wormhole through which representation and real production oscillate, then we ought to investigate desire in terms of this transposition more thoroughly.
2. Function of the Mother
The role of the mother is central to the motivations of various characters and, as I will suggest, to the flow of both texts. In Infinite Jest, Avril Incandenza is the day to day manager of The Enfield Academy and has a fallacious relationship with her children; the question of the contents of 'The Entertainment' is tied together with the question of the function of the mother and the psychic structures of the Incandenza children. In House of Leaves, Johnny Truant's mother functions as a kind of bWo image, that is, her Whalestoe letters and role in the background serve as an absolute limit to the path of
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Of interest here is the Lacanian (m)Other, engulfment fear, and the perverse and psychotic structures at work in the texts. I will also investigate the novels in terms of the Deleuzian primacy of becoming-woman in the process of a becoming and how this relates to the position of the central females in the texts.
3. Role of the Films
Both Danielewski and Wallace were dealing with the issue of what it means to be entertained and how to write a work that is entertaining, challenging, and rewarding at the same time. In its various forms, film was certainly a dominant medium of entertainment in the 90's and both writers play on this idea in their singular ways. In Infinite Jest, 'The Entertainment' is the absent object-cause of multiple layers of plot, mirroring the process of addiction in many of the central characters. I will claim that a similar error which occurred in film theory with regards to (mis)identification also occurs in some literary critique, specifically in works on this novel. Lacanian concepts are often only partially invoked and many of the studies on both novels use a combination of Lacan's mirror stage
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
Eupriedes, Medea and Sappho’s writing focus on women to expose the relationships between a variety of themes and the general ideal that women are property. The main characters in both pieces of literature demonstrate similar situations where love and sex result in a serious troll. These themes affected their relationship with themselves and others, as well as, incapability to make decisions which even today in society still affects humans. Headstrong actions made on their conquest for everlasting love connects to sacrifices they made to achieve their goal which ultimately ended in pain. Love and sex interferes with development of human emotions and character throughout the course
Are all mothers fit for motherhood? The concept of motherhood is scrutinized in the stories “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Tears Idle Tears”. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence the mother, Hester, unpremeditatedly provokes her son into providing for her through gambling. In the story “Tears Idle Tears” by Elizabeth Bowen, Mrs. Dickinson disregards her son’s emotions and puts more emphasis in her appearance than her son’s wellbeing. Hester and Mrs. Dickinson both were inadequate mothers. Both the mothers were materialistic, pretended to love their offspring, and their dominance hindered their children’s progress in life.
The central figures in these three works are all undoubtedly flawed, each one in a very different way. They may have responded to their positions in life, or the circumstances in which they find themselves may have brought out traits that already existed. Whichever applies to each individual, or the peculiar combination of the two that is specific to them, it effects the outcome of their lives. Their reaction to these defects, and the control or lack of it that they apply to these qualities, is also central to the narrative that drives these texts. The exploration of the characters of these men and their particular idiosyncrasies is the thread that runs throughout all of the works.
For centuries women have been perceived as overshadowed figures who remain in a separate sphere from men. The term “separate spheres” refers to the distinct, conventional characteristics associated with gender differences. The public sphere of men is associated with commerce whereas the domestic sphere for women is linked with the household. However, there is more than just one perspective on feminism. The feminist view is influenced by three main voices: the French, American, and British. French feminists focus their attention on language; American feminists analyze the literary aspects; and British feminists examine the historical processes (Murfin 296-299). Using these perspectives, we can see the oppression of women conveyed in many different texts throughout literature and in history. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for instance, exhibits not only a feminist view in the text, but also in society during Shelley’s time period as displayed by her negotiations with the separate spheres. Voltaire’s Candide also conveys powerful gender differences and reveals the oppression of women throughout the novel. Therefore, a correlation can be seen between the view of women in the two novels and how it reflects the culture and time period in which the novels were written.
Many readers feel the tendency to compare Aphra Behn's Oroonoko to William Shakespeare's Othello. Indeed they have many features in common, such as wives executed by husbands, conflicts between white and black characters, deceived heroes, the absolute vulnerability of women, etc. Both works stage male characters at both ends of their conflicts. In Othello, the tragic hero is Othello, and the villain is Iago. In Oroonoko, the hero is Oroonoko, the vice of the first part is the old king, and the second part white men in the colony. In contrast to their husbands, both heroines—Desdemona and Imoinda—seem more like "function characters" who are merely trapped in their husband's fates, occasionally becoming some motivation of their husbands (like Desdemona is Othello's motivation to rage, Imoinda's pregnancy drives Oroonoko restless to escape). While Shakespeare and Behn put much effort in moulding them, to many readers they are merely "perfect wives". This paper aims to argue that, Desdemona and Imoinda's perfect wifehood may be the product of compliance to male-dominated societies, where women are
In conclusion to this essay, having examined these 19th century gothic texts, it is fair to say that normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades them. This element gives the reader a deep insight into the culture context of the time in which these stories are situated. It enables the reader to delve into the darker sides of humanity at that time, that they would not have been able to do otherwise.
In many ways, feminist criticism has grown out of a creative synthesis of Marxist and Freudian approaches, liberated further by the insights of structuralist and post-structuralist readings of literature which have probed ever deeper into the hidden depths of texts. Feminist criticism has emerged as a school in its own right only during the last quarter of the 20th century; as recently as 1986 Mario Praz (in his introductory essay to three Gothic novels) was able to pose the question ‘why in the most polite and effeminate of centuries… should people have begun to feel the horrible fascination of dark forests and dismal caverns, and cemeteries and thunderstorms?’ and come up with the rather patronising answer: ‘just because of its feminine character.’
Eve Sedgwick describes the gothic novel as a “dialectic between the homosexual and homophobic” (92). Homosexuality was first recognized in the eighteenth century and resulted in far reaching social responses. With the establishment of the term “homosexuality”, social tensions appeared. These tensions found their way into novels as fears of sexuality and the struggle for sexual expression. Sedgwick terms this emerging homoeroticism as the “gothic unspeakable”, which is reflected through the depiction of male class and male sexuality (95). Although homosexuality is not explicitly discussed in the text of Otranto, some critics find the relationships and behaviours between the male characters to manifest Sedgwick’s queer reading of the gothic novel.
While examining nineteenth-century female monster, Susanne Beacker reveals that she remains a mere idea, a “voiceless textual object” in women’s gothic texts whose happy endings close to the retribution and exorcism of the monstrous woman and the entrapment of the heroine in the patriarchal system (72). In this context, DeLamotte contends that:
Parent/Child relationships are very hard to establish among individuals. This particular relationship is very important for the child from birth because it helps the child to be able to understand moral and values of life that should be taught by the parent(s). In the short story “Teenage Wasteland”, Daisy (mother) fails to provide the proper love and care that should be given to her children. Daisy is an unfit parent that allows herself to manipulated by lacking self confidence, communication, and patience.
The story of Marcela is first encountered second hand through a male character who describes her in the most negative way. In his criticism “Competing Narrative Discourses: (fe)male Fabulation in the Episode of Grisóstomo and Marcela,” John P. Gabriele agrees that Marcela is misinterpreted by the male characters who describe her to Don Quixote (509). The men plea that she is very cruel and “does more harm in this land than the plague” (Cervantes 85). Even though Marcela has asserted her independence and rejected a countless number of men desiring to obtain her love, the men still objectify her by “waiting to see where her haughtiness will end and who will be the fortunate man to conquer so difficult a nature” (Cervantes 85). Referring to her as something to be “conquered” demonstrates how women were respected as nothing more than property and a source of pride. Yvonne Jehenson describes Marcela’s situation as “a male fantasy, a microcosmic image of man’s gender-inflected wish fulfillment” (Gabriele 510). This explains why the men have so much built up frustration towards Marcela for being the complete opposite of their
Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu’s texts, Dracula (1898) and “Carmilla” (1872), use gothic tropes in similar ways to captivate readers with horror and terror. This essay will illustrate how, in comparison, both texts include gothic tropes: the New Woman, sexuality and setting, in order to provoke emotions and reactions from the readers. To achieve this, this essay will focus on the women that challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and deconstruct each text in regards to the very strong undertones of homosexuality; specifically between Carmilla and Laura, and Dracula and Harker. By discussing the harshness and darkness of the environments described, including ruined castles and isolated landscapes; this essay will also explore the
French lover was neither controversial nor celebrated by the readers and critics. In fact very few criticisms and articles are written and printed about this novel. The reason for choosing this novel amidst her other sensational novels is because of the negative criticism that has concealed the true worth of the novel. This article tries to find a place that the novel deserves, in the literary canon. A psycho-dynamics study on French lover will open the gateway to the female psyche which in turn will lead to the proper understanding of the place it deserves in
The Book of Secrets is a bi-layered textual discourse comprising relics of information obtained from Alfred Corbin’s diary, on the one hand, and Pius Fernandes’ reconstruction of those disjointed messages into a narrative. But within these spaces, there are multiple mini-layers of stories of other characters: Mariamu, Pipa, Rita, Sola, Kim and others. A diary is known for its fragmented and incoherent nature. By trying to fill in the gaps of Corbin’s diary, Fernandes comes up with a new narrative whose truth become the discursive subject of the novel. Imbedded in the search of the truth between the constructed (Corbin’s) and the reconstructed (Fernandes’) diaries, there are metaphors of violence that manifest narratives.