Channeling Ireland...

Met the writing goal for the day--well, wrote 4 pages, not 5, but feeling quite self-satisfied with the results.  Five pages forthcoming tomorrow.

I've been listening to lots of Mumford & Sons in an attempt to better channel the Irish vibe...

Page 13...My husband the warrior...

So I've taken all of the friendly advice and started writing.  I'd hoped to be knocking out 5 pages a day, but it's turning out to be more like 2-3 as I'm being a bit of a perfectionist.  But hopefully this will save me from making generalizations or hasty analyses which would require heavy revision later on.

My only concern is how am I going to to fit everything I have to say about Thackeray and Ireland in 40-45 pages? I'm on 13 and have just covered my intro, his background with Ireland and am just now starting my breakdown of the Irish Sketchbook.  Still need to cover Barry Lyndon, The Great Hoggarty Diamond, his letters & illustrations and the various Irish characters who pop-up throughout the body of his work! I'm trying to have faith, I'm sure it will come together.  At least I'm quite satisfied with my approach and introduction...


"Thackeray’s writings on Ireland are less straightforward; unlike Edgeworth (whose work he greatly admired) his Irish fictions don’t definitively support English rule; unlike Anne Radcliffe, Charlotte Bronte or Elizabeth Gaskell, he doesn’t clearly denounce Catholicism in favor of Protestantism; unlike Trollope, he reaffirms many Irish stereotypes and where he offers sympathy to struggling Irish persons and characters he likewise attributes blame and criticism.  And just as Thackeray consistently rebukes anti-Catholic sentiment and inspires empathy for Ireland’s impoverished, he reasserts the gamut of derogatory Irish characterizations including drunkenness, laziness, and uncleanliness in both his letters and fictions.  In the realm of Irish literary studies, scholars repeatedly try, and fail, to classify William Thackeray as either Irish sympathizer or colonial supporter.  While his most prominent biographer, Gordon N. Ray, credits his stereotypical depictions of the Irish (and other non-white, non English groups) to Thackeray’s “unfortunate nineteenth century prejudices,” contemporary postcolonial scholars such as Neil McCaw and Laura Berol divide the author from his various narrators and assure us that Thackeray is using irony to cast the blame upon the English reader rather than the Irish target.  However, careful consideration of the bulk of Thackeray’s letters, fictions, articles and illustrations pertaining to Ireland reveals a complex web wrought with English guilt and judgment, criticism of the Irish and denouncement of his own English preconceptions and prejudices.  This rich and complicated “gray area” is consistently overlooked as scholars confine themselves to the realm of his fiction and limit their analysis to the scope of definitive answers.  When his letters and articles are read alongside his fictions, a more developed and conflicted perspective emerges of an Englishman torn between the nationalistic views of his native country and what he observes in Ireland that is incongruous with his established belief system. Thackeray offers conflicting views of both the English and the Irish, as he typically narrates Irish-English conflict as he sees it, with little effort to conform to either nation’s or religious group’s political ideologies."
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On a separate note, my heart was in my throat last evening as we drove home from the christening of my cousin's adorable twins--Craig was taking the stage for Philly Fight Night to box it out with another amateur in his weight class, he representing the Law School, the other fighter representing Wharton.  I called my dad as he watched the live video, and learned the fight was called in 47 seconds... because Craig was slaughtering the poor guy!


My dad somehow taped and sent me the video--it was a massacre and I'm beyond proud... maybe I'm a bit twisted! Regardless, my husband's clearly a warrior and I hope this isn't his last time in a boxing ring... 

Holy cow! Success!

Despite the rain outside (and Blue's outright refusal to get wet, regardless of how long he might have to hold it), it's been a gloriously productive day! First, I uploaded my dozens and dozens and dozens of pages of notes to Kinko's website and had it printed as spiral notebook for the low price of $15! Having all of my citations/quotes there for me to flip through and annotate has made this process abundantly easier!


And, I met my writing goal today: 5 pages.  I figure at 5 pages a day, I'll have my new refined version of Chapter One up and running when Craig arrives next week.  


To be clear, I have notes and quotes and rants and paragraphs for three chapters thus far, but currently the refined and finalized products are being restructured, and I'm once more, for the last time, rebuilding Chapter One from the ground up.


More good news, my abstract for the Mid-Atlantic Conference of British Studies, March 26-27 at Pennsylvania State University, Abington, was accepted! I'll be heading back to Philly for that weekend to not only reconnect with the academic community but see some of my Philly friends over the weekend.  Plus, this means I'm writing about Thackeray and India next, as I need to have 10 solid pages to present on!  


Good things all around, hopefully more momentum tomorrow!

Mucho Productivo!

I've been having some health problems and being bed/couch-ridden the better part of the week has really dampened my spirits.  I came across a passage in one of Thackeray's letters (1854) that really summed it all up:

"I think I have been ill ever so many times since you went: that is why the time has passed away so swiftly: why I haven’t written either books or letters, and why the latter must be so stupid.  I mope about alone, avoid company, sit up stairs in my rooms, and am sick of being unwell, that’s a fact” (Letters & Private Papers I: 656).

On the upside, I found a wonderful doctor--at first I was put off that she's my age (or younger) but then remembered, "wait, I'm freak'n old," and she's been incredible!

Thanks to her, today was 'mucho productivo'--Liana feel free to correct my butchered Spanglish!

Made it through:
Ó Síochái, Séamas. Social Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2009.
Sadly, compiled of essays tailored to specific authors, nothing on Bill Thack.  Pulled a few key quotes from the introduction.

Fisher, Judith L. “Image Versus text in the Illustrated Novels of William Makepeace Thackeray.” Victorian Literature and the Victorian Imagination. Ed. Christ, Carol T. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. (60-87).

This article was brilliant! Focused specifically on Vanity Fair in her critique of the relationship between Thackeray's illustrations and his writings.  Pointed out that the dark drawings of characters like Becky Sharp are to reinforce to the reader not to trust the narrator (who continually makes excuses for her plotting).  Excited to apply these ideas to Irish Sketchbook and see how they hold up!

Klotz, Ganther.  “Thackeray’s Ireland: Image and Attitude in the Irish Sketchbook and Barry Lyndon. Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1987. (95-102).

This article is so spot on and even irked me in that several of the points he makes reflect my own ideas... wish it wasn't from 1987!!

On a side note, I have 200+ pages of notes.  Craig and Noella are going to inflict bodily harm if I don't start producing finalized pages ;-)

Some pictures of interest...

I just wanted to share a few pictures: Bill Thack himself, a sketch of Jane (around age 30), and a drawing he did of her looking forlorn.  Perhaps I'm overly imaginative, but I feel you can see that he loved her...

A Day Late & A Dollar Short

“The following entry applies to Thursday, Februrary 17.  Yesterday entailed illness and doctors visits, but enough of that!”

Yesterday I neglected Ranciere's The Politics of Literature in favor of Edgar Harden's two volume collection of Thackeray's hereto unpublished letters--I felt that Bill Thack (as he sometimes dubbed himself) and I needed to reconnect.  In scanning for relevant letters and journal entries I found maybe a dozen gems and made it through 500+ pages, which still doesn't count for one of the volumes!  Afterwards, Grandma and I cashed in a "Groupon" from Craig (our Valentine's Day gift) and went to Mama's on the Hill (Italian restaurant in downtown St. Louis).  Appetizers were divine, salad was interesting, main course subpar, but as always we shared sparkling conversation when I wasn't fixated on Blue scratching up the interior of my new-used car...

We got home with just enough time to Skype my brother in Japan and watch Cary Grant in Father Goose.  He's truly one of the few Hollywood stars who managed to be drop-dead sexy at 60+! As much as women gush about present-day Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, they kind of give me the nursing home vibe… but Cary certainly has it going on…

But back to Bill Thack’s letters: several years ago I wrote a paper shredding the false stories in his biographies surrounding Jane Brookfield.  As I mentioned before, Thackeray’s frail Irish wife, Isabelle, went mad shortly after the birth of their third child and had to be permanently institutionalized, a huge drain on both his heart and his wallet.  And as he was a good Victorian man (supposedly with a pesky VD to remind him of his youthful dalliances with French prostitutes) he could never “date” or remarry as Isabelle was living.  Thus, when he met his old friend, William Brookfield’s, wife Jane (ten years his junior, 5”9, beautiful from a literary family) he was smitten.  That much the biographies have correct! But if you pick up any Thackerayan biography it will tell how Thackeray and Jane were innocently in love her husband came between them like a tyrant and forbid them to continue their friendship.  For my aforementioned paper, I read ALL of Thackeray’s published letters to Jane AND all of her published letters from throughout her lifetime.  It’s true she and William were woefully unhappy, despite finally conceiving children after 10 years of marriage, but the truth is she was a notorious flirt.  Her husband was a clergyman, and not a wildly successful one, plus 10-15 years older.  She found him severe and often dull and thus used her sharp mind and lovely face to garner attention from male company.  She’s the perfect Victorian hypocrite, never consummating anything and refusing to be in the company of “scandalous women” like Caroline Lamb who stepped out on their abusive husbands, and surely would never give George Eliot (Marion Evans) the time of day.

But back to Thackeray—their letters became too familiar, and in a judgmental 19^th century society, William Brookfield was right to call a halt to their gushing letters and Thackeray’s “innocent” proclamations of love.  And I’m fully convinced that Thackeray believed her husband was an abusive ogre he wanted to save Jane from, while she wasn’t attracted to the 6”4 grey-haired paunchy author, but LOVED his celebrity, and for this reason alone encouraged the flirtation.   Biographies will have you believe it was true love cast asunder, but in the new volume of letters I’m reading, Thackeray himself said “[Brookfield] acted like a man.” Still, though he mentions in one letter he can’t bare the idea she played him like a “fool,” he writes the following note to Kate Perry (not the “Fireworks” version): “Kiss her: tell her that in giving that frightful lecture my only thought was to see her; that all week (except Wednesday) I prowled around her house hoping to see her—that near or far I am only hers and always hers.  Console the dear friend and believe in all my gratitude…” (Letters & Private Papers I: 430).   I get too wound up reading such lines, getting indignant that this coquette hurt my “dear friend” Bill Thack, so deeply, but I guess that’s why I know this story all too well…

But ‘what does this have to do with Susan’s dissertation?’ my father asks.  ‘Not much!’ she responds.  Save I’ve had a bit of a break through with his letters composed in French—and God bless Edgar Harden for translating them! Just as he confessed his “stalking” habits to Kate Perry in French, I found a similarly revealing letter composed to a French journal that tore apart the Irish Sketchbook—only in French does he seem uninhibited enough to stand by his anti-Catholic, anti-Irish rants, instead of hiding beneath the veil of his narrator.  In my opinion, this blows many of the postcolonialist assertions out of the water, but more on this tomorrow… today I finished these invaluable unpublished letters!

**Laptop is dying, no editing of the blog today! **

A brief rant about the "F" word...

More to come on my French philosopher friend later (and no, the aforementioned "F" word is not French)! But I'm irked by several recent postings on Facebook.  One of my former students noted that her current professor called her the "F" word yesterday--feminist--and one of her male Facebook friends jokingly noted "we can't be friends anymore."  

A wave of frustration hit me: why has "feminist" become such a dirty word? I had this same conversation with my dad, for whom the word conjures angry, hypocritical female extremists.  I'd say it's Rush Limbaugh's fault, but it would be complete a cop-out to blame it on conservatives.  We've all complacently let the words feminist & femi-nazi merge together.  When our generation hears the word "feminist" it conjures images of buzz-cuts (and buzz saws!), man-hating angry females looking to spread their venom to innocent younger women.  And we buy into this as women because the entire world has taught us that being feminine and attractive are among our top priories--hence we now have fourteen-year-olds running around with "Juicy" and "You Wish" scrawled across their asses: if boys want them, they win, as the hottest girl is the best girl.  Or as Liz Lemon notes on 30 Rock, when Jack brags about dating the beautiful news anchor, Avery, Liz exclaims: "I know her! I saw her on Maxim's 'I'd Rape that 100!'"  

But back to the issue at hand.  Last semester I was teaching my unit on gender for my EN 101 (freshman comp) class and one of my most dedicated and driven male cadets said, "I'm sorry, but my wife needs to understand that she's in charge of keeping the house clean, making the meals, and taking care of the kids."  Always the devil's advocate, I noted that I was currently working 50 hours a week and writing a dissertation while my husband was focusing on his three classes.  Who did he think bought the groceries and ran the vacuum?  When someone countered by asking if my husband was "whipped," I told her that she was welcome to ask the grizzly veteran herself.  After what I felt was a productive discussion another male student, who didn't speak up much in class, meekly walked into my office and asked, "Ma'am, you're not a feminist, are you?" He whispered the word like it was a profanity, as if he was asking if I was secretly a communist or perhaps a KKK member.  We had a productive chat about the term, but I'm still baffled that in 2011 we've let that word be turned into something profane.

So please remember, if someone who stands up against racism is an 'anti-racist activist,' a person who stands up against blatant sexism is a 'feminist'.  Her goal isn't to make all women burn their bras, break off their heels, and bite the heads of men, but rather resonant of the goals of the 'anti-racial activist': to be treated fairly, paid the same, and recognized for her talents not her cup size. 

Ladies, if you can’t stand your ground every time a disapproving man (or woman!) throws the “F” word at you, I suggest you get on board with Cartman’s views on gender: “If a woman told me what to do, I’d tell her to get back into the kitchen and make me some pie!”


Now back to my French philosopher friend... Must remember to focus on empire, not gender studies..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd30JESdb9o