Attempting to Find a Structure

The idea of teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in classrooms across America may be shocking and forward to some; however, outdated and excessively structured to others. In a close review of the writing, context, language and overall benefits that reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has the potential to bring to a classroom, I will express how greatly the disadvantages out way the benefits.
Many individuals and teachers a like will argue that the use of the vernacular and coarse language is enough to exclude The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from student curriculum until college level. However, the use of the vernacular and dialect throughout the novel is actually the novels strongest learning tool. Individuals looking to strengthen their vocabulary and learn from their reading would find the use of local language to be a huge benefit and very stimulating. The challenge that Twain presents the reader with through the attempt to understand and comprehend the dialect is a masterful work. However, dialect and vernacular alone are not enough to encourage a school to teach a novel. If that were the case, books from regions like Mexico, Hindi and Tagalog would be enough to meet this criteria. A good novel which is taught in high school courses should include interesting strong vocabulary but also have a thorough topic, clear thesis and themes and an easy to follow plot line. After all, isn’t that what we are attempting to teach new writers?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is filled with themes, however has no clear direction or point by the end of the story. The many side tales told by the narrator and various characters are a distraction to the overall plot of the novel and encourage scattered, uncontrolled, poorly structured writing. One such example is the “Raft Passage”. The footnote to this section of the novel states “The passage that follows was part of the final autograph manuscript for Huck Finn that Twain sent…the cut was made to save space and not on literary or aesthetic grounds,” (161). This portion of the novel was removed from the original publishing to save space; however, being that it was off topic and lacked the consistency that is found within the remaining portion of the novel, the cutting of this portion is understandable. There are several other sub-stories within the novel that if cut, would not remove from the quality or complexity of the novel. The overall length and structure does not promote the style of writing frequently taught in the classroom and would be detrimental to the ideas being taught.
Although Twain warns readers that the story holds no plot, individuals within high schools and most college students read stories almost exclusively for the overall plot. In reading the novel from start to finish, there is clearly a lack of plot. The story does not hold true to the standard writings structure of protagonist, climax, and resolution. One might attempt to argue that the story does resolve itself; however, if the ending had been thorough and complete rather than cut short, there is no telling where the story would have gone. It is a poor influence to present our educated youth. Encouraging youth to end their writing pieces short and simple without a thorough, expanded and complete conclusion is a major fault; especially as thorough conclusions are often a weakness within high school writing.
Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a popular historical piece of writing, there are many other stories which would be used to teach the same things within the classroom. Such pieces include Life In The Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis and The Trail of the Goldseekers by Hamlin Garland. Both of these stories are by American realist writers who have strong writings skills, use of the vernacular and would be a great contribution to any high school curriculum.

The Taming of the Shrew

In William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Kate and Petruchio are seen as equal sparing partners. They are both smart, cunning individuals who make a rather comical pairing. However, by the end of the novel, Shakespeare has indeed, tamed the shrew and Kate is no longer the quick to judge, angry girl we see in the beginning of the novel.
Although Kate’s character progresses in various directions throughout The Taming of the Shrew, Kate ultimately becomes an obedient wife to Petruchio. Kate’s final speech in the novel addresses many key areas of her final transformation. In the beginning lines, Kate addresses the fact that disobedience makes a woman ugly. Here Kate says “And dart not scornful glances from those eyes To Wound thy lord, thy kind, thy governor. It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,” (219). This expression is addressed to the group of woman who did not come when called by their husbands. Kate is arguing that disobedience and the “scornful glances” make the woman unattractive. She continues on to express how unpleasing angry women are. “A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,” 219). This expression shows that a woman who is angry is like a muddy, unused water hole. Such a woman can not be seen for her beauty in the eyes of viewers.
The introduction of Kate’s speech is very focused on the ugliness of anger and disobedience. However, quickly Kate turns the cards and addresses wit and cunning. Kate speaks to the women and tells them that their lack of obedience to their husbands is foolish on their part. Kate says, “And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel and graceless traitor to her loving lord?” (219). Although this line addresses grace as a form of beauty, Kate’s focus is on the foolishness associated with disobedience to a loving and caring husband. Throughout The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio is supposed to be seen as the soul provider of their family, and as such he has earned the respect of his wife. In “A Homily of the State of Matrimony,” the various reasons for marriage are reviewed. It is stated that marriage “does not emphasize pleasure or happiness as a reasons to marry,” (171). This philosophy holds true in The Taming of the Shrew. At no point in Kate’s address to the other women does she address the fact that obedience is due because of love. Kate in fact never uses the word.
Strangely enough, Kate brings God into the mix when she says “Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,” (221). Kate is telling her listening ears that God has created women (in their essential form as soft and smooth) to be looked after by their husbands. Had God intended woman to care for themselves or provide for their families through various chores and hard labor, he would have made their bodies more conducive to work. This ideology is repeated in “A Homily of the State of Matrimony.” In “A Homily of the State of Matrimony,” it is said “For the woman is a weak creature, not endued with like strength and constancy of mind,” (174). There are many similarities in philosophy seen between the Homily and The Taming of the Shrew. The ideas and values of the 1600s are clearly noted and supported throughout various works of the time period.
In Kate’s final act of obedience she places her hand under the foot of Petruchio, “And place your hands below your husband’s foot,” (221). This puts him in the position to step on her if he so chooses and she knows this, as she says “My hand is ready, may it do him ease,” (221). In this scene, Kate is entirely at the will and whim of her husband. This act shows her as confident of his care and trusting of her position within the relationship.
Although Shakespeare initially creates Kate as a shrew and hateful woman, he is able to progress her character to much more. Kate in essence because the ideal wife and is found to be preaching to what once would have been the choir. Through the finale speech in The Taming of the Shrew, it is clear that Kate is in fact, a tamed woman.

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

Throughout the Romantic period there was a surge in placing value on passion, feeling and reason as a form of decision making. The ideas surrounding the works of William Blake’s London and Robert Burns’ The Fornicator prove to readers that an individual need not have proper education in order to understand and change the world around them. The use of passion and perception as a form of reasoning, in opposition to rationalism, helped to inspire the masses into political upheaval and change. In contrast to Blake, Burns forces readers to look beyond what is seen on the surface and question circumstances at a deeper level. The idea that vision alone is enough to evoke change within an individual is overlooked by Burns and replaced with the idea that vision and thought combined make for the soundest logic. These two opposing views helped individuals to form opinions regarding the government and ultimately resulted in the French Revolution.
During the Romantic period, the period of Blake and Burns’ poetry, politics and social ideas were changing. The National Assembly was in the process of accepting and approving the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” The Declaration would soon be approved by the National Assembly and disapproved by the Catholic Church. Romantics were learning to place emotional and sensory oriented experienced values above that of ideas expressed in rationalism. Charles Baudelaire said it best, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither by choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling,” (3). Although the revolution was ultimately named the French Revolution, it was ecumenical.
Blake used poems such as London, to create an artificial emotion in readers which exhibited the feeling associated with romanticism. This artificial emotion which Blake is able to evoke encourages readers to feel for the so called victim of society. The victim of society is traditionally an individual who has been cast down from social grace and must struggle to survive in an unforgiving society. In London, published in 1794, Blake uses the first person to make readers conscious of their surroundings. Blake begins the poem saying “I wander thro’ each charter’d street/Near where the charter’d Thames does flow” (179). The repetition of chartered draws the readers’ attention to the word and thus evokes a feeling of confinement and restriction under the government. Blake goes on to use a graphic visual image to emphasize his views of the world, stating “And the hapless Soldiers sigh/Runs in blood down Palace walls” (179). Readers are encouraged to open their eyes to the world around them and take in that which they see. According to Blake, readers should feel so moved by that which they view physically and the feelings these images evoke, that they have no choice but to act.
Blake goes on to use sexual references to express his ideas of the times political environment. This connection is made to bring forth the vulgarity which can be found in prostitution and politics, a rather cunning suggestion. Blake says “But most thro’ midnight streets I hear/How the youthful Harlots curse/Blasts the new-born Infants tear/And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse” (179). In this stanza, Blake focuses on sexual impunities and their effects on society. Blake has already shown the streets of London to be filled with filth, but what could be worse than a curse upon our new born children? Blake’s references encourage the masses to rise up and demand change within their cities. Blake says “How the Chimney-sweepers cry/Every blackning Church appalls” (179). Here Blake is showing that as the victim within society is crying for help and expressing the woes of his struggles, the church is turning a blind eye and is appalled by the dirty homeless child. Readers are supposed to feel a raw emotional connection to the child calling for help. This emotion is used to cause a surge which results in the uprising of the people and ultimately the French Revolution.
Much like Blake, Robert Burns, a Scotsman, presents the world from the eyes of a victim of society. Burns shows readers the hypocrisy of the society everyone is living in and encourages one to think about their actions in relation to their perceptions. Although Blake and Burns write during the same time period, their poetry is nearly in contradiction to each other in that Blake believes in evoking raw feelings in order to move individuals to action, while Burns encourages readers to look beyond the surface and question morals on a deeper level.
Robert Burns writes The Fornicator in the first person and places the poem in a public realm, much like Blake. However, different from Blake, Burns writes The Fornicator less to encourage individuals to use their own perceptions but to make readers question the perceptions that they see. Rather than perceiving something as Blake suggests, Burns suggests that sight alone is not enough. Burns forces readers to look beyond what is seen on the surface and question circumstances at a deeper level. The idea that vision alone is enough to evoke change within an individual is overlooked by Burns and replaced with the idea that vision and thought combined make for the soundest logic.

In a different light from that seen in London, Burns expresses sexual impropriety as wrong only in some instances. Burns writes his poem of fornication while expressing a somewhat genuine love between two characters. He describes the love that is felt by harlots in opposition, by saying “Ye wenching blades who hireling jades/Have tipt you off blue-boram” (381). Here Burns is saying that there is a difference between love outside of marriage and prostitution. He is not entirely condoning either but has not shown disdain. Burns, again, is not calling for actions from his readers, but is encouraging readers to question that which they see.
One example of the varied views expressed by Blake and Burns can be clearly identified in their views of orthodox religion. Burns, rather than evoking thoughts of the church, places his characters physically within a church, “Before the Congregation wide/I pass’d the muster fairly” (381). Burns’ characters are atoning for their sin of fornication in front of the congregation. This social ostracizing is shown to be a hypocritical statement. Burns uses the final stanza of his poem to emphasize the idea that all people are “fornicators” or sinners. Both Blake and Burns use the church to show the hypocrisy found within churches during the Romantic era and also to place an emphasis on perceptions. Blake wants readers to see and act, while Burns wants readers to consider that sin and wrong doing is all in the eye of the beholder. Why such a vast difference between the two views? Blake’s poem is written to show individuals the injustice around them, while Burns poems are from the eyes of the sinner. The perception of the speaker, in Blake being the observer and in Burns being a criminal, allows readers to understand the position of the author himself.
However not all ideas found within the two poems are in contraction. The most prominent similarity between Blake and Burns is their joint belief in the idea of a fallen society. London focuses on the overall fall of the great city. The poem shows a society which is struggling to provide its people with the necessities. Burns too shows a fallen society in that he says all are fornicators. The similar belief that society has reached an all time low is often expressed in writings of the Romantic period. Use of sensory imagery is used by both Blake and Burns to allow readers to connect first hand with the writings. Blake ends lines 9 and 13 with “I hear” while including visual images of the streets to draw readers into the poem. Burns’ poetry emphasizes sight as well, while showing readers two individuals sitting before a congregation. Burns’ sinners are shown using visual imagery as sitting with shame, “my downcast eye by chance did spy/What made my lips to water” (381). The use of the primary senses in relation to how the world is perceived and how one interacts with the world is key to understanding poems of the Romantic period.
The use of passion and perception as a form of reasoning, in opposition to rationalism, helped to inspire the masses into political upheaval and change which manifested through the French Revolution. Writings such as those mentioned above by Blake and Burns, although at different ends of the spectrum, worked to provide the public with the knowledge and inspiration to act on feeling as a form of reasoning.

Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Berlin, Germany: Belknap Press, 2006.

Damrosch, David and Kevin Dettmar, eds. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. United State: Pearson Education, Inc, 2006.

Passing Ideas

“Racial Formation” by Michael Omi and Howard Winant abstractly covers the idea of race, both as an essence and an illusion, as it relates to modern practices within the United States. Race within politics, everyday life, science, and more is reviewed as a fundamental concept which is constantly affected by hegemony within our society. The idea that race is a historical concept is established to help create a concrete idea that race will eventually evolve into something new and unique from that which it is believed to be today.

In “Racial Formation,” the following passage exhibits the argument Omi and Winant are trying to imprint upon the reader:

Since racial formation is always historically situated, our understating of the significance of race, and of the way race structures society, has changed enormously over time. The processes of racial formation we encounter today, the racial projects large and small which structure U.S. society in so many ways, are merely the present-day outcomes of a complex historical evolution. The contemporary racial order remains transient. By knowing something of how it evolved, we can perhaps better discern where it is heading. (61)

Omi and Winant are trying to stress the importance of understanding the history of race in order to better lead and establish what “race” will mean to future generations.

The illusion of race as a fundamental means for understanding an individual is established as being socially constructed and therefore invalid. However, the idea that understanding race can better help individuals to establish non-racial projects for the future, in an attempt to better mankind, is stressed as being the articles’ purpose. The idea that understanding contemporary racial order as a fleeting structure establishes the solvency of racial evolution.

WTF

P.G. Wodehouse, author of “Strychnine in the Soup” a story, in essence about a story, is a classic example of the use of literature in modernist writing. The tale, “Strychnine in the Soup” focuses readers on the culture surrounding a good novel and brings readers to understand and question the culture surrounding literature.
Individuals throughout Wodehouse’s “Strychnine in the Soup” are constantly attempting to read a single piece of literature, a novel within the story - Strychnine in the Soup. The players are so interested in reading that they often become neglectful of other life details and personal interactions. The group of individuals enthralled in the novel, are depicted as being very exclusive of those who have not, or are yet to, read the novel. Wodehouse is able to show the exclusivity of the literary culture established during the modernist era and use this environment as a setting for his tale.
One can call into question the idea that Wodehouse has written a story, about a man in a bar telling a story…about a story. Through this detachment, Wodehouse is able to show readers their degree of removal from the actual literature and call into question the role of the reader. Whether it is the detachment of the reader or the representation of what a reader is like, Wodehouse is able to focuses readers on the culture surrounding a good novel and brings readers to understand and question “literature”.

In The Coquette by Hannah W. Foster, General Sanford is introduced as a man passionately in love (or perhaps just lust) with Eliza Wharton. However, Eliza never has the opportunity to marry Sanford. Not only does he never ask, but he returns from abroad with a wife. The reader is then forced to question, why Sanford hesitates in making Eliza an offer of marriage, when their feelings of love for each other are so evidently mutual? Simple, Sanford feels that he is entitled to live a life of luxury, which he can not support of his own means and must therefore marry a women with financial backing.
Throughout the novel, the connection between Sanford and Eliza is clear. There is no question that she feels for him and although a reader could wonder if he feels the same, Foster is blunt in depicting that Sanford does love Eliza. Sanford writes “Love her, I certainly do! Would to heaven I could marry her” (72). Therefore, why does he not act on these feelings? Sanford begins to explain his circumstance to the reader in a letter to Mr. Charles Deighton. Here he states:

I shall manage matter very well, I have no doubt, and keep up the appearance of affluence, till I find some lady in a strait for a husband, whose fortune will enable me to extricate myself (65).

From this, the reader is able to gather that Sanford has no money and is simply keeping up the appearance of being affluent. Sanford feels that his only option for gaining the wealth needed to support his lifestyle would be to marry a lady.
Foster invites readers to understand and even sympathize with the situation Sanford has found himself in through use of Eliza. The reader is greatly attached to and connected with Eliza and her feelings; therefore, reader has no choice but to mutually like Sanford for his wit and cunning. Being that Eliza is only able to connect intimately with Sanford, allows the reader to feel sympathy for Sanford as an individual and identify him as a human being, capable of all such emotions.
Whether because of Eliza’s clear connection with Sanford or the illusion which Foster has created of love between the two, readers of The Coquette have no choice but feel sympathy for all players in the novel, regardless of their actions. Sanford’s decision to not marry Eliza may have ultimately led to the fall of both players, but was made with deep thought and consideration.

Hope Leslie

There are many scenes which play parallel or mirror scenes in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie. The use of echo scenes plays a large part in the flow and foreshadowing of the novel. Through use of these scenes, Sedgwick is able to incorporate a degree of anticipation while encouraging the reader to make historical, biblical, and social connections to the events as they unfold.
The novel begins with the tale of love lost due to the meddling of Alice Fletcher’s father, Sir William. In fact, “Sir William perceived their growing attachment and exulted in it” (4). The scene plays out that the lovers who are originally thrust together by Sir William are then forced apart. In Volume I, Mr. Downing suggests that Everell should wed Ester; here he says “I have already taken the first steps towards bringing about so desirable an end” (97). Much like the scene which takes place between Alice and her father, Ester is thrust into a situation with Everell because of her father. Had Ester’s father not encourage the relationship to foster by inviting Everell to his house, it is possible that Ester’s life would take a very different turn; use of these parallel scenes, helps readers to notice the citizenship status of unmarried women. Both Alice and Ester’s futures are shown as being entirely dependent on the decisions made by their fathers.
Another parallel scene Sedgwick demonstrates is far less obvious. Rosa, a young girl under-cover, warns Hope Leslie of her master’s deceitful ways. Here she says “Promise me you will not love my master. Do not believe him, though he pledge the word of a true knight always to love you” (110). In a similar scene, Jennet, a house-maid overhears a conversation between Everell and an accomplice and runs to tell Sir Philip Garner of this great secret. The use of characters such as Rosa and Jennet as a means for establishing a social gossip network are a tool Sedgwick shows great mastery of.