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This blog is for use by students in Anjuli Raza Kolb's "Legacies of the Gothic Novel" course at Columbia University.
Course Description
The gothic novel is a genre of 18th and 19th century fiction that concerns itself with fear, mystery, the supernatural, violence, purity, otherness, and the impact of these conceits on its largely female protagonists. Much maligned as a popular or 'low' genre at its inception, the form has nevertheless persisted in its popularity as well as crossed into 'higher' forms of modernism and postmodernism. This course will read three key texts in the gothic mode-Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights-and follow the ways they are revisited and rewritten by contemporary American and Caribbean novelists. We will look at how these texts subvert the realist leanings of 18th century narrative prose in English-and its assumptions of enlightenment rationalism-by way of two main processes: narrative hypertrophy and feminist versions of horror. Additionally, we will take up select contemporary criticism on the gothic in literature, film, and art.
There are no prerequisites.
Followers
Blog Archive
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2009
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June
(15)
- Guerillas/No Telephone to Heaven
- Guerillas II
- Guerillas
- Sylvia Plath reads Purdah
- Wuthering Heights III
- Wuthering Heights II/Sedgwick/Kristeva
- Wuthering Heights I
- Wide Sargasso Sea II/ Caribbean Gothic
- Wide Sargasso Sea
- Jane Eyre II
- The Other Side of A Mirror
- Jane Eyre I
- Beloved III/ Modern Medea/ Black Frankenstein
- Beloved II
- Whitman "A Boston Ballad"
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June
(15)
“How easy it had been in that city for her simple impressionistic comments, borrowed from here and there, and some already borrowed from himself and distorted, to suggest a complete and coherent personality. In London, Roche now saw, Jane was an exotic; and perhaps she was aware that she was an exotic. Perhaps she was aware that her simple views, which would have been unremarkable in a woman of another background, were more than simple when she claimed them” (94).
ReplyDeleteJane seems at once foreign and familiar, familiar maybe because she is a pastiche of things she picks up from the behavior, thoughts, and expressions of others. Maybe this explains her strange detachment from her body, her failed sexual encounters, her apparent formlessness, the way she doesn’t allow Jimmy to touch her body with his hands so he might know her, the way her “ugly kiss” is hungry but not really desirous. It’s hard to get a grasp on what she wants. For that matter it’s hard to know yet what any of them want except for some swift end to their hot and grimy existence. Jimmy writes ( I think it’s his writing): Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerilla” (82). But Jane doesn’t seem to have a fight as much as a guarded meanness. So far, each character seems hard to know, each version of the character seems to betray another version.
What's the deal with the dollar? Jane gives the dollar to Bryant (not an American dollar, apparently) and lies about it twice. Bryant also lies about it. Three times either Jane or Bryant lies about the dollar. Is this a heavy handed way for Naipaul to tell us that there was this deception going on, or do Jimmy and Roche already know the truth? It seems that Jimmy does know, at least by the end of the fourth chapter, but when he tells her that he wants to give the dollar back, he doesn't. I suspect that the act of Jane giving a dollar to Bryant serves as a microcosm of the tension between races in this novel, especially in the way that the act of giving a dollar is repeated in chapter 7.
ReplyDelete"They will see him then like a prince, with his gold color" ( page 57, Guerillas). This quote is an excerpt from one of Jimmy's many letter/diary entrys found throughout the book. It is an overt nod towards Bronte's Heathcliff character, and while Jimmy isnt as openly conniving as his romantic counterpart, he is certainly cut from the same ambitious cloth. Furthermore, the way characters are "seen" and their "color" is EVERYTHING in this novel. But more importantly, im intrigued by the fact that Jimmy/Heathcliff is the AUTHOR in this work of fiction. Its as if Naipaul suggests that the real story in Guerillas is that of Jimmys failed rise to power, but since he has not the color nor vision to write it fully himself, Jimmy's plight is narrated by the actions of others.
ReplyDelete“And yet, as always in moments of crisis, and her crises were connected with these failures with men, she saw the world in crisis, and her own privilege, for all its comfort, as useless” (50). Jane’s character is the apotheosis of female passivity. She is completely deprived of the agency of any kind. She speaks about men in her life as failures, but does she ever fail herself? Probably not. How can she fail if she does not exercise her right to make decisions about her own life? She prefers to attach herself to a man and wait for him to fail… In giving her happiness? Making her safe? She is a scary woman – without any personality and a will of her own.
ReplyDelete"It was what he had taught her, what she had picked up from him and incorporated, as words, as a passing attitude, into the choas of words and attitudes she possesed" (18). For Jane and Roche, their relation to each other is more than just companionship. Whether o not he was aware, Roche rubbed off on Jane - not only in small mannerisms, but onto her own identity. From words to attitudes, Jane has become a product of Roche's influence. What is left unsaid is how Jane felt about this. "She was without memory" (18), the narrator goes on to say. The idea of memory and past is interesting here because, like memory foam, she contorts her body, mind, and behavior to fit into her partners lifestyle. What does this mean about the role of women? We always talk about how women are identified by the men they attach themselves to. Even if Jane is "without memory", does this mean that she is no different? Beyond that, does she have a personality at all?
ReplyDelete