Over spring break I watched the Reformation video and I have to say it was really good. I even got my family to watch it with me...maybe we are all geeks for that kind of stuff but I think PBS puts out some really good shows. Anyway, from there I read Mary E. Wilkes Freeman, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Sarah Piatt, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Sophia Jewett, Edith Wharton, etc. I was a busy reader and found that I really liked a lot of the different stories put out by these women, they were varied in their subject matter, interesting, and at times progressive for their time. I really enjoyed Mary Freeman's "A New England Nun" and liked the way she showed the character of Louisa as being capable and happy on her own. I could completely identify with her not wanting to get married and being comfortable in her life as it was...not wanting to share her space...this is something I can relate to as I'm sure most modern day women can.
I also really liked the poem The Wood-Chopper to His Ax by Elaine Goodale Eastman. There was something about this poem that I really liked and I found myself reading it out loud several times. The meter of the words, the words themselves, I'm not sure why but I just liked it a lot, it felt powerful and I could picture the man with his ax chopping down the tree and the power the ax had in his hands. Good imagery. On the topic of poems, I enjoyed I Sit and Sew by Alice Dunbar-Nelson as well. It ran in the same vein as Mary Freemans story...questioning the roles of women...but at the same time this one focused more on the tediousness of the domestic role of women rather than the enjoyment of womanly solitude to do domestic tasks as Freeman's story demonstrated. I could relate to what this peom was talking about as this feeling of wanting to break free from trivial things and instead do something of importance with your life. In her case she is thinking of the men who are fighting in the Civil War and how she wishes she could be part of that rather than spending her days sewing.
I also really liked the poem The Wood-Chopper to His Ax by Elaine Goodale Eastman. There was something about this poem that I really liked and I found myself reading it out loud several times. The meter of the words, the words themselves, I'm not sure why but I just liked it a lot, it felt powerful and I could picture the man with his ax chopping down the tree and the power the ax had in his hands. Good imagery. On the topic of poems, I enjoyed I Sit and Sew by Alice Dunbar-Nelson as well. It ran in the same vein as Mary Freemans story...questioning the roles of women...but at the same time this one focused more on the tediousness of the domestic role of women rather than the enjoyment of womanly solitude to do domestic tasks as Freeman's story demonstrated. I could relate to what this peom was talking about as this feeling of wanting to break free from trivial things and instead do something of importance with your life. In her case she is thinking of the men who are fighting in the Civil War and how she wishes she could be part of that rather than spending her days sewing.
I'm now a big fan of Edith Wharton and I haven't even finished reading all of her work in this book yet. I especially liked the stories, Souls Belated and The Other Two, the complexity of the situations these characters find themselves in are truly modern day predicaments. The social constraints are not as apparent now as they were at that time but I still think much of it holds true today. In Souls Belated, Lydia and Gannett find themselves, having run away together to escape her bad marriage, in a upscale European hotel passing themselves off as a married couple. They had always thought they did not need the social hierarchy and had mocked it in the past but found themselves enjoying being part of it in this place. In the end Lydia feels that she should strike out on her own and leave Gannett because they will always be under this cloud of their scandalous affair. Even if they marry someday someone could find out and it would ruin their social standing that they have found they truly love being a part of. However, when faced with the choice of leaving or staying, Lydia finds that leaving and being a woman on her own in that time would be more difficult than staying with Gannett. It's a really good skeleton in the closet story and is a timeless situation but Wharton's ability to pull the reader in to the complex feelings of the characters and their tough decisions is really compelling. I found myself reading both of these stories rapidly, kind of on the edge of my seat, wondering right along with the characters what or where they were going to go from one situation to the next.
If you Netflix, you might want to watch MWF's "The Revolt of Mother." I haven't seen it yet. Good luck with all that reading. Hope you're having a good conference.
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