Catching Up- a personal blog for my two adoring readers

OK so it's been three years since I've last posted and I admit that I have no idea what it's like to blog anymore. My last "real" post was probably written over four years ago, though for good reason. You see, I was so busy studying and writing for English classes (as well as courting my now husband) that I elected to share more essays rather than my random reflections, which strangely seemed to get more attention from people. In fact, the reason for my return to this blog is because I just discovered that I have followers whom I didn't know existed! It is strange to me that anyone would want to read my thoughts, but it is so flattering knowing that there are people who do and who are waiting for me to show my face again and tell my tale. Knowing I have an audience does motivate me to write again, so thanks for the support. I did start "The Anneotated Bib" in an attempt to refresh myself in this blogging thing back in 2009, but to no avail. Pregnancy and depression prevented such endeavors. However, now that I have some time on my hands with my two children and husband asleep, I feel like I can begin once more dusting off the old key board and perusing through this nearly neglected mind of mine.

Alright, to begin, I want to state that the tone of this blog will most likely be changing since the tone of my personal life has also changed. The aloof essayist of the past is no longer. My days as a student are over and the new life I am living tends to be more humble and deals with, what I believe to be, the more important aspects of life. You see, I am now a mother of two adorable "Irish" twins who have literally transformed into a person I honestly did not know existed. And as a result, I have found myself reflecting less on philosophical ideas and more on whether or not a half used diaper could be reused after a bath, or how in the world I can get my little toddler to stop screaming when she doesn't get her way. Thus will be the mode of all future posts barring I get a moment of personal reflection and, dare I say, have a moment to think real thoughts again! For now this will simply be a transitional piece that will open the door to future thought provoking, if not domestically entertaining conversation. Good to be back with you all, but for now, Ciao!

Cracking Water: A Commentary of Cracking India

Women and water have much in common. Both are lucid and appealing. Both satisfy and refresh the soul and body. In the night they capture all beauty and in the day they sparkle in the golden hues of the sun. Without it man dies. Yet women and water are also impressionable, and can be sculpted to assume a shape and form by those in authority over it. Having almost no will of its own, it is formed into the cast it finds itself placed. Taking on diverse forms or qualities, it adjusts to the changing environmental conditions surrounding itself, managing to subsist regardless of the circumstances it is made to confront. This simple analogy, though much oversimplified, briefly describes both the power and the vulnerability women possess. Reflecting upon the history of civilization, woman has proved herself to claim these qualities. Regardless of culture or time, women have appeared as the more beautiful, gentler and influential sex while also being the weaker. Contrarily, men have claimed the role of authority being the protector, provider and the one to make the decisions. Though it is natural for a man to take the role of lord and women that of maiden, these positions have ultimately been decided and enforced by declared religions of particular regions of the world. And since time immemorial these gender role traditions have been handed down through the learned behaviors retained by children of such cultures. Children, watching, listening and learning, come to understand who it is they must be by the environment they are raised in, and thus learn their appropriate positions within that society. This idea of what gender roles are, how are learned and how they can evolve in specific cultures, is poignantly portrayed in Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India. Written from the naïve narration perspective of five-year-old child Lenny Sethi, the author represents the varied roles women in early twentieth century India exhibit. In portraying the lives of three women who play a pivotal role in Lenny’s upbringing, Sidhwa exposes the reader to the realities women in India had to face in a period of political and religious upheaval during its 1947 Partition. As horrific consequences manifest themselves in this state of unrest, Lenny attentively observes and considers the lifestyles of Mother, Ayah and Hamida, and comes to understand what gender roles are, how they are manipulated and how they are abused in a world of particular male dominance.

The first person a child learns the lessons of life from are its parents. For girls, it’s almost always her mother. However, depending upon the region of the world one comes from, the role of a mother in the life of her children varies. In Lahore, India, during the time of the early 1940’s, the definition of what a woman as a mother was depended upon the class in which she existed and sometimes the religion which her husband followed. Being the sole provider for one’s children came most frequently in those households of poverty. Class structure, therefore, played a significant part in deciding what a woman’s expectations were as a wife and mother in the family household and in society at large. Because Lenny’s mother is a woman of middle to upper class status, she shares her husband’s money to hire servants and uses them to help raise her children. Though she loves her children and does not neglect them to provide for their needs, she does not become the prime feminine influence in Lenny’s life, though she does teach her much about the importance of gender roles during this time.

The relationship between Mother and Father Sethi represents much of what Lenny learns about married women. Since Lenny’s parents were modern in that they were not radical religious followers, as they belonged to the more passive Parsee religion, they had more freedom with their style of living and embraced more of the British culture in the way they dressed and ran their home. However, when regarding gender roles, Father preferred those the Hindu/Muslim religious cultures demanded. This division between the new western customs and the old eastern traditions existing in the Sethi household causes a tension for Mother and creates in her a way of compromising both cultures into one of her own. This she does by obeying her husband while also manipulating her feminine guiles to soften her husband into giving her what she wants. The cat and mouse games she plays with her husband to get him to lend her money, the flirtatious advances on him to get him out of bed, the childlike behaviors on his way home from work, these all show the ways she dotes upon her husband in order to coerce him into subjection to her. In seeking to please her husband and do all things according to his pleasure, she fulfills what women of her position are meant to fulfill and he though liking it, hides this secret pleasure from her.

As times change, so too do the characters as they begin to experience the pains of violence and death which war creates thus cracking not only India, but the Sethi home as well. When dangers surmount and people start killing each other for the sake of land and religion, Mother transforms from a woman of frivolity to a woman of heroic action. Though her secret deeds of hoarding gasoline tanks and driving distances to rescue fallen women and return them back to their families are known to her husband, he never-the-less seems perturbed by her new role as a woman. For soon after this alteration occurs, Father and Mother begin fighting in the bedroom at night. Crying and even physical abuse are suffered by Mother. They barely speak to the children or to one another. Though Mother’s actions are noble, this idea of a woman performing tasks more man-oriented does not sit well with Father, which reveals how profoundly men of that culture, even of the more progressive households, resented the idea of a woman being more than just a wife and mother. Mother realized she wanted to do more than sit back and watch as women suffered under the hands of men and so she, being a true mother with magnanimous love went out to save them. And so she breaks the gender tradition to do what her true motherly heart bits she do for the preservation of her sex. And for this she is derided.

Aside from the role Mother has in Lenny’s life, Ayah plays a most significant role, for she both directly and indirectly exposes Lenny to the truth about life for women of single status and what happens to them if they fall into the hands of dissolute men. Because Ayah is beautiful, she attracts the attention of many men throughout the city of Lahore. Her “presence galvanizes men” (41). However, this possession of beauty works both for and against her as the men in her life use her to their own advantage once the country breaks into warfare.

Opposed to Mother who had to cajole Father by posing as the cute and sensuous housewife to acquire her desires, Ayah had only to speak and her wishes were granted. Being a contemporary Hindu woman who didn’t place her religious beliefs before her personal life, it was easy for her to welcome suitors from various diverse religious affiliations. She was the paradigm of religious ecumenism in female form. “Hindu, Muslim, Parsee [all…] unified around her” (105). Her beauty did not discriminate nor reject any man of differing beliefs. Though she used her beauty towards her advantage by getting free food, silks, and sharpened knives, she made sure that men respected her, for she was a virgin and would not give herself physically to any of them unless through marriage. This sense of self-respect made her all the more desirable and drove men to do all in their power to make her theirs. Furthermore, this acquaintanceship she shared with men allowed her to partake in discussions most women would not be aloud to engage in at that time. Although these men made her think that they respected her by including her in their conversations of war and politics, they also, when given the chance, would pay to see her perform acts exhibited only by women of ill repute or desperation.
Once Ayah’s lover Masseur is killed and she is kidnapped by Ice-Candy-Man, Ayah’s character falls apart and Lenny witnesses what happens to women because of selfish men who’ll kill to possess what they desire. This realization that men can have their way with women and take them for their property and abuse their beauty, kills Ayah’s spirit. For when Ice-candy-man arrested and forced her to become a dancing girl and prostitute in order to survive, she died within herself. “… I can not forget what happened[…] I am not alive” (273-4). All the men whom she thought respected her now used her for her body and showed themselves for who the brutes they were. Because she was a single woman beautiful to behold and free to taste and because corrupt men exploited the war to get what they wanted from women they lusted to consume, Ayah turns into a woman of misfortune though much against her will.
Though families of this area of the world would refuse to admit women who had “fallen” (233) Ayah attempts to escape knowing that she may be rejected by her family. Regardless of the consequences, she risks everything to be liberated from her master. “Please get me away from him […] I want to go to my folk”(275). Having suffered the robbery of her freedom and beauty, she leaves Lahore to start a new life though with no promise for success. In the name of freedom her freedom was despoiled. This brutal reality breaks the heart of Lenny touching her so deeply as to be willing to travel all distances to rescue her from her lot.

The other women figure to teach Lenny the brutality in women’s lives is her subsequent nanny , Hamida. Hamida is most subservient as she is a woman rescued by Mother from the fallen women camps. She was kidnapped by the Sikhs because she was Muslim and was raped by their men, making her a victim of social disgrace. Although what happened to her was against her will, society condemned her as an outcast and she suffered the rejection of her husband who refused to admit her back to his home or to care for her children since she “was touched by other men”(227). Lenny is told by Hamida that her “kismet ”(234) or fate is bad and that there is nothing she can do to change it. Muslim women believed that life’s course was predestined and unchangeable, and Hamida, being Muslim obediently submitted herself to the beliefs of her religion. Lenny, however wonder if what they believed was true. “I don’t believe that! […]The line on our hands can also change”(234). While Hamida’s clings to her beliefs, she fails to see that it is precisely because of the rejection of such ideas that she escaped from her horrid “fate” in the first place. This blind acceptance of one’s fate resulted in many women’s demise and Lenny would not be a victim of such destiny. Hamida’s character reveals how fanatical religions and oppressive patriarchical cultures take away women’s hope for amelioration and how such belief’s leave women to feel controlled by their circumstances.

As the story ends, much is left unsaid about the future of all three women. Ayah ventures to be reunited with her family though without the knowledge of their accepting her, Mother continues in her role as the heroine to help the victim women at the Recovered Women’s Camp without much reconciliation between she and her husband and Hamida stays with the Sethi’s to care for Lenny and her brother without making attempts to be with her children again. But from these women, Lenny learns of what it is to be a woman and what it is to love. Though her role as a woman is yet to be decided, her preparation for whatever life hands her will not be without readiness. For from the lives of these women who touched her life, she beheld the power, strength and suffering women can endure. Like water they touched her soul and strengthened her body; they sustained life when life seemed doomed. In the cracking of India all was cracked, but for these women their crack was like cracking water which kept on flowing and refused to dried up.




Works Cited

Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India: A Novel. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1991.

Tragic Awakenings to Reality: A Review of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"

Living as children, things appear wonderful. Life is grand and fantasies gallop in the wild pastures of young, freshly sprung minds. Problems are few, cares are whimsical and dreams soar high above the playing fields of man. Yet, as time progresses, people, environments and life experiences met with along the path of adulthood, open the eyes of the young to the realities existing in the world in which they live. And the choice of either embracing or rebelling against life’s trying demands, inevitable in every man’s life, molds a person into the individual they ultimately become, thus leading to either glory or defeat. In Kate Chopin’s 1899 controversial coming of age novel, The Awakening, the issue of a woman finding liberation from the traditional expectations of women held by current social norms, poses as a key dilemma for novel protagonist, Edna Pontellier. As novel critic Emily Toth states, Chopin focuses her writing on Edna’s “pursuit of solitude [and] independence” (114). Chopin highlights this want for solitude and independence in creating a new Edna who dares to escape from the “outward existence which conforms to the inward life which questions” (14). However, as Edna embraces the social liberty she longs to possess, she opens herself to an inner awakening, thus leading her from a woman of marital discontent to a woman of social discontent. Unwilling to endure the obstacles set before her and her state of life among both lifestyles, a hunger for solitude envelopes her spirit, leading her to a premature decay of personhood. Through nature and personal relationships, Chopin educes the defeat of Edna after she recognizes who she is and what life is and that the two cannot merge without tragic consequences.

In defining a coming-of-age novel, one may best describe it as a novel where a protagonist gains insight into life’s difficult realities, leading the character from naïvete to maturity, to a greater understanding of self and circumstance (Letham). Edna Pontellier, a young twenty-nine year old mother, fits this description, as she peels back the curtains from the social norms of society and unconsciously admits that her marriage leaves her with “an indescribable oppression”(8), thus making her want for happiness. As she subtly considers the unhappiness that her marriage offers her, due to the fact that she is not the “mother-woman […] who idolize[s] [her] children and worship[s] [her] husband” (9), she looks for diversions from these womanly paradigms, ultimately channeling her towards darker despondencies and seclusion from society.

In developing the awakening, Chopin first uses nature to engender the growth of Edna’s want for liberation. The ocean is particularly important in this regard. Commentator John May, in his article “Local Color in The Awakening”, states that the sea presides over the dawn of Edna’s awakening as it does over the night of her fate” (213). The sea introduces and concludes the time in which Edna comes to know the inner person she never knew existed within herself. Comparing the ocean to a memory Edna had as a girl in Kentucky, she describes “a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean […] she threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes water [… feeling] as if [she] could walk on forever without coming to the end of it” (17). Edna later comments to her companion , Adele Ratignolle, that “sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.” (17). The crossing of thresholds for Edna is apparent from this exchange had between she and Adele. After swimming at sea for the first time, Edna experiences something of what admirer, Robert Lebrun , calls the “semi-celestial” (29) resulting in the spanning of her budding wings into a world foreign to anything she has ever known before, and wishes all the more to scale.

Using parallel characters, Chopin develops Edna’s realization of her diverse nature leading to her seclusion from society. The homely and socially disagreeable musician, Mademoiselle Reisz, contrasts Edna by her singular individuality, alien among Edna’s sphere of existence, thus ironically becoming a major influence regarding Edna’s decision to defect from traditional societal living. Being a single woman unattached to man or children, Edna “not a woman given to confidences”(14), trusts herself to Mlle. Reisz regarding her secret love for Robert Lebrun. Though not disapproving her affections, Mlle. Reisz warns Edna that however much she may want to “soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice, [she] must have strong wings” (79) in order to fly against such heavy currents. While supporting Edna’s rebellion from local culture and gender expectancies, Mlle. Reisz imprudently holds up the illusory dream that Edna can live in a world diametrically opposed to what is honestly obtainable, which ultimately crashes down upon Edna causing her progressive withdrawal from society and end in suicide.

Along with Mlle. Reisz, Chopin utilizes Adele Ratignolle in influencing Edna. Adele is typified as the Creole “mother-woman” who loves both her children and her husband, consenting to love and do most anything to please them. Edna loves her; her beauty, her charm and the way she allows her to let down her guard. Learning to relax her soul among such a matronly influences, Edna, “ intoxicated with the sound of [Adele’s] own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor” becomes inebriated “like wine, or like a first breath of freedom”(19) which she soon follows, though to extremes. Upon admitting that she is a mother whose children’s “absence was a sort of relief”(19) rather than a joy as it was for Adele, she seeks to live a according to her own fashion. And Adele, detecting this unorthodox spirit within her and knowing of Robert Lebrun’s affection for her, last tells her to “think of the children […to] remember them!”(104). With Adele’s faithful motherly persona shadowing over Edna, Edna reconsider the life she newly posseses, leaving her to want for escape through the taking of her own life.

Leaving her home, abandoning her children, beginning a new life as an artist in her “pigeon- house”, escaping to the suburb gardens, following a new life of adulterous living with lover Alceé Arobin, Edna swallows the wine of independence she thirsted to consume, yet never obtains the self-contentment she thought she’d acquire. Edna begins to live what writer Lewis Leary states as “love outside of marriage and passion outside of love.” In Elizabeth Elz’s essay, The Awakening and A Lost Lady: flying with broken wings and raked feathers”, Elz claims that Edna recognizes that in living she will […] merely be moving from one type of confinement to another: "To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it will be some one else" (108).” This observation illustrates that Edna knew she couldn’t possess the life she sought. Her dreams were crumbling. Time and culture would not permit her to span the horizons of extreme moral disobedience hoped for in vain. Unwilling to carry the consequences of her state as wife and mother, being rejected by the only man she really wished to love, Robert, and seeing she cannot live with herself in the state she’s presently living, the systematic defeat of Edna was only a matter of time. Standing on the shore naked and free from all attachments, Edna chooses to live in weakness and defeat, not strong enough to endure life’s crosses brought upon by her own doing.

Through the usage of characters and nature, one can detect how Kate Chopin progressively portrays the demise of protagonist Edna Pontellier. Though finally possessing the liberty she longed for, Edna does not evolve into a woman of strength and nobility as she meets with life’s pains and denials. Rather with a “never lifting[…] despondency” (108) she becomes like the bird seen on the beach “with a broken wing beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water”(108). She selfishly leaves behind all who love her, her children, her husband, her friends, thus leading to her final desire of being lost in the sea’s “maze of self-contemplation”(212) with nothing but a tragic awakening to reality to greet her at the center of the sea.



Works Cited

Elz, Elizabeth. “The Awakening and A Lost Lady: flying with broken wings and raked feathers.”
Literature Online 2003. Electronic Resources Campbell Library of Rowan University.
Glassboro, NJ. 8 Mar. 2005 < http://lion.chadwyck.com>.
Leary, Lewis. “Kate Chopin and Walk Whitman.” The Awakening: A Norton Critical Edition.
Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994. 217-220.
Letham, Susan.“The Coming-of-Age Novel: It’s a Woman’s World.” Inspired 2 Write 2002. 8
Mar. 2005 .
< http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/04/17/60II/main286163.shtml>.
May, John R. “Local Color in The Awakening.” The Awakening: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed.
Margo Cully. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994. 211-217
Toth, Emily. “A New Biographical Approach.” The Awakening: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed.
Margo Cully. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994. 113-119.

Il Primo Libro

Hurrah! My first book has just been published and is ready for you and your children's enjoyment. You may find it by clicking on the title of this posting (found above).
I would love to hear your thoughts about the plot and/or how you think it reads for children. Hopes of continuing to write so your critiques are most necessary. Cheers tutti!