Final Blog- Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf has been another challenging modern poet for me. She was one of the most popular women writers of the 20th century. Born into a very privileged British family, she was given a good education considering her status as a woman. However, she actually had many psychological issues, including depression as well as she suffered from mental breakdowns for much of her life.
One of her most popular works is The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, which includes many of her signature themes and her unique writing style. In this prose, she writes about the life of a Lady through what of her belongings one can see through a mirror hanging over her mantle. The mirror is something that Woolf enjoyed using in her work; having it illuminate the idea that writing is supposed to mirror reality, but Woolf was very skeptical in that even the best writers cannot utilize language and words to explain something as well as when someone actually experiences something. She was a firm believer that words and language have limits and they simply are no substitute for the subjective experience of something.
She begins the prose with the following comment, “People should not leave looking- glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime” (p. 1224). This certainly hints to the fact that Woolf believes that firstly, when looking through a mirror we get a pretty good glimpse of reality and secondly, looking at a person and their belongings through a mirror can give you a good idea of their personal identity. She then describes everything that can be seen in the room through the mirror’s reflection including a sofa, a path outside the window, curtains blowing, and a rug. She describes the images seen through the mirror as, “held there in their reality unescapably… things had ceased to breathe and lay still in the trance of immortality” (p. 1225), which is very true; they are stuck there forever as if in a picture book as opposed to real life.
Woolf begins to describe the young lady who lives in this house. “But one was tired of the things that she talked about at dinner. It was her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words, the state that is to the mind that breathing is to the body, what one calls happiness or unhappiness” (p. 1227). This sentence gives a lot of interesting ideas for the reader to interpret. First, she discusses certain things at the dinner table probably because those are things expected of a young lady. She was not taught to discuss how she was feeling. Woolf may be hinting to some issues she has with gender roles of the time. Secondly, interestingly, Woolf uses the word “profound” to describe the state of being happy. This word seems to be reserved by most people for well versed public speakers and intriguing novels not for a woman’s state of being. Thirdly, Woolf desires to have the woman’s state of being interpreted into words; but, turning a subjective feeling into words for others to comprehend seems like a very difficult task. Lastly, she makes the claim that happiness is to the mind that breathing is to the body, which I’m not sure is scientifically valid, but considering Woolf’s constant state of depression, she is certainly aware of what it is like to live in a state of unhappiness.

T.S. Elliot

T.S Elliot was raised in a very distinguished New England family. He entered into the modern poetry scene with his poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. People link him to Robert Browning who wrote the Last Duchess due to his strange and disturbing imagination. J. Alfred Prufrock is an ironic “love song” which is intended to mirror the European society, which can’t get past custom and habits in order to arrive at anything truly meaningful. Many of his works dealt with issues such as loneliness and isolation, which were issues that Elliot believed resulted from a disconnection from oneself.
In this blog, I am going to attempt to analyze T.S Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which begins with an anecdote from Dante’s Inferno in which Dante asks one of the damned souls for its name and it replies, “If I thought my answer were for one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth, without ear of infamy I answer thee”. After reading the poem multiple times, I’m still unsure as to what the connection is between Elliot’s poem and the anecdote. However, the anecdote itself is so harsh; the man that is going to hell and he is still prideful.
This poem seems very strange to me. Firstly, it was written in 1910, which would have made Elliot about 22 at the time. He is constantly talking about old age and possibly about his time to die. First he describes his physical appearance, “With a bald spot in the middle of m hair--” and then “ I have measured out my life in coffee spoons;” (p. 1195), which both give an image of his life being full and complete. I doubt the narrator in this poem is supposed to be symbolic of Elliot himself because he was still young when he wrote this poem, but I do think the aging process must be a metaphor for something.
Secondly, Elliot tends to ramble. He writes through a stream of consciousness and thus it is difficult to tell whether what he says is simply him just rambling or actually symbolic and/or meaningful to the purpose of the poem. For instance, “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers…” (p. 1197). The two phrases before and after that phrase about the peaches, characterizes an elderly person, but “Do I dare eat a peach” seems so random. Does it have anything to do with his poem? Does it further his purpose at all?
Overall, I’m not really sure of Elliot’s intent. There are certainly overarching themes of death and dying; of one’s life being complete and full. I think it is interesting how the first few stanzas are repeating phrases like “And indeed there will be time”, “Time for you and time for me” (p. 1195), and the next few stanzas repeat phrases like, “For I have known them all already”, “ I have known the eyes”, I have known the arms” (p. 1196), but then the last stanzas change to “And would it have been worth it” and “would it have been worth while” (p. 1197). We see a transition throughout the poem from a belief in having more time to figure things out, to gaining knowledge about various things, to finally doubting whether you spent your time right before death.
Like I’ve said, I don’t believe T.S Elliot wrote this to be autobiographical. I wish I knew the metaphor he was trying to establish. As I stated in the first paragraph, our anthology suggests it is supposed to be mirroring the European society at the time; a society that was quickly going to change due to the war in a short amount of time.

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist. Born in Dublin, Yeats was always fascinated with Irish legends and symbols and would eventually become very involved in the Irish Renaissance or Celtic Revival. His interest in symbols shaped much of his career, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures frequently. Another influence on much of his work was his proposal that was turned down by Maud Gonne in 1891. He tragically had a one sided love affair with her his entire life.
In this blog, I will be exploring Yeats’ The Second Coming, which is a perfect example of his writing style in that it is filled with imagery, allusions, and symbols. We see an allusion in the very first line, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer” (p. 1122); one usually associates this description of a falcon circling around with death. This poem was written a year after WWI had ended, which had left Europe in ruin and which Yeats describes as “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (p. 1122). Given the fact that many Europeans thought that WWI would be the war to end all wars, there was no real resolution brought about by the war, but it simply left the continent in utter devastation. At the end of the first stanza, Yeats states, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity” (p 1122). I think Yeats is trying to describe the effect the war had on individual soldiers. Many soldiers were “shell shocked” and had psychological and emotional issues the rest of their lives. War changes people and you learn how to survive even if it means doing ugly and horrid things. Even people that were good and noble by nature lacked all conviction by the end of the war and those that began the war not good only had their temperament intensified. It was a dirty war that left people and countries in turmoil.
In the second stanza, the title of the poem, The Second Coming, is further explored through various images and allusions. This idea of the second coming is certainly hinting to the Christian belief of the return of Christ to earth on Judgment Day. However, I do not think that Yeats is trying to describe Christ’s return, but using much of the imagery in the book of Revelation to describe the chaos throughout Europe in the early 1900’s. Upon Christ’s return, we don’t know what exactly is going to happen to any of us and I think that the period during and around WWI was very similar in that nothing was really resolved and people were in a lot of distress. Similar to the book of Revelation when John describes four living beings including one looking like a lion, a second like an ox, a third with a human face, and the fourth like an eagle each of which had six wings and eyes covered their entire beings, Yeats describes, “A shape with a lion body and the head of a man” (p. 1122). He ends the stanza with a description that eludes to Christ; “That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,/ And what rough beast, its hour came round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” (p. 1123). The twenty centuries is describing the 2000 years since Jesus was born and placed in a cradle in Bethlehem and since then the nightmare of sin that has been bestowed upon the world. However, in line 21, a beast is described whose hour is come round at last, which eludes to the possibility of a Judgment day. Again, I think most people don’t associate this poem with Yeats’ belief of the actual second coming, but the similarity between the idea of the unknown future for people on that day and the way many people felt unsure of their future after WWI.

WWI Perspectives!!!

Just as the French and Industrial Revolutions influenced both the Romantic and Victorian writers respectively, similarly, WWI had a profound impact on the Modern writers in the early 20th century. World War I also known as the “Great War” was entered into by many countries not over territorial aims, “but in defense of principles the maintenance of which is vital to the civilization of the world” (p. 1080). What may have began as a heroic idea turned into one of the ugliest and costly endeavors. New technologies including trench warfare, chemical warfare, U-boats, airplanes, and tanks made it the deadliest conflicts ever with over 15 million casualties. As I previously stated, the war began with such high hopes; it was coined “The War to End all Wars!”, but it soon turned into something that many people thought would never end and there would be no progress.
In this blog, I am going to touch on two poems, Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier and Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, which come from two very different perspectives. Rupert Brooke was one of the first of Britain’s “War Poets”. He wrote The Soldier as he was sailing out to duty for the first time. His war sonnets are a symbol of English pride. There are two reasons why I think his poems are read so optimistically, the first is that he had never actually been to war and was therefore unaware of the true horrors of war; and secondly, he wrote his poems early in the war when people were still optimistic that this would be THE war to defend ideologies and end all other wars. On the other hand, Wilfred Owen enlisted in 1915 and in 1916 left for France with the Artists’ Rifles. It didn’t take long at all for Owen to witness the horrors of war and in 1918 he was sent to a hospital to recover from “shell shock”. It was there where he wrote many of his poems. Unlike Brooke, Owen actually endured battle and was able to convey it’s disillusionment to the world. We see, through their work, a naively optimistic perspective as well as an understanding and apprehensive perspective of war.
Brooke begins The Soldier with, “If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” (p. 1098). This statement shows the reader that Brooke thought fighting was a very noble thing to do and that even if he died there, he would be leaving a part of himself and thus a part of England where he was, and therefore it was worth it. When he states, “A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,” (p. 1098) and “Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given,” (p. 1099) I think we get a sense that Brooke truly believed he was fighting for certain ideologies and that by fighting he could make the enemy “aware” of those ideologies that Britain stood for. This poem is very naive and ignorant. An optimistic outlook, which many soldiers and wives at home needed to hear; that their sacrifice would be worth it, but they would soon realize that that was a disillusionment.
As seen in the title, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Owen’s perspective of the war was much more realistic. In the very first line, “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?” (p. 1100) we quickly see the way Owen felt about the “youth” dying in battle. Describing them as “cattle” gives the connotation that there were so many of them that they can’t be thought of as distinct individuals but as a collective group and as unimportant as a heard of cattle lacking emotions, feelings, or desires. In the second stanza, he states, “Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--” (p. 1101). Again, when there is a death in the family there is a funeral service and a great amount of mourning, but Owen describes the devastation being so large that there is no way we can honor each youth the same; he makes their death and even life seem so pointless. The last line of the poem, “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” (p. 1101), points to the fact that not a single day went by without producing a death. Every time the sun went down on the battlefield, the blinds were drawn. Owen’s disturbing account of war was extremely pessimistic, but true and he conveyed to the men and women at home the true horrors of war.

Bernard Shaw

Bernard Shaw was a renowned, but controversial novelist, music critic, playwright, political theorist, educator, and essayist. However, his main focus was writing plays, which usually dealt with social issues of the day including: education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and social classes. One thing he felt very strongly about was the divisions of social classes and the abusive power of the upper class over the lower classes. He fully supported equal rights for all, which we see in his play, Pygmalion. His play was eventually turned into the well known and Oscar winning love story, My Fair Lady.  However, unknown to me before reading this original screenplay, is the fact that that was not Shaw’s original intention.

In the preface, Shaw begins, “The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it” (p. 1005). As we read in the Victorian Ladies and Gents section of our Anthology, the Victorian Era was categorized by a shifting in social classes in that one could pull him or herself up from the middle class to the upper class through hard work. However, Shaw understood the fact that even if someone worked hard, if one could not emulate the upper classes mannerisms including their language and rhetoric, one would never be accepted in the upper class society. Shaw fully understood the power of words and thus gives the protagonist of the play, Henry Higgins, the occupation of a phonetician.  At the end of the preface, Shaw states, “ But if the play makes the public aware that there are such people as phoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in England at present, it will serve its turn” (p. 1007). We therefore see that his purpose in writing Pygmalion was not to write an epic love story or romance, but to make a point about language and it’s importance in society.

Starting in the middle of Act 1 there is a comedic dialogue between Higgins and a group of people in a lobby where he is able to place each individual with their hometown simply by their accent.  He figures out that the bystander is from Selsey, the sarcastic bystander is from Hoxton, the gentlemen is from Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India, and the flower girl is from Lisson Grove. The gentlemen, who we later find out is Pickering, asks Higgins how he does it and Higgins replies, “Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That’s my profession: also my hobby… You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets” (p. 1012). Higgins then goes on to state, “This is an age of upstarts” meaning that people born into lower classes are working hard and are able to move up into the upper class, “but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths” (p. 1013). He is able to teach them how to pronounce their words properly and get rid of any dialect that could place them in to a certain social class.

Throughout the rest of the play, Higgins and Pickering come together through a project of teaching the flower girl how to speak properly and an attempt to pass her off as a Lady. Although they succeed in their endeavor, the ironic and intriguing issue of the play, is what Mrs. Higgins points out in Act 3, “No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards” (p. 1041). This points to gender issues in that maybe men can pull themselves up into upper class society, but women are different. In the Victorian Era, lower class women worked, but an upper class Lady was too delicate and precious to get her hands dirty. Mrs. Higgins tries to explain to the men that they took this poor woman and gave her the mannerisms of a Lady and with that, disqualify her from working; however, she comes from a poor background and is thus not marriageable. In an attempt to turn a poor girl into a Lady ironically makes her unable to support herself. It is a strange idea, but an ugly and valid point during the Victorian Era.

Thomas Hardy

Many people claim Thomas Hardy had two great careers, the first being as a Victorian novelist and the second as a poet. His family was unable to afford him a formal education and he spent his early adult years as an architect. Hardy was obviously very aware of society’s class divisions, specifically his social inferiority. His family raised him as a Christian, however they did not attend the Church of England. It seems as though Hardy spent most of his life struggling with the existence of God, but did have a firm belief in a supernatural being that had greater control of his life than himself. As seen in many of his works, Hardy was highly pessimistic; he struggled with certain ideologies including class divisions, women’s inferiority, the corruption of the church, the evils of the industrial revolution, and a belief in a universe ruled by a tragic fate. Even though his works are dominated by these pessimistic themes, in a way, one must admire Hardy’s honesty and awareness of the social corruptions of his day.

Although it was not part of our reading, nor do I remember many details, I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles in eleventh grade.  Many of Hardy’s issues with society that our anthology recollects are familiar to me from his novel. For example, there were distinctions made about the dairy where Tess worked and the city, which may have been Hardy’s authorial input on Industrialization. In addition, there is the obvious issue that when Tess is raped she is seen as impure, which points to the double standard for men and women during this time period. Overall, the novel has an overarching theme of injustice—Tess is blamed for the death of prince and for her own rape.

This theme of some god or supernatural being out to fill our existence with injustice is again seen in Hardy’s poem, Hap. Specifically in the very first stanza, “If but some vengeful god would call to me/ From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,/ Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,/ That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”” (p. 1073).  We see right away that Hardy believes in a god, but it is probably not the same God Christians believe in. We also see not only that Hardy thinks this God is serving him an injustice, but that he thoroughly enjoys torturing Hardy. His words are so powerful, “thy sorrow is my ecstasy” and “thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting”.  It’s not as if the god is apathetic to whether Hardy is sad or happy, but that God actually loves when Hardy is in utter sorrow; total polar opposites!

In the second stanza, Hardy stated “steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;/ Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I/ Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.” (p. 1073).  We see again that Hardy thinks that the god is unjust. He doesn’t think he deserves the sorrow that he has been given. His word choice of “half-ease” is interesting in that he is at least half pleased to know that there is someone out there with control; someone more powerful than he has ultimate authority. Yielding control to someone other than oneself can be seen as both scary and freeing at the same time.  I think a theme that dominates almost all of Hardy’s works can be summed up in the question he asks in line 11, “And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?” (p. 1073). This idea that there is a being out there with ultimate control and power who doesn’t always make decisions based upon the worldly view of justice is a challenging and many times incomprehensible thought.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins is known as one of the most modern of the Victorian poets; one could say he marked a transition from the Victorian to the Modern era. He had a talent for words, phrases, rhymes, alliteration, and unusual syntax. In 1866, he converted to Catholicism and went into the priesthood. However, Hopkins battled with his spirituality throughout his life. One can easily read his work and determine whether he was in a period of great praise for God or whether he was struggling in his faith. Hopkins is probably most well known for what he coined, “inscape”, which was an object or an idea’s inner landscape; what made a certain thing distinct. Related to the "inscape" is what he coined “instress”, which both unified the object and brought the "inscape" outward to the observer.

I really enjoyed Hopkins’ Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord. In this poem, he begin with a verse from Jeremiah 12:1, which states “You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” I think this is something that every Christian fights at some point in his or her walk with Christ. Personally, I sympathize with Hopkins in his questioning that if God is sovereign and righteous, why sometimes do the faithful struggle and those that do evil are given happiness? This can be an extremely hard concept for anyone to grasp and I thoroughly enjoyed Hopkins’ account of his honest struggle.

In the first stanza, Hopkins questions God sense of justice. Stating, “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend/ With thee… and why must/ Disappointment all I endeavor end?” (p. 778). Initially, I wonder what has happened in Hopkins’ life to give him such a pessimistic outlook (I think we are given the reasoning by the end of the poem). But deeper than that is the idea of justice. Hopkins states that the Lord is just. According to a dictionary, Just is the idea of one being “given or rewarded rightly; deserved”. This definition of the word just is not always exemplified in the way God works in our lives. God doesn’t say do “good” and you will thus be given riches. As humans, we cannot justify or comprehend the things that happen to us. Only through an understanding of GRACE can one begin to accept and understand God’s idea of justice.

In the second stanza, we are able to get a better example of Hopkins literary ability. In line 6 we see his use of alliteration, “How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost” and again on line 12, “Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,” (p. 778).  I struggle with his true meaning behind the analogies and imageries in this second stanza, but I think in the first sentence, “Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,/ How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost/ Defeat, thwart me?” Hopkins is trying to say that God and him have a relationship that he thinks of as a friendship, but he wonders what things would be like if God and him were enemies due to the fact that their friendship has already resulted in struggles. In lines 6-9, Hopkins admits that he lusts and does evil things more than he does things for the glory and honor of God, “Oh, the sots and thralls of lust/ Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,/ Sir, life upon they cause” (p. 778).  In the last three lines of the poem, “birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,/ Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain," we see that Hopkins is jealous that the birds are given the ability to build, yet he is left in “poetic sterility” (p. 773).  He is utterly depressed with his lack of poetic ability at the present time and is begging God to be just (the worldly definition) and to give him the ability to bring his poetry to life. 

I think this was an interesting poem because he was able to convey his lack of contentment with his writing by connecting it to the idea of Justice. He basically states that God is not being just through the fact that he is withholding Hopkins' literary ability. Through his skepticism of God, the reader is able to see that Hopkins is thoroughly struggling with his faith. I don’t think Hopkins honestly feels as though God is punishing him for something through his writing, but this poem enables him to express the challenges he faces with God.