"Regulated Hatred": An Aspect in the Work of Jane Austen- D. W. Harding

            Harding states that the impression of Jane Austen that is passed down deters many who might be her best readers from bothering to read her novels. The first impression is that she offers quite favorable openings to urbanity. There was also an impression that she provided a refuge for the sensitive when the contemporary world became too much for them. Harding originally believed that her scope was incredibly restricted, but that, within her limits, she did a great job at expressing the gentler virtues of a civilized order. He originally thought she was a “delicate satirist, revealing with inimitable lightness of touch” the comic weaknesses of the people she lived amongst and liked. Harding states that this impression made him certain that he did not want to read Austen and that he believe that this is a most misleading impression—though it may have some pieces of the truth.

            Harding claims that she is not a conventional satirist and that her object is the more desperate one of finding some mode of existence for her critical attitudes. She had to keep on reasonably good terms with those in her everyday life. She had a need for their affection and respect for the ordered, decent civilization they upheld, yet she knew that her existence depended on resisting any of the value that championed—this was her motivation to write. Her society’s ability to laugh at faults they tolerated in themselves and their friends, so long as the faults were exaggerated and could be thought of as mock assaults and not genuinely disruptive. This kind of satire, Harding says, is a means of self-preservation, not admonition.  One of Austen’s most successful methods is to giver he readers every excuse for regarding as rather exaggerated figures of fun people whom she herself detests and fears.

            Harding declares that caricature served Austen’s purpose perfectly, as one can never tell where the caricature leaves off and the real portraiture begins. He claims that it appears that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth serve as undistorted portraits, whereas characters such as Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Collins lend themselves more towards caricatures than real people. The simplest comic effects are gained by bringing the caricatures into direct contact with the real people, as in Mr. Collins’s visit and his proposal to Elizabeth. The complexity of the characters come when the reader realized that though, at times, he is a caricature, at other times, he fits into the real world. Harding maintains Austen’s works are not only for those who care for relief and escape, but are also for those who need an ally against things and people which were to hateful to her. 

Pleasure

     Pleasure: a word we hear all the time, but do we really know its all-encompasssing meaning? The way I see it, most, if not all of us, do not. The mystery behind the entire denotation of this word is what draws me to it. I believe that, like most words, the colloquial usage of the word pleasure no longer includes its true, original, and intended meaning. As a result, I decided that I wanted to delve further into the multiple meanings that this word might hold and discover the history behind the word pleasure. As I begin my research, this word, as a noun, is a synonym for happiness or satisfaction (the phrases "being with my family causes me great pleasure" and "being with my family causes me great happiness" are logically equivalent). Moreover, it also is used as an adjective to signify something done simply for fun and not for business or work (the phrase "pleasure reading" means reading for solely enjoyment and not for school, work, or the like). Additionally, it is used as a verb to mean to give sexual enjoyment or satisfaction ("the female received a tremendous amount of pleasure the night she stayed at home with her boyfriend" is a phrase that currently possess an obvious sexual connotation). Lastly, in English today, there are a few different phrases in which the word pleasure is used--examples are "I would have the pleasure of escorting you to dinner," "it would be my pleasure to write a letter for you," "she takes pleasure in causing trouble," "she asked him to wash the dishes, and he responded, 'with pleasure'," and many more. Prior to beginning my research, listed above is what this word means to me; however, as I have an inkling that this is not all this word has meant since its first recording, I am excited to begin my research and deduce its meanings throughout the ages.

The Women of Frankenstein- William Veeder

• Mary Shelley's sense of weakness in herself and womanhood makes her defensive in Frankenstein.
• Women are no more immune than men to weakness, but women are less weak. They are not destroyed by being effeminate (womanly, feminine), but simply by a world that is incredibly strong.
• The courtroom scene minimizes Justine's weakness. Shelley makes Justine a victim, not a weak woman, in the courtroom. 
• Since Justine does state that she did not kill William after the verdict, Justine no longer appears weak. Had Shelley wanted to make her a weak character, she would have simply made her confess to killing the boy. 
• Shelley makes Justine a victim of the Romish clergy ("My confessor has besieged me; he threatened...excommunication and hell fire in my last moments" (56)) and the untrustworthy judiciary ("They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge" (56)).
• True woman, according to Shelley, is not debilitatingly weak but touchingly vulnerable. Shelley reveals in rue woman not a feminine weakness which destroys her but a radical purposiveness which releases her. Justine's "passive death becomes...a retaliation." Justine is self-victimized enough to be understandably human. 

How to Lose Sir Gawain in Ten Days

​Throughout literature and film, writers have frequently addressed the idea of a test: a test of courage, strength, passion, loyalty, or any other cherished ideal has evidently been on the minds of writers for thousands of years. In both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, this “test” serves as both a main focus and driving force of the work. Lady Bertilak and Andie Anderson both put the male protagonists to the test by seducing them for reasons other than purely sexual gains in their respective works; in addition to revealing the shortcomings of the male population, the seduction of men to essentially prove points about the male population in different times shows that women are, in fact, strong and powerful characters who are more than simply sexual beings.
​In both of these works, the most important similarity is that the female characters put the leading male characters to a kind of test in order to prove something about the males living at that time. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lady Bertilak seduces Sir Gawain in order to assess his adherence to the knightly code of chivalry and the laws concerning courtly love, which, in this poem, are presented as conflicting ideas; therefore, the Lady tests Sir Gawain by seducing him and seeing if he respects either the code of chivalry by resisting her temptation and being loyal to her husband—the lord whose castle he is in—or the laws of courtly love that state that “So good a knight as Gawain is given out to be,/ And the model of fair demeanor and manners pure,/ Had he lain so long at a lady’s side,/ Would have claimed a kiss, by his courtesy” (141). This quote reveals that, according to the laws of courtly love, it is required that he do whatever the Lady asks, which, in Sir Gawain’s case, means granting her a kiss and, later, taking her girdle. Prior to going to find the Green Knight, although Sir Gawain respects Lady Bertilak by taking her girdle, partially out of his fear of death, he simultaneously betrays the Lord, as he does not give him the girdle despite their covenant to exchange their winnings. Therefore, in the end, Sir Gawain is proved to be dishonorable by the Green Knight, who is actually the Lord. In this poem, it is evident that the purpose of the Lady’s seduction was to examine Sir Gawain’s morality and his virtues and prove that despite all of his praise as a reputable knight, Sir Gawain—and, therefore, most of the men living at that time—was subject to failing in his duties. Lady Bertilak’s test in this poem was done for more that simply gaining sexual favors; in actuality, it is done to prove that despite a man’s overwhelmingly principled nature, he is still able to be disgraceful.
​Similarly, in How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days, Andie Anderson puts the male lead, Benjamin Barry, to the test. In this movie, Anderson, a “How-To” columnist decides to write a piece, as the title suggests, about how to lose a guy in ten days. In order to do so, Anderson first picks Barry out at a bar and proceeds to seduce him. Once she believes that she has him seduced and falling in love with her, her personality changes immediately, and she begins to do all the wrong things that women tend to do in relationships in order to get Barry to break-up with her; Andie acts possessive, controlling, clingy, disruptive, and, at times, selfish in order to make Barry leave her so that she can essentially be able to prove the true superficiality of the men living at her time, her main purpose for writing her piece. However, while Anderson has told her boss that she can make a guy break up with her in a matter of ten days, Barry has told his boss that he can make any woman fall in love with in him ten days. Therefore, despite her persistently obnoxious behavior that drives Barry insane, he stays with Anderson anyway in order to win his own bet. In the end, however, both of the characters reveal their true motives, and the two characters realize that they truly do love each other. Although Anderson does not succeed in losing Barry in ten days—because he is determined to win his own bet—, her pestilent behavior reveals his shallowness throughout the beginning of the movie. For example, after Anderson takes Barry to a Celine Dion concert instead of a New York Knicks basketball game, Barry rants to his friends of how he wish he could break up with Anderson because she is incredibly infuriating, and, had he not been involved in the bet and had she not been so attractive, he would never have stayed with someone so aggravating. This scene in the movie shows that Barry is incredibly shallow, as he wants to break up with her cause she is annoying, but is only staying with her to fulfill his bet and win an advertising deal and because she is good-looking. Although Anderson’s test did not fully succeed—she was not able to completely prove that the men of her time were very shallow and ready to break up with females who are even slightly obnoxious because of Barry’s bet—her test did reveal that he could, at times, be superficial, a shortcoming of man, so long as he was with his male friends.
​In both of these works, the writers depict the female as an incredibly powerful character. In the poem and the film, the female character wields a great deal of power, as she is the one putting the man to the test and trying to determine his true virtues and morals. The works show powerful women who are able to manipulate males in order to test and prove something about the men of their respective eras; by shifting the control to the women in the stories, the writers undermine the power of the men and bolster that of the women in the patriarchal societies in which both female characters live in. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the girdle is a symbol of the feminine power that emasculated Sir Gawain, and, in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the article that Anderson publishes at the end of the movie serves the same purpose. Both the poem and the film not only reveal the faults of men, but also reveal that incredibly strength and power that women have in a society.
The biggest similarity between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and How to Lose a Guy in 10 days is the test that the female characters impose on the male characters. The tests of the women reveal both some innate failings of man and the power of women. As these two ideas are referenced in plots written thousands of years apart, it is evident that, in both societies in which these pieces were written, authors were concerned with the oftentimes underrepresented power of the female. The idea of the strength of the female is reinforced in both works not only by the fact that the women test the virtues of man, but also by the fact that the men are shown to have their faults. In both of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, the idea of a female conducted test on a male protagonist reveals the authority of the woman.

Destruction of Monasteries and, therefore, Libraries between 1536-1541

King Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland through a set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541. Thomas Cromwell first began thinking of dissolving monasteries around1534 and, therefore, began a publicity campaign to make monasteries appear to be corrupt. Then, in 1534, the First Act of Supremacy declared that Henry was the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England. Parliament then in 1536 passed an act dissolving al monasteries with an income of less than 200 pounds per year.

Effect in the North-

Effect in the South and West-

In 1539, another Act was passed dissolving the larger monasteries (dissolved 552 Catholic monasteries and house, the last being Waltham Abbey in 1540).

Waltham Abbey-

Some consequences of the dissolution included: transfer of vast tracts of valuable land to the Crown, Henry's vast acquisition of gold and silver plate (worth as much as 1 million pounds), the fact that all 25 abbots lost their places in the House of Lords (which left the secular lords in a majority), and the physical destruction--buildings decayed because lead was taken from the roofs and libraries were broken up for their precious bindings or sold off by the cartload.

Examples of effect on libraries-
Worcester Priory had 600 books at the time of dissolution and only six of them are known to have survived intact to present day. Similarly at the abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York, a library of 646 volumes were destroyed, leaving only 3 known survivors. John Leland, however, was commissioned by the King to recuse items of interest (especially manuscript sources of Old English history), and Matthew Parker was a notable individual who made a private collection of manuscripts.

Persuasion.

     The novel I choose as my 18th/19th century summer reading novel was Jane Austen's Persuasion. As I always like to do before picking a novel that I must read from a list, at the beginning of the summer, I sat down with the summer reading list and my computer and began looking up abstracts of each title. After having read short summaries of each of the 8 18th/19th century novels that I could potentially choose to read over the summer, I decided on Persuasion because the summary of this novel had appealed most to me. In addition to the fact that this novel was simply the most appealing to me, I had also chosen this book because I had always desired to read Jane Austen as I had heard mixed reviews on her writing. Many people had, prior to the beginning of the summer, told me how much they disliked Austen's writing, while a few felt quite strongly when telling me how much they loved her writing; I, therefore, decided that I would like to read a novel of hers in order to form my own opinion of Austen as an author, and I saw this summer as the perfect opportunity to do so. Therefore, in the end, I believe that I picked this novel because the content grabbed my attention and because I was drawn to the author who I had been wishing to read for quite some time. 
     Overall, I believe, after having read this book, that Austen is an example of an excellent female storyteller. Although, admittedly, there were some low points in her storytelling in this novel, I believe that her strengths greatly outweigh her weaknesses.
     In Persuasion, I think one of the best aspects of Austen's storytelling is her thorough development of the many characters that we come across in this story. Austen does a great job developing each character independently, through their relationships with the other characters in this novel, and through the eyes of the other individuals in the story. An example of character development through another character's eyes occurs as follows when Louisa Musgrove describes her sister-in-law, Mary:
     "Mary is good-natured enough in many respects," said she; "but she does sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and her pride; the Elliot pride. She has a great deal too much of the Elliot pride.--We do so wish that Charles had married Anne instead. --I suppose you know he wanted to marry Anne? (Austen 93)
This passage is a great example of Austen's development of characters within the novel, as, with this single passage, we gain insight not only into Mary's but also into Anne's character. In this example alone, we can appreciate how Austen makes her characters come alive by way of contrasts and foils within the story. In this excerpt alone, we not only discover that Mary has an immense, and sometimes, according to Louisa, intolerable, pride, but also that Anne does not have this same air of haughtiness. Austen's impressive storytelling is evident here, as she is able to reveal so much important information about two central characters in such a short passage that is told by an outsider's perspective. 
     To me, some aspect of a novel needs to be relatable for the novel to be an example of prime storytelling. In Persuasion, the most relatable part of the story is the idea of persuasion itself. As all of us have succumbed to persuasion or pressure at one time or another, and later usually come to regret it, the premise of the entire novel is something that many readers can sympathize with. Austen does a great job portraying persuasion in its two stages: acceptance and subsequent regret.  Throughout most of the novel, Austen shows Anne accepting and justifying Lady Russell's reasons for persuading her not to marry Captain Wentworth, as typical of any individual persuaded to do something. Concerning most of the novel with the justification stage of persuasion, Austen accurately portrays how an individual pressured into doing something by someone they respect greatly would try to come up reasons as to why he (or she) was correct in listening to the person who persuaded them. Moreover, by addressing the rejection stage towards the end of the novel, Austen correctly depicts how it is human nature to strongly end up resenting an idea or action that someone persuaded you into believing or doing. This resentment is seen when Anne states that she "was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not risk" (262). This quote shows that, even though Anne was persuaded to do something because Lady Russell wanted to protect her, she still regrets her yielding to Lady Russell's persuasion. Austen does an impeccable job of portraying the stages of persuasion in a manner in which every reader can relate to, and, for that, Austen's storytelling is evidently superb. 
     Contrarily, I think Austen fails in her storytelling because she does not have action drive the plot of her novel. Although this novel is essentially a romance novel, a certain degree of action is still required to make a novel interesting throughout. However, since Austen's novel greatly lacks action and movement, the parts of the book that simply include pages and pages of conversation make the book a bit dry and drab. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Jane Austen's writing in this novel, the lack of an action-driven plot provide a reason for readers to dislike Austen's writing and label it boring and uneventful. Although I found the deficiency of action to be one of the major flaws of this novel, I thought the strengths greatly outweighed the novel's weaknesses. 

Most Memorable Books

Here we go. The most memorable books I have read are the following:

1. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini- One of my favorite books of all time. I loved the storyline, and, since my parents were born and raised in a neighboring country,  I felt a deep connection to the characters and the story. I cried while reading it!

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini- As this story is also set in Afghanistan and is specifically about a few women living there, I feel an even deeper connection to the story. Although I did not like it at first, I ended up loving the book and crying at the end.

3. A Mercy, Toni Morrison- Although the story was quite confusing at first, once I started to understand it,  I ended up really enjoying it, and I really looked forward to having to read in every night for Ms. Driscoll.

4. 1984, George Orwell- I started the book and, after beginning it, I couldn't put it down. By the end, I felt like I even knew the main character, Winston, personally. It is one of my favorite books!

5. Persuasion, Jane Austen- I was told that I wouldn't like Jane Austen because she is "dry" and her books are boring, but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I thought it was a beautiful story that was written really well. I loved that in incorporated suspense in its own way but was also just a love story.

6. Crank; Glass; Tricks; Identical; Impulse, Ellen Hopkins. These are 5 different books all by the same author, Hopkins, that I LOVED reading. Each book is about 500-700 pages, but, as they are written in poetry, they are a breeze to read. I finished each book in 1-2 days because I simply could not put them down. They were incredible books that I loved so much because they were realistic (2 of the 5 were based on her daughter) but completely unrelated to my life as they told the story of characters who participate in immoral, often criminal, activity. Although these are considered more "trashy" literature, I can't help but continue reading her books!

7. Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala Markandaya- We had to read this for World History class in 10th grade, and I really loved it. It was about British colonization in India (so once again I felt a kind of personal connection to the story), and it made me cry at the end!

8. Othello, Shakespeare- This is probably my favorite work I have read by Shakespeare. I enjoyed reading it because it was about  isolation, deception, and other concepts that were interesting to me.

9. Animal Farm, George Orwell- Amazing book that I read in the 7th grade and still remember and love.