Tuesday's Class: Edith Wharton

For Tuesday's class, we will be reading a short story by the American Edith Wharton ("The Other Two" on pages 21-44). Click here for the general Wikipedia entry for this writer. In her long career, which stretched over forty years and included the publication of more than forty books, Wharton (1862-1937) portrayed a fascinating segment of the American experience. She was a born storyteller, whose novels are justly celebrated for their vivid settings, satiric wit, ironic style, and moral seriousness. (and there are some film versions of her novels including The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth).

If you wanted to, you could even join the Edith Wharton Society! (Click here for that information!) The cool thing about this link, however, is that it includes many of her works that are available online (and, thus, free!)

Brian will be leading our discussion on Tuesday -- see you there! :D

We Continue with THE AWAKENING!

Welcome to our last week of Kate Chopin! As you all know, we are going to read one of her most well-known short stories as well as continue the novel for Tuesday's Class; the story you need to read before Tuesday is "Desiree's Baby." Click here for a full-text of the story (just in case you have misplaced your own copy).

Written in 1892 (a few years before The Awakening), this story first appeared in Vogue magazine. This story, like The Awakening, also takes place in Louisiana but it is one of the few stories that she wrote which takes place before the Civil War. Interested in more background information? Click here for a fantastic web site (from the Kate Chopin Society) that critically examines her controversial story, "Desiree's Baby."

FYI: Click here for a useful link that explains much of the unfamiliar vocabulary in The Awakening. Personally, I found many of the term useful!

Keep up the great discussion -- I look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday! :D

Kate Chopin!

OK, so we are finally done with the philosophical musings of Vriginia Woolf -- and now we are jumping into some "real" fiction: Kate Chopin's 1899 novel, The Awakening. This book totally scandalized folks when it was first published (and then forgotten) and it took until the 1970's before this novel was "rescued" and brought back to public attention. Click here for a great web site about this novel! Click here for another great link as well!

One of the earliest novels to focus on a woman's interior thinking, the plot of The Awakening centers around Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South. For Tuesday, you need to read the first nine chapters of the book -- but the chapters are short so this shouldn't take you too long!

See you in class on Tuesday! :D

Some Weekend Reading

More than a century and a half ago, Walt Whitman predicted the coming of a race of "fierce and athletic girls" who ...

"are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right -- they are calm, clear, well-possess'd of themselves."

Pretty much everyone thought he was crazy.

PS: If you haven't read Walt Whitman, you really gotta check him out!

Quick Web Link

I stumbled on some interesting thoughts on why we read -- click here for the web site!

Anyway -- I thought there might be something here (in this text) that you all might find interesting! See you in class!

For Thursday Sept 2

If you folks are interested, I stumbled on a pretty interesting biodocumentary of V. Woolf on Youtube.com. I couldn't figure out how to imbede it into this blog entry but I did manage to get it up and running at the bottom of this page. So you should see the first segment here at the bottom -- you would need to click to get to the parts that come after!

How is Chapter Two going?!