Naiara Dutra

Discuss how the characters Gwendolyn and Cecily break gender roles.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comic play written by Oscar Wilde. This is a play on words, since there is more dialogue than action. It criticizes the hypocrisy and the triviality of the upper classes in Victorian society. During the play, the author discusses about how the upper class at that time deals with marriage, morality, and how important was the social position and income for them.

First of all, one of the most common motifs in The Importance of Being Earnest is the notion of inversion, and it takes many forms. The play shows inversions of thought, situation, and character, as well as inversions of common notions of morality or philosophical thought. So, as far as inversion is concerned, we take as examples the characters Gwendolen and Cecily. They are some of the characters who break the rule of gender. Both of them are manipulative women and this kind of behavior for ladies was not accepted in that society. Cecily and Gwendolen take control of their own life and desires and they say to men (candidates for marriage) what they have to do. Cecily, for example, has a diary in which she writes about her “own life”. But she invents the life she wants: in this imaginary life she receives letters from Algernon, they get engaged, and many imaginary things happen. She takes control of her life as we said.

The excert below shows one of the things Cecily invents, in act 2. She was engaged with Algernon, but he did not know about it:

“Algernon: Oh, I don’t care about Jack. I don’t care about anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won’t you?
Cecily: You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.
Algernon: For the last three months?
Cecily: Yes, it will be exactly three months on Thursday.
Algernon: But how did we become engaged? (…)”

This part shows the moment Jack proposes to Gwendolen and she teaches him how to act:

“Gwendolen: I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.
Jack: Well… may I propose to you now?
Gwendolen: I think it would be an admirable opportunity.” (…) [Act 1]

Another point is that both Cecily and Gwendolyn are not submissive to anyone and they are not sweat and innocent. They choose the person they want to get married and acting like this they break the social rules. Those things contradict the rules in Victorian society, where young ladies were guided by the gender rules which expected to be innocent, pure, sweet, elegant and submissive to the decisions imposed by their families. On the contrary, Cecily does not respect the decisions of Jack and, in the same way Gwendolyn “pretends” to do what her mother says, but she does not. Both ladies are strong and decide what they want to do.

After the ladies find out that their candidates’ real names were not Ernest, they forgave them without any resistance after some foolish excuses. Cecily and Gwendolyn are contradictory, because they still want to get married with someone called Earnest, but they do not care if he is really sincere or not.

In the dialogue below we confirm the explanation said before. This excert shows the time Cecily and Gwendolen accept Jack and Algernon’s excuses about their lies, in act 3:

Cecily: I am more than content with what Mr Moncrieff said. His voice alone inspires one with absolute credulity.
Gwendolen: Then you think we should forgive them?
Cecily: Yes. I mean no.
(…)
Gwendolen and Cecily [speaking together]: Your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier! That is all!

As we realized, Gwendolen and Cecily are both examples of the hypocrisy of a society. They break rules and these characters show how society is not as perfect as it is intended to be. So, with these two characters breaking gender roles, Oscar Wilde shows in a humoristic and ironic way how hypocritical was the upper class in Victorian period.

Discuss the symbol “blue roses” used by Jim as a nickname for Laura. How does it show some of her specific characteristics?

“Blue roses” was Jim’s nickname for Laura at high school. When Laura had an attack of pleuroris, Jim asked her what had happened and she said “pleurosis”, but he thought that she had said “Blue Roses”! So, after that he started calling her like this. In fact that nickname symbolizes some of her specific characteristics. After searching the internet, I discovered that in some cultures, blue roses signify a mystery or attaining the impossible. Historically, this symbolism comes from the rose’s meaning in the language of flowers common in Victorian period. In Chinese folklore, the blue rose signifies hope against unattainable love. Then, considering those meanings and relating them to Laura, the nickname “blue roses” represents how she is and it is also related to her unattainable love for Jim.

Firstly we can see that Laura is as rare and peculiar as a blue rose or a unicorn, and she is as delicate as a glass figurine. Once Jim asked Laura: “Has anyone ever told you that you were pretty?”( Sc.7, page 105) and he continued saying: “Well, you are! In a very different way from anyone else. And all the nicer because of the difference, too”. Jim also told her that “they’re common as – weeds, but – you – well, you’re – Blue roses” (Sc.7, page 105). He was comparing her with other people and he was also telling her how she was distinct such as a blue rose. Secondly, the nickname is also associated with Laura’s attraction to Jim and the joy that his kind treatment brings her. She loves Jim since high school time, but he does not know her feelings. Jim was engaged that time. Time after, Laura and Jim meet again and they were attracted, however they could not stay together because he was going out another girl. This situation symbolizes her attainable love for him.

Moreover, we can also associate the word “Roses” with Tennessee William’s sister. Some people say that The Glass Menagerie is an autobiographical play Williams’s life. It means that maybe he had called Laura “Roses” because of his sister’s name, Rose, who was sickly and (supposedly) mentally ill.

“Is Lady Macbeth as guilty as Macbeth in the murder of the King? Comment and explain your answer”.

 By analyzing the evil side of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, it is a little bit difficult to define which one is guiltier than another. It happens because both of them are guilty some point, since they both are involved in the murder of the king. 

 According to my point of view, Lady Macbeth is as guilty as Macbeth is. Firstly, she planned the crime and Macbeth killed the king. Thus, it does not mean that she is guiltier than him or on the contrary. They are both ambitious because they wanted to achieve their objective, the kingdom. Then, after the prophecy said by the witches to Macbeth that he will become Thane of Cawdor and also king,

 1. Witch.  All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

 2. Witch.  All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

3. Witch. All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King here after!

                                     Act1, Scene 3, Lines 50-55.

 Macbeth started being interested to the predictions and this moment he becomes very ambitious. Then, the day he received the title of Cawdor, he really felt good and greedy about to have power and honor. So, he tells to his wife what happened and then she feels anxious and decides not to wait the moment he would become king.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be

What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature.

It is too full o’l the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;

                                     Act1, Scene 5, Lines 14-17.

Because of that she makes a plan to achieve her object. Their ambition results the murder of the king.

 By considering these points, the difference is that Lady Macbeth decides that she will do everything to conquer the kingdom, without thinking about the consequences. Despite Macbeth who is afraid of the possibility of doing something “wrong” or cruel according to the taboos of human society, that to kill someone old and who is sleeping means to be coward and cruel. This fragment shows the time he sees himself killing the king:

 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

Against the use of nature?(…)

                                     Act1, Scene 3, Lines 149-151.

 He knows that it is not right according to what human being believes. In spite of Lady Macbeth, Macbeth is ashamed of his actions and thoughts:

On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

                                                  Act1, Scene 5, Lines 57-59.

The second and last point is that despite of Lady Macbeth being the mentor of the murdering and she intents to convince and disturb Macbeth until he kills the king, he was free to choose the path he wanted to follow, and he decided to let dominated by the evil Lady Macbeth’s ideas of murdering. I think that everybody has the right to decide what want to do in life. You are responsible for your actions and also for the consequences of them! If someone convinces you to do something that you and the person are interested, you are both guilty. If you choose to kill someone or not, it is of your own business! In fact Lady Macbeth helped him to conquer what both of them wanted and Macbeth worked on her wife’s plan. Because of that we cannot classify who is guiltier than another. They are both involved in the murder some way considering that there is no classification for “being guilty”. You are guilty or you are not.

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers . May none die

without somebody caring.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn if Quantity.

Analysis of the poem To Counter Malthus by Margaret Avison

Firstly, I am going to introduce this analysis pointing some characteristics out about  Margaret Avison and Thomas Robert Malthus’ theory. Avison has the reputation of being a intellectual poet. She has ability to think in a logical and understanable way. We can find in her works complex metaphors, literary allusions, and use of complex language not as an end in itself, but as a means to accurately convey her subject matter: God and the love. Considering Malthus he developed a famous theory related to the growth of the population. He said that if people have good conditions of life, the population will increase. Consequently, the food will not be enough for them. So, people will face starvation and death in fact.

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

This first stanza the poet represents her opinion and the ideas she is going to discuss through the poem. In this part, she shows that she is against Malthus’ idea. Firstly, she says that there is no formula or handbook to know how to live in this world. After the comma, she says that we should not pay attention to people like Malthus( “too many”).

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

In this stanza the sentence between the commas “each day afresh” explains what the world “Presence” means for us. This “Presence” means God and He represents support to our existence.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring.

In this part the poet says that the world has great areas and ways of subsistence to bear lots of people. But despite of the earth to be big (“vast territories”) and to keep a great number of strangers, people care with each other. The poet does not see life like Malthus sees. Differently of the poet Malthus sees life such as a trivial thing.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

This stanza shows us questions that the poet is making in her mind. Some thoughts appear in her mind and it makes her reflects about human being situation. The short sentences and the use of many periods confirm that the poet had “flashes” of thoughts.

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity.

In this last part the poet concludes her idea about the issues discussed on the whole poem. She says that humans are still feeling desperate with the possibility to deal with hunger and other problems such as wars, diseases, death, poverty, and things related to the survival. After the period she concludes that this theory does not have importance because it does not affect the course of life. The “Presence” who she says, which means God, bears this bears this theory. It is not useful for us since the life is going on, the population is increasing, and problems as well. Thus, this theory is trivial for us and for the “Presence” since it does not have influence in our life.  

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.

1) Analysis

The poem A Thunderstorm is sonnet written by Archibald Lampman. This poet is widely regarded as Canada’s finest 19th century English language. His poems concern Canada’s rural life and the wonders of nature. He is considered the impressionistic poet because his poems have a lot of characteristics from the Impressionism.

A Thunderstorm is one of his many poems which involve a wide description of sounds, colours, and vision. This poem has 14 rhyming lines with the rhyme scheme: A B B A C D D A E F G G E F. It is called iambic pentameter because the lines have regular alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables like this:

-      /    -      /      -        /      -        /       -     /

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

  -     /     -        /       -            /   -       /     -        /

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

    -     /     -      /     -         /     -       /     -        /

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

Now I am going to show the analysis of each part considering the five senses and the movements presented in this poem.

“A moment the wild swallows like a flight

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Toss in the windrak up the muttering sky.

The leaves hang still.”

These three verses describe a moment before the thunderstorm. The first movement we have is the wild swallows flying in the sky. The poet compares this movement with the strong wind tossing the withered leaves. Besides that, the next movement is represented by the strong wind blowing and tossing the leaves. But in spite of this, the leaves are still on the trees. We can see with these events that a thunderstorm is coming soon because the sky is muttering and it is windy. This way the senses that we can feel through this poem represent a mix of vision and sounds. The movement of the shallows and the leaves flying represent the sense of vision and the noise made by the wind shows the sense of hearing.

“Above the weird twilight,

The hurrying centres of the storm unite

And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

Tower darking on.”

In this scene we can see three movements. The first one is represented by storm that is forming very fast above the sunset. The poet makes reference to the sun falling down when he says ‘weird twilight’. This event implies a really beautiful vision since we can see a mix of colours in the sky! The next movement is represented by the clouds spreading in the sky. Maybe the storm will fall strongly like a ‘huge trunk’. The last is the movement of the storm forming that makes the sky dark. So, these events show us the sense of vision because we can see that the poet describes how the storm is being formed.

“And now from heaven’s height,

With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,

And pelted waters, on the vanished plain

Plunges the blast.”

In this part the poet begins to describe the thunderstorm itself. These verses represent the storm falling down from the sky while the elm-trees swaying. The waters pelt and they cover all the plain even it is raining intensively (‘pelted waters’). This way the heavy storm makes the plain disappears as fast as a blast. So, we can feel the sense of hearing represented by the sounds of the wind and the rain. Once again we also have the sense of vision because we can see the way that the raining is falling down

“Behind the wild white flash

That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,

Over bleared fields are gardens disarrayed,

Column on column comes the drenching rain.”

These last lines of the poem describe two movements. The first one we can see is the flash appearing and disappearing in the sky quickly. The flash splits the thunder-crash and it makes a strong noise blearing the fields and the gardens as well. In doing so, the poet uses the words ‘crash’ and ‘pealing’ to describe the sounds of the thunder. The next movement shows us how the rain is falling down “column on column” and it mean slowly.

2) Conclusion

By reading the poem A Thunderstorm written by Archibald Lampman, I could see clearly characteristics of the Impressionism through the descriptions of the movements mixed with sounds and colours. This poem shows us how the poet sees and feels a storm in that place. He says which things happen in the and with the Nature before and during a thunderstorm. The poet creates an image of the storm and he describes each simple thing.

Welsh History

We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.
Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.
We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn
Armed, but not in the old way.

R. S. Thomas (1913 – 2000)

Through the poem Welsh History, R. S. Thomas shows us how the Welsh people see their past, present, and what they hope for their future. 

At the begining, to show a view of the past of the Welsh people, R. S. Thomas writes the sad past of them. The poet tells us a little about the suffering of the these people during the war. According to him in these periods many people died in fruitless battles and kings were slain. It was the moment of the failure.

 But even the wars finished, the Welsh people still living the consequences of the war with bad conditions of life such as poverty and hunger. Their country and culture were destroyed in the war and because of that, they have had suffered yet. In spite of these events, the Welsh people believe that they can rebuild their identity and also become a powerful country, but they are aware that they have to do it in a different way of before in the past.