Final blog instructions and the last "On Beauty"

"Final blog is due by Wednesday, May 6th, 11:45 AM, King 027. If you want to turn it in early, turn it in to Laura's mail box in Bachelor. TURN IN THE COPY THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU ON WEDNESDAY.

Print out and include: your name, your cell phone number, your blog url, AND a paragraph assessing the experience of blogging this semester.

EC: A paragraph or two describing those grammatical rules that you need to learn to edit yourself when I'm not around."

On the last two pages of On Beauty:

- There is an implicit condemnation on one's class when transitioning from one social class to another

- AT RIGHT: Hector Hyppolite's Maitresse Erzulie - probably the painting Smith uses in her novel to get Kiki and Carlene talking

THE END.

WEDNESDAY: Look at Rosie Erdadez's article

What is beauty on the last two pages of the novel?

The last two pages of Zadie Smith's novel On Beauty show Howard utterly fouling up his last chance at tenure. He gets to the lecture hall for his Rembrandt presentation late, and half-way through his introductory speech realizes he left a yellow folder in his car. I assume this folder holds the speech that was supposed to get him tenure. This disrupts what momentum he carried in, having hastened from the house late, sweaty, and with the latest family disaster in mind - a disaster, by the way, that was entirely his fault. (It's bad timing all around).

When he realizes he left that folder in the car, he can't seem to make a split-second save of his lecture. Instead, he starts the power point. By then, he also catches sight of Kiki in the audience - this seems to finish what little concentration he had mustered. He flips through all the paintings his lecture was supposed to cover without saying anything. The last picture is a painting of Rembrandt's love, Hendrickje. Smith describes the quality of the woman's skin in the painting in a way that is beautiful. One line suggests Howard is looking as closely at this painting as his audience is: "He looked out into the audience once more and saw Kiki only." What else would he have been looking at to turn and look at the audience and Kiki for? He had to have been staring at the painting. Kiki is described often in the novel, and her skin is one of the things about her that receives the most attention - apparently, she has beautiful skin. The woman in the painting has beautiful skin as well.

In this moment, he is looking at the painting the way he often looks at Kiki - seeing her as beautiful, and seeing so much of his life reflected in her person. Almost as importantly, he doesn't say anything - he gives the title of the painting, Hendrickje Bathing, and that's it. After a career built on saying a great deal, and all of it having to do with the fallacies in theories of beauty and genius, he manages to look at the painting as a record of something beautiful for the sake of beauty and love.
Hendrickje Bathing by Rembrandt

The end of "On Beauty"

- The end "grabs at the crux of what the future is for English studies" - that a lot of classes are going to become multimedia classes

- What do you think of the Department of English as an institutional thing? - In my opinion, English Departments are still necessary! Until writers like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, and Shakespeare lose the credibility attached to their names, and until books like In Memoriam, The Iliad, and Moby Dick are not necessary to know as an adult, English Departments are still necessary. Even when those names and novels become outmoded, the work those people produced will always be reference points and incredible resources for people who need them. The classics will begin to include contemporary 21st Century material, but it'll always build on previous material. I can see publishing dying off and going completely online before I see English Departments getting cancelled en masse.

- What does it mean to be an intellectual? Pages 226: Claire talks about loving Warren, never having known someone like him, but considers herself the victim of a female psychological disorder. "She was a woman still controlled by the traumas of her girlhood.... she felt one thing and did another. She was a stranger to herself." In her conversation with Zora about beauty and landscapes, the beauty she talks about is politically suspect (a political reification, where you turn something into an object - a term from Marx's Capital).

- This novel is a lot about taking women as objects: Kiki is fat, Claire is thin. Zadie Smith hates the objectification of women and beauty. She also hates that beauty can't be talked about anymore, especially on the Left. Howard immerses herself in theories of un-beauty, of going against celebrating genius and beauty, but when two women who he thinks are good-looking come onto him he drops his pants. Zora, who believes Howard's theories and spouts it, too, questions the beauty of the landscape - that it is uncorrupted, that there aren't laborers working there, that industrialization isn't making it ugly just beyond the landscape. When Claire brings up Virgil, Zora stops listening. Claire has read Plato, Virgil, Baudelaire, etc, and Zora and Howard are trained in the latest literary theory and are aware of the working poor. What is an intellectual, then??

- Poor people as the playthings of radical intellectuals - page 418, when Carl tells Zora what he knows about Chantelle Williams and Monty Kipps, and accusing her of using him as an experiment she expected favors from. His ticket to a life is gone. "You got your college degrees, but you don't even live right."

- On Levi's stealing the painting from Kipps' office: he's an idiot. He's a stupid 16-year-old with a lot of screwed-up theories. THEN he suggests his mother isn't black for marrying a white man. He has a point when he asks Kiki wha her part is in helping the poor climb economically when she pays her housekeeper $4 per hour - he says she wouldn't do that if the woman was American instead of Haitian.

- The last 2 pages: What has happened to Beauty?

Howard's children still hate him, a lot, but they are still talking to him. He goes downtown to give his lecture, the job-talk of his life. What is beauty on the last two pages?

Literary Theory and "On Beauty"

Literary Theory - varying ways to read and make meaning of a ext

New Criticism: 1920s-1950s - the dominating idea of how to interpret texts. It was a way of seeking out contradictions in a text and figuring out how those contradictions unified the text and created meaning.

1960s: Cultural revolutions in USA, England, and France carries over to the English departments of American universities - psychoanalysis and feminism, for example.

Psychoanalysis - studies the unconscious; finds the meaning in dreams; use of the Oedipus and Electra complexes; psychoanalytic theory (read a text using Freudian theories to discover the workings of a text's unconscious), etc.

Feminism - part of the movement for women's equality and rights through the 1970s. In the 70s, this is where you read texts to discover hidden or not hidden meanings about female desire, empowerment, equality, sexuality, gender politics, and power. And subjectivity. What makes a woman a woman a man a man.

Who cares what the author thought or meant?

Critical Race Theory: texts have larger cultural meanings. Texts include poems, novels, plays, films, TV shows, movies, digial images, art, painting, CDs, music, graffiti, clothes, merchandising, advertising, etc. These are all cultural artifacts - items you can interpret.

Queer Theory - Gender issues, power, gender depictions, heteronormative ways of thinking, etc. How is queer identity constructed in a text?

Power, identity, subjectivity, political significance, cultural signifance, types of representation. Literary theory is difficult to understand, and it is blamed for politicizing the classroom.

Deconstruction: French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Questions meaning to question stable notions off identity, to question stable notions of what a person and so on.

Opposing it: Logos: speech, reason vs. writing or text. We grant more authority speech and reason than writing or non-reason.

Subjectivity - "1: of, relating to, or constituting a subject: as aobsolete : of, relating to, or characteristic of one that is a subject especially in lack of freedom of action or in submissiveness. 2: of or relating to the essential being of that which has substance, qualities, attributes, or relations. 3 a: characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind"

Logocentric - "1 : a philosophy holding that all forms of thought are based on an external point of reference which is held to exist and given a certain degree of authority 2 : a philosophy that privileges speech over writing as a form of communication because the former is closer to an originating transcendental source." We privilege th faculty of reason over all else. In the history of the West reason has been used to judge what makes a human human.

Example of Logocentricsm: In literature or philosophy or political reports, or expeditions to far away places, non-white peoples are judged to be without reason and therefore not fully human. Another, more specific example is British imperialism: slave trade between England and its plantations. The reasoning for the slave trade was the old "Us v. Them" - we have logic and reason on our side, they don't, we are responsible for them, therefore, enslavement is justified because they can't take care of themselves.

Essentialism : What is the essence of the human?

*THESE ARE ALL TOOLS TO STUDY AND QUESTION, NOT TO BE MADE INTO IDEALS FOR A PERSONAL CRUSADE. Why do Monty Kipps and Howard Belsey feel free to adhere so strongly to just one theory of literature, to the near-exclusion of all others, when all it does is limit and blind them?

Different human developments in various geographic areas that accoutns for differences in an essentialist way.

Culture wars

How do we make meaning?

Is a text just a text?

What is art?

What is a poem?

Challenging fundamental assumptions of Western culture.

Darwin and the advent of biological adaptation -

FOR FUN: Chocolate sculpture!

Who or what is beautiful in this novel?

The one thing always presented as a work of beauty in this novel is art. Music, painting, dance, dress - they are all part of art. Carl can do beautiful things with his rap music; Claire finds beauty through writing poetry and encouraging her students to write poetry, and Kiki sees overwhelming beauty and inspiration in the art she loves. Even Howard Belsey, the great anti-Rembrandt lecturer, can't help but see something of beauty in Rembrandt's work. He ends the novel with a close-up of the woman Rembrandt loved, a close-up of her skin (one of those portraits is at right). Several of the characters also react strongly to music - such as Jerome's reaction to the concert, where he cried.Art, and the sincere, human efforts that go about creating art or allow people to be inspired, is beautiful.

Define Beauty from Smith's point of view. Do you agree?

Carlene becomes beautiful when she jokes about how Monty's best friend, the Reverend, is gay. Kiki notes that she looks younger and healthier when she laughs. Kiki's beauty comes from an impression of solidity, maternity, and physical presence - she is hard to overlook, not necessarily because of her weight (though to say one can ignore a 250-lb woman is silly) but because of her presence and bearing. Even with her, despite being middle-aged and overweight, there is an impression of physical well-being.

Carl is described in lovely terms when he's swimming, as well as when he is talking to Zora about the Mozart concert. His natural physical grace in the water matches the expressive way he speaks about the music. Even Claire, rather than being described as the classic American beauty (blonde, small, white, skinny), has a moment of inherent loveliness when she moves - years of yoga have honed her movements so they are self-contained and graceful. There is a beauty to that that transcends weight, appearance, and race.

What I drew from this novel was that Smith considers beauty not necessarily a physical thing - often, it has little to do with the physical. Victoria Kipps is stunning - Belsey compares her to Josephine Baker at one point, which is quite a compliment - but she is banal and naive in a way that detracts from her incredible physical appearance. She is in turmoil due to the unexpected death of her mother, which seems to explain many of her actions in the latter half of the novel. There is a casual, takes-things-for-granted quality to her I found off-putting. On the other hand, Carlene Kipps, though not a physically attractive woman, was beautiful in her love and enthusiasm for her paintings. She also makes a grand gesture in willing one of her paintings to Kiki. It's the love, passion, and goodness of one's actions and personality that mark people as beautiful - that much I agree with. After all, even Josephine Baker had more going for her than physical attractiveness - she had talent, passion, self-confidence, and charm to elevate what would otherwise be quite ordinary to something that became immortalized.

Here is a Josephine Baker dance routine: CHECK IT OUT!

Describe a character from "On Beauty"

Zora Belsey - almost too much character.

She is determination personified. Anything she decides she will accomplish, she goes about working at with every ounce of effort she can scrape together. This is how she goes about her college education: when an application, exemplary transcripts, and writing samples don't get her in, she goes to the Dean and subtly threatens him so he puts her into Claire's poetry class.When she has a crush on Carl, she visits him twice a day while he works at Wellington with equally-subtle efforts at enticing him. She is opinionated, relentless, and zealous - a combination that makes for a potent, potentially destructive strength that she uses to bulldoze her way through problems. Her determination gives her a pigheaded quality, especially when it becomes Zora v. the World. Zora has her father's habit of concentrating so much on her life, her wants, her needs, that she does not see how her actions might conflict with what others are doing. It is hard for her to admit she's made mistakes and even harder to go about doing something about them. She's an interesting, thought-provoking character - but most of the time, I felt annoyed with her. She imagines she's filling a huge role wherever she is - Student, Academic, developing Scholar - but she often looks like a fool in the meantime.

"On Beauty", through page 300

TO RIGHT: Helena Bonham-Carter in the movie version of Howards' End - great actress, interesting film shot.

Scrutinized the poem on page 153, "On Beauty."

- Who is the "we"? What is the "list"? "They" could mean all beautiful people, the "we" could mean the ugly people. The beautiful are ideal, they have no "wounds" to speak of. What is snow usually representative of? Purity, winter... Maybe "They" are beautiful because they're wounded. "They", by nature of the word, creates a distance - put them in italics, and the distance increases (as in "They are the damned...", 3rd stanza). The "we" feel left out, so the word "they" describes the distance and that feeling of being left-out. The vague terms could be asking the question, Can you really put people into two separate camps like that?

- Interestingly enough, the poet who wrote the poem isn't interested in that kind of poetry anymore.

Page 206-7: Notion of living for someone and with someone. Here, Kiki argues with Howard, and says, "I staked my whole life on you... I gave up my life for you." Here, she's saying something that sounds more like Carlene than not. "Before, she adopted Howard's attitude - later, she adopts Carlene's atttitudes." Characters here claim to be what they often insist they are not - characters reverse.

- Talked about Howard's End, a novel by Forester, from which Zadie Smith "stole" the plot, of which only the ending is changed (allegedly). Howard's End is a place, not a person. It's a part of Victorian England; purity notion characterized by propriety (social codes). Men and women are supposed to do perform the same kinds of roles and are supposed to behave a certain way around each other.

Page 301: After Howard abruptly leaves the funeral, he visits his father, Harold Belsey. This section highlights social expectations and racial divisions, tensions. Harold guesses Kiki "found another black fella," and earlier Levi talks about how white people look at him in his own neighborhood because of the way he dresses and because he is black.

Page 263: Claire suggests Zora give a "barnstorming speech" at the next meeting so she can stick up for the students who were not officially enrolled in classes. She says that students like Carl don't have a voice, and Zora should be his voice. What kind of voice? A Wellingtonian voice. He can stand up for himself, but not in a way that will earn the respect or consideration of Wellington academics. This has to do, again, with defintions of what a person is - how does one have subjectivity? - how does one have power, or resist power? Implication: The people Claire is talking about don't have their own "personhood". For the rest of the novel: What is it saying about subjectivity - how does one form notions of one's self?

Cultural wars and more in "On Beauty"

- Culture wars - the Right (classics, canonical) and the Left (liberal, non-canonical)

- Now, the Academy says its suspicious of how the word beauty has been deployed, because it's an exclusionary term - as with the word genius. The Academy is not so certain that traditionally-canonized work is all that there is to know.

- In "On Beauty", Smith writes a bleak picture of the Left and Academics; is Zadie Smith anti-Left? Harold Belsey is snide, elitist, when he speaks to the museum curators hiring for a lecture on Rembrandt. Page 117, "'Well,' he said loudly, hoping to finish it off with a daunting display of academic pyrotechnics, 'what I meant was that Rembrandt is part of the seventeenth-century European movement to... well, let's shorthand it - essentially invent the idea of the human.'"

- page 127 - Elaine Scarry - Universities as defenders of beauty; and at right, The Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt

- Next: Zora talks to the Dean and bullies - even threatens - him to go to the board with discrimination if she didn't get into Claire's poetry class. She wants the class and the credentials it'll provide, and she will point out the details of the affair to get them.

- Carl - what does he do in this chapter? He wants to be in class for the status and perceived society-given kiss of acceptance it provides. He doesn't want to be in college because he had bad experiences in the classroom for so long, and because, so long as he is not in college, he's not a college student, and that's impossible to get past. Being around University-people puts him on the defensive, but he wants to reach out and communicate.

He went to the Mozart concert because he wanted to hear good music and he's a musician - he wants to cultivate his abilities as a musician. "Do I look like I'm on the swim team?" translates to "To I look like I go to school here, lady?" "It's not poetry-poetry, but it's what I do." A classmate noted that, in the conversation between them two, Zora sounds stupid and Carl sounds smart. It's not because that's the case, but because it's (in Mandell's words) a structural corruption.

- "The structure predisposes people not to be like Carl" - even if he were a college student, Carl
would be unusual.

- Forms of corruption: Zora bullies & threatens the Dean; Kiki told Warren about the affair

- Beauty is a ruse, a mask power wears - what Howard says in his Rembrandt class. The way he treats it, though, makes the material a routine - he doesn't have to pay attention to it anymore. His work life, not just his married life, is dead.

Is there anything special about the University - anything to preserve? Is it still worth having a place to play with ideas?

For fun - Book art!

- ISN'T THAT COOL?? It's like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came alive in book form! And in the middle - books, squashed! Far, far right - it's a carved column, I have NO IDEA how the artist did that!!

Trophy wives, people as objects, in "On Beauty"

- The 20th C. Hollywood power couple: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, at right

- Study of a head and shoulders, center-right; on left, bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti:



- To what extent is a battle between beauty where you're not objectifying a person opposed to the conventional notion of beauty? Beauty as ideas, like motherhood or sisterhood. How else is beauty discussed in the novel? When Zora talks about her mother to Carl, she sums it up as Kiki having let herself go - Kiki ignoring herself, putting herself last. Carlene Kipps, though, says that Kiki carries the weight well. If you look at Kiki without evaluating her in any way, she's beautiful. Howard says he still loves her face. Kiki herself compares Claire's weight to one of her legs.

Who else's body gets discussed? Carl's body! His appearance slows down traffic in hallways!

- How is this related to art and art history? What does that have to do with beauty? (*Kiki makes me think of an ancient fertility goddess, at right):

- In addition to the discussions about women cutting parts of themselves off, separating from a partner can feel like cutting a part of oneself off. In Kiki's case, she can survive one night in Michigan - then she finds out Howard's one night was really three weeks with a friend. It's an exponentially bigger betrayal.

- Howard is less irritating only in comparison to Zora. The way he talks to Kiki in relation to the affair, p204: he goes about it like a lecture, "...the onus is on me, I know that. It's for me to - to - explain my narrative in a way that's comprehensible... and achieves an... I don't know, explanation, I suppose, in terms of motivation..." There is no possible narrative, explanation, or motivation that do not make an extramarrital affair anything more than idiocy.

- What does Carl think when he overhears the Belseys talk about genius after the Mozart concert? He sees it as a wonderful, privileged, somewhat exclusive exchange of high-quality ideas - spoken between members of a black family, no less. He also loves that, when Mozart died, other people had to finish the music - the person who finishes it, Sussmeier, "steps up" to the challenge of completing this work of music. Preserving who did what adds to the depth of musical apprecation, possibly, but it also adds to idolatry of the music creators.

- pg. 116 - when Howard, who does not believe in genius, talks to a curator about how Rembrandt is not the start of the Renassaince, and that the movement propagated a fallacy. The curators are justifiably nervous about this possible talk. Page 123, Kiki's figured out the truth about Howard's affair - with Clair. What is going on in terms of beauty, intellect, and intellect, and why does it make Kiki so made?

Kiki and Claire are opposites. Culturally, Claire is the preferred woman - she is thin, active, in shape, WHITE, very academic. Kiki is aware of this, and for Howard to choose her opposite to have an affair with makes her feel as though he does not want the relationship she devoted so many years to anymore. Their level of education, not brain power, differentiates them - Claire speaks Wellington, Kiki does not, and Kiki is outside of the academic circle. Howard objectifies both Kiki and Claire - he examines Claire the same way he does his wife.

- What does this say about Howard? Did he just want to know about another body - was this just a curiosity he wanted to address?

- What Claire says about Kiki, how she should be in a fountain in Rome, is condescending. Kiki is aware of this. This is also the moment when Claire is unaware that Kiki knows, and Howard does know.

Zadie Smith, "On Beauty," through p78

- Our tastes trained to prefer writing by men to writing by men - a kind of literature training. Also, "another major contention of the course", the "politics of beauty" - the aesthetic can be political, but still can be good!

- Zadie Smith - contemporary British woman writer; video, interview with Smith (resembles Kiki from the novel)

- Smith: novels are politic ("moral"), but you can't make it a propaganda novel - how does she get the politics and morals into her novel? "A truthful perception of the world as I go through it..."; "Art is a case, an analogy of morals" (Iris Murdock)

- The artist doesn't have to be a moral purpose, but his or her art has to be a truthful expression of the artist. This is difficult because of self-deception - in art as in life.

- Pushes the difference in a person's adult- and child-reactions - the adult sees the world as being about other things than one's self, a child does not see multiple perspectives or a "me v. them" or "us v. them" mentality

- Will multiculturalism dispossess a person? Nick Holdstock - Zadie Smith v. Zadie Smith, the real person versus the author the PR, her audiences, her critics, etc. have fashioned

- Example of attacking a mirror-image of the self

- Method: create a thoroughly likable character - get into that character's head - let that character come alive

- It's an analogy for moral people in real life

- Literature is about human relationships and the difficulties of that

- The culture wars; multicultural debate (radical left) - Howard's family and Monty's family; Jerome as mediator, since he loves Kiki

- Monty: practicing Christian, pro-family, pro-business, sole provider, conservative. His family is religious

- Why is Jerome working for Monte? - He's trying to get his father's attention by working for his arch rival/nemesis.

- p44 of book: Jerome came home, and his mother is trying to get him to engage with her - she wants him to go to a fair or something. "Jerome had fallen in love with a family." What's that about? He sees in them what he wants, or what he thinks he wants at that time. Does falling in love with a family change your attitude about love? NO - it doesn't. It makes perfect sense to me.

"Art and Lies", class notes

Friday: no class - blog the same way Friday as you did Wednesday, about Picasso or another character/story in the book. ALSO: Vindication of the Rights of Women - Chapters 6-9, "Wrongs of Woman", for April 6th.

Winterson, class notes

"Art and Lies" - the title makes me think of a famous sibling relationship - that of Lisa and Bart Simpson. Lisa is the artist, and Bart is prone to manipulation. Ta-da!

- Art (Objects) - objects, noun, or objects, verb
- Postmodernist in style - collage-like, juxtaposes passages without explaining the relationship between them
- Prof. Mandell's Winterson nut shell: the genre, 18 C. - people argue about who is the first novelist in Britain - the short story comes about in the Romantic era

- Can one abandon great art? Cultural studies want to eradicate the concept - would it be true eradication of art, or substituting one form of art for another?

- Definition of greatness - too narrowly defined?

- "What people see in great writers when they read - they see their own alienated majesty," - Emerson - yow! Great quote!

- PROJECTION

- (The sculpture to the right: Coffee Kiss, by Hong Kong artist Tsang Cheung-shing).

- Anthologies, etc, are a guide through that "mountain of stuff" - with time and concentration on art, everyone could create art - but there are very real, unavoidable limitations, especially that on people's attention. Art is an investment now - "it's gone out of control... but you can see how it came into existence."

- CONSIDER EVERYTHING GREAT ART - TRY GIVING ALL THINGS THAT KIND OF ATTENTION (if just for the semester)

- Close reading of Art and Lies text - come in ready to ask lots of questions. Check out her website,

Jeanette Winterson, "Art and Lies"

Describe the two key terms in this title:

I've heard this argument previously: art is a lie told to reveal truth. A painting, for example, is not a completely-true representation of its subject. It is influenced by the artist's mind, style, eye sight, and methods. Further, one person's point of view of a single object, even the same object, can vary widely from another person's point of view of that object. In view of this, isn't art a kind of methodical, thought-out lie? Than again, no one looks at the apples in a Cezanne still life thinking those apples are up for eating - it's obvious the apples are part of a two-dimensional representation of apples using paint. Also, the painting was not intended to deceive people - it was meant to represent the subject and whatever meaning the artist endowed it with. Is it a lie if the art being questioned does not try to be anything other than what it is?

Strictly, in terms of representing apples that are not real, physical, bite-into-and-eat-them apples, the painting above is a lie. That table cloth is not up for sale, you can't eat those apples, and that bottle of wine is available to no one. But Cezanne never started out with that in mind - this is a classic composition, an artistic meditation on space, texture, objects, whether art can be something like an apple on a table cloth, and use of a specific medium. When the intent of the artist matches the product, is it still a lie? To say Yes to that seems horribly shortsighted.

Is it okay to use lies to get to a position where one can create art, then? In Virginia Woolfe's A Room of One's Own, she uses the imaginary existence of Shakespeare's sister to demonstrate how life would have gone for a women with Shakespeare's genius. She theorized that woman's life would end early and very unhappily. This woman would have had to use deception to make opportunities available to her - she would have had to run away, and she would have had to compromise herself and her safety in the attempt. Here, a female Picasso is faced with a similar challenge - that of using her genius to its fullest extent, developing it past the threshold normally left to women. Is it alright for her to go beyond what her family and community thinks is decent and just to achieve the same rights and sphere as a man? - even though she has more than enough talent to do so? A lie looks like a tool, like a paint brush or bucket, when the question is poised this way.

Felicia Heman's poem

Group work on Felicia Herman's poem "The Child and Flowers":

("For a day..." to "...each human heart." Pages 2 and 3.)

"For a day is coming to quell the tone
That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!
And to dim thy brow with a touch of care,
Under the gloss of its clustering hair;
And to tame the clash of thy cloudless eyes
Into the stillness of autumn skies;
And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part,
Midst the hidden things of each human heart!"

1) Is the meaning of the poem the same in all three versions? Does the format affect the meaning?

- the meaning is the same, but the text gives a different feeling: the TEI version made some of us indifferent, because the code was so distracting - it didn't add to the poem's overall meaning or our understanding of it. The form affects the meaning, not the way its processed. To me, the image version of the poem gave me a context to read the poem in: the older paper, the type of font chosen, influenced me.

2) What difference, if any, will digitizing make to our understanding of poems?

- Metadata! Metadata makes a big difference. To the uneducated-in-html-type, the site of all that coding looks like a headache waiting to develop. On the other hand, it will also make poems widely available - no more hunting them down in obscure literary magazines or catching snippets on the web. In XML, the context of the poem - where this text would have originally appeared, and therefore who it was meant for, and when it was read (traveling, or in a library) - disappears.

Ironically, the page most people preferred and got the most out of, the image version, was the most expensive to come by. Very expensive equipment is needed to take such detailed pictures of things without hurting the (old, old, old) books and paper-sources they're from. The HTML poem, meanwhile, streamlines the poem - it makes it easy to access, since it's in a form and font most contemporary computer-users are familiar with.

3) How are each of these versions made (doesn't have to be a techy answer)? Versus how a book/pamphlet is made?

- Typos are very possible, among a host of problems with virtually-visualized text. A book and pamphlet have a more physical presence - the internet poems have a kind of intangibility to them that anything on paper does not.

Problems with audience - who is the audience? It's too mature for children, but it's about children. Is the poet writing to one's inner child? Ekphrastic - a poem written about something visual, or something visual using text as inspiration.

Appreciation of the aesthetic: "Nature has mines of such wealth..."

Frankenstein + JUXTA

No class Wednesday!

Friday: BB - Course Document - Poetess Archive - look at 3 version of the Bijou poem - do a close reading of the poem in the HTML version - Answer the following: Is the poem the same in these three versions? - What difference will digitizing make to our understanding of poems? - Bonus: Apply the poem's theme about art to the poem itself: does digitizing contribute to Heman's aim in writing this poem?

http://sarahoims390.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/tag-clouds/

1 - Create a tag cloud for your assigned Frankenstein passage (using above link)
2 - Compare textual versions using JUXTA
3 - Blog

Comparing the three texts:

There were significant differences in the texts. For example, the original 1818 version's tag cloud tagged the word "friend" more than anything else; the 1831 version tagged "converse", "creature", "friend", "man", and "spoke". In addition, the 1831 version's tag cloud contained a lot of adjectives: excited, unhappy. Others included dark, despair, mind, noble, misery. Beyond the interesting differences between the texts without analysis, I suppose Shelley's focus in writing Frankenstein changed when she edited the book later. The later version, maybe, concentrated more on the psychology and the individual.

Because the word that appeared most in the 1831 text was "creature", I googled "creature" and here is one of the images that popped up - a Frilled Shark!


Did Mary Shelley write three different novels? What is the difference in what the stranger agrees to in these three passages? Why does visualizing matter? How does it matter?

While the three novels have significant changes, and can be said to mean different things, the story is essentially the same one. The three texts contain the same characters, plot, plot twists, and ending. It's a story that, for all its cult fame, is really a meaningful story debating issues relevant to any human being. Shelley's editing to her own work might have broadened or altered the story's focus in its three forms, but I think it's still the same novel even when the text differs between editions.

The 1831 version goes into more detail of what a best friend should be to a person - that this person should challenge and complete the other. This sounds a lot like what people talk about when they talk about soul mates.

Visualizing the texts the way we did in class helps reminds us of details we might otherwise have overlooked. Without sharp reading of the 1831 text I might not have noticed which words popped up most often. It offers another angle to analyze a text by.

- Kirstyn Leuner (King Arthur meets Lady Guinevere)

- Poetess archive

- Epic art in modern life, book V of Aurora Leigh:
1) Define epic art and modern life
2) Can there be heroes in modern life? - according to the poem? to you?
3) Who are the modern day equivalents of the poets that A.L. is writing about? (in YOUR opinion)

1) Lines 221-2: an epic "... is living art,/ Which thus presents and thus records true life." In A.L.'s opinion, epic art and modern life are, by necessity, closely related. Modern life is contemporary existence, having to do with everyone alive; epic art records a living, true presentation of it.

2) According to A.L., heroes can exist: "Nay, if there's room for poets in this world/ A little overgrown (I think there is),..." (Lines 200-1). She describes poets as being heroic, for dedicating their life's work to the history and existence of the people around them.

I think most heroes are unsung, anonymous people. They are also not called heroes so much as "role-models".

3) The modern day equivalents of the poets A.L. is talking about are everyday people. Lines 151-2: "All actual heroes are essential men,/ And all men possible heroes..." She's very frank, even blunt, when she wants to be - an excellent mouthpiece, on occasion, for the author herself.

Speaker notes

Bess Calhoun on Aurora Leigh

- Life of Elizabeth Barret Browning

- Group Work:
1) It'd be a lie to say "yes" and become Romney's wife, and she considers herself an honest person.
2) She is appealing to G-d for what she wants, not what anyone else wants; thanking G-d that she said "no" instead of "yes" to Romney; defends her decision by saying her will was given to her by G-d, so it is G-d's will.
3) She doesn't need things to be happy; her soul's life is not bound up in material things, it depends on her for happiness and fulfillment. Wants to rise above her mortal state through the soul, into heaven.
4) Convinced that Aurora will starve without a man to support her; disappointed in Aurora's rebellious attitude towards her demands, including her wish that she marry Romney.

Woman's work - Book 1, lines 455 on
Response to what Romney says - Book 2, lines 356 on

- Aurora is "caught between two binaries of what a woman should be"

- Romney's speech, Book 2, lines 218-25 - self-contradictory!! An obviously-flawed ideology!! Christ sacrificed himself, and women can't produce a female Christ, though they can be Saints? Saints are people who had to sacrifice themselves just to be sainted - they were martyrs. In that line of logic, there certainly could be a female Christ. Eat your words, Romney Leigh!!

- Aurora uses language to further her cause - Book 2, lines 400-6: she acts and sounds subservient and deferential, but in being so she refuses to do or be what he wants.

- Important to recognize that Aurora does not exactly what she wants - her life as self-supported artist is hard, lonely, and without relief.

Class notes, "Aurora Leigh"

TO THE RIGHT:
Victorian swimwear! (Haha).


- Hopkins sonnet, "To Christ My Lord"

On Elizabeth Barret Browning:

- 1850: Elizabeth Barret Browning considered for position of Poet Laureate.
- She was radical in her politics and very outspoken
- Her father: an enormous personality who didn't want any of his children to marry; he cloistered her, and she developed a dependence on morphine.
- 1845: Met Robert Browing through letter, and they fell in love. A year later they eloped to Italy.

On Aurora Leigh:

- To "live" - it has two uses: to be alive spiritually and physically
- Acculturated - habituated to what society says (ie, when Aurora moves inland, in Britain)
- Aurora is left with a sense of having been adored by her parents while very young, especially by her mother, "the mother's rapture slew her" - she thinks, if her mother had lived longer, Aurora might have had an easier time fitting into society
- She says she looks for the kind of deep, unconditional love that her life lacks after her mother dies
- The words you use to describe the world also describe, to an extent, how you think and feel about that world; words and the possibilities they open for a person are beautiful and infinite
- Passage from Book 1:

"They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words;
Which things are corals to cut life upon,..." - cutting - like teething, but on words, etc.

Describe Aurora from "Aurora Leigh"

I think this doll, to the right, is the perfect representation of Aurora - the blowsy hair, the blue eyes, the moody/affected disinterest, and the pose is perfect. Like a Tim Burton, Nightmare Before Christmas-version of the character.

Aurora is smart, idealistic, naive, rebellious, and reflective. She has to be quiet in front of others, like the vicar and her aunt's friends, but she has a very lively mind that finds expression through poetry (her father's, by the way: since the books and poetry belonged to her father, it's another way of identifying herself as his daughter and tying herself closer to him).

She has an active, playful side that clearly makes her aunt very uneasy because, to her, it's an unfeminine, wild quality. Any wildness or expression of liveliness must be tempered to something more acceptable; anything not English must be ironed smooth within Aurora, though the niece makes this kind of work hard for the aunt. Ultimately, it doesn't appear to be very successful work.

Aurora also feels very much like an outsider, even though she never belonged anywhere in the first place. Born to a grieving father who never recovers the shock of losing his wife, she spent most of her childhood in solitude with said sad father, then with her aunt in England as the obedient niece.

And here's a LINK to a great Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry skit (related because it is a skit about the Brownings).

First half of "The Lifted Veil"

After looking at two images of women:

Lady on right: "... and this camera, try to keep shoulders back, lift my chin a little, mouth closed - should have gotten my teeth whitened before this, why didn't that appointment get made, I could have called, why didn't I call? Wish there was a better background behind me, it's kind of blah, make the smile reach to your eyes, hope it's working, shoulders down and back shoulders down and back shoulders down and back, I wonder if I'll look washed out, when can I move on, what's going on up ahead?"

- Mandell: "So, I'm channeling AIRHEADS!"

- "When you look at someone, you can (or can you?) imagine what you're thinking through all kinds of clues - it's a way of understanding the person in front of you."

- Does Latimer really have the supernatural powers he thinks he does? (Group work - get specific pages if possible):

We didn't question it at first - considered the possibility of Latimer's being very, very good at reading nonverbal cues, and he has a very good imagination - Romeo complex - he never sees anyone outside of a handful of people, and later in life he sees even fewer people, so the possibility of testing this possible power diminishes, and it gets harder to judge whether it's real or not - in fact, this discounts the alleged truth of it. His visions are bizarre, though.

- Why can't he read Bertha's mind? He's projecting what he wants of her onto her.

- What makes her such a great screen to project on?

- Goes to Geneva (Frankenstein's home), and imitates Rousseau by lying around in a boat.

- To the Right: How I imagine Bertha and Latimer look.

Class Notes, the last on "Frankenstein"

- About the ending - was this to be expected? Was it boring? It was a little expected, if not boring. I didn't expect Walton would talk to the monster - clearly, the monster didn't think so, either. Since this is a dramatic novel, what could be more dramatic than Victor dying, and the monster exiling himself to the far North where he might die? This is what I imagine would have happened if this story were more realistic: Walton's ship gets thoroughly stuck, and Victor dies because of the cold. Rumors of cannibalism drift through the crew as its members weaken. The story never leaves the area, and the ship rots in the ice. The end.

- Does Victor contradict himself when, after refusing to tell Walton how to create a monster like he did, he instructs the crew to persevere in the expedition? Victor believes in ACCOMPLISHMENT and HUMAN WILL; this is not in opposition to not telling Walton the recipe for "Frankenstein Monsters a la mode." Victor does not want his mistake repeated by someone else making a monster, but he does want civilization and human ability to reach its limits and beyond.

- Tomorrow: "The Lifted Veil" - an attack on the Romantic hero.


- On the 'hero' I created on HeroMachine:

I created a version of Elizabeth. She was all that was still good and decent about Victor: she was the focus and the source of unconditional love and companionship, towards Victor and his family; she was a protective, guarding presence in his life, to whom he intended to trust the horrible secret of the monster after they were married, and who, I think, has a hidden reservoir of heroism and determination. The lantern in her left hand represents that kind of light, a power of insight and goodness. The shield in her right hand indicates her protectiveness. The lynx I think might be the secret daring and aggression she has within, but who, as a genteel woman, she has to hide.

Does Latimer resemble Victor?

Frankenstein v. The Lifted Veil

Latimer and Victor are not too similar. They are both self-centered and trapped within their own heads. The former is passive and weak in character, a very self-pitying excuse for an adult; Victor, at least, owns up to his mistakes, even though he shifts the blame more towards Fate than himself. Victor is far more active and assertive. He is less insipid, though this might be because Latimer's education was such a bad fit, and Victor was spoiled with a very expensive, suitable education. Latimer's mind, for want of the kind of structure and application it needs, deteriorates a little in adulthood - he is fanciful, and his family does not take him too seriously in the beginning. Victor is always seen as his father's immediate successor, and he certainly never questions it. He knows it is his legal right to take his place as head of the household on his father's death. I think Latimer would waffle on the subject, if presented with it.

Does Victor's advice to Walton change by the end of the novel?

Well, let's see:

The story begins when Walton rescues Victor, tells him about the purpose of the expedition, and Victor tells Walton about manufacturing a monster in order to curb Walton's grandiose ideals.

The story ends with Victor berating Walton's crew for quitting the expedition out of fear for their lives.

Yes, the advice seems to have changed. In the telling, perhaps Victor became enamored with himself all over again through Walton's adoration. Maybe, despite his own failure, the warning he gave Walton did not read as, "Don't go through with this harebrained expedition to the North Pole, my friend," but as, "Do not do this looking greatness, but seek truth and honor for yourself." Victor's purpose in life was such a selfish one that, rather than curbing Walton's plans completely, maybe he just wanted to impose a bit of realism and self-awareness on them. They are big plans that have the potential to change the world and contribute to human knowledge - that is a worthy undertaking. To do it simply because a person wants to be well-known, never forgotten, makes the effort petty and silly. This way, the apparent change in Victor's message to Walton would make more sense.

How does the Monster's tale make you feel about him?

The monster's version of the story makes me think two things:

1) He has a point. Cruelty and the strictest isolation have led to his being monstrous.
2) He is very persuasive - more persuasive than I'm comfortable with. It makes me distrust him.

The monster is very pitiable. He is made of human parts, so it stands to reason that he would have human needs and wants. Even the loneliest person finds some kind of consolation or company; the kind of isolation the monster is subjected to, though, is complete. Worse, he has these needs and wants that are part of his nature, and he is never taught what to do with them - he is just left to figure it out on his own. For all his threats to be a scourge on humanity, out of hate and loneliness and pain, I don't think he would ever have gone through with it - he just wanted Victor Frankenstein's attention. When he extracts his revenge on Victor, and when Victor dies, the monster does not continue torturing innocents - he walks willingly towards his own death.

At the same time, he is incredibly good at rhetoric. There is a "Woe is me"-tone to his argument that reminds me a great deal of Victor. The monster sees his worst qualities as indicating that Fate wants him to be a monster, not just look like one. Especially when he talks about how his hate built up, slowly choking out his better feelings, he does it in a way that excuses himself. He is a monster, and his 'parent' neglected him in the most awful way, but he had opportunities to do something. He had a tendency to rush things and ruin them, though. He rushed Victor's decline in health by killing the people he loved, initially out of impulse, and later he sprung on old Delacey when he should have left a written note for the entire family as a way of slowly introducing himself into their circle.

I do feel sorry for the monster, and I think he was treated very harshly. At the same time, it takes a great deal of will power and energy to invest in the kind of long-term grudge the monster built up - it's an active, conscious, slow-burning fire that needs to be fed constantly. Instead of doing what he could for his own character and life, he lashed out. Maybe this was due to immaturity or a lack of experience - he had only been alive a few years by the end of the novel, and the maturity rate for a lab-originated monster is unknown. By the end of the novel, though, I trusted him as much as I trusted Victor - not a lot.

Is Walton like or unlike Victor? How?

YES. Yes, and yes again.

Victor is (as we have hashed over in class on multiple occasions) a self-involved, self-serving egotist intent on realizing his genius in a Great way - as in, he wants to be thought of as Great, on a level with Shakespeare and Julius Caesar. To do so, he is willing to put everything at risk - even the things and people he loves. He justifies this with monologues on Fate, Destiny, and a Tragic Flaw - the similarities between Prince Hamlet and himself are remarkable. While he does express enormous guilt and responsibility for the consequences of his reckless experiment, he terms that guilt and responsibility as things that were predestined for him. He was meant to suffer (like Jesus Christ). His enormous genius could only bring either greatness or destruction on him. To listen to him speak is to ignore all the times he had to pause and reflect on whether or not what he was doing was in his best interest. There were plenty of red flags, and even more opportunities to stop and consider what he was doing, but he ignored them. Even at the end of the novel he conducts himself, not like a man who failed because of plain human stupidity, but like a disgraced emperor.

Which brings me to the main point - not only does Victor behave like dethroned royalty, but Walton encourages and engages in supporting this fallacy. He, also, wants to be Great, an equal to Shakespeare, etc. He respects grand feats of intelligence and ability, and despite the horror of the experiment Victor's monster is a feat Walton respects. He is currently pursuing a hopeless, dangerous career of his own purely because he burns to do something big, something no one's attempted and succeeded at - he wants to clear the path first. And all during the telling of the story, Walton appears to worship Victor, as a close friend and like mind. Walton submits to a kind of hero worship. The two are like the much-repeated "two peas in a pod".

Oh, my dear Dr. Frankenstein...

TO RIGHT: Luzern, Switzerland

The bizarre thing about Switzerland is this: every single view is postcard-perfect. It's almost freakishly beautiful in terms of aesthetics.

... and the Swiss have fantastic desserts.





TO LEFT: A view of the Rhein River in Germany...

... Germans, also, have excellent desserts. I suggest the pastries and cakes.



More on Frankenstein:

- After the Delaceys reject the monster, he rejects humanity. He also seeks out Victor F, to request a female counterpart so he won't be lonely. Victor wants to make the second monster before he marries Elizabeth, but destroys the unfinished monster to prevent it from reproducing with the first.

- The monster extracts revenge on Victor through his family - he kills Elizabeth, in addition to the murders of William and Justine Moritz, and Clerval.

- What if there is no monster?? Are Victor and the Monster one and the same person? Is this a possible argument for the novel? If so, why does Victor wants his loved ones to die - why does he want to kill them? (2 research questions)

AGAINST: Why would Victor kill, in the guise of the monster, these people he loves so much?

FOR: The following are quotes from Victor; each uses the word "wretch", which the monster applies to himself just as often.

"During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture."
"I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness."
"I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment."

- Is this wretchedness Victor achieves on purpose?

- Why would a person want to be completely alone? Is it part of a person's possible believe that others could hurt him?

- Even the monster wants a mate - people are social animals, and if even a manufactured human being wants a mate that is its equal, how can Victor really want to be alone? Could he just want an equal, and could he feel he is too horrible for as innocent and virtuous a woman as Elizabeth?

- Look at the times when Victor calls himself satanic, and see how Walton, and even the monster, worships him. This satanic hero is willing to defy limits put to him by authorities and G-d to the death and the loss of everything you love - is this admirable or genuinely heroic? Or is Shelley saying there's something suspect about it? Is the kind of neglect Victor inflicts on his family good? - is this connected to the novel form, to sci-fi? Victor is daring, independent, unafraid of voicing his opinions, and a force in character (see how often Walton remarks on the impression he has of Victor's person). Whether or not one agrees with his actions he gets what he sets out to get: when he decided on an education, he left home and dove into a chosen field. When he felt set on the project, he pursued the project until its awful conclusion. When he decided the monster had to die, he never wavered from that plan. How many people in his life die through no fault of their own, though? A lot. Victor's life and talents are wasted in a pursuit anyone would have called insanity, and not just because it was seen as impossible. His G-d complex gave him a disregard for others the like of which I haven't seen often in literature (and that's saying something, considering literature is filled with similarly great, egotistic characters). I prefer to think Shelley thinks this kind of behavior very suspect - especially when compared with other, more sedate, less radical characters, like Elizabeth and Victor's father, who both suffer their personal grievances in quiet so as to support the family unit. They put themselves last on their lists, while Victor always put himself first.

Assign: Google "Hero Machine"; make a hero out of one of the characters in Frankenstein.

"Frankenstein" class notes!

Class notes on Frankenstein:

- Shelley was 19 when she wrote this novel!

- The monster could represent art, AND it could represent that, if you bring up children properly, you'll be helping to make a better world.

- Thomas Day - novelist; adopted 2 children (to train as the perfect wife - he got two so he had one back-up girl); he didn't teach them anything, he wanted them to learn everything for themselves so they wouldn't have prejudices. Ex: he let them stick their hands in fire. His two girls grew up to be schizophrenic!

- William Goldwin: pointed out that peasants had grown up taught by aristocrats, who taught that rulers ruled through killing. They were badly taught, in essence.

- (And then we danced... oh, the mortification... of dancing... in front of classmates.. to Rihanna).

- Victor's leaving Frankenstein, and the violence the monster is subjected to, are two forms of incorrect teaching. (Comparison to Columbine tragedy made).

- Does the monster make a moral choice? Morals are taught mostly by parents and other sources of authority - without either, can one have a moral compass?

- Do parents use their children to prove something? (To each other, to other people, etc). What are motivations for parents to do things like enroll their kids in violin classes, clubs, sports, etc.? Using that ultimate, unconditional love parents have for their kids as a compass, parents would want to provide everything for them. They see genius and absolute beauty in their offspring, and they want to encourage its growth. Parents like doing things for their kids that make them happy - impressing or pleasing a child is gratifying. It is also a way to keep kids occupied, so the parent does not have to deal with them as much. Some parents really don't know what to do with their kids when left alone with them for an extended period of time. Almost as bad is the parent who pushes the child to excel at something he or she failed at in childhood - finding success in the subsequent generation, and being able to say, "I got her/him involved in that club, I got the star of that team where he/she is now." Parents are still human.

- What happens if a children is made to live out his/her parent's wishes, or made to prove something? You get a really confused child. You get a child who has to put extra work into figuring out what he or she enjoys and wants to do with her or his life. That child looks towards the parents for approval on everything, instead of building up a sense of success and failure within themselves. The kid also runs the chance of growing up to be neurotic, weak-willed, and dependent.

- He kills William, knowing him to be Victor's brother, and he frames Justine, proving that he knows something of right and wrong - how much is this like a child trying to get attention from his/her parents? He does it just to get Victor's attention.

- Does a creator owe its creation happiness? I think a creator owes its creation the means to be happy - how to be happy, how to go about making yourself happy, given the proper restraints and constructs.

- Deterministic - nurture, not nature - argues that a child doesn't have any morals or personality for itself.

BELOW: Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry the Mouse. My point being: we did NOT look like that, unfortunately!

More class notes on "Frankenstein"

(At left: Meet Frankenstein the Great Dane puppy) :)


Why the intense desire to prevent someone from dying - to create life?

- It's the ultimate power, the divine power - ergo, sheer ambition.
- He'd like to have prevented his love from dying.
- It would prevent his "child" from dying, since he can bring him back to life again.

Why is it worse to be alive and watch your children die?

- You want to see them live their life to its fullest, and dying early is not that.
- The love for your children is so intense, they can hurt you the most - if they died, it'd hurt so much more. Is this a reason not to have children?
- Staying aloof, from love and having children, keeps one from getting hurt - a selfish thing to do, but understandable.

- Story of Prometheus
- "Prometheus Unbound" (Victor is the modern Prometheus)
- "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"
- "Alastor"

WHY WOULD YOU KILL SOMEONE OR SOMETHING THAT LOVES YOU? WHY WOULD YOU WANT THE OBJECT OF YOUR MOST INTENSE LOVE TO DIE? You love them so much it hurts. When you value something that much, the possibility of not having it in the future is as painful as it is terrifying. No one wants to live with terror and pain continuously, but loving as completely as parents love their children or spouses love each other is scary. It's a fright that never goes away. If you make that object of love go away,you'll have a part in dictating where it goes. That kind of control, even used destructively, means control over yourself and your life. People want control.

- "Unconditional, deep, divine love is scary as hell... when someone really deeply loves you, your immediate reaction is to push them away so they don't hurt you." - Mandell

- p247-48, "Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude": The poet wanders, unaware of an Arabic women's deep love for her, and dreams of her later. He dreams she is like him, a poet; they are soul mates. Line 188, "Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes," he wakes up, and he's haunted by her.

- Maybe he didn't want to get involved with someone real, who could hurt or disappoint him, so he chased a specter instead. Whatever his real reason, he dies looking for her.

- "Does Victor spurn Nature's choicest gifts?" - YES, again and again, YES YES YES.

- Victor tries to make Frankenstein beautiful, but all of his efforts just show how hideous the monster is - how yellow, how monstrous, etc. Then he dreams: "the wildest of dreams" - about Elizabeth, who appears to die in his arms, and looks like his dead mother. This suggests he created the monster to replace his dead mother or prevent Elizabeth from dying.

- Mary Shelley accuses Victor of being a bystander when he should have taken action (ie, in the death of Justine). Victor turns himself into the ultimate sufferer, a man with a "hell within myself" - such an egotist.

- Start with p75, when the monster begins his story. (II, Ch3, in class edition)