Hope It's Not Dry Clean Only
Love it, hope to buy the T-Shirt.
Snap Shirts will generate a "Word Cloud" of your blog and create a T-Shirt for you.
Watch for this on a T-Shirt near you:
To see my other Word Clouds click
here,
here, and
here.
(Thanks for this
MJ and
Sharon)
Bring It On
What will the new year bring? This is a question that many people will be pondering over their cocktails and beer this evening as they gather with friends and family to welcome in 2006.
For me 2006 will always be remembered as the year I received my BA/Bed from UNBSJ. This is something I have worked hard for and look forward to seeing what doors will be opened for me because of this accomplishment. I hope to find a teaching position in the Middle School area but I will be content with any teaching job as I have a love of learning and hope to share that with my students.
But before I think about what 2006 has in store I must take a moment and think about the great gifts I received in 2005. This past year has been a year of firsts for me. It was the first time I had the opportunity to go to university without having to work full time (thank you for that Will). I spread my literary wings and began reading SF (thank you Dr. J.). I have been blessed with the gift of friendship from Emily, Debra, Jane, Melanie, Valerie, Dr. J. and Doc M.
Along with the joys of the year, there was sorrow. Will lost his dad to cancer, his mom has been in and out of the hospital on several occasions, both my parents received news they need to have surgery (nothing serious, thank goodness), and my sister has some medical issues she is dealing with. We all know that we have to take the bad along with the good but the good is so much easier.
As I sit at my desk thinking of what 2006 might bring I am confident enough to say, "Bring it on," I'm ready for anything.
I hope you and yours have a very Happy New Year and I wish you all the best in 2006. Party on!
Merry Christmas
It looks like Santa is running a little late this year!This picture is so cute I just had to post it. I wonder where Mrs. Claus is? Perhaps she is out warming up the sleigh. It is great to see that Santa knows his way around an iron.
Some of the old Santa art is beautiful. The Coke ads were always my favorites. Check out
these great ads from the old National Geographic magazines.
The pic of Santa sneaking a coke was found at
Rare Ads, a great site to see old magazine art.
I hope Santa gets his ironing done on time to make his special deliveries to you and yours this holiday season. All the best to you and your loved ones.
Happy Holidays, Lucy
Happy Ending
You can call me a hopeless romantic if you must but I was glad
Miss Betsy Thoughtless had a happy ending. Maybe I was happy because Betsy found the strength and courage to leave that no good husband of hers. It was interesting to read a book depicting a heroine struggling with the consequences of marrying the wrong man as most of our readings up to this point end with a marriage and we didn't have the opportunity to see what the marriages were like.
Betsy's marriage to the brutish Mr. Mundane was very unfortunate. She did not have a choice in this marriage as her guardians decided she was too flirtatious and wanted to marry her off before she ruined her reputation. This same flirtatiousness also scared off the man she whould have married, Mr. Trueworth. Once Betsy was married she was totally under the control of Mr. Mundane. Shea Stuart writes in her essay, "Subversive Didacticism in Eliza Haywood's
Betsy Thoughtless," that "men govern women through a natural law of superiority." Stuart calls this control over women "divine-right patriary." Living in a marriage under this kind of rule would be a nightmare. I believe Haywood is arguing for a marriage contract that women and men enter into with mutual consent and free will. This is something we take for granted in our society but this was not the case in Haywood's time.
"Thus were the virtues of our heroine at length rewarded with a happiness, retarded only till she had render’d herself wholly worthy of receiving it"
Pulled in Both Directions
Title: Das Gefolterte Mädchen (The Tortured Girl) Series - Undecided
Created: December 2002 Tools: Charcoal
Information Experiment in emotional response. Created under the alias Antonia Kluge
I wanted to begin my blog with this picture as I think it represents Betsy Thoughtless very well. While reading The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless I found myself thinking that Betsy was being pulled in all directions because of the societal expectations placed upon her to marry and her desire to "play the field." The whole courtship ritual and how important it was to civilization and women at that time must have been frustrating to those like Betsy who didn't feel as compelled to follow these rituals. Perhaps this can explain why Betsy is making so many unwise decisions. Once Betsy does conform to societal expectations, her life is none too pleasant, but then again, what would one expect being married to someone with the name of Mundane.
I have not finished reading the book yet but I am sure things will eventually work out for Betsy, well, at least I hope they do.
Even Barbie Does It
This is my second reading of Eliza Haywood's
Fantomina and it still amazes me how easily Beauplaisir was fooled. I know we all have different personas to fit various situations but I'm quite sure the people around us still know who we are. Perhaps all the blood has rushed to one part of Mr. Beauplasir's body and it has caused him to have blurred vision (sorry, just had to say it).
I'm sure we have all experienced a time when we acted differently because of the freedom afforded us by a costume, so it is easy to see why Fantomina acted so differently when she was in disguise. The disguises allow Fantomina to share, for a short time, the male privilege of openly desiring someone. Without the disguise, Fantomina would have to wait until the person she desired approached her and that may never happen. By being in disguise, Fantomina can still keep her virtuous persona in her real life and explore her more adventurous side in her fantasy life. The only problem with this scenario is reality enters into her fantasy world and Beauplasir lives up to his name and pleasures himself.
Fantomina then tries to take control and turns sex-roles upside down by repeatedly disguising herself to seduce the man who first seduces/rapes her. She asserts her female passion and her determination to control the relationship between herself and gullible Beauplaisir is somewhat surprising in literature of the period. Haywood is clearly aware of the imbalance between the positions of power of men and women involved in romantic relationships. Fantomina is playing a game that she cannot win, though men may do so, and women may wish they could.
Life-Writings
I must confess that the more I read about Frances Burney the more impressed I become. While doing research for my essay I became captivated by the many adventures in her life.
- Frances Burney was not formally educated, she quickly mastered reading and writing within her father's drawing room, where she met many of the major musicians, actors, and authors of the time.
- At the age of 16 Burney began to keep a diary, which she would continue to write for 72 years.
- Between the years 1786 and 1791, Frances Burney served as assistant of the robes to Queen Charlotte, a court position which was deemed to be prestigious.
- She established a romantic attachment to General Alexander dArblay, Lafayettes aide de camp who had fled France upon the rise of Rhobespierre.
- In 1793 Frances Burney married d'Arblay against her fathers wishes. Alexander d'Arblay was a poor man due to the confiscation of his estate in France and their marriage was said to be a happy one.
- In 1794, Frances Burney gave birth to her first and only child, a son who was named Alexander after his father. - Burneys husband returned to France in 1801 to reestablish himself in the French army and to recover his lost property. Burney and her son moved to France a year later and, as a result of the war between England and France, were forced to stay for 10 years.
- In 1811 she underwent a mastectomy. She made medical history by
chronicling her operation, which was performed without anesthesia.
- After her fathers death in 1814, Burney returned to France where her husband was fighting with the French Royalists against Napoleon.
- In 1815 Burney and her husband settled in Bath where dArblay, suffering from jaundice and depression and eventually died in the year 1818.
- Burney died on January 6, 1840.
Burney's life-writings give us a feel for what it was like to b
e an eighteenth-century woman writer with commercial ambitions and how difficult it was for a woman to be taken seriously in the male-dominated business of publishing. Aside from the commercial aspects of her writing, Burney's readers are given a peak into her private life through her numerous letters and journals. Some of the correspondence is light and witty while others, in particular her account of her experience during an operation that was performed without anesthetic, are tragic and emotional.
Samuel Johnson called Burney "a real wonder," and
Virginia Woolf considered her the "Mother of English Fiction."
Leslie Stephen, in
The Dictionary of National Biography (1885), hailed her as giving "the first impulse to the modern school of fiction which aims at a realistic portrait of society."
Jane Austen admired all her works, and found the title for
Pride and Prejudice in the last chapter of Burney's
Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress.
Frances Burney was a prolific writer and her
works enclude: four novels, eight plays(4 comedies, 4 tragedies), six books consisting of diaries and letters and one pamphlet (
Reflections to the Emigrant French Clergy).
It is a real treat to have an author's personal history to read along with her fictional works. I have plans for over the Christmas break to read Burney's novels that are available on-line. So many things to read, so little time.
Through a Secret Window
While searching for an image for this post I found this
webring that I think Sarah Egerton would appreciate. This is from their site:
Inside every woman there is a secret window, a window that only she can see through. This window looks deep into her soul, over the landscapes of her imagination. Through writing this window can be opened and the images seen through it shared with others. This webring allows secret windows across the web and around the world to be opened. It allows the voices of women writers to be heard and shared.I think giving women another space to have a voice is great.
As for the reading of Egerton's work I will post information I found on a website I was reading:
In The Female Advocate Fyge defends womankind. She reinterprets the creation story, rails against the double standard, gives historical examples of virtuous women, questions why men treat women so badly, and explains that women are a source of pleasure, not sorrow, for men.
Fyge's main points concerning the creation story, a couple of which are new, follow:
1. Men speak vile blasphemy when they speak ill of Eve.
2. God created the heavens and the earth then populated the earth with all creatures in pairs, except man. Man being alone was insignificant and scant. Only when God created woman was man made complete.
3. Man was made of dull and senseless Earth while woman was made of a much more noble substance.
4. Adam had the commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge while Eve received the commandment only second-hand.
5. Weak Eve was tempted by the strong supernatural serpent while Adam was tempted by a mere mortal, a weak woman at that.
6. Since her heal bruised the serpent's head, why do men scorn women?
Sounds reasonable to me.
On With The Games
I found this poem a little difficult to get through and had to reply on internet resources to get me through (thank you Dr. J. for not asking us to read all four parts).
I did find out Pope is often quoted so I am assuming there are people out there who are getting more from his work than I did with this piece. Found this on-line and thought the quote was humorous:
The poem is Pope's final protest at the decay of Britain's cultural inheritance that he believed to be associated with the Hanoverian rule of George I and George II: “Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first” (I, 6).
As for the illustration on this post, this is the text that was included:
A satirical print against Pope from Pope Alexander (
1729). The print was also sold separately. It shows Pope as a monkey, because the satirist calls him "A--- P--E," and he sits atop a stack of Pope's works and wears a
papal tiara (referring to Pope's Roman Catholicism). The Latin at the top means "Know thyself," and the verse at the bottom is Pope's own satire on
Thersites from
Essay on Criticism. This was only one of many attacks on Pope after the Dunciad Variorum.
What will the new year bring? This is a question that many people will be pondering over their cocktails and beer this evening as they gather with friends and family to welcome in 2006.
It looks like Santa is running a little late this year!
Title: Das Gefolterte Mädchen (The Tortured Girl) Series - Undecided
This is my second reading of Eliza Haywood's Fantomina and it still amazes me how easily Beauplaisir was fooled. I know we all have different personas to fit various situations but I'm quite sure the people around us still know who we are. Perhaps all the blood has rushed to one part of Mr. Beauplasir's body and it has caused him to have blurred vision (sorry, just had to say it).
I must confess that the more I read about Frances Burney the more impressed I become. While doing research for my essay I became captivated by the many adventures in her life.
e an eighteenth-century woman writer with commercial ambitions and how difficult it was for a woman to be taken seriously in the male-dominated business of publishing. Aside from the commercial aspects of her writing, Burney's readers are given a peak into her private life through her numerous letters and journals. Some of the correspondence is light and witty while others, in particular her account of her experience during an operation that was performed without anesthetic, are tragic and emotional.
While searching for an image for this post I found this webring that I think Sarah Egerton would appreciate. This is from their site:
I found this poem a little difficult to get through and had to reply on internet resources to get me through (thank you Dr. J. for not asking us to read all four parts).
