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.