The Cenci and Violence: Victims and Despair

One nature I thought was very interesting about the play that we're reading was that this is the first time we've been in the viewpoint of a woman who "is" truly a victim, many female characters of the works we've read are victims of circumstance or by the actions of another party, but not nearly to the physical or emotional degree of Beatrice Cenci. Count Francesco Cenci, her father who is the most sociopathic character i've ever seen, and absolutely relishes, violence and milks the misery of those lives he destroys in the most twisted and brutal ways possible for all it's worth.  The violence he enacts on people is simply astonishing to see and truly makes me wonder whether he is a human incarnation of evil itself. Francesco's physical and emotional violence enacted on his entire family in nothing short of disgusting, and the fact that nobody tries to offer any assistance to the family for fear of Francesco makes this entire play a lesson in that you have noone to protect you but yourself. The fact that Beatrice and her mother are nothing short of slaves to Francesco's whims and are treated little better than servants fills the reader with a tender sympathy, but also  a frustrated  sense of anger, or atleast to me, because Beatrice nor her mother seem to fight Francesco or they waited until something truly horrible happened, but that just shows the beaten down personalities of both woman and the staff because they are so afraid they can't even voice an true opinion. This entire play filled me with a absolute and pure disgust for Francesco and personally I was glad he died, but yet I can't help but feel terrified for Beatrice and her mother, because this world certaintly doesn't feel like a kind place towards woman.

(Presentation notes) Women and the Law; Addressing Inequality, Imprisonment and Madness

Women were viewed by society to be the weaker sex, and faced unequal treatment regarding rights by law, job opportunities, and education. Men had the ability to sue their wives for adultery, gain full custody of children in the case of divorce, as well as a full range of educational and legal resources at their disposal. Women on the other hand were unable to sue their husbands (unless attempting to prove physical danger - which was RARELY proven), were seen as the property of their husbands (along with any assets they owned prior), and faced a lack of educational resources and occupational options.

Mary Wollstonecraft is seen by many critics to be the ‘Mother of Feminism’, drawing from many of her own life experiences to form the basis of many of her feminist and ‘radical’ writings. Mary advocated for the rigorous education of young girls into their adulthood, something that was lacking in her time. She also rejected the idea that women were inherently weaker or less capable than men, and strongly fought against the subjugation of women, both in marriage and society. Coming from a family composed of a violent father and a submissive mother, she strove to avoid facing the same ills, but like many others before her- also faced her own demons when it came to her personal life. Pregnant and unmarried (Mary Shelley is the wonderful result of this pregnancy) Mary Wollstonecraft surrounded herself with friends who strongly supported her publications as a means of supporting herself independently, and only later met someone with whom she found herself an equal. 

“The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria”- the asylum setting parallels the lack of physical and mental freedoms that women experienced in society (i.e. the protagonist is imprisoned by her husband unjustly)

“Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?” ( pg. 167)

Mary felt that by denying women serious, rational pursuits, society relegated them to a lifetime of vanity and weakness/inequality. She uses fiction to address feminist ideas of education and morality, medical theories of the mind, and gender differences in a way that is approachable and instructive to the women readership. This novel also helped to pioneer the celebration of female sexuality and cross-class identification between women. 

The heroine’s inability to relinquish her romantic fantasies of life and character reveals women’s collusion in their oppression through false and damaging ‘sentimentalism’. The novel criticizes the patriarchal institution of marriage and the laws that protect it by aligning women with the insane: a minority to be championed in Romantic society. 

This representation reflects a Societal view rather than an Individual view; addressed the wrongs done to women (repression), and by women (sentimentalism).

'Mary Wollstonecraft' by John Opie

 'A Rake's Progress' by William Hogarth (Bedlam depiction)

 'Mary Wollstonecraft' by John Opie

'The Nightmare' by Henry Fuseli

WORKS CITED:

Black, Joseph, ed. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature- The Age of Romanticism. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Pr, 2010. Print.

Blake, William. "Drawings for Mary Wollstonecraft's "Original Stories from Real Life"" (c. 1791): Electronic Edition. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.

"Mary Wollstonecraft." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 July 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. Ed. Michelle Faubert. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Pr, 2012. Print.

Lamia and Geraldine: Damsels in Distress

I thought it was interesting while reading the two poems to compare Lamia and Geraldine in terms of their relationships with hero-like figures.  Hermes and Christabel have interactions with Lamia/Geraldine that are similar in some ways.

Lamia is trapped as a serpent (which in Greek culture is pretty low on the animal totem pole), and Hermes removes the illusion.  Through the retelling of her story, Geraldine is 'trapped' as a damsel in distress, but by having Christabel hear her story, the reader realizes that this is an illusion to.  The story is not sound.  "Five warriors" took her, yes...but where are they?  What was a plausible purpose for their leaving, and more importantly, what is her purpose for staying?  There is something Geraldine is not willing to tell Christabel.  Geraldine's flawed story suggests the absence of an important detail, or at the very least, that Geradline is not what she seems (which is reinforced later on with the "bad omens" upon Geraldine's arrival).

There are some other slight differences here.  Hermes only helps Lamia after she helps him by giving him his water nymph.  Geraldine, on the other hand, does not really give Christabel anything of value, except maybe the opportunity to feel like a moral person by helping her.  Whereas Hermes helps Lamia as a reward for her actions, Christabel takes in Geraldine as an act of kindness.

Lamia is portrayed in more of a submissive role.  She immediately wants Lycius and ultimately does not get him; she's punished towards the end of the poem.  It is a male figure that gives her her human form (Hermes) and a male figure that ruins her (Apollonius).  She has a very reactionary existence.

Gerladine is more conniving.  She holds more cards than Christabel (or the reader) is aware of.  Both characters play the part of a damsel in distress, but while Lamia goes along with whatever happens to her, Geraldine seems to have an ulterior motive, something that the reader can only approximate since the poem itself was never completed.

Lamia and Geraldine

I found it odd how Geraldine was described as being a "perfect" woman and decided to look up the mythology of Lamia and found out that Lamia was a mistress of Zeus and made to either kill/consume her children by Hera. The mark of snake skin on her body a way of reminding Lamia of her sin of adultery. The fact that Geraldine is a Lamia figure and her interest in Christabel makes me wonder about whether or not Geraldine was getting friendly in order to eat her and satisfy her savage instincts. This idea is that Christabel and Geraldine are doppelgangers and why Geraldine is suppoused to represent everything that women are suppoused to strive to be her vicious behavior in her sensuality and how she seems to use that in the second act recasts her as something to be reviled and disgusted with.

Poems of Love and Irony

Throughout reading this book I found it ironic how many of the poems portray love as something that should be avoided, ignored, or something to be wary of, and throughout the events of the story love is something that causes Theodore to be almost killed, Adeline to nearly go insane from, and for every other character, misery. In "Ode To The Passions" the character of Hope is holding a rose of revenge. I thought it was pretty ironic in relation to the plot in that Adeline's inability to hope for a good future for herself causes her to fall into despair and her lack of hope for Theodore when he's faced with the death penalty causes her to go nearly crazy, causing her to be easily manipulated into the Marquis plans of revenge. Reading the novel without the poems I think would take away a lot of the tension in the novel in that when you read them they give a sense of weight to the plot and the characters decisions that because you can't see inside their heads, and just have to believe that their sincere, the poems kind of ground the book in a more real world sense that just because you love someone doesn't mean that circumstances aren't going to turn out badly or that it won't lead to the characters death.

Heroes and Heroins

One thing I noticed about the characters in Romance of the Forest was the use of several heroes. Pierre, Peter, and Theodore all do heroic things to save Adeline’s life. Pierre takes her in and refuses to kill her even though it will fix all his problems. Peter warns her several times of imminent danger and Theodore is her true hero and true love. While Theodore is the main hero of this novel, both Pierre and Peter played a role in saving Adeline’s life too. This novel uses several heroes in addition to Theodore to further the plot and show that Adeline’s life is worth saving. I think it is also worth mentioning that the heroin uses her influence at the end to save the hero’s life. It switches up the concept of the heroin being completely helpless and allows her to save someone’s life instead of being saved herself.

The Thorn

Wordsworth's "The Thorn" tells the tragic story of Martha Ray and her troubling life. Represented by the thorn in the poem, she is plagued by heartbreak and the death of her child, which have led to the destruction of her life. Those events "all have joined in one endeavor/to bury this poor Thorn for ever" and as a result, she spends her time upon the hill, crying and lamenting her losses. Her life, once a promising one filled with love, is now one of tragedy and warning to the reader. Her story is mysterious; the narrator is unaware of the circumstances regarding her baby's death. Though she is alive, she has become a sort of ghostly, haunting figure, weeping on the hill for twenty years over the death of her child and the loss of her love. She is unable to escape the tragedy of her past, it is made clear that "the Thorn is bound/with heavy tufts of moss that strive/to drag it to the ground," and she is left to haunt the hill with her misery.

The symbol of the thorn

That Wordsworth's poem is about more than a simple thorn on a simple hill is easily enough discerned in the text. The tale of Martha Ray and her woeful cries on the hill that may hold the body of her infant child is one of betrayal, anguish, and love lost. It is a tale of a thorn. The thorn becomes a symbol for her whole ordeal. It is the prick of her lovers betrayal.  It is the stab of finding herself alone and with child. The thorn, overgrown, is the child she may have killed. Just as the story of betrayal is an old tale, so is the thorn itself. This is not the thorn of a rose, balanced with the sweet smell of the flower.  This is the thorn of bitter anguish, without redeeming grace. The scarlet of Martha's cloak echoes the blood this thorn draws.  Just as the thorn is bound with moss to the hill, so is Martha bound to the hill. This is something that transcends the mortal realm. The hill itself has become a symbol, something wholly "other". The hill itself rebuffed the townspeople's intent to find the bones of the infant, it rebuffed mortal intrusion into its otherworldly realm. We can but look upon the hill, we can but mark this sad tale, unable to change it. We are observers, who may, if we are fortunate, glean some lesson from the hill, the moss, the thorn, the pond, and the woman. While Martha may have once been mortal, she is now wholly symbol, undying, unchanging, like the hill itself. And the thorn, which never lives, yet never really dies, like her pain, and the death of her child.

Portraying Women: Otranto vs Glenfinlas

In the tale of Glenfinlas by Sir Walter Scott, two men are seduced by a women in green who bears a striking resemblance to the mythological seductress archetype of the "otherworldly" women. This is in clear contrast to the women of The Castle of Otranto who are forced to manipulating events or quietly accepting their fate. The fact that The Lady of the Wood is in charge of her femininity, in that she is complete control of who she loves and is accountable to no one but herself for her actions. Contrasting this is Hippolita who gives up everything of herself for her husband who leaves for a younger woman. These women portray to opposite but important sides of how women were thought of by society, where as Hippolita portrays self sacrifice for the so-called good of her family the Lady of the Wood is purely unchecked desire with no thought or caring beyond what she wants.

Small Instances of Atypical Female Behavior

I found that in "The Castle of Otranto", I was really intrigued by the characteristics of the women in the novel. Mostly uniform with the attributes of female characters displayed in literature both prior to and in the 18^th century, the women are portrayed mainly as obedient and kept individuals who lack independence in thought, choices, and identity. However, two of the female characters do display moments of uncharacteristic and surprising behavior. Firstly, there is Isabella, who despite her initial role as simply a bargaining tool, becomes the only character to attempt to control her own fate. While her hope to escape is entirely in response to the actions of Manfred, she escapes and saves herself from what would have been a future of compliance and submission. The other main example of defiance of the typical female character is Matilda, in that she releases Theodore from prison, completely and entirely knowingly defying her father. I found it very interesting to see quite strong instances of self aware and defiant behavior in two women from a time of passive, obedient, and disinteresting female literary characters.