Northanger Abbey: Catherine Morland, an "accidental feminist"

 Last week I had the awesome privilege to teach a class of graduate students at Fergusson College in Pune, India. Although I couldn’t see the 38 students, I could view their names and we could interact. Even though we tested the technology ahead of time, there were still some glitches: I couldn’t access the chat and my PowerPoint presentation didn’t work in full screen. All of us who teach online or remotely know we need to be flexible. So we soldiered on, overcame the technical deficiencies, and had a wonderful class!

Not being able to use the chat turned out to be a blessing. The questions I would have put in the chat I simply asked aloud, and I got great responses from the students. I was a bit surprised to hear several male voices—either there were a lot of males in the class, or they were just more vocal! Either way, I smiled as I listened to apt interpretations of Northanger Abbey from both the males and females.

To begin I covered the genre of the novel—covering aspects like length, plots and sub-plots, complex characters with inner lives, and entertainment value. I did an elevator speech on Jane Austen—that could take several lectures in itself. Then we took a glance at the theories of literary criticism: Formalism, New Historicism, Psychological (Freudian), Feminist, Archetypal/Mythological, Marxist. I tend to take a New Historicist approach, wanting to know as much as possible about the author and the time period in which she wrote.

                                     Catherine Morland, played by Felicity Jones, from the 2007 

                                        production of  Northanger Abbey directed by Jon Jones

Then we spent the second hour of the class discussing Northanger Abbey in some depth. I asked the class, “Is Catherine Morland a feminist?” Catherine is honest, direct, turns down, and accepts marriage proposals; she speaks her mind to her peers, Isabel Thorpe, and her ‘betters,’ General Tilney. But do these qualities make her a feminist? One of the students offered a brilliant answer to the question. She called Catherine Morland an “accidental feminist.” Maybe she didn’t intend to be a feminist or strive to be a feminist, but for her time period, she really was a feminist!

Catherine Morland was not a feminist in terms of the modern definition of belief and advocacy for equal social, political, and economic status. And she might not have met the standards of Mary Wollstonecraft, though both would agree that a wife is more of a ‘companion’ than an ornament or servant.

What do you think? Was Catherine Morland a feminist? Was she ahead of her time? Please let me know your thoughts by commenting below.

Check out my new website: katiesweeting.com. I'll be discontinuing this blog and blogging from my website in the coming weeks.

Historical novel research - Taboo no Longer: Menstruation in 19th Century England

You may wonder why I'm writing a blog on menstruation! Well, I'm revisiting and revising my historical novel Remnant, adding some drama to Joanna's storyline. Joanna Vassa, the daughter of famed abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, died of uterine disease, maybe endometriosis. It's likely she suffered from painful periods and I plan to include this in the novel...hence the research. After spending days on research, it will probably amount to a few paragraphs in the book, but the journey is worth it. 

Joanna came of age during the Regency Era in England, so designated because King George III was mentally incapacitated and his son George took over as Prince Regent from 1811-1830. Following the Regency Era was the Georgian Period, followed by the Victorian Era, from 1837-1901; Queen Victoria was one of England's longest-serving monarchs. My research hit a brick wall when searching for Regency or Georgian information on menstruation, so I had to look back to the Elizabethan Era or ahead to the Victorian Era.

In the Elizabethan Era, theories about menstruation include a necessary balancing of the four humours: pure blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. A woman's monthly bleeding would return her body to a natural, healthy balance of fluids. Beliefs that menstruating women had magical powers or that menstrual blood could cure diseases abounded. In fact, Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder wrote "that a menstruating woman could stop hail storms and lightning, as well as kill crops" (History). It was common in the Middle Ages for women to simply bleed into their clothes. I really find it hard to picture a woman walking down the street leaving behind a trail of blood!

Middle or Upper-class women were often consigned to bed rest during their monthly cycle in the Victorian Era. Charles Knowlton, who wrote Fruits of Philosophy in 1832, stated that during her menstrual cycle "the woman is said to be unwell, or out of order...dancing in warm rooms, sudden exposure to cold or wet, mental agitations should be avoided as much as possible" (Showalter 84). Men made decisions about what women could or could not do. 

Elaine Showalter points out that "scientific fact and scientific theory were being influenced by the prevailing social or ethical doctrine of women's inferiority...governed by prejudices rather than scientific truth" (Showalter 85). Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, an English physician, pushed back against the theory that women were incapacitated for one week out of every month during their period, and claimed from personal and professional experience that "the extent of female invalidism was greatly exaggerated by male doctors... and that most adult women completely disregard menstruation in relation to their normal activities" (88). 

Victorian women "used outhouses, chamber pots, or a discreet outdoor spot, [women] did not normally wear panties or other clothes that would need to be pulled down" (Freidenfelds). However, during their monthly cycle, women wore some kind of cloth or diaper, often with a belt, a precursor to the first Kotex pads with belts in the 1920s.

I was also curious about what women (and men) called the menstrual cycle in the early 19th century. In the 17th century, they referred to flowers, courses, and terms, as in "she is having her courses." Quite frequently no specific vocabulary would be used at all. Instead, someone might say "she hasn't had those for a while," or they might say she is "in the custom of women" (Reid). 

Interestingly, Natalie Joffe points out that "it was noted that some groups had a rich vocabulary for menstruation, while others had but the scantiest of terms" (Joffe). The Irish have very few words and the French employ a plethora of words, denoting not just their attitude toward menstruation but their attitude toward women's sexual health in general. Words used to denote menstruation often referred either to the monthly frequency-- that time of the month, her time, monthlies-- or the idea that women were not feeling well while menstruating--unwell, the curse. Meigs, writing in 1852, notes that "among us , it is called courses , periods , terms , monthlies , monthly sickness , unwell , times , and a variety of other names , hints , and allusions , that need not be here summed up" (Meigs).

Historical fiction novelists spend weeks, months, or even years conducting research to insure the history is accurate. Finding reliable sources for some topics is quite difficult, as I discovered when simply trying to find out what they called a "period" in 1807!

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Bibliography

Freidenfelds, Lara. "Period Drama: That Time of the Month in Victorian America." National 

Museum of Civil War Medicine. 12 February 2017 https://www.civilwarmed.org/menstruating/

Hindson, Bethan. “Attitudes Towards Menstruation and Menstrual Blood in Elizabethan England.” Journal of Social History, vol. 43, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 89–114. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/jsh.0.0246.

Ives, Susanna. "Tidbits on Mid-Victorian Era Menstrual Hygiene." http://susannaives.com/wordpress/2015/09/tidbits-on-mid-victorian-era-menstrual-hygiene/
Joffe, Natalie F. "The Vernacular of Menstruation," WORD, 4:3, 181-186, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1948.11659341

Meigs, Charles Delucena. Obstetrics: The Science and the Art.

Read, Dr. Sara. Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Showalter, Elaine, and English Showalter. “Victorian Women and Menstruation.” Victorian Studies, vol.14, no. 1, 1970, pp. 83–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3826408. Accessed 22 Feb. 2021.

The History of Periods: How Women Have Dealt With Menstruation Through the Ages. https://www.knixteen.com/blogs/the-rag/the-history-of-periods. 23 May 2018

Words as symbols

家 

jiā, house

What are words?! Sometimes I like to get back to basics. As someone who deals with words in my personal, social, avocational, and professional life, I like to take a step back and think about what these crazy squiggles on a paper or screen are actually all about!

Words in and of themselves have no meaning. Words are composed of letters, or in some cultures characters. A particular combination of characters is formed to comprise words or larger characters. In Chinese, some characters resemble the idea or meaning of the character. 家 (jiā) means home, family, or house in Mandarin. The original character for home in Chinese was a pictograph of a pig inside a house. The current character has a hog under a roof! The character for house looks like a house. So there is a concept of a house, and there is a corresponding character of house. And for ancient Chinese culture, a house included a hog! The character is given a meaning, and the image of the character resembles the image of the meaning.

The English alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet around the 7th century C.E. -- the very word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta!!. The origins of the English language hark back to the earliest influence on England -- Germanic peoples known as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The Norman (French) influence on the English language is also significant. So what we consider the "English" language is rooted in influences from Latin, Greek, German, Dutch, the Netherlands, and France!

Words are composed of letters (in many languages, like English), and the specific combination of letters in a particular order forms a word that connotes meaning. However, this is where it gets tricky. The meaning I imbue to a word may not match the meaning you give a word. And that is precisely where communication goes awry. We use words and we think we are communicating well, but do we check to ensure the words we are using are understood the way we understand them?! 

In one of my classes, we had a lengthy debate about a word when studying Socrates. The word was DESK. I asked the class, "what is a desk?" Answers included the following: a table with drawers; a rectangular structure where one can work; a place to work; a place to store papers with a top to work on; a table with file drawers. I asked if the table I was at was a desk. Some said "yes" and others said "no." Does a desk need to have drawers? Is a desk defined by how it looks or its function? If I'm sitting in my backyard grading papers on my lap, is my lap a desk?? The word "desk" is composed of symbols, four letters in this order... D.E.S.K. In and of themselves, those letters have no meaning. The word itself has no meaning other than the meaning we give it. As it turns out, we don't all give it the SAME meaning! One simple word we think we all understand, but it turns out there is great confusion!

In the current political climate here in the U.S. words have been misused, misappropriated, and misunderstood. In my next post, I'll examine how words have power, both for good and for evil.

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch on absolute truth…” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

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https://www.chinasage.info/chars/fch_jia_house.htm

The Word: Logos

 Words fascinate me. As I wrote in the previous post, I deal with words, in words, and around words on a daily basis. I write words, read words, grade the written word, and speak words. Words have power--to enlighten, to heal, to change a perspective, to hurt, to encourage, to challenge, to express love. 

For the next few blog posts,  I'll delve deeper into the meaning and purpose of words--the relationship between ideas, words, and culture; how and why words are so often misinterpreted; how certain combinations of words have more impact; and how we can use words to change the world! For now, we'll start at the beginning.

The first verse in the bible is Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The word genesis means the beginning or formation of something. So Genesis 1 is the beginning of the beginning! And who was there in the beginning? God! Jews, Christians, and Muslims all hold the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament as a sacred book and believe God created the heavens and the earth.

Skip ahead in the Bible to John 1:1-3: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through Him and without him nothing was made that has been made." So God created the world, heaven and earth, in the beginning, and the Word, Logos in Greek, was there. The Word, Logos, is Jesus. Jesus was present in creation with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, speaking the universe into existence: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light," Genesis 1:3. 

The word logos has its origins in Greek philosophy and relates to the power of reason. According to Stoic philosophers in the 3rd century B.C.E., logos is the "active rational and spiritual principle that permeated all reality. They called the logos providence, nature, god, and the soul of the universe." By referring to Jesus as logos, the Apostle John is signalling that Jesus is the co-creator with God the Father, the One whose words reflect spiritual and physical reality. In addition, Jewish rabbis referred to God as "the word of God," so in a few short sentences the Apostle John is appealing to Jews and Greeks, and laying a foundation for the spiritual concept of the Trinity -- three co-equal aspects of God.

Our ability to use words to communicate thoughts originates in the creator of words, God Himself, and in the Word, Jesus Christ. God used words to create life. As we begin to explore the meaning and power of words, we start with the Word, Logos, the Messiah whose birth we celebrate this week, Jesus the Christ.

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Holy Bible. New International Version. Cornerstone Bible Publishers, 1984.

"Logos." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 May 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos

 

Are You a True Reader or a Book Nerd?

Not a day goes by when I don't read. I read the bible daily, and I am also usually reading a novel; articles online; student work; texts and email messages; recipes. I can't imagine a day without reading as an integral part. But none of these activities make me a "true reader" according to C.S. Lewis, beloved and renowned Christian author, professor, scholar, and novelist. Lewis highlights a few characteristics of a "true reader" in his book (compiled from letters and writings) The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes. 

C.S. Lewis has been described as "the best-read man of his generation, one who read everything and remembered everything he read" (Epmson, qtd in Lewis). Anyone who is reading John Milton's Paradise Lost at ten years old and Shakespeare at eleven is beyond erudite! So Lewis's ethos argument is strong--he has earned the right to qualify who earns the title of "true reader." See if you pass these four tests of a "true reader" C.S. Lewis uses to separate the serious from the inconsequential! 

 1) Loves to re-read books 

    Have you ever purposely re-read a book? I read so many books, some serious literary tomes, and some lighthearted romances, that I can forget I read a book. This has happened more times than I'd like to admit, and I usually reach a point where it seems so familiar that I realize I have read the book previously. At that point, I sometimes continue and finish the book, and other times set it aside.

    I'm a member of JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America). Any good Janeite will tell you how many times they have read each of Austen's six books. I remember hearing a Janeite say at a conference, "Oh, I didn't realize that until my thirteenth reading of Persuasion." Some books beg to be re-read. Why re-read a book? It's not for the plot - we already know the plot. We re-read for the lyrical prose, for how the book makes us feel, and think, and see differently.

 2) Highly values reading as an activity 

    I read daily because I love to read. Now that I'm on Goodreads it's easier to keep track, but I generally read 4-6 books a month. Do you read because you love to read, or because there is nothing else to do? When I travel I always have my iPad, or Nook, plus a few actual books. I can remember when I was a pre-teen I would get together with my friend Connie and we would spend the afternoon sitting outside each engrossed in our own book. Yep, I'm a book nerd.

 3) Lists the reading of particular books as a life-changing experience 

    Books have changed my perspective, taken me to the past and the future, provided hours of enjoyment and suspense, and made me a more empathetic person. First, the Bible has changed my life and revealed spiritual truth. All other books pale in comparison to the impact of the Bible on my life. 

    Second, authors who have greatly impacted me include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Tracy Chevalier, Jojo Moyes, Philippa Gregory, Barbara Kingsolver, Olaudah Equiano, Noah Gordon, Langston Hughes, Sophocles, Homer, Ann Patchett, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Vikram Seth, Thrity Umrigar, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maeve Binchy, Rosalind Laker, Ann Tyler, .... and too many more to name.

 4) Continuously reflects on and recalls what one has read 

    (these four points are taken from The Reading Life by C.S. Lewis).

    Book groups are great. I'm not in a book group right now, but I love sitting around and talking about books. Book groups are one way to reflect on what we've read. I guess some of my literature classes are like book groups in the sense that we read and discuss literature. But there are other ways to reflect on books - writing reviews, journaling, and talking to friends. When a book simply blows me away I write a review -- it comes out of the life-changing experience of reading the book and I'm compelled to share my experience with other readers. I also blog about my favorite books!

    What do you think? Do you meet all four of these criteria and qualify as a True Reader, according to C.S. Lewis. Or, if you'd like another evaluation to determine if you're a Book Nerd, take this quiz: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/whats-your-book-nerd-score/

    What's the verdict? Are you a True Reader or  Book Nerd?

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Lewis, C.S. The Reading Life, The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes. Harper One, 2019.

Where the Crawdads Sing - Paean to the marsh

Don't you hate it when book descriptions are imprecise or inaccurate? I have avoided reading Where the Crawdads Sing because I was told it was mainly about an abusive father. An abusive father plays a role in the book, maybe a pivotal role, but he is not the most important character, and in fact, his part on the book's stage is small.

Order here 

Rather, the book is a love song to the marsh and the Marsh Girl. Delia Owens' lyrical writing about nature reminds me of Tracy Chevalier's At the Edge of the Orchard, or Remarkable Creatures, or Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior or Prodigal Summer. Interestingly, Barbara Kingsolver has a degree in biology and Delia Owens is a zoologist.

The book is about survival - Kya, aka the Marsh Girl, is abandoned by everyone. Her mother leaves, then all her siblings leave, and finally, her abusive father leaves. She lives alone in a shack at the edge of a marsh in North Carolina - alone as in there were no other humans around. With only one day of formal schooling, and no adults to guide her, she survives. When she becomes a young woman, two men come into and out of her life, and she survives their betrayal, too.

Kya's best friends are the seagulls, the great blue heron (one of my favorite birds), and Cooper's Hawk. Owens describes the great blue heron as "the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water" who walks slowly "like a predacious bridesmaid" (Owens 109). Kya is so intimately attuned to the creatures who inhabit the marsh, she takes on some of their characteristics (read the book to find out what I mean). Kya observes the birds, insects, amphibians, and sea creatures and even mimics some of their behavior. Owens' writing almost has me scratching imaginary mosquito bites and feeling the cool mud on my feet -- it's that descriptive and engaging.

Like the best writers, her analogies and descriptions are original, yet with a veracity that makes them feel obvious. She describes the nearby town as "quite literally a backwater town, bits scattered here and there among the estuaries and reeds like an egret's nest flung by the wind" (Owens 32). And her analogies, similes, and metaphors reflect the natural world of the novel, so Kya is depicted as "trying to disappear like a bark beetle blending into the furrowed trunk of an oak" (Owens 45).

When her only real friend, Tate, teaches her to read, she reads this line: "there are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot" (Owens 125). Kya exclaims, "I wadn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full" (Owens 125). Indeed, I feel like Kya when I read the book - who knew sentences could be so full!

There is a plot, and it has enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged. But the plot is not what made me love this book. The descriptions of the birds and Kya's relationship to the birds, how she crafts a life for herself, albeit lonely, and how she survives kept me riveted.

Have you read Where the Crawdads Sing? Did you love it as much as I do?!

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Owens, Delia. Where the Crawdads Sing. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018.

A Community of the Curious - Writing and researching historical fiction

 I love research! My students question my sanity, but honestly one of the parts of writing historical fiction I love the best is the research--so much so that I need to forcibly stop myself from continuing to research and start writing my novel. I'm revisiting and revising my historical novel about the daughter (Joanna Vassa) and sister (name unknown) of Olaudah Equiano. In the process of conducting research, I came across three scholars/historians and Equiano aficionados. They are part of a community of the curious about Joanna Vassa. I'm a card-carrying member now, too.

Dr. Angelina Osborne's research uncovered documents about Joanna Vassa and information about her life, which she published in a book entitled Equiano's Daughter, The Life and Times of Joanna Vassa. Momentum Arts in Cambridge published the book as part of the Untold Stories Arts and Heritage Project designed to highlight the lives of Cambridgeshire's Black and Minority Ethnic people. Nine years ago I undertook a pilgrimage to England to visit the sites where Equiano lived and wrote, Joanna's grave, The Congregational Church in Clavering where her husband was minister, and William Wilberforce's museum in Hull. 

Dr. Vincent Carretta is another member of the community of the curious. His research led him to write a seminal biography of Equiano, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. 

Arthur Torrington, CBE, is a Guyanese-born community advocate and historian who co-founded the Equiano Society in London in 1996. He personally took me on a tour of the spots in London where Equiano is known to have lived and worked and brought me to Joanna Vassa's gravesite in Abney Park Cemetery. The Equiano Society recently hosted a Zoom event on Joanna Vassa, and Dr. Vin Carretta was one of the speakers.

The community of the curious about Equiano, his life, and his family continues to grow. I am honored and delighted to be part of this particular community of the curious about Joanna Vassa.

What kinds of wonderful people have come into your life through your research?