Growth Mindset W17

For growth mindset I choose to do number 12 which is what is Genius? This assignment is based on a great cartoon by Grant Snider. What do you think the elements of genius are? Here's the cartoon:

This shows me that genius is made up of many elements that come together to make up genius which is much more than the definition we are used to. which is exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. Most people think it is something that you are naturally born with which is part of it but the other part is hard work, critical thinking , and just go outside the box. To me genius is always reaching for more and constantly trying to be better than the you of yesterday. 

Wikipedia Trail form "Fascinating Womanhood"' to "Articulating Adolescent Girls' Resistance to Patriarchal Discourse in Popular Media"

I searched women's role in patriarchal society from there I looked at the first article Fascinating Womanhood. published in the1920's and 1930's the book seeks to help traditionally-minded women to make their marriages a lifelong love affair. It takes in many sources from historical women and examples shown in classic literature.This gained attention of many feminist writers who largely regard the book as detrimental to women in various ways

The next article I hopped to was The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. The author makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations.the author talks about three linked dogmas. the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits)—empiricism, the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society)—romanticism, the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology)

The next hop was to an article called In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. In the book, Gilligan criticized Kohlberg's stages of moral development of children. Kohlberg's data showed that girls on average reached a lower level of moral development than boys did. She strives to emphasize that women, like men, are capable of thinking and acting in a manner associated with justice, and women with elements more associated with the value of care.

My last hop leads me to an article called Articulating Adolescent Girls' Resistance to Patriarchal Discourse in Popular Media. This paper explores and theorizes the experiences in adolescent girls' lives that pertain to their ability to resist damaging media representations of femininity. Traditional theoretical approaches to resistance involve notions of “resistant reading” of media messages.

week 17 analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis of Mahasweta Devi story "GiriblaIa". The literary devices that devi use in her story are Characterization, Dialogue, setting and changes between first to third person. She use Characterization when she describes the the girls that are being married off and how young they usually are when this happens. She also shows dialogue through out the story specifically when characters are talking to one another, Giri and her mother I believe. The setting takes place some where in India in the late 1900's. The story changes from a third person narrater when it is talking about the over all story and details then changes to first person when the character is actually talking. The theme I see in this story id a big one which is women do not have rights in India. This plays out very well in the story because they make it quiet obvious that this is the way there society is ruled and factions. This metaphor works perfectly to address the issue of inequality in India as well as the rest of the world. It also show how bad places that are not America can be when women do not have any rights. I choose this reading because this displays the history India and many other places around the world that are still like this. where privileged patriarchal power structure in a society constantly  subordinates, subjugates, and oppress women’s lives to years of injustice and gendered brutality and impoverishment. This was once apart of almost all societies in the world at one point in time, which is now apart of only a few countries now. I can tell the elements that I choose influenced and informs the authors work because she herself is an Indian women who has probably seen this first hand and wants to inform other of what is truly happening.   

Reading Notes W 17:Mahasweta Devi "GIRIBALA" Part B

Giri is only 14 years of age when she is married off to the abusive Aulchand and indoctrinated into the patriarchal dictum: “A daughter born. To husband or death. She’s already gone” In this property exchange in which Giri’s father paid Aulchand “eighty rupees and a heifer before he married her,” Giri is cast into the patriarchal bargain for exchange “After the birth of her fourth child, a daughter she named Maruni,¹ she asked the doctor at the hospital, where she went for this birth, to sterilize her”. Her request for sterilization raises questions of reproductive control and incurs the wrath of her husband. When Aulchand terrorizes her to tell him why, it becomes apparent that Giri chooses to preclude her reproductive system from any further patriarchal control in a society where, “having a daughter only means having to raise a slave for others” . Giri’s uterus goes permanently on strike from further patriarchal intrusion in a country that devalues daughters as disposable second skins.
Giri’s Bela had become another victim of a duplicitous business venture of “procuring girls on the pretext of marriage”. Devi observes that the police do little to help the mothers and young girls in these circumstances. Instead, they blame it on the father and the fact that “Poor Bela had this written on her forehead”; she was a girl after all. Giri’s first response is to bang her head against a patriarchal ceiling that positions men as owners and women’s as oppressed producers. It is a determining logic that sustains gendered subordination, as “A daughter, until she is married, is her father’s property. It’s useless for a mother to think she has any say”. Here, we co-witness how young girls have become alienated commodities to be bartered, bought, and sold as instruments of sexual labor.It is not until Giri has been duped into marrying her almost ten-year old daughter, Pori, off into what she believed at the time was a way to protect her from the same fate of her first daughter Bela that Giri begins to find another way out of her predicament. Unfortunately, the mother and father have been swept away by the desire to marry their daughters. Trusting Mohan, a family friend, to find her daughter a mate before Auchland intervenes, Giri, unknowingly, delivers her second daughter into a large-scale prostitution ring. It is for this reason, that Giri sterilizes herself and removes any future daughters from her womb to this fate. For the commodity Giri produces, “unlike all other commodities, is unique to capitalism: the living human being”—the pubescent sexual laborer herself. By taking control over her body, “Giribala” directly subverts her husband’s domination over her reproductive organs and contests the transformation of her daughters into surplus labor to feed male sexual appetites. Because Giri’s fertile womb is essential for Auchland, Giri’s refusal to reproduce is the ultimate form of social power and resistance. Auchland’s chastisement of Giri’s actions confirms his economic motives: “Foolish woman, you shouldn’t have done that operation. The more daughters we have, the more money we can have”. Giri precludes her womb from begetting more fetishized commodities to be sold into sex bondage, for “no matter what euphemism is used, nobody ever sets up home for a girl bought with money”. Motivated by survival, Giri leaves Auchland “to work in other people’s homes in order to feed and raise her remaining children”.

Reading Notes W 17:Salman Rushdie , "THE PERFORATED SHEET" Part A

Salman Rushdie, whose extended family lives in India as well as Pakistan, published his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, in England in September 1988. On Valentine’s Day 1989, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, then the leader of Shi’a Muslims in Iran, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, urging Muslims around the world to murder Rushdie for his acts of blasphemy against Islam in writing the novel. With typical irony, Rushdie called the fatwa an unusually harsh "book review." The incident sparked off a global controversy about freedom of expression, modernity, and "Islam versus the west," and Rushdie had to live underground for a decade, with maximum security provide by the British secret service. For many readers ever since, the international fallout from The Satanic Verses has been a public measure of its literary value, and a confirmation of Rushdie's status as the world's most important living writer.

Saleem Sinai starts by giving his exact date and time of his birth August 15, 1947 at midnight. Saleem’s birth coincides precisely with the moment India officially gains its independence from Britain. Saleem states his miraculously timed birth ties him to the fate of the country. He is thirty-one years old now and feels that time is running out for him. Saleem’s believes his life is ending and he must tell all of the stories trapped inside of him before he dies. Saleem begins the story with his grandfather, Aadam Aziz on an early spring morning in Kashmir. Saleem describes Kashmir as a place of incredible beauty and says that 1915 Kashmir was still pristine looking just as it had during the time of the Mughal Empire. At this point in the story, Kashmir is free of the soldiers, camouflaged trucks, and military jeeps that will come to characterize it in later years.

While praying, Aadam bumps his nose against the hard ground, and three drops of blood fall from his nose. As a result, he vows never again to bow before man or god, and consequently a “hole” opens up inside of him. Aadam has recently returned home from Germany, after five years of medical study. While Aadam was away, his father had a stroke, and his mother took over his duties in the family gem business. As Aadam stands on the edge of a lake, Tai, an old boatman, comes rowing toward him. Saleem describes Aadam’s features, particularly his prominent nose. Saleem also describes the enigmatic Tai and the local rumors that surround him. Tai’s boat draws closer. He shouts out to Aadam that the daughter of Ghani the landowner has fallen ill. Here, Saleem interrupts his narrative to say that most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence, but he reassures us that he has the ability to see things he didn’t actually witness. In this way, he is able to describe Aadam taking care of his mother, attending to the landowner’s daughter, and being ferried across the lake by Tai, all at the same time.At the landowner’s opulent house Aadam realizes that the old man Ghani is blind. While waiting to see the patient, Aadam gets nervous and considers fleeing, but then he has a vision of his mother and decides to stay. Aadam is taken in to see the patient, who is flanked by two extremely muscular women holding a white bed sheet over her like a curtain. In the center of the sheet is a hole, approximately seven inches in diameter. Ghani tells Aadam that, for modesty’s sake, he can only examine his daughter through the seven-inch hole.

Week 16 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of Toni Morrison story "Recitatif". The section of the story that intrigued me the most was "“Listen to me. I really did think she was black. I didn’t make that up. I really thought so. But now I can’t be sure. I just remember her as old, so old. And because she couldn’t talk—well, you know, I thought she was crazy. She’d been brought up in an institution like my mother was and like I thought I would be too. And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it, too. You and me, but that’s not true. And I don’t want you to carry that around. It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day—wanting to is doing it ”(p. 1187). I like this part because this is the end of the story were both character come together to reconclie the past between both of them. This conversation is between Roberta and Twyla and they are talking about the past misunderstanding. Were Roberta thought see saw Twyla with the gar girls and they were harassing the older lady named Maggie. So Roberta saw this as racial discrimination because she thought Maggie was black. Yet Twyla said she did not do anything she just happened to be there when this happened. This was there first misunderstanding that led to other misunderstandings as they encounter each multiple times through there adulthood. At first before they explained this issue I thought there first misunderstand when there parents met. The thesis I see in this story is misunderstandings that are left unresolved can lead to other problems and more misunderstandings.

Reading Notes W 16: TONI MORRISON Part A

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison combines realistic depictions of African American experience with a strong sense of the past’s hold on the present. She often conveys this sensitivity to the power of history by invoking magic or supernatural occurrences. The combination of techniques resembles at times the magic realism of the Latin American Boom; at other times, Morrison's concern with the border between fiction and history seems postmodernist. Her writing also addresses the role of racial and gender discrimination in the contemporary society. In all her work, while drawing on the experimental fictional techniques of the early 12th century, she maintains a close connection to African american oral and literary traditions and to everyday life in the united states.

The story opens with Twyla’s declaration that she and Roberta were brought to the orphanage of St. Bonny’s because Twyla’s mother Mary who dances all night and Roberta’s mother was ill. When they are initially introduced they do not get along. Mary has taught Twyla to hold prejudiced views about people of Roberta’s race. Eventually, the girls begin to bond over the fact that they understand each other without asking questions. They are also brought closer by the fact that they both get F's all the time; Twyla can’t remember anything she learns, and Roberta has not yet learned to read. They are also forced together by the fact that they are excluded from the rest of the children at St. Bonny’s because they are not real orphans. Sometimes Twyla and Roberta are picked on by the older girls or gar girls, who wear makeup and seem scary but are in fact mostly vulnerable runaways.Twyla often dreams of the orchard, but isn’t sure why because nothing really happened there, except one incident in which Maggie fell down there. Maggie is a sandy-colored old woman who works in the kitchen and has multiple disabilities. She is mute and possibly deaf, and has bow legs that cause her to rock and sway as she walks. The story jumps eight years ahead in time. One day, when a Greyhound Bus stops at the diner, Twyla notices that Roberta is among the passengers, accompanied by two young men. Roberta goes to leave without saying goodbye, but before she does Twyla asks how Roberta’s mother is. Roberta replies that she is fine, asks after Mary, and leaves. The narrative jumps another twelve years forward. Twyla is now married to a man named James whose family have lived in Newburgh for generations; the couple have a son named Joseph.She eventually resolves to buy only Klondike bars, because both her son and father-in-law love them. At the checkout, Twyla runs into Roberta, who is dressed elegantly and reveals that she now lives in the wealthy suburb of Annandale along with her husband and four stepchildren. They later catch up over coffee were they talk about Maggie and the incident that made Twyla and Roberta fall out. One day, Twyla accidentally drives past a protest against busing, where she sees Roberta holding a sign that reads “MOTHERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO!”. The women call each other liars because of how they both said the Maggie incident went, and eventually Twyla comes back to join a counter-protest, at which she waves a series of signs that directly address Roberta and don’t make sense to anyone else. The final sign reads: “IS YOUR MOTHER WELL?”, and this seems to cause Roberta to abandon the protest. As time passes again Twyla and Roberta come across each other again during the holidays at a cafe, they both confront each so they can both apologize with one another about everything that has happened between them both.  

Week 15 Analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis of Seamus Heaney poem "The Strand at Lough Beg". The literary devices that i see that Heaney use are Genre, Imagery, Point of View and Tone. He shows that the genre is a tragedy by saying something before his poem even starts which was in memory of Colum McCartney. He shows imagery in the way he is describing the situation and the scenery like how he does in the beginning of his poem he describing what he sees "Leaving the white glow of filling stations And a few lonely streetlamps among fields" (p.984). He continue to do this through out the poem and makes it feel like are almost there. The point of view of this poem I believe if form the authors perspective since he is telling this story. The Tone of the poem this kind of dark and scary violent situation based on how he describes how dark it is and the sounds of gunshots. For this poem it was a bit hard for me to identify a theme in this since he was basically just telling a story and not really giving any opinions on what he thinks and because poem are just plain hard for me to see themes. The theme to me seems to be there is a lot of unnecessary violence in the world. What this means to me is i can leave my house today and get shot by a random stray bullet because two guys were fighting over who had the right of way in an intersection, this also mean stealing and many other violent things that can happen to me or anyone else at any moment. I think this plays out well in the poem because it seems like they were out at night and were met by people who maybe wanted something from them and his friend ended up being hurt by a gunshot i think. I also think this poem was heavily influenced by real world events that was happening in the authors life, in northern Ireland in the 1960 there was a lot of violence due them fighting for independence from the united kingdom which the rest of Ireland had done. This directly shows in most if not all of his work.

Week 14 Project Planning

Choose one short story or novel excerpt. Write a piece in which you explore the following:
1. In what ways could this story be considered an artifact of history?
2. What does this story teach us about history?
3. How does a story teach us about a time or place differently than a history book?

The question is asking us to talk about the history in three different parts in the context of history. The first part is to show why this is important to history. The second part is what do these story or moments in history teach us about the past or what do we learn by looking back at are past. The third part is asking what do story teach that history books do not and is it similar, different or something new. The readings i will use is James Baldwin "Notes of a native son" because it seems interesting to talk about and it is talking about time in history were slavery / racism was very big  which has change now. The literary devices I might use are Imagery, Symbol(ism), Tone, and Point of View which I see a lot of examples that I could use. These device could help me answer the the project question because it will help give insight to the authors point of view as well as what he is trying to say. The exact example Im going to use i do not really know just yet I am still figuring out how I want to do this. I can come up with at least a working arguable thesis are something close to is which I might change when I figure out what info I will use exactly. my thesis idea is history has changed from a time of great racism to a period of a more undressing and equal society which is one of the most important period in American history.

Week 14 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of leopold sedar senghor poem letter to a prisoner. "I write you from the solitude of my precious—and closely guarded—Residence of my black skin. Fortunate are my friends Who know nothing of the icy walls and the brightly lit. Apartments that sterilize every seed on the ancestors’ masks And even the memories of love.You know nothing of the good white bread, milk, and salt, or those substantial dishes that do not nourish, that separate the refined from the boulevard crowds, Sleepwalkers who have renounced their human identity Chameleons deaf to change, and their shame locks you In your cage of solitude. You know nothing of restaurants and swimming pools Forbidden to noble black blood And Science and Humanity erecting their police lines At the borders of negritude. Must I shout louder? Tell me, can you hear me? I no longer recognize white men, my brothers, like this evening at the cinema, so lost were they beyond the void made around my skin (p. 682 -683)". I don't know why but this stood out to me the most because is was talking about a person writing a letter to a prisoner and he also seems to understand what the prisoner is going as well. This text is basically saying that he is writing to him a person who sees himself as a pensioner. He also talks about race a lit bit saying that there is still this segregation of black people, yet he see people as all the same not the color of there skin. He uses a lot of words that paint a picture of scene as well as words that he use to compare things and people. Before I really did this analysis I thought the theme or thesis to his poem was something else like comparing someone free to someone who is a prisoner which is part of it but there was much more to it. What this tells me about the author is he was born into a period were racism was big in society as well as him trying to understand what do people treat each other different just because of the color of there skin. So the thesis of this poem to me is two parts one is the idea of freedom and the second is race, so its how can and does race restrict your freedom.

leopold sedar senghor "Letter to a prisoner". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition, Vol. E. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages 676-686.

Reading Notes W 14: leopold sedar senghor, Part B

Léopold Sédar Senghor was a poet, a founder of the Négritude movement, and the first president of independent Senegal. His poetry takes as its central subject the encounter between Africa and Europe. The harsh circumstances of the encounter on both the personal and social levels, the conflict between two races and their conceptions of life, provide the background to his intense exploration of the historical and moral implications of the African and black experience in modern times.

Night in Sine
Senghor is describing the beauty of Africa by using the image of a woman to convey its significance. He asks the woman to mother him by placing her hand on his head and by cradling him, as they listen to the heart of his African heritage. Everything has gotten quiet, ''even the storyteller,'' whom he likens to a child asleep on his mother. The author encourages the woman to light the lamp and listen to bedtime stories, like the ones parents tell their children. Specifically, he wants to hear from the elders, those who died but ''did not want to die.'' He wants to gather all their stories and use them to speak through him before he sleeps. 

Black Woman
Directed against an entire Western tradition of literary praise for white-skinned and light-haired women that reaches from Dante to the twentieth century, this poem celebrates the feminine beauty of black skin for its own sake.

Prayer to the Masks
At the prayer point, Senghor greets the spirits in silence. The altar is a place of solitude. It's a place where masks representing each of the mighty tribes of Africa are displayed and where worshippers congregate to pay their respects. Senghor believes "masks of the four cardinal points where the Spirit blows" have a forceful presence that protects all corners of the world. These spirits come together at this sacred place to be honored and praised in silent prayer.

Letter to a Prisoner
He is basically writing a letter to prisoner who are black and is saying how sorry he is that they can't enjoy what lays outside there prison walls. He also says he is writing to him because he is bored and he would like a response back.

Reading Notes W 14: James Baldwin"Notes of a native son", Part A

The story "Notes of a native son" by the author James Baldwin.  A leading African American novelist, James Baldwin was one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century. He is best known for his remarkable essays that, in poetic rhetoric drawing on both the classics of English literature and the tones of biblical prophecy, combine personal reflection with a wider view of social justice.
The first group of essays focuses on the black person as artist and on his or her image within the cultural canon. In “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Baldwin, once an enthusiastic fan of Harriet Beecher Stowe, labels her an “impassioned pamphleteer” and criticizes Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other “protest novels,” including Richard Wright’s Native Son, for falling short of their lofty aims, abusing language, and overtaxing credibility. Baldwin goes on in the second essay, “Many Thousands Gone,” to recognize Native Son as a literary landmark but questions its actual power, given the depersonalization and mythification of blacks as Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima. In essence, the “native son” is a monster created by American history, and it is American history that must confront and re-create him. The third essay in the group, “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough,” criticizes an all-black production of a theatrical standard for perpetuating racial stereotypes.

Topic Brainstorm 3

1. From a piece of fiction (short story, section of novel, or a play) choose a female  
character on whom to focus, and create a project that discusses some of the following questions:  

• What is the author’s attitude towards her? (how can you tell?)
• What is your attitude towards her? 
• How do (at least 2) other characters view her? 
• How does she view herself?

I choose this topic because there is a lot of stories that we have read that focus on women roles in many different societies during many different time periods. What I would like to learn through this project is more about the author and how they refit themselves through there characters. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much i will dig deep and think about a character from many point of views. What I have learned from the first project process that has helped me is critical thinking to help me with gathering info.

2.Choose one short story or novel excerpt. Write a piece in which you explore the following:

1. In what ways could this story be considered an artifact of history? 
2. What does this story teach us about history? 
3. How does a story teach us about a time or place differently than a history book? 

I choose this topic because one I have not done a brainstorm on this topic yet and second exploring the historical context of a story seemed interesting. What I would like to learn through this project is more about how much these stories reflect actual history and how has history influenced these stories. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much i will do research outside of the text. What I have learned from the first project process that has helped me is information gathering.

3.Choose a reading selection. Then choose one of the following questions, and write an argument in response to it: 

• How does the work reflect the period in which it was written? 
• What does the work reveal about the cultural behavior contemporary to it? 
• How are class differences presented in the work? Are characters aware or unaware of the economic and social forces that affect their lives? 

I choose this topic because one I have not done a brainstorm on this topic yet and second it gives me options within this this topic. What I would like to learn through this project is more about how much these stories reflect actual history, peoples behaviors, culture, economic and many other things during the stories time periods. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much more I would like to know about the author and other outside influences that have affected the book. What I have learned from the first project process is a better way to take notes as well analyzing a stories from many point of views.

week 13 analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis T.S.Eliot’s poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land. The theme I seem to she is this idea that the modern world is in ruins yet somehow very beautiful and is deeply meaningful. I also think that the author has multiple sub themes within this be theme, which kind off made it hard for me to focus on only one idea. I think his theme plays out very well because he shows both that we are dying and moserable society yet we still can find the small things in life beautiful. The literary device that i see the most is imagery because he is building these were you can kind off picture it yourself if you close your eyes"Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”". What i think this tells us about the author is that there is a balance between life as well he is real about what is happening around him because he is paying attention.

Reading Notes W 13: Eliot, esp The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, Part B

The poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, the earliest of T.S.Eliot’s major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating their relationship. The first section of The Waste Land takes its title from a line in the Anglican burial service. It is made up of four vignettes, each seemingly from the perspective of a different speaker. The first is an autobiographical snippet from the childhood of an aristocratic woman, in which she recalls sledding and claims that she is German, not Russian. The woman mixes a meditation on the seasons with remarks on the barren state of her current existence. The second section is a prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey into a desert waste, where the speaker will show the reader “something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; He will show you fear in a handful of dust” The third  section describes an imaginative tarot reading, in which some of the cards Eliot includes in the reading are not part of an actual tarot deck. In the final section the speaker walks through a London populated by ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle that seems to conflate the clashes of World War I with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage . The speaker asks the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a corpse planted in his garden. The section concludes with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal accusing the reader of sharing in the poet’s sins.

Week 12 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of "A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN" by the author Virginia Woolf. The part of the text the was intriguing to me was "It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon; it was the professor’s statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially remarkable, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man—I looked at the student next me—who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight (p.356)". What this passage is basically saying that her teach which i believe is a man is saying how much lower women are in the context of intelligence, physical ability, and a variety of other things. While she is listen to her teach say this comment form a book to the class she felt angry and mad that someone could think this and actually say out loud to people. She also thinks to herself as to why people do not see women and men as equal since we are all the same human beans. She uses a lot a bit of metaphors when she is describing her anger for the subject, like when she's comparing her heart beat to that of the action leap. The theme that the author Virginia Woolf is trying to show is that there is a big problem with the inequality between women in men in that time period around the entire world. She also envisions a future in which there will be no gender-based division of labor and were men no longer hold this power in a patriarchy society.

Reading Notes W 12: Joyce:The Dead, Part B

James Joyce experiments with narrative form helped to define the major literary movements of the century, from modernism to postmodernism. By developing methods of tracing individual consciousness, Joyce, along with Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, helped us to understand the functioning of the human mind. Several aspects of “The Dead” recall—and transmute—elements in Joyce’s life. “The Dead” is divided into three parts, chronicling the stages of the Misses Morkan’s party and also the stages by which Gabriel Conroy moves from the rather pompous, insecure, and externally oriented figure of the beginning to a man who has been forced to reassess himself and human relationships at the end. The story "The Dead" bu author James Joyce starts off at the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary Jane Morkan, the housemaid Lily frantically greets guests. Set at or just before the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, which celebrates the manifestation of Christ’s divinity to the Magi, the party draws together a variety of relatives and friends. Kate and Julia particularly await the arrival of their favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife, Gretta.  When they arrive, Gabriel attempts to chat with Lily as she takes his coat, but she snaps in reply to his question about her love life. Gabriel and his aunt discuss their decision to stay at a hotel that evening rather than make the long trip home.The party continues with a piano performance by Mary Jane. More dancing follows, which finds Gabriel paired up with Miss Ivors, a fellow university instructor. Miss begins to ask him a whole lot of question then she start to criticize him based on his answers. Later on Gabriel gives a speech to thank many people for there help in the event today as well many other table conversation happen. After that he bids his guest a good farewell and continues to have a conversation with his wife about the day. After talking for a while Gabriel grows irritated by Gretta’s behavior She does not seem to share his romantic inclinations, and in fact bursts into tears. Gretta confesses that she has been thinking of the song from the party because a former lover had sung it to her in her youth in Galway. This makes Gabriel question himself as well as other things around them.