M. Fuller, The Great Lawsuit

Continuing my research on Margaret Fuller, I wanted to post about on is considered her greatest work. I did talk about it a little during my presentation.

Margret Fuller’s views and work is epitomized in The Great Lawsuit, which was later turned into a book called Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The piece was first published July 1843, in The Dial, IV, the leading Transcendentalist newspaper of the time. Recognized as probably Margaret’s greatest work towards feminism it is a complaint of women's rights in America. The lawsuit itself is against America and the statement, "All Men are created equal”, which suggests men’s continued oppression of women; she concluded the Men in the statement include both men and women. She suggests that much of our law and views are taken from traditional Europe. After stating her views she calls on women to take action:

“We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we believe that the Divine would ascend into nature to a height unknown in the history of past ages, and nature, thus instructed, would regulate the spheres not only so as to avoid collision, but to bring forth ravishing harmony” (Fuller).

By having equality, she suggests that America would be able to reach a spiritual harmony. She also states that women need to be on an equal level with men in order to develop self-dependence. She refers to Christianity as an example, where women were just as divine as men. She then goes to argue that women need their intellectual and spiritual freedom. And also as a country it needs to be one to cause reform and change. In the end she also states that it is possible and encourages men and women to take it upon themselves to take action.

“The world at large is readier to let woman learn and manifest the capacities of her nature than it ever was before, and here is a less encumbered field, and freer air than anywhere else. And it ought to be so” (Fuller).

Now is the time to take action, she believes there is no better place in time but now to take action. According to her the world has actually been waiting for change.

In the piece she also criticizes the sanctity of marriage. She criticized most women's belief in marriage and deemed it compulsory, she realized it was often arranged for convenience and utility rather than for spiritual harmony; marriage should be a mutual union between two souls.

Of course her piece was not fully appreciated during her time and was met with criticism. She was recognized for her boldness and embodiment of ideals but she her beliefs were never taken seriously. During her time she was recognized more for the notion of challenging the social norms than recognized for her actual beliefs. The criticism of her work only comes to show the cultural and social norms that were prevalent in the 19th century.

Fuller, Margaret. "The Great Lawsuit. Man Versus Men. Woman Versus Women." The Dial, IV (1984). 24 July 2008

"The Great Lawsuit." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 20 Jul 2008, 03:59 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 4 Aug 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Great_Lawsuit&oldid=226747555>.

If only I could write my research paper in the shower...

Is there supposed to be any difference between science research papers and English research papers? I wouldn’t expect there to be any significant difference, yet why is it so much harder to write my English research paper than science papers. Perhaps is it because I’m less familiar with English texts compared to scientific literature, or is it a lack of confidence or fear of an undesirable outcome like in the past? Although procrastination is preventable and usually bad for most people, I find myself most productive when I’m working in the wee hours of the night knowing that time is slowly running out. For this research project, I am very grateful that it was broken up into multiple segments. Having to prepare the presentation ahead of time really does help plan ideas for the paper. If it weren’t for planning the presentations before the paper was due, I would probably end up trying to plan my ideas and write the paper at the last minute. Now, with my ideas already planned out, all I have to figure out is how to organize them into a logical paper. In the end, the hardest part about the research paper is starting and ending. If only I could write my research paper in the shower, then I would have much less trouble thinking of ideas.

Prison Reform in the 19th Century

So, every time I re-read a source or try to write, I keep thinking back to what I am actually trying to argue. I've finally figured out my argument: Hawthorne portrayed Hollingsworth as a failure because he did not believe in the prison reform efforts of the time. I came to this through looking at a lot of parallels in my sources, and finding different reasons for why my hypothesis is true.

The two types of prison reform in the early 1800s were meant to reform criminals through very strict methods. They were so strict that prisoners were not allowed to communicate at all. I think that the strictness of these systems was too harsh for many people. Also, these systems died out quickly because people started to realize that reforming criminals did not actually prevent crime itself. So, because Hollingsworth's school was never accomplished, Hawthorne is showing how these types of systems will fail.

Advocates of prison reform were also very extremist. Like other reforms of the time, prison reform had advocates to only stuck to one idea. For example, people believed that the source of criminal misbehavior was the family. Thus, prison chaplains were brought in to inspire the criminals and be their new family. However, this idea of replacing an entire family with a chaplain was obviously not going to help criminals that much. But, everybody believed that religion was the only way to solve the problem. This extremism is shown through Hollingsworth - he does not want to believe in any other ideas. His failure is a warning against the extremism of prison reformists.

One of my sources described how many of the reform movements failed in the early 1800s. Dorothea Dix helped improve insane asylums and hospitals, and was able to cause a vast increase in funds to help these causes. However, even with all the money that asylums got, they were not prevented from class discrimination. Depending on one's race, he/she would receive different treatment, and some would receive it faster than others. Also, many looked down on reform movements in general because they feared that constantly giving help would make criminals dependent on others. Thus, they would not know how to take care of themselves. Transcendentalists saw philanthropy in general as a threat to self-reliance. So, Hawthorne was disoriented with prison reform because the ideas behind the reform only caused more problems - like increasing class divisions and only hurting the poor more.

Well, now that I seem to have gotten a clear topic and some evidence, off to go write my paper!

Writing the Draft

I'm taking the same approach to writing the draft that I did with the reading paper. I just sit down with a few ideas of the direction that I want to take the paper in, then I just start to freewrite. I've found out that I develop my ideas in a much more logical way. I make one transition to another instead of always trying to write a paper that proves something. I don't know how well this method would work when I have to write a persuasive paper; but for the research and reading paper, this method has helped me expand on my ideas and intuition about the main text.

This is completely different from what I was taught in middle school and high school. Then, I was taught to outline my paper with a thesis and three sub-arguments that support my thesis. It was really formulaic and I liked that. But I always had trouble coming up with a thesis and the arguments. It was even worse when I'm halfway through with my paper to only find that my sub-arguments don't match my main thesis. I would just get lazy and finish the paper with how I had outlined it. But now, I can start off with a premise or question that I would have about the text. From there, I can add my ideas and answer some of my questions about the text. In this way, I slowly work my way to a greater/better understanding of the text.

I'm also noticing that some of the critics who write articles about The Blithedale Romance take the same approach. Richard Brodhead starts his paper noticing that Zenobia is described in very physical terms, much like what we noticed in class when we were talking about the novel. From there, he noticed more stuff about the book and kept refining his ideas about the book. By the end of his article, he came to a final thesis and understanding of the novel that was completely different from how he first approached it. I found this really cool.

The Link Between Hawthorne and Coverdale

In trying to determine how Hawthorne relates to his first-person narrator, Coverdale, I came across two primary connections:

1. (My own opinion:) Hawthorne and Coverdale share similar personalities and experiences, but Coverdale’s are exaggerated versions of Hawthorne’s. This suggests Hawthorne is examining himself through Coverdale.

2. (A few critics’ opinion:) Hawthorne and Coverdale are both authors and storytellers. Through Coverdale, Hawthorne analyzes the art of romance writing and how someone can gain access to others’ minds.

Because I have to come up with an original argument, I have been struggling to figure out how to incorporate my idea (1) with the critics’ idea that I agree with (2). I have decided the fact that Hawthorne and Coverdale are both authors is just more evidence that they share similar experiences, that Hawthorne is exploring his own personality and life.

While at Brook Farm, Hawthorne spent much of his spare time in isolation, either in his room or on a quiet walk, which he had hoped to use to write but was unable to out of physical exhaustion. Coverdale struggles from a similar desire to do poetry while at Blithedale without success. Both decide to narrate their experiences at their respective socialist communities years after, with Hawthorne reflecting on Brook Farm in The Blithedale Romance through Coverdale reflecting on Blithedale. It seems that, by making Coverdale an author like himself, Hawthorne can finally culminate all of his observations of life at Brook Farm into a narrative without doing it directly autobiographically. Essentially, Hawthorne has Coverdale be an “author” as an excuse to analyze his observations of Brook Farm.

Thus, my research paper presents the following argument:

Hawthorne and his narrator Coverdale have similar personalities (self-absorbed, quiet, and reclusive), similar life experiences (both live in Socialist communities and Hawthorne uses his experiences at Brook Farm directly in his novel), and similar authorial struggles (both are romance writers trying to pry into others’ lives and both find they only have time to write about their narrative-inspiring experiences at Brook Farm / Blithedale after leaving). Thus, Hawthorne puts much of himself into his narrator and uses first-person narration as a tool with which he can examine himself. After doing so, Hawthorne becomes self-conscious of his connection with his narrator, and a month after “finishing” the novel, he attempts to cover up his relation to Coverdale by adding a preface that states Coverdale is fictitious and a concluding chapter that portrays Coverdale as ridiculous. Finally, the connection between Hawthorne and Coverdale explains Coverdale’s personality and imaginative wanderings, his attempts to understand the other characters’ “hidden” relationships, and why he suddenly professes love to Priscilla.

Research: The Evolution

So I quickly realized that my initial question of "What role does Transcendentalism play in Blithedale?" was very very vague and that I needed it to be a lot more specific if I was to get anywhere. So when doing my research I realized that there was a very common occurence in the plot-- Coverdale is very much affected by Nature. In fact, he seems to become more sensitive to the others around him when he is exposed to Nature (eg. when he becomes sick and has his dreams, when he takes his walks in the forest, when he is in his hermitage, etc.). I found out that Nature (note the capital 'n') was very important to the Transcendentalists and the Brook Farm was formed to get away from the confines of the city. I'm still in the beginning stages of my essay so who knows where my writing will take me.

Nick

PS. Don't worry guys this is taking me a long time too.
PSS. I find that most of the fun in writing this thing is coming up with the title.

My Approach to the Research Paper

Like Wendy, this research paper is taking a really long time for me as well. I know I have that tendency to wait for ideas to come around, so it could waste up to a few good hours where I could have been productive in something else. So I decided to jump around and instead of talking about my research first, I started writing the section where I connected the research to the text first. I see how I want everything to connect because I know the importance of the research question to my paper, so not only do I get some work done, it might make me realize what I need to research to back up my claims in the process. This entire analysis and relating back to the novel part is essentially half of my paper.

Thanks to Natalia for the short one-on-one meeting at her office hours last Thursday. She told me what parts of my writing I need to improve on. She also made me realize some things I took for granted in Sweet Cicely. Good luck on your papers everybody!

Literary Criticism in Research

Writing this paper has proved more time consuming than I thought would be. Although I’ve been researching for some time now, it’s challenging, particularly with the literary criticism, to effectively integrate the information into my paper. I’ll admit that I did a somewhat cursory reading of a couple of the papers on my annotated bibliography to judge relevance and gain some notion of what they are about, and now that I have to delve more deeply into it in order to produce my own argument, I’m finding it difficult to appreciate all of what’s there.

Especially with Berlant’s “Fantasies of Utopia in The Blithedale Romance,” I know I’m missing some of the import of the text. I think a large part of the problem is simple unfamiliarity with literary analysis. The language is often different than what I’ve dealt with before, and some of themes it addresses, including the relationship between the collective and the individual, I think may be part of an often used interpretation of the novel which I’m not familiar with, as I’ve only explored a very small fraction of what has been written about the text. Exploring the citations in her paper may be of use, although I’m not sure that would be a worthwhile use of my time given how soon the paper has to be produced. Regardless, I think an argument can be produced from what I’ve read, though I wish I had more time to explore more of what has been written about the novel.

Was Hawthorne Being Honest?

I've had a really difficult time making sense of Hawthorne's comments in the preface to The Blithedale Romance. Specifically the portion where he attempts to convince the reader that Brook Farm serves as nothing more than a stage for the characters that he invented. I've been back and forth about what Hawthorne's intentions were.

Initially I took the statement at face value. That Hawthorne honestly didn't use Brook Farm as anything other than what he described. From that I inferred that there would be few if any similarities between the characters of the book and the people of Brook Farm. I figured since there wasn't likely to be much overlap that I could use my research paper to expand on the areas where there were similarities. Natalia was first to point out on my proposal that this was probably not the best way to go because there were so many similarities between the two.

After I started researching I was surprised just how many possible similarities there were between the people of Brook Farm and the characters from the novel. So I was forced to alter my perception of what Hawthorne's intent was in the preface of the novel. Suddenly I felt like I was being lied to. That he obviously wrote his characters with specific models in mind. I figured the comments in the preface were nothing more than him covering himself because he was concerned about backlash from the people he had modeled his characters on.

Then after doing more research, I discovered a few conflicting accounts about the relationship between the people and the characters. I read many contradictory opinions of what character was based on what person, or what event was the inspiration for what part of the novel and I came to a new conclusion. That there really is no connection between the people of the novel and the people of Brook Farm, just as Hawthorne stated. I realized that regardless of what the characters of the novel were like it would be possible to map them to people at Brook Farm. I think it would even be possible to find similarities between the people at Brook Farm and the characters of any novel. So maybe Hawthorne wasn't being dishonest at all. Maybe the similarities are nothing more than coincidence and no matter what Hawthorne did people would do everything they could to come up with a reason why this character was based on that person. After all...it sure makes for a good research paper topic!

I'm sorry, but it's true -- Research Paper Drives Me Crazy!

I am exhausted.

I have been writing my research paper for hours, because I write very slowly, and I can't help writing off topic. It seems like I have gone too far away from my argument, and I lose directions. But there is always stuff that I do not want to throw out, because I consider every detail equally important and can contribute to my argument. I know, it doesn't work that way... I should selectively choose the details to prove my argument, but I just don't want to cross out my paragraphs at this moment.

So, I decide to write everything down first, and then narrow it down after I finished the paper. Maybe by then I can see the distractions and will not be so reluctant to throw stuff out.

I wish I had more time for this paper, but it's partly my fault because I am a good procrastinator who didn't start writing until Friday night, and I still have to do a lot of research after I did the annotated bibliography.

I know such a short period will not produce any decent research paper, so my only hope is to try my best to have my thoughts down, and revise the paper later. It's good that the first draft will undergo peer reviews.

OK... go back to my paper now.

Good luck everyone on your papers!

On Writing

I don't have much to share this week on my researcherch or the class readings, so I thought I would share some things I learned in another course I am taking (not at Cal--it's from a different program I am doing), which is on non-fiction writing and lecturing.

The four main principles we are learning in the course are:

1. Motivate your audience

Your audience is investing their time and effort in reading and understanding what you have to say, and they aren't going to do it if they aren't getting something out of it. You should let them know what it is that they will find valuable on early in your paper, and in a lengthy paper, should periodically slip in reminders or new motivations to keep them interested. A key part of this is understanding who your audience is and what is important to them.

2. Delimit your topic

It is tempting to try to cover everything and explore all peripheral topics, but that isn't really possible. Clearly delimiting your topic helps focus your argument, guiding which facts are and are not relevant. It helps your reader, by making your paper a coherent, unified whole, and it also helps you write it by helping prevent wasting time on peripheral or irrelevant issues.

3. Balance abstractions and concretes

It is important, when writing about abstract ideas and relationships, to keep them grounded in examples, facts, analogies, etc., so your audience clearly understands what you are saying. The more abstract ideas get, the more difficult they are to interpret correctly by a reader, and providing concrete explanations of what you mean ensures they interpret you correctly. Likewise, too many concretes require an abstract idea tying them all together and preventing the reader from getting overloaded. (A side benefit is that providing concretes ensures you fully understand the material yourself).

4. Organize your argument logically

Having some logical structure to the argument you present helps the reader organize and keep track of everything you are saying. How you choose to organize your thoughts is optional to a large degree, but it is important that there is some non-arbitrary organization to your paper.

Marietta Holley...what else is there to say?

I'm finding this research paper to be a lot harder than I expected. Unlike other research papers I've done in the past, this one actually requires that I make a new contribution to the topic and to develop my own ideas. My question was: Why has Marietta Holley's name disappeared while Mark Twain's name remains immortal for generations to come? Is there a difference between the humor they wrote that may have contributed to ones rise and the other's downfall? My thesis was that Gender is the dominant factor in determining the reputation of a literary humorist for so and so reasons. Surprisingly, there were many secondary sources that have already this question in great detail. Nancy Walker has even written a book on it: A Very Serious Thing Women's Humor in American Culture. Charlotte Templin even goes into detail the differences between Twain and Holley in Marietta Holley and Mark Twain: Cultural-Gender Politics and Literary Reputation.

The problem was not finding sources to support my argument, but I couldn't think of anything new that I could add to their arguments. I felt like everything had been said and in great detail. In the words of Kristin Fujie, "[I found] the secondary sources a little too helpful, such that they hijack your thought process completely, turning your paper into a rehash of their arguments." The kind of research papers I'm used is to the kind where you research a topic and reaffirm the information in a paper.

I started to panic, because I didn't want to just throw all my research away. I frantically tried to think of a new fresh thesis that would still find my sources helpful. This was hard since my thoughts kept coming back to information that I already knew. Well after dinner with friends, a long casual talk with my mom, and a long shower, I finally found a working thesis: Though Holley's popularity reached heights comparable to Twain's, I propose that her humorous writings were simply not taken seriously because she was a woman. Though women and men alike enjoyed her writing and found her novels amusing, they were simply laughing at her and not necessarily with her. Sure she's witty, but how far can we take literature written by a woman?

I'm not sure my sources would agree with me, but this is the contribution I'm making and I'm sticking to it! Well hopefully you guys didn't run into the same problem I did.


*Fugie, Kristin. "Navigating Secondary Sources Basic Maneuvers." UC Berkeley English N1B. 2008.

House apologizes for slavery

A recent Washington Post article describes the House's recent decision to apologize for the U.S. government's involvement in slavery.

The House yesterday apologized to black Americans, more than 140 years after slavery was abolished, for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" segregation.

Question: why is this controversial?

The Conjure Woman

I'm enjoying this book a lot more than I though I would, mostly due to the fact that it isn't the kind of book I thought it was going to be. I had envisioned it as a melancholy book about the evils of slavery, which is a theme I didn't really have much interest in revisiting for the millionth time in my educational career. I was pleasantly surprise to find out that it isn't that at all, and that it was actually pretty lively. I'm originally from the South, and the book really rings true with a lot of aspects of the culture I lived in as a kid.

Storytelling is a big part of Southern culture, and although my grandfather (who I called Poppy Chuck) clearly wasn't a post-emancipation black southerner, I could almost hear him telling these exact same stories. In particular, it reminds me of all the stories I heard about the Bell Witch, a famous local alleged witch in Christian County Kentucky, where I'm from. You can read about the Bell Witch at www.bellwitchfansite.com. Some of my favorite stories that Poppy Chuck told me were about the Bell Witch and his supposed run-ins with her as a boy.

The most striking similarity I see between Uncle Julius' storytelling and my grandfather's is the style. I don't really have the words to describe what is so distinctive about Southern storytelling, but it kind of makes me feel like I'm a little kid again to be reading Conjure Woman.

Being from the South also helps me a lot with the dialiect. It's causing me no difficulty whatsoever. A lot of times when I drink, I slip back into my Southern accent (my friends make fun of me for it), and I can turn it on and off at will, so all I have to do to read The Conjure Woman is turn on in my mind and get to reading. Mine isn't quite as pronounced as what's in the book, but it's close enough to bridge the gap. I actually had a lot more trouble reading Coverdale's story than I have with Uncle Julius'.

The problems of research

I’ve run into a few issues while researching, both for the annotated bibliography and as I attempt to find additional sources of information. First is finding criticism relevant to what I’m discussing. Much of what has been written critiquing The Blithedale Romance is not concerned with the specific aspects of the novel that I’m interested in (how the novel provides commentary on issues related to utopian socialism), or they are buried within a larger criticism which is mostly irrelevant. Obviously this made the research process very laborious, and I’m not entirely satisfied with the sources I’ve found. It’s possible that there are sources out there which discuss the issues I’m concerned with in greater depth, but finding them via a search engine is a non-trivial task considering how much has to be sorted through.

Also, I’m not entirely sure how I should go about addressing discrepancies in the criticisms I’ve come across. I’m going to need to use the criticisms of The Blithedale Romance to help establish a connection between the text and the ideological movements associated with utopian socialism. It’s not clear to me at this point how I should deal with the different perceptions of novel themes. It seems somewhat disingenuous to simply look for sources which support the argument I’m inclined to make, but on the other hand it seems like it’ll be much harder to advance the thesis while acknowledging the variation in opinions. Obviously to a certain extent it makes the argument stronger to acknowledge differences in opinion and to argue against those contradicting your argument while at the same time advancing your own thesis. The issue, I think, is that some of the disagreement comes down to a basic subjective difference between the authors. One could make a compelling base for both views, and it’s hard to resolve the difference without admitting some of the differences are, to a certain degree, arbitrary. I’m sure I’ll come up with some solution in presenting the different views while putting forth my argument, but at this point in time it’s not entirely clear to me how to go about it best.