Quotation: “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”-(Bronte, chapter 23)
Comment/Connection: This quote from Jane hit incredibly hard. It is at this point within the narrative that Jane seems to, as she says, “talk without conventionalities” and truly speaks from the heart. The things she says within this piece of dialogue speak to the hundreds upon thousands of women during the 1800s who felt as though their voice could never be heard properly or at all.
Jane, in this moment, encompassed the thoughts and feelings of a united womanhood and spoke it loud and true for a predominantly male audience. The sentiment that she expresses, specifically regarding her worth though she may not be beautiful or rich, can be described as a cultural shift
within Victorian society. Most individuals during this time held worth in gender and place in society rather than the inherent worth and respect that all people are born with. To say this as a woman, as a woman to a man in high society, is groundbreaking and I can see how Jane Eyre startled and offended many because of this. I also believe that this quote encapsulates the theme of Jane Eyre quite well, as it is the climax of the feminist themes within the novel.
Questions: I wonder how society, women specifically, reacted to the release of Jane Eyre. Was there any pushback against the traditional normalities held during the Victorian era?
Author: Alex (Page 18 of 21)
END COMMENTS: What is it? What’s working? What questions the piece raises? What suggestions do you have for the writer?
This story, to me at least, focuses on the illusion of appearance. Heather is feminine, yet confident and sometimes unemotional while Billy has a hulking and intimidating frame, yet he’s a matter-of-fact and anxious person. It’s clear that your story knows what it is just through the framing and voice of your narration, even though there are some instances where it may stumble. Regarding what works, I think you have natural dialogue. The interactions between Heather and Billy don’t seem forced, even if they are tense at the beginning. You also sprinkle bits of your characters into dialogue. Heather’s dialogue is to the point, as she focuses on what she wants and ignores practically everything else. Billy’s dialogue, on the other hand, is slower and casual. It’s a refreshing combination that works well together. Another aspect that works well in your story is the foreshadowing elements. They weave seamlessly into the narrative that it feels as though the audience just glanced at the TV for a moment, and then is right back in the action. It was also really satisfying to see it all tie together at the end. There were a few questions I had regarding the story, mainly about Billy. Why had it taken him so long to talk about the murder of Bennie and George? Also, if Billy, George, and Bennie were so close, then how come Billy doesn’t know what the DA had on Bennie? Heather also has a reputation that Billy knows about, but what kind of reputation is that? I don’t think the audience necessarily needs to know, but I was just curious. The ending does leave some questions about how and if Heather succeeds, but the beauty in your ending is that it leaves it up to the audience. There are a few suggestions I have. There are a few places where it seems like you could slow down, like the scene where Billy reveals his identity. Heather seems to recover from the reveal rather quickly, but it may be interesting to see how she reacts and if there are any exploits she may know him from. There are also a few word choices that may need to be reconsidered to see if they’re the best fit, but that’s not something you should worry too much about. It’s also a small thing, but for some reason it was bothering me. Billy says “Hmph” a lot during the story and it kind of put me off. It’s up to you and it may just be a preference, but consider taking some of them out. A last thing to consider would be to add some insight on how Heather sees Ted Johnson at the end. She seemingly goes to “take down a politician”, but without any proof, what exactly is her motivation? Overall, you have a strong story and I really enjoyed it!
END COMMENTS: What is it? What’s working? What questions the piece raises? What suggestions do you have for the writer?
I think that this story and the author know what it is and what it wants to be, but the audience may not know what exactly it is because of how massive the scope is. You’ve got a really great idea and an incredible voice (It reminds me of Frankenstein’s narration of the novel), yet the details of the story get lost within the exposition. You said it yourself within your notes that you wanted to get to the “story you actually wanted to tell”. If that’s the case, then why not skip the exposition and get to where you want to be? There are a lot of things that are working in this story. Like I’ve said before, you’ve got this classical, almost Victorian-esq voice that really pulls you in to the story. The characters, especially Richard Brothers, really come to life in your dialogue, which flows naturally and rarely feels forced. I think one of the biggest issues I have with your story is the motivation of your characters. Arlo seems to be very passive and lies (on the second page) about how religious he is. If he hasn’t been religious for a while, then why is he so eager to participate in the task that Sharp sets him on? Richard Browns, while he was interesting as a character, felt underdeveloped in the motivational sense. The audience understands that he’s religious, but we don’t get a sense of why he wants to stop Sharp’s “heresy” and we also don’t get enough about the relationship between Arlo and Richard to justify why Richard wanted to keep Arlo from getting involved in the first place. In a sense, you may be too concerned about the audience understanding the background of the story instead of focusing on developing the “now” for the characters. On a more positive note, the research and time that you’ve clearly taken to develop this world is commendable and it shows in the smallest details. Your first page has wonderful descriptions of the shops and houses, and also makes use of your voice well. The only suggestion regarding your voice would be to take out some fluff, as it sometimes feels like you’ve just used a thesaurus for most places. Overall, you’ve got a great concept and voice, but you may need to develop the motivations of your characters more and decide the best starting place for your story.
Prompt: Read Step 4 in Writing Grants. What were some takeaways?
Response: This chapter/step discusses writing goals and objectives. One of the main takeaways from Step 4 is the differentiation between goals, objectives, and strategies. It is easy to lump the three together, but the chapter clearly defines each. Goals are about what a program wants to achieve. They can be visionary rather than measurable in terms of progress. Objectives, on the other hand, are measurable in terms of progress and allows grantseekers to keep track of the goals their organization is/isn’t meeting. Strategies encompass the methods/actions needed to accomplish objectives. The book describes strategies as the “how to”. Prior to this, I suppose I had some idea of what goals, objectives, and strategies are but I had never thought about how they intertwined together in a professional space. Near the end of the chapter, the authors give a list of do’s and don’t’s for writing good goals and objectives. I found that these tips relied heavily on being realistic and communicating to others in a clear and concise way.
Link to artifact: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vyt65q5w
The artifact I chose for this entry is a nine-page doctor’s report regarding a small-pox outbreak in a Catholic school for girls in Manchester. This report and outbreak occurred in 1888 and was centered around the St. Joseph’s Certified Industrial School for Roman Catholic Girls. The report is written by Dr. David Page and is addressed to a Mr. George Buchanan of an unspecified medical department (most likely London). Coincidentally, the document was printed for Her Majesty’s Stationary Company by Eyre and Spottiswoode. The contents of the report focus on the girls who were infected at the institution, the vaccination status of most of the “inmates” at the school, and the sanitary arrangements and regulations put in place at the institution. I chose this artifact because it reminded me of Jane’s experience at Lowood when a typhus epidemic spreads. It also reminded me of Charlotte Bronte’s own history where a similar experience left her two sisters dead of consumption while at school. These experiences made me think of the prevalence of outbreaks, especially in religious schools for girls. It makes me think of whether Bronte included her own experience within Jane Eyre in order to raise awareness for the sanitation requirements at institutions aimed towards girls. I also think that this awareness fits into Bronte’s own feminist approach to writing, as she writes the women at Lowell with individual traits and minds that may have been lost during the 1800s. Women were often neglected and thought of as second-class citizens, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to reason that regulations and health requirements of schools for girls weren’t held to high standards. In her own way, Bronte may have included sections of Jane Eyre to push for better health care standards for women. Even though the event at St. Joseph’s school happened after the publication of Jane Eyre, it can still be reasoned that outbreaks like this and at Lowood were relatively common. Regarding Jane Eyre‘s feminist theme, I think health-care for women is also an important aspect of the novel that doesn’t seem to be touched upon often while analyzing this work.
Prompt: Read chapter 9, Theme.
Response: This chapter was especially helpful to me, as I’ve been stuck on what the “meaning” of my short story is. It was helpful to read about how you shouldn’t necessarily write with a theme in mind and that the theme is not synonymous with the overall message of the work. Personally, I’ve been struggling with the type of story I want to tell, and that struggle has kept me from actually writing. When the author of this section just tells the audience to “not think about it”, it definitely seems like hollow advice. Yet, as with most of the chapters, the “theme” seems to be to write and revise, even when you aren’t sure about the meaning or the plot or the characters. All a writer needs to do is try. Refocusing on theme, I guess I had it in my head that whatever theme an author presented also needed to have some sort of solution, which is ridiculous now that I think about it, because many works don’t offer solutions to their thematic problem. George Orwell didn’t have a solution to a dictatorship police-state, but the work still handed the audience that theme. Like the author of this section says, all the writer needs to do is state the problem correctly, and then a theme can arise from it. I also appreciated how there was a discussion of how an author presents a theme and how the audience receives the theme. There’s a fine line between interpretation and misinterpretation, one that I hadn’t thought about. An author can present their theme in a way that leads to audience interpretation, yet subconsciously the theme is still absorbed by the audience. If an author isn’t confident in their theme, then it can be missed entirely. I think that I’m focusing too much on creating a theme that I know will be interpreted the way I want it to be, rather than allowing the theme to be created naturally and organically. Overall, I think the biggest lesson to take from this chapter is that the theme doesn’t have to be shoved down a reader’s throat, and that it doesn’t have to instruct an audience to be meaningful. All the theme needs to do is connect to the story and come from a natural space.
Quotation: “Fearful and ghastly to me–oh sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discolored face–it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!” (Bronte, 332)
Comment/Connection: This quote comes directly from Jane when she is describing the “ghost” she saw. Her description made me think of Cohen’s theses once more, specifically Thesis I. Thesis I states that the monster is a cultural body, one that is typically a minority or underserved population of people. The language that Jane uses indicates a type of ‘otherness’ from herself and Mr. Rochester, both of whom are white, middle/upper class citizens. Jane uses terms like “savage” and “discolored” to describe this ghost as something abhorrent and different, while also indicating that she and Mr. Rochester are superior to the “savage ghost”. The language and time period in which this novel was published indicate that Jane most likely saw a person of color and believed that she was a “ghost”. While Jane wholeheartedly believes that what she saw was a ghost, she still uses derogatory terms to describe her. People of
color during the 1800s (and onward, unfortunately) were barely given the rights that were extended to their white counterparts. As a minority group, people of color seem to be fitting of the misunderstood “monster” category.
Questions: Did Bronte intentionally use a person of color to play the monster to raise awareness for this minority group or do you think that Bronte was drawn to the “savage” and “discolored” description of a “monster”?
Prompt: Read Clementine, Carmelita, Dog by David Means.
Response: There were multiple craft elements that I appreciated in this story. First, I liked how the focus of this story was heightened by the sense of smell. Plot wise, it makes sense, due to the fact that the main character is a dog. Sense of smell is obviously more developed in dogs than humans, so instead of using sight and emotions to develop the story, Means relies on describing the scene in terms of scent. It was also refreshing to have an omniscient narrator instead of a dog-narrator. While it is technically in first person, as there are some moments of the narrator speaking directly to the audience, this allows the reader to be in touch with how the dog does not think like a human, instead relying on senses and instinct. The narrator gives the audience few hints of humanism during the story. These are mostly used to describe things in terms of a human outlook, as describing them through a dog’s perspective proves to be too challenging or unexplainable to the audience. If anything, I would describe this story as having a passive plot, as we are only given the dog’s perspective. There are context clues as to what happened to human characters, but there are really no emotions attached to any of the descriptions, except for the parts when the dog realizes that the death of his female owner causes scents to change around the house. The plot is driven primarily through instinct, conveying emotions only through the response of the reader. The dehumanization of a dog character, especially when dogs in literature and media are often created to be more human than some of the human characters, was refreshing to me. The lack of emotion from the dog and the pure instinct that drives the plot actually created a powerful narrative about grief, loss, change, and natural instinct.
I visited Paige and Virginia’s pages to look at their latest commonplace book entry. Paige focused on foreshadowing within the novel and Virginia analyzed another work from the 1800s that correlated with Jane Eyre. While Paige’s entry took a different direction, I think Virginia and I highlighted criticisms that people may have had regarding the novel and other works during this time period. I think for my next entry, I might focus on how criticisms and praise of women authors changes over time.
Prompt: Read Chapter 8
Response: This chapter focuses on voice, specifically the types of voice, style, and finding your own voice. I’ve never really gotten notes regarding the voice of my stories, which is either a good or bad thing. Personally, I feel as though I haven’t really struggled with finding an adequate voice within my stories. Sometimes it can be awkward at first, but like the author says, I tend to, “not worry about it”. When I write in a voice different from my own, I like to try embodying the character and talk to others in a way that the character would. I did appreciate the distinctions between formal, conversational, and informal types of voice, and while the voice of your story should be consistent, I do think that there is room to change the voice depending on the situation the character is in. Like every chapter we’ve read in this book so far, everything builds and connects to each other. The voice of a first person narration should be more consistent than say, a third person narration, as with first person the narrator needs to be consistent with their character. One of the tips that I liked was how the author continuously said to just write and not worry about voice. It’s more important to get something on the page rather than having words that are perfectly fitting to the voice.
