Can you finish it?

I have set myself a literary project: to tackle Trollope's Parliamentary Palliser series.

I am talking about Anthony, of course, and not Joanna.

Having started and failed to complete any of the Barsetshire Chronicles time and again, why am I subjecting myself to this? I'm not really sure, except that I have a sneaking suspicion that I am missing out. I didn't get on at all well with the misdemeanours of churchmen - but I read The Way We Live Now for the Masters, and enjoyed the satire on high finance and the inevitable parallels that can be drawn with our very own thoroughly modern banking crisis.

I can't help wondering what Trollope would have made of the tabloid hacking scandal.

So I have turned to the Parliamentary novels, about a weakly bound coalition between the Tories and the liberal Whigs. Sound familiar? I have started at the beginning with Can You Forgive Her? (albeit with misgivings, having read the joke titles Can You Stand Her? and Can You Finish It?).

No politics as yet, but an interesting quandary for the heroine as she holds out against marriage as the only destiny for her sex, asking 'What is a woman's life for?'. Seeing friends juggling marriage, motherhood and full time work, I do sometimes worry we haven't come that far. Free childcare for all working parents! I'd vote for that.

Circus

Wonderful Victorian poster for a rather special variety act. Love the typography, love the insouciance of the etcetera.

Lions, tigers, leopards etc., indeed!

Conan Doyle and monstrous orchids

Two more essays done and dusted.


First, for the Victorian Fin de Siecle course, "Metaphors as monstrous as orchids: the language of flowers in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray."

I wrote on The Picture of Dorian Gray as a work which embodies Aestheticism's belief in 'art for art's sake' in its narrative and in the richly gilded prose. Redolent of fin de siècle decorative excess, I find the novel's symbolic schemes are in themselves rich and productive. I looked at the creation and application of a symbolic language of flowers by Wilde, aiming to demonstrate the influence of contemporary ideas on his construction of an Aesthetic language of flowers in the novel. A veritable whirlwind through Paterian ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, formalism in garden design, Grant Allen’s Physiological Aesthetics and Darwin’s evolutionary botany, Linnaean botanical naming, and Huysmans.

Phew.

Next up, for Race and the Victorians, "The house is full of Indian curiosities: Colony, metropole and imperial interaction in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four."

Here I looked at Edward Said’s idea that a key narrative of the nineteenth century is the sustaining of British imperial policy through oppositional identities: occident, us, home, metropole set against orient, them, away, colony. I argue that, as a story of a collision between metropole and colony, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four is an interesting framework through which to consider the ideological representation of these binaries, the blurring of boundaries of race and difference, and Conan Doyle’s view of Empire.

Loved ‘em both. Funny how you write better when you’re passionate about the subject.

I feel a bit melancholic as that’s the end of the taught courses, but it’s been a deeply deeply satisfying time. Possibly one of my better decisions! It’s been creative, challenging and full of original thought … I’m also a lot clearer on what I want from my work life too, having really enjoyed the various digital projects I’ve worked on as a freelancer. Time has rather zoomed by, though!

I’m on my own now with ‘the big one', a 15K word dissertation on Edith Nesbit’s Fabianism to produce by the end of September.  Here we go …


[http://www.thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

The Cult of Beauty at the V&A

If you haven't been, you must...

Peacocks. Sunflowers. PreRaphaelite hair. Morris wallpaper. Du Maurier Punch cartoons. Liberty dresses.

What more could a girl want? My heart is full ...

Here's a taster from YouTube:



The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900

I only wish I'd been before I submitted my Dorian Gray essay, ah well...

[http://thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

This Week

This week, I have been mostly:

 - feeling conflicted as I'm a republican but enjoyed 'the dress' and the cakes

 - trying to keep the cat off the keyboard ...

 - starting to obsess over Edith Nesbit and the Fabians ... "Sounds like a rock band" - thanks Dad!

Image from Wikipedia Commons

 - rediscovering collections of turn-of-the-century cigarette cards - Cissy is my favourite, love the white lace / black opaques combo

 - dusting off the SLR for a sunny, windy day in Greenwich

 - and picking up gems for the Butterfly Mind Vintage Etsy shop.

What have you been up to?

[http://thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

Good Friday

The garden is looking lovely in all this glorious sunshine. We have been cracking on with the veg - the lettuce and salad leaves are in, as are the courgettes, carrots, broad beans and sweetpeas. There are lots of promising looking blossoms on the strawberries, and the mint is riotous (of course).  The tomatoes are coming along beautifully behind glass, and it's Good Friday today so the 'tatties will be going in tomorrow - not an old wives tale I'm reliably informed, but related to the lunar calendar...

Meanwhile, I've been taking study breaks from my 'Fin de Siècle' and 'Race and the Victorians' essays to tackle the thistles in the lawn with my trusty fork - most satisfying!

[http://www.thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

Writing, writing, writing

First term of the Victorian Studies MA is over: I spent Christmas writing, writing, writing, and the essays were submitted, heart in mouth, the day before the deadline.

For the 'Progress and Anxiety' module, I wrote on Dickens' Bleak House – I looked at the highly ambivalent representation of domestic and household spaces, focusing on the way that the novel abounds with dirt, disorder and disoriented domestic life. I argued that Dickens sets up a moral spectrum of 'approved' and 'disapproved' household systems and domestic topographies, and that it is difficult to establish if this should be read as a radical or conservative moral project. I was so happy writing it!

For the 'Faith and Doubt' module, I wrote on Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti – I compared the way the two poets explore the efficacy of the poetic voice in approaching an understanding of the divine, arguing that, despite their different poetic styles and belief systems, a shared approach can been seen, even down to shared metaphorical and lexical registers, and both sensing that language is limited and inadequate when it comes to faith. This one was more problematic for me: I will have to think very, very carefully when choosing my dissertation topic, to make sure I have enthusiasm enough to carry me through the required 15,000 words!

This term, 'Race and the Victorians' and 'Fin de Siècle'...

I feel a bit sad that it's one third over already as I am thoroughly enjoying myself – but no time for brooding, there's so much more to do!

Race and the Victorians

 

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

 

I've been trying to come up with a list of nineteenth century (UK only, I'm afraid) novels with black or Asian characters, as I'm taking a class on “Race and the Victorians” next term.

Remarkably, the internet has failed to provide – or I haven't searched effectively!

I've been canvassing friends, and so far we've got:

• The Moonstone
• The first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre
• Arguably Heathcliff?
• H Rider Haggard
• Vanity Fair – I think there was a mixed race child at the school, or am I misremembering?
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four & The Man with the Twisted Lip
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Ivanhoe
• Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden"
• Tattycoram in Little Dorrit, and Nipper in Dombey and Sons?
• Conrad's Heart of Darkness
• Robert Louis Stephenson short stories: Beach of Fales and The Isle of Voices.

If you think of any more, please stick them in the comments!

[http://thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

In the bleak midwinter

13:365
Originally uploaded by ByBlanca

Because it's Christmas Eve, because it's -2oC outside, and because I have just completed the first draft of my Christina Rossetti essay:




In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Photo is from ByBlanca's lovely Flickr photostream.

[http://www.thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

Ceaselessly beginning

stricken
Originally uploaded by verethragma

So, it's been a hectic couple of months and I've been meaning to blog the whys and wherefores. I've resigned my job to do an MA in Victorian Studies, after two years (some of my nearest and dearest would argue longer, I'm sure!) of vacillating and trying to decide if I should stay or I should go.

It's all very exciting and I am looking forward to January very much.

Classes have started and I am currently juggling work and classes and reading which is hard going but it's so much fun and so endlessly rewarding. I gave a seminar talk on Bleak House a few weeks ago, and am in the middle of two essays: one on Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, and the efficacy of the poet's voice in exploring the divine, and one on the moral interpretations of the disordered domestic space in Dickens – and goodness me, I know I've done the right thing!

At work, as I've progressed, I've moved further and further away from the things that motivate me, doing very little creative and lots that requires me to ...well, not really be myself. The gap between 'real' me and 'work' was just getting wider and wider, and that can't be healthy. This is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time: I find academic work so challenging, rewarding, fulfilling, exciting. This is a chance to have a bit of a career sabbatical and think carefully about who I am, what makes me happiest, and what I really want from a career. I'm going to try to keep my hand in, through, by doing part-time/temping/freelance work in digital or publishing (publishing friends: fair warning, I'll be in touch soon, for a little of what they call “leveraging your network”) so I keep my options open. Here's to a portfolio career for the next six months or so.

Who knows what will come next?

As a person who is usually so concerned with the future and doing the “right” thing, I am strangely relaxed about all this ambiguity and uncertainty. Which, I guess, is all part of the process of getting back to where I want to be – wherever that turns out to be!

Hurrah for new starts.

"To be alive is to be ceaselessly beginning." George Eliot – thanks, Jude, for such an apt quote, and from a nineteenth century author too!

(The photo is from my very talented friend Verethragma's Flickr photostream: go and have a look, it's full of beauty)