Letting Go of Humanity: Lost Objects in Never Let Me Go (Rough Draft)

When telling your story, it is hard to determine what details are important. For Kathy H., the story teller of Kasuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, the details rise to the foreground as the most compelling aspects of the tale.

How does one even summarize Never Let Me Go? It seems odd to tell the setting and idea of the novel straightforwardly. There is a school for clone children, who are raised and board together, and after their primary education they receive a sort of communal secondary education, through which they learn to drive and communicate with human society, and then comes the nursing (called "caring") and organ donating, and finally, "completing," when the clone has served its ultimate purpose, and dies. Ishiguro manages to pull out and focus on the details from a clone's life and weaves a compelling tale which frames beautifully ideas about purpose, individuality, and what it means to be in touch with our own feelings.

Part one deals mostly with Kathy H.'s time at Hailsham, the name of the boarding school where she and other clone children are educated and cared for by a rather stereotypical school master and other teachers, called "guardians." I find the name of the school intriuging. At first glance, I thought of Mrs. Havisham, the frightening woman from Dickens' Great Expectations. It's really not too far of a stretch, I think. There is a great horror associated with Mrs. Havisham, what with the spiderweb wedding cake, the unfulfilled desire, the rottenness of her body and home, and yet, the hope that she offered those who would behave according to her wishes. Her influence, as rotten as she was, allowed her a great persuasiveness, and even though we know, creeping through her house with Pip, taking in the grotesque scenery, that she is unwell and her words vitriolic, we find that perhaps she has a point, perhaps somehow we will be able to right the great wrong that was done here, our pity the catalyst for her power. Is something different going on at Hailsham? I'm not sure. The images and horrors conjured up by the association are eerie enough.

Then I looked at the name on a connotative level. Hail-sham. This stands out as more relevant now that I've finished the novel. There is a loyalty to the school to which the children cling desperately. We forgive them this, because they have never known anything else; still, their determination to trust the institution is always heartbreaking. As wizened Westerners, we know better than to trust the institution, don't we? But when we witness the trust of the children, and become aware that they can't leave the life prescribed for them, the life they were bred for, we experience the dread, the hopelessness that will surely overtake them as they come closer to realizing their fate. We are aware of the scam, the sham, from the beginning, and naming the place Hail-sham reinforces the the sadness experienced as the children salute and give reverence to that which has pulled the wool over their eyes.

Kathy H. doesn't ever come right out and say that there is no choice to walk away from the life of a donor. In fact, she rarely comes right out and declares anything. She remembers, she recalls, but even then, when suddenly in the story she is sobbing, it is shocking, for we aren't privy to her emotions. She rarely feels a certain way, she simply accepts whatever is expected of her, and when her personal choice is an option, she usually does the smart thing, or the reasonable thing, or the sensible thing. She is compassionate, to be sure, but she never shows distress, and this enables her to be a good hospice nurse for clones who are recovering from donations or are about to complete. There are times in the novel when I thought to myself, why can't you just run away? Why can't you defect? There is no information in the novel to suggest that they are tracked or micro-chipped, as in other works with the clone as backup setting. Thus, I believe that Ishiguro is suggesting that there is no need for such management. If you believe that you have a place in society, and that place is instilled in your consciousness as important, vital even, then you will not need to be monitored, or tracked. You will simply do as you're told. You won't walk away, because where would you go? You're inherently different, so who would accept you? The novel answers the Biblical question posed by Satan, what won't a man give up in exchange for his soul? The human society in Never Let Me Go has answered with a resounding nothing, deeming the clones a spiritual waste, a land ripe for harvesting. They have let the ethical question hang, and proceeded forward without investigation. It seems that once heart disease, cancer, and neurological disease were a thing of the past, the question of whether or not raising clones in order to slowly harvest their vital organs is ethical became a taboo question. So they live as a taboo, recognizable, but mostly unspeakable.

The novel sets this up, and then presents arguments against using the clones as donors. Obviously Kathy H.'s story is a testament to her humanity, however vague and remote her emotions seem. The fact that she even desires to tell her story is more human than anything else about her, including her search for her origins, her love of Tommy, and her protectiveness of Ruth. She has an idea of the infinite, as evidenced by the title of the novel, which is a reference to a song that moves her when she is a child. It's a song that she feels expresses the loss associated with infertility, and that in the event that an infertile woman was to have a miraculous baby, she would hold that baby to her chest and sing, never let me go. The idea that the clone would imagine such a thing is so ironic, for not only are the clones infertile, but their whole purpose is to ensure the health of the public. Humans can't bear to let each other go, so they grow surrogate humans to replace their diseased parts. Kathy H.'s attachment to the song reinforces her place in society. She doesn't desire to have a baby, but the scene shows her empathy for the society that created her, and the purpose for which she was "born." This underscores her humanity, but also demonstrates how important it is for the clones to identify with humans, to be subordinate to ones who need them. Kathy feels throughout the novel that she is accomplishing her work, her purpose, and she wonders only briefly if there were any alternative.

It is only later in the book that the mystery surrounding Hailsham is revealed. A few academics and scientists decided that instead of growing the clones in an animalistic way, in bad conditions, they should bring them up like proper school children. MIss Emily, the school master, and Marie-Claude, her partner, explain the school as an experiment in proving that the clones have souls and are as human as they come, aside from their all but guaranteed infertility (although it is not stated directly whether or not they are bred this way or if it is a side-effect of cloning). Miss Emily and Marie-Claude had the idea that to educate and culture their students would mean a better life for them, allow them to be "sensitive and intuitive." It gets quite muddled, and I expect that is what Ishiguro intended. The main argument for the failure of Hailsham is that the politcal climate changed, and during a time period when people were especially fearful of clones gaining human rights, their supporters vanished. Society did not want to compete with clones that were genetically altered, or bred for superiority. So, the donor program resumed as a government run institution.

This is of importance because Kathy H. has sought out a deferral; she thinks that she and Tommy can apply for a few years together, living as a natural human couple, before resuming their donations. This is a baseless rumor, and they are utterly defeated when filled in on their complete lack of any future other than that they have been raised to believe in.

I don't think Ishiguro wants his audience to admire Miss Emily, and my strongest evidence comes from the scene in which she is sitting with Kathy H. and Tommy, explaining about Hailsham, and the falseness of the deferral rumor. Before she discloses the information about Hailsham she mentions something about a piece of furniture that she is having moved that day:

Unfortunately, my dears, I won't be able to entertain you for as long as I'd like just now, because in a short while some men are coming to take away my bedside cabinet. It's a quite wonderful object. George has put protective padding around it, but I've insisted I'll accompany it myself all the same. You never know with these men. They handle it roughly, hurl it around their vehicle, then their employer claims it was like that from the start. It happened to us before, so this time, I've insisted on going along with it. It's a beautiful object, I had it with me at Hailsham, so I'm determined to get a fair price.

It's probably a high school-ish insight, but look at what care Miss Emily takes of her beautiful, wonderful object. She is going to make sure that no man abuses it and harms it, and she is very sentimental about it, and wants the full value of it's worth. I postulate that the disappointment Miss Emily and Marie-Claude feel about the failure of Hailsham is less about the eventual process of donation and completion the students will endure, but the dissolution of their pet project, the underestimation of their beautiful, wonderful students that have turned out so well.

I wonder if Ishiguro is simply, reasonably implying that whenever we objectify humans we cross an ethical boundary that undermines our ability to practice fairness. When we come to a cloudy grey area in scientific advancement, can't an argument be that if we proceed, if we calculate the benefit, the value of the advancement in dollars, or selfish gain at another's tragic loss, then, shouldn't we just stop, and be still? Of course we want a cure for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for heart disease, but isn't it mostly because we never want to let our loved ones go? And to the professionals whose aim it is to ensure the ethical treatment of humans and other animals, what is an obvious gauge of their success? Pain free, cruelty free, good conditions, safety. organic, needs met, and so on. But it's more like the novel, isn't it? It's truly gauged by the leaning of society at the time. And we are truly a society that refuses to accept death as inevitable, suffering as reality, and lifetimes as undetermined in length.

Ishiguro is willing to tell us that yes, if we pursue stem cell research and cloning experiments we will someday have the ability to live without fear of many diseases that plague us today, but many will still suffer, and the price has to paid. He suggests that the highest price we pay is within the forfeiture of our own ability to be still, to live free from harming others, and to let go. Their cost is incalculable, but permeate our existence, as the loss permeates the novel. Our ability to be compassionate, to exercise restraint, to truly love others will be lost, caught in the fences of some windy cosmic wasteland, never to return. The lies we tell ourselves to fill the ensuing void will be rejected like a faulty transplant, as nothing can replace our humanity.

Yet, what of the use and treatment of human beings as objects, and then as lost objects, as I think Ishiguro suggests? Foremost, the clones are objectified and harvested as unfeeling, unthinking non-humans. Their objectification is justified by the immense desire humans have to hold on to life, at any cost. The clones from Hailsham are lost, because these particular clones exist outside of the role ascribed to them by the government, that is, they attend a prestigious boarding school in which they are observed and tested to determine if they are indeed objects, or if, as the book says, they possess a "soul." They are not subjected to the inhuman conditions in childhood belonging to the majority of clones. They are not like the others of their kind, and they are certainly not like humans, and yet they, or at least Katherine, feels that as such, as a former student of Hailsham, she is of more, or better use to humans than her run of the mill peers. What gave her a seemingly better life only served to solidify her worth in the society that will continue to use her inhumanely. The end, the harvesting of her life, as well as finally her vital organs, is justified because she now means more to the clone program than ever. She has learned compassion, empathy, and these serve to make her a better carer and nurse, and girlfriend, and friend, and yet, she is still lost, because these qualities only serve to make her a better person, an a person she is not. She is a clone, with no rights, with no freedom. She sets off on a journey which ends where it began, a room filled with medical equipment, designed to prolong the lives of those true human beings with rights, and precisely empowered with the ability to strip clones of their utter humanity.

Paradoxically, what gives Katherine her intimate sense of self also blinds her to the utter injustice of her existence.

Wuthering Heights Chapters 11-Fin: Look at MY Baby!

As the clock ticks off the final sixteen hours until I have to sit in a classroom and most likely listen to an already weary professor read the syllabus (to English majors!) I couldn't help but notice that I never finished discussing Wuthering Heights. I don't think I will blather more about it here. Instead, I think I will start drafting a paper. It will have something to do with possession, and how the word "mine" is used in the novel. Included, of course, are thoughts about reproduction, to add to my "Look at the Baby" thesis.

I thought I would work on Moby Dick this semester, but I never got over Wuthering Heights. Reading this novel as a grown up, I find it fascinating that it ever got published. It's so odd. Bronte turns the Bildungsroman into a never ending saga. I imagine this novel and Catcher in the Rye to be at opposite ends of the coming-of-age spectrum. I have a lot of questions about this novel. Why don't we ever get to hear Heathcliff or Cathy I's side of the story? Why is Lockwood even important? No one seems to have sex in this novel, yet babies everywhere! This novel trudges through religion, sex, classism, property, racism, sexism, incest, horror, and never once does it really tell you anything. It's quite possibly the most obsessive novel I've ever read. We're so insanely focused on these half-dozen people that it's like no one else exists. Yet, everyone just mopes around, except Heathcliff, who hits women and dogs and is always out doing something very important. It's very...emo.

Well, let's hope I get something together about it.

Wuthering Heights Chapters 3-11

I know eight chapters seems like I'm going a little fast, but everything was going along rather blandly, until I got to chapter 11, when things became very complicated and interesting. First of all, there are several narrators in this novel. There is Lockwood, the tenant at the Grange, Nelly, the Earnshaw's nanny/housekeeper/soulkeeper, and Catherine I, who speaks from her notebooks (there may be more, I'm not sure yet). They tell the tale in an out of order fashion -- I believe only Nelly tells the story chronologically. Before Nelly starts telling the family history to Lockwood, we hear Catherine tell a version of the story from her journal, in chapter three. This is a very curious chapter. We have heard what Joseph, the groundskeeper, sounds like from his dealings with Lockwood. His charater is written in a sort of English country vernacular, which never changes, whether Lockwood is hearing him speak in the moment, or Cathy is writing in a journal, or Nelly is relating an account of him to Lockwood; Joseph is always written in the same nearly indecipherable vernacular, full of outrageously old (maybe olde) fashioned words and pronunciations that I can scarcely make out. It seems a little strange to me that Bronte always chose to represent Joseph using this vernacular, no matter who is speaking. I mean, would ten year-old Cathy really record Joseph's language in the vernacular form? Nelly, although also a servant, is not recorded in this way, so are we to assume that she doesn't sound abnormal? Heathcliff couldn't speak English before he came to Wuthering Heights and his language doesn't differ from the other normalized characters who do not speak in a dialect. Yet, he and Cathy do speak in a sort of argot, don't they? We never really get to hear their private conversations, and they are always being interrupted. Also, did you notice that quite early, we think of the Earnshaws and Lintons as ORPHANS? I'm getting ahead of myself.


Much like in Moby-Dick we come upon a chapel and sermon scene. Although Bronte's is in a dream sequence, and the experience of Lockwood in Jabes Branderham's congregation is much more personal, and dangerous. There are some ideas in this dream-sermon that I don't really understand, but whether that is because I don't have a critical edition which would tell me if I'm simply not recognizing Anglican jargon, or if in fact this is deliberately confusing dream talk, I'm not sure. After listening an excruciatingly long time to a seemingly endless sermon, Lockwood says he "was moved to rise and denounce Jabes Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon." Now what in the world is this referring to? An unpardonable sin? Or a sin that simply doesn't warrant pardon? I don't clearly understand. Next the chapter describes Lockwood as telling the reverend that the "sin" he has committed is carrying on too long -- but the catch is that he tells his fellow listeners, "have at him! Drag him down and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!" I think Lockwood is trying to say that he doesn't have to forgive the Reverend his overlong sermon -- they call it the "first of the seventy-first" which I'm taking to be a reference to the limits of forgiveness -- the first of the seventy first is the final straw upon which afterward it is righteous to carry out retribution against another. It is as if Lockwood, who is kind of a smart aleck, gets exasperated and then gives this clever good-day to the reverend, who then eerily replies that "Thou art the Man!" (who has burned through his chances for forgiveness, and is now up for judgement), and sets the whole assembly on him, saying that "all His saints" have the honour of executing judgement on those who's chances for salvation have run out. Yet I'm left wondering, what is the crime? I think that is a question that the novel consistently asks -- what are these crimes that we are so guilty of that our inmost moral fiber is compromised and we end up deserving of annihilation?

I interpret Father Mapple's sermon to be a sort of warning against trying to live a life on the run, which even Father Mapple has to realize he is doing, in his impregnable pulpit. All of the characters in Wuthering Heights seem to exist on the premise that another person is their undoing. They are on the run from some judgement of their predicament -- Cathy with her two husbands, Heathcliff with his thunderbolts of retribution, Hindely plagued by the loss of his father's favor, Linton, who cannot command respect or enact the violence that would supposedly make him the king of Catherine's heart, and Nelly, who seems to feel that she is a part of everyone's sufferings, and somehow must struggle to control it all.

As the tragic romance develops over the next few chapters, some interesting ideas surfaced about what I've heretofore mentioned as the gaze, especially the returned gaze and feminity. Maybe it was Sedgewick that had a triangle theory? Anyway, as chapter ten winds down, I observed a rather startling line:

I determined to watch his movements.

Nelly, it seems, sees all, or wants to see all, judge all, control all. She is this unwanted, undesirable, awkward thing. She is not permitted to be one of the children, who desires and is respected and looks out for herself. What does she desire? Who does she gaze at? The answer, according to chapter 11 seems to be Hindley. She actually admits her "angelic" moments of conscience are her own repressed desires finding a suitable outlet, appropriate for one who is not allowed to desire:

I've persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways...I came to a stone...it serves as a guidepost to...the Heights. The sun shone yellow on it's grey head, reminding me of summer, and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child's sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favorite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block, and stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail shells and pebbles, which we were very fond of storing there..."Poor Hindley!" I exclaimed, involuntarily...this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since.

I just about went berserk after reading this! The summer sun shines on a sign that leads her to Hindley, who she regards as her master. She bends down to examine a hole in the stone where she and Hindley used to store things like snail shells and pebbles and perishable things, and then sees her master's son, who she claims as "my Hareton." Now, Hareton's birth mother is dead, and Nelly has been the child's nurse and nanny. But upon reading this passage it appears that Nelly imagines herself a consumater (legitimizing her and Hindley's relationship the same way Heathcliff and Cathy do, outside of the limits of Wuthering Heights and the Grange, in a liminal area like the moor; this spot -- the very line between all known worlds -- is even more provacative), a womb (the hole in the rock), and fertilization (images of nature and hard vs. soft/wet things, chambers, growth, engorgement, slime), and viola!, Nelly sees a child -- Hareton (and claims him as her own). This child, SO much like Pearl from The Scarlet Letter, does not recognize her or the kind of authority that she must think she represents, and he HURLS A ROCK AT HER. His baby features were "distorted...into a shocking expression of malignity." Everything is backwards here: the (presumably) virgin nurse goes through the figurative stages of fertilization and childbirth -- but the baby's expression is not childlike, and it's only real protector is Heathcliff, who is not exactly the mother-type. Nelly get's to remain virginal, and her sexual desire remains unsatisfied, hence by the end of the chapter she has meddled in matters that do not concern her; she is a busybody precisely because she never gets busy.

I have other ideas about this chapter that would be better served with a little more gender theory. I think Heathcliff represents a lot of physical release - he is rather violent. Nelly's physicality is seen in her housework, and she is never to imagine that she is of the same class as the Earnshaws, Lintons, or Heathcliff. She is a servant, and presumably celibate. But what a repressed sexuality! She is passionately loyal to her masters, and even rather in love with Cathy. The possibility that she can express that passion sexually is severely limited, and that energy tends to send her meddling in everyone's affairs. She describes her involvement in the drama as "put[ting] in my tongue," "I commenced a soothing speech," "it urged me to resolve further on mounting vigilant guard," "'Judas! Traitor!' I ejaculated," and when she betrays Cathy's trust to Linton, she relates how livid Cathy looks, and then says, "I made up my mind for broken bones, at least; but she only glared about her for an instant."
She expects a physical altercation -- I almost want to say that this whole chapter is about Nelly's sexual repression, and the ways in which she finds gratification through the violent acts of others (the whole divine retribution thing applies here). Yet, I cannot get over the imagery of the hole in the rock and the baby. It's just smacks of Melville and Hawthorne all over.

Wuthering Heights Chapters 1 and 2

I know the title of this post didn't suggest this at all, but I wanted to write about how disappointed I was by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You know, Brad Pitt is a movie idol, a really, really, ridiculously good-looking actor who is a joy to watch. So, just getting to see him do his thing is nice (I think I have an old blog about just watching Brad Pitt). But this movie dragged on so long, and took so many left turns, that by the time it was over, I had no idea what I was expected to walk away with. I was unnerved by the fairy-tale aspect of Benjamin's miraculous reverse aging process juxtaposed with the hyper-realism induced by including hurricane Katrina. I actually think I didn't like it, and that it really wasn't a good movie. The only thing that saves it is Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are so attractive. I guess what I'm left with is that old age is ugly and it sucks to lose your mind. This was like the antithesis to The Notebook. I read the story to my niece the other day, the original story by Fitzgerald, and Benjamin was never meant to be this benevolent, ageless creature full of wonder and sagacity. Giving the character so little personality caused me to constantly remember that I was watching Brad Pitt. It's a shame, really, to get these A list actors together so beautifully, and get so little out of it.

On to the original intent of this post -- Emily Bronte's tale of the hearth.

Chapter one of Wuthering Heights introduces a rather odd, rather Ishmael-like narrator, Mr. Lockwood. I have a lot of thoughts about this narrator. One concerns his view of what I'll simply call "the gaze." I'm trying very hard to remember the theory I've read about the gaze. I think Butler discusses the importance of the gaze in the subject/object relationship. The subject gazes at the object of desire. In Mr. Lockwood's case, he doesn't particularly care for the gaze to be returned -- especially by a woman. When Lockwood first meets Heathcliff, he gets a little crush on him, he says, because he "felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself." The first woman to meet Lockwood's gaze is the mother dog that jumps on top of him and dominates him. This is the beginning of what seems to be a pattern with Lockwood: out of fear of female dominance, he avoids the returned gaze. He seems to better tolerate Heathcliff's person, and he gives us a little insight into why this is: "I bestow my own attributes over liberally on him." Lockwood likes to look at what he can see himself in, and I don't believe that women can do that for him, but Heathcliff, with his masculine power, wealth, and frustrated heterosexual desire is something that can receive his gaze, precisely because he won't return it. When Lockwood speaks of a failed romance, he confesses that he was interested in a lovely girl, "as long as she took no notice of me." When this girl does look at him (he even insists there was no telling of love, only looks), "at every glance [I} retired colder and farther."

Now, I think for the purpose of the novel, we are to compare Lockwood and Heathcliff, and find the latter far more exciting and masculine. However, aside from Lockwood's inexperience in the country, how are we to distinguish between his frustrated sex life and Heathcliff's? I think it has to do with the gaze, and with power. Lockwood is secure until the object of his desire returns the gaze; Heathcliff is secure until Cathy turns her gaze to something else besides him. Lockwood would have liked it if his aforementioned object of affection had kept her gaze elsewhere. Heathcliff admires an empowered woman, and Lockwood is afraid of one, even if only in the form of a dog. This fear in Lockwood is so off-putting. I feel somewhat sympathetic for him, having stumbled into this mess unknowingly, but when he begins to worm his way into things, I find it don't like him. When he wants to free himself from the Cathy's ghostly arm, he rubs it bloody against the broken window pane. Something about him, his fear and his weak character, make him the great counterpoint to Heathcliff.

I find that he is very much like Ishmael, and Heathcliff is very much like Ahab.

My Homage to British Lit

I'm not sure if British Lit will be amused, but I am planning on reading Wuthering Heights over the break and doing my usual running commentary here.

I have simply had a miserable time in British Lit this semester, with mistakes and misunderstandings flying. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't give some authors due attention. I especially avoided James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, and Tennyson. I don't think I had enough time to really give these texts the close reading they demand. I had no real desire to please the teacher, which can go a long a way when you feel overwhelmed by long readings. I knew that if I did the readings we would have the same inane discussion in class that centered around a New Historical perspective, and the same dim wits would give their reader response comments that our instructor would spin according to her wishes. I had to keep myself from sleeping, doing other homework, and indulging in other diversions during this class.

I was actually interested and involved for the first half of the semester, but when she rode me so hard about the midterm mishap, I just tuned out.

Well, the entire time I have spent analyzing Moby-Dickthere has been this small voice saying, "Wuthering Heights...Wuthering Heights... ." I don't know why. There is something about childbirth, the other, and tragedy in this novel that has been echoing around in my mind as I try to understand my ideas about Moby-Dick. I started re-reading this book today, and I already see some similarities.

A full journal will follow, a chapter by chapter discussion. Maybe British Lit will forgive my behavior this past semester, and I can redeem myself with this literature that I love.

Little stars...

I was either fifteen or fourteen the first time I read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I had about two years before I would see Baz Luhrmann's film with my then boyfriend, who didn't quite understand why I was so distraught by the film, especially since I was no DiCaprio swooner. The fact of the matter was that just months before I saw the film, I had been through some pretty perilous breakups, and the ideas of romantic suicide, families that hate each other, and even the idea of being star-crossed, all appealed to me and reached the inner, dusky corners of my mind and heart. Rereading the play almost fifteen years later has given me a different vantage point, and I identify more with Mercutio, and Friar Laurence, than say, Romeo or Juliet, but somehow their young love and fierce passion still move me, even to tears.

I have been, probably to the detriment of my learning experience, watching the film as I read, pausing to read the lines that the film skips or delivers out of character or scene. This film is still pretty darn good. Mercutio is expertly played by Harold Perrineau, now of Lost fame, and I really love Clare Danes' portrayal of Juliet. She embodies her as I interpret her from the text; she is witty, and the cleverer of the two young lovers. Her innocence and virginity, so often brought up in the text by her blushing cheek, is balanced by a strong sense of who she is and being true to who she loves, even at the cost of losing her family. Her father's tirade at her, and her mother's dismissal, is crushing in the text, and Danes' is so good at teenage angst that she takes Juliet's despair to very strong, but very realistic level. When she pulls the small pistol from her purse and screams at the Friar that he better hurry up and tell her an answer, because she "longs to die," my heart just breaks for this young girl who seems to see no other way out, and has been spurned by the people she should trust with her life.

Shakespeare seems to have a penchant for rage between father and daughters over marriage. Hero's father, in Much Ado About Nothing, tells her that if she has been sleeping around, and is ineligable to marry Claudio that he would like to kill her, and calls her all sorts of slurs. Capulet similarly yells at his daughter that if she doesn't do as he says and marry Paris, that he would watch her starving, begging in the streets with a blind and callus eye. He calls her a harlot, and tells her never to speak to him again. There is some sort of strange connection between these future sons in law and fathers in law. They are marrying off their only daughters, but they have more of a connection with these idiots than their own valuable daughters; Hero and Juliet are far wiser than their years and experience alone.

At any rate, Shakespeare repeats themes and patterns and even names, in his excellent plays. I don't think the film could move me without his direct dialogue; while it's a pretty movie, it it firmly rooted in Shakespearian sound, and tone. I have yet to watch the church scene, with the glowing blue crosses. It makes me weep. Perhaps it is good to read this play at around the ages the main characters are supposed to be. It is good for depressed young people to know they are not alone, nor have they been alone for hundreds of years. In mourning Romeo and Juliet, perhaps they put off mourning themselves.

Joseph Conrad: A Man Without a Country Knows Best

We are supposed to be reading Heart of Darkness this weekend in Brit Lit, which means we made it through the Victorian period and are on our way into the modernists. Yay, Virginia Wolf! Yay, T.S. Eliot! Okay, Joyce, you can come in, but don't stay long. I don't want to get caught up in a syntactical logic-warp. It's too late for that kind of thing. To kick off our time with the modernists, we have read some of Hardy's poetry -- you have to love this man's cynacism, just don't fall in love with a cynic because they will be skeptical that you love them -- and I have to say, I just love a man who admits that no matter how cheery things seem, there is something wan in even the most colorful of experiences. He's so good as an equalizer and as a response to the Victorian sense that everything that is perfect is right around the corner. Not in this life, Hardy says, and even goes on to say, probably never. Oh, and did you know that we don't actually talk about Naturalism in British Lit? Why is that?

Conrad's work is a whole other ball of wax. Even amidst all the doom and failure of imperialism there is this sense that there are people who are in positions of power who do not accept the traditions that are handed down to them. Well, I'm not sure you would call Marlowe a man in a position of power, but if you look at capitalist societies and view the working class as a group heavy with the possibility of having the most power, then you could see him as representative of a powerful group that rejects the ideals of imperialism, and maybe even look at the superficial end of colonization in this particular manner -- this manner of striking a flag in the ground and declaring this land in the name of whatever (hmmm, freeedom, anyone? democracy, anyone?), and capturing all the inhabitants of a region as chattel. What I mean is the face of imperialism has changed, with possibly less suffering, or different suffering, because people like Marlowe could see that the ends didn't justify the means, by looking at the means. Marlowe sees imperialism in action, and from day one can hardly stomach it.

Yet Conrad is...not British? Oh, right. He's Polish, Swiss, and eventually, British. When you hear this, you smack yourself on the head and go, of course he could write about the evils of imperialism -- he is an alien, a foreigner, an observer. It's so much harder to look at your own country, your own environment, and describe with such clarity and understanding its moral weaknesses and fractured manifestos. The great thing is that Marlowe tends not to cast too much judgement when witnessing injustice. When his aunt declares him practically a saint for taking Western Civilization to Africa, he calls it so much blather and nonsense. He knows he is there to make money, and won't take stock in any of this "civilizing" talk. Then, when the doctor wants to measure his head, he lets him, but he doesn't really think there is anything to it. When he sees the men on the canoe for the first time at sea, he describes them as looking so natural, emphasizing how unnatural his ship and crew are as they motor down the coast. Through the text he speaks the internal questions and reactions that tend to stay hidden. In this way Conrad vocalizes Western guilt and shame. Shame seems to be a dominant theme of the novella.

I know this piece is short, but I wish we were taking more time in discussing it. It is one of the more brilliant things to come out of England. Or Poland. Or the West.

Howards End

I finished this novel the other day, and near the quite surprising end, I found myself actually crying. It's a wonderful book -- insightful, beautifully written, interesting, and may very well be a contender for best novel by E. M. Forester, although I haven't reread A Passage to India in quite some time, so it remains to be seen.

Mrs. Wilcox must be the most important character in the novel. She is manipulative, frightening, and embodies an interpretation of the woman's movement in the sense that she is felt more than she is seen, and that her most powerful act in the novel is something she writes. Margaret and Helen do not write, they simply discuss writing, and mostly men's writing. But Mrs. Wilcox is a writer. She goes out with Margaret for stationary, and her note concerning her plans for Howard's End is the most provocative bit of information in the plot, pulling up truths hidden deep within the superficial goings on of the Wilcox family. I don't know if I like Mrs. Wilcox or not -- but her influence on the novel is transcendent, and cannot be denied.

Her involvement with the plot reminds me a little of the women of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: influencing their husbands, weaving the future of men from small offices of the African Trading Company, and pushing and pulling men out of and into various destinies. Mrs. Wilcox doesn't so much as demand, as she suggests -- but her presence commands, and like many great leaders who become even more persuasive in myth than in life, she appears to control matters when she isn't present.

The forward says Only connect..., which is of great importance to Margaret, who feels Mr. Wilcox's tragic flaw is his inability to connect. But what is this connection she so craves and desires for herself and for others? I want to imagine it as the moments where we break the Subject/Object hierarchy and simply exist together. Yet, I'm not sure much of this connecting occurs in the novel. If it does, it is between Margaret and Helen. I'm almost sure that this book is about sisterhood as much as it is about homes, land, economy, love, family, and nature. I don't know if there is another relationship where the kind of connection described as preferred occurs. It may occur between Helen and Mr. Bast -- but so much social consequence occurred to put them together and break them apart, I feel that option is troubled.

There is so much more in this book -- so much about land ownership, possession, class (of course), women, men, outcasts (Tibby), sons, parenting, fathers, mothers, siblings, friends. It's quite a package. I think the narrator quite unreliable, but who knows.

I think I will read it again, maybe not soon, but certainly. It seems that Forester owes a great deal to Austen, Dickens, Bronte, and probably the whole Victorian era. Its definitely Modernist -- there are passages that seem to be written in stream of consciousness.

I'm getting the film from Netflix in a few days. Can't wait to see Emma Thompson. She just simply is Margaret.