manipulative use of language.
In similar thread to my last post, I’m just leaving here some files on Wordsworth’s poetry. Considering that, in the A-level exam, it’s necessary to compare first-generation and second-generation romanticism, it’s important to have a good understanding of Wordsworth as his poetry is particularly adaptable to some of the themes that Shelley and Keats later develop, such as man’s relationship to nature, imagination, and the role of the poet. Wordsworth isn’t just a poet of nature, rather his poems have a great range for comparison.
I’ll probably re-upload my notes on the Immortality Ode at a later point as they’re rather sparse at the moment, so make sure to come back for the updated file. This type of content that’s more an offloading of notes will probably be the norm as we progress closer to the exam season.
For this week’s post, I’ve typed up an old essay (introduction and first paragraph rather) on the role of the imagination in Shelley’s poetry. Although not a full essay, it was awarded 29/30 for its perceptive analysis and excellent context.
In his poems, ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘The Question,’ Shelley presents imagination as the realisation of the actions and passions of one’s internal being. Whilst Shelley recognises nature’s power as a unique sublime entity, much in the same manner as the first-generation Romantics, he rejects a Wordsworthian understanding that humanity and nature are complementary elements of a whole, that man is a part of nature and that refuge can only be sought from this unity. Rather, for Shelley, where nature wields dual forces of both destruction and beauty, man will find no reassurance in this response. Instead, by rejection of the self-justifying idealism of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley’s poetry embodies the very era of his upbringing, following on from the revolutions, in its significant contradictions and tensions in regard to the ardent optimism of the first generation that would eventually wane with the arrival of the 19th century. Shelley, in his poetry, emphasises that only imagination – the source of all artistic desires – can enable creation.
Shelley interrogates the sublime response of the individual to his natural environment when exposed to an interchange of both destructive and renewing forces. In ‘The Question,’ he alludes to metaphysical forces at work in the gothic imagery of the “starry river,” “oak that overhung the edge” and “moonlight beams” – a supernatural state that almost centers on a pantheistic display of nature. Here, the reader becomes conscious of the sheer impermanency of this world in stanza 4 by alluding to the sublime with the syndetic listing in tandem with the long drawn-out syllables of the /ee/ sound around the “dazzled eye” conveying astonishment and confoundment at the peace that can be found in this “moonlight scene.” This natural macrocosm holds a sense of sublime authority over Shelley’s imagination, although he is struck by the spiritual power of it, there is also something distinctly unattainable about this realm. Even within its structure, as a loose adaptation of Canto 28 of Dante’s Purgatorio attributes a quasi-divine quality to the terrors invoked by the sublime. However, extending this reading to Shelley’s explorations of atheism, the religious response would appear almost irrelevant and meaningless in face of the “secret strength of things,” rather he suggests a mere nothingness and existential void that might “overhang the edge” of human life. In this, Shelley reflects upon the Romantic dialect of beauty and first first marked out by Edmund Burke in the “Origins of our Ideas on the Sublime” which proposed that the effects and terror were more effective beauty. Indeed, this reaction becomes most evident in Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” with apostrophe to the “West Wind” of antithetical ideals that appeal to both the violence and creation of nature’s passage in scattering his voice over the course of the universe in hope that he might bring about revolutionary change, typical of the Romantic notion of the Romantic poet. As consequence, there would be no need for conflict that was produced in overthrowing power structures, as in the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution. Further in the poem, the refrains become increasingly anxious, more desperate, even calling into question whether humans can fundamentally communicate with nature, implicit in the parallel structures of the conditionals (such as “If I were a dead leaf” and “If I were a cloud,”) that underlines his urgency. This uncertainty is strengthened by the restraint of the metrical regularity of the iambic pentameter by the sudden strictness of form where previously this lyricism had created a sense of Shelley’s desire to be harmonious with nature as a poet. Still, in the final line, there is a remnant of optimism with the rhetorical question, “O wind, if winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” that might allude to the increasing conservatism of Wordsworth and Coleridge in their old age. Shelley may be using this seasonal change to signal a turn in Romantic thought from the first-generation of Romantics that in their retreat into nature, fantasy, and the subjective life had evaded any direct social engagement. Shelley calls upon his readers to accept the challenge of transcendence by observing the natural world and from this, derive social change from poetic truth in order to create the social and political transition that the Romantics so coveted.
Below I’ve attached a set of annotations on Shelley’s poems in addition to some general context that might be useful to employ in essays and supplement your notes.
UPDATE: I’ve converted the above file into a PDF to make it easier to read. I recognise that the annotations are quite small and messy so you’ll just have to do your best to zoom into the file.
Below is a brilliant essay submitted by Sophie Russell on imbalances of power in the ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Little Stranger.’ Improvements have been added in bold.
In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Little Stranger’, Wilde and Waters use imbalances of power to represent social concerns and constructs of the time. Both authors show the power that the supernatural has over the characters. The supernatural has been manifested as a result of anxieties around change- the fin de siècle in ‘Dorian Gray’ and changes of class in a post-war society in ‘The Little Stranger’. These social concerns and constructs result in power imbalances between the characters, particularly because of class and gender.
In both texts, the supernatural has a powerful and destructive effect on the characters. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde mainly presents the effect of the supernatural on Dorian Gray via the portrait. The portrait becomes a split self of Dorian because he wishes the retain his youth and beauty forever- ‘If it were I who was to be always young, and picture that was to grow old. For that I could give everything’. Dorian does ‘give everything’, as he trades his soul in order to retain his youth and beauty. The portrait becomes a part of him, a split-self. The split selfdouble is a common Gothic trope, used to show the power that the supernatural can have, especially during times of social change because of the threats that change can bring, as supernatural threats can hide behind a façade. Wilde uses the split-self trope to show the effect that the portrait has over Dorian. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Waters also uses the Gothic trope of the split-self for a similar purpose. Dr Faraday is suspected to be the ‘little stranger’ and what is tormenting the Ayres throughout the novel, allowing Faraday to become a part of the Ayres life without them knowing that he is a threat. Faraday is unaware that he may be a threat or have a double self, unlike Dorian, although at the end of the novel, he says the ‘little stranger’ may be ‘spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself’, unknowingly aligning with the theory that Waters suggests at throughout the novel. In the first chapter, Faraday narrates that he ‘wanted to possess a piece of it’ and steals a ‘plaster acorn’ from Hundreds Hall. This may have been when Faraday becomes ‘connected with the house’, meaning that he unconsciously is tormenting the Ayres for the entire novel. Waters uses the irony of Faraday stating this but being unaware of it to show that the supernatural can have a powerful effect in the novel, even if they are unaware of it. This differs in ‘Dorian Gray’ as other characters are unaware of Dorian’s deception. While Faraday is unaware if the supernatural’s effect, other characters in the novel are. Roderick is the first in the novel to be tormented by the ‘little stranger’, such as the fires in his room where it ‘seemed to leap’. The fact that the fire ‘leaped’ instead of spreading like a normal fire would shows that it is a product of the supernatural. Roderick is aware of this, saying ‘it’s smarter than I thought’. He says to Faraday that he has to ‘keep the source of the infection away from my mother and sister’, showing that he bears the burdens of the supernatural because as ‘man of the house’, he has a duty to protect his female family members. However, the power of the supernatural escalates throughout the novel, resulting in both Mrs Ayres’ and Caroline’s demise.
The tension in the novel both novels escalate throughout as the supernatural gains more power, showing the effect that it has on the characters. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Caroline ends up ‘plunging down in the moonlight’ towards the end of the novel, only shortly after Mrs Ayres’ death, showing the high escalation in the power of the supernatural. The close time scale between Mrs Ayres’ and Caroline’s deaths shows the high escalation in tension. This happens after Faraday gains more power and control over the family, going from being unexpected- ‘neither Mrs Ayres nor Caroline was expecting me’ to being relied on as he arranges Mrs Ayres funeral- ‘began to make a list of all the things that must be done’. Thus, as Faraday gains more power within the Ayres family, the supernatural threat increases. Wilde follows a similar rising tension in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, as Dorian becomes more consumed by the portrait. It has a power over Dorian, with him saying through his free indirect speech that his sins would ‘defile it, and make it shameful. Yet the thing would still live on’. The use of FIS allows us to see Dorian’s inner thoughts and feelings, therefore showing his distress over the portrait. Dorian is concerned of the portrait being found as it would be ‘shameful’ because of Victorian Hypocrisy and strict morals of the time that would not allow for the amount of sin that Dorian commits, especially as an upper-class gentleman. Wilde uses Dorian’s concerns over the portrait to show his own views on Victorian morals and Aestheticism. While Aestheticism states that art should be beautiful and Wilde says in his preface ‘All art is meaningless’, Victorian morality attempted to place meaning and morality into art. Dorian’s concerns over the portrait being found show Victorian hypocrisy, as he isn’t concerned about committing the sins, but is about being caught. Wilde makes a criticism on Victorian society through this and his presentation of the supernatural. Dorian ends up meeting his downfall because of the painting as it worsens and grows more ‘grotesque’. He says that he must ‘kill this monstrous soul-life…he would be at peace’. He believes that with his sins gone, peace will come as the painting has grown so ‘grotesque’ and powerful. However, he ends up meeting his demise, as the Ayres also do after the increase in supernatural power.
The writers also show power imbalances through relationships between characters, particularly men and women. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Caroline and Faraday’s relationship can show this as Faraday aims to gain control over Caroline, in order to own Hundreds Hall. Caroline recognises this, saying ‘I think it’s the house you want’. Faraday wants the house because he seeks social mobility, and the Ayres are vulnerable to him due to class changes that have made him lose power. As a doctor, the Ayres trust him and his logic, allowing him to gain power over them, particularly Mrs Ayres and Caroline after Roderick’s departure as, in a patriarchal society, they would have to rely on men for survival, as the women also would in ‘Dorian Gray’, especially in their declining position. These factors of power that Faraday has allows him to gaslight Caroline in their relationship to thinking that he doesn’t want the house, saying ‘My darling, I think you’re tired’, after Mrs Ayres’ death when Caroline doesn’t want to get married. However, Caroline is aware of his manipulation, saying ‘sometimes I think you want to keep me tired’. Waters aims to show a woman in a changing post-war society where women have more power than before and don’t need to be as reliant on men. This differs in ‘Dorian Gray’, as Sibyl Vane, Dorian’s fiancée early on in the novel, has to rely on Dorian and men once she is married. This relates to separate spheres- women not being able to be married and work. Dorian has power over Sibyl, as Faraday also does over Caroline, because he is a higher-class man, and she is a higher-class woman. Sibyl says ‘Prince Charming rules life now’. The fact that she calls him ‘Prince Charming’ shows his higher station over her as he is a ‘prince’. Sibyl would no longer be able to act once she marries Dorian, so he would ‘rule’ her life. However, Dorian has fallen in love with Sibyl because of the roles she plays, not because of her, so when she acts badly, Dorian is no longer in love with her, saying that she is ‘ruined’. Sibyl cannot recover from this rejection and ends up committing suicide. Throughout this novel, Wilde uses flower imagery to present Sibyl’s character. However, when Dorian rejects her, she is described as a ‘trampled flower’, as her image has been ruined and she cannot recover due to the reliance that women had on men. While Caroline can recover from the imbalance of power between her and Faraday as she is in a post-war and changing society, Sibyl can’t survive without Dorian because of the imbalance between genders.
To conclude, the authors show the imbalance of power between the characters and the supernatural, as well as men over women. This is because of social concerns and constructs seen in the times of the novels.
Beneath is the first essay I wrote for A-level English literature on the presentation of Mitch in Tennessee William’s Streetcar Named Desire. Reading over it was a painful experience, there are a number of ways in which it could be improved and areas that I would expand upon now. Still, reading through old essays is a useful exercise in tracking the development of your writing.
The following was noted for its outstanding fusion of objectives with a critical style, whilst lacking development in the conclusion along with the recommendation that it was worth placing the marxist interpretation earlier in the introduction in order to ‘umbrella’ the argument overall. It was given 23/25 as its final mark.
“You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.”
Mitch is presented as gentle with a sensitive nature that place him low in the hierarchy of masculinity. William’s presentation of Mitch in his unassuming and uncertain masculinity makes him a dramatic vehicle for the transitional male between the hyper-masculine aggression of Stanley and the relative effeminacy of Allen Gray. Initially, he appears to lean towards the latter in Blanche’s attraction towards Mitch, yet their class differences and romantic sensibilities separate them as a potential pair. By the end of the play, Mitch has taken after Stanley; a blue-collar labourer unable to match Blanche’s upper-class sensitivities and restricted by the limits of his poor education. Although sympathetic to Southern traditionalism shown by Blanche, he can only make a clumsy attempt at the act. Mitch’s character is a warning to a subversive type of masculinity that conceals and contains sexual desire. Ultimately, Mitch comes to represent the destructive impulses that lay at the heart of the crisis of masculinity that struck post-war America.
Amongst the hyper-masculinity of the poker players in scene 3, Mitch demonstrates a gentle sensitivity that, in the mind of the audience, redeems him from him fellow men. He appears as a foil to Stanley, governed by the feminised control of his mother that ‘she says to go out, but I don’t like it.’ Despite this, he seems attracted to the status derived from the hierarchy of masculinity. Longing for female attention, his lack of excludes him from the circle of men that he makes note to emphasise, ‘you are all married. But I’ll be alone when she goes.” His attachment to his mother demonstrates a great fear of loneliness that pre-empts his need for marriage. Yet, even whilst longing for female approval, he appears to lack ‘sufficient’ masculinity, rather he shows an affinity with the feminine, retreating to the bathroom setting that has since been associated with Blanche’s own sanctuary. His desire to be dealt out of the masculine realm of the card game, “I’m going to the ‘head.’ Deal me out’ can be interpretated as another way in which Mitch’s incomplete masculinity is characterised. The audience, however, may recognise this gentle masculinity as an appeal to Blanche who has antagonised the dominant and aggressive Stanley Kowalski.
Mitch’s attachment to Blanche demonstrates his sincere sensibilities that proves him as a potential suitor for Blanche. Whilst they are both drawn together by the operatic drama of lost love, both having suffered the loss of loved one, Mitch has been made honest and genuine but has driven Blanche to the refuge of delusions and imagination. His difference foreshadows their incompatibility. By Blanche’s recognition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43, “And if God choose — I shall love thee better after death,” remind the audience Blanche’s possession of cultural capital far overshadows that of the ignorant Mitch. His gentleness offers Blanche a security and protection against the harsh aggression of Stanley’s masculine world; from “Thank you for being so kind, I need kindness now!” emphasises the delicate and fragile basis of their relation built on a ‘kindness’ that sharply contrasts with the bestial attraction of Stella and Stanley.
Mitch stands in-between the states of being a man and boy. He is tied to an unassuming and passive femininity, evident by his relatively effeminate interest in fashion and focus on his appearance that marks yet another similarity with Blanche in “It don’t look neat on me.” In both characters, their concern for the outer exterior demonstrates an attempt to appeal to the other gender. This concern distinguishes mitch from the hegemonic form of masculinity in post-war America inclined towards a ruggish handsomeness. This is however contrasted with masculine ambitions to physicality in “I work out there with the weights.” Williams hints towards the inclination to violence as he asks Blanche to “punch [him]. Williams, here, warns of the falling for the guise of the transitional man. Mitch acts liminally along a spectrum of masculinity with Allen at one end and Stanley at the other. The question of Mitch’s character is to which form of masculinity will he pursue.
The incompatibility between Blanche and Mitch means that any potential romance will only be one of practical union, soothing their shared loneliness and lacking in the mutual sexuality of Stanley and Stella. Demonstrating this, Blanche’s joke in French of “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?” places them of different planes of thought entirely in terms of intention and purpose. The further reference to La Dame aux Camellias by Alexander Dumas implicity comparing herself to a Parisian call-girl. One way in interpreting this dialogue is in Blanche divulging her ‘secret history’ as a prostitute, yet Mitch lacks the cultural knowledge to understand her — this is perhaps emblematic of their relationship as a whole for Mitch can never understand Blanche, separated by class ideals and comprehension. Mitch can certainly offer her protection, “You need somebody. And I need somebody too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?” but by the dying away of the Varsouviana at his embrace, this use of plastic theatre could imply that he will be the one to save her from the memory of her dead husband. In this way, this embrace can be analysed as a way of Blanche merely mirroring her lost marriage in her romance with Mitch. However, Mitch shows glimpse of masculine protection in the kindness he offers, separating him from Allen that becomes distinct in his outburst of aggression in scene 9.
Scene 9 is proof that, in spite, of Mitch’s seemingly gentle exterior; he, like Stanley, harbours a dangerous desire that appears in him with the form of a dormant masculinity. From this point, Williams presents Mitch in likeness with Stanley: he proudly wears his “work clothes’ that distinguish him, a blue-collar worker, from the upper-class Blanche, adorning a “red sating robe.” This scene may read as an exposure of both their hidden natures — in Mitch, hew shows a sexual aggression having been deceived by Blanche. He adopts Stanley’s systematic and factual language in “that’s a fact,” as he realises “I’ve never had a good look at you.” The act of “turn[ing] the light on,” is an act of cruelty that shows his shift to the masculinity symbolised by Stanley. Still, he uses the excuse of his “mother” and Blanche not being “clean enough.” Despite his mimicry of masculinity, he will never be whole, even using his mother to rid himself of Blanche. A Marxist interpretation would read the failure of their relationship as representative of the emerging power of the working-class and the still-present resistance to accepting this direction of America from the South. Crucial is their inability to coexist, without the disintegration of the upper-class, Blanche would need to sacrifice all that she values to be integrated into the new, modern America with Mitch.
Mitch’s role as a failed suitor to Blanche marks him as an equally dangerous form of masculinity to Stanley in repression of sexual desire. Yet, beneath the gentle and rustic exterior, Mitch proves to be only another brute.
There are some interesting ideas raised in this essay that require expansion such as:
Even in the dialogue, “You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother,” implies a level of maternal dependency in shielding off Blanche’s romantic advances, unable to assert himself on his own terms. Williams makes a point to emphasise that Mitch has been mother coddled — could there be an implicit reference to Freudian psychology?
Mitch’s irrational hope that others will define his identity for him (perhaps, this is a rational reaction for at the end of the play he does seem to align with Stanley’s hyper-masculine, brutish persona) — oscillates between mother, Blanche, and Stanley as influences on his self.
Masculine hypocrisy — the conventional wisdom of the play informs us that Mitch is a gentleman, but by scene 9 his behaviour is anything but that. Although marriage is what they both desired three scenes prior, he rejects her for he past promiscuity. Although marriage is unacceptable, sex remains a possibility. Objectification of Blanche (See stage directions of Stanley in act 1: “He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind)
These are just a few points that might make for a interesting discussion in any future essays.
Over the half term, I hope to upload notes and essays on Othello to make up for the relative lack of Othello content under our tenure along with any miscellaneous posts that may be of use.
WymCol English Blog 