Americans learning reserve

Several people have noticed that emotional expression here is different from the American norm. In general, social life is slightly more reserved and often, in public interaction, more rule oriented. Students have noted the lack of public displays, and the effect of social-misteps. I think the naive American cheerfulness can get a person a long way towards forgiveness, but only so far. I certainly feel the difference in volume, but the lack of eye contact seems normal to me as that was the norm from the east. Already, in public, I can feel our group volume going down.

Happily, our classroom discussions are not muted. We had a great conversation this morning about Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. We talked about the dichotomy of interior and exterior in Wuthering Heights where the interior was the repression of social rules, and the exterior is the freedom of nature personified in the moors. Even on the OS maps, this interior/exterior dichtomy is clear. The towns are thick with roads and the black symobls for structures, and huge swaths of the map are empty moor populated only the names of each contour of the ground: Peniston Crages, Dove Stones, Hall Hill, Round Hill, Withins, lower Withins, Haworth Moor, etc. It is a wasteland that is densly populated by the thoughts of poeple who posessed the empty land by naming it. The footpaths wind around the edges of the trackless moors but no footpath crosses the empty spaces.

We also talked about how in Wuthering Heights, all characters could be seen as fragments of the author's psyche. Cathy IS Heathcliff, Heathcliff cannot live without his life. Wuthering Heights is an interesting maze of book because the plot is twisted, it defies genre, and the characters share the same names, just in different orders. Some critics have called it a prose poem of Emily Bronte's internal conflicted state. At the time, contemporary critics complained that there was no way a young lady could imagine a person of such depravity as Heathcliff so someone else must have written the text. But no matter how dystopian and confusing the novel is, we still buy it, and it stays in print.

Jane Eyre is a bit more coherent, but the conversation was less unanimous about what to conclude about Jane. It seemed like Jane was compelling because we all identified with her in our own personal ways. While Wuthering Heights had a distincly psychological critique in this group, Jane Eyre got more Reader Response. One person commented that if Jane hadn't had Helen Burns' influence, she would not have forgiven her Aunt Reed and responded in such a compassionate way. It was also suggested that if Jane had not escaped from Reed's influence at Gateshead, then she might have ended up like Heathcliff. Or, if Heathcliff had gone away to school, he might not have been so tortured/torturing. All this is moot because the sisters wrote the same story but with different takes. It is entertaining to see the two as autobiographies because then one has a distinct image of each person not reflected in the surviving painting of the sisters.

Rochester got a lot of air time also. Was he handsome? Was Adelle really his child? Was Jane as ugly as she says she was? Why didn't he just divorce Bertha? We resolved these questions as plot devices and social commentary. We also discussed Jane's rather 21st century resolve to remain independent and under no one's control. Interestingly enough, in this group of young women, the topic of marriage is neglible. The most extended discussion of marriage has been concerning dresses while the issue of the husband acquired along with the dress has been a decidedly secondary issue. During the end of the evening at the pub, the general conclusion was that men were exasperating. I think Jane and Emily might have like to have joined us at the Blue Pig. Emily might actually have said something and Jane might have felt right at home.

Only three rabbits on the lawn this morning, but there was one huge rook eating an ex-rabbit. I did not count the rook's breakfast in my morning rabbit count.

Gazing at the Landscape

I walked out the side door of the manor this morning at 6:30 am. Thrushes were singing, the poppies were still wet, and the great lawns were full of rabbits at flayrah. The clouds were low, and a fresh breeze from the south promised rain. I walked down to the pond to see the great blue herons and the moor hens. In the grey morning, the white beaks of the moor hens seemed too bright to belong to such dark birds. At home, my morning walk is a brisk trot with my faithful hound, Max, around our suburban working class neighborhood. There are no thrushes to hear, but the air sometimes feels the same. But here, on the long drive, with the manor hulking on the hill behind the fields of grain and poppies, there was a more open feeling that encouraged me to think more widely. Later in the morning I would talk about the nature of the sublime accessed through the landscape, and I was so full of joy to feel that sublimity of space, treeline, skyline, and poppies waving in the green fields under fast grey clouds.

In class today, I outlined the waterfall of reasoning that leads from myth to landscape and how we create landscapes through a deliberate guiding of gaze to reify our beliefs. The manor is a great example of the guided gaze from the carefully constructed gardens to the deliberate long drive. Behind the manor is a work area where they are repairing the Grotto. It is such a juxtaposition of conflicting genres to see the Work in all the studied leisure.

I am impressed by the energy of the students. They have excellent commentary, and a refreshing willingness to engage with the material. I am very much looking forward to hearing what they have to say about the Bronte texts we are reading. We discussed the different literary lenses with which to see the texts, and we have some devoted Reader Response people here, as well as some Historical/Biographical critics. We are also fortunate to have a visual artist among us. Her photos are well worth checking out at the Sea and Color blog. If you look at the Verbivore blog, you will see hysterical pictures of how Grantham honors its famous native son, Sir Isaac Newton.

We are here, we are here

The flight was blissfully uneventful. The movies on the flight were formulaic trash which was made all the more obvious and tragic due to the fact that I did not put on the headphones to listen. Every time I looked up, some smooth faced young hero was being thwarted in his or her efforts to defeat evil cop/cia agent/dog catcher/general bad guy whatever. It was the hero's story perverted to its most reductionist pulp. I read literary theory instead. Heathcliff is a terrible person, but far more compelling than the cab driver in Race to Witch Mountain.

Harlaxton welcomed us with a little snack and nice lecture from Earl Kirk, the interim director of student services. Lesley Meese and Jan the Librarian met us at the door. They made us feel we were coming home after a long absence. John the bus driver continued to marvel over the prominent lack of luggage belonging to the "American Girls" and declared them the poster children of packing. I'm not sure he meant the reference to Easter Seals poster children: I think he meant that in the Wheaties sense.

Everybody has lovely rooms with lovely views of the gardens. Well, Josie and Chirsty (I think) actually have a lovely view of the men working on the back garden fountain. They have not yet reported if it is, in fact, a lovely view or not. However, Melissa has a great view of the Rabbit Lawn in front of the Italian garden. I look forward to hearing how many rabbits she will count out on the lawn in the mornings.

Thelma and Natasha instantly wanted to check out bikes and ride to town, but I mentioned the opposite side of the road thing going on here, and they revised their plans to a walk until they could get a look at the route. I have not seen Laura or Katie since everyone was dropped off in their rooms, but I am sure that Katie is leading her own tour, so I'm sure they are having a good time.

A few more paintings

Here are a few more paintings I did as a way of getting ready for the foxgloves in the Italian garden at Harlaxton.  Once I've dealt with the foxgloves, I might branch out to including a little corner of the manor.   Here is one I did of "reflective items".  I call it Food of the Gods. Look just above the olive oil jar, and you will see the hand of Jupiter reaching down to grab the bottle so he can make spaghetti for his dinner. 

As I work up to the mighty Harlaxton foxgloves, these are little tiny versions in my backyard: 

And as a sort of way to build up to painting the manor, I painted my tiny little house in Deer Park.  This will prepare me for painting a little tiny corner of the manor house.  I'm sure it is not as good as the paintings that Mr. Rochester praised that Jane did, but well...Jane had more time to spend on this than I did. 

Two Weeks to Lift-off

I have all my clothes, but I still have to decide what to do about all the books I need.
I have notified all my credit cards that I'll be using them in the UK.

I'm looking forward to
...tea and biscuits while watching the sun set down the manor drive.
...walking along the canal path and hearing all the new birds.
...painting foxgloves in the Italian garden.
...having a pint at the Blue Pig and at the Blackfriars.
...going to the Globe and the Barbican theaters.
...eating food someone else cooks AND cleans up.
...hanging around with people who actually WANT to talk about literature.

Part of the course I am coaching in England is learning how to view the landscape with new eyes.  Originally, this course was supposed to be a combination of a landscape painting course complemented by the literature and landscape course. Due to forces beyond our control, circumstances did not allow the painting course to to. Now it is just the literature course, but the landscape painting is so important to the subject matter, that I enrolled in a water color painting course to be able to at least talk about it in a state of slightly less than complete ignorance.  Here are some of my paintings so far. I'm still building up to landscape....give me a few weeks...

Learning to see in color is hard!  For three years, I have been working in shades of grey with charcoal, and now I am learning to see all the reds and greens and yellows etc out there in the planet.  I'm really looking forward to learning to see trees through watercolor.  So in an effort to work towards trees, I decided to work on...teapots. 

The Road Goes Ever On and On

A group of seven women and I are getting ready to spend a month in the UK studying the transition of Victorian literature from romanticism to modernism. Long before now people knew, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." This is so much the case for looking at the social upheaval during the 1800s in England. Well, be fair, a lot of this stuff was fomenting in the late 1700s as well, but clean lines are hard to draw. But in the early 21st century, I think we are still enduring the same provoking issues of gender identity, disillusionment, and the iniquity of human nature that the Brontes, Byron, and even A. Conan Doyle were writing about. But why not sit in Ohio and discuss this?

Stories take place in specific settings evoking landscapes, memories, and emotions from the readers, which enhance the narrative. One of the benefits of study abroad is that students can experience the landscapes of novels and well-known story cycles thus gaining an increased understanding of the texts. In this course, we will study texts that have come to be associated with specific landscapes in the vicinity of Harlaxton Manor and discuss the texts that have made those landscapes iconic.

In addition, the tourist industry has firmly grasped the idea of literary tourism, which is rooted in this idea of the power of place to enhance a literary experience. The commodification of famous texts through gift shops and tourist events becomes an interesting commercial literary critique.England has built an entire sub-genre of tourism based on literature. This course would explore the explicit relationship of literature with landscape through the lens of this commercial interpretation.

In this course, students will read texts associated with local landscapes, visit those landsca apes, and reflect on the effect of their physical experience of the landscape and their interpretation of the texts.Next, students will do descriptive studies of the commercialization of the literature through the presentation of the landscapes and the commodification of the texts through the tourist industry.

This commercial interpretation of the texts will be contrasted with their personal interpretations and more literary interpretations.The capstone project will be for a student to present all three interpretations associated with a text and its landscape, identifying the areas of overlap and contradiction.