Amanda's 2012 Literature in Review

Happy New Years Eve to everybody! This is the time to reflect on the current and think about changes to the self. By “the self,” I mean the individual. What has influenced your life the most during the year? What change would you like to see happen in your life – and the world – during the new year of 2013? How can you help somebody else with the influence(s) you choose? Are you happy with the decisions you have made over the current year? What would you change in the next year with future decisions?

As I write this morning, I remember feeling anxious to begin the college semester  from Rose State College’s online Liberal Studies program. The session was to begin on January 23, 2012. For me, January 23 brought back painful memories of being hospitalized on January 23, 2011, after a tiny blood clot was found in the same right leg. I was not thinking about that heartbreaking experience. I had to concentrate on the present and what was about to take place.

I had time to reflect on the courses that shaped my college career. From the early 2000 to the 2011 period, I had taken several courses that led me to only having to take fifteen hours of residency at Rose State College. I had taken Appreciation of Music, World Religion, and Biology after recovering from blood clots. Education of the self provided a sense security I had lost due to hospital stays. Up until this point, I had been a “C” student. Using the dictionary help me with vocabulary terms. Keeping an active daily planner helped me learn how to become a more disciplined student and woman..

From reading survivor stories during my time of healing, I learned that expressing the self was needed for the recovery process. So, I knew I had at least done something right by keeping a journal. One rape survivor began to sing karaoke and brought an awareness to women about her brutal attack. The more I read stories on how survivors cope with every form of abuse, the more I appreciated their openness, honesty, and humiliation. We experienced their humiliating experiences together. We traveled back in time to the abuse. That was important to me. I wanted to know how disgusted, repulsed, and vulnerable the survivors felt. I wanted the survivors to gut every emotion out into words and then cry, cry, cry. When there is no water left in their eyes, how do they make it in this world? I read, wrote about these survivors, and reached out to a woman I can never thank enough for sharing her story and bringing shame to my own college experience.

The cupcake on the cover of A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown led me to open the first few pages. A young female baby was named Cupcake simply because her mother wanted to eat a cupcake. Already, I liked the positive direction of the story. This child, Cupcake, became a foster child after her mother’s death. Her foster mother wanted money from the state. The house would be cleaned spotless by the few foster children living in the home. For work, there was a prostitution business. Cupcake experienced the evil part of this world early on. This negative direction led Cupcake on a downward spiral. Cupcake became involved with crimes, drugs, and isolation.

What changed Cucake’s life was her desire to become a lawyer. Cupcake’s own tragic experience with the foster care system made her want to create a change. As a young woman, she learned how to work in a law firm. There were a few hard times. Cupcake was attending a recovery group and her sponsor became her biggest cheerleader. This job led Cupcake to the road of attending college. As a woman with a limited background in education, Cupcake set high standards for herself. She did not attend college events or fraternities. She did not have time to make friends and socialize. Cupcake would be in her professor’s offices seeking help. Work and college became this woman’s world.

The end was happy. After all of this hard work, Cupcake graduated with top honors. As a woman who became hungry for more knowledge, I can never stop recommending this brilliant woman to other people. This woman dug the heels of her shoes into the excitement of education. I followed in Cupcake’s positive example with my own education.

When I entered the Liberal Studies program almost a year ago, I was one percent a bona fide conservative. I was the way Bach and Beethoven were with absolute music. After my program ended over the summer, I was feeling program music much like that of Saint Saens. When I refer to "absolute music," I mean the music followed a fixed style of music. With "program music," there was more liberation with the process of experimenting with music. Absolute music does not change over time while program music matures and develops  as new ideas are presented to composers and musical instruments are included. Even though I have great appreciation for Bach and Beethoven, the tragic deaths of Saint Saens small children made me understood why he needed a change. He created Carnival of Animals with such great love, care, and nurture that I began to program music rather than absolute music at the end of my course in Appreciation of Music. 

When I entered English literature during the Spring, I did not even realize this would be an advanced literature course. My professor provided my class and me with a lengthy list of writers from four periods, a choice between two questions to write over each month, and to check in three times a week on our discussion board. I had never taken an upper level literature course, and quite frankly, I did not know what to do or where to begin. This, however, did not prevent me from writing questions to answers.

  

The more I read older writings in English literature, the more I realized these thoughts and ideas seemed liberated. I enjoyed Wordsworth’s poems about nature. Several poets wrote over war, beginnings of new periods, lost loves, deaths, and hope. As I read English literature and American literature, I realized there was a difference. American poems from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tend not be as expressive as senventeenth century English (British) literature. British poets seemed to be more comfortable with the pen and paper. There does not seem to be much of a repressive state or much fear.

One British writer I am not fond of is John Stuart Mills. As a critic of Lord Alfred Tennyson, Mills' criticism changed his writings forever.. No longer did this poet write to his heart's content, these feelings and thoughts became censored. I did read about the influences of Jeremy Benthem and John Stuart Mills in Ethics in Criminal Justice along with Immanual Kant, Marxism, and numerous other people. I was very impressed with the writings of Tennyson. I don't believe there should have been a change in his expression of words. The only change needed was Mills tolerance level, which was one of Aristotle's virtues. As a good friend, Mills could have appreciated the effort and thought Tennyson put into his writings and suggested in a nice way where improvements could have helped his writings. Or, Mills could have been thoughtful and written good reviews about how much he supported his literary friend's expression of poetry. There are always better alternatives than shutting a writer down.

One poem from English literature I will never forget is “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning. In this poem, the narrator points out a painting of his former wife, his last Duchess. I read this poem as a warning for any future bride to stay away from the narrator. This narrator seemed to have an extremely jealous side. The last duchess had so much life in her body and livelihood. Maybe the narrator misinterpreted this behavior to be more than it really was. So, the duchess was sentenced to death. Her picture still hangs on the wall.

What could this painting symbolize to the narrator? As I think back to this poem, I feel this picture represented the narrator’s empowerment over his deceased wife. Each time this man looked at the picture, he is driven to not make the same bad decision making skills in settling for just any woman. This man became deprived of having a male heir to his name. The wife’s attention was not centered solely on their marriage. The wife was liberated from this apparent bondage. In this picture, the narrator is reminded of his commitment as a noble husband and his wife’s apparent lack of formal education of the home.

I enjoyed writing over “The General” by Siegfred Sassoon. This is a war poem. I wrote my heart on this poem along with a few others.  This poem stands out in my mind as something never to forget. When I do forget, I must re-read this. In order to write about this poem, I had to put myself in the shoes of the soldiers under this cheery-happy-go-lucky General who only visited a couple times away. How would I feel about this cheery General’s visit after I had watched fellow brothers fall to their death, watch them being taken to hospitals, and bullets flying by left and right? As a soldier, this cheerful attitude would bring back pleasant memories of civilian life with my parents, spouse, children, and friends. I would also feel resentment. As I was fighting for my country and freedoms, this General was losing himself. The General would not be same field as his soldiers. How could he be any different than cheerful if he does not have to breathe the war 24/7 the we do? If he had been in our shoes, that big smile would be showing human emotions, and there would be a time for everything as in Ecclesiastes.

British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft

Speaking of the way Matthew Arnold related feelings of repulsion and attraction to his Father’s religion, I felt the same way when selecting to read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Victindication on the Rights of Woman and responses to Edmund Burke’s conservative writings on mankind. Along with English literature, I was also taking Ethics in Criminal Justice and American Literature. Combined, my agenda was busy writing over each new story, author, and idea. So, the way the I felt about this new feminist perspective on womanhood felt intimidating. This new female voice of Mary Wollstonecraft was strong and assertive in her liberated view on the education of woman. I struggled reading the conflict of women’s roles between Wollstonecraft and Burke. Both authors created several good points and arguments that followed.

In the end, I became a liberated woman. I learned that these strong feminist authors spoke – or wrote – over the issues and roles women deserved in their own lives. As I read more about Wollstonecraft’s personal life, I learned she married a famous male English author. This marriage was liberated. The couple had their own independent lives and friends. When the couple went out with friends, they would not be together. In the home, each author had a separate room to write in. Wollestoncraft’s life ended when she gave birth to their daughter, Mary Shelley, author of the great Frankenstein.

During this time, one story stood out by Meridel LeSeuer. This story was “Women on the Breadlines.” As a college educator, the college encouraged students  from taking creative writing courses offered by LeSuer. I do find the college LeSeuer to be unappreciated of her hard work and dedication to women. When I wrote about these women’s struggles in a paper, there was no doubt in my mind what my purpose in life was to become. These starving, oppressed, education-struck women needed a strong female advocate. As much as I cried over these stories and women, my strength everyday originates from these women.

A female literary character from “Women Are Hungry,” by Meridel LeSeuer, made the comment that a body is not able to live on bread alone. This reference comes from Luke 4:1-13 when Jesus is being tempted by Satan. Jesus asserts his true believes that bread does only provide nourishment a body needs to become fully developed. From this Biblical references LeSuer uses, I am glad to be given a glimpse of oppression and suffering feels like.

There is another feminist author who changed my perspective on womanhood. As this year ends and 2013 begins, I feel Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a true pioneer for modern women. 

This liberated woman remained strong and faithful in  her writings spoken at women’s conventions. This woman believed in the abolishment of slavery. This woman believed women should have strong voices in local, state, and federal government and politics. This woman believed a woman should be granted voting right. This woman advocated for the education of women from all walks of life.

As I reflect back on changing from a conservative woman into a liberated female, this does not mean I am going to be going to be taking my maiden name with my last name. I am not going to sit in on political rallies. I am not going to partake in burning my undergarments. I am not going to support birth control because my life almost ended by the third generation pill. What I will do is try to teach women they are worthy of being loved, stood up for, and provided with the best education and resources available this world has to offer them. Each time I wake up in the mornings, I want to write a new entry that may help women in this world.

When I began a Liberal Studies program last January, I had no idea where the courses would take me. A year prior to this, I was laying in a hospital bed inside a hospital that was surrounded by snow. This snow was convinced it would stay awhile. During this time, the snow became a cheerful General to me. I was at the mercy of Mother Nature. This vulnerability led me to relate better to female characters in stories along with news stories of victimizations.

I could have withdrawn from my courses. When death became too much, I could have given up. 

Dealing with death has been the biggest struggle in my own life. I have watched loved ones pass away, become physically disabled, and the self suffers in solitude. I have stories and novels over heroines committing suicide. For the author's time period, perhaps this constituted as a dignified ending to a future of living with shame, guilt, and humiliation. Divorced women were not treated with respect as Edith Wharton writes in "Autre Temps." Kate Chopin's "A Respectable Woman" features a wife I do not find to be respectful. Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening features a young wife and mother finding her renaissance and trying to make it onn her own. I have my own thoughts on how the woman could have changed the tragic outcome of her ending. In Edith Wharton's Summer, a young librarian becomes fascinated with the idea of a romance. The love interest winds up hiding Charity, the main character, and she becomes the charity wife of her adoptive father. These two authors wrote stories about women who would probably live in modern society. As a result, Kate Chopin received the worst cricitism from her male readers. This criticism closed Chopin down as a writer.

This is a good closing point for me this morning. I do not wish to give too much of hint for the subject of tomorrow’s writing. Those readers who know me well probably have an idea.I do love suspense with anticipation, however!

Have a wonderful New Year! Until next time,

Miss Amanda and ever faithful, furry K-9 companion Luigi

Luigi was showing me love and support yesterday as I worked out with my stationary bike and a set of weights. I am one blessed woman to have such a sweet little furry K-9 companion supervising my daily workouts!