Something wicked this way comes?

Now here is certainly a piece that I could sink my teeth into... okay bad pun I'll admit it. However it is completely appropriate considering that such an innocuously named piece was written about a vampire. Usually when you think vampire what comes to mind? Creepy castle? Check. Run down village? Check. Superstitious and vengeful family members of the victim(s)? Check and check several times over. It's nice to see some of what has become stereotypical of the vampire novel here before us, quite a bit before they were total stereotypes, and I will gleefully admit, those stereotypes were played out without hurting my brain.

I think one of my favorite moments in the piece was the story of the General's niece and her new friend. Yes of course we all knew what was happening and knew who was involved long before they got to the end of the story but it still made me snicker at the simplicity of disguise used in the entire piece. Masks at a Masquerade, a simple rearranging of letters, and then returning to her own hidden grave. I almost felt like I was playing hide and seek with the characters at times. Even more amusing I knew who the vampire was in one of the far earlier parts of the book, for even if I had questioned it Le Fanu threw the implications right into our faces in Chapter Three. "There was a sombre piece of tapestry opposite the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom;" clearly pointed us in the direction of everything that was going to happen, with our main character (aka Cleopatra) clutching a prized and favored being (aka the Asp), in this case Carmilla, to her chest without the consideration of its inherently deadly nature.
Now I'm not certain if Le Fanu was attempting to offer such a thin veil for his dramatic conclusions or if he really didn't believe that people would noticed the allusions to where and how Carmilla came about together. It was in chapter one that we were informed of the lay of the land including the nearest village. "because there is, only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General Spielsdorf’s schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the mouldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town." And in Chapter Four, Carmilla discloses the only three facts about herself that she can: her name, her family's ancient and noble heritage, and the direction in which her home is. Add that to the discovery of the Mircalla's (read Carmilla's) painting. Three simple things put together to tell you that something isn't right here! Don't forget of course about the hunchback in Chapter Four as well who informed us about the strange situation of Carmilla's teeth.

Now considering that I'm a fan of vampire novels I'll once again say that this was, in my opinion, a good one. I can't say great considering that the original intended audience for this piece was nothing like myself, so I'm missing several of the nuisances of the piece I'm certain. I did however notice something rather interesting from the start of the novella, although written by an Irish novelist the main character had little if anything to do with Ireland itself, and neither did the story. It's a trend I've been noticing in the pieces, although this is an Irish novel there is almost no connection to Ireland itself, except perhaps in certain mannerisms of the vampires and the way that the peasants celebrated the death of their girls. Then again... those are just the things that pop into my mind while writing.

WS

Thank You Word of the Day Calendar!

Oh how I loathe thee, over verbose tacticians of written monotony. Seriously! Who has discussions like these? Why do they think anyone besides a college professor (no offense Teach) or other literary critics would appreciate this type of writing. Then again... maybe I'm just being cantankerous. (Yes I used that word in a sentence, correctly even.)

Although I plowed my way through, what I once again saw as unnecessary vocal drivel, I can't say that I was particularly enlightened by what was there. Seeing Edgeworth's writing characterized as little more than a vaudevillian tactic to drum up amusement and support was a bit disappointing. Seriously when Egenolf quoted Kenneth Lynn saying that "Edgeworth thus becomes a minstrel character, performing what Kenneth Lynn refers to as “a white imitation of a black imitation of a contented slave," I was slightly bothered. I've heard some people refer to the Irish as the blacks of Europe, but I can't imagine that a statement like this is being used without a slap in the face attitude. Then again I can only get so upset by it considering how much of America's own entertainment history shares such a common thread.

I think perhaps the most persuasive pieces in this article are those linking dialect and clothing to a subversive culture and attitude. I think one of the most amusing things presented for us is the story of Mary Leadbeater's friend "a loyalist officer, was able to safely travel by post in the midst of the revolution, “disguised in a round hat and great-coat over his regimentals." In my mind it just evokes series of amusing scenes from movies where the 'good guys' steal the 'bad guys' uniforms and sneak into places that they shouldn't be. To think that this tactic worked because someone at some point decided that a particular style of jacket was going to be considered quintessentially 'Irish' is absurd to me. Then again I wasn't living at that period of time so much of what I look back upon will seem rather foolish.

A lot of this article draws back onto my feelings that the level of English persecution and mockery truly harmed the culture of Ireland more than people give it credit. There seems to be a lot of poking fun or commenting on the ineffectual nature of the Irish rebellion of 1798, which to me, seems quite unnecessary. They seriously seems to trivialize the hundreds of reasons that the Irish had for rebelling with the although we get a glimpse that, indeed, some people did get it with James Alexander's “A Curious Letter, Supposed to Be Written by a Penitent Rebel" from Some Account of the First Apparent Symptoms of the Late Rebellion in the County of Kildare (1800). "Alexander offers a fairly scathing critique of the burning of Irish houses by the government and the practice’s certainty of creating more rebels," one which I had the pleasure of having on hand to point out the truth behind one of the largest unaddressed matters.

Then again these are just the random ramblings of a crazy college student, please discuss.

WS

A Few Things Not To Do When You Become And Irish Lord

Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

You know there's a part of me that thinks of Thady like that crazy old uncle or neighbor that everyone has in their life. You know the one, the one that always has a story about everything great and small and how they were there for it. Or at least they know someone who was. I only wish their stories were as loyal as the ones that we got from Thady.

Now we're presented with a family that start with perhaps the quintessential Irish hero king, Sir Patrick, and we have to suffer through the bumbling misfortunes of his ill begotten line until we reach the tragic end with Sir Condy, who many people view as Sir Patrick reborn. What can we learn from this family?
1. Don't let your wife buy all the crazy baubles and dresses that she's grown accustomed to when you know your family is broke (Thank you Sir Condy).
2. Never wed for money, especially when your wife and her family will always have more than most of your country in the last ten years (Thank you Sir Kit.)
3. The law, even when it's on your side, doesn't make up for living a good life full of enjoyment (Thank you Sir Murtagh).
Now these are by no means the only lessons that we can learn from the Rackrent family, they give us so many opportunities to look at them and go, I will not be that guy. Please don't be that guy...

I think though that some of the best lessons in Edgeworth's satire comes more from Thady himself and how he deals with his place in the world. Seriously it must have been a blessing for him in that span of ever shifting masters to know that his place was there at their sides, that his loyalty was perhaps the greatest asset that these lords would ever have at their disposal. Thady couldn't even make him think poorly of the Lords of the Rackrent clan, and could barely justify such thoughts about their ladies. In the end the Rackrents were more his children than his own son.

Oh Jason... Of all the ills that befell Castle Rackrent and her denizens I doubt there was any as painful or as unsuspected as Jason M'Quirk. In the face of so many generations of family service Jason's supposed betrayal of not only the Rackrent clan, but of his own father, is something that any observant reader could have told you was coming from early in the tale and yet Edgeworth still makes us feel the bitter sting of his actions. Thady points it out himself on page 106 when he speaks of Jason "I wondered, for the life of me, how he could harden himself to do it; but then he had been studying the law, and had made himself attorney Quirk;". If we look back on when Sir Murtagh was in charge, who was himself and attorney, there was little in the way of joy that we could connect to and even less in the way that his family existed. It was sad to say the least that Jason couldn't learn from this preceding character's losses.

And I'm not certain that it was Edgeworth's intention that we reviled the women of the Rackrents in the way that I ended up doing. There were few if any traits that I could find in them to connect with. Although I could understand Sir Murtagh's bride and her frugality, I had no respect for the manner that she dealt with those who rented from her husband. Then there was Sir Kit's Jewish wife, who even in devout faith wouldn't give up her cross, and yet was it really faith or was it her shrewd sense of money. I pitied her more than anything, however I pitied Kit as well for wedding such an unyielding woman. And then there was the quandary of Judy M'Quirk and Miss Isabella. I think in the end Condy would have been happier, and perhaps even better off if he had wed where his heart told him to, with Judy, but he trusted to chance and eventually was ruined by the one that wanted him the most. Seriously Isabella had to be one of the flightiest girls in the book, with a theatrical response for everything. Did that really work during that time? Because seriously if it did, I'm living in the long era. Still there is almost nothing to find to love about these women when all is said and done and I can only think that Edgeworth was making a commentary about the women themselves as well as their lordly husbands.

All of this though is just observation and conjecture, of which I am becoming quite fond of. Sadly enough my favorite character is one that we barely get to see, Sir Patrick, who even in death had a merry song to sing and who reminds us not to take the world to seriously.
"He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do, falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
But he that goes to be , and goes to be mellow,
Lives as he ought to do, lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow."

WS

One punch, Two Punch, I punch, You punch...

Violence and the Constitution of the Novel...

Also known as how to fry your brain like an egg.

Normally I don't find that I have a lot of problems with wordy pieces but I think that this one takes me well beyond my normal 'wordy piece'. I'm not exactly certain who David Lloyd was writing this piece for, however I take the fact that it was so overly verbose as meaning it wasn't meant for your average student. Now that being said I will give Mr. Lloyd plenty of credit for addressing perhaps some of the most touchy and difficult topics of Irish literature, much less culture.

One of the major topics that I actually took a bit of an interest in was the analysis of the subaltern culture and how it was possible for the Irish to be considered a subaltern group if we were "overstepping the limits of Gramsci's largely class-oriented thinking" (126), and not just the Irish. Several other groups were allowed to be considered subaltern in this extension of understanding, including those on a gender basis.

Now if I understood some of what Lloyd was saying correctly, a good portion of why the Irish were and in fact still are portrayed as overly violent has a great deal to do with their revolutionary relationship with the British Kingdom. Lloyd pointed out that "Violence is always without the law. For, within nationalist history, what was violence becomes, in Walter Benjamin's terms, 'sanctioned' and thereby ceases to be violence insofar as bloodshed is subordinated to the founding of the state." (126) If we look at that quote, keeping in mind the history and the manner in which history is written, it's no wonder that the Irish to the blunt end of the publicity stick to the proverbial face and still are till this day. There is no love lost between the Irish and the British but to see it stretch beyond the standard politic floor and bar bashing is a point of view that I hadn't considered. This very idea draws us back toward the idea of a subaltern group. In this case it follows Lloyd and Gramsci's direct line of thought where the 'dominant history' over rides almost all of the subaltern group, to anyone besides that group. To me this is just an obnoxiously over complicated way to say history is written by the victors.

I can only think that this idea is strengthened by Lloyd's statements on pg 142, where he is analyzing Bartlett's article on death's in Irish Conflicts. When Lloyd points out that "what might be called the economy of Irish violence seems literally improbable or illegitimate to English observers," he highlights the fact that the English, and if you look at it closely for the time period, the majority of the rest of the world, don't understand the necessary level of violence as part of a struggling society. It simply seems to the outsider that the Irish are violent to be violent, when in truth they're fighting for the necessities of life, which, according to Bartlett's numbers, were not often lost in the more agrarian disturbances of the time. This still placed an impression on the world at large which, once made, was nearly possible to undue.

After reading Lloyd's piece, my opinion states that a good portion of the reason that the Irish novel is often so rife with violence is due to simple misunderstandings and socio-political blackballing on the behalf of the British. In all honesty without the British fanning the flames of how, and I'm stating stereotypes here, uncouth and barbaric the Irish were in comparison to 'civil societies', I doubt that the overt violence would have held on for this long. Then again those are just my opinions.

WS