The Bell Jar -- Chapters 6-10

It can be useful to immerse yourself in the world of Plath to help you better understand why or how she out together her writing.

You can watch the entire film, Sylvia, at this web site:

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/sylvia-plath-part-1-11/01586ff631dca9235a5f01586ff631dca9235a5f-304456991521?q=sylvia%20plath&FORM=VIRE7

You will notice that the first few lines of the film come directly out of today's section of The Bell Jar. And, interestingly, actor Daniel Craig plays her husband, Ted Hughes.

Welcome to THE BELL JAR!

Today's reading: The first 5 chapters of The Bell Jar!

Until the 1970s, American literature did not have too many female heroines in its owrks of fiction, and too few of them had been created by women authors. Basically, few American women were telling their readers what it is/ was like to grow up in this vast and complex culture. It is probably this vacuum in American literature that made The Bell Jar's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, so popular.

So here are some web links to get you started with the book:

Click here for general info about the novel with some good links!

Click here for a great link of basic biographical Plath information!

Click here for information on Olive Higgins Prouty, who is the basis of the character Philomena Guinea (the wealthy novelist who is Esther's patroness)

Alice Walker's "Everday Use"

Today's Discussion Leader: Cassandra

Our story today is a popular one -- there are tons of internet resources:

Click here for the Wikipedia entry!

Click here for an essay from a literary magazine titled "Portals"!

Click here for another academic essay in relation to this short story and personal names!

The title gives us a big hint as to why Walker may have written this story: The phrase "Everyday Use" brings about the question whether or not heritage should be preserved and displayed or integrated into everyday life. "Everyday Use" pertains not only to the quilt, but more so to people's culture and heritage and how they choose to honor it.

If you google this title and author, you should be able to find a ton of sources!

Alice Munro's "The Office"

Today's Discussion Leader: Erica (Munro) and Jon (Oates)

Alice Munro, a well known Canadian writer, is a master (I think!) of psychological drama! In an interview for a Canadian fiction magazine she was quoted as saying, "I don't see that people develop and arrive somewhere. I just see people living in flashes." And I think it is these "flashes" that you see in her short fiction!

One of her earliest collections of short fiction includes "The Office," the story that we are reading. From what I understand this story evolved from a real event from early in her marriage. "The Office" centers on a narrator who has evolved a room-of-one's-own menatality and consciousness (to borrow Woolf's words!). In essence, the first person narrator of "The Office," a writer who finds it hard to work at home with her husband and family in the background, yearns for a room of her own, a private space where she can do her creative work, reflecting a major theme in feminist thinking of this period.

Click here for a link to an article that talks about her winning the Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for folks who write fiction.

Click here for her Wikipedia entry!

Click here for a Canadian encyclopedia entry for Munro!

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Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific American writer, one you should know! She has pubished over fifty novels (which is pretty amazing!). Click here for her Wikipedia entry!

Click here for a great interview with her from the Paris Review!

The short piece we are reading from her, "In the Region of Ice," won a prestigious O.Henry Award in 1967. It shares with some of her earl work a relgious protagonist and a concern for spiritual matters. (this story was even made into a short film in the 1970s, by the way!)

The 1970 collection she put together -- The Wheel of Love -- includes this story and several other of her most famous pieces (including "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?). She has been quoted as saying the unifying theme of these stories is "different forms of love, mainly in family relationships." Many critics have said that she offers a negative portrayal of females (only recently has she been seem as a "feminist" writer, whatever that means!).

Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation"

Tuesday's Discussion Leader: Amanda!

Have any of you ever read Flannery O'Connor before?! I can't hide the fact that she is one of my most favorite writers -- she creates the most brilliant portrayals of "the" human condition (or, at least, that is my opinion!).

In "Revelation," as in all her stories, O'Connor accomplishes her purpose through the linking of opposites -- two levels of meaning, two viewpoints, two irreconcilable conclusions. And out of the collision between these opposites is born a synthesis that illustrates, for O'Connor and her characters, the means of God's grace (however you wish to define "God"). Religion, by the way, is a vivid part of the Southern values and way(s) of life.

Here is a youtube.com link with a pretty good narration of her life and this particular story: CLICK HERE!

Here is a good link in which a critic summarizes and critiques the story: CLICK HERE!

CLICK HERE for the Wikipedia entry for the short story!

CLICK HERE for an interesting article I happened to stumble upon on-line!

I hope you like this piece of her work -- if you do, there are tons more stories by O'Connor!

Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen"

Today's Discussion Leader: Kathleen

Our author today won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, so I would argue that she is one of those writers that you should read at least once!

A British writer actually born in Iran, Lessing lived for awhile in Africa. According to Wikipedia, Lessing's work can be "divided into three distinct phases: the Communist theme (1944–1956), when she was writing radically on social issues (to which she returned in The Good Terrorist [1985]), the psychological theme (1956–1969), and after that the Sufi theme, which was explored in the Canopus in Argos sequence of science fiction (or as she preferred to put it "space fiction") novels and novellas."

So this is a writer who is complex and esay to describe in easy terms!

In terms of the short story we are reading, "To Room Nineteen," many critics have notes that Lessing legitimizes the depression that besets many women who work at home. She is critical of Matthew's response to Susan. Like some medical professionals, he does not take the time to understand what she feels, and is unwilling to face anything outside of his experience. Hemmed in by rationality, Susan's emotions cannot be expressed, resulting in her suicide.

FYI: Here is the COMPLETE Dorris Lessing web site (lots of cool stuff here!): Click Here!

See you all in class tomorrow!

"Wunderkind" by Carson McCullers

Discussion Leader: Erica

Tuesday's reading is Carson McCullers's short story, "Wunderkind" -- many folks have said that McCullers herself was a "Wunderkind" since she wrote most of her great literature before the age of 30 (including writing the amazing novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter at 23!). What made McCullers such a prodigy was her preternatural ability to capture the heart at its frailest.

Written in 1936, when McCullers was 19 years old, ‘‘Wunderkind’’ was McCullers’s first published work. It presents the story of Frances, a teenage girl who has been considered a musical prodigy but who, after years of training and sacrifice, seems suddenly incapable of fulfilling the bright expectations she has always held. In the brief space of a single piano lesson, we see her struggling to recover the confidence and artistry she once knew and trying to navigate a flood of conflicting emotions and desires that threaten to overwhelm her. Often praised as a sensitive, insightful portrayal of the pressures and isolation of adolescence, it is marked by a dramatic tension that increases relentlessly throughout the story—despite the fact that very little ‘‘action’’ occurs. That action takes place in the studio of her music teacher, but the story’s actual setting is the intimate depths of Frances’s troubled mind.

I think this quotation from Wikipedia aptly describes a way of seeing her work in a general way: "Although McCullers's oeuvre is often described as 'Southern Gothic,' she produced her famous works after leaving the South. Her eccentric characters suffer from loneliness that is interpreted with deep empathy. In a discussion with the Irish critic and writer Terence de Vere White she said: 'Writing, for me, is a search for God.'"

Click here for an encyclopedia entry that outlines her life and her work!