Week 11

This class has been a pleasant suprise to me. Coming into the class, I was thinking that this class was going to be boring because I really am not a big reader, especially of classics. However, Dr. Ashworth found a way to make this class exceedingly more interesting than I ever thought possible. I think it was the class discussions, use of media, and mainly connecting the material with the present day which made the class interesting.

Probably my favorite section of the class was when we read and discussed Cotton Mather's "On Witchcraft". I feel like this discussion really set the scene for the time period we were viewing. The pilgrims were really beginning to develop different views about life and society. Those who were breaking away from the "norm" were usually labeled as witches and killed. However, this breaking away from the traditional beliefs seemed to set a trend for most of the readings which we viewed. From the Coquette to Emerson's piece on self-reliance, there was the reocurring theme of new ideas.

In the Coquette, Eliza really is breaking away from the traditional views of how a woman of her class should act. She chooses to go against the grain and be independent by "dating" to guys at one time. Many people during her time period may have labeled her a whore but I think what she really was doing was trying to break out of the handcuffs which was naturally placed on women in society. She was going to do her own thing no matter what others thought of her. I respect that.

Emerson's piece on self-reliance definately went against the traditional views. Up until this point, it seemed that the appropriate thing to do was to fit in as best as possible with everyone else. Flashy, bright colored clothing would only bring attention to yourself which in that case you may be looked upon as flaunting your wealth, or worse, a witch. Emerson was actually making the statement that everyone should care about their own personal happiness and not others'. He said that in order to find true happiness, you must become self-reliant. Do not rely on anybody or anything but yourself. This also goes against society's views because men and women were expected to marry and then rely on each other for support. Emerson is telling us to do the exact opposite. He is not telling us to not get married, hoiwever, he is saying that we should not have to rely on our partners in order to be happy. Quite the opposite actually. He says we can't rely on others in order to achieve self-reliance and true happiness.

Without these 19th century controversial views we studied throughout this quarter, life today would be very different than how it is now. The average marriage age is increasing every year. The United States has never been more religiously/culturally more diverse than it is now. You could say that the views during the 19th century created a more free and liberated America compared to the America prior to the 19th century.

The following article is about women and their role during the 19th century. I feel like it is appropriate to look at this article in order to see just where women like Emily Dickinson and Eliza Wharton were coming from.

"It takes a considerable leap of the imagination for a woman of the 21st century to realise what her life would have been like had she been born 150 years ago. We take for granted nowadays that almost any woman can have a career if she applies herself. We take for granted that women can choose whether or not to marry, and whether or not to have children, and how many.

Women of the mid-19th century had no such choices. Most lived in a state little better than slavery. They had to obey men, because in most cases men held all the resources and women had no independent means of subsistence. A wealthy widow or spinster was a lucky exception. A woman who remained single would attract social disapproval and pity. She could not have children or cohabit with a man: the social penalites were simply too high. Nor could she follow a profession, since they were all closed to women.

Girls received less education than boys, were barred from universities, and could obtain only low-paid jobs. Women's sole purpose was to marry and reproduce. At mid-century women outnumbered men by 360,000 (9.14m and 8.78m) and thirty percent of women over 20 were unmarried. In the colonies men were in the majority, and spinsters were encouraged to emigrate.

Most women had little choice but to marry and upon doing so everything they owned, inherited and earned automatically belonged to their husband. This meant that if an offence or felony was committed against her, only her husband could prosecute. Furthermore, rights to the woman personally - that is, access to her body - were his. Not only was this assured by law, but the woman herself agreed to it verbally: written into the marriage ceremony was a vow to obey her husband, which every woman had to swear before God as well as earthly witnesses. Not until the late 20th century did women obtain the right to omit that promise from their wedding vows.

In 1890, Florence Fenwick Miller (1854-1935), a midwife turned journalist, described woman's position succinctly:


Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held...under the arbitrary domination of another's will, and dependent for decent treatment exclusively on the goodness of heart of the individual master. (From a speech to the National Liberal Club)


Every man had the right to force his wife into sex and childbirth. He could take her children without reason and send them to be raised elsewhere. He could spend his wife's inheritance on a mistress or on prostitutes. Sometime, somewhere, all these things - and a great many more - happened. To give but one example, Susannah Palmer escaped from her adulterous husband in 1869 after suffering many years of brutal beatings, and made a new life. She worked, saved, and created a new home for her children. Her husband found her, stripped her of all her possessions and left her destitute, with the blessing of the law. In a fury she stabbed him, and was immediately prosecuted.

If a woman was unhappy with her situation there was, almost without exception, nothing she could do about it. Except in extremely rare cases, a woman could not obtain a divorce and, until 1891, if she ran away from an intolerable marriage the police could capture and return her, and her husband could imprison her. All this was sanctioned by church, law, custom, history, and approved of by society in general. Nor was it the result of ancient, outdated laws: the new (1857) divorce act restated the moral inequality. Mere adultery was not grounds for a woman to divorce a man; however, it was sufficient grounds for a man to divorce his wife.

Signs of rebellion were swiftly crushed by fathers, husbands, even brothers. Judge William Blackstone had announced that husbands could administer "moderate correction" to disobedient wives, and there were other means: as late as 1895, Edith Lanchester's father had her kidnapped and committed to a lunatic asylum for cohabiting with a man.

As a Marxist and feminist, she was morally and politically opposed to marriage.

Among the rich, family wealth automatically passed down the male line; if a daughter got anything it was a small percentage. Only if she had no brothers, came from a very wealthy family, and remained unmarried, could a woman become independent. A very wealthy woman might make a premarital agreement for her wealth to be held in a trust fund, but in the majority of cases marriage stripped a woman of all her assets and handed them to her husband.



Fitting in rather uncomfortably, even hypocritically, with this state of affairs was the concept of woman as a goddess placed on a pedestal and worshipped. This contradiction has been described admirably by R.J. Cruikshank.

"The Victorians, who tackled many big problems successfully, made a fearful hash of the problem of woman. Their moral dualism, their besetting weakness of dreaming of one thing and doing another, might be amusing in architecture or painting, but it involved endless cruelty towards flesh and blood. Woman in the abstract was as radiant as an angel, as dainty as a fairy - she was a picture on the wall, a statue in a temple, a being whose physical processes were an inscrutable mystery. She was wrapped by the Victorians in folds on folds, and layers on layers of clothes, as though she were a Hindu idol. She was hidden in the mysteries of petticoats; her natural lines were hidden behind a barricade of hoops and stays; her dress throughout the century emphasised her divorce from reality. She was a daughter of the gods divinely fair and most divinely tall; she was queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls; she was Helen, Beatrice, the Blessed Damozel, the Lady of Shalott. A romanticism as feverish as that could only bring unhappiness to its objects."

From reading Victorian novels and watching television costume dramas it is easy to forget that the vast majority of women were working class. Born without a penny, they began work between the ages of about 8 to 12 and continued until marriage. A woman's fate thereafter depended on her husband. If he earned enough to support her she would usually cease work, otherwise she worked all her life, taking short breaks to give birth. Anything she earned belonged to him.

Barred from all well-paid work women were forced into a very small range of occupations. Half were in domestic service and most of the rest were unskilled factory hands or agricultural labourers. Almost the only skilled work for women was in the bespoke clothing trade, but even that was ill-paid and low-status. Seamstresses became a cause célèbre in the 1840s.

Prostitution was rife in Victorian England, the majority being "casual", resorted to only when there was no alternative. Without the safety-net of a welfare system and with all wealth in the hands of men, it was to individual men that women were forced to turn and to sell themselves when desperate for subsistence.

Women's clothing symbolised their constricted lives. Tight lacing into corsets and cumbersome multiple layers of skirts which dragged on the ground impeded women's freedom of movement. Between 1856 and 1878, among the wealthy, the cage crinoline was popular as it replaced the many layers of petticoats, but it was cumbersome and humiliating. Sitting down, the cage rode up embarrassingly at the front. The skirts were so wide that many women died engulfed in flames after the material caught fire from an open grate or candle.

In 1851 Elizabeth Miller designed a rational costume in the U.S. which was publicized by Amelia Bloomer. It consisted of a jacket and knee-length skirt worn over Turkish-style trousers. It was regarded as immodest and unfeminine and was greeted with horror and disdain, despite its obvious utility. A presentation was given in Hastings, with the speaker Miss Atkins dressed in one of the "Bloomer" outfits.

Women were indoctrinated from birth to accept their lowly status and yet many did rebel, and some analysed, criticised, and published books on women's situation. An excellent review of these can be found in Dale Spender's Women of Ideas (Pandora 1982).

During the early to mid-nineteenth century the social order was being challenged and a new philosophy was emerging, imbued with ideals of liberty, personal freedom, and legal reform. Black slavery was being criticised and challenged, and was abolished, and working class men demanded that the right to vote be given to them and not just to a few thousand landed gentry. It was in this climate that women like Barbara Leigh Smith began to think that women, too, deserved to be emancipated from their enslaved status."

The article was written by Helena Wojtczak and can be found at the following web address: http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/19/overview.htm

From this article we see a few things about the culture and what life was like for women living in the 19th century. Women were given just a bit more freedom than the slaves. They were still expected to obey what men said and they had certain "expectations" under the institution of marriage. Women were not allowe to deny their husbands of sex if the husband wanted it. Basically, wives were glorified sex slaves. These disgustings facts may very well have been what scared Emily Dickinson away from marriage and drove her to stay in her house. Also, Perhaps Eliza was scared of marriage and therefore used her indecisiveness between the two men as an excuse to have a man but stay un-married for as long as possible. I wouldn't blame either one of these women if this were truly the case. If I were put in the same circumstances where as soon as I married someone I was automatically made their slave, I would probably not get married or stay un-married for as long as possible. It really is amazing how women like Dickinson were able to become as famous and successful as she did during this time period. Perhaps it was her decision to remain single and independent which allowed her to write her poems. Can you imagine her becoming married and her husband telling her to stop writing all those poems and make dinner or have sex instead? We would probably not have Dickinson's extraordinary poems today if she did decide to marry and serve her husband.

From this class, I learned that the 19th century was an extremely different world than the one we live in today. And that out of this foreign time came extraordinary people who helped shape the world into what it is today, by their writings and lifestyle.

Week 10

"Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,- Life!"(pg. 27)

Though I had a very difficult time making sense out of most Emily Dickinson's poems, there seemed to be a theme that I did understand in her poetry. She tends to have a dark, dreary outlook on life in general. From this poem we see that she is referring to life as a culprit, meaning that life is guilty of something. Perhaps she is so bitter towards life because of the pain and suffering it brought her. For example, she was never married, her best friend married and hardly ever spoke to her after that,she was not a very social person and remained a recluse for the majority of her life. Now I am not saying that someone needs to be a social freak or married in order to find happiness in their life, but I do believe that you must have friends to understand what happiness is. I think we would all be a little depressed and have a negative or gloomy outlook on life if all we did was stay in the house and write poems. I feel like maybe Dickinson's poems were an outlet for her depressive state. Her poems became her best friends, they were always there for her to talk to and they would never leave her and marry off. In a way, I respect her independant attitude, but she really should have found someone besides her poems to rely on.

"Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat-
You must have walked-
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!"(pg. 142)

In light of this being March and March Madness beginning, I picked this poem as one of the poems to reflect on(I know, very poetic of me, right?!)... As mentioned before, I'm not very good at poetry, especially Emily Dickinson's poetry. It is very difficult for me to unpack... But I can relate to this particular poem. When March rolls around and it begins to warm up outside, it really is like something is coming back into my life that has been missing for several months. As Dickinson puts it, an old friend is coming back after an extended absence. This poem also makes me think of March Madness, the college basketball tournament for those of you who are wondering... It's probably my second favorite sporting event next to the baseball playoffs. I just can't wait for that opening weekend where it's pretty much 4 straight days of never ending, emotion packed basketball. If March Madness was a person, I'd definately invite him/her(?) inside and tell me all about it's journey..... seriously.

"We outgrow love like other things
And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
Like costumes grandsires wore." (pg. 192)

I think just about all of us can relate to what Dickinson is saying here. How many of us have dated someone, thought they were the one we were going to spend our life with, and then it ended up not working out? Maybe that's just me but I think it happens to most everyone like it may have happened to Dickinson. Our former boyfriends/girlfriends are now just old memories or antiques which we store in the drawers of our mind. We outgrew them and put them away only to bring them out when remembering our past relationships. They become sort of like a collection that we store. Are we proud of our collection? I think some are. I think some people walk around looking to add more to their collection and never stop to think about who they are hurting in the process. Somehow, along the way, these people have become numb to their own feelings and have learned to get past the hurt or ups and downs of relationships...


"During a visit to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1855, Dickinson met the Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Sixteen years older than her, a brilliant preacher, and already married, he was hardly more than a mental image of a lover. There is no doubt she made him this, but nothing more. He visited her once in 1860. When he moved to San Francisco, California, in May 1862, she was in despair."

Read more: Emily Dickinson Biography - life, family, name, death, mother, young, information, born, college, house, time, year, sister http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Dickinson-Emily.html#ixzz0iGyGkBlO


Perhaps one or two broken hearts was all Dickinson could handle. She obviously had her heart toyed with/broken by Charles Wadsworth. Thinking they were lovers but he actually moved away from her made her think otherwise. Perhaps this is the reason for her secluding herself from the rest of the world and becoming a recluse. Maybe she just got too scared of another broken heart and therefore she dared not take another chance with her heart.

Do you think it was Dickinson's life experiences which shaped her into the woman she became(secluded, gloomy, depressive)? Or do you think it was just in her DNA? She was just born that way. What are your thoughts?

Week 9

"You fancy me mad? Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what caution-with what foresight-with what dissimulation I went to work!...It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha!-would a madman have been so wise as this?"(pg. 193)

"If still you think me mad, wou will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs."(pg. 196)

I find these two quotes taken from "The Tell-Tale Heart" to be especially interesting. It is interesting to see how this obviously mad man continued to insist he was not mad. To him, he had perfect logic in killing the harmless, innocent old man. It was the old man's eye that resembled a vulture's eye which the mad man could not stand. He created his own logic behind murdering the old man. The thought process we can see through Poe's interpretation of this man's thinking makes me wonder about sanity. I often have caught myself wondering if I would know if I were insane or not. Would I be able to distinguish between being insane or sane? Also, what exactly is sanity? I often wonder if someone who is insane is just another way of saying that they are different. If the whole world was insane but I was the only sane one, would I not be labeled insane? I think I probably would be simply because I was not like the rest of the world. Perhaps an insane person is someone who thinks differently but the result of their different thinking is hurting somebody else. Let's face it, if the man in "The Tell-Tale Heart" would have just suppressed his hatred for the old man's eye and not killed him, then probably nobody would ever had caught his insanity.

During our facilitation, I posed the question whether or not you would be able to recognize you were insane and needed help. Somebody answered back saying that if your questioning your sanity, then you are most likely sane. However, that answer really made me think about this man who kills the old man with the vulture's eye. He is constantly giving reasons as to why he is not insane when very clearly he is insane.(to be continued)

Week 8

"In the Heart of the Sea" is a good example of what happens when a bunch of testosterone gets together. First of all, I feel like the whole situation could have just about been avoided if the men had decided not to take the route they took with the limited supplies they had in storage. The Nantucketers seemed to look at themselves as some of the toughest, most able men on the sea, and they payed the price for their cockiness. After their ship had been rammed by the whale, the men were forced to make an emergency voyage back to land in their twenty-five foot whaling rafts. The men viewed this as just another challenge which they would have no problem passing.

"The perils of whaling had given the Nantucketers a high tolerance for danger and suffering. They had been tossed in the air by the flukes of a whale; they had spent hours clinging to the battered remnants of a capsized whaleboat in a cold and choppy seas. 'We are so accustomed to the continual reocurrence of such scenes as these,' Chase wrote, 'that we become familiarized to them, and consequently always feel that confidence and self-possession, which teaches us every expedient in danger, and inures the body, as well as the mind, to fatigue, privation, and peril, in frequent cases exceeding belief.' Only a Nantucketer in November 1820 possessed the necessary combinatio of arrogance, ignorance, and xenophobia to shun a beckoning (albeit unknown) island and choose instead an open-sea voyage of several thousand miles." (pg. 99-100)

This quote from the book shows just how arrogant the men were. They viewed themselves as invincible because they were Natucketers and they could not possibly be harmed on the open sea. This instance actually reminds me of a time when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I was hanging out with my friends and we decided to go on a bike ride. We started out from Alexandria(hickville), Ohio and rode to Newark, Ohio. It was a pretty cloudy day and there was actually thunderstorms in the forecast for that day. But that didn't stop us. When we got to Newark, the clouds were very dark and there was that smell of storm in the air(come on, storms do have a smell). We probably should have called our parents to have them pick us up and wait at the Dairy Isle we drove to but nope, we were all macho men and nobody wanted to be the one to "wimp out" by bringing up the fact that it was about to storm with the hour trip we still had to make back to my friend's house. So we set out and the rain started.... then the hail started... then the lightning started... But we felt like heroes riding our METAL bikes in the middle of a thunderstorm. At the moment, it was pretty cool... Looking back at it now, it was pretty stupid. We are pretty lucky we weren't hurt from the hail of attracted a lightning bolt. I feel like this story ties in pretty well with the situation the men got into in the book. Their dire situation could have been suppressed by hanging out at the island but the men had to be arrogant go for the more challenging situation because they were Nantucketers! When my friends and I finally got back to the house, we couldn't wait to tell the older guys what we had just done. We were dripping with rain and sweat, it was glorious! We told about how we rode home through the hail and the lightning. We sounded so cool and the older guys couldn't believe that we had actually rode our bikes through what was going on outside at the moment. I think our desire to share our "heroic tale" also relates to the book.

"Like many survivors, Pollard was animated by a fierce and desperate compulsion to tell his story. Just as the gaunt, wild-eyed Ancient Mariner of Coleridge's poem poured forth each harrowing detail to the Wedding Guest, so did Pollard tell them everything: how his ship had been attacked 'in a most deliberate manner' by a large sperm whale; how they had headed south in the whale boats; how his ship had been attacked once again, this time by 'an unknown fish'; and how they had found an island where a 'few fowl and fish was the only sustenance.'... Later that night, once he returned to the Diana, Captain Paddack wrote it all down, calling Pollard's account 'the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.'"(Pg. 189)

Pollard, like my friends and I, was so anxious to tell his story of survival. Pollard seemed to take enjoyment in sharing his gruesome tale of survival, and it sounds like the crew may have been interested in hearing about the story. Nobody likes a dull story. In order for a story to be good, there has to be severe conflict and Pollard's story had alot of conflict. There is something innate in humans who seem to take some kind of enjoyment in hearing about someone undergoing the worst possible conditions, and then prevailing. I understand the prevailing part, but why must a human go through a terrible situation in order for their story to become interesting? It certainly adds excitement to a story, but it seems like we seek out stories of tribulation. Actually, it today's world it seems like our culture likes to focus on the bad times of a story more than the prevailing moments. For example, look at the Saw movie series. Not more than 1 or 2 people survive in each movie. Most of the others die a horrid and gruesome death and it seems like those deaths are the majority of the entertainment. Do you think that "In the Heart of the Sea" would be anywhere near as interesting if cannibalism was not involved? I don't think so. I mean, the whale attackes and almost starving to death made for an interesting read, but the whole eating each other and killing each other for meat just escalated the entire story, in my opinion. It's a weird, and in some cases sick, desire that we have as humans to hear about grotesque stiuations. Very intriguing to think about though.

Week 7

Though I did not make it to class on Thursday, I will write about what "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" stirred within me. While reading this book, I could not stop my mind from flashing back to two things. The first is the recent(within 10 years or so) discoveries of Thomas Jefferson's relations with his slave. Just like within the book, Jefferson also seemingly had sexual relations and children with his slave. However, I think Jefferson attempted to justify his relations by sending all of his "slave children" to college and having them educated. Also, at his death Jefferson noted in his will for the woman slave whom he had had the sexual relations with to be freed. The thought that Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of this nation, committed some of the same crimes described in this book makes me wonder just how prevalent and/or accepted the act of masters having sexual relations with/raping their females slaves actually was during the 1800's.

"The Jefferson-Hemings story was sustained through the 19th century by Northern abolitionists, British critics of American democracy, and others. Its vitality among the American population at large was recorded by European travelers of the time. Through the 20th century, some historians accepted the possibility of a Jefferson-Hemings connection and a few gave it credence, but most Jefferson scholars found the case for such a relationship unpersuasive.

Over the years, however, belief in a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship was perpetuated in private. Two of her children - Madison and Eston - indicated that Jefferson was their father, and this belief has been relayed through generations of their descendants as an important family truth.

That a Jefferson-Hemings relationship could be neither refuted nor substantiated was challenged in 1998 by the results of DNA tests conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists. The study - which tested Y-chromosomal DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle), John Carr (grandfather of Jefferson's Carr nephews), Eston Hemings, and Thomas C. Woodson - indicated a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants. The results of the study established that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808), the last known child born to Sally Hemings. There were approximately 25 adult male Jeffersons who carried this chromosome living in Virginia at that time, and a few of them are known to have visited Monticello. The study's authors, however, said "the simplest and most probable" conclusion was that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Eston Hemings."

The full article can be found at the following web address: http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html

I still remember hearing about the DNA testing which was done in order to prove that Jefferson had sexual relations with Sally Hemings. And I remember people like my grandma making statements like "oh, he never did that" and "It's just people with agendas trying to make Jefferson look bad." I love my grandma to death but I gotta say I think maybe she was wrong on this one. It seems like, from reading this book and other accounts of slave women, that having sex with the master was almost a common occurrence. It really is amazing though to think that one of the founding fathers of the greatest and freeest(sp?) country in the world would use slaves, not only for labor but also for his own personal pleasures! It's embarrasing to think about and perhaps that is why so many people like my grandma just deny the thought even though there is substantial evidence being brought to support the claim.

The other area my mind kept wandering to was the "Roots" movies. These movies are re-telling of an African-American man's geneology and the struggles his ancestors faced as slaves in the South. These movies are filled with situations much like the ones which arise in "Incidents in the Life as a Slave Girl". I think what stuck out most in the movies was the fact that it did not matter to masters which slaves were married to who. The slaves were all viewed as livestock which could be separated at a moments notice. In "Roots", there is a moment when a man and wife were suddenly separated from each other because the husband was sold away. This left the wife unsure about what she should do. Should she remain faithful to her husband even though she hasn't a clue whether or not they will ever be reunited again in this lifetime. Or should she forget him and find another man to take care of her? This situation brings me to a quote which helps put us in the shoes of a slave.

"Why does the slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence? When the separations come by the hand of death, the pious soul can bow in resignation, and say, 'Not my will, but thine be done, O Lord!' But when the ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, regardless of the misery he causes, it is hard to be submissive."(pg. 170)

It is hard for anyone born in a free country to be able to understand what slave go through. Not even being able to have the luxury to love because if you love someone you are probably setting yourself up for disappointment. I can't imagine. As a slave, do you think it would be worth the risk of loving someone even though the very next day they could be sold away? Would you marry someone if you truly loved them even though, like in Roots, they could be sold and you may never see them again. If that were the case, would it be ethical to marry someone else even though your husband may very well be remaining faithful to you?

Week 6

I like this picture because I feel like it expresses Emerson's "Self Reliance" pretty well. The men walking in line all have robes on. They are probably all religious men with the exception to the man in the back of the line. The man in the back of the line is wearing a robe but it is not a religious robe. This man is expressing his uniqueness by showing his individuality in a place where all the other men are pretty much unified. I can only imagine the kind of looks Darth Vader is receiving from the other religious men wearing robes. They are probably wondering why this is dressed so weird and I can bet they are probably annoyed by him. Perhaps they think he is mocking them by wearing a completely different attire than what is "appropriate". This brings up an interesting point. How is appropriate clothing determined. In my opinion, society draws the rules of what you should where and when you should wear it. One of my biggest pet peaves is ties. Why in the world would anybody ever think that something you tie around your neck and let it dangle would be a fashionable thing to wear? I never understood the logic behind ties. They are uncomfortable and annoying to eat with. Yet, I fall prey to them everytime I have to coach a basketball game because it is the rules of the school. All coaches must wear ties. And if I were to ask the school why they would probably tell me that ties look good or professional. But who's opinion is that? I think it is society's opinion that ties look good therefore we must all conform to society. Very interesting to see how individualism is lost in society when it comes to clothing.
Another area the Emerson's piece reminded me of was a passage in the Bible. Romans 12:2 states "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is- his good, pleasing, and perfect will." I want to focus on the first part of that verse. It is basically summing up what Emerson is stating. I like how the verse says "the pattern of this world". The world is one big pattern. We are born and sometime in our growing up we learn to do things or think about things because we have either been taught that way or we have observed others and copy their behaviour. It is very interesting the way the mind works.

There is a part of me, however, that believes that one must conform to the society they live in in order to live a happy life. For example, if one is continually breaking the law and being thrown in prison, their life will be wasted within a 15x15 foor room and watching their back in the showers! Not fun. If you have ever been driving and suddenly seen the flashing red and blue lights in you rear view mirror, that is also not fun. I think we can look at Emerson's piece with a realistic perspective. We must conform to a certain extent in order to live as individuals in society. But that brings up an interesting point, if the government we live in eventually gives us such a short leash where nobody can live as an individual and everything is uniformed, then I think that is when it becomes time to revolt or stand up against the governement. Just think about this type of government makes me think about a movie I once saw. "Equilibrium" with Christian Bale is a good example of a government which would not allow for any kind of individuality. All the citizens were forced to take these pills which removed human emotion. Human emotion was said to be the "disease" of humanity. Also, any type of art was forbidden. Everyone wore a black or grey uniform. This was a completely opposide world from what Emerson is describing. Eventually Christian Bale joins the underground movement of humans who would not take their pills but would collect art. Bale eventually kills assassinates the government leader and the world is made individualistic again. Such a happy ending. :)

Favorite quote: "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an exemptoraneous, half possession."(1177-1178)

Week 5

There are a couple areas around The Coquette which I found interesting. One is how the book seems to relate to the American attitude. And the other is how I was really able to relate to portions of the text.
Eliza Wharton really seems to relate to the American spirit by the way she excercises her vibrant free will. In a time when women were supposed to act the part which society had written for them, Eliza chose to rebel and not conform. Women during this period of time were supposed to marry within their social class, have many children, and be the homemaker society wanted them to be. While Eliza was initially going to conform and marry a much older man who had money, he died and she expressed her relief. Now, I believe, she felt like she was given a second chance to do what she wanted and make her own happiness. In fact, in a letter Eliza explains to Lucy Freeman that "I recoil at the thought of immediately forminag a connection, which must confine me to the duties of domestic life, and make me dependent for happiness...I would not have you consider me as confined to your society, or obligated to a future connection...You must either quit the subject, or leave me to the excercise of my free will..."(pg. 29) How does Eliza's independent attitude relate to the American spirit? I believe it is because the colonies of the new world would not conform into paying the taxes to the king of England and thus rebelled. But that was just the beginning. The United States has always seemed be the nation which will always do what it wants when it wants. Up until the United Nations was formed, America seemed to draw the lines of right and wrong for other countries. Actually, we seem to still do that in today's world. I view America as having a philosophy of not conforming to the world, but making the world conform to us. Just like Eliza, America did not conform but rebelled against the world's view of what it should do.
The other area I want to touch on was the personal application I took away from this book. In class, we just barely touched on the relationship Eliza had with Major Sanford which brought up the question of why Eliza kept going back to him even though she knew there was really no future for her in his eyes. This relationship brought up some memories of a past relationship I had. About from my junior year in highschool to about my freshman year in college, I dated this girl off and on. I'm not sure why we always broke up and hot back together. I think both of us always knew that there was not a future for ourselves together but we would get back together anyways. Perhaps we both just liked having the feeling of security that we had someone to talk to when the day was over or just to have someone to hold. whatever the reason, I think Eliza's feelings towads Major Sanford is pretty much the same. While he does a good deal of "playing the game", I think she ultimately understands that he is not a permanent solution. But, like myself, she liked to have him around for the time being as did he.